voussoirs

Friday, 24 May 2024

PAIRS 21 - RUNWAY OR CITY?

Two news reports came together on the one day and highlighted the parallel – no pun intended:

https://english.alarabiya.net/News/saudi-arabia/2024/05/23/saudi-arabia-s-neom-new-video-shows-rapid-progress-at-mega-project-workers-doubled

and

https://australianaviation.com.au/2024/05/council-owned-toowoomba-airport-could-close-down/.

Neom.

Toowoomba airport runway.

The first item was a report on the new Saudi city being developed, Neom; the other was a report telling of the potential closure of a local airport. Both reports came with a lead photograph; these were the images that caught the eye and caused the question to be asked: would an airport runway make a good model for a city?

Neom.

Airport runway.

Given the relationship between forms and functions, and lived experience, one can only see the disparity between the relationship, runway and city; yet Neom is being built, albeit at a length of 2.5 kilometres instead of the originally promoted 170 kilometres.

Neom.

Airport runway.

Whatever the length, this model for a city still appears to be inappropriate. History shows us that people settle into a radial pattern rather than a linear one; that linear rules are for queues rather than for the accumulation of any habitation. Radial arrangements appear to offer greater equity, and seemingly, more convenience for proximity. There is something more ‘democratic’ about this circular arrangement.

Neom.

Airport runway.

Radial city settlement pattern.

One is left wondering about the details of this linear city as one ponders the potential experience of living between two walls clad externally in what the illustrations show as sheets of reflective, fixed glass. How are the architects envisaging this civic strip? Where does one go; how? Where is one’’s front door? How does one get to it; from it; to where? How does one go to work; the shop; the park? Is the desert accessible? It would be interesting to look at the details of the infrastructure that answers these questions; but all we see is the glassy, aerial strip of building disappearing into the distance, or the ground being scraped to fit this form.

Neom.

Airport runway.

THE PROBLEM WITH GRAPHIC MESSAGING

Southern vista.

After reading a report on a new coffee shop opening up on the Queensland coastal border with New South Wales, about 20 kilometres away at Point Danger, we decided to travel there to see what it was like. The surprise was discovered only after we had enjoyed our caffeine fix and strolled across the road to enjoy the marvellous view from this headland.

Captain Cook Memorial and Lighthouse.

Tucked under the grand, refurbished, 'NSEW' monoliths, the Captain Cook Memorial and Lighthouse that marks the border with just too much muddled grandeur; and snuggled in behind some huge concrete planters, we found another new café with a far superior position, perched directly on the edge of this promontory. It was a very nicely detailed café serving coffee and snacks from early morning to mid-afternoon. It was called Black Dingo.

The glassy space had some well-considered and nicely executed plywood detailing, and had an attractive outdoor terrace space cantilevering over the edge from which the 180-degree ocean views could be enjoyed. It was an pleasant discovery that was noted; we’ll return for breakfast one day.

Northern vista.

The place came complete with its own graphics that caught the eye with some amusement, while highlighting the potential problem with all graphics: the unintended message. The logo was a grey image of what one was encouraged to read as a dingo, (a 'black dog' might have been too depressing?), with the letters QLD in front of it, and NSW behind it. One could get the message immediately: this cafe sat on the border between Queensland and New South Wales. The only problem was that the location of the NSW lettering made it look as though the reference could be to a dog’s turd.

Here one’s reasoning and manners might put such an interpretation aside without any further thought, but these states are serious rivals, especially in sport. Rugby league football ‘State of Origin’ games are regularly played with a serious intent to prove one State better than the other; superior. In this context, these States frequently refer to each other with rudely crude, disparaging, insulting names: so it is easy for a Queenslander to read the message as referring to NSW as being a ‘dog’s turd.’

Southern vista.

It was indeed all a little depressing. One does need to be more careful with arty outcomes and their messaging.

Saturday, 11 May 2024

MORE ON SYDNEY MODERN & AI

Nearly one-and-a-half years have passed since the grand opening on 3 December 2022 of what was called ‘Sydney Modern’ – the $344 million extension to the Art Gallery of New South Wales designed by SANAA. Unusually, the gallery extension was not named when opened. One presumed that most of the catchy acronyms like MoMA and GOMA have been used up by other galleries across the world, leaving the Art Gallery of New South Wales management with a problem, and its own awkward AGNSW shambles that makes no phonetic sense. In the absence of any decision on the name, the gallery became known colloquially as ‘Sydney Modern.’ A review of the gallery was written at the time: see – https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2023/02/thoughts-on-sydney-modern.html.

