The Vision Machine of Babel

Tucson, AZ 1996

Project Statement

The project is an exploration of visual phenomena and how it relates to issues of design, perception, and technology. It began with a series of experiments in transformation. I digitized a set of my photographs which convey the feeling of "equivalence", the nature of which is outlined in my previous project. I then combined them and remanipulated their properties on the computer. At this point, I was trying to see how to transform these images into architectonic forms through programs that allow extrusion based on their grey scale properties and through a process of reinterpreting the image manually. The results showed how transformations between media on a symbolic level (i.e. tracing forms or extruding values) leads to forms lacking the depth (and beauty) inherent in the original. These images later became the source for the narrative behind the project and the maps for my rendered materials.

The Library of Babel, a short story by Jorge Louis Borges, became the next point of departure. The steps in transforming text to form require a bridge constructed more of intuitive responses than arbitrarily conscious ones. This exploration inspired both the form and narrative behind the complex.

Turning the ideas acquired from these and other investigations lead me to transform the issues into text (Issues of Concern, Relevant Quotes, etc.). From here I manipulated this text into an appropriate program which would become a virtual reality through the aforementioned investigations. These inquiries serve as research and background for the complex relationships proposed by the program. The issue of information and its transformation (both visual and semantic), especially in the contemporary sense, is illuminated by the underlying interpretation of Borge's Library of Babel.

The issue of complexity is inherent in the design. Its purpose is to provide the user with experiential depth, which may lead to new forms of play within personal and professional "scripts". The project also demonstrates an approach to design which doesn't require a large leap from idea to realization. The gap produced by this leap (as demonstrated in the beginning transformations) is filled with conscious contrivances brought about by the incompatibility between original idea (sketches and conceptual datums) and final product (tied to programmatic and real spatial issues). By developing the design from study to actuality within the same computer model, I was able to make this transition less abrupt. At any point in the virtual construction, one can easily see whether or not the path of transformation is relatively "realizable", or appropriate. In others words, the initial parti and the final constraints do not become disperate endpoints in the process. Instead they are in a state of constant interaction within the design's development.

The actual project consists of: a set of drawings that explain the programmatic and formal properties of the complex - a series of images and a video showing the process, intention, and narrative behind the forms - and a collection of writing exploring the theoretical nature of the work.

Issues of Concern

I. Explication of a contemporary state of Being.

A. Issues of technology.

1. The computer as a model for human mental (and visual) operating systems.

a) philosophical discourse as program ming language

2. Implications and possibilities in CAD

B. Dasein and Temporality: concepts of being and time.

1. i.e. Bergson, Virilio, Borges, Heidegger, Dante, etc.

C. Our dwelling relative to these issues.

D. Issue of power and force throughout historical and contemporary collective unconscious.

-Expression in project: Possibilities of "virtual mod- els" in design process and their implications for the architectural "profession"

II. Holistic nature of aesthetic processes and their implications on all other disciplines.

A. Concept of Equivalence (see senior project and inquiry).

1. In architecture, painting, photography and cinema.

a) temporality, and evolutionary models

2. Issues of erosion.

a) issues of time transferred through patina and other natural or human interventions

3. Issues of framing.

a) reinterpretation

b) scaling

B. Art's relation to the unconscious and the intuitive (also relates to III).

1. Contrast to conscious and empirical.

a) mythical equivalence (Dionysus vs. Apollo)

b) the dream-scape

C. Pattern formation.

1. Relationship of information to intu- ition: serves as fuel for connections.

-Expression in project: Hollistic intent of pro- gram and the synergistic nature of the design process and presentation

III. Nature of the sublime, or the expression of the infinite in the artistic experience.

A. Close relation to I. and especially II.

B. Issues of expression.

1. Abstraction and representation (similarities to II.A.)

2. Modes of expression and models (i.e. Borges, the Dao, Spinoza etc.)

C. Mythological elements

1. Ideas of the collective conscious and uncon scious.

2. Conception of evolution and history.

a) as design seed (see Frazer text)

-Expression in project: Actual experience within the project and its perceptual implications

Mind and Vision

" By this art you may contemplate the variation of the 23 letters...'

We peer into the world, seeing only what we can understand.

The transformation begins with an image. The image is immediately transformed into memory. The memory is catalogued by the Librarian of Babel - the caretaker of histories.

