Scribbled Out

An American, a Frenchman, a Dane and an Australian walk into a bar.

And it wasn't even a joke.

Just rather drunken and tektonik-ey.

And oh my god oh my god oh my god I've just realised that wierd guy sleazing onto us was actually in Disco Vandetta!

***work in progress***

Kenny has a blog.  He lives in Roskilde.

He is fascinated by depicitions of post apocolyptic cities in movies, literature and in history and posts regularly on this topic.  In fact he has become quite popular.  His hit count has just passed the one million mark.  He and some bloggers to whose posts he subscribes have decided to hold a forum on late twentieth century science fiction novels which feature the destruction of a city.

His latest entry features the work of a prominant New York artist who has painted scenes of a dry American South West and he has been given permission to broadcast the images publicly.


http://www.ninjapirate.com/images/seahorse5.jpg

What does he need?  

Somewhere where a discussion can take place.
Somewhere he can present his work so he can capture the interest of the public and increase his reader base.
Somewhere to hold the afterparty.

Katerina is a stay at home mother.  

She lives a few blocks away from the Black Diamond with her boyfriend and twin daughters who are 4 years old.  Her boyfriend is in Berlin working for a marketing company and wont return for 3 weeks.  It is Sunday in early winter and she is feeling lonely and a bit understimulated.  The children want to go to the local playground, they bring their Nintendo DS's with them.  She sits on a bench and watches them trade pokemon with two other children.


http://www.bhhpa.org.uk/additional/files/skelwith-children-playing.jpg

What does she need?

Ok so I went missing for a while.

Things that I did:

I did Berlin.
I bought boots and skinny black jeans.
I farewelled my parents.
I drank alot at friday bar.
I went to Culture Night.
I have had long dinners late into the night.
I went and saw Laura Imbruglia play.
I found nice espresso.

But I'm back again I think.  Although this weekend will be as crazy as ever.

As I have said earlier I have become interested in digital spaces, and the possibility of augmenting it with a 'place' in the built world.  This was largely driven by my own addiction to online spaces. 

I blog, use Myspace and Facebook as well as spend inordinate amounts of time on Wikipedia and YouTube.  Judging by the size and membership levels of these programs and websites, many other people are using them as well.

Not only do I enjoy using these sites, but I am beginning to value them as they increasingly become integrated into my life they become and more important to me.

So I think it would be useful to list some of these things that we are becoming involved with online:

-Online computer games / virtual worlds - World of Warcraft, Second Life

-Facebook

-Myspace

-Blogging websites - Livejournal, Blogspot

-Multimedia posting and storing websites - YouTube, Flickr

-Dating websites - Adultmatchmaker.com

-Sites to find information - Wikipedia, Movie timetables, Map websites

-Online buying/selling sites - Ebay

-Communication tools - MSN, Email, Skype

All of these sites are quite obviously valued by the public due to their large membership and usage levels.  But why is this?  

Increase in users of facebook from August 2006 http://blog.facebook.com/ 

Why do people have the desire to augment themselves with digital personas and networks?

I started my exploration by reading 'The Gadget Lover: Narcissus as Narcosis' in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man 1964 by Marshall McLuhan.

He starts by telling the story of Narcissus in which he mistakes his own reflection in the water for another person.

Narcissus, by Michelangelo Caravaggio, ca. 1598. http://www.lightandmatter.com/html_books/5op/ch02/figs/narcissus.jpg

"This extension of himself by mirror numbed his perceptions until he became the servomechanism of his own extended or repeated image".

The point of this myth is to demonstrate that men and women at once become fascinated by an extension of themselves in any material other than themselves.

He went on to talk about how medical researchers such as Hans Selye and Adolphe Jonas have tried to explain physiologically the reasons for an extension of ourselves involving us in a state of numbness. They say that by extending ourselves we are attempting to maintain equilibrium. This 'autoamputation' is the power or strategy resorted to by the body when the perceptual power cannot locate or avoid the cause of irritation.

Think of 'wanting to jump out of your skin, going out of your mind'.

"The physical stress of superstimulation of various kinds causes the central nervous system to try and protect itself by a strategy of amputation or isolation of the offending organ, sense or function.  Narcissus's image is a self amputation or extension induced by irritating pressures. As a counter irritant, the image produces a generalised numbness or shock that declines recognition."

There is a good reason for this numbness. It is our way with dealing with shock.