Shortly after this, ChatGPT became available as an AI tool for all to use. The idea came: why not ‘ask’* ChatGPT to write a review of Sydney Modern, just as a trial. One could compare the AI result with one’s own writing. So the words: ‘Write a review of Sydney Modern,’ were typed into the AI site, and the button was pressed. The result came in about twenty seconds – or it might have been less: the images here show the text on the mobile phone.

See text below.

This exercise showed up one thing: that this new gallery had become known, in a very short time, as ‘Sydney Modern’ by all. The AI site never paused with any ‘uncertainty’ or muddled codes about this matter; it simply put together words that said something about the new project. Looking at the text, one sees words that read as somewhat ‘mealy-mouthed.’ The dictionary helps us explain: avoiding the use of direct, critical, and plain language, as from timidity, excessive delicacy, or hypocrisy; inclined to mince words; insincere, devious, or compromising.

The words appear hesitant, making what looks like a concentrated effort to be right, polite, using catch phrases as blurb pieced together, as if taken from a tourist brochure, or collected as generic statements, general, almost apologetic words that have no idea about the particular subject being referenced, or any of the specifics involved. One could say that the AI review lacks rigour and substance; that it has none of the authority of experience. It looks to be structured on a phantom schedule, annotating some cliché dot points, offering a sundry gathering of these bits and pieces as ‘a review.’ The whole is puny: poor in quality, amount, and size. AI seems to be more of a threat from poor outcomes concealed in exuberant hype, and our hopeful belief in it, than anything else.

Now, at last, it has been announced that a name has finally been decided, for both the new and the old galleries:

Art Gallery of NSW’s $344m building extension finally named more than a year after it opened

Newer building named Naala Badu, meaning ‘seeing waters’ in the Dharug language, while older building named Naala Nura, or ‘seeing country.’

https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2024/apr/16/art-gallery-nsw-new-building-naala-badu-naala-nura-dharug-language-meaning#:~:text=The%20gallery%2C%20which%20has%20been,out%20on%20to%20Sydney%20Harbour. Can one really see significant water from these galleries; does one see country?

One has to wonder: why has the awkward AGNSW been dropped in favour of these two puzzling First Nation names? Why was ‘Sydney Modern’ not good enough? It seemed to catch on very quickly. Why do aboriginal names get selected when their soundings are not easy to correlate with grand institutional references?# Will Naala Nura ever match the authority of MoMA, or Tate Modern? Can Naala Badu do anything better? The intentions appear good; but is this all just a cultural cringe, a hypocrisy that pretends to care about true recognition and assimilation, but only in words? One hears a “Na-na, na, na-na” rhythm that has a mocking chant to it rather than any naming of a venerable art gallery. Is this naming the outcome of a group of indulgent enthusiasts sitting around a table, encouraging each other’s ‘genius’ suggestions without any critical overview? Did no one ever ask what the man in the street might make of this naming in classic, clever, Aussie-larrikin slang? Was there not even a joke mentioning ‘going to Timbuktu’?^

Seeing Waters?

Seeing Country?

The repeated phrases about acknowledging country etc., etc., are proudly spruiked at nearly every opening or introduction; and aboriginal place names are now used in the news, and on weather maps too, but really nothing changes. Indeed, it is worse: when the population is asked to agree to give a ‘Voice’ to the aboriginal population, just the right to be listened to, nothing else, astonishingly the vote goes against this idea, all while these pitiful, self-conscious acknowledgements and namings - e.g. “This is Cammeraigal country” - continue, appearing to be both insincere and devious; lacking true rigour and commitment; just shrouding an intent to do nothing about ‘country’ or its people who, perhaps hopefully, might be placated by such hollow gestures. The use of the aboriginal names for the galleries has a cringing feeling about it: one could say that there is nothing ‘native’ or necessary about this labelling. “I’m going to go to Naala Badu,” sounds like a phrase that comes with the cynical, sarcastic, Aussie retort: “Ya might as well go ta . . . .” - think, at best, Timbuktu; and 'snarly' comes to mind as well. The sounds lack authority and substance to the western ear; they almost complain. The meanings might be poetic: ‘seeing waters’ and ‘seeing country,’ but does it make sense to name a place in this way, either in English or in the Dharug language? It all appears very shallow; perhaps it is just an effort to be seen to be ‘politically proper’? Might this increase funding for these galleries?

