Mixing the categories again, Fourth Door Review 6, appears early in 2003, brimming with a basketful of new pieces, weaving its alluring design tapestry into the reviews mission to breathe fresh thinking into the many connections between ecology and technology, arts and architecture, design, craft and new media and new music.
This new issue includes features on some of highest profile artists and musicians to be included yet, a new arts section and the first in a series of ‘futures’ pieces.
Andy Goldsworthy, one of Britain’s best-known names in land art, kicks off the new Framework arts section, with an in-depth interview. Both Jon Hassell and Sheila Chandra also feature as in-depth interviewees in a special Margins of Music section on the influence and spread of Indian musical forms around the planet. And George Dyson, respected author of ‘Darwin among the Machines’, contributes a piece on the prehistory of electronic evolution to the reviews’ Digitalis new media section. Framework is completed by fully illustrated overviews of artist and multimedia practitioner, Russell Mills, and the papercraft and computer wizardry of Cardiff’s Artstation.
This editions Architexts is well represented with pieces on the Earthcentre’s dramatic Solar Canopy, the new Cybrid smart building project in Plymouth, and African Beehive structures. Its highlight however is the first in a series of Scenario ‘futures’ pieces, exploring the prospect for a pan-European Timberbuild Renaissance.
This new Fourth Door once again features both the Middleground and Wordwatch book reviews section; in the former a report on Thai elephant musicians, along with a Re-read piece on blindness and consciousness.
This sixth Fourth Door Review refines the outlook nurtured through previous issues, which has been published independently from Lewes, Sussex since 1996. The new edition will be published in early 2003, and will be accompanied by the launch of Unstructured 02 Fourth Door’s new media, design and architecture web-magazine, and Fourth Door Research.
Previous Fourth Door Reviews include interviews with or pieces on, Fritjof
Capra, Brian Eno, Susan Derges, Pierre Levy, Chris Drury, Natalie Jerimenjenko,
William Latham, Morris Berman, Anne Katrin Dolven, Paul Ryan and Holger
Czukay, as well as many pieces on new media, new music, arts and architecture,
and the relation between ecology and technology. As Susan Derges wrote
of Fourth Door, the review “explores the impact and influence of
ecology and technology on our culture with more depth and with more integrity
than any other journal.”
Fourth Door’s critically acclaimed design focus continues across
this nineteen piece issue. And as with the previous Fourth Door Reviews,
it overturns media conventions by concentrating on content and exploring
subjects in full depth and constructive sympathy, rather than being compromised
by the apparent needs of one-minute culture
Fourth Door Review returns in 2003
Beyond the cutting edge.
Praise for Fourth Door Review
“Fourth Door Review is a journal with a mind of its own…a gentle non-ideological, stirring of viewpoints, with what seems an abiding respect for the intuitive methods of the way of art as a healing antidote to the overly scientific, overly rational way looking at the world” Jon Hassell
“Fourth Door Review is one of the few magazines that takes an in
depth view of Nature and Culture; that combines articles on the arts and
architecture with new views on ecology, science, food and sustainable living.
It is neither new age nor academic but explores innovative creativity outside
of current cultural norms." Chris Drury
Contents in Full
Digitalis
George Dyson on electronic evolution
George Dyson, author of Darwin Among the Machines, and Project Orion, considers
artificial intelligence as a new form of life
Radiobiology, the evolution of radio
With many technologies are exhibiting evolutionary characteristics, Duncan
Marshall puts the evolutionary case for radio
Artstation’s paperhouse delight
Interview with Cardiff’s Artstation artworkers, Glen Davidson and
Anne Hayes, on their extraordinary paper creations and the connections
between computers, craft and cybernetics
Architexts
Earth Centre’s Solar Canopy
A sideways look at the Doncaster’s Earth Centre’s unique solar
panelled wooden space-frame canopy
Scenario Cubed: A Timberbuild Renaissance for Europe
First in a series of future scenario pieces, which launches with an in
depth look at how a timber construction resurgence in buildings throughout
Europe could be supported by the continents Northern Boreal forests
Beehive Beauty out of Africa
Picture piece on this traditional African building form
iTecture – Plymouth’s Cybrid smart building
Chris Speed on the University of Plymouth’s new intelligent building
which encompasses sound, video, and self regulating computer monitoring
within its walls
Rotique - a visionary Chilean architectural school
Exploration of the visionary Open City architectural School, in Rotique,
Chile which sees architecture as akin to poetry and gesture, rather than
computer programming
Margins of Music
Indian Oceans of Sound
Special themed section on how Western based musicians
Are extending Indian and Indonesian ‘tropical Hindu’ musical
forms into the planetary present of the twenty first century
i) Sheila Chandra - Sound of a million years
In depth interview with Sheila Chandra, on her work with Drones, the Indian
singing tradition and recording technology
ii) Mark Lockett - digitally enhanced gamelan
Interview with the Birmingham based musician on using KOAN software as
part of a Gamelan ensemble, The Loop Orchestra, by Ruth Hellier-Tinoco
iii) Jon Hassell – raga in electric blue
Fourth World originator, Jon Hassell, discusses his other worldly music,
the book in progress, The North and South of You, and his interlacing
of ancient musics with future tense technologies
Middleground
Thai elephant music
Report on the Thai elephants who play music from specially constructed
instruments
Inci Mutlu’s Wattbug
Highlighting a gizmo pet which tells how much energy you’re using
by changing colour
The Scale Explorer project
Adam Nieman outlines his Scale Explorer computer modelling programme which
graphically demonstrates the finite natural resources on this small blue
planet
(including Makeshift)
Extinct traditions: love tokens
Harold Lowenstein explores the lost craft-skills found until recently in
the giving of love tokens to ones beloved
Haystack Hybrid: Maine’s Haystack school of craft, new media seminar
A summer 2002 conference brought together Maine’s highly regarded
Haystack craft school with members of MIT’s Media Lab to uncover
the hidden connections between craft and the computer world. By Chris Rose
Kaffe Matthew’s Sonic Furniture
Sound design meets chair design in Kaffe Matthew’s sonic experiment
in rest and relaxation for Reading railway station’s waiting room.
By Kaffe Matthews
Framework
Andy Goldsworthy: Multimedia, chalk boulders, and moonlit paths
Feature piece which takes a different slant on Andy Goldsworthy’s
recent land art work since the millennium, including his experimental work
with new media
Russell Mills, layers of texture, layers of space
The alchemical world of Russell Mills’ paintings and multimedia pieces
are looked at fully in this in depth interview with the artist of the ambient
intelligentsia
Dreams of Consciousness
Langdon Winner, philosopher of technology in interview
Langdon Winner, author of Autonomous Technology in interview, about new
and old technology, and how both could be used for social ends and means
Wordwatch (book reviews)
Re-read: Touching the Rock, by John Hull
In this edition of Re-read Fourth Door looks at John Hull’s poetic
and moving biographical account of becoming blind
Taking Shape by Susannah Hagan
Review of Susannah Hagan’s book, which contends an emergent ecological
architecture is ‘taking shape’ at beginning of this new century,
just as the modernist impulse did at the outset of the twentieth century.