Depending on what is extended technologically (shocked) the body compensates accordingly. (If you intensify sound, taste and sight are affected). Since all inventions and technologies are extensions or self-amputations of our physical bodies, new equilibriums are required to be reached in our bodies.

"Thus man is fragmented by his technologies".

To use technology is to embrace it, and the displacement of perception follows automatically.

"We have to numb out central nervous system when it is exposed and extended or we die". 


Pyramidal neurons (yellow) from the central nervous system http://www.astrographics.com/GalleryPrints/Display/GP2137.jpg

Our desire to create online lives is not only a reaction to the increasingly meaningless physical world, but it’s also a defence mechanism, a survival technique. We are escaping the meaningless and complex world into the world of the digital

Architecture as escape?

Architecture as Narcotic.


Anti opium smoking poster from Afganistan http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/39834000/jpg/_39834421_poster-afp-203x300.jpg

Now I don’t like this way of approaching the problem.  Mostly because I feel that many productive things come out of this technological world known as the internet.  I think it explains why its so fun escape into the world of Facebook, for example, but it doesn't explain the accountability of discussing Facebook in real life with friends.  There is a reflection of the net on our real lives.

So I kept reading.

I found this excellent essay by AUDC / Robert Sumrell and Kazys Vernelis called 'Los Angeles and the Theology of Ether' which hinted an answer to me. They start by introducing the world described in Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt's 'Empire'.

In this book they describe a new world order created by the global spread of capital and communications technology. They envisage a new Empire emerging, based on a placeless network of flows and hierarchies. This Empire has three main tiers - the Bomb, Money and the Ether.

The internet has formed a global empire.

Sumrell and Vernelis (S&V) focus on the Ether in this world - the realm of the media, culture and the global telecommunications network, in other words the internet and telecommunications.

Ether, Aether or Quintessance is the material that fills the region of the universe above the terrestrial sphere. Imbued with the power of life the Ancient Greeks believed it was the pure essence where the gods dwell, which they breathe like an equivalent of 'air'. This ether has no qualities (neither hot, cold, wet, nor dry) and is incapable of change except for changes in location and density. It also moves in circles by nature, is pervasive and non material.


http://www.scienceclarified.com/images/uesc_01_img0040.jpg

In the world of medicine and chemistry ether is a flammable liquid which has been used as an anaesthetic. This chemical separates the mind from the body, reducing the dominance of physical sensation while maintaining the consciousness of the patient.

They go on to describe a building used to house equipment to 'plug into the ether'.  This building, they say, "demonstrates the transformation of the city into a system of objects and the importance of the network to that system".

"These places [where we connect to the ether] are homes in which we dwell telemetrically.  We check into the global space of telecommunications in order to escape the dead world of objects.  The desire is to leave behind this world of material goods for something more pure, and to escape our responsibility to them by submitting to something greater.  [This] realm promises that the spirit can finally part from flesh and exist fully in a world of electronic images. These images are seductive because they cannot be suppressed, and we never have the disappointment of ownership."

What they are basically saying is that in this world where our lives are more removed from the direct consequences of our actions, physical objects become more important for their symbolic values alone.

"Value itself does not come out of any deeper truth but is constructed by temporary notions and mass delusions".

Take 'vintage' clothing for example. The value of say, a jacket changes depending on the style's popularity. Nothing in the object itself adds value or meaning, but rather it is invented, or marketed.


Japanese street fashion http://tn3-1.deviantart.com/fs11/300W/i/2006/180/8/4/Japanese_Street_Fashion_by_hakanphotography.jpg

S&V feel that the role of computers and telecommunications don't do away with physical objects, but rather objects proliferate endlessly. We still feel the need to own objects to validate our identity and diversity outside of this media web, but we are also repelled by them, because they "cannot satisfy our desire for self-negation, our desire to loose ourselves in their world. We dream of being as erethral and meaningless to them as they are to us, to be allowed to leave this world and dissipate in Ether"

"A dream of immaterial culture is revenge on the world of objects."

Within this culture, objects have no natural meaning and are abstracted to empty forms, ready to be filled with a variety of meanings that we apply to them depending on context. Supply and demand emerge from what is already lying around.

"Either things don’t mean anything anymore, or we don't, or both. Value is now a commodity - sought out and consumed."