~~Sydney Modern~~ - Naadla Badu

The closest parallel one can think of is the arts theatre building in Lerwick, Shetland. It is named ‘The Mareel’ – mareel being the name in Shetland dialect for the phosphorescence seen on the sea, especially so during autumn nights - the sheen of light on water: one might say ‘seeing waters.’ With the Nordic/Icelandic roots, the sound ‘mareel’ settles easily on the ear, and the name carries some substance in its new punchy title, as it maintains its poetic reference which lingers nicely with the location: the building sits right on the waterfront on Lerwick harbour, opposite Bressay Island.

The Mareel, Lerwick:

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

One can only remain uneasy with the twin, double-syllable, First Nation names that collect four soundings into each title; is this the problem: too sing-song? Shetland’s working sheep dogs were named with single-syllable words so that commands would be crisp and certain: e.g., Fleece; Sam; Max; Jack. Perhaps a name needs a clear, brisk snap with a sharp certainty to sound right, to be memorable, to hold meaning in its reference in order to establish a belief in itself and what it stands for?

What is interesting is that this SANAA building itself appears uncertain; it is still being illustrated from drone shots. It appears as though this is the only identity it has. It was argued before - in https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2023/02/thoughts-on-sydney-modern.html – that the building would never hold the identity, the authority, of the Sydney Opera House, even though the media hype claimed otherwise. One supposes that one has to get something outstanding from an iconic expenditure. Here, yet again in this current media release, we see the building photographed from on high, highlighting the obvious weakness as it begs the question: what does it look like from ground level?

Naala Badu from above:

the words sound like a foreign country, perhaps as strange as the vision itself?

The images of the new SANAA gallery seem to struggle for cohesion and identity when not taken from a drone. From the air, one sees layers underlining the context of Sydney’s dramatic skyline and harbour; an interleaving that becomes a criss-crossing of planes from higher above; but at eye level, one sees a certain blandness – planes and posts framing nothing but uncertain white voids, lacking the confidence and strength one sees in a Meis building. Naala Badu – is it ‘The Naala Badu,’ and does one add ‘Art Gallery’ after this or not? - seems to have no public image that can be grasped from eye level; and there is now nothing in the sing-song name either. As noted previously, usually a graphic is developed to promote such a place. What will be the graphic image for Naala Nura and Naala Badu? It can hardly be the colonial frontage of the AGNSW! Perhaps the current graphic might turn the angles into boomerangs? - it would nearly be as crass as the naming.

The interior seems as uncertain as the exterior in deciding what it wants to be.

Might boomerangs be a better match with the new names?

Why not use boomerangs in the graphic above?

Even the section appears ephemeral.

Will this new interest in things aboriginal in Australia now give its First Nation members a ‘Voice,’ or is all of this ‘feel-good’ aboriginal naming just an artful scheming to pretend we love ‘country’ and its people; that we really, truly care? - !! ‘Humbug!’ sounds loud in the silence which we are forcing on our First Nations people – “You have no say in this country.” What might AI say? We’ll have to put the instruction: Write a review of Naala Badu, and find out.# One fears that it will be as poor as the first review on Sydney Modern.

Perhaps this mishmash in naming can be seen to be stimulated by that of the identity of the new building itself that seeks to claim far more than it appears to offer.

AI language always refers to the digital, programmed system as though it might be human: see note below on the instruction to write a review, where the response refers to an ‘I’ that is mere code, nothing human at all.

This was done on the original AI site, ChatGPT, but a direction was given to download the very latest AskAI site. The site was downloaded and the words were typed in; ten seconds later some words appeared. The response is very telling and says much about the problem with the new name:

I’m sorry, but I don’t have any information about “Naala Badu.” It seems like you might be referring to something specific. Could you please provide more details or context so that I can better assist you?

