5 July 2011
josef, étienne & i
"the search is what everyone would
undertake if he were not stuck in the
everydayness of his own life. to be
aware of the possibility of the search
is to be onto something. not to be
onto something is to be in despair"
walker percy, the moviegoer
[as quoted on page 1 of 'seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees' by lawrence weschler]
the image above is my submission to the copy/paste issue of matzine#09; it is of two beds, one for étienne and one for i - two characters from a short story i wrote for the previous issue. i had built part of a miniature stage-set for the piece but the simplicity of this spread, the strange divide of the spine, the butterfly and clone effect, the floating beds in paperspace and the questionable penmanship - these qualities won me over.in a 1968 interview, josef albers said something provocative, that has stuck with me and seems pertinent here :
"the source of art - or where it comes from - is the discrepancy between physical fact and psychic effect"
Labels: albers, depth, drawing, dreams, irwin, matzine, quotes, square, vision
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3 July 2011
sunday 19th june saw me lending my brick threading skillz to the f o l l y f o r a f l y o v er team
cool, engaged bunch - the get-up had a great ad-hoc vibe and the competence to pull it off
hats off
[looking forward to 2001 : space odyssey]
Labels: architect, assemble, collaboration, collage, image, narrative, set design, urban
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4 June 2011
p h e n o m e n a l p r e s e n c e
"i began to recognize the difference between imagery and physicality, that everything had both an imagery and a physicality, and furthermore that for me, the moment a painting took on any kind of image, the minute i could recognize it as having any relationship to nature, of any kind, to me that painting went flat...
imagery for me constituted representation, "re-presentation," a second order of reality, whereas i was after a first order of presence... it's about presence, phenomenal presence."
images the mechanical film set of stanley kubrick's 2001: a space odyssey [sourced from wikipedia if i remember correctly]
text seeing is forgetting the name of the thing one sees, by lawrence weschler. the words are spoken by artist robert irwin
Labels: collaboration, drawing, image, irwin, kubrick, mythology, quote, set design
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19 May 2011
the city of oedipus
[as published in matzine #08]
like clockwork, étienne + i would spend two long days a month in studio monoculeure. always, the first studio day was the first friday of the month; the second, the second saturday
in turns, one would fall asleep, or employ chloroform. meanwhile the other, thirty three minutes later, would shake his friend awake, whereupon the dreamer would take his dream and put them on a page; the dimensions of their studio wall.
friday, my turn, i inhaled fully and closed my eye. a moment passed before i opened again. absurdly, both étienne and the fresh, wall-sized page were nowhere to be seen.
eight days following, in studio monoculeure, étienne and i met again, rather upset with one another. an emphatic, erratic explosion of airborne blame ensued. étienne defended that the previous friday it had been his turn to capture his dream on the page. only, when he opened his eye the room was empty of both partner and page.
disturbed and irreconcilable, we could agree on only one thing; to meet again twenty days later.
friday, the first day of the month, with little trust or patience surviving, we hung the page along the centre beam of the studio, ready to take a dream on both surfaces. we entered our respective unconsciousnesses simultaneously.
i was in a heavily-dark place; a vast and dense chamber. there was a sense of minutes passing, then hours. i navigated every permutation of turn and stride [ if one could call indeterminate movements navigation; my residual self-image was unrestrained, yet unable to move to anywhere ]. a numb intuition said my partner shared this space with me, just as the excited thought skimmed across the void; we had found it!
although consciously imperceptible at the time, an afterimage of the dream persisted - whole and familiar - though strictly unknowable. a double, a mirror, the eye that can view itself directly.
now awake, days later, stylus and knife in hands, both sides of the page were black with lead scratchings. there was no page left unwarped, only two un-placable, unfathomable maps; uncanny in dissymmetries; the city of oedipus
[this is a fictional foray originally presented in matzine #08 in response to the idea 'domestic exotic'. i really enjoyed writing this - and exposing my retina's to the matzine readers was an added delight]
Labels: borges, dreams, light, matzine, mythology, shadow
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[image: joiner of tmle presentation in action]
stephen mackie and i were invited to talk at the modern language experiment; a critical art, practice + theory forum. this took place on 17th may. we decided to present our collaborative work, drawing attention to the progression of our processes over the past year, between the black mill project and the meta architecture exhibition.
