webben

2003-08-11T13:00:00.000+10:00

Wallpaper Seminar Abstract:

Massumi states that we often see what is not there, through implication, or through carefully composed diagrams and effects. The wallpaper propositions here aim to test these notions through illusory effects, and through suggestion of the absent body.

Experimental investigations, testing diagrammatic, image and representational effects will focus on:

deterioration, affect, taste, texture....memory, absent bodies.

It is the intent that this study of the tactile, visual and material properties of latex will explore a range of concepts that aim to allow this material to take on different and unexpected qualities. A series of seamless, repeating patterns will be produced using a combination of the diagram, photography and found objects.

Course patterns, when transformed onto the smooth surface of latex will cause tactile and visual uncertainty.

Although we don't physically see the match igniting in the above images, it is implied in the scratched surface of the striking paint. We feel this in the same way we feel the pain implied in scarring.

Matchbox skillet striking paint is course - the friction caused by striking the sulphur tip of a match to ignite it, leaves its mark, gradually wearing out the matchbox edge - evidence of the body. The course pattern, transformed onto the smooth surface of latex will cause tactile and visual uncertainty.

The proportion of the tile represents both the production process of redhead matches and the proportion of the matchbox striking paint. The individual latex wallpaper tile will be 166mm wide (representing the number of chops per minute of a match chopper) x 1000mm long (the number of individual match splints made by each chop).

The image below exploits our methods of perception, tricking us to believe that the horizontal bands of diamonds are two different shades of gray. Here, a liveness is created where we challenge our minds to accept that the greys are of the same shade.

The effect currents and ocean swells have on the underwater environment means nothing is static - the constant movement of seaweed provides a continually changing atmosphere. The visual effects of Op Art can be likened to this underwater context, where the eye picks up on movement or distortion in a constantly changing way.

2003-08-09T14:05:00.000+10:00

interactive coastal maps

2003-06-27T15:25:00.000+10:00

Gone to Thailand - back in eight days

2003-05-20T12:27:00.000+10:00

SHIFT | GASBOOK8 | H5

2003-05-20T12:20:00.000+10:00

Antoine Bardou-Jacquet

2003-05-20T11:59:00.000+10:00

Just finished reading Architectural Body by Gins and Arakawa

Cognition & perception has been divided into three distinct categories: 1. Perceptual landing site - visual and synesthesic 2. Imaging Landing Site - Imagined/ Created (without visual) 3. Dimensionalizing Landing Site - "fabricate a world or suffice to map one" (p 8).

Karl Dahlke's description on how he was able to solve the a Polyomino Puzzle (without the use of sight - Imaging Landing Site by visualizing and remembering the starting corner and each piece until his memory failed him) says a lot about perceptions being enhanced when one of the senses is taken away. Just watched a film clip The Child by Antoine Bardou-Jaquet (Shows a young couple rushing across New York to get to a hospital in time for their baby to be delivered. The twist is that the buildings, streets, cars and people are all made of words). Great visuals. Then I listened to it without watching it - picked up a lot more of the sounds/ words without the visual stimuli "taking over" the (visually) perceptive mind.

2003-04-30T10:09:00.000+10:00

Ruddock fury over Woomera computer game - theage.com.au

2003-04-24T12:16:00.000+10:00

Something just occurred to me - the annoying adds at the top of this blog page seem to "know" the content of my blog. Earlier in the year, when there was lots of stuff on Pollock and painting, the adds were about oil paints and prints I need. Now they are telling me to look at a website on Gilles Deleuze? Visit Betterhumans for everything related to human progress. Sounded good, but there was a sales hook involved.

This is what Steven Johnson writes about in Emergence. These adds are a good example of the "self organizing systems...in our software" (Emergence p 21). Strange to think that some type of artificial intelligence is "reading" my blog, and "critiquing" it by placing adds linking to what it thinks I am interested in. This could be really useful, if it wasn't so much about the big sell. It's frustrating that the good concepts always get taken up first by either advertising or the military. We should be able to use this for good, not evil. The Wiki would be really useful, if it had a sense of artificial intelligence, and "read" our wiki pages and suggested related ones to look at. While we are all looking at things in different ways, I have noticed so many similarities/ crossovers in what we are all looking at. While sometimes its better not to know what other people are doing, imagine the possibilities of thousands or millions of users on the wiki, all doing different research, but being told by an e-robot where to look for like-minded thinking.

