voussoirs: ON AI – THE GOLDILOCKS GAME

Monday, 8 September 2025

ON AI – THE GOLDILOCKS GAME

A colleague noted that he had been asked to speak at a conference as a panel member, on the subject of AI in architecture. He expressed a few misgivings, saying that he had some reservations as he had little experience of AI in practice, having retired a few years ago. Matters these days do change quickly. He said that he would only accept the position if he had something to say.

One wondered about this. We all have something to say about AI as it creeps into everyday life in a subtle and almost unnoticed manner. Simple Google searches now involve AI’s Gemini with responses that can be seen to be somewhat generic and disinterested, obviously gathering sundry information and presenting it as though it might be learnedly authoritative: such is AI. Sometimes one gets useful information; other times one gets garbled nonsense; but how might AI have an impact on architecture?

One knows how computers can be useful for the usual mechanical tasks that they are capable of, like searching, copying, itemising, and for similar challenges like schedules and filing that one uses in architecture; but it is in presentation and design that one first confronts the presence of AI. Practice has grappled with a range of CAD developments that started years ago as simple drafting, and now has become 3D documentation allowing an enormous complexity to be described and detailed.

This has led to documentation that becomes the contractor’s tool, with the creation of a seamless link between the architect and the builder. As matters have developed, AI has crept into this world that already surprises even the creator of the file, offering opportunities for amazement beyond what anyone might have comprehended as being possible. One notices that AI slowly takes over as the master, remaining in control by having others act according to the rules it works to; and as the slave, by responding to simple verbal and written instructions to manage complex matters whenever these directions are given. One is left in an ambiguous situation of initiating processes that one has little control over.

So it is that one can not only ask AI to prepare a report on such and such, e.g., but one can also direct it to design whatever is described, and fine-tune this output with further directions, with each step offering slick, complete solutions for consideration arising from the digital void. These are drafts only in the sense that the instigator, the architect, might consider them to be interim steps; stages of development; but they all remain tempting final possibilities. One might ask AI to design a house in the style of Wright, or Corb, or whoever, (see: https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2023/10/cosplay-in-architecture.html), and then further refine the outputs with more instructions, e.g. by asking for the scheme to be less bold, or smaller and less grand, or whatever: e.g., make it blue, and it will. The refinement can go on until one gets an image that one feels ‘happy’ with. It is something like a lucky dip, with the architect taking as many ‘dips’ as he wants until he gets the prize he prefers, like a spoilt child. AI has an impact on how people act and how they see themselves – something like self-important heroes; god-like figures given apparent total control by AI, a perception which, on reflection, fades away as a misguided illusion.

The possibilities are endless. AI is becoming increasingly powerful, capable of producing complex visuals under direction, to request, in a matter of minutes, with a precision and variety of expression that empowers the fool and the genius without any discrepancy. AI is simply mathematics; the intricate matching of numbers and sequences, code that gives the ‘answer’ to the calculation it has been set. Just as ‘one plus one’ will give the answer ‘two’ on the calculator, the direction: ‘design a beach house,’ will give a beach house of some styling. After seeing this answer, one might be able to understand what is wanted or not wanted, and continue with as many steps as one desires to achieve the preferred design. They could be called the ‘Goldilocks steps’: not too big; not too small; not too . . . , etc., and so the outcome is varied to respond just as though it was: ‘now try four plus three’ when one is searching for an appropriate ‘seven’: no, how about ‘twenty-nine minus twenty-two’?

The concern with AI is one that already exists with 3D CAD: its ability to amaze the operator. Each step in AI provides a perfect graphic submission that can be altered to be a ‘hand sketch,’ a video, a water colour rendering, or whatever might be available as a programmed option achievable at the push of a button, leaving folk literally gobsmacked; astonished at the ‘mindless,’ instant outcome – ‘their work.’ The result has literally come from nowhere, just with a bit of mumbling as a maybe instruction, with no roots other than the thought as words, and the mathematics the response has been structured with. Its mystery is like magic, with schemes appearing complete before one’s very eyes: “WOW!”