the group discussion around our subjects was most welcomed, raising some unexpected questions about our work. thanks to matt and keh from t.m.l.e. for arranging the event and alan magee for co-presenting the evening with us
Labels: black mill, critique, london, meta architecture, presentation
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23 April 2011
lexicon-scape :
is fallaciously called
a vast polemic
the heresiarchs of uqbar
i conjectured that
fortified my doubt
the visible universe was an illusion or (more precisely) a sophism
the scrupulous cartographical indices
he suffered from unreality
his tired rectangular beard had once been red
engage in taciturn chess games
the duodecimal system of numbering (in which twelve is written as 10)
these subordinate sleuthing procedures
the many and weighty tomes
a perfect synonym of the cosmos
a dialectical game
a kind of reductio ad absurdum
a very daring hypothesis
the complete victory of this idealist pantheism
one of its modest demiurgi was herbert ashe
i perceived then something of its premonitory character
covered with hard heraldic fauna
the perceptible and tenuous tremor of a sleeping bird
the proprietor's rudimentary hospitality
intermingled inextricable insults
a scattered dynasty of solitary men
i am reading borges at the moment, and taking my time about it. the list above is a collection not dissimilar to previous lexicon-scapes - meatier and spicier. i intend to write about my fascination with tlön, uqbar, orbis tertius in more detail and at a later point, whereas here and now i want to look at the evolution of the lexicon-scape.
lexicon-scape is in flux - while making these word lists i have found it invariably enlightening, promoting a mode of questioning of the text you present yourself. i have begun expanding the focus of this exercise by looking at word patterns and descriptive formats alongside my current interest in individual words. there are some motives for this shift -
d e f i n i t i o n m i n i n g
the context of a word almost always implies the word's meaning, exclusively from the etymology of that word.
l y r i c a l r h y t h m s
"man in his movement modifies the forms which surround him" | page 37 | inter-lyrical tools and literary expression are mostly hidden when focusing on one word. i want this lexicon-scape exercise to work harder.
i have been swooning over the phonetics of these singular words, sometimes over an exotic sound they produce, over a unique way they instruct your mouth [like a reverse conductor], or leaving the physical world; the associations these words recklessly conjure in our mind. the translation process entwines fluidly from printed word to every neuro-psycho-sense of the body e.g. memories and assimilations of smell and intrigue, light and texture, pain and all sorts of emotional trauma. now looking at a broader set of words and authors' intent i feel some richer engagement with the poetry of the text can be read.
a r t i s t i c a r t i c u l a t i o n
"buckley was a freethinker, a fatalist and a defender of slavery" | page 40 | this uneasy triptych of attributes is so deliberate in its expressed, evocative juxtapositions; is this an art of adjacency?
some of these words are used by authors, for me, in unexpected ways. and for someone who is as intimidated by english language as i have been this is a welcoming, revolutionary idea - you can make the language work for you! you can bend and break perceived axioms of a language in favour of telling a story, appropriate to the story. language becomes an artistic exploration rather than a rigid, rule-based exercise.
d e s c r i p t i v e d e n s i t i e s
jorges luis borges was able to pack and unpack, layer and criss-cross prose. a personal, exciting thing is that i have encountered no other writer's work that paces me like the stories contained within labyrinths.
