1999.10.05 13:12
who's on first?
the following exerpt comes from Johan Huizinga's Homo Ludens - a study of the play element in culture.
"The player who transpasses against the rules or ignores them is a "spoil-sport". The spoil-sport is not the same as the false player, the cheat; for the latter pretends to be playing the game and, on the face of it, still acknowledges the magic circle. It is curious to note how much more lenient society is to the cheat than to the spoil-sport. This is because the spoil-sport shatters the play-world itself. By withdrawing from the game he reveals the relativity and fragility of the play-world in which he had temporarily shut himself with others. He robs play of its _illusion_ -- a pregnant word which means literally "in-play" (from inlusio, illudere or inludere). Therefore he must be cast out, for he threatens the existence of the play-community. . . . In the world of high seriousness, too, the cheat and the hypocrite have always had an easier time of it than the spoil-sport, here called apostates, heretics, innovators, prophets, conscientious objectors, etc. It sometimes happens, however, that the spoil-sports in their turn make a new community with rules of its own. The outlaw, the revolutionary, the cabbalist or member of a secret society, indeed heretics of all kinds are of a highly associative if not sociable disposition, and a certain element of play is prominent in all their doings."
1999.10.13
Quondam on/off
I started the notion of an on Quondam and an off Quondam yesterday. The on Quondam id the regular Quondam and the off Quondam is where the museum will be experimental and offer an alternative history (of architecture).
If nothing else, off will be the opposite of on or perhaps a tangent of thoughts out of the ordinary or even contrary to the norm.
1999.10.25
exporting merrie olde england
Marcus,
Your closing remarks...
"Now I really enjoyed the place and the quality of the buildings were excellent, but were they real? They were to me. Aesthetically I was enriched by visiting them. However, if I had have been told prior to the visit I might have viewed them differently. I think we place too much emphasis on sentiment for the historical nature of objects and attribute false values on wanting to see something that is "original". Anyway over to you lot what do you think?"
...express a refreshing honesty that indeed sheds light upon the power (either good or bad) of received opinion. For me, nonprejudicial first reactions regarding aesthetic issues are the ones most worth valuing.
The question of whether or not the "theme" environments are real is also worthy of (new?) consideration. At first this question of 'reality' may seem appropriately associated with the notion of 'real' versus 'virtual' (as in virtual reality in real 3d). I believe there is more to it, however. The easiest way for me to relate my thoughts on this point is to here include the abstract (with a brief postscript) of a paper I'm to deliver at the "Inside Density" colloquium in Brussels, Belgium in late November:
Albeit resolutely virtual, Piranesi's Ichnographia Campus Martius nonetheless manifests a high degree of density not only in terms of architecture and urbanism, but with regard to symbolism, meaning, and narrative as well. The hundreds of individual building plans and their Latin labels within the Campo Marzio do not "reconstruct" ancient Rome as much as they "reenact" it. Thus Piranesi's overall large plan presents a design of Rome that reflects and narrates Rome's own imperial history. Given Rome's history, then, the ultimate theme of Piranesi's design is inversion, specifically ancient Rome's inversion from (dense) pagan capital of the world to (dense) Christian capital of the world -- a prime example of the proverbial "two sides to every story."
With the inversion theme, Piranesi also incorporates a number of sub-themes, such as life and death, love and war, satire, and even urban sprawl. Rendered largely independent, each sub-theme relates its own "story." Due to their innate reversal qualities, however, each sub-theme also reinforces the main inversion theme. Piranesi's Campo Marzio is not only dense, it is condensed.
In 2001, the finished Ichnographia Campi Martii will be 240 years old, yet Piranesi's truly unique urban paradigm -- a city "reenacting" itself through all its physical, sociopolitical, and even metaphysical layers -- may well become the most real urban paradigm of the next millennium.
-- Marcus, what you are basically questioning and evaluating are the (aesthetic) notions regarding reenactment as a purposefully designed phenomenon within the built environment. As my abstract indicates, I see this particular 'brand' of construction as something on the rise, but it is important to remember that reenactment is a 'theme' that exists throughout history. For example, Hardian's Villa of the second century AD and Las Vegas of the 1990s. And aren't the Great Pyramids 'perfect' reenactments of mountains?
1999.12.07
Tafuri's critique of "operative criticism"
Via Heynen's chapter 3 of Architecture and Modernity, I'm now aware of Tafuri's critique of "operative criticism" and even though Tafuri espouses a "historical criticism", the operation of operative criticism is still very prevalent in the ongoing formulation of architectural history and theory. The prime example (for me at least) of how operative criticism still prevails is in the universal notion that significant architectural history and theory most certainly must eminate from the university, particularly from those who write or have written PhD dissertations.