The ‘learning’ process that has been adopted for AI is the same as that of the human brain: one tries, stumbles, and finally, after much corrective repetition, becomes fluent and skilful in the tasks – and then an expert. The more complex matters are developed and managed likewise, as an aggregation of simple steps that are intertwined and layered to offer an integrated awareness of a situation. AI manages things similarly in text and graphics. There is no fault here. The mechanism has been adopted and implemented, and it works well. The complication comes with other issues, some rather basic matters, and some other very subtle concerns.

The accuracy of the outcome is the most predictable problem that can be checked and corrected. All results are presented with a supreme confidence and sophistication that encourages one to see them as ‘the gospel,’ the 'right' answer, totally accurate and all-knowing, even when the whole might be an inappropriate, fanciful fabrication. One has to remain vigilant.

Then there are the more subtle matters. The human brain and its mode of operation might be able to be replicated and ‘improved’ upon by AI, but it never works alone. This human brain, (not the digital ‘brain’ we sometimes refer to as ‘thinking’), is not a simple machine that works in isolation; there are feelings, senses, assessments, reviews, judgements; flesh and blood – the body flexing rhythmically – that are involved in the brain’s operation. There is other 'knowledge' that is involved, always more than can be explained, giving moral guidance and personal responsibility a place in outcomes; shaping their role and relevance. AI creates from a void, a book of rules defined by the coding. It is a complex version of colouring by numbers on auto that is then assessed by the human brain for its degree of satisfaction that sees difference and surprise as enduring positives.

Both these situations demand that if AI is to have a responsible role in architecture, it needs to be managed as a tool, not treated as the ‘messiah.’ It has to be constantly questioned and challenged by a living, breathing integrity in order to shape meaningful outcomes. It has to be treated as the lesser gadget that can mislead and conjure up hopeless, irresponsible, perhaps alarming visions, rather than being seen as giving unforeseen, 'genius,' (c.f. genie as in mystery and magic), results. Here one thinks of that relationship between the craftsman and his work, where his beliefs and attitudes have an impact on the outcome, with these matters lingering in the thing itself, to be sensed as that known unknown. Given this, one can envisage how important the involvement of the architect and the personal rigour that comes with the individual is in the designing of a building.

We are the ones who are making AI what it is. It can be whatever we want it to be. It can be the prompting guide hinting at possibilities that need to be tested as scientific theories might be, even discarded, or the bold director of the designer, taking over completely, turning the architect into an irrelevant slave, a nobody who can be the anybody who is giving the instructions.

One thinks of the report on AI and aboriginal art. The outputs are astonishing and believable, but they come with no cultural roots; no social or historical provenance: they just are ‘lookalikes’ – the outcomes of calculations and rules; nothing more: dare one liken them to fakes? They present nothing emotionally; they hold no power other than what we might choose, in our naivety, to give them: they have no inherent value other than saying that they have been compiled from sources Aboriginal.

Here lies the issue with architecture; we could end up with a valueless architecture, with nothing to support the soul; zero Zen wholeness: merely the game of make believe; of let’s pretend we are real – mock-ups, as in theatre sets shaped for flimsy entertainment: perhaps we have it already? – see; https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2017/01/herzog-de-meuron-architecture-with-no.html. This is a serious matter. Being needs substance to be; essence. AI is so persuasive in everything it does; it is up to us to let ourselves be fooled by it or not.

We seem to have granted AI a particular place in our understanding. While we describe the use of a computer in architectural work as CAD – computer-aided design; perhaps ‘drafting’ might fit too – we do not refer to the use of the computer to respond to our questions as CAR – computer-aided responses or replies – but as AI: artificial ‘intelligence’; nor do we say that the architectural presentations and designs are not CAP – computer-aided perspectives or possibilities – but as AI in architecture: artificial intelligence, giving AI an unwarranted stature and sense, in the same way as we do when we say that a computer is ‘thinking.’ We assign intelligence to the computer, the very same piece of equipment that we use for ordinary searches, schedules, and writing, with the only difference being the programming. From the basic programs that allowed us to manage 0 and 1, then other numbers and letters, we developed programmes that could help with maths and spelling; then grammar; writing; then essays; etc.; then drawings; then design: all as the complexity of the programming developed, .01; .02; .03; etc., and the finer details and possibilities were compiled, assembled, and manipulated.

