Crevice

A bit of thinking/reading about axonometric drawings. Briefly, these don’t include any sense of ‘perspective’ … as a drawn building is ‘further away’ from the viewer the lines of that building are not drawn to converge as in perspective drawings. Unlike orthographic drawings, however, they do provide a ‘3d’ sense of the building/site. Blah blah.They look like perspective drawings that have gone a bit wrong - ie they appear to ‘warp’ when in fact they are drawn totally to scale (sans perspective recession).

Anyway - you can wikipedia that stuff if you want … what IS interesting is that, quoting once again from Envisioning Architecture, “… axonometry has been used to symbolise an ideological position and to crystallize an architectural style. In the 1920s axonometry was vital as a symbol and tool in the development of Suprematist space and Constructivist architecture in the Soviet Union.” p.54.

“For them, the axonometric construct manifested this spatial idea through the manner that the construction remains constant throughout the drawing, having no variance for viewer or object position. Therefore the form as well as the process of the drawing spoke about the form of their ideas…. As symbolic of their polemical position, it was opposed to the hierarchical order of classicism and the emphasis on facade. Instead, they strived for an architecture which could have an equivalency of elements in space, no front, back or sides, no near of far, top or bottom, major or minor, no interior or exterior. Space was to be neutral, amorphous, infinite, and the axonometric drawing form reinforced this sense of infinite extension. The Supermatists had almost no hope of building their projects and, in that sense, their drawings are almost purely rhetorical. Drawings were their end product, that is, drawings were the final construction, their architecture.” (my emphasis - p.54-55).

I am not sure about utilising axonometric drawings, but I am drawn to the IDEA of drawings being architecture .. or not REFERRING to an other place… but how to achieve this? Or to sign it like this?

This first image - from Pelli - is a combination of orthographic images - showing different perspectives of a single building. The drawings are a bit ‘complete’ for my liking, but I am interested in this placing of perspectives next to each other.

This second image - from Frank Lloyd Wright’s “Avery Cooney House” is in here simple b/c it is one of only a few images of the interior of houses (in this particular book). It’s probably a little busy (to consider animating) but it’s apparent roughness is again pretty evocative.

I wonder about morphing from orthographic to single point perspective… to a single point with qualities like the following van der Rohe image.

I am really into this image - it’s simplicity/clarity …

Was also thinking about the opening drawing/animation occurring when people are entering the broader/larger space - it could be four orthographic images of the exterior of “this” house. The next drawing, as people start to climb into the ‘house’ would change to interiors - but again orthographic. So no sense of perspective, or extension of the house beyond the confines of the screens, EXCEPT that you’d see overlapping of objects in the drawings … perhaps.

What about different costumes for exterior/interior/under. That is, if this x-ter is ABLE to exist in three locations:
a) under the house - physical
b) inside the house - virtual (on video).
c) outside the house - virtual (on video).

All of these images are from the “Envisioning Architecture” book.

Talking/thinking about ‘my’ character (hence the ‘me’ bit).

What events have happened to me?
What is this life?
What am I telling?
Is it about me?
Who is this person?
How has he ended up under there?

One house imagined - not lived in - a construction, and far away from my x-ter’s reality.
Do I need help?
Does my x-ter need help?

- this feels like I am in search of a premise for these ‘perspective/architecture’ ideas. Is that right? Do I need to? What is my preoccupation with narrative? Is it b/c the context of this work is setting up a narrative OR it it b/c I still want this idea of viewers ‘holding on’ to something …

This is scanned from a “how to” architectural drawing book called (they thought long and hard about this one): “Architectural Graphics” - by Francis D.K. Ching. (1996).

I was thinking about having single point perspective images ‘extending’ in perspective away from one (or more) of the screens… this dancing person could be located then in the ‘drawn’ space - it’s the same idea. But this sketch gives a good sense of depth provided by single point perspective. The “picture place wall” would correspond (in this case) to where the screen is. As for detail of the ‘look’ of the house …

Earlier notes from this image:

Man standing in room.
Dancing person in this ‘perspective space’ … cross dissolves/cuts getting closer and closer until reaches Picture plane wall (screen).
THEN:
dancing under (live). As this occurs the lines of the room are erased.

Been considering/mulling over starting points for text(s) - mostly happen when I am running so, judging from writing below, my running is going too well. But maybe the language will trigger other thoughts/ideas from you all. In many respects I am trying to ‘feel out’ this role … to get a sense of who this person is under the floor.