They conclude by saying that individuals also want to become virtual and escape into Ether. It is through this that it is possible to obtain 'another body, a media life'.

"Neither sacred nor living this media life is pure image, more consistent and dependant than physical life itself"

This is the key to it I feel.  We participate in these sites because they allow us to exist in an empirical world.  In this world where things are getting faster and more confusing, and truths are always questionable, it has been important to map out what we find valuable, place our own value on information and objects.

But why do people who are involved in these online networks need to gather?

Well there are conventional reasons.  Many networks are based on the idea of meeting someone.  Take online dating websites - you meet someone online then decide to meet in real life for a date.  Myspace as well is used for finding places to go out and meet others.


Music events are quickly organised on Myspace

It is less clear why people would choose to meet if they were part of a Blogging network, for example.

For help I turned to the work of the sociologist Bruno Latour.  In his introduction to 'Making Things Public - Atmospheres of Democracy', he applies his 'actor-network' theory to political meetings.  I think that his writings are equally valid for gatherings of individuals as well.

He starts with the statement that people will assemble, but then asks what around?  Parliament, he says is out of touch with a meaningful meeting because "In practice, humans never assemble among themselves just to speak their minds about some state of affairs."

So then when we assemble, how do we form a collective person that is sometimes more the sum of its parts?  This is hard to imagine if the centres of interest are "a shifting and barely visible tracing of the unintended consequences of collective action".

In this world where objects loose their value and significance (as stated above) it is important that we focus on "things".  The original meaning of the word thing was "a gathering around a disputed state of affairs"

"There is thus a critical interest in shifting the center of gravity of politics (read assembling) from an assembly of people to an assembly of matters of concern."

To put it simply, people will meet over a thing or subject because they have strong opinions on that subject.  This sounds pretty obvious, but it shifts the focus from gathering people together to talk about a subject to drawing people together to discuss something about which they are passionate.  From a set point of view and audience, to a more flowing, decentralised organisation about topics for discussion.

His final point is that it is important to look at other forms of gathering so that we can learn about how we can gather.

What if there was a place to meet in which can be used to present a blog?

So where would this be?  What place in the city would be a suitable place for this range of gatherings to take place?


http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8a/Den_Sorte_Diamant02.jpg/800px-Den_Sorte_Diamant02.jpg

I have chosen Soren Kirkegaards Plads for this project for a few reasons.  Firstly it is central to the city and easily accessible, thus will draw many people.  It also is paradoxically separated from the city, being situated on the waterfront, in an area which is not so dense.

A place to which one can escape.

It is near the Black Diamond as well as the proposed Centre for Design (Architecture?) - in-between old library, a contemporary library that still uses conventional ways of accessing information and learning and a centre which makes a living from looking to the future. 

I think that such a project - a place for the future, a project of interaction, would sit well in-between such places.

It is also located near a large youth hostel and other museums, as well as the Parliament House.  It is in an area where allot of different opinions are held on many different subjects.  Why not throw some more in?

It also seems rather fitting that the square is named after the Danish philosopher famous for writing at different desks and for inventing different characters with different arguments.  What would he have thought about such a place?


http://www.philosophyprofessor.com/images/philosophers/soren-aabye-kierkegaard.jpg

So what does this place become then?

A place to share ideas.

A place to understand the networks of the city.

A safe place to meet an online friend and work out what to do.

A place for impromptu gatherings.

A place to learn about how and why we gather.

A place to invent new ways of gathering.

So I very quickly worked out (was told) that a good way into this project was to work out why these people feel the need or desire to augment their physical selves with virtual components.  Knowing this I should be able to proceed.

(The world of second life)

So I started to read about networks and connections.  I found this excellent essay by AUDC / Robert Sumrell and Kazys Vernelis called 'Los Angeles and the Theology of Ether' which hinted an answer to me.  They start by introducing the world described in Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt's 'Empire'.

In this book they describe a new world order created by the global spread of capital and communications technology.  They envisage a new Empire emerging, based on a placeless network of flows and heirachies.  This Empire has three main tiers - the Bomb, Money and the Ether.



Sumrell and Vernelis (S&V) focus on the Ether in this world - the realm of the media, culture and the global telecommunications network.  Ether, Aether or Quintessance is the 'material that fills the reigon of the universe above the terrestial spere.  Imbued with the power of life the Ancient Greeks believed it was the pure essence where the gods dwell, which they breath like an equivalant of 'air'.  This ether has no qualities (neither hot, cold, wet, or dry) and is incapable of change except for changes in location and density.  It also moves in circles by nature, is pervasive and non material.