It is a situation that we cannot dismiss or criticise, for it is how we learn too. How could this be a problem? The difference is not the mechanism, it is the context. One ‘mechanism’ comes as a part of the operation of a living body, with a thinking and feeling that embodies, literally, consideration for another; for context, empathy, meaning; ethics; the other is a calculation manipulating the numbers that have been entered into the digital system that responds to the input to provide the 'answer.'

No doubt the argument can be made that a computer can be programmed to accommodate matters like symbolism and the like if the software is appropriately assembled with more and more subtle layers and versions. It may even embody ‘meaning’ itself when this has been shaped as a set of rules; but it seems that there will there always be more. Tradition says that if things ephemeral and enriching could be told, they would have been. So, can meaning be programmed? It seems unlikely, even if we might try, leaving us with the quandary of human involvement and its unknowns that machines seek to match.

AI gives some less subtle results too.

Aboriginal art best highlights this situation that remains difficult to articulate, being unsatisfactory in spite of the stunning outputs by AI when asked to present an Aboriginal painting.# Cultural relevance and intimate meaning involve something deeply relevant and personal that leaves us questioning AI ‘Aboriginal’ art. We can admire the effort, and be cajoled, but remain outraged at the sheer insult that we are expected to see this art as a style that can be replicated by anyone, anywhere; by any machine, in any place. We have to remember that computers compute; that human involvement carries more that we need to respect even if we cannot understand what this might be. Here lies the problem that can always be quashed by the debater's logic. Art, like life itself, is not the outcome of a rational dictionary reference, an analysis, or a calculation.

The craftsman of old knew that his very being was involved in the making - 'having concentrated, he set to work' - and that this essence came to be embodied in the outcome to engage and involve others in this mystery, this commitment. Once we forget this, or think the notion fanciful, as we do today, then it makes perfect sense to envisage the computer creating ‘meaningful’ aboriginal or any art - anything at all, even architecture.

Already ZHA uses AI to find, to go fishing for, an ‘interesting’ form for most projects – to see what comes up - and then to go for it.* It sounds just like a game of ‘pick a box’ - and we consider this intelligent? The process would have been mocked in earlier times when ideas were rooted in ideals, ideas, and theories; when there were no computers to play with to leave us astonished and amazed, distracted from the real state of affairs – that we are dealing with a programmed machine.

We are in danger of becoming blind outsiders, occupying a blank space while manipulating the digital void to develop some different visuals – an architecture of surprise appearances. Yet, even being aware of this situation, the argument for the benefits of AI continue to be put with much force and determination, such is its guile. Perhaps we should not be surprised, for, as René Guénon has noted, we are in an age of quantity that concerns itself only with what can be measured, or programmed, with our search for meaning lingering in the amazement of progress, revealed in the bespoke differences that AI can generate with things 'futuristic.' We need to think more carefully about how we manage AI rather than delight in its wonderment.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-08-23/calls-to-protect-indigenous-intellectual-property-from-ai-cultur/105680182

https://www.dezeen.com/2023/04/26/zaha-hadid-architects-patrik-schumacher-ai-dalle-midjourney/

Some articles to ponder:

https://theconversation.com/we-risk-a-deluge-of-ai-written-science-pushing-corporate-interests-heres-what-to-do-about-it-264606

https://www.dezeen.com/2025/08/14/seraphinne-vallora-interview-andreea-petrescu-ai-imaging/

https://share.google/cMRTKtLxLtvOvjWVG

https://share.google/EU4DLqZNHrTQ88d0X

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2025/aug/20/wa-lawyer-referred-to-regulator-after-preparing-documents-with-ai-generated-case-citations-that-did-not-exist-ntwnfb

9 SEPT 25

NOTE

One could liken AI in architecture to cruise control in a vehicle. This system cleverly keeps the speed automatically, distancing the vehicle from slower traffic, but it knows nothing of the road conditions, and can become dangerous on rough surfaces, on certain bends, on some climbs, and in various densities of traffic, a situation that is only aggravated by any combination of these factors. This computer-aided driving lacks a subtlety in its response that only manages the mathematics it has been structured with.

