November 2008 Archives

This situation involves a detached edge, an anchored fragment and a face of a fragment that wants to meet with the others. Each destroy or bring parts of their field to various degrees. This situation uses less pulling/distortion that the other drawing and instead uses rotation.
Now I will imagine a scenario that is more direct.

Positioning of fragments on field and trying to get them to relate
here there are three anchored ones that effect their field differently.
Two collide. One goes in wrong direction and misses.
The detached fragment is also here. Am developing notation as I go along.

Here were some more attempts where I have been trying to fix certain points where as other points are pulled by the fragment.

Here I tried to establish the fragment to field relationship via an action of momentum. Its achieved through distortion.
Also, the relationship between the parts changes in relationship to your view. (images on right)
I think that I need another method of modelling.I am still trying to work with how the field reacts when many fragments (that each have their own behaviour). I need to work with more than 1 fragment basically. Also, I am still really seeking the spatial effect that I describe in manifesto. Today, I am trying Maya as a modelling tool...

These ones were first tries of Unattached fragment and Colliding fragments. I think that these are too static so this weekend will model more...!

This is the initial model of the ANCHORED FRAGMENT

2.There are two things happening here:
manipulated ground planes that are stitched together so that the distorted volumes collide.
In effect, the view is always changing

Here are a small selection of test models where I have been attempting to create a dynamic relationship between the fragment and the field that it originates from.
I am trying to spatially demonstrate the behaviours that are described in the manifesto. At the moment the models are instances. This weekend I am continuing to create models of the behaviours between many fragments.
The considerations are:
1. are how the behaviour of the fragment or fragments transform their context
2. How the fragments react to each other and causes a reaction from their field
3. The field as an abstracted type of landscape - points.
4.The edge between the fragment and field its trying to move from.
5. Converging planes.


This was a start: fragments are extracted from the city fabric. In order to pull the selected fragments together, parts of the city collapse or are closed up as a result. Need to think more about what this is doing and why...

 

The true state of the Icon is the fragment as its identity is created when and how it is referred to.

The icon is not comprehended via its singular, localised form but in its referential form. The impact of an icon relies on how well it refers to itself. The references become the key moments that construct the story of the icon. The omni-presence of an icon is achieved in its fragmentary state. Therefore, the iconic state is the fragment.

 

A Fragment is a record or trace of something that HAS existed or WILL exist.

A Fragment refers to an absent whole. A fragment carries the specific information of the absent whole.

The story of the whole is constructed through its key moments.

 

A fragment is the foundation of a constructed reality.

 

 

FRAGMENTS THAT ARE STOPPED AND FLATTENED ONTO A PLANE:

THE IMAGE

Fragments are carefully composed in a particular way towards a single viewpoint. The worlds are not representations of a reality but a construction of one. These fragments define the graphic space and a reality is constructed within the picture plane.

 

VIEWPOINT

The viewer has both an inflexible and privileged viewpoint. The viewpoint is fixed because it is determined by the image author.

 

BEHAVIOUR/ARTICULATION

The fragment refers to an overall plan or arrangement that it sits within yet also articulates itself with its own separate behaviour. Therefore, a dynamic space is created.

 

The Anchored fragment: this fragment is tied to its origins but also wants to move away from it.
         It is grounded, and heavy and you can see where it sits within an overall spatial organisation. But if it wants to move, what it is tied to has to move also. As a result, the plan is rotated and warped.

The Unattached fragment: this fragment is independent of its origin but could return

to it if it wanted to. This fragment only shows you certain sides of itself. It resembles its origin but always makes a   
            point of showing that its different. As a result, the elevations of the volumes are disconnected and are shifting. The plan is flipped up towards the viewer. Parallel lines vs converging lines.

The Merging fragment: this fragment camouflages itself into any position. It is a corner that flattens flattens itself onto a plane.

The Shattering fragment: when this fragment impacts with a fixed object it shatters it and its shards embed themselves into other volumes.

The Interconnecting fragment: this fragment looks for edges where it can fit its own edges into

perfectly. Regardless of what orientation it is, its edges will always fit in place.

The Expanding fragment: this fragments starts of singular but starts to steal parts from its surroundings and these parts begin to talk the same language as the fragment.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

FRAGMENTS THAT ARE VOLUMES THAT ARE CONTINUALLY READJUSTING THEMSELVES:

SPATIAL

The fragments cause the space that you engage with to slip in and out of place, to emerge and to recede. Distances are no longer measurable. The position of the ground plane is unreliable

 

 

 

VIEWPOINT

The viewer is roaming. There is no single viewpoint as it constantly changes in relation to the movements of the viewer.

