133 - Archinktober Recap Part 1

Kurt Neiswender: 0:32

Hey, Jamie. How's

Jamie: 0:33

it going?

Kurt Neiswender: 0:36

Good. How are you? Our triangle cue is

Jamie: 0:38

gone. I know. I hear, I hear, I hear no triangles, which is

Kurt Neiswender: 0:43

good. You hear, you hear no triangles. Yeah. But I think there's triangles in your head. It's going to be there forever now. Probably. I'm all right. You know, I, we were talking, you know, for those who can watch this, you know computer aided drafting and design, which is also known as CAD. All sorts, or BIM, Building Information Modeling. The drawing software tools are not kind on the eyes. Jamie is picking on me for looking tired and sad. So, I made some serious progress on a drawing set for a house with a lot of corners.

Jamie: 1:25

A lot of

Kurt Neiswender: 1:25

corners. And you know, it's a lot of jogs, a lot of turns. The house is, it's a busy, it's a busy project.

Jamie: 1:36

I like, I like how you're just like, you're, it's not that you're backtracking, but you're sort of, like, cad splaining. You're...

Kurt Neiswender: 1:50

Cad splaining. The politest of cad splaining. Yes. Yeah. Have you, I've never heard... That term, that invented term before it's,

Jamie: 2:03

it's, it just, just happened. Like, yeah, I have coined it for everybody's benefit.

Kurt Neiswender: 2:10

You know, the good thing is we won't be looking at any drawings. No, but I did that I did that in order to cat explain you. No,

Jamie: 2:21

no, no. This is all about the coffee sketch.

Kurt Neiswender: 2:23

Cheers. That's right. Yes. Cheers, sir. Oh my gosh. Thanks for Cheering me up and not picking on my puffy eyes.

Jamie: 2:32

I mean this all started with me. Just trying to make you have a deep cleansing breath Cause I just, I really felt like you needed it, the way you have this like, Your face just looked like you were carrying the weight of the world. And, and so I'm cat splaining it away with a good coffee sketch,

Kurt Neiswender: 2:53

so. You know in the in the family feud that we've been politely having. Oh. Haven't had any grenades lobbed in our direction

Jamie: 3:04

lately. It's, well, we haven't had a whole lot of episodes dropped for them to know that, that you're,

Kurt Neiswender: 3:11

you're still holding that. I hold a grudge. Yeah. I don't really

Jamie: 3:18

hold grudges, but you know, I know, I mean, of all people like to initiate a coffee feud, you were not the one that I thought would think that like, that's like. I mean, almost like you almost would think it would be more me, but then I kind of don't go there either. You know, in all honesty, I mean, it's like, I can, I can be, I can be abrupt maybe a little intense sometimes, but not, not interested in the coffee feud. So,

Kurt Neiswender: 3:49

well, then I'll just, I might just

Jamie: 3:51

let it go. Don't let it go yet. Okay. Okay. Got it. We have to keep it going for at least like the month of October.

Kurt Neiswender: 4:01

Oh, good. Good. And then,

Jamie: 4:03

and then, and then in November is Thanksgiving. Right. And

Kurt Neiswender: 4:08

Grace and forgiveness and there's peace and

Jamie: 4:11

stuff. And we're getting, then we get to the end of the year and you're picking up a word. I mean looking ahead. You know, there's a, there's a

Kurt Neiswender: 4:18

lot to look forward to. You know, we're week nine. Ending week nine in the, in the semester. So there's now, you know, ten to, ten to, or sorry five to six weeks left in the semester. So before you know it, November is going to go by like that. And then we're going to be into December and the end of the year. So you're right. It's, it's creeping, creeping up on us.

Jamie: 4:46

I thought you were going to ask me to be a juror again.

Kurt Neiswender: 4:50

Well, we're a lot like excuse me but we're in person right now a lot there possibly. Could work out of a virtual possibility, so I will keep you on the speed dial if you're willing. It started to sound like you were escaping, escaping your kids, kids, planning

Jamie: 5:17

duties. I have no, no idea what I was saying, but yeah,

Kurt Neiswender: 5:21

Oh, all right. Well, yes, I, well, how's that? What's in the mug

Jamie: 5:26

for you? I am enjoying, like, our Coffee Sketch podcast roast. It's still, I'm, I'm not, I'm not really, I'm, I'm being very judicious about it, but on days that I know that we're going to pod.

Kurt Neiswender: 5:43

Well, I'm not going to give it to anybody. In particular, there's plenty

Jamie: 5:50

for us to see, and I walked, I walked right up to that and I didn't even see it. I'm so proud of you. That was

Kurt Neiswender: 6:02

good. Yes, thanks.

Jamie: 6:05

Even though I have, I don't, I almost feel like now I'm a party to

Kurt Neiswender: 6:09

this, but I'm not, I'm not, I pulled you. It's a subtle implication.

Jamie: 6:14

Yeah, it's like it's the implication. I didn't know I was driving the car and he went to go in the bank And he came out with all this stuff and said it's time to go and I just went and I didn't know. Yeah

Kurt Neiswender: 6:30

Well, I'm glad you're enjoying. I I Haven't I haven't had any since the one the one bag. I've been frugal myself But I'm,

Jamie: 6:41

Still on I have sent, I have sent a few bags, like how kind of you like if, if I, if I had. Like, like you can see behind me, I do not have a map of the U. S. with like yarn but I, I have, because that would be weird on a whole, on many, many levels, but no. Sounds like a good idea. Yeah, you're like, you're like, but you can't see this wall over here. Right. Yeah. Turn the camera. You see all these photos. of Cormac, you know?

Kurt Neiswender: 7:19

Yeah, no. Yeah, there's a big buffer right around. Yeah. Yeah, no. Exclusionary zone.

