Wednesday, October 31, 2007

NOTES

each of you that presented yesterday are responsible for getting your notes up asap. i made this clear during class. do this immediately. i hope i dont need to remind you who you are. thanks.

from aline concerning media

Please communicate to the students that they are welcome (and encouraged) to test their laptops with the projector in that classroom ahead of time and that if any problems arise to please let MMS know ASAP. In this particularcase, since I was unable to determine the problem, it may behoove thestudents to try using it again following these steps:
1. fully shut down computer
2. connect to the projector
3. turn on projector4.
turn the computer on
5. If image does not appear immediately, try utilizing function keysfor toggling second monitor on/off.
If it still doesn't work, ask Academic Computing to suggest possiblesolutions for their specific make/model display settings.Please let me know if there are any further questions.
Thank you,
Aline Fader
Coordinator of Equipment & Loan Services
Multi-Media ServicesPratt Institute Libraries

Reflection and stillness vs. motion

Midterm Class Notes

Sartian Look vs. Lacanian Gaze
Architectural screen or lens to clor sensor or screen what you want other to see
That else is being informed through your film
James Turell
What is editing / cut / shot
How do we isolate the parts of the film and how do they translate into architecture
What is the moment of translation
What are we allowed to see? Society
What should be veiled in society?
Could you tie into the idea as a blind spot
The brain will fill in the blind spot with memory
Relation of mechanism of perception to discover
Optics of the eye
Camera obscura
Vision subjectivity
Write down the verb of what each word is doing and define them in relation to what they are affecting in the rest of the composition
How can you make your shopping experience?
Architecture gives us our context
With hold the loose ephemeral quality of life within architecture
Piers show that there is a constantly shifting datum
How are abstractions articulated and used
Good that scale is not clear. A landscape condition can emerge from this
Give existential meanings to materials so that the viewer appreciates the space but is not sure why
Possible an orphanage that occurs after a disaster
Memories and current facts could drive the chess game that will be your program
Best thesis projects discover something
Set strong parameters to test
See the sight at different times/ seasons

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Tuesday, October 30, 2007

Class Presentation

Would it still be possible to acquire some feedback also from Dan Silver and Michael Eng via the Blog?

Thanks,

Matt
for program, I'm really liking the idea of a stage/set of a mosque for a film. I suppose the question that needs to be addressed for the next part of the project is where? I imediatly thought Hollywood for the accessibility to the industry, but a film set can be set up anywhere.

In terms of a precedent, the composer Richard Wagner comes to mind who has specially constructed theaters for the performance of his operas. in terms of having a screenplay for the set to be constructed for, my brother who is a director, has volunteered to help co-write a story with me.

I'm just throwing this idea out there. obviously I need a full presentation to clear up other questions.

shadow as self-awareness - updated film

Sunday, October 28, 2007

crits

Karin didn't know either. I told her an invite was in the mail. (on the way)

Saturday, October 27, 2007

Swings

would having a separate projector for our films help speed the switching back-and-forth proccess up?

Last week discussion

Film: Junk yard
Metaphor: Pile of Memory

Thinking about totality and wholeness from parts of car that are organized but kayo tic.

Thinking about amnesia: “Have to lose in order to create new memory”. How the each part had its own memory before it arrived to the junk yard but ever since it’s in this environment of correction of car parts, each part are creating another memory by blending into each other, like experiencing optical illusion; and creating landscape with unique texture

Thinking about how body has relationship to car: “Body is a Car”. Car is an extension of our body that moves under commends.

Thinking about sensing and memory: what awakes our senses? If I see a ruff texture it can give me a touching sense and I can imagine how it’s going to absolve and bounces sounds… etc. But the question is how do we know that ruff texture is going to give me certain feels that I expect? And after really experiencing it and really delivers that exact feeling that I know of we accepts it very naturally but it’s possible because we once have a memory that I similar to; we call that memory.

Comments for Dionysios

Last comments on the blog about the film on Oct 11…Dan B said about your film… very good.it is much stronger visually ...it is still mostly about geometry and abstract space.the viewer is allowed inside (interiority)...that you achieve.... what is still not present sufficiently is a suggested link to the notion of "HEAVEN"...that is the "narrative”, the story and program for your film based on your metaphor. Yes, you show the sky,manny times, and the sky is a symbol of heaven but most people will not get it. The question is, how can you introduce in the film new elements that may make the mental association to the "concept of heaven" easier to achieve. Lets talk about that…


October 26, 2007
New comments in response to your Japanese system of symbolic
Representation….


It seems that you went there in response to my asking for a narrative (story, symbolic program) about the “notion of "HEAVEN"...that is the "narrative". Is that correct?

Here are my comments about your last posting. I am than a little irritated that I have to spend the time to respond in writing which is a lot more time consuming while you took class time for real estate investments! That is the grand narrative you are communicating within your present tense actions, that is voting with your feet.. that is more important than the degree project….if you get my metaphor…..be that as it may…….you wrote and I comment……


“I am currently exploring a reading giving to me by a professor titled, "MA Space-Time in Japan" which is a correlation of exhibitions by Arata Isozaki. “

That is great but you seem to ignore the readings given to you by your current teachers and the theoretical frame they suggest….you have to pay attention to both..!!! otherwise you fail in the present tense……



"After the discussion a week ago on the potential to this theory of programming defined as the 'Generational Archive for Living' “

Too general, too vague too ambitious, to and this is the most problematic for our studio’s theoretical frame, too typological (that is highly coded in a cultural sense, linguistic, in a memory sense and not in the present time as Morris reading suggested by the notion of “ presentness (our class reading), sensorial and open ended mode open for re-interpretation, in other words too fixed, this is the core argument between structuralists and post-structuralists (I will expand in class about this)


“ I have began to consider how one might be able to assimilate the various other typological programs within this condition of existential archiving.”