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ON GARDENING

I am strongly of the opinion that the possession of a quantity of plants, however good the plants may be themselves and however ample their number, does not make a garden; it only makes a collection. Having got the plants, the great thing is to use them with careful selection and definite intention. Merely having them, or having them planted unassorted in garden spaces, is only like having a box of paints from the best colourman, or, to go one step further, it is like having portions of these paints set out upon a palette. This does not constitute a picture; and it seems to me that the duty we owe our gardens and to our own bettering in our gardens is so to use plants that they shall form beautiful pictures; that, while delighting our eyes, they should be always training those eyes to a more exulted criticism; to a state of mind and artistic conscience that will not tolerate bad or careless combination or any sort of misuse of plants, but in which it becomes a point of honour to be always striving for the best. Gertrude Jekyll Colour in the Flower Garden Mitchell Beazley London 1998 – Introduction (first published 1908)

MORE IS LESS

Significantly, in the era of the ‘information revolution’, the same process is now affecting disinformation: whereas in the past it was lack of information and censorship which characterized the denial of democracy by the totalitarian state, the opposite is now the case. Disinformation is achieved by flooding TV viewers with information, with apparently contradictory data. The truth of the facts is censured by over-information, as we have seen from the press and television discussing the Balkans. The globalitarian state, built out of economic-strategic alliances, is no longer old ‘Anastasia’ with her scissors: it is Babel. Now more is less. And in some cases, less than nothing. Deliberate manipulation and unintentional accidents have become indistinguishable.

Paul Virilio Strategy of Deception Verso 2007 p.48

(first published Editions Galilee 1999)

‘That which precedes the event is not necessarily its cause,’ claims the wisdom of the ancients. p.76

As Negroponte has rightly remarked, with the ‘liberation of information’ on the Web, what is most lacking is meaning or, in other words, a context into which Internet users could put the facts and hence distinguish truth from falsehood. On the Web, where, as everyone knows, the terrorist temptation is constant and where depredations of hackers are committed with impunity in a strange state of legal indeterminacy, the difference between (true) information and (false) deception fades a little more each day. In entering the looking-glass worlds of television and home computers, we are in the end left in the position of Kinglake’s old ‘English soldiery’. As they saw it,

insofar as the battlefield presented itself to the bare eyesight of men, it had no entirety, no length, no breadth, no size, no shape and was made up of nothing . . . In such conditions, each separate gathering . . . went on fighting its own little battle in happy and advantageous ignorance of the general state of the action; nay, even very often in ignorance of the fact that any great conflict was raging.

As Albert Camus asserted: ‘When we are all guilty, that will be true democracy.’ p.78

ENCOUNTERING CONRAD

Ryszard Kapuściński The Other Verso London 2018, p. 92

At the end of his book, Kapuściński asks whether, in our encounters with others in the future:

Will we jointly wish to refer to what – as Conrad puts it - ‘speaks to our capacity for delight and wonder, to the sense of mystery surrounding our lives; to our sense of pity, and beauty, and pain; to the latent feeling of fellowship with all creation – and to the subtle but invincible conviction of solidarity that knits together the loneliness of innumerable hearts: to the solidarity of dreams, in joy, in sorrow, in aspirations, in illusions, in hope, in fear, which binds men to each other, which binds together all humanity – the dead to the living and the living to the unborn.’?*

* J. Conrad, Preface to The Nigger of the ‘Narcissus’: A Tale of the Sea, New York: W.W.Norton, 1979.

Architecture stands in between of all of these circumstances of encounter, but how does it explain itself beyond being a bespoke ‘grand design’ of a potential genius?

ON THE CULTURE OF OTHERS

Herodotus . . . wanted to know them because he understood that to know ourselves we have to know Others, who act as a mirror in which we see ourselves reflected; he knew that to understand ourselves better we have to understand Others, to compare ourselves with them, to measure ourselves against them. As a citizen of the world, he did not believe that we should isolate ourselves from Others, or slam the gates in their faces. Xenophobia, Herodotus implied, is a sickness of people who are scared, suffering an inferiority complex, terrified by the prospect of seeing themselves in the mirror of the culture of Others.