Jamie: 7:30

So, yeah. But yeah, no, it's still good. It's, it's, it's, I'm I'm very, very pleased with the folks at Rootless having picked that one as a, as our, our collab blend. So thanks again to them. Good stuff. What about yourself?

Kurt Neiswender: 7:46

What do you, what do you draw? You know, I, I'm on some root lists right now. Some, some of their state, they're one of their long time favorites. Dark. It's called dark. It's dark roast. Pretty self explanatory, I think.

Jamie: 8:05

I did. Because you, you had mentioned the dark roast. On the last episode with Steven I was shopping this week and I knew that I was like, well, I need to, I need to balance my supply. So I needed something else and I did find something I'm not going to talk about on this. This episode, but I'll talk about it on the next one. And it was sort of inspired by your diving back towards the dark. Awesome. I look forward to it. I haven't tried and I haven't tried it yet. I did. So I'm like, I'm literally going to save it for the next episode.

Kurt Neiswender: 8:43

That sounds good and I probably will have something new then too, because I'm. Running low, running low on some beans there. So as, as a proud coffee drinker, who's, you know, trying to, trying to crunch out lots of drawings these

Jamie: 9:01

days. Oh, speaking of coffee drinking, we haven't mentioned this on the podcast, but. Probably coming up pretty soon is I have been in contact with the coffee research folks at Texas A& M. Oh,

Kurt Neiswender: 9:23

wait, we haven't

Jamie: 9:23

talked about it. You and I have talked about it, but we haven't talked about it on the podcast. And so I'm dropping it here as sort of a little, like a little thread. This is the. You know, dropping a couple coffee beans in this episode. We'll pick it up in another one. But yeah, they have a research, a research lab on campus and have. Been in contact with them. They've enjoyed the podcast. And I, I think it'll be an interesting, I get, I get to have a tour, so always, I mean, architects always love a, a tour. So

Kurt Neiswender: 9:59

building tours, we like spaces.

Jamie: 10:01

Yeah. See, see stuff. Enjoy it.

Kurt Neiswender: 10:05

Yeah. I will say, I, I did listen to I, I believe it's the latest Archie speak. To speak nice about our friends over there and Cormac was, he did make a mention about site visiting or touring or something like that. And how you know, his non. Architecture family members tend to tend to not understand so much why we. We all, we architects like to look at building.

Jamie: 10:36

Well, it's a balancing act, right? I mean, it's, that's the whole thing is it's, you gotta, you know, when you're traveling with folks who aren't architects and you're, and I've had this mini conversation with folks, it's like, they're like, Oh, I'm going on a trip. And they say where they're going. I'm like, Ooh. You know, and I'm, and I think I started, we all do it, you know, start thinking down that list of like Phoenix, what's in Phoenix and like in like, you know, you go down this list of things you've seen things you haven't seen. Like, when were you there last, what's, what's nearby, like what's in driving distance, like striking distance as an architect. And then they're like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa. You know, I'm not, I'm going with other people. And, and, and they know I'm an architect, but, and you, and you hear that, you hear that phrase and it's, it's, it's usually really worded really close to that. You know, we all have said it, admit it, we've all said it. And, and we know in our heart that there's a part of us that's saying, yeah, but can I steal away for an afternoon and just. Just one. I just want to go to one, one building. Just one. There's one on my list that's really close by. I took a long flight to get here, or I drove, like, just one. I just have one. You know, and, you know, for those who are in relationships, there is this natural bartering. For friendships, the same thing, you know, for work colleagues. God, I hope your work colleagues already know that when you travel you want to go see stuff. I will tell one quick anecdote, okay, along these lines. So I'm in Boston earlier this year at a national conference for Main Street. And so a lot of the Main Street folks that I deal with are obviously interested in historic preservation but, you know, to some degree it's more about The community and economic development and not necessarily the buildings and the architecture and the architects and all that kind of stuff. I mean, that's, it's part of it, but it's not like as high a priority, you know, for for a lot of them, unless I'm with the architect types in that group. So I'm out with a few of our local managers and we're having dinner and I realize that we're really, really close to MIT's campus and I'm like, I wonder if I can, you know, like in my brain, I'm like, I wonder if I can just like, if I, I know that the, I know the subway stop we have to get is here, but if we walk just, if we walk just a little bit this way, I can go see part of MIT's campus and, and see one of Frank Gehry's buildings on there. That's just sort of fascinated me. And they indulged me, you know, a lot of them still ribbed me about it afterwards and say, I remember when you took us on that side trip to go see some architecture.

Kurt Neiswender: 13:46

Well, there's Frank Gehry, there's Stephen Hall.

Jamie: 13:48

Oh, yeah, yeah, we know I wasn't that was too far. I knew where that

Kurt Neiswender: 13:52

was. Yeah, it wasn't happening. There's so much on MIT. Yeah, I get it. Well, you're also going on a trip next week, right? I am. So, yeah,

Jamie: 14:07

I'm going to do these. Yeah, I have a little bit more, a little more control over my schedule going to Nacogdoches.

Kurt Neiswender: 14:17

Oh, that's New Mexico, right? No. Is that

Jamie: 14:23

Texas still? It's still Texas. Nacogdoches is East Texas, so the opposite side of, The New Mexico side. Are you looking at a map?

Kurt Neiswender: 14:33

No, I was letting the

Jamie: 14:34

dog out of the room here. Oh. I thought, I thought you were tipping everybody off who's watching this, like, where Kurt keeps his yarn filled map. It's, it's, it's, yeah, it's off

Kurt Neiswender: 14:47

to the left. Like, the yeah, that's, I've heard that name before. It's I think I heard it was like on Breaking Bad or some, you know, I don't know. They talk about Sure.

Jamie: 14:59

It's a cool, well, don't, don't make me spell it, but yes. That's

Kurt Neiswender: 15:03

where I'm going. That sounds cool. Take a picture, of a sign with probably a few. Yeah.

