2000.01.10 00:26
as dense as architecture can get?
As to wondering about the 'easy' play with scale's relative to Piranesi's Campo Marzio, in part you guess correctly. I say in part because when Piranesi delineates the Campus Martius proper, he more often than not uses the correct scale for the buildings that once existed there. Piranesi grossly exaggerates building scale in the Campo Marzio's outer regions, however. Nonetheless, Piranesi is deliberately 'playing' a learning game here, in that the outer regions is where Piranesi's plans and programs lack practically all veracity, hence, the hyperbole of Piranesi's architectural imagination is coded by a hyperbole of architectural scale. In simple terms, the over-sized plans of the Campo Marzio indicate buildings that Piranesi completely 'made-up', where as a high percentage of the smaller building plans indicate buildings that actually once existed and are drawn at their proper scale. (Mind you, the drawn plans of the once existing buildings, even though at a correct scale, are still often individual plans of Piranesi's invention.)
| |
2000.02.18
[hyper collection]
...Quondam to be a museum of hyper-architecture.
| |
2000.02.19
a hyper architectures museum
...change Quondam into a hyper architectures museum.
www.quondam.com/www
www.quondam.com/quondam
www.quondam.com/com
www.quondam.com/a
www.quondam.com/hyper
www.quondam.com/architectures
www.quondam.com/museum
www is where all web/internet related material will be housed/compiled, links to other web sites and email lists, where virtual issues are addressed.
quondam is where the former Quondam (a virtual museum of architecture) will be exhibited and elaborated upon, where the new Not There will be introduced.
com is where all commercial activity will reside, eg, pieces, the museum shop. This is also where I can begin incorporating (banner) advertizing and links to amazon.com.
a - an alphabetical mega list.
hyper - the most experimental, the most radical, in a word, hyper. ...building collages, revisionist hyper-texts, reenactionary texts, outlandish exhibits.
architectures - Quondam designs, architectural ideas and discoveries.
museum - the Quondam archive, the infinite collection.
| |
2000.03.31
journeys out of the body (into hyperspace?)
All of the recent 'scientific' discussion here reminded me of a particular passage I read in Rudolf v. B. Rucker's Geometry, Relativity and the Fourth Dimension (Dover, 1977). I bought the book in 1978 just before I went to rural Missouri to work on a HABS (Historic American Building Survey) team for the summer. My work-mates/room-mates in Perry, MO thought I was pretty nutty to be reading this stuff, but I was genuinely interested. Anyway, a passage from the book's annotated bibliography has always stuck in my mind because of its intrigue--Rucker writes:
Robert A. Monroe, Journeys Out of the Body, (Anchor Press/Doubleday, Garden City, NY, 1973).
So you're tired of just reading about 4-D space and want to go see it for yourself? This book tells you how to get there. Unfortunately, it is also a blueprint for insanity.
Monroe describes a fairly effective method of inducing a state in which one has the feeling of being able to leave one's body, move through walls and so on. Although he never refers to the fourth dimension, the idea of investigating the sort of "astral travel" he describes with an eye to interpreting the observed phenomena in terms of hyperspace is a tempting one.
The technique is basically to "wake up inside your dreams." It is not uncommon for one to have this experience during a daytime nap: that is, that one is awake and aware although one's body is still asleep. If on begins to look for this experience it begins to happen more often, and then astral travel is not far behind.
I worked on this for a few months once, but finally had to give it up as the experiences were so deeply frightening and disturbing. To be fully conscious and aware, and to know that one is in a dream world where anything can happen, to try to wake one's body up and not be able to--aaauugh! Indeed, reading the book, one gets the impression that Monroe finally scared himself into a heart attack.
But forewarned is forearmed, and perhaps some intrepid reader will be able to make something of the old theory that we have souls that move in hyperspace.
------------
I should mention that Rucker's book is a very good, plain English science book that is all about "geomerty, relativity, and the fourth dimension," and not some sort of 'new-age' book.
I have never pursued finding Monroe's book, but there may be some renewed interest now.
| |
2000.04.16
exploiting Quondam
...invading the existing pages with new data that is there like product placement or is disinformation or is just infringement text/imagery.
a totally avant-garde, free-spirit way... ...a museum completely otherwise. ...breaking” of all the (design) rules...
...an iconoclastic approach will engender originality at its best. I can see changing the Ichnographia, adding "bold" topics to the Encyclopedia Ichnographica, Philadelphia a a hyper(?) museum of architecture, Synopsis of Architecture by Papidakis and Lauf, "how to be the best architectural client," hyper building additions, religious conversions (Hurva goes Christian, etc.), Seroux and the Denkmal (plus more), the Philadelphia model with all the other site plans grafted on, the NOT THERE imagination.
|