Ryszard Kapuściński The Other Verso London 2018, p. 19

CLEVER PEOPLE SELF-DOUBT

I last met him when Philomena came out back in 2013. Back then, Coogan was a bracing, combative interviewee. He saw every question as a potential ambush and moved to thwart any perceived journalistic angle. Today, though, he seems more comfortable with the process, more at ease with himself. It used to be that he felt he always had to have his guard up. Now he accepts that he can sometimes afford to let it drop. He’s middle aged and a mass of insecurity and contradictions. He suspects that, on balance, that’s not such a terrible thing to be.

“And actually I think acknowledging your own fallibility makes you a better artist and a better person,” he says in a rush. “It’s fairly obvious to me that the real wisdom lies in seeing people’s failings and trying to understand them. Because the alternative is that very childlike, Donald Trump thing of believing that admitting any weakness is fatal. What was it Bukowski said? All the clever people are full of self-doubt and all the stupid people are very confident. That’s the era we’re living in now. That’s the era I don’t want to be a part of. So all you can do is try to go about things differently. Do interesting work and don’t be a cunt.”

Coogan gulps for breath. His eyes widen and then he rocks with laughter. “There you go, that’s my big artistic statement,” he says. “Do interesting work and don’t be a cunt. Took me the best part of an hour. Got there in the end.”

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2019/jan/04/steve-coogan-interview-stan-and-ollie

HILLS

The hills bespeak a healing power and closeness to unseen help now lost in the security of modern welfare. Those who befriend the silent peaks in a lifetime's work know well their embracing strength. (p.91)

For only once is it given to man to lie in the arms of the eternal forces which give all matter form. (p.98)

Iain R Thomson Isolation Shepherd Birlinn, Edinburgh, 2007

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help.

My help cometh from the Lord, which made heaven and earth.

Psalm 121 King James Version (KJV)

SPAN

17 August 2012

This blog began as a co-operative concept. While the idea and the stimulus was generated through discussion, the blog has turned out to be an individual enterprise. SPAN stands for ‘Spence and’ in the context of others. As a word, it fitted in nicely with the idea of voussoirs - parts and pieces, complete with keystones, that could ‘span’ the gaps in understanding and communication. The word SPAN also allowed for a shared input into a blog.

Spence Jamieson is an architect and the author of these articles. The blogs show the scope of his interests.

THE IDEA

chapters and verses as architectural commentary:

the wedge to isolate, array and shape ideas; the keystone to highlight core, supporting issues. voussoirs is a concept to start an architectural discussion to span the large gap in the debate on things architectural; a bridging of the void in architectural issues by exploring considered bits and pieces. The state of the profession today is highlighted by silence and self. It is introvert and protective. Educational centres remain isolated within their own constructs, being run primarily as businesses. They put very little back into the community. They indulge themselves in their own interests and exclude contrary and different ideas and ideals. They constantly avoid any challenge on concepts or strategies that might change the plotted course. Rarely does comment ever come from this academic world into the public or any arena. Very few publications help direct the public interest. Rarely do newspapers grasp the issues and explore them. One aspect may be given space in the popular press, but architectural debates and concerns are rarely given attention. The professional institutes are doing much the same as the educational institutions. Private practice is doing likewise, offering, if anything, only its own pushy propaganda to the public. Yet there is a discussion and debate in these silences that needs a larger and more open platform. Discussion is alive and well amongst a few in at least one curry house, but the debate needs to be a broadened. voussoirs is the place for this discussion. It is a site for ideas, comment, articles, and critiques on things architectural and associated issues. It is here that matters can be aired and ideas discussed and debated without fear of the neglect and disdain that institutions and private groups and publishers give to open speaking and differing ideas.

There can be no true understanding of any idea if discussion and debate are curtailed in favour of a preferred position.

ON COMMUNICATION

. . . there has been a growing feeling of concern to solve what is now commonly called “the problem of communication.” But if one observes efforts to solve this problem, he will notice that different groups who are trying to do this are not actually able to listen to each other. As a result, the very attempt to improve communication leads frequently to yet more confusion, and the consequent sense of frustration inclines people ever further toward aggression and violence, rather than toward mutual understanding and trust.