Jamie: 15:10

Yeah. Probably took a few. Yeah.

Kurt Neiswender: 15:13

Well, so it is October. So every October for, I don't know how long it's been quite a while. We should, I should have checked stats, but the, the arc inktober theme, I guess, or themes

Jamie: 15:34

comes up every year.

Kurt Neiswender: 15:37

So every day for the month of October, there's a prompt for sketches. And since my personal schedule has not allowed us to be as. Punctual for say, the 1st, because in the past, we've probably landed near to the 1st of the month with some, some bit of conversation about this because it's a lot of fun. It's a good, good exercise for those who are not familiar with it. It must have started off as like a hashtag or yeah. Some sort of challenge or something

Jamie: 16:10

like that. Yeah, so it was, it the, there's a hashtag in Tober that's sort of like predates it and has existed for a while. And so I was following a lot of those prompts just as a, as a general sketcher. Right. And then, I think in 19 20 19, so our first year of our podcast Arch Arc Tober. There we go. See, we have, we've had this conversation be like, this is my deja vu moment. Like, we've had this conversation before where like if you add the prefix a R C H to something, I'm gonna pronounce it totally differently than Kurt

Kurt Neiswender: 16:48

will. Well, The world of architecture is probably 50 50 split on that, but you know,

Jamie: 16:56

you're not that many Canadians in architecture,

Kurt Neiswender: 17:02

you know, I don't know. It's just, you know,

Jamie: 17:04

mark the tape right there because that was a good one. Jamie got a good one. You were like, you were like, like, visibly surprised. And like, that was a good laugh. You've laughed, you have laughed so much more in the last, I don't know, what, 20 minutes? 24. There you go. There you go.

Kurt Neiswender: 17:24

Friendship. Right here. Right here. You've, you've lightened, lightened the mood. There we go. You've dragged me out of, you know, not that I was in No. Dark depression or anything like that, but

Jamie: 17:34

the No, but the eyes were like, oh my god. Yeah. They're starting to, Let me cadsplain the corners of this

Kurt Neiswender: 17:42

building.

Jamie: 17:44

Exactly. So many corners. There's just so many corners.

Kurt Neiswender: 17:52

I'm gonna, I will not send you the floor plan, but I,

Jamie: 17:56

God, you, like, you need to get something about that floor plan out in the, in the, in the socials, just to, to help everybody, because there's going to be, like, if we had some powerful memers. Meemers, is that a thing? Like, who listen to this, there would be like, like, you know, it would be like, corner, corner, corner, corner, corner, corner, corner, corner, corner, corner.

Kurt Neiswender: 18:16

Yeah. Well, so, so, so Arc, Arc Inktober is, we're, we're, we're deep into 2023 Arc Inktober, but Jamie, Jamie has Not what's the word I was trying to think of? He has not let us down. He's got 16 already finished and we're going to, well, I might as well just show, show, show the grid while we go through this, these are the 16 days of arcing tober that Jamie has produced so far and he's on a roll, you

Jamie: 18:54

know, 30 days has September, April, June and November. All the rest have 31. So there's 15 more of these, 15 more,

Kurt Neiswender: 19:05

15 more coming. Yeah. I'm excited. Have you ever made a full month of our King Cobra? No. Well, this is

Jamie: 19:14

the time. I've got, I've gotten damn close. I will say that and I will say it that way. I've gotten damn close. Yeah. And recently. I was asked to provide or to donate a sketch for an, a silent auction actually at the conference. I'm going to and so it gave me an opportunity to pull out a couple of sketchbooks and sort of look to see. And it, what it, what it made me realize is in October, I get really prolific and consistent and inconsistent for a while. And there's other months too, that it, that it sort of repeats itself. Yeah, the, the, and, and I, and I have, I have shared with the author of the prompts that the prompts do help, but they also hurt.

Kurt Neiswender: 20:02

So double edged sword. Yeah. So, so Jamie came up with the idea we have, which we haven't done in quite a long time, if, if, if anybody's listened since the early days is a lightning round which was, you know, I listened to that lightning round one again at some, you know, not, not very recently, but multiple times. And it is always it almost sounds crazy when you think about like how we didn't really plan much and it came out really well. I thought it was a lot of

Jamie: 20:39

fun. Well, I mean, and we, you were really diligent about the timer on it. They're like, Oh,

Kurt Neiswender: 20:44

time to move on. We could do that today. I mean, we could, I mean, we, we, maybe we should.

Jamie: 20:49

That we probably should for the audience

Kurt Neiswender: 20:51

sake. Yes,

Jamie: 20:53

but

Kurt Neiswender: 20:53

let me so, you know, I'll do a quick scan. So, you know, everyone on on video can see the grid. There's 16 force 4 by 4. Nice and tight grid and I haven't really, you know, again, I've been. Buried in, in my own drawings, so I didn't even realize Jamie had turned out 16 16 days in a row. And so, you know, this is, this is a fun 1, you know, I'm familiar, you know, 1 of those

Jamie: 21:30

and to be honest, some of these are sketches that have occurred before. all the ones you're seeing are all new. So there might be subject, subject matter that I've drawn before, but every sketch is absolutely brand new. And so maybe that's a tease. Or like a prod or a critique even critique because we talked about crits before of the arcing tober prompts because damn if we need to start shuffling those prompts around because we don't want to be repeating ourselves and I've noticed that I've noticed that there's some things in our toe or maybe it's a critique of myself maybe I'm drawing the same things in my brain's like, well,

