> initiating drone connection ~
> design |computation | fabrication :: make things ~
> we came here to do something, so let's do something ~
The site for my ARCH201 studio at Pratt this semester is the MET Cloisters Museum in NYC. We are working on extracting aesthetic and contextual influence from the context of the site trough video based analysis and collage. This video is a sample experience I created to demonstrate techniques and ways of seeing through video (AfterEffects).
A question I have been exploring for a long time as a designer is, how do we reveal, accept, and filter our aesthetic influence without direct copying or feeble translations? While I was a student (and to some degree still), i would resist looking at precedence or architectural examples during the design of a project to avoid contamination of my thinking. This was not a position against learning from other works, which I also did a lot of through research papers, history classes, sketch trips, and summer / winter break reading (looking at pictures and drawings). It was an anxiety about creativity, a purity of concept and ideation from a process of the project. As a teacher I have leaned that this was perhaps quite naive, as I see my students struggle to extract much influence from even highly focused precedent studies, much less and interesting drawing or project screaming past on the internet.
One of the strategies I am exploring to resolve this anxiety and conflict of influence and invention has been through a process of Aesthetic Tuning through collage-drawing experiments. As part of the early stages of a design process, I like to gather a broad visual context through associations with the site, culture, biases, impressions, and personal interests hovering around the project. To find a way into the work, I generate a series of Aesthetic Drivers as convergences of Organization :: Qualities :: Tectonics. For the image above, we were exploring the visual potential of a Viscous :: Deep :: Phasing Scape. A virtual space of image , drawing, and language that captured the project's proximity to the viscous Mediterranean Sea, the geological depth and isolation of an island, and the phasing movement of a local common Jellyfish. These initial impressions drive a search for imagery, which is tuned through a series of procedural collage studies to de-contextualize the content while superimposing the inherent organizations and qualities of the inputs.
The Jelly and Rolling Clouds phase into each other through the Rollage technique. The rhythm of the images swap position to expand-contract through both aesthetic contexts. The procedural Rollage technique offers simple parameters to integrate ideas from multiple images, there are also near endless possible rhythms and organizations that can drive the superposition. These outputs can be generated and evaluated quickly to challenge initial reactions to the site / context of the project, opening up a space for deeper exploration on less stable and more complex terms. A process of visual richness and conflict. While this particular Aesthetic Driver pushed much of the projects organizations and formal ideas, there were many others just as rich for future investigation, each perhaps worth its own post.
I often oscillate between analog and digital manipulations. Out of a practical desire to draw from the image, I inverted the colors and contrasts to work with a pen and trace paper.
Colonizing the territories of the de-contextualized Aesthetic Drivers.
Extracting and developing systems of integration - site :: drawing,:: architecture
A macro level organization emerges from the Aesthetic Tuning of the project, soft clustering volumes connected by flowing meandering paths, texturing the sloping fabric of the site.
The collages also drive many other organizational positions of the project, extracted from layers of drawing and analysis in a negotiation between the prescribed programmatic parameters and the friction of influence.
Revealing relationships, searching for a language of mediation between thoughts and things.
Reterritorialization (the influence of Deleuze et Guatari and Columbia GSAPP in the early 2000s)
A map of new territories, an expedition of discovery, a search for meaning.
A network of relationships, regions, textures, isolation and clustering inform the layout and concept of program and site organization. These striated bubbles coalescing to form colonies of spatial aggregations, reaching out to connect with neighbors and subvert the fractured landscape. The initial organizations of the elements for the project were sampled from this drawing and aligned with program and scale to further the design.
Unit Organization
Axial scalar clustering and geometric subtractions - poche - ground - thickness
A colony of artist habitats projecting from the topography out to the endless horizon of the island citadel.
Colonizing the steep landscape with a meandering joy in isolation with the environment of an island.
Architecture is an act of colonization of a territory. Integration or destruction is a choice of this act, but the environment is forever changed by the introduction of new agents within the territory.
