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.

The Asylum Scene in The Conformist

Preliminary diagram of line/object/frame relationships over time

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).

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

project one [section+surface+frame+motion]

file size: 14.2MB



As the culmination of the previous exercises to date, this animation explores the interpertation of section, surface, frame and motion as growth. This process of revision involved employing a new critical eye on the previous MOVIES (not previous models or even concepts). In acknowledging that the value was in the movie, I was able to use the movies themselves as building blocks. What was once the focus has now become the transition, the periphery to the new focus: the expression of raw, cyclical, infinite growth expressed, using a grammar of forms and spaces, in a language of animation.


I have always thought of the film industry as ahead of architecture in terms of integrating and embracing technology as a key player in shaping our respective products. Its easy to trace the potential causes of this phenomenon:

the film industry is much newer than architecture and therefore has less of a tendency for crippling nostalgia

the film industry is fundamentally about entertainment, it does not shy away from popular culture

our market driven economy demands that films provide new and surprising experiences with each successive release


a great movie review, From Here to Thermopylae, in this weekends post helped me clarify an opposing argument. Apparently Hunter wrote a bad review of 300 last weekend and there was some kind of public outcry. The public sentiment was that he somehow "didn't get" what the movie was REALLY about. First of all, don't ever tell an arts critic he doesn't know what he is talking about. But nonetheless, this essay published on Sunday brings up an interesting point. Bad movies by immature film makers are, at least lately, becoming too "self aware." The argument is that movies for movies sake are often too much about the actual movie rather than some sort of idea, concept, or "story," that transcends the actual movie experience. In the case of 300, this is especially problematic because the entire concept is allegedly historic. This conflict between represented event and the new event created to represent the event does not appear to be addressed.... This is beginning to sound a lot like the conflict that goes on between architecture and the representation of architecture.

I realized also that in using animation as a process, as a language, architects often have the opposite problem. Our animations are often so completely unself-aware. So much so that architects produce animations that fail, as animations. A critical point for me was when I stopped trying to communicate, or explain the form (as in a documentary--a concept that the makers of 300 would cringe at) and began to embrace the value of moving pictures to communicate more than the models used to generate those moving pictures.

Section

This is the revised animation studying section--specifically the relationship between geometric section and the constantly varying temporal section of this (and any) animation.

Note: I did my best to get the file size down but its still something like 10.5MB... sorry for the potentially slow load time.