2002.06.19 13:00
Re: dead languages
If you read a lot of architecture theory books or essays, every so often you come across an analysis/explanation of something Victor Hugo wrote about architecture and books. Here's an example from a quondam online source:
In Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame Book V Chapter 2 is titled "This Will Kill That". Hugo tells how human history, pre-Gutenberg, was written in its buildings: huts and temples, pyramids and pagodas, tombs and towers. Now (as of the Fifteenth Century) he argues that the printing press and its products have taken over the rôle of recording knowledge. Faster, cheaper, more democratic --- and, with widespread proliferation of books, far more imperishable than architecture. Hugo says, "The invention of printing is the greatest event of history." True? Chapter 2 concludes with a summary of his thesis:
"Thus, to put it shortly, mankind has two books, two registers, two testaments: Architecture and Printing; the Bible of stone and the Bible of paper. Doubtless, in contemplating these two Bibles, spread open wide through the centuries, one is fain to regret the visible majesty of the granite writing, those gigantic alphabets in the shape of colonnades, porches, and obelisks; these mountains, as it were, the work of man's hand spread over the whole world and filling the past, from the pyramid to the steeple, from Cheops to Strassburg. The past should be read in these marble pages; the books written by architecture can be read and reread, with never-diminishing interest; but one cannot deny the grandeur of the edifice which printing has raised in its turn.
"That edifice is colossal. I do not know what statistician it was who calculated that by piling one upon another all the volumes issued from the press since Gutenberg, you would bridge the space between the earth and the moon --- but it is not to that kind of greatness we allude. Nevertheless, if we try to form a collective picture of the combined results of printing down to our own times, does it not appear as a huge structure, having the whole world for foundation, and the whole human race for its ceaselessly active workmen, and whose pinnacles tower up into the impenetrable mist of the future? It is the swarming ant-hill of intellectual forces; the hive to which all the golden-winged messengers of the imagination return, laden with honey. This prodigious edifice has a thousand storeys, and remains forever incomplete. The press, that giant engine, incessantly absorbing all the intellectual forces of society, disgorges, as incessantly, new materials for its work. The entire human race is on the scaffolding; every mind is a mason. Even the humblest can fill up a gap, or lay another brick. Each day another layer is put on. Independently of the individual contribution, there are certain collective donations. The eighteenth century presents the Encyclopædia, the Revolution the Moniteur. Undoubtedly this, too, is a structure, growing and piling itself up in endless spiral lines; here, too, there is confusion of tongues, incessant activity, indefatigable labour, a furious contest between the whole of mankind, an ark of refuge for the intelligence against another deluge, against another influx of barbarism.
"It is the second Tower of Babel."
Interestingly, the paragraph that follows the above addresses pretty much the same idea that I thought of last night:
"So does that put the Web into a better context? Is what we're now experiencing just a step or two more along the road that Victor Hugo identified in the move from the building to the book? And is the noise of the 'Net only an increment (though perhaps an order-of-magnitude worse) to the pandemonium that the printing press has already brought us?"
Actually, what I was thinking last night is more an inversion of the prior paragraph--last night I thought to entitle my post 'virtual [architecture] inversion'.
My thoughts where about Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) as now 'virtually' killing the book. Moreover, I was thinking how HTML manifests the 'structure' of virtual architecture, thus bringing back [reenacting?] an "architecture as delivery of content".
Robert Venturi in his latest theory regarding electronics and iconography upon a generic architecture is almost saying the same thing as far as architecture again being a delivery of content, but, for me at least, Venturi's theory becomes flawed when he admits to not knowing what the content should be. More than anything, what he so far fails to acknowledge is that iconography on buildings today, be it either electronic or not, is almost always advertising, advertising, advertising--essentially a very limited, narrowly focused delivery of content. Since 1999 when I did a large number of webpages utilizing the HTML 'marquee' tag, I've wondered if HTML might not be a better 'programmer' for the 'screens' that are now on buildings (as in Tokyo and NY's Times Square and Lehman Brothers Building). For example, if I were commissioned to design content for some real (generic) building whose 'skin' was an electronic screen, I'd propose a vast series of 'webpages' that act as a museum of architecture, thereby making the building, at least on the surface, a 'virtual museum of architecture.' I wouldn't necessarily be advertising Quondam, rather I'd be cloaking real generic architecture with many architectures. It wouldn't really matter what goes on inside the building because that will probably change from year to year, and the 'bulk' of the building's real architecture will be literally superficial and ironically really virtual.
I could go on and on, like pondering what kind of content I would propose for a hospital that had screen facades, or electronic/iconographic houses that change decorations by seasons or holidays, or even imagining the imaging of a house of ill-repute.
2002.06.20
Re: dead languages
For me as an architect, the liberating part of hypertext (and here I mean specifically HTML and its application via the internet) is that I can design a virtual building with just my two hands. There are very little costs involved, and no one can stop me, nor a can anyone deny that I'm doing it. That is very liberating, especially for an architect. Furthermore, virtual architecture via hypertext has no real need for a client, thus liberating all design possibilities.
My work as a hypertextual architect/designer can be judged by anyone, just like it can be utilized by anyone. So far, the architectural 'establishment' chooses rather to pretend it's not there, or judge it something lacking or even just unimportant.
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2002.07.10 12:52
Re: fashionism etc
Spoken language is all at base a wavelength, isn't it? Does that mean language written digitally is a hyper-wavelength?
2002.08.10 12:47
Re: church plans (was synagogues)
While what P. says about 'sacred' sites remaining 'sacred' no matter what the religion (my take on the phenomenon, actually) is true, it is nonetheless worth noting that concerning Christian churches in the city of Rome, for several centuries all Pagan (temple) sites were strictly avoided as sites of Christian churches. The first pagan temple of Rome to be converted to a church is the Pantheon, but that didn't occur until the very early 600s. The story goes that some catacombs were caving in and that gathered remains of the fallen catacombs were deposited at the Pantheon, hence the buildings present name of Holy Mary of the Martyrs. If you believe in the Last Judgment, the Pantheon will surely be a 'watershed'.
In a more current situation, what was Congregation Ahavath Israel is today Grace Temple Church, Inc. (Talk about having it all.)
2002.08.26 15:54
Re: Marriage Vow(El)S In Drag
Could it be that the whiter humanity thinks, the more it manifests extinctions? Or is such thinking going hyper avant-garde?
2002.09.22 12:38
MORPHOSIS Exhibit Redux
On 19 November 2001 I wrote (and promised):
I too go to Temple's campus quite often, and thus am also aware of what types of student's works are produced there. In fact, I was at the architecture building today, using the library. There is an exhibit there now, which, when I first walked in, I thought was a student exhibit. Then I soon enough found out the exhibit was of recent work by Morphosis. It wasn't that the work was unprofessional and thus looked like student work, rather more that many students today are doing projects that emulate Morphosis. Anyway, I'm going to go back to the exhibit to take lots of digital images. Then I'm going to put together an online version of the exhibit.
"And now for something completely hyper-different."
Yesterday I finally got around to compiling and uploading Morphosis Exhibit Redux starting at...
This is not your 'standard' online display in that it further exhibits the ease of digitally artful arbitrariness, the easy otherness of virtual curating, and an insurance against copyright infringement liability via the critique/parody clause.
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