2003-04-13T10:37:00.000+10:00

I have been thinking about this visual essay thing in terms of Deleuzifiing it, and what Inger has been suggesting - letting it develop in an emergent way, rather than formatting it into sections/ parts. I think I know how this can happen..........

The way I am thinking of developing the site is to have a number of topics/discussion/ theories/ musings/ whatever, that are spread over a number of pages. The first page might have a few options (links), possibly slightly abstract images that are decidedly different. By choosing one over the other, the reader will be affected, but will also be affecting the reading/ format of the essay. I think this interactivity is heading toward the intents of the Deep Space Exhibition.

This will allow for a multitude of ways of reading the essay. The reader can follow the links that they are interested in, rather than systematicaally going through the essay page by page. The Nomadology website is a good example of this.

2003-04-13T09:34:00.000+10:00

Saw the movie Pollock last night - interesting thing he said on a radio interview when asked if he had any control over how much paint went on to the canvass and in what form. He answered that he “denied the accident” and that with practice, it became possible to control the flow of paint. Does this seem at odds with the notion of action painting of getting outside of yourself in creating this form of expression? Has Pollock’s abstract expression emerged from repeating and ‘perfecting’ (controlling) patterns and techniques or is the outcome a result of the emergent of the (Pollocks) inner self through the mechanism of his body. Organized Complexity or Disorganized Complexity?

2003-04-10T09:29:00.000+10:00

On “Strange Horizon: Buildings, Biograms, and the Body Topologic.” by Brian Massumi

“Computer assisted topological design technique is no longer a novelty [in architecture].”

Orientation “Cognitive mapping is secondarily applied to the experience of space, or the space of experience”…..or……”Cognitive mapping takes over where orientation stops.”

As a child, my dad used to drive my sister and I to Apollo Bay fairly often. I was fascinated that he knew the way – exactly where and when to turn, when to slow down etc. I asked him how he knew the way, he replied “because I’ve driven there hundreds of times”. He even boasted that he knew the road so well that he could predict whether the road would turn left or right after the next bend in the road. This was then proven over the course of the drive.

I then asked how he knew how to get to Apollo Bay the first time he drove there. He laughed and said that he used a map. This was the first time I had ever heard of a map, and for a long time I thought it was the only way you could get to a place that has a complex series of turns on the journey.

This is where cognitive mapping takes over as Massumi puts it, in explaining his disorienting experience in getting to his office. Cognitive mapping helps us to know where we are relative to the last cue we picked up on on the journey. We may not be able to recognise where we are relative to a map, but we know when and where to turn if we’ve been there before. This applies at the pedestrian level (in shopping centres and streets) and at the vehicular level – on the roads.

When underwater, it is very easy to become disoriented. Cognitive mapping breaks down for two reasons (in my opinion)………

1. Underwater, you are in what is closer to a ‘virtual’ environment than any other physical experience. As tides and wave surges push water back and forth, the entire sea floor can change, particularly when there is lots of seaweed on the ocean bed. Particularly Bull Kelp. What was ‘there’ a second ago (ie a rock) is no longer there when you look back at it because a surge of water moves the seaweed and covers the rock. Underwater forests are even more disorienting because the whole seabed moves.
2. Being underwater, you are truly in a three-dimensional space (or even four-dimensional space when you consider the movement of water and growth of seaweed). In a building, walls restrict horizontal movement, and vertical movement is restricted to stairs, ramps, lifts, ladders and escalators. Underwater ‘space’ gives you almost no restrictions in terms of where you can move. There is a lack of points to cognitively recognise when changing direction.

In other words, the freedom to move up, down, left or right in an environment that is constantly changing makes knowing (cognition) where you are very difficult.

Back to Massumi……..

“A synesthetic system of cross referencing supplements a systematic duality, exo-referential and self referential, positional and moving, Euclidean and self varyingly modadic.”

Pia posted a question on the Wiki about what model of space we might assume in the temporal, non Euclidean sense as opposed to Cartesian space in time. Maybe the underwater model is appropriate. Things are never static, never go exactly back to how they were underwater.