David Bohm On Dialogue Routledge, Oxon, 1996 (2004) p.2

ON ART & METHOD

Even in relationships with inanimate objects and with nature in general, something very like communication is involved. Consider, for example, the work of an artist. Can it be properly said that the artist is expressing himself, i.e., literally “pushing outward” something that is already formed inside him? Such a description is not in fact generally accurate or adequate. Rather, what usually happens is that the first thing the artist does is only similar in certain ways to what he may have in mind. As in a conversation between two people, he sees the similarity and the difference, and from this perception something further emerges in his next action. Thus, something new is continually created that is common to the artist and the material on which he is working.

David Bohm On Dialogue Routledge, Oxon, 1996 (2004) p.4

THE NECESSITY OF THE INCOMPLETE

The early 50's and 60's is a period that is gaining interest in architectural ideas. Perhaps this is why Princeton chose to republish The Tao of Architecture. It is a beautiful little book that discusses the implications of traditional wisdom in architecture. Given the astonishing lack of direction in current architectural theory, the publication is very timely.

Amos Ih Tiao Chang, The Tao of Architecture, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1956, reprinted 2017.

p.26

Laotzu's idea of formation is heavily concerned with emptiness or non-existence. To him who regards nothing as persistent, what is essentially important in things is the possibility of becoming something, not the opportunity of remaining as something confronting deterioration. Consequently, meaningful incompletion is taken as the most desirable state of tangible being.

p.22

. . . the full meaning of existence is beyond the power of any manifestation. What appears tangible, architectural or natural, is only a means to suggest that which is lacking in appearance and existing in man's intangible understanding and aesthetic feeling.

LIVING IN IMPERMANENCE

Maybe it is a good thing for us to keep a few dreams of a house that we shall live in later, always later, so much later, in fact, that we shall not have time to achieve it. For a house that was final, one that stood in symmetrical relation to the house we were born in, would lead to thoughts – serious, sad thoughts – and not to dreams. It is better to live in a state of impermanence than in one of finality.

Gaston Bachelard The Poetics of Space

see: THE NECESSITY OF THE INCOMPLETE in the sidebar

THE REAL AND THE IMAGINARY

I prefer, by far, real islands to imaginary islands, just as I prefer prime documents to novelistic remakes. That's because the real is richer than the imagination. The real demands investigation and is an invitation to sensitive knowledge, whereas the imaginary is more often than not just a collection of stereotypes, a soup of clichés offering an infantile kind of satisfaction. Then, a relationship to the real and its resistance requires changes in thought, in ways of being, in ways of saying, it leads to a transformation of the self. Whereas imagination is nothing but compensation. There's even something horribly autistic about sitting in one spot and spinning out invention by the yard. How much more interesting an open and poetic process involving contemplation, study, movement, meditation and composition.

Kenneth White Across The Territories Travels from Orkney to Rangiroa Polygon Edinburgh 2004 p.86

VISION, CIVILIZATION & SPIRIT

The architect who combines in his being the powers of vision, of imagination, of intellect, of sympathy with human need and the power to interpret them in a language vernacular and time - - - is he who shall create poems in stone.

When you look on one of your contemporary 'good copies' of historical remains, ask yourself the question: Not what style, but what civilization is this building? And the absurdity, vulgarity, anachronism and solecism of the modern structure will be revealed to you in a most startling fashion.

It cannot for a moment be doubted that an art work to be alive, to awaken us to life, to inspire us sooner or later with its purpose, must indeed be animate with a soul, must have been breathed upon by the spirit and must breathe in turn that spirit.

Louis Sullivan

AN UNCHANGING PROFESSION

ARCHITECTURAL PRACTICE

. . . no one can relieve (the architect) from the need to rely on his own discretion, for that discretion is linked to a responsibility which belongs to no one but (the architect). It is the exercise of discretion hampered by considerations of cost, of risk, of exact justice, of conflicting interests, of uncertainty as to facts, of misunderstandings and of diverse individualities and dishonest or incapable agents, which is the chief care and preoccupation of architectural practice. To design a building, to draw and specify every part of it, and to direct its construction and see it completed with no other anxieties and dilemmas than belong to the exercise of those duties, is unknown.

