Week 9/10
Data Dissemination of the Enigmatic Body
201202 Morgan Anna Kerber
Luis Dubios’ lecture drew me back to an exhibition at ARTECHOUSE by Refik Anadol. It was a wonderful cinematic installation which deployed machine learning algorithms on a dataset of over 300 million images to reveal the hidden connections between these moments in architectural history. Refik Anadols intent with the project was to infuse the spatial memory of places and information which hold cultural memory. Intuitively I am drawn to this piece because of the use of city imagery to suggest a flow between one era to the next. The form of each moving images series is volatile and ekoes an essence of motion and time. It is a series of images farmed off of the internet of a place. The record of the images were a snapshot of all of the lives lived within the city of NYC. Even though it has a sense of time it is most definitely not a time lapse but like Louis Dubios state, a self portrait of the city. It has a strong provocation of connection between people even though there are no faces within the imagery. The illusive spaces are placemaking even though people like myself have never actively been within all of the spaces. By tapping into the evolution of data and not the numerical representation, viewers are able to read themselves into the set with ease in multiple places instead of the singularity instance you normally experience when looking at a chart. In a sense the Luis definition of a ‘portrait’ can be drawn directly to Jean Louis Schefers Enigmatic Body text.
“The enigmatic body is what cannot be accounted for by our legitimated systems of representation.. What is elided or missing, precisely from those systems and procedures.”
The elusive nature of identity or place making, which we as architects continuously try to orchestrate, is realized through a data dissemination process that is not a pure representation but a translation of it which targets the unseen. To me this often is more effective than the diagrams which we see in the current architectural vocabulary. The BIG diagram of our current architecture lexicon is unable to communicate complexity and open ended discussion which a phenomenological representation does. A tight rigorous representation like the graph also leaves little room for expansion and open ended discussion which the enamic body is about. I tend to agree and lean into the individual interpretation of information and less into statistical analysis because I feel limited by the legitimated and accepted systems of architectural representation. Although I recognized the need for didactic communication of construction and clarity within details but I do not believe that these drawings sets can describe the ephemerality of experience of the paced which are being abstracted through line weights.
Concept Details — I am an emitter
This is where aspects of college are so important to think about when thinking about the translation of data. The Refik Anadol Machine Hallucination installation was a collage of abstract representations of data, oscillating between pixelated versions, linework, and image needed to be translated on a 30min rotation to fully communicate the complexity off the topics and be able to let viewers dwell in the information for enough time to be in. To this note I started to think about my own engnamic body relationship to my microclimate. I dwelled a lot about a relationship I know exists within my own local but is has not been quantified in a way that is graphed or quantified but never expresses the qualitative aspects of the relationship. Following my through line interest of light and the resultant of light I was intrigued to record my reactions to the thermal environment. I do not what to isolate myself from it but embrace it as much as possible keeping a temporal experience that stretches and condenses time over experiences. I began to think of myself as an emitter for the invisible field of light.
Technik — My Imprint
I recorded an amount of data in my physical environment so I recorded all of my physical and mental adjustments to my environment through the day. Since I was crossing the border to a different location I wanted to capture the differences of experience and mood within the two spaces. To record one workspace and the interactions I have with the space when I become aware of my surroundings and reactions to the comfort of the space. This aims to combine the aspects of the thermal environment with the comfort and situational personal data. My personal observation pushes toward synthesis and the internalizing for a successful interpretation of the ephemeral experiences of the space. As well as the recording, I took thermal shots of my surroundings from two consistent points within my workspaces for a very intimate experiential look.
Defined — Critical Site
I think that placing my personal experience re-mapped onto the original site is an interesting way to reimagine the effects of an experience in an alternate environment and try and read the new context with the infused energy traces of my body. The intent would be to create a series of characters of experience mapped onto a new landscape. This defamiliarization of the information to the landscape allows for me to read the information in a new light. I want to collide these two instances who experience the same light at the same time but are in completely different environments in order to see how my emission is translated in a new environment. I strated remaping them to create a morphing video but my scale of mapping is off and needs o be worked out. The first mappings are promissing though.
Happenstance — Sore Back
I noticed that my backrest on my chair got colder as the day went on as my desk got warmer. My posture affected my emission as the day went on. The invisible fields acknowledge the positioning of my body even though I do not realize they are happening.
In my Thoughts — Don Pettit.
If Aliens looked at our planet, they would not see and experience our world in the same way that we do… paraphrased Don Pettit
Resources:
Machine Hallucination, instillation by Refik Anadol, ARTECHOUSE Gallery, New York City, New York, On view 9/6/2019–2/2/2020
Donna J. Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women: The Reinvention of Nature (Intro and Chapter 9) Situated Knowledges: The Science Question in Feminism and the Privilege of Partial Perspective
The Enigmatic Body, Jean-Louise Schefer
Meeting the Universe Halfway, Karen Barad