Kurt Neiswender: 22:19

right, right, right. And we could, could go both. Go

Jamie: 22:23

both ways. Dammit. Dammit. There's a lot of fun

Kurt Neiswender: 22:27

stuff. PG stuff here. I think that's, well, I think as long as you don't say it like ten times in a row, right? Okay. There's a censorship rule. Right. There's, yeah. This is a fun one. I think we might wind up, this might be, you know, not that it's near the bottom of this structure here, but. You know, there's some recent events in, in the U. S. C. world that we might need to talk about. We can, we can talk about that. Well, it's not, it's football, not architecture

Jamie: 23:00

in this case. I know. I know. I know. I know. I mean, I have the same pain. So,

Kurt Neiswender: 23:08

and so, yeah, some Aggie, some Aggie struggles. Did I, and I got them in the right order, right? Yeah, I think,

Jamie: 23:16

I believe so. Yes. That is

Kurt Neiswender: 23:21

16. Yeah. Well, this is going to be tough because so what did we, we did the rule set last

Jamie: 23:28

time. I like how you were just like, this reminds me I'm, I'm having, this is good. This is good. I feel like the lightning round, it's like, we're, we're dusting it off. Like that equipment, like that equipment was over here. Like, it was just over here, and it's like, it's just been waiting for you to touch it.

Kurt Neiswender: 23:46

The

Jamie: 23:46

I was looking I have no idea what's on your phone right now,

Kurt Neiswender: 23:50

but it's damn important. Well, no, I was trying to get the clock, I was trying to think about how do I do this time thing. Oh, oh, oh. And did we do minutes, right? Yeah. We did like, we did like 10, 10 sketches last time. You know what we should do? We should do, what's it, two times.

Jamie: 24:08

Oh my gosh, it's math, it's math. We could do eight of them.

Kurt Neiswender: 24:12

Okay.

Jamie: 24:13

Which saves eight.

Kurt Neiswender: 24:17

And so 16 minutes and I, I, I might not go, I might not necessarily go top eight. Okay.

Jamie: 24:24

Okay. Yeah, no,

Kurt Neiswender: 24:26

no, no. I might just jump. That's cool. You can keep an eye on the timer and there's the, the prompt though, or the, our lightning round prompt last time wasn't necessarily, how did we do it? We, did I make you? Describe things, or did I pick something to initiate the car? I can't remember, because early on it was about technique and things like that. Right? You know, we talked about. Yeah, and

Jamie: 25:03

we could do that too because I did. I did. I honestly did mix up what's nice about this batch is that there is some mixing of technique. I mean, it was. And, and I'll, I'll preface it by saying that even when you go back to the earlier episode where we're introducing the idea of Arcane October and talking about it. You know, one of the challenges that I found was like, you know, here's a situation where I am really trying to respond to a prompt that somebody else has generated and I'm doing it in the order. Like, I'm not going out of order. You know, these aren't being generated ahead of, I mean, the prompts are generated way ahead, not way ahead, you know, a week or two before October, but. I'm not trying to get ahead of them. I am trying to kind of digest them daily. Some, some, some of the sketches, like, like if, and I said this last time and it's the same thing is true today is like some of them, like on the day of, I'm like, Oh my God, I have no idea. Like what I would draw for that. And it's like, and the prompt is just, it just doesn't resonate with me in the moment, but I won't move on to the next prompt until I've resolved the first one. It's kind of like, you know, like you're in the video game and you can't get past that door, you know? So,

Kurt Neiswender: 26:22

yeah,

Jamie: 26:23

so the final boss, like what is the final final boss is a train station. I've totally got train station in my head. There's lots of train stations. On the 31st. Who knows what will happen on the 31st, that it's going to like lock me up. So I can't handle the final boss, but and I say that, you know, in my, in my, my brain, but yeah, so that's, that's a good, that's a good analogy. That's a good preface. So you handle this however you want,

Kurt Neiswender: 26:50

we can go either direction. Okay. So, well, I think two minutes, we'll do a two minute timer. I think you should, so I might, I might just dive in. I'm going to probably start. Into 1, but then I want you to tell me the prompt and then we're going to talk a little bit about the execution. And then we're going to go and then we're, you know, it'd probably be two minutes and then we're going to move on and that's, that's, that's the, that's the game plan. And now, and by the challenge will be all mix up the directions crap. And so that hopefully the day won't match. So we have, let's see, in 30

Jamie: 27:29

seconds,

Kurt Neiswender: 27:33

we're going to get started and then the time will still be fun. Thanks for suggesting doing this again. It's been, and I think we should do lightning round again. For,

Jamie: 27:46

for, yeah. Yeah, we

Kurt Neiswender: 27:49

do. We'll try our best. All right. Five, five seconds. Five seconds. I gotta get to the right window.

Jamie: 27:55

I have a really cool idea for the 17th.

Kurt Neiswender: 27:58

All right, so the first one, the seven. Oh, yes. Okay. Well, we're not there yet, so No, I know. I mean, so day one, I, I have to start on day one, but it's also because it's a, Co op Hemoblyo building, which I forget the name of the building, but what was the prompt in this case? 1980s. Oh

Jamie: 28:21

Yeah, of which neither one of us was in architecture school just for the for for all the listeners out there. We're not that old but Yeah, 1980s.