H.B.Creswell The Honeywood Settlement Faber and Faber Limited London 1967 (fourth edition: first edition 1930 Architectural Press) p.128

MENDING WALL

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
'Stay where you are until our backs are turned!'
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, 'Good fences make good neighbors'.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
'Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offence.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down.' I could say 'Elves' to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me~
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Robert Frost

CATHEDRALS and SYMBOLISM

Everything is the symbolical representation of an idea. p.28

The same artists, who had to follow a strict rule when treating the history of God, could use all of their imagination when treating the ornamental: whence the blossoming of the grotesque and the original. p.38

In those days religion, drama, and art had the same aim and sought to provoke the same thoughts. They did not pretend to amuse the people; they endeavoured to teach them. p.51

This way of thinking and reasoning takes sometimes a very subtle turn. p.53

Hélène Fouré The French Cathedrals Their Symbolic Significance Bruce Humphries Inc. Publishers, Boston, 1931

THE COMPLIMENT & THE CRITIC 2

ON DEMOLISHING BUILDINGS

Nothing appears to me much more wonderful, than the remorseless way in which the educated ignorance, even of the present day, will sweep away an ancient monument, if its preservation be not absolutely consistent with immediate convenience or economy. Putting aside all antiquarian considerations, and all artistical ones, I wish that people would only consider the steps, and the weight of the following very simple argument. You allow that it is wrong to waste time, that is, your own time; but then it must be still more wrong to waste other people’s; for you have some right to your own time, but none to their’s. Well, then, if it is thus wrong to waste the time of the living, it must be still more wrong to waste the time of the dead; for the living can redeem their time, the dead cannot. But you waste the best of the time of the dead when you destroy the works they have left you; for those works they gave the best of their time, intending them for immortality.

John Ruskin Lectures on Architecture George Routledge & Sons Limited, London p.109

THE COMPLIMENT & THE CRITIC 1

How to avoid insult

But how much of nature have you in your Greek buildings? I will show you, taking for an example the best you have lately built; and, in doing so, I trust that nothing that I say will be thought to have any personal purpose, and that the architect of the building in question will forgive me; for it is just because it is a good example of the style that I think it more fair to use it for an example. If the building were a bad one of the kind, it would not be a fair instance; and I hope, therefore, that in speaking of the institution on the mound, just in progress, I shall be understood as meaning rather a compliment to its architect than otherwise. It is not his fault that we force him to build in the Greek manner.

John Ruskin Lectures on Architecture and Painting George Routledge & Sons Limited; New York: F.P.Dutton & CO - p.64-65

ON EDUCATION

'. . those who are responsible for giving instruction in the theory of architecture should be practising architects. The warning is necessary because, strange though it may seem, English schools of architecture to-day tend to be run by men who either do not practise at all, or whose practices are for them a very subsidiary spare-time occupation. Often a teaching appointment is a means by which a clever student avoids the humiliation of entering an office as a junior assistant, thus depriving himself of the only opportunity he will ever have of learning something of the practical side of his profession from the bottom upwards. There can be no doubt whatever that the teaching of theory has suffered severely as a result of this habit: and this leads me to the conclusion that no man should be permitted to teach until he is recognized by his Faculty as a Master of Theory and Practice. In other words, he should be not only a practising architect but also, what is unfortunately a much rarer specimen, a good architect.'

W.A. Eden, The Process of Architectural Tradition, Macmillian & Co. Ltd, London, 1942, p.p. 86-87

ETHICS

Thus Pugin laid the foundation stones of that strange system which dominates the nineteenth-century art criticism and is immortalised in the Seven Lamps of Architecture: the value of a building depends on the moral worth of its creator; and a building has a moral value independent of, and more important than, its esthetic value. We must not consider this emphasis on morality peculiarly Victorian. Whenever esthetic standards are lost, ethical standards rush in to fill the vacuum; for the interest in esthetics dwindles and vanishes, but the interest in ethics is eternal.

Kenneth Clark The Gothic Revival - An Essay in the History of Taste, (1^st edition Constable 1928); third edition John Murray 1962, reprinted 1974, p.149.