COPY BEGINS:

I no longer feel whole. I have never felt whole. Pieces of flesh receding into the distance. Closeted. Enclosed. Caught. Lines of fear. Flat. Straight on. Head on. Without depth or substance. Shallow. Two dimensional.

I an under here.

An idealised me. On the outside peering in. Launched. Launching. Traced.

Another simple image. Possibility of including text in the images (and animated). Am highly interested in the messiness of these images … and also perspectival possibilities … of stretching the (inhabited) real of the audience beyond that physical experience, and into (through?) the walls …

The first of a series of drawings by Le Corbusier. They are all scanned from a book:
Fraser, I. & Henmi, R. (1994). Envisioning Architecture: An Analysis of Drawing. Van Nostrand Reinhold: New York.

But first some quotes/thoughts.

p.viii: “There is a distance, however slight, between a drawing as represetation and what it endeavours to represent. Drawings are more than passive recipients of their authors’ actions; they do more than reflect a way of seeing. They abstract vision and thought, imposing a material presence on the act of representation and thereby on imagination.”

p.4: “… drawing the remaking of visual experience …”

p.5:

This single point perspective of floorboards (on ship’s promenade) reminded me of possibility of extending the boundaries of the 3 x 3m space via animations - to see the physical floorboards extend the space — and not necessarily in a perspectivally ’sensible’ way .. perhaps there are 4 horizons extending in each direction? Perhaps the each wall has a different point of view (subtly) …?

p.5: “Instead they are ruminations, patterns of analytical lines, a means to intensify vision and memory of a specific place by interpreting a view through drawing.”

p.6:

From p.6, I wondered about presenting two perspectives (say a 2-point perspective AND an elevation) on the same ‘page’ as it were - so that on the same screen (or different) they are animated (at the same time or one after the other).

p.7:

This small sketch of a church also provoked me to consider the possibility of animating what is visible through an animated window (or aperture of some kind) — maybe the materials can invite alternative (or broadening) contexts due to animated ‘exteriors’.

And what of a ‘dancing figure’ animated in the exterior — for elb to draw figurative images - that might overlap with ‘real’ video materials (so these could be traced over the top of stills grabbed from video) OR they might ’stand alone’.

The images might also be sketched so that multiple versions of the same, say ‘doorway’ are animated over the first - for elb to do ‘blind’ versions (on tracing paper) over the top of the original (a la Indelible)??

But I am stimulated by how rough Le Corbusier’s drawings are … they cut against my desire for order … and might serve to disrupt the clarity and order of the lines within the physical (3 x 3 m) ‘house’. They talk to a flimsiness, and uncertainty …

I managed to get some students to stand in a 3 x 3m space yesterday (with only 1 wall though - so quite different I would expect in terms of feeling boxed in). There was 10 of us in there. It felt fine - and could see a surprising amount of all four ‘walls’. However, I would expect we’d tend to keep away from (flexible) walls … so I am hazarding a guess that 6 would be an optimum number of viewers, but could go as high as 10 at a squeeze. I think this can be considered once we show some materials at the end of the development in January.

Have had reasonably detailed conversation with Pete Brundle about this. He has had a G5 system running 4 full screen video streams working very solidly (over night) without a hitch. Coded in Max/MSP and jitter. Set up as follows:

g5 2.3ghz
5Gb ram
extra nvidia 6600 pci-e video card (2 x dvi output) - same card as whats in there already
max-msp-jitter patch

I think he might have a control interface from another show - but in reality, unless we are looking at mixing live video feed (possible) then it will most likely be a ’start the videos’ and then ’stop the videos’ at end.

I reckon Pete would be up for coding the max/msp/jitter interface if we needed it - wouldn’t need to be too sophisticated. I am planning on buying hardware in UK (but not for this development).

Of course we could just mechanically start 4 x DVD players at once - rig some kind of ’start them all together scenario. Cheaper, less likely to fall over ….

Projectors
Wondering about projectors to use - currently looking at 3w x 2.25 h walls to project on. Can be done here. Seems like the choice is based solely around having the projectors as close to the screen as possible (simply to make the work fit in less space). It seems common enough to get a 300 x 225 throw from about 5m (without any short throw lenses attached) .. this would mean we need a 15 sq m room (at the least really).

But these calculations could be ’shifted’ if we were to go with a smaller room (ie < 3 sq m) ... and this impacts on costs (less screen material to buy, less design materials to buy, easier to relocate etc ... but, I have a sense that anything smaller than 3 x 3 m will be too small ...

Door
How to organise so that viewers can enter and exit the room easily?

Building
Someone to construct practice platform for December/January?