That is the problem with your proposal…that is not the task….if at all, it is only a beginning of a structure borrowed from an other culture, which is not a problem (we may even encourage it) but it has to be made into a lived experience in your film and in your future project , manifested sensorialy (all five senses) and not depending on the observer’s knowledge of that culture and/or be given a legend/dictionary of meanings…your diagram’s written staff I could not read…



“As discussed the resolution or adaptation of the archives functional requirements to begin to break from social, cultural economic and political constraints; is in direct response to the 'free-space' of existential living conditions required by the premise of the class as noted in my text 'Perceptional Programming”

Good term not yet developed….but why invent a new private terminology when we established a way to speak under the studio theoretical frame based on the readings ( from Lackoff , Piaget and Morris etc)


"However i was finding myself playing with ambiguous linguistics and unable to notational speak of these adaptations, i found the Western culture of architectural propaganda is to strictured to allow for such fluid dialectics required by modern man and the individualized perception of Syneasthesia. "

I (and may others) argue that this East West false dichotomy is another kind of propaganda which is not helpful……


“However the discussion of the Japanese concept of Space-Time in this pamphlet MA, is proving to be the comparative cognitive thought process that may be able to begin to restructure the Generational Archive. Issues of MA as various typologies (spatially, culturally and theoretically) are in tension with Western theories and through a notational process of interjected these conditions into a fabric purely conceived by western theory i may be able to bridge between these variations into a single notational domain that can produce a strong dialectic as to construct a thesis on.”

I FEEL THAT I MUST REISSUE YET AGAIN , FOR YOU AND OTHERS A SUMMARY OF WHAT WE REGARD AS THE CLEAR PEDAGOGICAL FRAMEWORK OF OUR STUDIO WHICH WE EXPECT THE STUDDENT TO GRASP AND FOLLOW. The particulars, the specific program and site, are up to the student but not the theoretical frame. You all chose this studio for gthat reason among others. I hope that is clear.




Posted Wednesday, October 10, 2007

Your task to develop a proposal for a Degree Project Program. The term 'architectural program' has many meanings. Marc said in class three things. I am repeating them here to make sure that you : It can be a (1)mixed program (mixed use),and (2) it does not have to be only quantitative but be in qualitative terms (experience) and (3) it should be argued (the choice of and the approach to designing it) in the light of the studio theoretical framework and your own developing interests as you discovered in making the film.
That will take some work to propose and write about it. That is the task before midterm.

The discussion of metaphors/synaesthesia etc. and the translation of this research into a degree project concept (precis) , program and site is just begining.
Summary (yet again) of our proposed “Theoretical Frame” for the studio October 26, 2007

Architectural experience, as a mode of knowing, originates and exists primarily in direct
experience, the “being here” of bodily experience.

It is the disembodied quality of many recent developments in architectural theory and architecture teaching that this studio attempts to address.

Synesthesia refers to cross-modal associations, an interface of virtual (non-sensorial) perceptions with normal sensory perception, These are associations of modes rather than replacing one perceptual mode for another. Such as “where am I ?” (space/time) ,"smell" colors, "see" sounds and "feel" tastes. “touch” texture. Inter-sensory associations are the basis for becoming inter-subjective emotional states between the “I” and the “other” in human collective experience.
Synesthesia is not a concept, but a material experience occurring in the brain and imbedded in cultural behavior-language/art. Others suggest that these primary metaphors might be hord wired in the brain (see neurophilosophy).

Rules of the game are from from Phenomenology (Merleau Ponti and Don Idhe)

Two different strategies for interpretation (of grasping, holding in memory)

1. Hermaneutic strategy

the use of story devices and (metaphorical naming) in order to create an immidiate thought context.

the story creates a condition that immidiately sediments the perceptual possibility- perception takes shape within and from the power of suggestion of a language-game.
2. Phenomenological strategy
centering on the subject , the way in which
perception functions is made thematic

the instructions of how to look, rely on certain knowledge of the
mechanisms of subject as active percievers.

Although these aspects of our cultural/linguistic behavior can not be realy ever separated , for operational purposes as producers/makers of objects/ cultural artifacts to which others will attribute meaning (interpret) later, WE in this STUDIO emphasize the phenomenological approach over the Hermaneutical (narrative,symbolic, interpretatice) approach. The reason for this is the great misunderstanding that architecture can represent a story, a metaphor…see Neslson Goodman…architecture is a non-representational art form..also see Rolland Barth in Eiffel Tower---as a “concrete abstraction”…….concrete, sensorial first, abstract after…..



From: Philosophy in Flesh Lakoff

Chapter 4
Primary metaphor and the subjective experience

domains are mostly sensory-motor domains

The four parts of the theory of primary metaphor
Subjective (non sensory-motor) experiences and judgments, on the one hand,
Sensory-motor experience, on the other, are so regularly conflated –
undifferentiated in experience- that for a time children do not distinguish
between the two when they occur together. …During the period of conflation
associations are automatically built between the two domains. Later during a period of differentiation ,children are able to separate out the domains,
but the cross-domain associations persist…. Universal early experiences lead to universal conflations (children’s body sensory-mptor and concrete operations see Piaget stages of development of spatial cognition)



Each primary metaphor has a minimal structure and arises naturally,
automatically and unconsciously through everyday experience by means
of conflation…..

Complex metaphors are formed by conceptual blending. Individual memory and cultural memory (language, systems of symbols)

Narayanan’s neural theory of metaphor…permanent neural connections ?????


