DRIFT
The Situationists were a European group of artists and activists in the 1950’s and 1960’s. They aimed somehow to disrupt any form of what they took to be the dominant regime or capitalist power. They drew from Dadaist practices, and later influencing other conceptual art movements such as Fluxus and performance art. The Situationists advocated a series of works that increased public consciousness and promoted direct action and systematic participation in everyday life. They were less interested in art objects and stylistic concerns but more with the engaging life situations and social formations. Guy Dubord is a key Situationist theorist who made a series of maps, or psycho-geographic guides of Paris by walking aimlessly around the streets and alleys of the city, turning here and there wherever the fancy took him and recorded these wanderings. The result of the map would reflect subjective, street level desires and perceptions rather than just a normal map we usually see. This activity became known as the dérive, or the dream-like drift through the city, mapping alternative itineraries and subverting dominate reading and authoritarian regimes. What is interesting about the dérive is the way in which the contingent, the ephemeral, the vague, fugitive eventfulness of spatial experience becomes foregrounded in place of the dominant, ocular gaze. If mapping had been traditionally assigned to the colonizing agency of survey and control, the Situationists were attempting to return the map to everyday life and to the unexplored, repressed topographies of the city. Earth-artist Richard Long shares little of the political and strategic agenda of the Situationists, his systematic play with maps and landscapes is very much in the same vein as dérive. Sometimes he will draw an arrow-straight line across a terrain and embark on the mission of walking it in actuality. It is important to understand that the primacy of both Long’s and the Situationist’s use of maps belongs to their performative aspects, that is to the way in which mapping directs and enacts a particular set of events that derive from a given milieu. These various practices of “Drift” use maps as instruments for establishing and aligning otherwise disparate, repressed or unavailable topographies; they are ‘set ups’ that both derive from and precipitate a series of interpretive and participatory acts. Their highly personal and constructive agency makes them quite unlike the detached work of conventional map-makers. All in all, drift discloses hidden topographies within ruling, dominant structures in an attempt to re-territorialize seemingly repressed or spent ground.
Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain"
LAYERING
Layering is to lie something or place it on or over something else to produce thickened surface. It is basically having different layers for individual and independent sections of a map and when it’s laid on top of each other it shows the relationships among the different parts. Bernard Tschumi and Rem Koolhaas were the first architects to develop this strategy. These kinds of montage and layering are also found in contemporary rock music genres. Combining different types of music with each other and trying to create new possibilities for new kind of music.
Another character of layering is its individuality the way that it can have different interpretation, uses and transformation through time. Just like a gymnasium floor that has different colour lines for marking a territory for different sports. Architect Peter Eisenman and landscape architect Laurie Olin developed a series of new composition made from whole series of local maps. It resulted in landscape and building maps to merge in to one large fractured ground-plane. A few significant events, such as the Gold Rush, the creation of the Campus and the ‘rediscovery’ of the museum led to the emergence of 7 key figures. These figures consist of discrete shapes, created by many layers. Eisenman, also created ‘scaling’ which is an important step in the manipulation of figures , which plays with a un-conventional reading of the relationship between form and intention. Tracing out repeated copies of the scaled overlays creates new analogic relationship (between the 7 key figures). The best combination is created when the overlapped layers don’t take precedence over each other and reveals new information, such as relationships and how culture organized itself. Einesman’s method of using layers are originally related to text however, others use it to anticipate future programmes which leaves little room for change. Nonetheless, both methods have the same goal of creating a heterogeneous environment. By throwing out traditional notions of centering, bounding, imparting meaning…etc, mapping becomes not only data collection and site survey but more involved on the level of design.
VOCABULARY
Subverting 1: to overturn or overthrow from the foundation 2: to pervert or corrupt by an undermining of morals, allegiance, or faith
Contingent 1 likely but not certain to happen 2: not logically necessary 3 a: happening by chance or unforeseen causes b: subject to chance or unseen effects : UNPREDICTABLE c: intended for use in circumstances not completely foreseen 4: dependent on or conditioned by something else
Ephemeral 1 : lasting one day only 2 : lasting a very short time
Fugitive 1: running away or intending flight 2: moving from place to place 3 a: being of short duration b: difficult to grasp or retain c: likely to evaporate, deteriorate, change, fade, or disappear4: being of transient interest
Valorization 1 : to enhance or try to enhance the price, value, or status of by organized and usually governmental action 2 : to assign value or merit to
Milieu 1: the physical or social setting in which something occurs or develops
Inchoate 1: being only partly in existence or operation ; especially : imperfectly formed or formulated
Disparate 1 : containing or made up of fundamentally different and often incongruous elements 2 : markedly distinct in quality or character
Poignant: 1a: pungently pervasive b: painfully affecting the feelings 2a: deeply affecting b: designed to make an impression
Iteration 1: the action or a process of iterating or repeating: as b: a procedure in which repetition of a sequence of operations yields results successively closer to a desired result
Analogic: 1 : of, relating to, or based on analogy 2 : expressing or implying analogy
Superimposition: To lay or place (something) on or over something else.
Autonomous: having autonomy; not subject to control from outside; independent.