 

ACTIONS

As you walk, a fragment jumps between being an object and an enclosure. But it is always open.

As you leave, the faces of the buildings detach themselves and follow your lead. Then they settle back into the fabric again.

 

 

SITE: CITYSCAPE

The fragment’s role is to rebuild the city’s story. Fragments of a fabric are taken for granted as evidence to corroborate a story. By referring to something that is missing, the fragment defines it.

The scale of the fragment jumps between two scales: local reading (as an object) and distant reading (as a face against the backdrop of the site’s fabric.)

The fabric of a city is read as a context: it is a continuing story. The fragment is kept as an essential, the definer of how anything new surrounding it will be arranged. Ambiguous continuities, ambiguous edges. Space as the “middle region between the already encoded eye and the reflexive knowledge”. Michael Foucault

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Iconic signifies something that is asking to be believed in by a collective of people. It embodies a belief or a way of thinking that calls for a collective support. The act of creating something Iconic is one of manipulation – manipulating something that already exists so that it both resembles it and reacts against it. This is because the underlying idea needs to be conveyed in a way that creates both excitement and a sense of ‘truth.’ The image of the icon in effect appears as an absolute only through the careful composition of its parts.

 

THE ICONIC IMAGE:

“How is the image used to convey a manifesto or vision instrumental in creating its iconicity?”

The iconic image has a role to communicate the essence and intentions of the project and manifesto in a very direct way. It has a duty to convey a message in such a manner that it could be comprehended as a “truth” by a particular audience. As the manifesto’s intentions are to make itself apparent within the image, the goal of the image is not just to represent but to actually construct a “reality.” You are directed as to how to view something.

 

 

 

The idea or intentions of a manifesto live and breath within an invented graphic space.  It has been constructed from a fixed, favoured viewpoint. A ‘reality’ has been constructed.

 

The two main types of architectural images I am dealing with that aim to both construct and resemble a reality:

1. Measured: To flatten or abstract a space into a 2d plan is to depict an overall spatial organisation. The fabric of a city is collapsed in order to construct a map of it. It is a qountative survey of an overall whole. There is a direct dichotomy between volume and space, public and private, physically accessible and non- accessible. The plan assumes that the viewer needs an orientation of an overall whole. There is always a depiction of the boundary of space and its mainly composed of parallel lines. The plan is generally agreed upon to be a ‘true’ representation of a city.
2. Immeasurable: Techniques are used in 2d to create a sense of spatial depth as opposed to flattening a space. Visionary. Narrative based.  Single view point. To understand the composition, there is a break down of it into its fragments and how they relate to each other.

 

Therefore, I believe the significance of the behaviour of the fragment as its own entity is that it carries the specifics of a whole. Specific coding of an overall. It un-collapses points of information. It has a materiality. It creates a dynamic space by standing in relation to both its origin and another fragment. Its always changing and its what you directly engage with.

 

Questions: how can the constructed reality in 2d inform a 3d spatial experience? How can the image be instructive? What comes from understanding the nature of the city through its fragments?

 

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There is no static whole just an active relationship between fragments. 

This is a dynamic state.

Fragments are both perfect and imperfect- they roam, becoming to complete themselves as wholes but never do.

There are many states. It is a dynamic spatial condition that arises when a fragment is moving away from it origin (state of defining itself as its own entity) or returning to its origin (becoming part of a whole again.)

 

An understanding or extraction of the world is revealed when deconstructing the way in which a 2d image has been composed. The 2d image is a constructed reality.

 

Techniques used in 2d to create spatial depth:

MONTAGE

Use of a  jump cut in 2d space as well as constructing a narrative:

In film you can cut it up at random into small sequences. These are fragments – they play themselves out or occur to you in immediate time. There is no lead up, no introduction and no fade out.

Fragments like these slide past each other, sometimes clash, try to unfold to tell more beyond itself but are stopped by the emergence of another fragment. You can look upon a fragment or let it surround you. You move forward, perceive another fragment and the whole picture changes again.

 

DISTORTION OF SPACE

No linear sequences only Multiple occurrences.

A sequence can unfold in a linear fashion but I call for the drawing out of fragments.

Cut, edit, drop, add, juxtapose. To pull these fragments together, you need to deform and melt the background they are attached to.  As demonstrated in the paintings of Zaha Hadid, through distortion, fragments emerge.

 

SCALE OF UNBUILT FORM VS BUILT FORM. URBAN.

You have a landscape and you have the fabric that populates it. Silence from an uncluttered landscape gives solace and a sense of pause but matter that is active, that crunches, that cuts up space, that you engage with, lives with you.