Other examples include the whole way that "virtual" architecture is asumed to pertain to either virtual reality or computer generated topological architectural forms or some kind of fractal environment. And yet another example is that the first virtual museum of architecture originates from a modest rowhome in an immigrant neighborhood of Philadelphia -- this is not how the "official" architectural historians want architectural history to be written.
This new theme of operative criticism is not something I expected, nor did I expect upon finding out about it today, for it to describe exactly what I see as "current" history's greatest fault. I think I can (and will) carry this new thinking through as one of the dominant themes of Quondam 2000. Essentially, Quondam will be my vehicle to criticize the "operative criticism" of today, and in so doing, I will actually objectively follow Tafuri's notion of "historical criticism".
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1999.12.08 12:37
hello, thanks, reading your book
Last night, I read the end of A+M's chapter three, the School of Venice. I have never completely (and actually barely partially) read Tafuri's History and Theories Of Architecture, and I am now grateful for your concise synopsis of 'operative criticism' and/or versus 'historical criticism'. The whole notion of 'operative criticism' fits precisely within my own feelings relative to how the notions of 'virtual' and 'computer aided design' are treated within the current architectural lexicons, debates, etc., specifically, with regard to my activities at Quondam in that my quest as an architect attempting to forthrightly create a 'virtual' building within the Internet/world wide web is still largely being ignored by the architectural field at large. Can you name another architect besides myself that is specifically trying to (and indeed succeeding at) creating a 'virtual' building that goes all over the world rather than requiring people coming to it? Is the lack of 'official' recognition for Quondam just another example of 'operative criticism' still very much at work? (I'm sorry for sounding a bit too self absorbed, but I sincerely believe I do have a clear and distinct point.) In any case, since I am now very much interested in 'operative criticism' and 'historical criticism', could you recommend any further reading that I might do on these subjects?
1999.12.28 13:09
"there's never been a design that proved something"
One of the last events of my trip to Brussels, Belgium was a Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday night, 27 November, hosted by Elia Zenghelis and Eleni Gigantes. About half of the guests were some of the participants of INSIDE DENSITY. During dinner I sat next to Mark Wigley (Princeton University, author of The Architecture of Deconstruction, keynote speaker at INSIDE DENSITY), and across from Mark sat Hilde Heynen (Katholic University Leuven, author of Architecture and Modernity - a Critique, scientific committee member of INSIDE DENSITY), and across from me sat Eleni Kostika (one of the two Elenis).
At one point I head Mark Wigley say to Hilde Heynen that "there's never been a design that proved something." My immediate reaction was that that didn't sound right, so I jumped in and said that Le Corbusier's design of the unexecuted Palais des Congres proves Le Corbusier's 'promenade architecturale' formula. [What I should have said is that the Palais des Congres, when compared with the Villa Savoye, proves that Le Corbusier followed a promenade architecturale formula.] Wigley quickly retorted that the Palais des Congres design only demonstrates the promenade architecturale, it doesn't prove it. I think at that point it was time to get dessert, so the conversation ended there.
So, my question to design-l is: is there a design (somewhere, anywhere) that proves something?
1999.12.29 16:26
RE: reenactment
Brian wonders:
lauf-s, i am wondering if you've encountered Baudrillard's ideas of simulcra and simulation in relation to reenactment. i am wondering how they are similiar/different/parallel ideas.
Steve replies:
As it happens, I purchased and started reading Baudrillard's Simulation and Simulacra just over a week before I went to Brussels (i.e, mid-November). I was prompted to do this when (in early November) I started reading Neil Leach's The Anaesthetics of Architecture, where, in the introduction Leach writes a good bit about Baudrillard's sim-sim ideas. I right away saw the SIMilarities to what I'm formulating re: reenactment, and thus sought out Baudrillard's book.
I've only read like the first three essays of Simulacra and Simulation, and that's now over a month ago. Of the three essays, only the first relates reasonably to reenactment; the other two essays reminded me of Barthes' Mythologies. I have to finish the book, as well as give it a more careful analysis. So, your wondering about "similar/different/parallel ideas" is right on target, and that is precisely what I intend to investigate.
The excerpt you supplied from the online source is very useful, particularly the passage:
So it is with simulation, insofar as it is opposed to representation. The latter starts from the principle that the sign and the real are equivalent (even if this equivalence is utopian, it is a fundamental axiom). Conversely, simulation starts from the utopia of this principle of equivalence, from the radical negation of the sign as value, from the sign as reversion and death sentence of every reference. Whereas representation tries to absorb simulation by interpreting it as false representation, simulation envelops the edifice of representation a itself a simulacrum. This would be the sucessive phases of the image:
* it is the reflection of a basic reality.
* it masks and perverts a basic reality.
* it masks the absence of a basic reality.
* it bears no relation to any reality whatever: it is its own pure simulacrum.