Since 2011 or so I have been a part of a generally Science Fiction themed book club in Brooklyn. Most of us are architects, but we have a few other friends to bring some much needed escape from our insular community. I try to write up a record of our meetings and the shimmering cloud of discussion and reference sparked by the books we read each month.
On the subject of Shadowbahn.
Steve Erickson's disassociated melancholic journey through a fragmented disintegration of alternate time lines was captivating in its low hum of dread. This one touched on all the heart stings of the group with its heavy musical influence, refined post modern prose, and speculative fiction. There is apparently event a Spotify, or Pandora, or whatever hot streaming music service the kids use these days, play list out there for the music buffs of the group (Paul maybe you can share this). Paul and I were the only ones present that had made the full voyage through the temporal slippages, and unfortunately Nate had to miss the meeting with the nasty bug that has been floating around, so the discussion was somewhat short as to allow everyone else to finish the book. I definitely recommend this, it is a fast read, especially for the not so linear multiple overlapping time-lines and realities aspect of it all.
Some moments of joy (which I am seriously questioning about myself) came in the subtle vanishing of songs from the fathers play lists during is decent into a madness after life. The closer reading to find the missing titles made the literary connections and misalignments of the list more vivid, I recommend reading it out loud to really feel it roll off the tongue. The use of the twin towers as a symbol of a modern void in the soul of American, was at first obvious and later more insidious as the tone of the book creeps into the folly of loss.
There was also the classic American catharsis of the open road, the brother's and sister's road trip from LA to Michigan as a chance to unfold long trauma and tune into the shifting frequencies of time emanating from the beacon of the twin towers. Their personal journey is both beautifully touching and heart wrenchingly sad. The drive brings them closer together as a family, airing stale emotions, and ends in ... well, I will leave that till next time once everyone has made the trip.
And now for the real reason we all come here, make this time each month (or so) and spend a few hours as jolly nerds, the tangents, misadventures, new media, and nostalgia ignited by the reading and the skyfi crew. My notes ended up on a napkin this week, most likely in a strange order, just let it sink in I suppose :).
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This will come back around https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-news/david-foster-wallace-on-9-11-as-seen-from-the-midwest-242422/
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I am excited to watch this one - and it reminds me of an old video game my friend and I used to play - Interstate 76, full of dystopian 70's scifi dessert road rage fun.
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There were a few references (I think initiated by Rachel) to the How Did This Get Made? podcast, the notables being, The Room, Sharnado, and No Holds Barred.
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Amazon released a mini-series adaptation of China Mieville's The City & The City that is pretty good. strange and noir with an interesting take on the overlapping realities of two cities in one place. An interesting parallel to the disassociated time lines of Shadowbahn, perhaps The Country & the Country.
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I recently reviewed an essay for a journal exploring the connection between David Lynch and Franz Kafka, specifically around Twin Peaks: The Return. Paul highly recommends this one, I actually started the first episode, it feels like a deep one, will have to focus. Rachel then brought up David Foster Wallace's essay on David Lynch. Joe, this one is for you, please provide a 1000 word synopsis and critical reflection for out next meeting on October 31st.
David Lynch Keeps His Head - David Foster Wallace: http://www.lynchnet.com/lh/lhpremiere.html
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Alfred Bester made it into potential discussion for our next reading, the Stars My Destination has been on our list for a awhile and a few people have read dome of his work in The Demolished Man and The Deceivers. I am particularly interested in hi Virtual Unrealities short story collection, perhaps a post Halloween experience.
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We went classic for this month with Olaf Stapledon
Last and Fist Men & Star Maker
We originally chose Star Maker, but it is pretty short, so if you are so inclined we can do a double feature with the related novel - Last and First Men. They come conveniently bundled here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0486219623/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
Next meeting on Thursday October 31st?
Until next time, keep looking up, or in, or over there.