Kurt Neiswender: 28:34

And so the building the building was completed in 1980s And, you know, I guess the one thing about co op, I always, I always want to say coop for awhile,

Jamie: 28:45

it's

Kurt Neiswender: 28:45

a co op, the idea is a co op, but you know, they did a lot of really exciting, you know, we probably have talked about this before, but they did a lot of stuff that without CAD, no CAD splaining back then they did hand drawing, splaining, and this is a very quirky building, renovation sort of sits on top. Of the an existing sort of classical building, and I don't know law office. Yeah, and I don't know. I mean, what do you, what do you

Jamie: 29:20

no, I, I think to me, it was like, when I saw 1980s is the prompt I was trying to think of either things that like resonated for me, like. As a child of the eighties, maybe, you know, but then I thought, no, no, no, don't, don't go there because that would be sort of our pop culture realm. I was like, well, what's the architecture of the eighties, you know, what, what's, what's the resident, you know, thread. And for me, it's what you and I've talked about before is the eighties were paper architecture for deconstructivists. It was, you had architects now in the 90s, 2000s, and then into this century that are really preeminent architecture firms, or the ones who have sort of created that trajectory. And in, in the, in the mid to late 80s. into the mid, early to mid 90s, they were creating a lot of paper architecture with very few realized projects. And Kolpin Blau was one that had this realized project in Vienna, very few photographs of it. Like this is the signature view, you have a couple drawings where you're trying to understand like what the hell were they making and, you know, as a architecture student who's seeing this in a monograph or in, you know, in a magazine, you know, and, and knowing it's already built because this is several years later it was just a fascinating piece and sort of a touchstone for me.

Kurt Neiswender: 30:52

And we are out of time. We're actually a little over time, so I will. I'll have to cut you off there. We're going to stick to the rules, Jamie. But I, I, I appreciate all of those sentiments. We could probably circle back on some of those. All right. Not to, to, to belabor it. Let's, this one, I, you know, stuck out to me because, and I think that the, the prompt was retreat or something. What was it? Pines. Pines. Ah, yes, yes. But the building, the house, or this sort of, well, this, I think, is not, is not a particular place, right? This is something you

Jamie: 31:32

came up with? No, I, I, I did do kind of a quick Google, like, look at, like, modern architecture in the woods. And this was an architect and an architecture that I wasn't necessarily familiar with. And, but it was, it was one that sort of stood out to me less so for the architecture itself. And I, I don't even want to go into the, you know, the architect and, you know, Why they did it or whatever, but sort of the setting was, you know, like, how do, how do, and then for me as, because I wanted to render it, I wanted, this is the thing I wanted to experiment with the sort of rendering techniques and because initially my whole thought was like a forest, you know, pine trees you know, Pacific Northwest, you know, you know, the, you know, the maritime provinces of Quebec, I mean, you know, and, you know, Canada and, you know, upstate New York, Vermont, something. And like, how do you start to render that environment? And then how do you drop architecture into it? And so this was sort of playing with lines, you know, that whole line technique about the forest. And I didn't, and what was funny was, you know, I rendered the forest as you sort of see it there in the, in the lower, the mid to lower foreground. And I didn't even like it, you know, and so this is again, this is, this one was only like a 10 minute sketch. It really did come, come across really quickly and at the very, very end, I was like the forest, the pines really aren't sort of speaking to me the way that I want to and so I ghosted in this sort of idea of the trees being a whole lot taller than the architecture. The scale really needed to, to, to play with one another a little bit more and, and then the architecture, of course, has that rectilinear form and, and all that.

Kurt Neiswender: 33:26

Well, the, the, the fun part, I think what struck me, you know, the, the building itself is nice, you know, it's a nice proportion. In the foreground, but then the background with the trees, unlike some of your sky renderings with the line work is the pine, the pine trunks, the, the base of the trees are the ones that are getting the line treatment. And then the canopy is kind of like this sort of, yeah, like you said an illusion to a massive. Stand of trees. So, you know, look, it just seems like a big clump. That's much bigger than

Jamie: 34:03

that was the happy accident. We've talked, we haven't, we haven't sort of talked about the happy accident and sketching before or in a long time. And this is one of those where, like, I wanted the denseness of the forest as the background. And so that was what renders the way it does at the bottom. But then the scale was wrong. So I Experimented with it, and I think it it came. Hopefully it came across the way you're describing it. Well,

Kurt Neiswender: 34:30

I think we got to stick to it. I think honestly, I'm not not trying to go in order here, but I want I do want to touch on this one.

Jamie: 34:46

And then I might start mixing Columbia buddy. Yeah, I gotcha.

Kurt Neiswender: 34:49

I see you. I see you. Is La Villette there? Yes. And I, I hope you're washing your coffee mug every day or you have multiples. Yeah, well, this is La Villette, you know, Bernard Schumi Folly. So is the prompt Folly? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. You know, Follies. Are there any Follies? Follies. Follies. Now they tend to call things installations, right? They don't really use the word folly

Jamie: 35:20

anymore. No, I still like the folly part.

Kurt Neiswender: 35:23

I like it too, but

Jamie: 35:25

you don't hear it much. No, you don't. I mean, because to me, the folly is, it implies a hell of a lot more fun. Right.

Kurt Neiswender: 35:35

Experimentation. I wonder if it implies also frivolity and a wasted expense. Well, I think the installation has more intention.

Jamie: 35:45

I don't know. I think that that might be the case. I mean, maybe maybe it's a Heather wick Response is that was that a chime for us?

Kurt Neiswender: 35:55

No, sorry. That was

Jamie: 35:57

the dishes That was like wow, like there's a gong

Kurt Neiswender: 36:02

Surprised this mic is picking up some of those Background noises too much. Anyway, we

Jamie: 36:08

need a gong next time. That would be good

Kurt Neiswender: 36:13

Yeah, it's over next to my

Jamie: 36:14

map, but yeah, right. So, but yeah, I wonder, I wonder if it is that the, the, you know, Heatherwick kind of you know, designing to access versus designing with a little bit of fun in mind and experimentation, which is really where I think shumi and lava let and things of that ilk is it is architecture. It is semi programmed architecture and it is a little bit of an installation, but at the same time, it's, it's pushing the boundaries of art and architecture. And I think that that's where I hope some of the things that I've been able to do in my career have, have, have landed. I wish I could do more of it.