Distinct conceptual domains can be co-activated, and under certain conditions connections across the domains can be formed, leading to new inferences.

The Sensory-motor structuring of subjective experience

In “Metaphors We Live By”, we gave evidence that conceptual metaphors are mappings across conceptual domains that structure our reasoning, our experience and our everyday language. We pointed to the existence of experientially grounded mappings, for example:
More is Up, as in “Prices Rose”…….. This correspondance between quantity and verticality arise in our everyday experiences..


Merleau-Ponty argued:

The social is not collective consciousness but intersubjectivity
a living relationship and tension among individuals.

the fact that Husserl determines the living
present as the ultimate, universal and absolute “form”


Inseparable from the concept of appearance, sense, evidence or essence…


Only form is evident, only form has or is essence, only form presents itself
as such.


“The Present Tense of Space “
Ch 10 in The Continuous Project Altered Daily
by Robert Morris
“a state of being I will call “presentness”; two kinds of Kublerian historical development ( is he referring to the book “the Shape of Time” ? or to the film maker), citing precedents, some of them widely separated in time and space; and three formal characteristics of the paradigm underlying the kind of work that now seizes presentness as its domain……..”
“Time is in this newer work in a way it was never in past sculpture…More at issue is the shift in evaluation of experience (direct experience) This experience is embedded in the very nature of spatial perception”
“Mental Space” has no location within the body. Yet without it there is no consciousness, Julian Jayyness suggests that mental space is a fundamental analogue-metaphor for the world, and that it was only with the linguistic development of terms for spatial interiority occurring around the second millennium B.C. that subjective consciousness as such can be said to begin. (link to Piaget and the children’s metaphoric world view, and to sensory-motor phase of cognitive concept of void/space in children similar to the beginnings of same in early humans)
Some times ago George Herbert Mead divided the self into the “I” and ‘me”. The former, the “I” has to do with the present-time experiencing self, consciously reacting. The latter , the “me” is the self reconstituted from various indices…”
(sensory-motor direct experience) rather imaginalistically (like children in the early metaphorically (see Piaget and the source of primary metaphors for Lackoff”)

Friday, October 26, 2007

Do the Critics know about our mid review??

Dan and Marc
I spoke with Fredric Levrat briefly about our mid-review, and it seems he either didn't know about it, or did not hear from you guys. Just wondering, is he and Dan Silver supposed to come to the review, or are they just to read our blog posts. It'd be nice to hear from them either way.

do the jurors know

Thursday, October 25, 2007

Dear ALL number 2. Re: PP presentation required

Dear All (2)


With apologies for this late clarification to the presentation format, We would want to make sure that you all understood that you must prepare your research presentation in Power Point along side your film. We are in Room 209 with limited wall space. Some drawings/ models etc. could be on the wall (well selected as original art work). A PP presentation with images and text slides (quotes from the readings or your own writing , a paragraph per slide ) is very useful in sequencing, timing and delivering clearly your presentation (written page on the wall or even if handed out to the critics remains unread often).

You can figure about 10 to 15 seconds per slide. You can also read out loud from your slides. All this helps you deliver clearly your presentation. This is after all a research seminar not a design studio. Of course I hope that you all understand that you can and should use all the staff you posted on the blog as material for the PP slides. It is for this reason that I feel that requiring this mode of delivery should not be a problem.


Please let us know if you have any questions.



Dan and Mark

Wednesday, October 24, 2007

Midterm Directed Research Presentation Format:

1. Genealogies (Precedent Analysis)

1.1 Research and discuss an Art/Architecture Installation
1.2 Research and discuss a Film from the assigned list

2. Material Practice (Method)

Produce a 2 minutes Film and draw into the film a material intervention
(art installation)

2.1 Show Film and explain your intentions
2.2 Develop analytical diagrams of cross-modal attributes that your film tries to capture
2.3 One Page written description of the intentions of your film

3. Discuss possible Degree project program as it relates to the studio theoretical Frame and your own research direction
4. Handout of a Table of Content of your presentation
5. Bibliography of all your seminar readings to date


Your presentation should be no longer than 6 to 8 minutes

Tuesday, October 23, 2007

intervention

These are some sketches explaining what I talked about in class for my installation. From still of swing set with three different swingers.
1. A solid "A" frame as the boundary with movable pendulum pieces to reveal view (can be solid or frames). Hanging unit or free standing.

2. 3dimensional space A frame again, but can walk through pendulum.

3. Free standing frame with pendulum units hanging from it. Move pieces to move through or view. Also with this is idea of scale and what is frame. Could be placed small in a door or window. Similar to a shutter like on a camera... exposure time. If small then could be placed on different sites and filmed again.

MA: Space-Time in Japan As Notational Typologies of Generational Archive


I am currently exploring a reading giving to me by a professor titled, "MA Space-Time in Japan" which is a correlation of exhibitions by Arata Isozaki. After the discussion a week ago on the potential to this theory of programming defined as the 'Generational Archive for Living', i have began to consider how one might be able to assimilate the various other typological programs within this condition of existential archiving. As discussed the resolution or adaptation of the archives functional requirements to begin to break from social, cultural economic and political constraints; is in direct response to the 'free-space' of existential living conditions required by the premise of the class as noted in my text 'Perceptional Programming'. However i was finding myself playing with ambiguous linguistics and unable to notational speak of these adaptations, i found the Western culture of architectural propaganda is to strictured to allow for such fluid dialectics required by modern man and the individualized perception of Syneasthesia. However the discussion of the Japanese concept of Space-Time in this pamphlet MA, is proving to be the comparative cognitive thought process that may be able to begin to restructure the Generational Archive. Issues of MA as various typologies (spatially, culturally and theoretically) are in tension with Western theories and through a notational process of interjected these conditions into a fabric purely conceived by western theory i may be able to bridge between these variations into a single notational domain that can produce a strong dialectic as to construct a thesis on.

drawing

the drawing below was my first response to the "notational" drawing - one that can begin to make a connection about the experience/sequence dealing with a kind of program in mind - to color the experience.