notable moments in this story
"mirrors and copulation are abominable, because they increase the number of men"
page 27
"we discovered beneath its rigorous prose a fundamental vagueness"
page 28
"and all of it articulated, coherent, with no visible doctrinal intent or tone of parody"
page 31
"an infinite leibniz labouring away darkly and modestly"
page 32
"the world for them is not a concourse of objects in space; it is a heterogeneous series of independent acts. it is successive and temporal, not spatial"
page 32
"the sun and the water on the swimmer's chest, the vague tremulous rose colour we see with our eyes closed, the sensation of being carried along by a river and also by sleep"
page 33
"another school declares that all time has already transpired and that our life is only the crepuscular and no doubt falsified and mutilated memory or reflection of an irrecoverable process"
page 34
"all men, in the vertiginous moment of coitus, are the same man. all men who repeat a line from shakespeare are william shakespeare"
page 36
"the concept of plagiarism does not exist : it has been established that all works are the creation of one author, who is atemporal and anonymous. the critics often invent authors : they select two dissimilar works - the tao te ching and the 1001 nights, say - attribute them to the same writer and then determine most scrupulously the psychology of this interesting homme de lettres"
page 37
"a book which does not contain its counterbook is considered incomplete"
page 37
"such was the intrusion of this fantastic world into the world of reality"
page 41
"this sensation of a very small and at the same time extremely heavy object produced a disagreeable impression of repugnance and fear"
page 41
*page numbers are references in the penguin modern classics edition of jorges luis borges book labyrinths
lexicon-scape is in flux - while making these word lists i have found it invariably enlightening, promoting a mode of questioning of the text you present yourself. i have begun expanding the focus of this exercise by looking at word patterns and descriptive formats alongside my current interest in individual words. there are some motives for this shift -
d e f i n i t i o n m i n i n g
the context of a word almost always implies the word's meaning, exclusively from the etymology of that word.
l y r i c a l r h y t h m s
"man in his movement modifies the forms which surround him" | page 37 | inter-lyrical tools and literary expression are mostly hidden when focusing on one word. i want this lexicon-scape exercise to work harder.
i have been swooning over the phonetics of these singular words, sometimes over an exotic sound they produce, over a unique way they instruct your mouth [like a reverse conductor], or leaving the physical world; the associations these words recklessly conjure in our mind. the translation process entwines fluidly from printed word to every neuro-psycho-sense of the body e.g. memories and assimilations of smell and intrigue, light and texture, pain and all sorts of emotional trauma. now looking at a broader set of words and authors' intent i feel some richer engagement with the poetry of the text can be read.
a r t i s t i c a r t i c u l a t i o n
"buckley was a freethinker, a fatalist and a defender of slavery" | page 40 | this uneasy triptych of attributes is so deliberate in its expressed, evocative juxtapositions; is this an art of adjacency?
some of these words are used by authors, for me, in unexpected ways. and for someone who is as intimidated by english language as i have been this is a welcoming, revolutionary idea - you can make the language work for you! you can bend and break perceived axioms of a language in favour of telling a story, appropriate to the story. language becomes an artistic exploration rather than a rigid, rule-based exercise.
d e s c r i p t i v e d e n s i t i e s
jorges luis borges was able to pack and unpack, layer and criss-cross prose. a personal, exciting thing is that i have encountered no other writer's work that paces me like the stories contained within labyrinths.
notable moments in this story
"mirrors and copulation are abominable, because they increase the number of men"
page 27
"we discovered beneath its rigorous prose a fundamental vagueness"
page 28
"and all of it articulated, coherent, with no visible doctrinal intent or tone of parody"
page 31
"an infinite leibniz labouring away darkly and modestly"
page 32
"the world for them is not a concourse of objects in space; it is a heterogeneous series of independent acts. it is successive and temporal, not spatial"
page 32
"the sun and the water on the swimmer's chest, the vague tremulous rose colour we see with our eyes closed, the sensation of being carried along by a river and also by sleep"
page 33
"another school declares that all time has already transpired and that our life is only the crepuscular and no doubt falsified and mutilated memory or reflection of an irrecoverable process"
page 34
"all men, in the vertiginous moment of coitus, are the same man. all men who repeat a line from shakespeare are william shakespeare"
page 36
"the concept of plagiarism does not exist : it has been established that all works are the creation of one author, who is atemporal and anonymous. the critics often invent authors : they select two dissimilar works - the tao te ching and the 1001 nights, say - attribute them to the same writer and then determine most scrupulously the psychology of this interesting homme de lettres"
page 37
"a book which does not contain its counterbook is considered incomplete"
page 37
"such was the intrusion of this fantastic world into the world of reality"
page 41
"this sensation of a very small and at the same time extremely heavy object produced a disagreeable impression of repugnance and fear"
page 41
*page numbers are references in the penguin modern classics edition of jorges luis borges book labyrinths
Labels: borges, lexicon-scape, words
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30 March 2011
Dear reader
here-in: the hourglass issue;
the effect time has on you;
how it and you are ‘twine
here-on will test your eye-sight [there is a lot of small text]
where image, prose, thought just might
spur questions in like kind.