Massumi even states “To get a static, measurable, accurately positioned, visual form, you have to stop he movement.” He then goes on to say “Now position arises out of movement.”

“The space of experience is really, literally, physically a topological hyperspace of transformation.”

Terminology “The Mobius strip and the Klein bottle are two dimensional Euclidean figures” I think I finally get the doughnut shape and the coffee cup thing now…..they are both the same topological figure because “one can be deformed [to make the other] without cutting [or joining, I presume]."

“The Mobius strip and the Klein bottle are two dimensional figures whose folding and twisting on themselves create three dimensional effects. The ‘effects’ are real, but not part of the formal definition of the figure.”

Synesthesia “Deja-vu” happens more for me when travelling. Is this because our eyes and mind are more exposed to new visual stimuli? Does this bring on synesthesia? Would synthesis ever occur if you spent your life in a furniture-less white room? That is a scary thought in itself – probably best not to go there.

“Biograms are not plainly visible forms……..they are event perceptions………not themselves visual representations, they cannot be accurately represented in mono sense visual form.”

“They[biograms] are uncontainable either in the present moment or in Euclidean space, which they insisted they encompass: Strange Horizon.”

“Positioned neither in time nor space.”

“The biogram is a literal, graphically diaphonous event perception……….it is………..seeing time in space.”

“Synesthesia is considered the norm for infantile perception……Synesthetes are ‘normal’ people who are abnormally aware of their habits of perception.”

“Every experience is a portentous deja-vu at a hinge.”

“Biograms remain their own creatures even for proficient synesthetes.” So synesthesia can’t be tamed……..

“There is no fundamental difference between perception, hallucination, and cognition.”

“In the circus of synesthesia, you never really know what act will follow.”

“What if topological architecture could find ways of extending the ‘diagrams’ it designs into ‘biograms’ inhabiting the finished product.”

“To do this would require somehow integrating logics of perception and experience into the modeling. Processes like habit and memory would have to be taken into account. As would the reality of intensive movement.”

“This is the direction Lars Spuybroek, among others is heading.”

2003-04-10T09:20:00.000+10:00

Wasabi-Folklore

2003-04-10T09:15:00.000+10:00

wasabi info

2003-04-10T08:56:00.000+10:00

On the “Brightness Confound” by Brian Massumi -(or The Great Unlearning…….)

“Colour is not separate from illumination……..there is always a fusion of colour and degree of brightness.” This is the “Brightness Confound”.

“The fringe of visual fuzz, acutely observed in all its vagueness, is what renders comparison impossible” How can we define the colour of wasabi when it is a lime green under daylight, but then quite a different colour under different lighting conditions?

“The opposite of analysis is synthesis, which is another word for construction.”

“In non scientific arenas, a combination of elements against a general backdrop is called context. In scientific contexts, it is called objectivity.” Both in the arts and the sciences, we often aim to place things within their contexts:
- subjectively: ie. Does it fit the within its physical, social and cultural realm?
- Objectively: ie. Do we know what it is made of, atoms, forces, Heidegger, en-framing and essence.

“Empiricism’s practical power is also its philosophical weakness.”

Wasabi is green, isn’t it?

What about its hue, brightness, saturation, reflectivity, transparency, opaqueness, refractivity, dryness, wetness, texture, taste – oops back to Affect……..

Dulux's method of identifying colour.

What colour is wasabi now? Is it still green, even with all the reflections of the light above and colours from the bowl it is within? When you lean forward for a closer view your body blocks the light and casts a shadow over the greenish blob.

This is the “experiential confound” that Massumi writes about. The transition of the colours of wasabi in this case is “without beginning and end points.”

“Philosophy as distinct from empirical inquiry, is amodal energetic thought, concerned with fusional intensities before paritive objectivities………Levels upon levels within levels: time within space within colour within illumination.”

Interestingly, Massumi states that “children are still too close to the confound to match what they are seeing by worldly measure. Their perception is not diseased or deficient. Just philosophical.”

So a child doesn’t see green, because ‘green’ has not yet been registered as a memory of the perception of this froggy colour. They might link this ‘green’ to the grass outside, or the furry tops of trees, but this green blob is different. It is shiny, wet, has texture. There are different and differing amounts of greenness in that green.

“That the adult philosopher can unsee the proto-scientific, linguistically assisted objectivity of things indicates that the confound continues into and through adulthood.”