What can one say but express alarm and concern: the site responds as if it might be a real, living, thinking individual: I’m sorry, but I don’t . . ; and, surprisingly, the new name of ‘Sydney Modern’ which was the original name that was immediately recognised, means nothing. The suggestion is that it might be referring to something specific but it has no information at all, and seeks guidance to give it a clue. Who would have guessed that it might be an art gallery; not just any old place, but the prestigious Art Gallery of New South Wales? There was no such uncertainty with Sydney Modern.

The change to this First Nations name seems to have immediate problems with recognition, let alone being seen as an apologetic cringe that has no intention of changing anything to do with First Nations people, and their country. It all looks very much like an imposing, new Colonialism operating with the idea that apparent inclusion will allow power to be maintained, which is not good. One can see it as a scheming to hold the “No Voice” stance, where the cunning argument is that we are including you; that we respect you.

There is yet another problem with the new names: Googling Naala, the common portion of the new identities, one discovers that this is the name of a singer - see: https://www.instagram.com/naalaofficial/ - and that it is an acronym for the NORTH AMERICAN AUSTRALIAN LAWYERS ALLIANCE. It also means: Not An Average Legal Adviser, and has its own graphic, and references a healing centre too. This is not a good start; did anybody check? One might say: "Join the queue."

Naala, singer.

Gordon Spicer has already made his comment online:

I haven't heard of that name change.

Does that mean it will only show Aboriginal art, or is it political revenge for the NO VOTE last year?

It's pathetic how we are caving in to minority woke activists.

Spineless NSW Government?

NOTE:

This is not the first time a familiar place has had its name changed to the indigenous title. Bombay has become Mumbai; Ceylon, Sri Lanka; Ayers Rock, Uluru; and, more recently, Fraser Island has been named K’gari. All of the first three noted here have been successful, with the names easily slipping into colloquial chat. The last name has yet to be tested, but there seems no problem with this almost cryptic, friendly title. The lingering issues with the new gallery names remain the strong aboriginal referencing for an international display, and the twin syllables of the two words that begin telling a story in song and can almost be seen to reference themselves as an echo rather than sounding as a place: Naala Badu and Naala Nura will have to prove themselves on the street. It seems as though there might be some difficulty as the sounds appear to be saying something unknown in a foreign tongue, something secret – which they are; but discovering that this is ‘seeing waters’ and ‘seeing country’ may leave one puzzled with such poetics when the idea was to be there to ‘see art.’ The further complication is the twinness that can, with its structure and sounding, easily be wrongly assumed to be a Christian name and a surname, when it is not. The whole appears very confusing. Might the galleries eventually come to be known as The Badu and The Nura? It might be better than establishing a confusing, mystic puzzle in rhythmic sound, and could hold some mythic sense in place and style with the old gallery being the solid ‘country,’ with the new more ephemeral extension being the surrounding ‘waters’ - wishy-washy comes to mind. Perhaps the whole complex might eventually become the Nura Badu Art Gallery of New South Wales, and come to be known as the more friendly, more encompassing acronym: ‘the NuBa.’ The only problem here is that this is the name of the indigenous inhabitants of central Sudan, and is close to 'Uber.' Such are the problems of acronyms: see - https://voussoirs.blogspot.com/2020/02/aaca-graphics-questions-and-answers.html Maybe the matter will sort itself out with time?

Naala Nura

Naala Badu

THE 'SYDNEY MODERN' AI REVIEW

5 June 2024

DRONE GALLERY

This report on the gallery is interesting, as it confirms that the promotional image of the gallery is the photograph taken from the drone: see -

https://www.smh.com.au/culture/art-and-design/art-gallery-wins-more-funding-faces-more-job-cuts-in-tough-nsw-budget-20240531-p5jic7.html

The new gallery apparently has no identifying presence for the pedestrian, a circumstance that makes the earlier hype about it becoming the ‘new opera house,’ pure farce; true hopeful thinking. It seems that the aim of the PR was to prove that the $344 million had been well spent!

What is interesting is that this article is illustrated with both an aerial image of the new gallery, and an image of the old, as if the drone shot needs some real support to be read for what it is. It seems that it is only the old gallery that has the identity - the classical entry.

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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.