so read, scan and ponder,
upon content of times yonder;
the contributors’ resplendent list
the hourglass becomes a symbol,
an object which asks;
“after all, does the present exist?”
Labels: collaboration, drawing, matzine, shadow, time
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28 March 2011
the constructive critique
matzine#006
the following submission to matzine#006 was a collaborative effort between nick shurey and myself, over the course of a month. we set up a scenario were the relationship between critter and critted was brought into question. the ensuing short design and review exercise was most enlightening. this post is a backlog; this matzine edition was released 11th december 2010
read the edition's intro by editor rowan mackinnon-pryde
click the images below to enlarge the text...
.
Labels: collaboration, critique, depth, drawing, matzine
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11 March 2011
in amsterdam's
open bare bibliotheek
image : i decided to pick through some random books in the architecture section of the library, and i came across this, frankly-hilarious, rather-boring, stereo-typical photography pose of an architect, walter gropius. i have much respect for his work, but these sort of images feel, to me, creepy and bleak
having just read a book for an hour or so, i can't help but be impressed by this ... place, this hyper-library, this unexpectedly-comfortable mothership of knowledge and cuisine and music and film and s i l e n c e and more-polite-than-not noise.
it is certainly the most convincing, evoled manifestation of the regrettable idea store i have come across.
this place is thriving. and open [accessible design] and open [spacious] and open [i'm allowed in]
-nd what gives the place a special glow in my eyes : there are no obvious tourists or indeed english spoken words - an escape from amsterdam-main. [a rather attactive young woman just picked up a violin and started bowing a classical piece, exquisitly, metres from me. awesome. all bets are off in the open bare!]
with all these impressive, at times querky things, still, i would trade nothing for the spirit from the libraries of old
image : walter gropius, buildings, plans, projects 1906 - 1967 (1970)
Labels: amsterdam, architect, library
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8 March 2011
mineralogical notes
and making stereoscopic drawings
image above : non-crystalline tetrahedral network model, from "a simple method for making stereoscopic drawings" by fred ordway, the american mineralogist, vol 50, september 1965. this image pair is made for viewing with a stereoscope.
a 3-page scanned article is included below. in this 1965 article, a molecular-scaled geological representation technique is explored - stereoscopic drawing. it is a fascinating, technical account of an experimental drawing method, which aims to overcome the otherwise slow process a crystallographer must endure to produce such a stereo-pair image.
article : "a simple method for making stereoscopic drawings" by fred ordway, the american mineralogist, vol 50, september 1965
stereos - stereós, meaning solid
the particular things, from this article, which i'd like to do something with are:
the necessary 4 coordinates and stereo pairs,
parallax mining - to find atomic/molecular structure,
parall-axis - the problem of vertical vs horizontal parallax with regards to human visual perception and interocular distances.
the necessary 4 coordinates and stereo pairs,
parallax mining - to find atomic/molecular structure,
parall-axis - the problem of vertical vs horizontal parallax with regards to human visual perception and interocular distances.