“Colours…….as we know them are the product of language under the influence of culture.”

Think of colour names for green…………

Pistachio – Ok Pistachio has a particular green we can relate to, but what if you’ve never seen the nut before? “Not colour blind, not deficient. Just philosophical.”

Massumi still acknowledges that “extraction and separation of colour from the confound and its standardisation are not real or do not work. They work and they are real. They just don’t work everywhere all the time.” Sounds a bit like a Bob Marley song. I say pistachio. Can you visualise the green I’m talking about? What if you’ve been living in an igloo all your life? What ‘colour’ is pistachio now? A pistachio nut isn’t very green, really. Pale yellow shell, white residues of salt, brown inner shell and yellowy nut. The green tinge that some pistachios have is what separates this nut from others. This ‘greenness’.

“Digital art is in no way synonymous with virtual reality. What matters is the how of the expression, not the what of the medium.” So are we are back to process, or the jump from process to expression?

2003-04-08T11:56:00.000+10:00

Went to Happy Birthday Astro Boy last night at ACMI, Fed Square.
Do the anime, cyborgs etc have pre-programmed intelligence/ humanistic tendencies, or do the characters emerge after their creation?
Philip Brophy's take on it is that the characters, cyborgs etc did have personality programmed into them by their creators, but then a sense of ai took over.....emergence and affect.

2003-04-07T10:59:00.000+10:00

(another wiki backup) BenText
So we know what diagrams can be used for (Part 1), we know what types of diagrams & diagrammatic techniques there are out there (Part 2). And a look at what the alternatives to diagrams might be (Part 3) also help us to understand them in a different way. In "Strange Horizon", Brian Massumi writes of lived abstract spaces & experiences from the points of view of orientation, synesthesia, experience, higher forms, change, outer and inner space.

So where does the diagram fit today, when we consider that Cartesian or Euclidean space does not allow for changes in time, synesthesia, astral travel (the wasabi experience), deja vu? Is the reductive nature of representation (ie. the diagram) merely only hinting at its intended meaning?

While ideas contained within the realm of of non-Euclidean spaces can and have been diagrammatically represented on paper (Escher's Mobius Strip, Klein Bottle, etc.), they need to be explained to be Affectively understood.

But does this method of representation truly give us a clear understanding of its meaning? Do astral travel, deja vu and synesthesia need to be experienced to be truly understood?

2003-04-07T10:20:00.000+10:00

On Peter Eisenman - Cities of Artificial Excavation Exhibition, CCA

This is just a backup of what is on the wiki page......
An architecture that ‘moves’ is an architecture that transcends its own body - even if only by implication. Current thinking is that it is not yet feasible to move or animate a building, so much of today’s art and architecture is looking at ways to animate or affect the body within three dimensional space. Eisenman used two techniques to affect the viewers of this exhibition, with the hope of snapping them out of their normal/ expected attitude toward exhibitions. A screen is placed between the viewer and the exhibited work, and has slots cut out of it to enable the work to be viewed. Instead of placing the viewing slots at the expected height (eye level), some slots are positioned just above or below this height, providing the opportunity for the visitor to "get it". No signage exists to tell them. The other technique is a little more obvious. The openings are placed at eye level, although there is an intrusive horizontal band in the middle of the opening right at eye level. To view the work, a viewer would need to peer over the band or else bend down and look under it. While being moved or affected by architecture is an empowering experience, could there be a possibility of enhancing this feeling of empowerment by being able to affect the architecture as a user/inhabitant/ visitor? The experiences at the Deep Space exhibition at Federation Square may point the way.

2003-04-06T10:18:00.000+10:00

NOAA Ocean Explorer: Lewis and Clark Legacy Thanks Lani for finding a link between the ocean and sound. Sound travels a lot faster under water than in air (I think 4 times faster). In air, we can distinguish which direction a sound is coming from by the slight difference in time it takes sound to hit one ear before the other. It is difficult to know what direction a sound is coming from underwater (when scuba diving) because the difference in time of sound waves hitting each ear is greatly reduced. Very disorienting - sound seems to come from everywhere. Strange (underwater) Horizons.