The intervention within the drawing has to do with a chosen site (below the Williamsburg Bridge), located on the water where this abandoned cave-like opening of space (bounded by the walls of deteriorating bricks) exists as you come down this sloped path. I am drawn to this particular site because of the conditions of water (low/high tide), a great view, and the conditions of how it is treated by the people (collection of trash). the place has a very distinct repugnant smell. At low tide, one can enter this caved space (once intervened and then abandoned) and the ground is always damp.
At high tide, people trickle down this slope and spend some time (no more than 20 mins. because of the smell) overlooking the water to catch a glimpse of this view and to listen to the water echo in this space underneath them. it is only at low tide however, that this opening underneath the walkway can be revealed to those willing to walk on the pile of trash.

Back to the drawing below - the drawing was made out of memory rather than through a practiced precise documentation or notation. the top part is a section, the bottom is a plan looking down at the edge standing on the ground above the water - the edges of this contained space of bricks underneath is bounded by the red/orange/brown/slight green bricks which makes a frame for the perspective drawing of the interior of that contained space in the middle of the drawing. in it, i had put in two stills from the earlier film i had made on shadows - dealing with the projection of the self, the hidden reality, the unconscious (i must re-edit my film ).

To make this a lot more clear, i am dealing with a framework foundation of morality and space. The shadows have made me more interested in the unconscious/conscious. Such an interest has led me to the ideas of everyday things like people throwing trash on the ground. this has led me
to many didactic qualities i have always been looking at.

shadow/light , nature/built environment, adults/children - and trash and what they are and were as materials for use.

the dwg. then may or may not portray the ideas for an upcoming program -

Not entirely unrelated neuroscience article

Saw this article in the NY Times this morning. It's kind of interesting.

An Active, Purposeful Machine That Comes Out at Night to Play
I seem to be having trouble with uploading my video. I've tried compressing it several ways but it is too big for youtube and the blog. I will try again in class tomorrow, but in the mean time here are some thoughts on program...

Monday, October 22, 2007

late advise for all

Dear All:

This is a very late entry reminder (never too late) to all as you are in the process of responding to our request for a "diagram/notational drawing" and "progarm" for your degreee project.

The diagram/notational analiticalo drawing we are suggesting thatb you do at this time should be applied to your film. You should act as if you were a (1) director of the film= story board, (2) cinephotogrepher +selecting the camera/eye point of view and/or (3) lighting designer etc.
You should produce analytical drawings of all these aspects of your film. Theser shouls help you
down the road , as an architect, plan the architectural interiorv experiencs of whatever program you might choose!!!!

Next, as you are thinking about a program, wde must remind you all of the goal and emphasis of our studio, which you have chosen. PLEASE READ CAREFULLY ..at we will expect you all to explain and justify hoew your chosen program fits within our theoretical frame work!!!



Theoretical Frame

Architecture is above all a walk through arcades, walls and columns subject to gravity. Such movements are the essential phenomenal ground for discovering architecture's most basic condition, that of interiority. Architectural experience, as a mode of knowing, originates and exists primarily in direct experience, the “being here” of bodily experience. It is the disembodied quality of many recent developments in architectural theory and architecture teaching that this studio attempts to address.

Theoretical Frame continued:
The name Constructive Curiosity is continuation of our interest in the Plastic Arts. The name ’Plastic Arts’ is an older and more restrictive term within the more general category of the visual arts. In french the term „arts plastique” comes from the Latin term ars and from the Greek word plaastikos used to describe those arts that must manifest tridimensional experience such as sculpture and architecture.
The phenomenon of Synesthesia refers to cross-modal associations, an interface of virtual (non-sensorial) perceptions with normal sensory perception, These are associations of modes rather than replacing one perceptual mode for another. Such as “where am I ?” (space/time) ,"smell" colors, "see" sounds and "feel" tastes. “touch” texture. Inter-sensory associations are the basis for becoming inter-subjective emotional states between the “I” and the “other” in human collective experience.
Synesthesia is not a concept, but a material experience occurring in the brain and imbedded in cultural behavior-language/art. Others suggest that these primary metaphors might be hord wired in the brain (see neurophilosophy).
A revival of scientific interest in synesthesia has taken place following cognitive , multimedia and philosophical research that are contemplating the condition not as an anomaly of the mind, but as a norm of human perception, imagination, and creativity.









Rules of the game are from from Phenomenology (Merleau Ponti and Don Idhe)

Two different strategies for interpretation (of grasping, holding in memory)

1. Hermaneutic strategy

the use of story devices and (metaphorical naming) in order to create
an immidiate thought context.

the story creates a condition that immidiately sediments the perceptual possibility- perception takes shape within and from the power of suggestion of a language-game.


2. Phenomenological strategy

centering on the subject , the way in which
perception functions is made thematic

the instructions of how to look, rely on certain knowledge of the
mechanisms of subject as active percievers.



WE in this STUDIO emphasize the phenomenological approach over the Hdermaneutical (narrative,symbolic) approach. The reason for this is the great misunderstanding that architecture can represent a story, a metaphor…see Neslson Goodman…give quote here……





...

