Tuesday, April 24, 2007

Asylum Scene

A next version of diagram- reclarification of linear relationships... also, this diagram will serve as a "cut sheet" and construction template for surface generation.

Tuesday, April 17, 2007

The Asylum Scene in The Conformist


Preliminary diagram of line/object/frame relationships over time

Monday, April 16, 2007

Preston Scott Cohen's exploitation of the perspective hinge

How would I explain the value of Perez-Gomez's writings regarding the "perspective hinge" to my mom? I ask not because this writing is obtuse, confusing or obscure but because it is almost too obvious. A standardized system for simulating and mimicking what we perceive is important to architects. The history and theory is not controversial or contentious. I have found though, that there is value in revisiting the most basic relationships between perception and representation. Yes, its obvious but its critical and relevant. Mitchell advocates a similar modernist re-examination of the pixel. At risk of going off on a tangent I will note here that this is good reason for embracing evolving societal standards for evaluating value (fads, fashion, etc). It is only now that we are "over" the pixel that we can (and we must, to stay ahead of the trends) really dissect it, conceptually. We can not dismiss it though because a good fashion sense requires historical resonance AND innovation or mutation ("new hotness"). And so, as uncomfortable as it may sound, perspective generation is not cool anymore. I mean specifically "generation" as in computer generation. It is no longer neat that computers have the computational power to calculate and display perspective projections.

This is where Preston Scott Cohen makes perspective fashionable again, by revisiting the value of descriptive geometry and the algorithm itself (as opposed to the speed or convenience at which the algorithm can be implemented). His remarkable product reveals and represents the algorithm as such AND exploits traditional graphic tendencies (linear convergence, rarity of the 90 degree angle, etc) as sign for perspective. Also, he has one of the trendiest/cool first/middle name combinations EVER (I mean, currently).

Tuesday, April 3, 2007

The Conformist

"[this] film really just expresses film."
-Bernardo Bertolucci

time and the fork in the road (plus the spoon in reality) and [the knife and the slice (title revision pending)]

"The speed of light does not merely transform the world. It becomes the world. Globalisation is the speed of light." -Paul Virilio

We, or at least I, have previously acknowledged the conceptual fork-in-the-road that is ahead of us: Either emphasize the model or emphasize the animation. What is important though is that each road, if traveled successfully (this is where the road is a bad metaphor...probably track would've been better) necessitates an isolation from the other road. As Pasquarelli points out, his versioning is significant in that parameter-based computational design "promotes technique rather than image." He seems to be promoting the "fork." Visualization for visualization sake is of course another technique, valid but not [as?] valuable.

However, later in the article, Pasquarelli notes that versioning produces coherent, tangible, real results but the result is architecture, not a model. The content within this issue of AD is meant to be direct and straightforward, although versioning is an open, gestural idea and the range of contributions should signal the pluralistic nature of the concept. Versioning can be seen as an attitude rather than an ideology. It allows architects to think or practice across multiple disciplines, freely borrowing tactics from film, food, finance, fashion or economics and politics for use in design..."

Tehrani and Ponce de Leon have gone a level deeper in discovering meaning in the physical conditions that can be controlled given versioning applied to form generation. More specifically, "the divorce of surface and space."

Later, Rocker and Keller specifically assert that the essence of versioning is time. Keller notes "we haveto map how and why this engagement of time and effect is is taking place...These technical advances in dine define the horizon of a designers ability to control time as well as space. Virilio and others have theorized this morphological shift of 'time territory' in the military/cinematic space." So if versioning is indeed, "gestural" it can be applied, also, to the generation of animation as directly as it can be applied to a wall paneling system (a-la "A-wall"). This is especially relevant as new technology allows us to systematize tracks into parameters and these parameters work to create non-represenational architectural artifacts.

Whether this implies the fallacy of the fork in the road or just that the roads eventually converge will yet be seen.


"Images contaminate us like viruses. "-Paul Virilio