2003-04-01T09:47:00.001+10:00

Transit

2003-04-01T09:47:00.000+10:00

Definitions of Semiotic Terms

2003-04-01T09:45:00.000+10:00

nomadology: Deleuze 101.
Thanks to transit from last semester for the link -

2003-04-01T07:49:00.000+10:00

Today's visual essay presentation will be:

Displacing the Symbolic Representation of the Diagram

Had a hard time working out whether this topic is about the diagram, the symbol or the representation. It seems to be about all three.
Split into 5 Sections......use, type, and a world without. Will then delve into astral traveling and out of body experience, before finishing with a look at an exhibition space by Peter Eisenman.

2003-03-23T15:14:00.000+10:00

On “Horror Vacui, Constructing the Void from Pascal to Freud”

Freud:
1. intense observations – unaltered images of important events
2. true obsessions – combine a forceful idea and an associated emotional state
3. phobias – emotional state is one of anxiety

Pascal’s Disease – agoraphobia. His well known philosophical and scientific interests in the variety of vacuums, psychological and empirical. The relations between spatial experience and psychological/ philosophical enquiry.

Pascal had an experience where he was “run away with by the horses and would have been plunged into the river [from a bridge with no parapet] but the traces fortunately [not for the horses I assume] broke…….afterwards, he used to see an imaginary precipice by his bedside, or at the foot of the chair”.

Pascal “suffered from imaginary terrors…..which made M Pascal to resolve to cease his outings and live in complete solitude.”

“Madness on the basis of the relation of cause and Effect.”

“Three very separate pathologies – a void at the side of the bed, a fear of falling into the Seine and an interest in spatial circulation. “

Pascal “resisted the open transparency of rationalism……….symbolically and Affectively exploiting the ambiguities of shadow and limit.”

Pascal “Broke with the prevailing spirituality of the church and philosophy.” He “lived in anguish……..a great interior tragedy…..who searches for the truth of phenomena with a sense of the powerlessness of science.”

“Space and its earthly precipitate, architecture.”

Pascal’s theory of perspective “an examination of the geometrical understanding of the void.”

2003-03-23T10:52:00.000+10:00

On “Dark Space”, Antony Vidler

This really delves into the unknown – Philosophical Film Noir. Starts with Foucault’s revelation on the study of space that so influenced the architecture following.

“In any situation light space is invaded by the figure of dark space”
Body-Disease
Urban-Homelessness
Buildings-Lack of light, ventilation, corridors.

18th Century – “The invention of a special phenomenology of darkness”
19th Century - Modernism – rational, controlled, hygienic, transparency.
21st Century - Affectivity

image of Memorial for Isaac Newton……..

The Palace of Justice and also the Memorial fo Isaac Newton by Etienne-Louis Boullee, a French Neo Classicist “confronted two worlds light and dark.” “Absolute darkness as the most powerful instrument to induce the state of fundamental terror”.

Boullee - Notion of an “architecture that would speak of death. Buried architecture, skeleton of architecture, a black picture of an architecture of shadows.” Ground as negative space.

Freud reference to the ‘refrain’ in this essay – a “constant repetition of the same thing”.

The perception of space is a complex phenomenon, a double dihedral changing at every moment in size and position. Dihedral – having or formed by two intersecting planes.

2003-03-23T10:35:00.000+10:00

On 1837: Of the Refrain

“Refrain: any aggregate of matters of expression that draws a territory and develops into territorial motifs and landscapes.”

Very difficult reading………Seems to focus on the human/ animal instinct to cerate a territory - form or virtual (s)p(l)aces against chaos. “From chaos, milieus and rhythms are born. “The territory is the product of territorialization of milieus and rhythms……There is territory precisely when milieu components cease to be directional, becoming directional instead, when they cease to be functional to become expressive.”

Does this mean that expressionism is a form of territorialism? This reading refers a lot to birds when explaining this concept. In this case it is colour in birds and the temporal qualities this expression might have depending on the situation.

“Territorialization is an act of rhythm that has become expressive, or of milieu components that have become qualitative.”

For some reason I kept thinking of the phenomena of the Easter Island statues when reading this.