In the world of medicine and chemisty ether is a flammible liquid which has been used as an anaesthetic.  This chemical seperates the mind from the body, reducing the dominance of physical sensation while maintaining the conciousness of the patient.

Now in Empire,  there need to by physical places which allow us to connect, 'plug-in' to the Ether.  They use the example of One Wilshire - a real building complex in LA which is extremly valuable but devoid of people.  It has become a building used by many companies to access telecommunications and the internet through cables and computers and things I don't know alot about.  This building, they say, 'demonstrates the transformation of the city into a system of objects and the importance of the network to that system.

'These places of connection are homes in which we dwell telematically...  We check into the global space of telecommunications in order to escape the dead world of objects... The desire is to leave behind this world of material goods for something more pure, and to escape our responsibility to them by submitting to something greater... [This] relm promises that the spirit can finally part from flesh and exist fully in a world of electronic images.  These images are seductive because they connot be suppressed, and we never have the dissapointment of ownership.

In this world where our lives are more removed from the direct consequences of our actions, physical objects become more important for their symbolic values alone.  'Value itself does not come out of any deeper truth but is constructed by temporary notions and mass delusions'.  Take 'vintage' clothing for example.  The value of say, a jacket changes depending on the style's popularity.  Nothing in the object itself adds value or meaning, but rather it is invented, or marketed.

S&V feel that the role of computers and telecommunications doesn't do away with physical objects, but rather they proliferate endlessly.  We still feel the need to own objects to validate our identity and diversity outside of this media web, but we are also repelled by them, because they 'cannot satisfy our desire for self-negation, our desire to loose ourselves in their world.  We dream of being as erethral and meaningless to them as they are to us, to be allowed to leave this world and dissipate in Ether.

A dream of immaterial culture is revenge on the world of objects.

Within this culture, objects have no natural meaning and are abstracted to empty forms, ready to be filled with a variety of meanings that we apply to them depending on context.  Supply and demand emerge from what is already lying around.  'Either things dont mean anything anymore, or we don't, or both.  Value is now a commodity - sought out and consumed.

Though the Ether is formless, it has to be created.  The Virtual world requires an infrostructure.  'Ether is primarily produced at nodes and locations where key players can meet and collect in front of and behind cameras and computers'.  All of media and all of virtual life may be transmitted through non-physical technologies, but it is not possible to catalogue or store it without ties to storage and material culture.

Individuals also want to become virtual and escape into Ether.  It is through this that it is possible to obtain 'another body, a media life'.  'Neither sacred nor living this media life is pure image, more consistant and dependant than physical life itself.

Now this idea of seperation, narcosis or numbness is further explored by Marshall McLuhan in 'The Gadget Lover: Narcissus as Narcosis' in Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man 1964.



Narcissus mistakes his own reflection in the water for another person.  'This extension of himself by mirror numbed his perceptions until he became the servomechanism of his own extended or repeated image'.  The point of this myth is to demonstrate that men and women at once become fascinated by an extension of themselves in any material other than themselves.

Medical Researches such as Hans Selye and Adolphe Jonas have tried to explain physiologically the reasons for an extension of ourselves involving us in a state of numbness.  They say that by extending ourselves we are attempting to maintain equilibrium.  This 'autoamputation' is the power or strategy resorted to by the bodywhen the perceptual power cannot locate or avoid the cause of irritation.  Think of 'wanting to jump out of your skin, going out of your mind'.

The physical stress of superstimulation of various kinds causes the central nervous system to try and protect itself by a strategy of amputation or isolation of the offending organ, sense or function.  Narcissus's image is a self amputation or extension induced by irritating pressures.  As a counter irritant, the image produces a generalised numbness or shock that declines recognition.

There is a good reason for this numbness.  It is our way with dealing with shock.  Depending on what is extended techologically (shocked) the body compensates accordingly.  (If you intensify sound, taste and sight are affected).  Since all inventions and technologies are extensions or self-amputations of our physical bodies, new equilibriums are required to be reached in our bodies, and other extensions.

Thus man is fragmented by his technologies.

'If perceptive organs vary, objects of perception seem to vary
If perceptive organs close, their objects seem to close.'

