Space- Time Analysis Docklands Light Railway

My first attempt at a film- A work in progress,  recording the DLR thematically & representationally

'A space exists when one takes into consideration vectors of direction, velocities, and time variables. Thus space is composed of intersections of mobile elements. It is in a sense actuated by the ensemble of movements deployed within it.'  Michel De Certeau - The practice of everyday life 

I am interested in our awareness of our bodies in space and our awareness of our surroundings/locality & how we experience the world around us both through body & mind. How do we measure the mind body connections?

I start with the coordinate- Mapping our locality on the earth, are we aware of our directional movement, speed & time?

I am inside & then I am outside, how do we respond to this- an unspoken reaction? If my environment is unfamiliar is this a conscious thought? Is it a conscious awareness of my current surroundings or am I using what is imbedded in my unconscious mind,my nature, is it part of my biology & physical memory? Entering, departing both geographically and physically in person.

Your feet, why are we aware of them on a train?Stepping on, stepping off, standing still sitting down. Is it because our feet aid in our balance when we move or is it because our feet touch the ground and collide with solid matter? Or is it that we are simply looking down connecting our bodys location with our mind?

51° 30′ 44.64″ N, 0° 2′ 22.92″ W 5:55.50 PM.......A flood of bodies from all walks of life appear each to their own with their own background, culture, knowledge base & experiences. All beings become aware of their breathing, sense of smell and owns body in space, where is my hand how should I stand...? 60 seconds pass the push & throw......25 second stop....

The disorientating effect of unpredictable events make me loose my awareness of self. One moment its still silent, the next overwhelming with events, colliding bodies and the space is transformed into a space made by the beings & movement of bodies. 

Tada Rasa- Clean Slate (Audio By Avro Part)

Based on a theory that individuals are born with out  built in mental content, knowledge comes from our experience. 

Avro part quotes 'it is like that magic experience when you speak to someone in a language they don't speak but they understand all you say... Communication happens on another level, somehow we all are one... Although musically from different worlds the feeling is the same, the desire is the same it is as if we are on different trains but going to the same destination.'

Is our experience therefore purely instinctive & primal? Something which our bodies inherit and learn over time, a knowledge base that is biologically stored?  Is there therefore no norm of representation, as communication happens instinctively, is our perception measured by what we hold within ourselves rather than the fact of position & orientation? How do we represent our architecture to reach this level of instinctive communication? Can we create an experience that builds our knowledge base connecting the architecture with the user.. like a language? especially since all beings are individuals but are we really? ..... The feeling is the same... how can we be certain??

Mapping the Journey on the DLR showing speed, direction, location & travel time, entry & exit - to be updated after crit 17'10'2012

Robin Evans Translations from Drawing to Building- Text 05'10'12

'To translate is to convey, It is to move something without altering it.'

Quotes from this text which I have found interesting;

Before embarking on the investigation of drawings role in architecture a few more words might be spent on language... the common antilogy that would have architecture be like language but also independent of it. All things with conceptual dimension are like language.

With our minds prefixed on the predominance of language we might even risk enclosing architecture...denying it communication with anything else to preserve its integrity. This is unlikely.. there is one unfailing communicant and that is the drawing. 

To insist on direct access to the work may be to designate the drawing as the real repository of architectural art.. earth art, performance, installations constructions.. architectural themes, several are remarkable not just for the fact that they make little or no use of the drawing, but for the impossibility of their development through the medium.'

Turell's work 

'if drawn up within current architectural conventions, could only construed as indicative of witles simplicity. Their effect as installations can none the less be completely overwhelming..... Observers not being able to believe their own eyes..

 it is impossible to envisage its depth even by an act of conscious will'

'Involvement, substantiality, tangibility, presence, immediacy, direct action vs disengagement, obliqueness, abstraction, mediation & action at a distance.

The Campanile drawing- 'required two imaginative steps never before taken together.. a completely abstract conception of projector lines... an ability to conceive of the thing being represented (the surface of the building) as not equivalent to the surface of representation.'

Evans, Robin.  Translations from Drawing to Building and Other Essays. Cambridge:  The MITPress, 1997

A Notation - Representing Chemical Brothers Star Guitar

The above attempts to represent the film by Chemical Brothers star guitar- please scroll across to see the whole drawing.

From slowing the film down it is evident that the film was created with a series of still images set in a sequence and then repeated and layered.

The strip on the right of the drawing represents this repition of sequence repeat together with the cameras drawn in plan.

 Relationship of the viewer to the moment- The cross section of the eye how our eye translates the image to our brain via our optic nerve, orientation is blurred by the repetitive nature of the images and the altering of scale. The outside space moves into the train through the motion.

The Absence of bodies- The absence of bodies in the drawing within the train is deliberate , the film was created using a series of still images, the environment within the train is therefore calm, still & timeless there is no movement at the point in which the images were taken as the train is not actually moving, an illusion of it doing so has been created. Time at the point of capturing the landscape is 0.00.00.00.

The atmosphere created by the film gives the feeling of chaotic disorientation and movement; the opposite to how still a still camera is when taking a photograph. Objects are synced with sound as they form the landscape.

Representing motion through using light & Dark- Landscape in the drawing has been drawn using charcoal shadow lines & sight lines. When the light hits the landmarks, resulting in shadow it forms the landscape as it moves through time.

