Salle Des Departs

This one comes to us from radio lab.  I think if you are interested in space, and how it can effect at all it is worth checking this project out.  Rather than make a mess out of trying to explain it I recommend you just go to radio lab and listen to their amazingly well put together show.  It is worth your time.  I love the photo they chose for their page, but if your like me and would like to see the larger space is a image I scrounged up. also here is a video of stills with the sound.

"What is Up?" by de Pakkerij

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Einsteinon the Beach.

Sometimes you have to look at something and say:  Ok in the context of its time it was earth shattering, yes there is some impressive visuals, but at the end of the day it maybe a little over intellectualized.  Einstein on the beach was one of those times for me.  I am not saying I didn’t enjoy watching it sitting in a dark library room eating peanuts and slurping a huge coffee.  There was some really interesting incites in the interviews, but I think my takeaway was ok this is the polar opposite of what we want to do.  it was huge.  Technically complex.  Designed to dissociate the audience form the experience so that they felt completely apart. It was observed, not experience.  It was long.  It was expensive.  It was intended for a very specific audiences at a specific time.  Ok inverse all those, and I think you have a fair list of the goals we have in our project.

I would say it is worth a watch especially if you are interested in theater, the sets are incredible, again the choreography is impressive and the music by Philip Glass is by Phillip Glass so yah that sums that up.

[update] Apparently there is a new commentary on about the show haven't watched it but it yet but looks interesting 

Did I miss the point of “Einstein”?  let me know your thoughts. Thanks

Diller + Scofidio : A Delay in Glass

“A Delay in Glass” was a theater project initiated by Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio in the late 1980’s. The project was inspired by Marcel Duchamp’s “The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors,” taking the approach of a tragicomedy in which the objective was the “irreconcilability of text and image.” The performance depicts 4 human elements, a bachelor, bride, witness, and juggler, interacting the 3 constructed elements, the field, apparatus, and mechanical bed. 

What interested us most was the way in which the characters were able to interact with the set. Abstract, yet incredibly functional and straightforward, the set was designed within the three terms of “glass, cut, and hinge,” each defining a characteristic that the set very successfully embodied and communicated. The term “glass” was described as “a slow liquid, continually molten, a reversible vantage and vanishing point.” The term “cut” was described as “a section cut through time, through the moment of desire.” The term “hinge” was described as “a generatx (a point, line, or plane that is moved in a specific way to produce a geometric figure), a form of spatial contradiction, a strategy of reprogramming.”

Physically, the set consisted of a field of performance, which was split in two parts by a thick white dotted line on the ground surface, creating front and rear spaces, relative to the audience. The apparatus consisted of a tall rectangular steel pipe frame, which provided the structure for its two essential parts, the concealing panel (an opaque plane of rubber) and the revealing panel (a mirror). The concealing panel functions on a swivel with its axis of rotation on the left column of the apparatus frame. Able to rotate at 180 degrees, the concealing plane would move from the outside of the frame to the performance space between the two columns of the apparatus, acting as a barrier between the front and the back spaces, a separation between the male and the female. The revealing plane, the mirror, was hung from the top of the apparatus frame at a 45 degree angle, so as to provide a projection of what the concealing plane was hiding. The mirror acts in a very interesting way, projecting an upright, elevation view of what actually exists as a plan. The abstraction that the mirror provides brings an incredible animation to the performance.

Moving forward we are extremely appreciative and inspired by the abstraction that Diller + Socifidio’s apparatus provides. The movement inherent to the apparatus exists as a very unique and critical part of the performance, an attribute we are pursuing for our space. The relation that exists between the apparatus and the narrative is also something that we are working to acquire. Our initial idea, “the space is nothing without the play, and the play is nothing without the space,” is a constant focus of our development and research.

Pina

One of the sources that our advisor recommended we chase down was the work of a German dancer / choreographer Pina Bausch.  Her work is incredible and really should speak for its self.  I highly recommend the film “Pina” a compilation of her works and interviews with her dancers.  Although completed after her death it is still an incredible film.  This is one of the only films I have ever enjoyed with the directors commentary on (for the second watch through) and yes it is defiantly    worth a second watch through.  So find a friend and your dance pants and enjoy this film.

Now as to what exactly this has to do with us that is a little less clear.  Well it is clear in some ways that are hard to describe in words.  I found that after the film I was talking with my hands a lot when trying to explain to Sebastian or Sam what I wanted, as if some wild gestures on my part partnered with a sentence fragment would articulate anything.  The amazing thing is they seemed to understand what I was going on about.  I think what I got from watching “Pina” was the incredible sense of the exponential power for dance/movement / choreography to tell a story conveys narrative, evoke meaning.