Architectural Synaesthesis

a hypothesis on the makeup of Scarpa's modernist architectural drawings.
by Marco Frascari\


I can see an image only if I draw it.

the concentration on material substances or material beings and their transformations and transubstantiations reveals in his drafting the vital differences between what buildings are in themselves (their substance) and the perceptible qualities or characteristics

that in a synesthetic transubstantiation Scarpa manipulates as drawing accidents.
The implicit requirement of Scarpa's studio was that non-duplicable drawings were to be traced on Bristol board or similar material using a range of colored pencils and pens.



From: Philosophy in Flesh Lakoff

Chapter 4
Primary metaphor and the subjective experience

We make subjective judgments about abstract things as importance, similarity, difficulty, and morality, and have subjective experiences of desire, affection, intimacy, and achievement.. Yet,…the way we conceptualize them , reason about them, and visualize them comes from the domain of experience. These other domains are mostly sensory-motor domains (see Piaget stage of concrete operations) , as when we conceptualize understanding an idea (subjective experience) in terms of grasping an object(sensory motor) …a conceptual metaphor

The four parts of the theory of primary metaphor

1 Subjective (non sensory-motor) experiences and judgments, on the one hand,
Sensory-motor experience, on the other, are so regularly conflated –
undifferentiated in experience- that for a time children do not distinguish
between the two when they occur together. …During the period of conflation
associations are automatically built between the two domains. Later during
a period of differentiation ,children are able to separate out the domains,
but the cross-domain associations persist

2 All complex metaphors are “molecular” made up of “atomic” metaphorical
parts called primary metaphors (see Neslon Goodman “How buildings mean”four types of references-denotative, exemplification, expressive, complex chains of reference)

Each primary metaphor has a minimal structure and arises naturally,
automatically and unconsciously through everyday experience by means
of conflation…..Complex metaphors are formed by conceptual blending. Universal early experiences lead to universal conflations, which then develop into universal (or wide spread)conventional conceptual metaphors.
(link to Hayden and the universal and the particular, nominalism)



3 Narayanan’s neural theory of metaphor…permanent neural connections
( yes but..the transmission is mostly by recorded culture, the “meme” concept of Dwarkin)

4 Distinct conceptual domains can be co-activated, and under certain conditions connections across the domains can be formed, leading to new inferences.

The Sensory-motor structuring of subjective experience

In “Metaphors We Live By”, we gave evidence that conceptual metaphors are mappings across conceptual domains that structure our reasoning, our experience and our everyday language. We pointed to the existence of experientially grounded mappings, for example:
More is Up, as in “Prices Rose”…….. This correspondance between quantity and verticality arise in our everyday experiences..

Affection is warms
Important is big
Happy is up
Intimacy is closeness
Bad is stinky
Difficulties are burdens
More is up
Categories are containers
Similarity is closeness
Liniar scales are paths
Organization is physical structure
Help is support
Time is motion
States are location
Change is motion
Actions are self-propelled motions
Purposes are destinations
Purposes are desired objects
Causes are physical forces
Relationships are enclosures
Control is up
Knowing is seeing
Understanding is grasping
Seeing is touching



HAYDEN WHITE

"The archetypal plot of dicursive formations appears to require that the narrative "I" of the discourse move from an original methaphorical characterization of a domain of experience, through metonymic deconstructions of its elements, to synecdochic representations of the relations between iys superficial attributes and its presumed essence, to finally, a representation of whatever contrasts or oppositions can be legitimately be discerned in the totalities identified in the third phase of discursive representation. Vico suggested such a pattern of moves in his analysis of
the "Poetic Logic" which underlay and informed all human efforts to "make"
a world adequate to the satisfaction of the felt needs of human beings, in pre-rational cognitive processes. ....The move from a metaphorical apprehention of a "strange" and "threatening" reality to a metonymic dispersion of its elements into the contiguities of the series is not logical. "



Merleau-Ponty argued:

The social is not collective consciousness but intersubjectivity
a living relationship and tension among individuals.

the fact that Husserl determines the living
present as the ultimate, universal and absolute “form”


Inseparable from the concept of appearance, sense, evidence or essence…


Only form is evident, only form has or is essence, only form presents itself
as such.

This is a point of certainty that no interpretation of the Platonic or Aritotelian
conceptual systems can dislodge.


All the concepts by which eidos or morphe could be translated and determined
refer back to the theme of presence in general.

Form is presence itself
Formality is what is presented, visible, and conceivable of the thing in general.

That metaphysical thought – and consequently phenomenology- is the thought
of being as form, that in it is conceived as the thought of form and the formality of
form, is nothing less than necessary; the fact that Husserl determines the living
present as the ultimate, universal and absolute “form”


Anything that is known (Morris)

1. behaviorally (sensory-motor direct experience) phenomenological
WE START IN THIS MODE/METHOD…starting with film we begin with the interiority and materiality of direct cross-modal (synaestesia) spatial experience and primary metaphoric unconscious cognitive expefrience (see Lackoff)

2. imaginalistical . recognizable gestalt, totalities in memory, Representational, metaphorically, poetic logic, metaphoric Hermeneutical, Symbolic,

“The Present Tense of Space “
Ch 10 in The Continuous Project Altered Daily
by Robert Morris

“ Since the mid-1960’6…..”independent specific object” have proliferated……the 70’s have produced a lot of work in which space is strongly emphasized…….focuses itself on spatiality….”

