Things I Need to Read/Research

I am currently rereading The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Walter Benjamin because one of the ways I write is by creating a web of intersecting, contiguous or vaguely related research. Something along the lines of: 

"This play deals with mechanical reproduced objects! = The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction! = the play is created for reproduction! = the process of reproduction is Act 1 of the play! = Sol Lewitt Wall Drawings!"

During a similar train of thought I realized that if I were to do this project justice I would read/research the following:

1. In Search of Lost Time by Marcel Proust (seven volumes)

2. Theatre for One

3. The Conventions of Cartography by David Hancock

I will let you know how that goes.

Scrap #1

Here is Scrap #1 of some of the exploratory writing I did at the beginning of the process: 

The front door opens onto a hallway, which leads to another hallway and another, which leads into another, slightly smaller hallway and another, each a fractal piece of the last. And the pattern continues with minor irregularities - elevators and stairwells - channeling into smaller and smaller spaces until finally all of it spills onto the parquet floor of my apartment.

And

The first days I’m there I get lost a lot.

The first years I’m there I get lost a lot.

I walk in the front door, which creeks like an old man sitting down slowly, and I look up into the hallway, up through the hallway towards the elevator doors – two for twenty floors

The floor is marble - black and white tiles - and just recently polished because I shift my foot to adjust the load of moving boxes balanced against my hip and my sneakers squeak against the step and I think the sound is going to echo up and down the cavernous hallway but instead it’s stifled, swallowed up by the space, instantly split apart into smaller and smaller bits until nothing remains.

The boxes are heavy and my arms hurt and my chest is tight because I already know that I have too many things too much junk to fit in my tiny studio and I’m going to have to throw something away.

My arms hurt and my chest is tight because I know already and I knew it before. I knew it when I signed the lease and I knew it when I was packing and I knew it when I was putting things in the car and I knew it when I was driving over and parking and unloading

But I couldn’t decide

I laid everything out like a guillotine queue shuffling towards the big industrial trash bags

But instead I packed everything into boxes and hoped that neglect and attrition would do the job I couldn’t.

Smiljan Radic_Casa Habitación

Casa Habitacion, designed by Smiljan Radic, a Chilean architect of Croatian descent, has served as good reference for our efforts. The small cabin is envisioned as a “storehouse of experience.” A wooden framework forms the structure of the space that is transparent to its surroundings. The elegance of the structure is apparent in its honesty and clarity. The pockets of spaces created are intended to be filled with the contents of the inhabitants, referred to as the textures of our lives, the bonds that are formed between experience and objects. In the cabin, objects are displayed, they form the space. The objects are relics of memories, a theme prevalent to our exploration of the narrative being written. 

Local vs absolute axiality

There are a lot of different ways to explore sequence, order and placement of spaces.  For this project we are going with local axiality,  this means that the spatial organization will be developed with each space’s orientation and focus derived from internal motivations rather than a external system.  This might not make a lot of sense.  So here is an example: Forbidden City china: everything is based on one super imposed axis and everything from there on out is derived from that.  vs the Acropolis Greece, the layouts of the buildings was based on approaches views and relationships to natural features an other structures.  That is more what we are after but ideas will be our driving site characteristics. 

Shameless boat bits

Ok here is some sexy boat hardware. Why? We were talking about the idea of the audience bringing in objects and Sam wrote up a couple test scenes.  Sebastian and I were struck by how much of it could be hung up or tied of to something so we did a little poking around and here are some of the nice things we found. 

Have your own nice tie of point detail?  Let us know.

Ise Grand Shrine

This one is a little harder to explain.  It is a Shinto shrine complex in Japan.  The wood detailing is beautiful, as you would expect. But that is not the real reason I am putting it up here.  Every 20 years the shrine is rebuilt as an exact replica on an identical adjacent site.  This is really interesting because not only doses it create a unbroken knowledge of the construction techniques of ancient Japan, but it also means that in some ways the building is one of the oldest buildings in the world.  I like the cyclic nature of it. And the idea that the apprentice in one rebuilding will be the master for the next.   I wonder is there some way that we can give the audience  that same experience of doing the same thing first as an apprentice and then as the master.

Any ideas?

Wall House_FAR Architects

The Wall House by FAR architects, out of Santiago, Chile, was one of our first reference projects we looked at in the initial stages of development. Both in materiality and spatial composition, the Wall House embodies a sense of transition and threshold through its vague boundaries and the ambiguity that is created in the translucent borders of fabric draped from the solid core of the house.