I have always loved dance, and have been frustrated by my inability to translate ideas of dance into architecture.  I think though after watching “Pina” it has changed my understanding of how space can “dance.”  A well-designed space it seems could be a choreographer, who leads an audience thought a dance physically and experimentally.  I am still playing with how explicit, suggested this relationship should be/can be.  But I think it is worth considering in the context of this project further.  The thing I want to avoid is creating just a backdrop or stage.

The last thought about this is that architectural drawing may not be 100% the right way to document this project… I am thinking that there is too much going on in time and 3D space for plans and sections to really capture it all.  I have started looking at dance notation and think there may be some sort of architectural dance notation that is either out there our could be adapted by merging musical/dance notation which caries through time but not space, with architectural notation which caries through space but not time… if any one has any ideas about this let me know thanks.

How It All Started: Sam’s Memories

For a long period in college I was an Urban Studies major and I tried to live and breathe it. I devoured urban theory like The Life and Death of Great American Cities, The Arcades Project, and The Image of the City, hoping the more I read that more I’d feel its vocational calling, but always with the creeping fear that I would relapse into drama and find myself free-basing some stilted Ibsen with the rest of the drama kids. And when that happened, I wasn’t really surprised because no matter how hard I had tried, I found theater insinuating itself into my Urban Studies talk; I kept using the word “performativity,” I analogized Jane Jacobs’ Lower East Side to “a ballet of the city,” and I fully intended on writing a thesis about theater organizations’ roll in attempts to revitalize hollow downtowns. In the end, I dropped Urban Studies for Theater and thought that would be the end of it, until I noticed how Urban Studies was inflecting my theater-talk; I kept imagining site-specific work, I continued to use the word “performativity,” and I wrote a whole play about the ethno-sociology of theme parks.

It was at this unresolved point that I graduated, and returned home to DC to an internship at Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, a DC theatre that led the revitalization of Downtown DC’s Chinatown/Penn Quarter neighborhood. Owen was also home, working a co-op job at a large, corporate architecture firm and feeling like his work was missing a creative, radical, experimental outlet. Over the course of the spring/summer we realized how neatly our interests overlapped – a nice little Venn diagram of theater and architecture with spatial intervention, site-specific performance, and non-traditional approaches at the center. That’s when we envisioned a collaboration – designing a special space for a performance, and a special performance for a space. We spent a bunch of late nights working together. We talked, we drew, we listened to music, we drank coffee, we wrote and we recorded it all, even the stupid half-ideas we argued about at 2 AM. We focused on the idea of thresholds and intimacy. We wanted it to be low tech. My writing exercises focused on the idea of loss; of moving into a new place of passing on/over/through, actually and metaphorically; on place-making and ritual.

Then, Owen had to go back to Cincinnati for his last year of college and I got pulled deeper into my internship and grad school applications. We let the project sit, ferment. And now we’re picking it back up, with a new collaborator, Sebastian, some structure, a blog, and an actual performance/build date. Here we go.

How it all started: Owen's Memories

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Like all good ideas, it started over a beer. Maybe 2.  I think Sam and I had been talking about the lines between theater and architecture for years.  But, the first clear recollection I have of the 4:2 project’s start was at the Capitol Lounge drinking beer and eating pizza…probably the fall of 2011.  I was home working in D.C. on co-op and Sam was home visiting from school.  Not much came out of that chat other than some napkin scribbles that would be probably left on the table, and the conviction that at some point we would work together on something….

Fast forward to late Spring, early Summer of 2012. I am working on co-op again, Sam has gradated and is back in D.C. working for a local theater company.  He has come over to my apartment for a party or something, and for whatever reason we decide to leave the hustle of the party and take a walk in the pleasant night air. D.C. really is best in the Spring at night.  We are talking about confession, intimacy, friendship, love and death.  You know, the usual cheerful things folks in their early twenties like to think about after a few beers on a Saturday night. What becomes really clear very quickly is that both of us have been thinking about these ideas a lot.  That is when we decide that this is the time to start the project we have been mulling over for a few months now.  I, with interest in small structures, Sam with his interest in non-traditional theatrical forms, will dive into something together. A play for two people in a space for two people, a space made for a play, a play made for a space, an Ouroboros of ideas.

It took us a week or so to settle on a time that we could both work on it again.  If I remember correctly it was a Thursday or Wednesday night. There were several pots of coffee, tea, popcorn and Tai food. We stayed up most of the night talking, arguing, discussing, drawing, writing, and looking at inspirational images. At the end we had a set of guiding rules, a lot of questions, and a similar understanding of what we wanted out of the project. 

We would explore ideas of threshold and intimacy.

The play would happen in a larger space somewhere.

The object/space of the play would some how relate to, or interact with the space it was in.

The whole thing would require less than 5 people to run, and if we could do it with less that would be better.

We would not rely on technological gimmicks, projectors, sound effects, ect.

We recorded all of these initial exchanges. They will be up soon.