Kurt Neiswender: 37:03

Well, I, you know, the, the conversation around the definition folly, I guess. You know, just because maybe we would have, maybe somebody would have assumed we would have talked about Shumi's thing in a little different light, but given that we have kind of talked about Lavalette, you know, in the past, I thought it'd be interesting and I appreciate your, your take on, you know, this definition of folly and, and perhaps it, it'll cause me and I think we're, I'm bleeding over time here, but yeah. I have a, a city contract potentially that I might be able to institute some, some folly, folly effect. Yeah, I'll let you know. Well, we haven't, you know, inked, we haven't arc inked the contract yet, but I'm going to, okay, so now I'm going to jump here because it's kind of. Maybe in the same vein of folly, in that it potentially is a paper architecture sketch, so what do you, do you remember the prompt on this one? Did I jump too

Jamie: 38:13

far? No, heavy.

Kurt Neiswender: 38:15

Ah, okay. I could see the physical mass. Of the the weight of this upper form in the sketch there. It says, you know, it's kind of like the, the favorite hybrid die. I don't, you know, what we've called hybrid sketching or hybrid landscapes or dystopian features. I feel like we need to coin a very distinct term. We do that, that, that is sort of an encompasses this, that maybe is not necessarily the word hybrid.

Jamie: 38:50

Well, it's not because it's not all dystopian, you know, it's like, that's the whole thing is like for, you know, yes, I'm fascinated by dystopian architecture and design, but I want to believe that I'm a little bit more optimistic

Kurt Neiswender: 39:04

than that optopian.

Jamie: 39:06

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like we'll, we'll, we'll put that over. We'll put that in the, they say the, we'll workshop it.

Kurt Neiswender: 39:14

Yeah. Put it on that map.

Jamie: 39:16

board. Yeah, put that on that white board that you got over there next

Kurt Neiswender: 39:21

to the yarn map, the yarn map. That's right. Exactly. Well, you know, so I, you know, the sketch it's kind of fun. I guess the, you know, the, the level of shadow and shade and, and hatch. I would

Jamie: 39:35

tell you, math, right? Well, and it's funny because like this one has sort of a unique technique in terms of how it's rendered the sky a little bit differently as sort of almost like a backdrop and almost like a silhouette in a sense, like, like which I do pick up on in a couple other sketches and try in a different couple of ways. But what was interesting to me as I was doing this one was, and I know I'm running out of time, but it's, there was a time like in the way back. And it's like, as I thought of, I thought of this one based on like, I was watching Ahsoka, like I was watching all the episodes of Ahsoka. And there's this whole, like they're on this planet and there's heavy things. And like, they're all suspended over this very, you know, kind of rich, you know, delicate landscape. And it's like, That's what was the mental image in my brain. So all these objects are kind of, you know, poised over a landscape. They're all connected to it, but they're heavy things over the top of it. So the foreground becomes super important. You have to ground this image. And in the perspective, as you're grounding the image, as things get closer and closer to you, you want to give... The viewer a way to enter it and it reminded me of a drawing technique that I learned probably in elementary school. There was this program on cable TV that I cannot remember the name of to save my life. I have looked for it. You know, the Googles have not. Found it for me yet, but there was a person when I was living in California, it might've been, you know, it might've been one of those like cable network app access shows, you know, now that I think about it, there was a person who got on and they would draw these drawings and they would teach about perspective, but they would do it in a way that was sort of like, okay, so you want to engage people. So you want to be able to walk into the drawing and they talk in there cause they're talking to the audience of elementary school people. I, I'm hoping they were talking to us but the techniques that they came up with and they would say, Oh, well, here's the pathway. And they would draw like a path and oh, here's the steps. And they would draw the steps and they would draw it all real time with sort of like fairly big Sharpies and stuff. That is what I was trying to emulate.

Kurt Neiswender: 41:54

Yeah, I think I used to watch as a technique, did he wind up drawing a lot of like these sort of spacey.

Jamie: 42:02

Yeah. Yeah. Oh my

Kurt Neiswender: 42:04

God. Very spacey. We watch the same thing. I love that show too. It does have that, it does have that exact sort of vibe in it. That this sort of everything sort of crops up to, to shape and, you know, shape the pathway, that.

Jamie: 42:21

And so this is going to be the jumping off point for Coffee Sketch 2. 0, where we go off and do, like, Jamie talks to the camera and says, because here's the

Kurt Neiswender: 42:32

pathway. That show was amazing. We got to figure out which, what that was called. So, yes, it was awesome. Going back in time a few days. Let's go over here. I think this is number five or six

Jamie: 42:48

Clock

Kurt Neiswender: 42:49

tower clock tower. Okay. Okay moving on The is this is this Big Ben it

Jamie: 42:58

is Big Ben. Oh, yeah. Yes.

Kurt Neiswender: 43:00

I mean, is there any other clock

Jamie: 43:02

tower? I mean, maybe Chase would tell you no, there's only one

Kurt Neiswender: 43:06

so Parliament Big Ben probably well, it's a great sketch of the of the You know Big Ben, the waterfront, the riverfront and then some of the other, well, that's parliament, right? That's right next to it there and sort of heated other space. So, did you draw that pretty quickly, like a

Jamie: 43:27

shorter again, tried to draw really fast because it's 1 that I have drawn before from different angles. And so this 1 you know, was looking at photographs from when M and I went to London and. You know, and so this was, you know, looking at a photo, but at the same time, trying to draw it quickly as if you're there. And that's sort of a, an experiment that maybe I haven't described to folks before is, you know, if you do take a trip and you take, take a photo of something, you can still try and create that quick sketch experience by looking at the photo and trying to, you know, set a timer for yourself and saying, okay, it's You know, within this smaller amount of time, I'm going to render that that point. And so in this one, you can see that the tower itself is really rendered really strongly. And I did that intentionally. And then also brought it into the water because water is always tricky to draw beautiful. Right. And then Parliament, you know, the details kind of as the, as you move away from that epicenter, you know, they get more and more sketchy and that's, you know, both the time thing, but also sort of an intentional thing with

Kurt Neiswender: 44:34

the drawing itself. Well, I think it really puts the focal point on, especially for the prompt. And so and, and the water reflections are really nice. And yeah, no, I really like it. So that's why, that's why it's on the short list today. And I guess, you know, I think for a couple of reasons, we'll just jump right next to it. Well, one reason is that there's a, there's some pencil in this one, which we haven't seen any pencil or any other technique yet, as you mentioned. And then there's this weird sort of scale thing going on of this giant, giant person pointing at this small. Maybe more normal human scale figure on this balcony of some kind. Is this from this from a movie

Jamie: 45:26

or? Yeah, yeah, so this is the Second Blade Runner. Oh the 2049 and so if you remember in Blade Runner, they would have sort of AI generated

Kurt Neiswender: 45:44

because, you know, AI is not good at the fingers.