|
article : "a simple method for making stereoscopic drawings" by fred ordway, the american mineralogist, vol 50, september 1965
stereos - stereós, meaning solid
-scopic - skopion, meaning to look at
the cinema screens in recent times have seen a notable rise in 3d films - the movie-makers are sharing the same basic principles as this crystallograpgher's notes; human stereoscopic vision. simply put, we have one eye about 6cm horiztonally adjacent from another eye. this is called the interocular distance. healthy humans also, crucially, have the phenomenal ability to fuse the two images we experience from each eye - visual-depth perception.
some people are not able to view our world with stereoscopic vision - perhaps the neurophysiology is affected by some disorder, the eyes do not sufficiently look in the same direction or some other issue. recently i found myself reading a fascinating, almost frightening book by oliver sacks entitled the mind's eye. in this book a woman named sue, who, for most of her life had only monocular vision, suddenly is able to see in binocular vision
"i noticed today that the light fixture that hangs down from our kitchen ceiling looks different. it seems to occupy some space between myself and the ceiling...
i noticed the edge of the open door to my office seemed to stick out toward me. now, i always knew that the door was sticking out toward me when it was open because of the shape of the door, perspective and other monocular cues, but i have never seen it in depth"
quote : the mind's eye, p129, oliver sacks, 2010
it is not only likely that we all take for granted the effect of stereoscopic depth, it's wholly improbable that we could even imagine, at will, the world of monocular vision. between ordway's mineralogical representation techniques and sack's patients, quickly questions arise about the limits of our sense of visual-depth, about how we might use this understanding of our eyes and mind to positively inform and create in our "ocular-centric world"
image above : from the above mentioned mineralogical article. i have made an animated gif to simulate the effect of seeing both stereo-pair images at the same time through a stereoscope
[thanks to wales for introducing me to this article. i believe she came across it while panning for diamonds]
[thanks to wales for introducing me to this article. i believe she came across it while panning for diamonds]
Labels: depth, drawing, parallax
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5 December 2010
lexicon-scape :
brunelleschi, lacan, le corbusier
|
above is a list of words taken from brunelleschi, lacan, le corbusier : architecture, space and the construction of subjectivity by dr. lorens holm. this lexicon-scape follows the same rules as my previous attempt with 'down and out...' yet with this reading of an academic text, the list builds much more quickly, while my reading of it slows down! hence this list represents just 30 pages of his 250 page book.
off the back of my last lexicocentric post, a friend, ian pollard, has kindly pointed me in two mutually diverse directions. the first, which i shall speak about here, is to the french troupe oulipo : short for ouvroir de littérature potentielle. these literarians, poets and linguists, from all flights of thought, wished to create new techniques, tools and machines for using words.
"the seeking of new structures and patterns that may be used by writers in any way they enjoy." Constraints are used to trigger new ideas and the Oulipo group is an ongoing source of novel techniques, often based on mathematical ideas -- such as counting letters and syllables, substitution algorithms, permutations, palindromes, and even chess problems."
- from another blog
as if seeking a new language of grammar, the rules by which words were brought together seem exploratory and fresh; they employed palindromes, lipograms and other constraints. i think my favourite is the snowball. here follows a 'melting snowball' poem by harry matthews, in which each sequential word is one letter shorter than the previous.
Incontrovertible
sadomasochistic
orthographical
compositional
restrictions
insistently
discipline
grandiose
sixteen's
initial
hubris
right
down
now
to
0
off the back of my last lexicocentric post, a friend, ian pollard, has kindly pointed me in two mutually diverse directions. the first, which i shall speak about here, is to the french troupe oulipo : short for ouvroir de littérature potentielle. these literarians, poets and linguists, from all flights of thought, wished to create new techniques, tools and machines for using words.
"the seeking of new structures and patterns that may be used by writers in any way they enjoy." Constraints are used to trigger new ideas and the Oulipo group is an ongoing source of novel techniques, often based on mathematical ideas -- such as counting letters and syllables, substitution algorithms, permutations, palindromes, and even chess problems."
- from another blog
as if seeking a new language of grammar, the rules by which words were brought together seem exploratory and fresh; they employed palindromes, lipograms and other constraints. i think my favourite is the snowball. here follows a 'melting snowball' poem by harry matthews, in which each sequential word is one letter shorter than the previous.