Chemical Brothers Star Guitar- Representing Movement

Stan Allen Essays - Practice Architecture, Technique and Representation

My thoughts & general response- We are a product of our own environments, our knowladge base and background, we experience architecture on some level through our 'baggage' what we come with into the space, what we know.  How we percive a notation is somehow also dependent on this.  Architects have the ability to somehow control the space but total control will never be possible....

We are influenced by our unconcious mind what we have seen, been educated upon or experienced, with out being aware of it. Similar to how we learn to climb, the first step always a conscious movement, you think about it translating it from the brain to your body learning the way it should be performed, as you climb higher it becomes second nature an unconscious movement a physical memory.

Parts I found interesting.......

The Autographic vs Allographic

'Notations are 'abstract machines'

'Many aspects of the experience of architecture can never be effectively simulated or predicted through representational drawing' 

'The limits to architectural drawing map out a paradox... but buildings are much less subject to control than drawings.. unpredictable and intangible effects are produced'

'To elaborate the consequences of architectures mixed status requires looking more closely at the interaction of the built and the drawn.'

'Representation is not something added onto a building but that which makes it possible in the first place.'

'If architecture has lost its historic capacity to fix and determine the limits of urban space and territory, are architects left to work exclusively with images? Or is it possible to accept the reality of this new condition.....?'

'In order to describe or intervene in this new field architects need representational techniques that engage time and change, shifting scales, mobile points of view and multiple programs. '

'Notations- Go beyond the visible to engage the invisible aspects of architecture'

'Even if already performed the work it describes is open to interpretation and change in the course of human performance'

Practice: architecture, technique and representation / essays by Stan Allen; with commentary by Diana Agrest Amsterdam: G+B Arts International, 2000
ISBN 9057010720
AA SHELFMARK: 72.01.036:7.04 ALL

Early thoughts 29.09.12

I struggle with the representation of my interests and ideas which mainly fall around the sensory, phenomenological experiences. Architectural experience as being multidimensional & unpredictable, how is the experience of architecture brought out in its representation? 

I have struggled with the  translation of abstracted theoretical ideas into an architectural language. 

My particular interest which begins to set off this blog for this year is the conscious experience of architecture, being present in a moment at any place &  time, capturing it and just feeling, sensing,being.

How do we begin to represent consciousness in an architectural space?
 

Definitions(taken from other sources);

Consciousness- awareness of one's own existence, sensations, thoughts, surroundings

It has also been defined as: 'subjectivity, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind. Stated in the Companion to Consciousness As being: "Anything that we are aware of at a given moment forms part of our consciousness, making conscious experience at once the most familiar and most mysterious aspect of our lives."

Presence- could be described as the 'the part of space within one's immediate vicinity', the spacious relationship to this moment in time, the completeness of being, a 'being which is activated'.

How can we be in two places at once mind in one, body in the other?

How do we  represent architecture in a way that allows individuals to fully experience the architecture through a conscious mind?

The possibilitys of film
Film has the ability to take the viewer to a particular place and moment in time. It has the ability to connect the viewer with the character or the place in an emotional  way without any prior knowledge of the place or person involved. It has the ability to tell a story, represent movement & atmosphere, capture moments with out stripping those moments down to pure still images or altered realistic end realities.

Before Unit 15 Diploma PT Yr 2

Awakening the Psoas- Research Institute dedicated to the PSOAS

Derived from ideas of the architectural experience as one that is facilitated by the body.  We experience architecture and the city through our bodies and therefore  our biology, mental state and awareness of self influences how we experience the world around us. As we move through space we respond to our environment through what the body senses, taste,touch,smell,sight and sound but in order to  experience all aspects of the senses we need to physically move through space/the city. The  Project therefore  aims to experiment with the  body and architecture, the merging of body movement and architecture.

Taking particular interest towards the psoas muscle, our core & centre what gives us the ability to stand upright as vertical beings. The muscle allows for movement, stance, balance and sensory experience, our matter & biology is that what gives us awareness, mental & physical stability & translation. Movement -the way in which we measure, experience and translate space through the body & mind.

Through movement we stimulate the unconscious mind and awaken the Psoas, stimulating fluid flow in the body connecting the skeleton emotional &  muscular core. Through motion the body polarises external realities and becomes an instrument of meaning, Beyond the bodys and the minds spatiality constitutes the thrust of architectural design, the creation of an order not dissimilar from the bodys own.

My proprio receptors help me be aware of my body in space, give me balance sensory perception and transform information into action through my muscles.
I am Stepping back in time to find the rope maker of Deptford, the rope maker who crafted and fabricated the rope to supply the royal navy, the first royal dockyards as it was known. In Deptford he thrived until the v2 rocket hit, suffering in decline through the economic downfall, robbed traumatized feeling empty inside. The Psoas muscle, the core, the centre of his instincts & survival provided him with stability and strength to stand and kick off the enemies, to remain grounded. Emotionally empty with the desire to craft and fabricate, suffering from loss of identity. Falling deeper into fear, the psoas pulls all the extremities together creating an enclosure, safety and protection for the soft vulnerable parts of the body

A system for researching the Psoas, our core, our centre what keeps us stable  & centered, gives us the ability to move, rotate and experience the world around us.

‘I am caught between a peculiar state of consciousness and delusion. My disorientation is exacerbated by the immaculate cleanliness of the pavement and ceiling, totally free of organic matter.’ Polyphilo, The Dark Forest Revisited