“a state of being I will call “presentness”; two kinds of Kublerian historical development ( is he referring to the book “the Shape of Time” ? or to the film maker), citing precedents, some of them widely separated in time and space; and three formal characteristics of the paradigm underlying the kind of work that now seizes presentness as its domain……..”
“Time is in this newer work in a way it was never in past sculpture…More at issue is the shift in evaluation of experience (direct experience) This experience is embedded in the very nature of spatial perception”
“Mental Space” has no location within the body. Yet without it there is no consciousness, Julian Jayyness suggests that mental space is a fundamental analogue-metaphor for the world, and that it was only with the linguistic development of terms for spatial interiority occurring around the second millennium B.C. that subjective consciousness as such can be said to begin. (link to Piaget and the children’s metaphoric world view, and to sensory-motor phase of cognitive concept of void/space in children similar to the beginnings of same in early humans)
Some times ago George Herbert Mead divided the self into the “I” and ‘me”. The former, the “I” has to do with the present-time experiencing self, consciously reacting. The latter , the “me” is the self reconstituted from various indices…”

“Knowledge of their space is less visual and more temporal-kinesthetic
than for buildings that have clear gestalts as exterior and interior shapes

(gestalts –organized complexes are totalities recognizable with narrative see installation Alice Aycock The beginning of a Cpomplex…housing as masa verde mountain in a flat field )
Anything that is known behaviorally (sensory-motor direct experience) rather imaginalistically (like children in the early metaphorically (see Piaget and the source of primary metaphors for Lackoff”)

is more time bound, more of a function of duration than can grasped as a static whole. Our model of Presentness begins to fill out.

The viewer’s feet are in the space of the art, but his vision operates according to the perception of objects (see Acconci). Some “scatter” pieces occupied the entire floor, the wall acting as limiting frame”
One could call these “noun” and “verb” type of spaces.
“Other efforts, restraining an emphasis on the phenomenal aspects, moved more directly into a confrontation with space. Some, by presenting articulated interiors, have moved close to an architectural imagery “ (see figure 10.17 Robert Morris, Untitled)

“Other work opens up the extended spatial field by employing distances rather than contained interiors. In most cases the overall unifying gestalt form has usually prevailed. These have been structural options that various works have found rather than programmatically followed.” (see Robert Morris , Untitled figure 10.17)
“The nature of gestalt unity, however, is instantaneous – in the mind if not always in the eye. Buy “all at once” information generated by gestalt is not relevant and is probably antithitetical to the behavioral temporal nature of extended spatial experience.”
“It is wrong to describe gallery and museum spaces as “spatial” in the sense in which I have been using the term. Such rooms are anti spatial or non spatial in terms of any kind of behavioral (sensory-motor direct experience) These enclosed spaces were designed for frontal confrontation of objects. The confrontation of the independent object doesn’t involve space. The relationship of such objects to the room nearly always has had tto do with its axial alignment to the confines of the walls.”

“The viewer’s feet are in the space of the art, but his vision operates according to the perception of objects (see Aconci). Some “scatter” pieces occupied the entire floor, the wall acting as limiting frame”

“One could call these “noun” and “verb” type of spaces.
(Serra is verb type , Aycock is noun type) in a “ field” recognizable housing typology a complex looking like a mountain Mesa Yerde against the horizon….memory …….narrative…..”

Sunday, October 21, 2007

Film and Possible Programs

I am having problem with uploading movie to the blog...

Metaphor: Pile of Memory

*Film Site: Car Junk Yard in Flushing Queens
The site I chose has lots of memories that are piled in different kind of manners;
sometimes it leaned against each other, or had other structure to lean on or hanged on
the wall. Sometimes it comes together in one unique texture, by blending into each; the
form it-self gets lost in that process. The Piles literarily represent memory of being
something else before it arrive to the junk yard but now itself is creating different
memories as a bits and pieces.
The tree and the fallen leaf, one that are together in peace and ones that are in parts
from its origin.
A human memory does not organize it-self in alphabetical order or in time sequence or
it does not have structured shelf to stack on to.

*Possible program
-Library & Super Market
Library is the place where we find our knowledge. Full of memory which is kept in form of book or in video or in CD form in these days, in very organized manner. We pick up or drop off knowledge in this space.
-Zoo
-Wineries & Train Station
Wine = aged also means history and history means memory.
Train=Trace we make is a memory; where people arrives and leaves, rail road and waiting area awake our memory.
-Community center
-Media canter & Laundry mat

Saturday, October 20, 2007

Reading

I seem to be missing the title page to "The Present Tense of Space" reading. Could someone tell who wrote the article and what book it came from?

Matt

recommendation

Marc,

Who was the author that you recommended to me? It sounded like "Arto" but I am sure that the spelling is way off.

Matt

Friday, October 19, 2007

Such questions as these

Maybe I missed this discussion but next Monday and Tuesday is Fall break. Do we still have class on Tuesday?

Wednesday, October 17, 2007

library resources off campus

Sent by Caroline Brown, Academic Technology Outreach Librarian:

The Pratt Institute Libraries are pleased to announce a convenient new way for Pratt faculty, students, and staff to connect to library resources fromoff campus. Offsite access to electronic resources previously required several steps, but the new system simply prompts users to enter their valid Pratt email username and password when they click on a link from the libraries' list of subscription databases available at http://library.pratt.edu/databases.html. Instructions for using the new proxy system are available at http://library.pratt.edu/proxy2.html. Please feel free to contact me or call the Brooklyn campus library's reference desk at (718)636-3704 if you have any questions.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

Clarifications

I want to make two clarifications based on today's discussion. First, I am using, words, as working titles to help summarize and memorize what the work (film / drawings) that follow are attempting to arrive towards. In that sense, words are innate tools that assist in constructing, similar to a drawing or a model. Second, there has been some conflicting information. According to these two sources, the definition of "laconic" is as follows:

1. Dictionary.com
using few words; expressing much in few words; concise

—Synonyms brief, pithy, terse; succinct.
—Antonyms voluble.