To use technology is to embrace it and the displacment of perception follows automatically.  'We have to numb out central nervous system when it is exposed and extended or we die.  The age of anxiety and of electric media is also the age of the unconcious and of apathy.  With our central nervous system numbed,  the task of concious awareness and order are tranferred to the physical life of man, so that for the first time he has become aware of technology as extension of his physical body.'

'With such awareness, the subliminal life, private and social, is put into full view.  We now have 'social concioiusness'.  Instead of individual seperateness we now have total social involvment.

In the electric age we wear all mankind as our skin.'

Ok take a deep breath.

So our desire to create online lives is not only a reaction to the increasingly meaningless physical world,  but its also a defence mechanism, a survival technique.  We need these things to survive in our increasingly chaotic and 'unphysical' world.

Architecture as escape

As Narcotic.


(19th C Opium Den)

So in the true spirit of my work this semester I will be trying to post regularly about my progress in design.  

In department 3 the focus is on process and method.  We each choose our own project, but we have a very set structure in which we work through the design.  So far the focus has been on mindmapping, so that we can work out the subject what we are interested in, to help come up with a central 'theme'.

After many maps I have decided that I want to try and understand what is going on here, online in the world of Facebook, Livejournal, Myspace, Boyfriend.dk, Ebay and so on.

Is it possible to have a Myspace space?

Do we need one?

How can I translate something completehly digital and fluid into something built?

My work for the next two weeks is to work out what context this idea sits in.  Who uses such a space?  Where is it? What do people do when they meet here?  So far I have defined a framework to work this out in the form of a question.  How can individuals meet in a comfortable place?  By unpacking this hopefully I will have a sort of context to work in.  

At the moment I am defining individuals as an interested person, someone who is interested in something and is driven to meet others also interested in that subject.  This is a really broad definition, but I think it will narrow as soon as I set a site.  I also need to investigate WHY these people want to meet and WHAT they might want to do when they meet.

The interesting part of this question though is the nice contrast between the idea of an individual as a free person, and the idea of comfort, which implies a set of rules that are followed to allow a sense of security and safety.  People form groups much like the diagram above, and these groups create rules to make themselves comfortable.  But these groups also overlap. How can I design a place which can cater for changing, or fluid rules for comfort?

I'm really interested to hear everyones' ideas on this.  Hate it? Love it? Meh? Feel free to comment with your thoughts or even email me.  Also tell me of any books/essays that I ought to be reading.

I drank too much last night.

Dave and Nic arrived at my doorstep almost by surprise only four hours after my parents had flown out.  They arrived carrying two bottles of cheap cheap German vodka.

Needless to say I'm feeling rather ill today.  

The unboozed fragment of my brain remaining is trying to get me to worry - I havn't been to school all week!  This is rather unusual considering how relatively studious I am back home.

'Of course you havn't been going to school!' you say.  'You're a stupid boozed up disorganised exchange student!  You're not meant to go to school!'

Really I can only concur.  I refuse to feel any guilt about this.

I'm not disinterested.  In fact most of the time I am concentrating really intensely both internally and externally.  I'm very quickly realising that what I can learn that will most help me design is not at my school here.  I just need to experience Denmark and work out what makes it, and thus me tick.

Something tells me that I'm slowly working towards an epiffany.  I feel as though I'm walking the edge of a knife, but I don't know what is on either side.  I'm living in Dangerous Times.   Rediculously safe Dangerous Times anyway - I don't think there is any way I can stuff this up.

I just have to concentrate on never ever ever drinking as much as I did last night.  Where's my coffee?

(Roskilde church (neoclassical extension) Ok this was designed white.  But its pretty fucking white isnt it)

In the religious reforms of the 16th and 17th centuries they painted the interiors of churches white.  That or they demolished them.  Roskilde, the burying ground of the absolute monarchs in Denmark, once had over 20 churches and chapels.  Now it has the one cathedral, converted for Protestant use by Christian IV (i think) and forever used as a catacomb for the sober eternally resting rulers.

I can understand why they did it.  Idols are evil and impure.  The Catholic images threatened the foundations of the protestant church in power.  So the interiors were purified with a thin layer of white paint, quickly applied.  We are left with the pure godly form of the thing.  Soaring, light-filled, uplifting form.  Something to inspire and instill the feeling of God in everyone.  Wonderful purity!  Something away from the distractions of the dirty real.