Jamie: 45:46

Yeah. Well, they have these figures that were sort of like it was digital screens that were kind of advertising marketing, but at the time it was sort of like minority report where it's like responding to you, you know, as a, as the viewer. And so Blade Runner kind of picked that up and I think Blade Runner had it. You know, and then, you know, Minority Report tried to play with it and now you've got Blade Runner 29, 2049, like really making it its own. But yeah, so the prompt on this one, can I, can I, can I see if you can guess the prompt? Marketing? Because AI is a prompt, but it's not this one.

Kurt Neiswender: 46:28

Huh. Oh, I don't know. I

Jamie: 46:29

would say marketing flashing, flashing architecture prompts flashing. So I didn't, I didn't go with, I didn't go with what everybody's going to go with. I went with the images flashing before you.

Kurt Neiswender: 46:46

Yeah, sure. Well, I, I think, I mean, I think the, the backstory on the 2049. Because I, I did see that movie and it's been a while, but it's a, it's a plus also has a really interesting sense of scale. So I, you know, I'm, I'm loosely keeping track of time, by the way. I mean, it's, we're, we're close, but

Jamie: 47:08

we're close and to, to, to, to respond to the pencil and ink is when I do figures, I do find that. Like, I mean, I can do a sketch of a figure ink alone and do it quickly. I am far more comfortable doing it with a pencil, even with a weird, weird golf pencil that looks like it's been like chewed on or something. But yeah, so

Kurt Neiswender: 47:36

yeah. Well, well, the smudges kind of add to that sort of ethereal effect you know, digital. Temporal, you know, that was the hope I mean, kind of foggy and you know, it's kind of, it's pretty cool. I think,

Jamie: 47:51

you know, you know, it's LA in the dystopian rainstorm of whatever.

Kurt Neiswender: 47:57

Yeah. All right, let's Oh, yeah, that's okay. Have we done 6 or 7? I think we're on 6. We'll do 2 more. Let's go here and then we'll go. Oh, we already kind of know where we're ending on the gamble house there. But so, just because. You did mention with one of the earlier sketches, the idea of folly and, and, and sort of in your own work, and I know what this is, you know, which is your, your Kraken Photon Fable and, and the, well, the installation or the folly of your own, which I think had a really, just a, such an eye catching effect. And I, I forgot what your budget was, but it must have been pretty lean and you pulled off a really intriguing fabrication you know, with light and text, right? Sort of baked into it and all that. And so this is like a sort of a diagrammatic sketch, but also kind of illusional or if that's a word, illusionary of the crack in itself, right? Like an actual, sea animal, sea monster, right? Which is kind of the concept, right? This kraken. Right. Is the, and so the tentacles are kind of flaying out and all that stuff. And then I don't know, I have no idea. I'm almost like, I don't have any diagram on the

Jamie: 49:29

sketch with that. I almost don't have anything else to

Kurt Neiswender: 49:32

say. Oh, cool. Well, there's, you could add in, well, I don't know what the, does it say kinetic?

Jamie: 49:38

So, the prompt was kinetic. And, and I think that was the thing, was the, the two things that were playing at the original site for Creek Show. So the original, this was installed twice. Ten days over a creek, which you're seeing here, and then ten months. In a museum kind of reimagined but in both it was sort of the idea of a piece of sculpture that isn't moving. So it isn't, you know, it doesn't have mechanical parts. It's not, it's not animatronic or something like that but implies movement. You look at it and you can imagine like if you like look back at it, you know, has it moved? And that kinetic aspect of things was how do you capture that moment in time? With the architecture and kind of this one came off of feeding off of the first prompt as well. So the first prompt was called Deconstructivism in my mind, 1980s and kind of where it is, where does my design ethic and impulse kind of come from? And it's a lot of that. And so this, this particular work. It was feeding on all those ideas and because I think that that action of the architecture that occurs in deconstructivism is, is something that really spoke to me as a designer. And so this particular project was a way to kind of try and capture that in something that was static with a limited budget, one that we designed, built and erected, you know, ourselves with a very, very small team of people. And, you know, mildly, you know, also in a creek in November, so it was cold. But yeah, it was cold. Yeah, exactly. But I, I think the other part of it too was, as much as it's the sea creature, the one part of this that doesn't ever really get talked about is because of the light aspect of it is sort of the figuring out. The exploded axo that sort of sketched here of how do you create these tentacles that are illuminating text. We had to experiment with the light lighting supplier on on which lights we're going to use. We had a mock up that we dangle in the creek. Just 1 section of it. The idea of capturing that idea of motion. And the way I would describe it to people before we had built anything was I want it to look like a light cycle from Tron. Oh. And... And how do you capture that motion? And if you remember, in both versions of Tron, or if you played the video game, like back in the day, the stand up one as the light cycle would move down the path and then make these amazing turns, the light behind it would stay. Yeah, right. Right? And so, my thought was, what if these tentacles were like light cycles? That we're sort of moving down and making the turns in these kind of strange angles. And so it, you know, inside jokes myself, but sort of a way to develop the design.