Engender: To procreate; propagate
The Situationists were a European group of artists and activists in the 1950’s and 1960’s. They aimed somehow to disrupt any form of what they took to be the dominant regime or capitalist power. They drew from Dadaist practices, and later influencing other conceptual art movements such as Fluxus and performance art. The Situationists advocated a series of works that increased public consciousness and promoted direct action and systematic participation in everyday life. They were less interested in art objects and stylistic concerns but more with the engaging life situations and social formations. Guy Dubord is a key Situationist theorist who made a series of maps, or psycho-geographic guides of Paris by walking aimlessly around the streets and alleys of the city, turning here and there wherever the fancy took him and recorded these wanderings. The result of the map would reflect subjective, street level desires and perceptions rather than just a normal map we usually see. This activity became known as the dérive, or the dream-like drift through the city, mapping alternative itineraries and subverting dominate reading and authoritarian regimes. What is interesting about the dérive is the way in which the contingent, the ephemeral, the vague, fugitive eventfulness of spatial experience becomes foregrounded in place of the dominant, ocular gaze. If mapping had been traditionally assigned to the colonizing agency of survey and control, the Situationists were attempting to return the map to everyday life and to the unexplored, repressed topographies of the city. Earth-artist Richard Long shares little of the political and strategic agenda of the Situationists, his systematic play with maps and landscapes is very much in the same vein as dérive. Sometimes he will draw an arrow-straight line across a terrain and embark on the mission of walking it in actuality. It is important to understand that the primacy of both Long’s and the Situationist’s use of maps belongs to their performative aspects, that is to the way in which mapping directs and enacts a particular set of events that derive from a given milieu. These various practices of “Drift” use maps as instruments for establishing and aligning otherwise disparate, repressed or unavailable topographies; they are ‘set ups’ that both derive from and precipitate a series of interpretive and participatory acts. Their highly personal and constructive agency makes them quite unlike the detached work of conventional map-makers. All in all, drift discloses hidden topographies within ruling, dominant structures in an attempt to re-territorialize seemingly repressed or spent ground.
Marcel Duchamp's "Fountain"
LAYERING
Layering is to lie something or place it on or over something else to produce thickened surface. It is basically having different layers for individual and independent sections of a map and when it’s laid on top of each other it shows the relationships among the different parts. Bernard Tschumi and Rem Koolhaas were the first architects to develop this strategy. These kinds of montage and layering are also found in contemporary rock music genres. Combining different types of music with each other and trying to create new possibilities for new kind of music.
Another character of layering is its individuality the way that it can have different interpretation, uses and transformation through time. Just like a gymnasium floor that has different colour lines for marking a territory for different sports. Architect Peter Eisenman and landscape architect Laurie Olin developed a series of new composition made from whole series of local maps. It resulted in landscape and building maps to merge in to one large fractured ground-plane. A few significant events, such as the Gold Rush, the creation of the Campus and the ‘rediscovery’ of the museum led to the emergence of 7 key figures. These figures consist of discrete shapes, created by many layers. Eisenman, also created ‘scaling’ which is an important step in the manipulation of figures , which plays with a un-conventional reading of the relationship between form and intention. Tracing out repeated copies of the scaled overlays creates new analogic relationship (between the 7 key figures). The best combination is created when the overlapped layers don’t take precedence over each other and reveals new information, such as relationships and how culture organized itself. Einesman’s method of using layers are originally related to text however, others use it to anticipate future programmes which leaves little room for change. Nonetheless, both methods have the same goal of creating a heterogeneous environment. By throwing out traditional notions of centering, bounding, imparting meaning…etc, mapping becomes not only data collection and site survey but more involved on the level of design.
VOCABULARY
Subverting 1: to overturn or overthrow from the foundation 2: to pervert or corrupt by an undermining of morals, allegiance, or faith
Contingent 1 likely but not certain to happen 2: not logically necessary 3 a: happening by chance or unforeseen causes b: subject to chance or unseen effects : UNPREDICTABLE c: intended for use in circumstances not completely foreseen 4: dependent on or conditioned by something else
Ephemeral 1 : lasting one day only
Fugitive 1: running away or intending flight 2: moving from place to place 3 a: being of short duration b: difficult to grasp or retain c: likely to evaporate, deteriorate, change, fade, or disappear
Valorization 1 : to enhance or try to enhance the price, value, or status of by organized and usually governmental action
Milieu 1: the physical or social setting in which something occurs or develops
Inchoate 1: being only partly in existence or operation ; especially : imperfectly formed or formulated
Disparate 1 : containing or made up of fundamentally different and often incongruous elements 2 : markedly distinct in quality or character
Poignant: 1a: pungently pervasive b: painfully affecting the feelings 2a: deeply affecting b: designed to make an impression
Iteration 1: the action or a process of iterating or repeating: as b: a procedure in which repetition of a sequence of operations yields results successively closer to a desired result
Analogic: 1 : of, relating to, or based on analogy 2 : expressing or implying analogy
Superimposition: To lay or place (something) on or over something else.
Autonomous: having autonomy; not subject to control from outside; independent.
Engender: To procreate; propagate
No comments:
Post a Comment