There are many white interiors in Denmark.  My room is white with pale wooden floors.  My bathroom is white.  My living room is white.  My studio is white.  My school hall is white.  All four of my local churches have white interiors.  Simple peaceful harmony.  Beautiful natural crisp European light.  

It is safe.  The dirty world is kept out while you sit inside and drink black coffee in your nice white interior.

The problem is I just don't find it particuarly challenging.  White churches affirm everything that I know about the world.  Beautiful things are simple.  White is pure and holy.  White is beautiful.  White goes with white.  White is a really good way of getting light into your buildings. 

Luckily some traces remain.  Brick up and sealed, chapels rested for centuries waiting to be uncovered.


(Malmo chapel ceiling, 15th C)

This rocks my socks off.  I gasp for breath astounded as my beliefs are rocked to the bone.  A cathedral becomes a living organism of flowing vines and stories and images.  A celebration of life and meeting.  These places of gathering never intended to be mere soulless places of contemplation, but intense, complex creatures to be inhabited, that can teach, and entertain, and amaze.  They embrace the dirtiness and complexities of life and celebrate it.  My mind blossoms with the possibilities.

And mass wouldn't have been so damn boring!


(the same church, painted 16th C)

Imagine the flowing images under the white safety-paint of all the old churches in Denmark.  The stories, the passions, the pure unadulterated life.  They are there, waiting to bloom and make plentiful the wide barren expanses of pure white planes!

Imagine what lies under the layers of this building.  Painted white so that we are not exposed to any dangerous ideas.  Protected by the propaganda of the modernists so we dont question.  Just absorb.


(http://weblogs.clarin.com/itinerarte/archives/Villa%20Savoye%20-%20Poissy.jpg)

Firstly, I'm sorry I havn't posted in a while.  What? I havn't forgotten about this blog.  Oh no how could I?!

I've just been drunk for a week

*thinks*

Actually for longer.

To give an example:

Friday night - Student night at my uni, cool music (electro, soul, funk, cool rnb), BEAUTIFUL people (Its a Scandanavian design school for god's sake!) and also 10kr beers (450ml for about two dollars).

Eight beers later and I'm having a great time.  The Danes start to dance and so do I.  I don't remember leaving the party, and before I knew it my friend and I were sitting on the old city battlements overlooking the moat in Christiania having a falafel roll and sharing some grass, while having deep and meaningfuls about the future of Denmark and ourselves.

Anyway on Saturday I thought I would take things a step further and go INTERNATIONAL.  Yes I went out in sweden.

To a really cool indie placed called Debaser.  For Sydneysiders, think health club meets a club in Darling Harbour.  Big fancy bar, huge outside area, but filled with the most amazing people.

Train trip over - 146 dkk
Lunch and dinner and cocktail- 200 dkk
Second dinner - 175 skk
More beer at random little places, entry to Debaser (80kr), more beer, taxi - 300 skk

Total = 732 dkk

= $170

Oh dear.

It was pretty fucking good though.

Now for some sleep.  Oh wait I'm nowhere near home.  Beer anyone?

image from http://www.irene.nu/archives/Debaser.jpg

So I crashed my bike.  

But dont worry it only got a bit dinted.  I managed to fix it.  Which was lucky, as it would have been freaking expensive to fix.

Oh.

and I'm ok too.  I only have a bruised ankle, grazed knee, bruised other knee, bruised AND grazed hip and grazed hand.  

But all that will heal for free. 

So anyway to get over my fright I decided to ride all day today.  I took Andrew and we bashed my bike back into shape and drove half way across Zealand looking at churches.   Thats 20 kilometers for two churches on a newly scary bike.  Sounds a bit steep.  But it was actually one of those architecture pilgrimages which one has to do over here.

So now I have two more *ticks*  

I bought a bike.  

It is cheap and nasty so it won't get stolen, but it takes me places much faster now.  To celebrate our purchases we went to Christiania and had some beers and talked to some of the locals, which was fun.  Tonight our final housemate arrives.

Anyway off to the art gallery.