What does it mean to him? He cannot make sense of it for the only world he knows is one of letters contained in a book, which is one of a countless number of books, residing in a countless number of hexagonal galleries. The only faith he shares with us is the intuitive notion of infinity. We both experience it everyday. In us, it is the incessant reinterpretation of the day(s) before, and the indefinite prefiguration of tomorrow.

He confronts it in the infinite variation of letters.

A book in the Library of Babel contains the exact biography of our life. Within infinity, it only needs to be possible to exist. However, just because it exists does not make it attainable.

He is our conscious mind.

One day, by chance, he picks up a book with a page missing. He flips through it, only to find the usual senseless garbage..."...aasdhdshuisdhsd ashbdfh jbs.as; dfuadsj(320)-b(23)in..." He goes to slide it neatly back into place, when he notices another librarian strewn across the banister in the most awkward position. Finding a librarian's corpse is about as unusual as finding the letter 'A' repeated four times in a row three times within the same book...third one today...(he's a fast reader).

In the corpse's pocket he finds the torn page he noticed missing. Towards the end of the page a line almost reads "...To realize the art of the twenty three letters you must not think of what the letters may mean, bu t you must create what the letters do mean...".

Our librarian takes a vigorous pause, "What happens if I throw myself into that chasm thinly forbidden by handrails and inherited fears?"

Only to realize this question is enough to have him thrown out of the work force of consciousness. But to ponder it means he has relegated himself to the Dionysian "underworld" of the sub-conscious.

He is propelled into the experience of cross-dimensional transformation. The hexagonal library morphs into its third dimensional realization...a cube, which continues to change along with his perception...

He has now become our subconscious.

The realization of the infinite, the sublime, has become more than a mathematical quandery or a pre-rational fear. He begins to feel a part of its creation. Formally, the golden section is transformed from a rationlization, or model, of the inexplicable, into an emotive play within life. A western perception of infinite causation is now perceived as "The Music of Nature". But don't start eating those granola bars yet, for even (or especially) the transformation from conscious to subconscious requires a series of mental cruelties that deviate from a comfortably "correct" series of politically necessary norms to a celebration of the differences within society and genders. Only within opposition can creativity spawn a harvest, and only within difference can creativity find fruition.

Throughout our travels, the librarian has kept to himself the surreal nature of our particular place in time. He is just now beginning to explore the farthest reaches of our minds, and explore what the intuitive sublime can actually be.

The Yin and the Yang provide him with a model of historical cycles. The mind he works for perceives vision only through the collective filter tinted by the Apollo versus Dionysius opposition. He can, however, choose which filter is the most transparent.

By folding and unfolding oppositions onto themselves he arrives at the Vision Machine.

High Resolution

The computer provides excellent metaphors for ontological modeling. It's facets provide observable and manipulatable environments from which we can formulate deeper renderings of the human condition. An obvious example is its anatomical similarities to the human mind.

Art should not shy away from this new mental playground. Painting and computer imaging do not represent opposing sides. A painting emotes things in ways a digital image never can because of many intuitive and spiritual criteria that can only be attracted by a human medium. The digital world, however, offers us a different road beyond the second dimension. It gives us the ability to create images on a two dimensional surface that not only look three dimensional, but virtually are. The implications of this ability is profound but glances a different perspective of aesthetics than does the human quotient. This difference should be acknowledged, explored, and even celebrated in discussions of a metaphysical bend.

Meaning and Representation

What this endeavor is primarily concerned with is the function of a response to my experiences and work, which I have found myself signifying after its creation. The processes, which I have outlined before, are primarily intuitive. As such, I find great insight in analyzing these subconscious experiences and relating them to my conscious mode of thought.

Much of this rhetoric is concerned with our contemporary (reluctantly, postmodern) condition. Post-modernism is the abandonment of "abstraction", and a return to the subject of "representation". To clarify this, I must expound on my perceptions of modernism (abstraction).

The "discovery" of the Autonomy of the picture plane in the early 20th. century is equivalent to the Renaissance's "discovery" of perspective ("discovery" meaning a similar uncovering, not inventing). The religious, political and economical conditions during the Renaissance period retained this discovery as a tool for the exposition of existing power structures. However, after the industrial revolution, the (high) arts were not as readily used as exemplifying or supporting the existing power structure (although this could be argued: Clement Greenberg as the sublime politician etc. <Expand...>). Therefore artists, and theoreticians, supported this autonomy as a major style within itself. Abstraction became more than an expressionistic tool. It became a self conscious symbol of the time as itself.