Dictionary definition of Refrain:
(n) 1. a regularly recurring melody, such as the chorus of the song. 2. a much repeated saying or idea, repeated with definition.
(v) to keep oneself from doing

2003-03-23T10:23:00.000+10:00

Essay topic " What (s)p(l)ace does the diagram fit in architecture?" or "diagrammatic (s)p(l)aces in architecture"

2003-03-23T10:16:00.000+10:00

On “Which Way Avant-Garde?”

Theory as fast philosophy.
“Driven by an attempt to reconnect form and ideology” the “social mission of modern architecture” the “avant-garde desire to reconnect form and ideology diminished in the 1990s as form began to melt into blobs and fields of data”]”Theory has not been free or quick enough to deal with the blur of e-commerce and open systems”

AA school: “Architecture…….should aggressively seek to transform itself into a research based business……..architects and urbanists ready to meet globalization’s challenge.”

Deleuze: Problematic relationship between thinking and doing. “He wanted to shift our attention away from thought that tethered us to fundamental truths and to enable us to act.”

A diagram is a Deleuzian principle. A diagram could be criticized as being only a reduced representation of a higher thought or idealogy, but by “acting or doing” the thought has gotten closer to becoming “thing”. Paul Minifie’s defines his work in this way, when talking of representing the forth dimension in form – a diagrammatic form representing 4th dimensional theory.

2003-03-23T09:39:00.000+10:00

On Francisco Varella

“A revolutionary, not a reformer”

Input/ output systems vs circular networks
Blackbox vs nervous system

While Francisco’s notion of circulatory/ emergent networks is a fitting description/ understanding of biological cognition, the nervous system etc, it seems to go a bit far in that he claims to have the answer to issues such as the way forward for a cure for aids, drug addiction etc.

He makes a connection between Buddhism and science. ie. the selfless self, virtual self egolessness. A practice, not a belief. Thos is the most spiritual so far of all the readings.

“Knowledge coevolves with the knower and not as an outside, objective representation” Where does this place a visual, written record, even philosophy itself?
I would argue that the ‘knower’ evolves and knowledge transforms – from one person (host) to another, from one milieu to another. In a myriad of forms – books (philosophy always refers to previous thought and twists it as needed to reinforce the current feeling), music, art, image and the internet.

Last week, I was able to download the latest Beastie Boys song “In A World Gone Mad” and am listening to it now. This song, about war in Iraq has not yet been released (on cd) yet the band are able to get their views (recently formed) out there, here, now. Here, now, knowledge is being transformed. Not necessarily because anything new has been passed on, but because a multitude of similar opinions reinforces ‘knowledge’.

The song can be downloaded from www.beastie Boys.com

Aboriginal rock art, knowledge represented on cave walls to pass on teachings to successive generations. The messages in these paintings are somewhat blurred and confusing to the uninitiated, but when the teaching or story is explained, such as the muscular and digestive system of a kangaroo, how it moves, eats, how to hunt it and importantly how to prepare and cook it. Once explained, the painting has the properties of a diagram, summarizing all the previously taught aspects of the kangaroo.

2003-03-19T13:52:00.000+10:00

If the computer as a machine is actually getting us closer to nature, where machines of industry previously took us away from it, is it possible to create a 'growing' architecture using digital technology? What if a building could 'grow' in much the same way that a seedling grows into a tree. Is it possible to use computers to create materials that have similar properties of sense that a living organism has? - ie a pre programmed genetic code.

Research genetics........later...........maybe

2003-03-18T21:36:00.000+10:00

Colorgenics online tests This site is quite interesting if colourgenics is your thing- it has a number of online tests relating to colour psychology. I will try to put it on the mc2 links page....

2003-03-13T09:37:00.000+10:00

Mark Rakatansky essay on Spatial Narratives 1991

2003-03-13T09:00:00.000+10:00

One person subconsciously mirrors the others pose.....we all do it from time to time due to adaptive oscillators (see Daniel N Stern). How can a building have a similar affect on people?

2003-03-13T08:08:00.000+10:00

Fractal expressionism

2003-03-13T06:28:00.000+10:00

One of the fundamental issues of diagramming is that it is important to remove yourself from the process as much as possible, to achieve previously unthought of solutions. How much do subjectivism and interpersonal baggage affect this process (see the interpersonal world of the infant)? How much do adaptive oscillators (working and reacting with/to others - adaptive oscillators), the immediate surroundings and memory invade the diagramming (design) proceess. Consider an essay topic - "diagramming non subjective experience". I would argue that most people have great difficulty separating themselves from this process, although there are precedents.