2. Webster's New World Dictionary
brief or terse in speech or expression; using few words

—SYN CONCISE

program posts

please post your program under your original film post as a comment.

Considerations for Program

Heritage Museum (I will specify this soon) with research library - with possibly park/garden potential
Orphanage - would consist of school and dormitories
Airport Terminal - redesigning an existing structure
Mosque
War Memorial
These were my suggestions during class. Please see my previous posts - the ones under my video post- for further written detail re: these programs.
Also a note on my metaphor - a more specific version: Reflection is a journey to identity ... However I feel this is too specific and perhaps too cliche and my previous 'reflecting is crossing a border' is a broader umbrella under which the newest suggestion falls under.

Sunday, October 14, 2007

Laconic Disintention

Metaphor: Angels are the weight in the water of our intentions

Here is the film at the end of its long and multiple file format metamorphosis

Friday, October 12, 2007

Anyone find "From the Trees?"

I looked for the reading that Dan talked about during our last class, "From (or For) the Trees" in last years blog, but couldn't find it. Has one found it? If so can you repost it?

thanks

Thursday, October 11, 2007

At the Edge of a Breakdown



"The logic of the eye with its need for balance and symmetry", is in a breakdown. The edge is a line, the spatial definer of the heavens. Horizon plane is an issue of time and space, submissive to the edge. In its break down, lies the breakdown of the eyes logic. Proceed to the edge.

Dionysios Neofitidis

Wednesday, October 10, 2007

bravo and next step-developing a program

Dear All:

First I would like to say a few encouraging words to ALL. In spite of our many comments, suggestions and side joking snide remarks, we both are very encouraged by your first attempt, as students of architecture to make a short art film. We (Marc and I) are quite aware that is a work in progress (that is not a finished product but an learning experiment) and that the pay-off of this research seminar will only become fully understood and appreciated if this work finds its way, somehow, in your final degree project at the end of next semester.

This leads me to my next point. Your task to develop a proposal for a Degree Project Program. The term 'architectural program' has many meanings. Marc said in class three things. I am repeating them here to make sure that you : It can be a (1)mixed program (mixed use),and (2) it does not have to be only quantitative but be in qualitative terms (experience) and (3) it should be argued (the choice of and the approach to designing it) in the light of the studio theoretical framework and your own developing interests as you discovered in making the film.
That will take some work to propose and write about it. That is the task before midterm.

We will continue to do and contemplate (act and reevaluate critically) your work along the way.

The discussion of metaphors/synaesthesia etc. and the translation of this research into a degree project concept (precis) , program and site is just begining.


Dan

Re-post Thought as Fluid/Time as Fluid3

The video I originally posted this morning was missing audio...finally got it to work.

grand central

http://scher.blogs.nytimes.com/
watch grand central...especially KJ

dreams are stillness in motion

shadow is awareness - knowledge

Thought as Fluid/Time as Fluid

Description in Comments

Marc and Dan,

I have a model deadline tomorrow and I having a problem exporting my film from Final Cut on the MAC. I can not look at this until tomorrow night. Can I please have a technical extension on the post for Friday 12pm?

Matt

Video - Alanna

Reflecting is Crossing a Border

"Earth is an Abyss, Light is a Mirage" by Ahmed Mohtaseb





Video - Alanna


Class notes for people who presented today

Since I always take notes and never post them, I thought it would be helpful to share them.


Notes: Class 10.09.07

Dionysios

  • experiential – falling, rising
  • rotated – leaving, coming into something
  • what you do with the geometry, do it synchronically
    • speed up the film to create the rotation
  • bricks, glass, materiality
  • light source during the day, or a source of light at night
  • play with opposition between bounded and unbounded

Liz

  • “The mind is a maze.” – metaphor
  • Borges reading – forking path
  • frames
    • less about the maze
    • transgression of the edge
      • about time
  • exploit the accidentals
    • ex. umbrella in the corner of the frame
  • Dan: Poetic Logic
    • play with the associations of words
  • what role can color play in the installations?

Derek

  • Terrani (??)
  • if it passes in movement, it’s present tense
  • Gaston Bachelard
    • memory
      • how do we remember ourselves?
    • threshold
  • Marc: Book that deals with the ways in which different cultures deal with time via ideas of ritual, etc.
  • time as an object
  • duration as an object
  • what is the significance of the book?
    • focused on the binding
    • library as a collection of past memory
    • symbolic, maybe not spatial
  • overlay of reading the book is ok…but the actual book is not yet relevant

Mike

  • sound of someone stepping in a puddle, regularity of the steps in contrast to the rhythm of the water
    • someone walking through the site as relationship to interventions
  • need to abstract from the fountain
    • piaget reading
  • maybe the footage is rotated 180 degrees so that the ground not becomes the top of the frame, and the water is suspended in the frame
    • what is the new relationship to gravity? What is someone’s experience via the point, line and plane of this new space?
  • use water architectonically
  • Florida University
    • realizing Wright’s dome of water
  • what is the essence of the thing, the effect

Leslie

  • 3 frames in intervention can have changing images
    • be aware of their angle of incident as it relates to the tilt of the frame
  • light from the windows at night is objectified
  • do the intervention drawings privilege one viewpoint?
  • “Window is a flame” – metaphor
    • what is the quality of the window as a flame?
    • window has to become a flame
    • explore the potential linguistics of this metaphor

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

time-3 (stills below)

time-3 2stills






2 stills.
I am focusing on the ideas of the moving direction against the vision direction.
when the vision is perpendicular to the movement, the affect is more dramatic as the
perspective point moves with the mover.
1. I am thinking of this scene as an opening type of installation that you walk by and look sideways. the perspective point constantly changes.
2. The vertical movement, as if in an elevator, gives similar effect as looking up the bridge. this is thought as a roof installation. walking through series of gates and look up.

maze

Window

Window

window is a flame

"Among a hundred windows shining
dully in the vast side
of greater-than-palace number such-and-such
one burns
these several years, each nightas if the room within were aflame"

(Denise Levertov (b. 1923), "A Window.")