 

The Metro trains are designed by Giugiaro Design. The trains are driverless and run entirely by a computer system called ATC (Automatic Train Control).  The trains are 39 metres long, 2.65 metres wide, and weigh 52 tonnes. Their top speed is 80 km/h, and the average service speed is 40 km/h with an acceleration and deceleration capacity of 1.3 m/s². Each train consists of three cars with a total of six automated doors, holding up to 96 seated and 204 standing passengers. There are four large "flex areas" in each train with folding seats providing space for wheelchairs, strollers, and bicycles. Since the trains are comparatively small, they are meant to transport people quickly over short distances with very short time intervals (two minutes during rush hours in the city centre).

The trains are maintained at the CMC in Vestamager. A train can automatically go to the centre, be washed on the outside by a machine, and return to service. If special maintenance is required, the train can be taken out of service and manually controlled into the siding.

 The automated train system

The entire Metro system is run by a fully-automated computer system called ATC. By letting a computer run the system, human errors are eliminated, and a low time interval between the trains can be maintained because of precise acceleration and braking. The system is monitored by five operators at the CMC at all times. In the event of a failure of the ATC system, the trains can either be controlled remotely from the CMC by the operators or by Metro stewards in the trains.

The ATC system is divided into three sub-systems:

ATP 

The ATP system (Automatic Train Protection) is designed to protect passengers, personnel, and equipment. It ensures that junctions are set correctly, and that trains adhere to speed limits to avoid delays and derailment. Since the lines are divided into sections, the system also makes sure that only one train is in one section at all times, and that trains do not enter blocked sections with maintenance or objects on the tracks, for instance.

ATO 

The ATO system (Automatic Train Operation) is the substitute for the train driver. The system makes sure that the trains stop at the correct stations, open the doors, wait for passengers to board and leave the train, and start the train again. The system cannot change vital functions like the position of a junction.

ATS 

The ATS system (Automatic Train Supervisory) controls the routes and destinations of the trains. The system can run the network under different scenarios: normal service, single-track service, or when a stretch is under maintenance, for instance. It maintains an overview over the entire Metro network with information about junctions, all trains, and other equipment for the operators at all times. The system also gives a list of alarms, errors, and other events for all equipment on the lines no matter if they are controlled by the ATC or manually.

AND CHECK OUT THE RELIABILITY!

A number of technical problems, especially with the automated doors, caused delays during the first years of the Metro, with between 85% and 95% of the trains being on schedule. Most of these problems have now been resolved, and the average reliability is usually between 98% and 99%, as of 2006. Overall, the Metro, carrying about 120,000 passengers a day, has been well-incorporated into the existing public transport grid that consists of S-Trains and buses.

I am living in the future.  Wheres my jetpack???

(en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City_Circle_Line)

Ok so I'm jetlagged.

I spent the morning walking the city and applying for my social security number.  That was fine.  It started to rain and I got stressed so I bought chocolate and went home.  Fair enough im not my normal self.

But alas, as fragile as I felt, I had to buy dinner.  Luckily there is a supermarket a block away from where I live off this delightful square near a canal.  I put on my green thongs (Thongs have this amazing ability to make you feel so so so comfortable outdoors) and made a list of things to buy.

Milk - tissues - bread - can of diced tomatoes - potatoes - cheese - eggs 

So I have an enjoyable walk to the store.  And as I enter things are looking up.  You can buy bicycles here!  I suppressed the urge to put one in my basket (only 1200kr) and moved on to milk.  Walked to the fridges,  found the milk looking cartons.

Ok so you would think that milk is the same everywhere.  Its not.  Here they rank it by its fat content.  I grabbed a 1.5 percent. 

Walked around alot.  Tissues hide near the sanitary pack.

Bread was easy.

Potatoes small looking.  I grabbed some frozen wedges because I felt like some comfort food.

Passed the alcohol 'aisle'  (and I use the term sparingly, the aisles are more like piles).  Gave up trying to work out how much a six pack of beer costs and collected a bottle of red.

Tomatoes.  I looked for like 15 minutes for them and finally found them on an assorted shelf.  They came in different flavours, all in Danish.  I grabbed the less suspect one.

Cheese I just had no idea.  I just wanted cheddar.  I ended up just getting some luxury cheddar, promising to try harder next time I wasn't so distressed

To the checkout and you have to buy your plastic bags (I like that) and pack your food yourself.  Costs about 150kr.  Meh paper money.

I ended up with a bottle of wine, expensive cheese, mystery milk, tomatoes surprise, potato wedges, bread.  I ran home and opened the bottle of wine to soothe my nerves.

Fuck I forgot the eggs.