Kurt Neiswender: 52:58

Well, it's a good visual reference. That's it. Yeah, that's cool. Whoever has not seen the images of this project needs to go track them down. And I'm sure Jamie will help point you in that direction. But it was, it is a really cool. Installation, folly fabrication. So I didn't want to, didn't want to leave that one out. And, and so lastly, since we're right, you know, keep this to two minutes. Only reason I wanted to squeeze in the gamble house, cause I went to USC. So I have to, USC owns the gamble house, which is a fun, fun fact for those people. It's a beautiful craftsman. You know, Japanese inspired, you know, the, the green and green, the green brothers, I should say green and green is the architecture firm. You know, we're very inspired. Well, you know, the, the really kind of part of the initiation of the high, this highly, how do you put it? Like high craftsman architecture movement, right? I mean, like every joint, every corner in the, in these, in their designs, you know, so meticulously detailed and, and fabricated and all this stuff. So it's a really nice house. I've been to it a couple of well, many times, I guess, as a student and if you ever go to USC as a student, they pick 2 50 or seniors. To live there. What? Yeah, two students every, every year get to live there for the whole school year and, you know, they use the basement for their studio space. And then, you know, you obviously have to drive because it's actually in Pasadena. You got to get down the hill into L. A. But yeah, I went. So when I was down the hill. Yeah, yeah, a little easier than maybe than now. But a good friend of mine was the. Okay. awardee of the, of the, the scholarship or whatever you call it, the internship residency. And so I, I got to visit a lot more and all crazy hours of the day. So it's kind of interesting. There's a lot of ghost stories of the Gamble family in that, in that house, but I guess, you know, maybe it's more folklore. I never saw a ghost, but I didn't sleep there ever. So. You never know but the I only and then the others. It's October. It's October, so I know. Yeah. Yes. And only other reason to bring it up is yeah, U S C got pummeled by Notre Dame, so we're not always amazing and perfect people. Right. Yeah. US Trojans. So anyway, we won't need to dwell on football

Jamie: 55:44

scores though. No, and, and in the sketch, we're not gonna dwell on the sketch. It was, you know, I've only been there once. Certainly not as many times as Kurt. We can definitely talk about green and green. Many anytime you'd like to, cause the architecture and the detailing is absolutely amazing. But there is a hashtag that's buried in, in this sketch that no one has noticed yet. I expected some of my texts architects, at least maybe to just sort of like wink and nod at me, but I will drop it here on the podcast to see if any of them actually listen. But so there is a scale figure. On the drive to the building. And this is what happens when Michael Malone does a photobomb on your sketch.

Kurt Neiswender: 56:30

So

Jamie: 56:30

what's the hashtag? I think it's when Michael Malone photobombs your sketch. Oh, like that's the, that's the hashtag when, when Michael Malone photobombs your sketch and like, no one has like caught that buried within the hashtags that I put on these sketches. So, Malcolm Malone is a very talented sketcher as well and has a very successful architecture firm was also the TXA president. I believe this was his year he was president, so maybe that's why he felt like he could just walk up right up to the building while everybody's, you know, sort of taking a look at it. And he's standing there, dead center, taking his photo, you know, but

Kurt Neiswender: 57:12

yeah, well, so what was the prompt for, for this one for the Arctic topper?

Jamie: 57:19

I think it was green and

Kurt Neiswender: 57:20

green, green and green. Oh, there you go.

Jamie: 57:23

Or no, no, no, it wasn't green. It was gamble house. I mean, it was like, go draw the gamble house. It was like, well, okay. I was there once, you know,

Kurt Neiswender: 57:34

Oh, there was actually a Halloween party at the gamble house that I don't think was sanctioned. And well, I couldn't remember too

Jamie: 57:44

many beers was there karaoke and what was the

Kurt Neiswender: 57:48

song? No karaoke. A lot of, a lot of good dress up though of my, my classmates. Yeah. I don't think they were allowed. They were supposed to have that kind of a party, but it was it was It was very respectful. Cause I mean, you know, what architects aren't going to destroy the house, right? It's a historic landmark,

Jamie: 58:06

right? Yeah. So yeah, green and green would come back from the grave. They're probably buried in the backyard. I mean,

Kurt Neiswender: 58:17

I wouldn't be there, you know, and you know, the, the, I mean, to tie in our favorite

Jamie: 58:22

things, irreverent. Is that me being irreverent? Maybe, maybe I'm an Aggie though, versus you as a Trojan.

Kurt Neiswender: 58:32

The, and the garage was used in back to the future as Doc's shop. I think

Jamie: 58:39

Ben Kazdin told me that, like, that might, that might be on Ben Kazdin's like. Like when you met, meet Ben for the first time, like he just like says, Hey, do you know,

Kurt Neiswender: 58:51

cause like, that's, I could see him. I could see him doing it. Where did Ben go to school? Cal Poly Pomona or, well, yeah, I think it was Pomona, maybe San Luis Obispo, but he's in the Cal Poly system. But he, he, but he's in Southern California,

Jamie: 59:08

so, you know, he loves that movie

Kurt Neiswender: 59:10

though. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, who, who's everyone should,

Jamie: 59:14

but right, well, yeah, I mean,

Kurt Neiswender: 59:17

well, the lightning round for right now has completed. We maybe it was, maybe we should extend the, the, the timer to three minutes. We were probably more like three minute average, which is fun. It's a lot of fun. So I think from there, for there, we're just going to have to. let you go and, and save some more sketches for another lightning round. And then we might have to do three more lightning rounds because we have still a whole month of our Inktober to finish. So we might as well touch them all, touch

Jamie: 59:57

all the sketches. Lots of fun.

Kurt Neiswender: 1:00:05

All right, buddy. Thanks.