Jackson Pollock, an early American Abstract Impression painter, used the technique of drip painting or 'action' painting (a term fisrt used by art critic Harold Rosenberg) where he would lay a canvas out on the ground and stand over it, using a variety of techniques to drip paint over the surface. It has been said that he removed himself from the process in that he would go into a 'state' and let is movements create the art form.

JACKSON POLLOCK
Detail from a Jackson Pollock painting showing the
use of his hand print
Title Number 1A, 1948
Oil and Enamel on Canvas

Two issues/ questions surface from this painting:
1. What has been produced by letting the 'diagram' of 'action painting' determine the outcome? Mess of paint or fundamental shift in art culture?
2. Why did Pollock place his hand on this painting? - Couldn't he resist the temptation to indicate his own presence, here he has gone against the notion of separation of self from process.

2003-03-13T05:23:00.000+10:00

Lars Spuybroek, Nox. H2O eXPO, water museum designed for the Dutch Ministry of Water Management on the artificial island of Neeltje Jans in Zeeland/NL.

On “Lars Spuybroek, interviewed by Cho Im Sik”: (pages 243-248) The notion of diagramming as not only a tool, but the most important innovation in architecture. A move towards metadesign (or templates). A network of relations that make the thing without actually designing it.
Consider the Simpsons episode where Homer is given the responsibility of designing a car for the ordinary person. His ‘diagrams’ are the individual elements that make up the car – all ideal elements, but without being selected and brought together into one car of ‘essence’. The car turns out to be disaster – the prototype, while offering the luxuries and comforts for the user ultimately ends up impractical and extremely expensive. Can diagramming nd the use of templates really get us closer to better design – a better outcome without having some idea of essence to begin with? I think this process can work, provided there is a sense of filtering in the process. ‘In the end what counts is what the diagram can do for you’. Rem Koolhaas and Peter Eisenman – two important diagrammatic architects today.

Spuybroek considers the implied movement of people within a potential space and how they might respond to each architectural element(s). A ‘flexible set of lines where it creates a language of movement first……that is then actualised by different possible movements of people’. ‘Movement is related to order first, and then to structure’. (p245)

‘Tools make us think differently, and, even more important, feel and wish differently’ (p247). Where industrialisation an the machine took us away from nature, the computer of today is bringing us back closer to nature, ironically through mathematical, scientific and technological means. Computers have given us as architects form creating and visualisation techniques that were previously unimagined and unattainable. The search continues in this radically new way for new forms and representations.

Potentiality – the new doesn’t come from the future, it comes from the past.

2003-03-13T04:49:00.000+10:00

Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? Simpsons episode 15, season 2

2003-03-13T04:38:00.000+10:00

Simpsons – second series

"Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?"
215 7F16
Original Airdate: 21 Feb 1991
Homer discovers that he has a long-lost half brother, Herb Powell, who is the wealthy CEO of a car company. When Homer and Herb meet, they instantly hit it off and Herb takes in the Simpson family as his own. Herb hires Homer to help design a car for regular guys, but Homer's design proves so disastrous that it bankrupts Herb's company and forces the brothers apart once again.
Guest star: Danny DeVito as Herb Powell

Fearing death, Grandpa Simpson tells Homer that he has a half-brother. This half-brother, Herbert Powell, is a carmaker in Detroit, and wants Homer to design a car for the average man to save his car company.
NOTES: Danny DeVito guest voices as Herbert Powell.

2003-03-09T23:27:00.001+10:00

On “Virtual Reality & Dynamic Form: An Exploration of Space, Time and Energy”: by Dr Richard D Brown (p21-25) In summary, the essay is about VR models continuing the intensions of the Cubists in terms of attempting to portray aspects of a reality beyond sensory perception. Multiple perspectives, fourth dimension, curved space. The interesting notion of Dr Brown’s work is that he utilises VR to produce an unreality, where VR has previously been used to represent reality. Dr Brown studied computer and cybernetic sciences before turning to art studies. An interesting duality (or opposition) between objectification/ surety and subjectification/ the unperceivable. Read “Flatland” by Edwin Abbott Abbott.