MODERNITY

The everyday is covered by a surface: that of modernity. News stories and the turbulent affectations of art, fashion, and event veil without ever eradicating the everyday blahs. Images, the cinema and television divert the everyday by at times offering up to its own spectacle, or sometimes the spectacle of the distinctly noneveryday; violence, death, catastrophe, the lives of kings and stars – those who we are led to believe defy everydayness. Modernity and everydayness constitute a deep structure that a critical analysis can work to uncover.

Henri Lefebvre, The Everyday and Everydayness, in Stephen Harris and Deborah Berke, Architecture of the Everyday, Princeton Architectural Press, New York, 1997, p.37.

NAMING

The simplest act of substitution is to put the name of a maker in the place of his or her work, which amounts to a paraphrase in itself. . . . All paraphrase sets aside the original: To put the name in place of the painting is to remove it from immediate consciousness; to narrate the life of an individual is an act profoundly different from looking into a painting and one that cannot be conducted simultaneously with it. To substitute a temporal narrative, already present in a name, for the physical work of art is to give up those features of the thing that were transient and unrepeatable, bound to a moment that is irrevocably ended; the unique insistence is, for the moment at least, sacrificed on the altar of continuity.

Thomas Crow, The Intelligence of Art, The University of North Carolina Press, 1999, p.1.

ON BRANDING

Branding is now the art of getting people to think what something might be rather than what it necessarily is. It's about the manipulation of the virtual reality in which so many live. The manipulators include anyone with an interest in what we might think of them - not just big companies with products to sell but political parties with votes to win, design gurus with clients to attract - anyone, in other words, acting in some kind of market. They all have an interest in controlling their appearance to make us believe it is the reality.

John Humphrys Beyond Words How Language Reveals The Way We Live Now Hodder and Stoughton. Great Britain 2006, p. 86-87

see:

http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2015/10/faking-provenance-misuse-of-meaning.html

PRECONCEPTION

Leone Huntsman Sand in Our Souls The Beach in Australian History Melbourne University Press 2001, p.16:

Thus first impressions were filtered through existing preconceptions, starkly revealed in Sir Joseph Banks's description of the people seen from Captain James Cook's Endeavour when it first touched on the Australian continent in 1770:

In the morn we . . . [discerned] 5 people who appeared through our glasses to be enormously black: so far did the prejudices which we had built on Dampier's account influence us that we fancied we could see their Colour when we could scarce distinguish whether or not they were men.

Here Banks refers to William Dampier's unfavourable accounts of the West Australian aboriginal people in published accounts of his landings in 1688 and 1699, and reveals his own awareness of the extent to which perception was influenced by expectation.

see: http://voussoirs.blogspot.com.au/2014/04/seeing-what-we-believe-idyllic-visions.html

THE MUSE - GETTING IT RIGHT

"It can be in the morning, any old time, I wake up with an idea and it starts following you around.

"You go, 'Ah that's good' because you know when it's going to work, it's going to be fruitful.

"Other times you'll get the edge of an idea and maybe it fades away or there's just no way it can be made to serve, you know?

"Then you just, it takes its time and you work on it and if necessary you work on it more than once. I'm known to work on it two or three times before you get it right."

Les Murray

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-10-02/les-murray-latest-volume-reflects-on-bunyah/6816714

http://www.lesmurray.org/

JARGON

The world seems to find it necessary to use more and more jargon in general reporting and conversation. It is especially noticed in accounts and discussions on the arts. The ABC TV arts programme presented on 7 January 2017 at 6:15pm had more jargon than usual; indeed, had more unusual expressions than previously encountered, ones that had not been heard before:

"unpicking the tapestry" of one's life;

and

looking at "the fan deck of what you do."

These reminded one of other popular fashionable expressions:

“to unpack an issue,” meaning to analyse it in some detail;

and

“to segue,” meaning to shift to a new topic or activity.

This last term is a favourite of radio announcers. The Italian word is often misspelt as ‘segway’ because of the similar phonetic sounding that is more commonly understood as Segway, the brand of a human transporter.

The parallel is interesting, as the idea of being ‘transported’ is common to both words, but it seems to hold little interest to the radio voices that appear just too cleverly happy with the use of this different, interesting expression.

Monday, 8 September 2025

ON AI – THE GOLDILOCKS GAME

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