Incontrovertible
sadomasochistic
orthographical
compositional
restrictions
insistently
discipline
grandiose
sixteen's
initial
hubris
right
down
now
to
0
i imagine this mathematicallesque discipline [or perhaps game?] as a great segue between fields of interest. i imagine the numbers of pupils at school who could delight in these ways of looking at words and prose, rather than the strict, perhaps hard-to-teach methods which i encountered. i'd love to think that while going through borges' library of babel, one would come across every permutation of these writing styles and an infinite amount of others, unfathomable to our cerebral capacity!!!
[thanks for the reference ian]
Labels: borges, lexicon-scape, words
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29 November 2010
grimshaw architects recently sponsored a life drawing class, with a set of conditions.
i no looking at the page one was drawing on
ii drawing with one's less dexterous hand [in my case, my left hand]
iii drawing with both hands, simultaneously, with the above two conditions
ix finally, on selected drawings the pen was not allowed to leave the page.
this applied discipline made producing a self-indulgently pretty depiction of the model's bodyform near impossible, yet still some unexpected attractiveness prevails. there is a child like quality in these drawings - perhaps something to do with the unusually clear evidence of thought/focus on the drawing. the result is almost remedial.
the exercise reminds me of a book that i read before beginning my education in architecture, called drawing on the right side of the brain, by betty edwards. a fascinating worthwhile read.
 |  |  |
Labels: drawing
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8 November 2010
strike the arc
and the emitting apparition
and the emitting apparition
"all together, these elements articulate the conceptual ambition of the project: to produce a blinding, over lit object whose geometric finiteness is undermined by the tremendous glare and seemingly infinite falloff of light." - neil denari
 |
| this circuit diagram represents my modest exploration into the workings of fluorescent tubes; it is an 'electric-language' - symbol, glyph and line describe the voltaic relationships between components and their demanding potential differences. the circuit reminds me of a plan and its own unfolded sections, the circuit has a definite 'parti diagram' - imagine if architecture had one as simple/concise as this... mapping human movements, object proportions, air flow .... [thinking] |
there are a rapid series of events that takes place when you turn on a typical fluorescent light. the following takes an instant to occur, close to the speed of light, so in order to understand this sequence, and because we can't read fast enough, assume time is stretched out.
- push the button
- cathode element heats, then emits electrons
- electrons collide with the low density noble gas, ionizing its atoms
- gas immediately around cathode turns into plasma and starts avalanche ionization [which is comparable to what allows lightning to occur] [note to self, get tesla into the discussion]
- everything inside the tube becomes great at conducting electricity
- a high current flows between the opposite cathodes [completing the circuit]
- light on
the emitting apparition
there is a ghost filament in a fluorescent light, unknown to the incandescent bulb. the bulb has her tungsten filament whereas the tube boasts nearly nothing inside, certainly no wire connecting the two cathodes. the emitting plasmatic stuff exists in a vastly different atmosphere to us, at just 0.3% the pressure of our air at sea level. [304Pa inside the tube, 101,325Pa of open air]
fluoroscape 2006
" all 224 lights are used as a field (the organizational) of stiffening members (structural) and dashed white lines (the graphic). these are held within seven laser cut, powder coated 3/16" thick steel formers (commonly known as ribs) that produce a series of different closed curves, all of which are filled and skinned with the f.s.l. elements."
 |  |  |
the above exhibition project "fluoroscape" by neil denari architects is a 'light object'-object - it certainly celebrates the module of the standard fsl tube. i like the intended ethereal description of this piece in the quote near the beginning of this post - "seemingly infinite fall-off of light". yet while obviously ambitious and imaginative and i'm excited by the idea of this kind of object, i'm not very much inspired by how it is represented on denari's website nor the accompanying text. maybe i'll ask him in person as neil the dude will be giving a lecture at the bartlett school of architecture soon - 16th november
Labels: fluorescence, light, tesla
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