2003-03-09T23:27:00.000+10:00

On “Ratansky, Motivations of Animation”: “The diagram represents, but not as much as it explains”. Preparation is irrelevant without a successful final performance”. Rigorous diagramming, research and preparation in not a ‘machine’ that guarantees a successful outcome. “Every diagram is a representational form of some idea and some motivation toward that idea” (p23.51).

“Animation means to invoke life not imitate it”. “Bring a character, an idea, a motivation to life – a series of ideas, psitions etc brought together to create a unifying presence, something new” (p23.51).

He does not draw Bugs Bunny! he draws pictures of Bugs Bunny!

2003-03-09T23:26:00.002+10:00

On “Lars Spuybroek, interviewed by Cho Im Sik”: (pages 243-248) The notion of diagramming as not only a tool, but the most important innovation in architecture. A move towards metadesign (or templates). A network of relations that make the thing without actually designing it.

Consider the Simpsons episode where Homer is given the responsibility of designing a car for the ordinary person. His ‘diagrams’ are the individual elements that make up the car – all ideal elements, but without being selected and brought together into one car of ‘essence’. The car turns out to be disaster – the prototype, while offering the luxuries and comforts for the user ultimately ends up impractical and extremely expensive. Can diagramming nd the use of templates really get us closer to better design – a better outcome without having some idea of essence to begin with? I think this process can work, provided there is a sense of filtering in the process. ‘In the end what counts is what the diagram can do for you’. Rem Koolhaas and Peter Eisenman – two important diagrammatic architects today.

Spuybroek considers the implied movement of people within a potential space and how they might respond to each architectural element(s). A ‘flexible set of lines where it creates a language of movement first……that is then actualised by different possible movements of people’. ‘Movement is related to order first, and then to structure’. (p245)

‘Tools make us think differently, and, even more important, feel and wish differently’ (p247). Where industrialisation an the machine took us away from nature, the computer of today is bringing us back closer to nature, ironically through mathematical, scientific and technological means. Computers have given us as architects form creating and visualisation techniques that were previously unimagined and unattainable. The search continues in this radically new way for new forms and representations.

Potentiality – the new doesn’t come from the future, it comes from the past.

2003-03-09T23:26:00.001+10:00

On “Move” by UN Studio: “Move examines the architect’s role in an environment of technological, public and economic change. The redefinition of organisational structures is the common thread running through the three books (that make up Move)”.
“The diagram is not a metaphor or paradigm, but an abstract machine that is both content and expression”. (Vol 2, p21) A diagram is two things:

1. It is the representation of an intent or thought. It is a means to convey preliminary ideas and also to explain a larger idea with the bringing together of diagrams.
2. A diagram can be used as a process of discovery, a refinement of ideas, and a streamlining of an idea into something tangible, metaphysical.

2003-03-09T23:26:00.000+10:00

On “Affect or “Too True to be Real” by Pia Ednie-Brown: The penny drops -, sudden realisation, a sudden bringing together of previously subconscious and conscious thoughts, ideas and positions. The sudden shock of realisation, awareness, changed perception. Instantly the previously difficult to understand becomes perfect sense. Morphosis. Metamorphosis. Change.

2003-03-05T09:27:00.000+10:00

wasabi - takes a person outside one's self.
Consider eating a large blob to see what happens.
would be worth photographing to record the results.
ie. affect

- astral travel, do we get close to this when we eat wasabi?

hmmmmmm....

Satellite link delay. When you watch an interview on television conducted via satellite there is always
a delay between when the interviewer asks a question and when the interviewee responds. The delay
is tiny when you consider that voice is tranformed into waves, then travels through air, space before
bouncing off a satellite and heading back to earth in a particular and precise direction. Do these waves have
intelligence? How do they know where to go? What happens when thay go through matter?

Pia's description of waves of stuff in the air - mobile phone waves, bluetooth technology,
beams of remote control handsets and radio leaves me with a question............
Are our bodies aware of these waves as they travel through us? Affect. Are our
neurotransmitters affected by these waves?

2003-03-03T14:25:00.000+10:00

wasabi - astral travel - satellite link delay -

2003-03-03T08:43:00.000+10:00

link to the sandbox

2003-02-26T12:29:00.000+10:00

2003-02-26T12:24:00.000+10:00

blaggggggggggggggggh