If I may be so bold, I'd say that the notion of reenactment is indeed missing form the above set of 'simulation', 'representation', 'sign', and 'simulacra', that is, even though what Baudrillard says here is succinct and 'correct', it might just be nonetheless incomplete because reenactment is a continuation, an ongoing affimation of specific past 'realities'. There is more than a mere thin distinction between 'reflection' and 'ongoing affirmation' or 'continuation'. The core issue for reenactment may be the distinction between ENACTMENT and a subsequent(ly necessary by definition) REENACTMENT. Is it correct to say that, for example, Beethoven's actual composing of a symphony is the enactment of the symphony, and hence every performance of the symphony (even the first performance and regardless of the interpretive differences of the rest) is a reenactment? As I said here about a month ago, reenactment involves a play with degrees of separation, specifically degrees of separation from the original enactment (and what Baudrillard does above is essentially map out degrees of separation in the mostly negative extreme).
So far, for me at least, the notion of reenactment (especially with regard to architecture and design and the built environment in general), helps raise significant questions, the answers to which may define what reenactment is or what reenactment is not.
Is Disney's Magic Kingdom really a reenactment of the Garden of Eden (including the unavoidable temptation of capitalism) with some very carefully designed degrees of separation? Is Las Vegas really a reenactment of all that the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil had/has to offer? And yes, is New Urbanism really a reenactment of the WHITE (Aryan/American) DREAM?
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2000.01.03 03:38
Re: sculpture versus architecture
Pinar Dinc writes:
What about the notion of life? In order to call a composition as a work of architecture there must be a life in it. A life around it does not make it architecture, I think. The composition must embrace a life style, must be an accompaniment of a life style but not be the focus of it. The objects which are for perception only, cannot be called architecture. They are called sculpture.
Steve Lauf replies:
What Pinar writes comes across as very true as a reasonably way to approach "what is architecture?" as opposed "what is sculpture?" And for the most part I agree with the notion that architecture accomodates life. So I then ask if this 'definition' must be broadened to include all built forms that once accompanied life and a life style, but over time have come to no longer do so. I am thinking of ancient ruins, be they Stonehenge, the Pyramids, the Parthenon, the cave temples of India, etc. These are commonly referred to as examples of architecture, yet today they are clearly "objects which are for perception only." Have these architectures become architecture/sculpture hybrids? Furthermore, no one now lives in Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye, nor, it might be agrued, does the life style around which the Villa Savoye was designed to accompany now exist. Is the Villa Savoye a master work of modern architecture that is now an "object which is for perception only?" Or is it merely that the 'life style" the Villa Savoye now accompanies is one where great buildings (if they're lucky) become cultural shrines, where the buildings now accomodate our 'perceptual worship'?
2000.01.08 13:48
a virtual museum of [disimformation] architecture?
John Young wrote:
Imaginary architecture, Escher, Piranesi, Heaven, Hell, visionary, virtual, has always mesmerized, inspired, perhaps terrified, for being beyond what is accompishable.
To be sure most architecture begins as imaginary and then it's all down hill from there as other brutally realistic forces have their way. Until ruins once again induce fantastic possibilities.
I especially admire Steve's fictional conference........
Steve Lauf continues:
Before going INSIDE DENSITY and while INSIDE DENSITY, the back of my mind was occupied with "what could a virtual museum of architecture be that a real museum of architecture could [or would] never be?"
www.quondam.com presently comprises over 80 megabytes of data in the form of texts and images. As 'director' of Quondam, I'm hesitantly contemplating the (online) deletion of all the data in one keystroke. Seems drastic, but dia(meta)bolically desirable(!) -- kind of like pushing that big red button somewhere in Washington, or where ever red buttons are.
Tabula Rasa is too easy, however. I prefer palimpsest, instead -- erasure and then overwriting/overrighting. Of course, replacement would be necessary and necessary in quick order (...don't want those rising web stats to suddenly evaporate).
So what can a virtual museum of architecture be that a real museum of architecture can not be?
I'm at the point where the dissemination of disinformation appears the most appealing. I'm imagining a museum of architecture that curates and displays an 'un-real' history of architecture, you know, among OTHER things, all those buildings Le Corbusier designed since 27 August 1965, and likewise the dies sanquinis urbanism of lights-camera-Africa in 2056 AD which is covertly inspired by the OTTO-man architecture of pre-Christ South America, and don't forget the equinoctial architecture along the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. Yes, www.quondam.com may well soon be a 'new and improved' virtual museum of [unscientific fiction] architecture, written and delineated in palimpsest (so the faded 'truth' is nonetheless incompletely 'not there').
I'm becoming more and more convinced that a virtual museum of architecture misses its full virtuality unless it 'calendrically incarnates' other
zeitgeists + [or minus] architectures.
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