Today, some artists are beginning to see how powerful abstraction and autonomy are as a tool. The major issue in-difference is the return to memory (in the sense of reminiscence of the image). The justification and the existence of forms, however, comes through the suggestion of power through forces inside the painting's structure. I will quote some Greenberg now, not because I think he is a brilliant theoretician, but because he has the strong perception that realizes (not ironically <expand><b.s. of politics>) the will to power : " I have offered no other explanation for the present superiority of abstract art than its historical justification...there is nothing in the nature of abstract art which compels it to be so. The imperative comes from history...Abstract art cannot be disposed of by a simple-minded evasion. Or by negation. We can only dispose of abstract art by assimilating it, by fighting our way through it. (Italics mine)".

I believe that I am trying to use abstraction as the starting point to realizing a representation. That is, I am rendering an intuitive abstraction (from autonomous processes) as a perceivable form. This form is not subject to a conscious recognition factor (e.g. a recognizable conscious form: namable), but an intuitive response depending on emotive properties within the painting or photograph itself (see essay on equivalence for further exposition around this phenomena in photography). This train of thought is inherently techtonic. Architecture becomes the acted life's definition of power. It is the stage for any instance, whether it be mundane or profound. Realizing it as such, the mundane can become hypereal, and the profound deified. (Question of our consciousness of this process)

In painting, the modernist abandonment of representation is easier to define than it is in architecture. What is representation in architecture? In a building, representation is a process of elucidating a recognizable symbol system (much like other arts) that makes the perceiver connect to something that is already known to his conscious. However, within history this conscious reaction was already defined by the power structure. Today, it is still defined by this structure, but the perceiver no longer has any confidence, or faith, in its existence, or execution. Therefore, the modern "Zeitgeist" in architecture has relegated itself (for the most part) to a mimicry of mass production. The key element in architectonic integrity is to have the viewer instill confidence in the designer's motions and to know that he is being taken on a journey or play that elevates his "emotive experience".

Program Synopsis for Visual Research Facilities and Complex

Client:

Kodak and Autodesk.

Program Function:

The complex is to support a research facilities for the furtherment of the visual technologies. It is to provide an environment conducive to insightful thought processing and public interaction.

The complex as a whole deals with the issue of different forces supporting each other.

Elements: (followed by symbolic intent and general physical details)

Research facilities / offices:

Represents capitalistic corporate power tantamount to historical religious paradigms, therefore "supports" complex.

Kodak (analog)

Autodesk (digital)

Spiral (symbolic temple):

This element (the spiral form) will function as the home for the unconscious and metaphysically inspired end of the research. This symbolically and physically becomes the link between the digital and analog investigations, for it brings them together in the more common realm of intuition and spirituality.

This area signifies the unification of forces while physically providing a common space for congregation.

It will house a bar, cofeeshop, and snack bar.

Gallery:

Supported by the present corporate structure, yet intended to be inspirational. It is a source for brainstorming to employees, and a means to get people excited about the direction that science and art is leading our perceptions.

By placing the public in this experiential environment, they will become more aware of their subjective perceptions as observers. By triggering certain links in the collective conscious, professionals and visitors will share in the evolving metaphysical discourse that can be plotted on the graph of Zeitgeist.

The organization of displays will be tied to the significances and relationships I have mapped out earlier in preceding inquiries.

Theaters:

Has a similar function as the galleries, in that it will exhibit visuals that represent the cutting edge of visual phenomena. It is also a space to exhibit the facilities current work as well as receive guest lectures and symposiums. The omnimax theater is for VR experiments and expositions, while the smaller theater serves to display films and experiments in regular formats(world as stage, etc.).

Bookstore / Library:

Talks about issue of information and how it can be used to make conceptual connections (which are visualized in the gallery). Serves as a specialized resource center for relevant metaphysical pursuits. Resources can be borrowed by staff, but must be purchased by public.

Retail:

Maintains the presence of mundane consumer reality. Provides space for related mercantile activities. They will house a processing lab, camera shop, software store, and frame center.

Site:

The site and intentions of this complex will be linked to my previous project The Equivalent. The nature of these two explorations share deep similarities in their conceptual, aesthetic and programmatic intentions.