Monday, October 08, 2007

Les thermes de Vals Peter Zumthor

A little long (and in French), but theres some good footage in here, particularly after 4:30 in the video. Relates very well to Nostalghia, and anyone who wants to deal with water.

Frames post





Sorry its taken me so long to put this on...I'm using a kind of hybrid of these three for the film: As a short explanation, I am trying to deal with water in terms of point, line, and plane, and the way that it can relate to the body, shaping space.

Sunday, October 07, 2007

Jstor Resource

Pratt has now invested in JSTOR.org and we have open access from anywhere on campus that we are using Pratt as the login. It is a great source for new articles that we didn't have access to before, especially for the newest information on synaesthesia. Also, as Mike posted a video earlier, TED.com is also another great website to find lectures about all kinds of subjects.

metaphor research tool on the www

Dear All:

In trying to help Leslie with the window metaphor I learned myself how to search the Internet for metaphors in literature, philosophical texts and poetry
I first tried looking in a book of Wallace Stevens poems but could not find the word window.
On the Web site you can search by the name of a poet you like in a second. A miracle.

I first typed in Google "window metaphor poetry" and discovered this great Web site designed to do just that. You should go there ..it is fun and very helpful.
I first tried looking in a book of Wallace Stevens poems but could not find the word window.
On the Web site you can search by the name of a poet you like in a second. A miracle.


http://www.enotes.com/famous-quotes/tag/windows

Thursday, October 04, 2007

film





"time is stationary and we move through it"

sorry that I missed class on Tuesday. I don't have any good excuses, but just slept
through the class time.
here is my film.
my metaphor is "time is stationary and we move through it"
I am taking this phrase literally and saying that if a 'change' is not sensed, time is not sensed either; anything 'changing' is moving through time.
I was trying to show the ideas from the reading "present tense of space"

Video Compression

Alanna...

sorry it took a while to reply. If you have adobe CS3, it comes with the "Flash Encoder". As far as I know, youtube encodes all files into flash format, so i'm assuming blogger does the same. If you pre-encode, it should make the work for blogger easier (and hopefully) less buggy. Give that a shot.

Wednesday, October 03, 2007

dreams are stillness in motion

Premier and movie

Can I get the premier CD again? I need to put the registration number in, the trial period is up and thats what I was using.

Also, Marc what was the name of that movie that was split into four screens? And is there any other feedback about my movie that I should consider? Thanks.

for Kwangjae

Notes for KJ
October 3, 2007

From: Ch VIII The Problem of Shadows
in Piaget’s book about about children and causality…..you have looked at it I hope..if not I will lend you the book or make a copy of that chapter

Explanations children give fo the existence of shadows

They say it is a “great black cloud” (between four and five years old. It changes later beween 6 and 7 very fast towards more and more realism and scientific accuracy…!!!!!!!
You should film the shadow of a cloud if you can…….

The next big question when they are older..can they predict the side on wjhich the shadow will fall…that means that they can “predict and explain”
(part of knowledge) the source and its location in space…system of reference…..

when we meet remind me to talk about Piagets’ three system of spatial reference……also Don Ide three horizons which I issued to the class by email some two weeks ago.


Play of shadow on a screen …ONE TYPE OF SHADOwshow many types of shadows are there

Another logical association of this line of “predict and explain” is the relationship between the source of light and object (the causes)
and shadow……Piaget calls it “the logic between the object and its shadow….


At 4, 5 old “shadow emanates from the interior of the object

At 5.6 shadow is caused by an external object….tree, the night, the corner of the room


At 6,7 the shadow is itsef an object (a physical reality) a “substance”..
You should look up the meaning of substance as used by Aristotle

At * they can predict where the shadow will fal


ALL OF THESE IDEAS CAN BE INCORPORATED IN TO YOUR FILM

Possible Metaphors

Dreams are stillness in motion
Eyes are the mirror of the soul

Tuesday, October 02, 2007

Spatial Perceptions of Edge/Line



I understand if my first posting on these images and drawings were a bit loaded and possible unresolved. This is an overlay of the two drawings which i intended for, and they may begin to open some insight to the implications of what is being discussed.

The Edge is a Line (Activated)






These were the diagramatic drawings i had prepared for class today. The interest is to exploit the perspectival perception of this edge and the spatial implications of that edge condition in perspective. In a serious of angular morphologies the edge itself is activated and rotated off in a gesture that is bounded by the conception of the space based on the frames orientation. Horizon plane is lost as the horizon line itself is rotated away.
Though purely diagramtic and gestural the spatial conditions that are created are hoped to be capable of orienting your perceptional view to begin to break the predispositions your mind may have to construct conceptions of spatiality purely on the orientation of the edge as horizon rather than the entity of the edge. The instillation once constructed would need to use materiality in an architecturally sensitive manner to activate the material of the actual site; the instillation would be able to 'disorient' your perception from the middle world of the material of the buildings and then 'orient' your perception to the edge of these materials.Only than can the edge be percieved as lines and the minds ability to then create a completely independent rendering of this edge in its purest spatial perceptions as an object in time and space.

Monday, October 01, 2007

New Metaphor


repost of movie still:
I don't know whats wrong with the color, that wasn't part of my analysis. It only shows up on the blog, not when I print it out.