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Data Dump 2.5

I realize that I’ve been dumping all my tabs onto Facebook, in hopes of developing some intrigue, maybe starting a little bit of conversation, sharing, and to (truthfully) shape my virtual persona. 

I was going to carry out these thoughts and musings there, but I don’t think that the format really resonates or is as applicable as this. Ultimately, I miss having discursive conversation and I feel the need to lay my interests out to understand them better. So this should be a good project for me..

1. Your Esophagus Is A River

alimentary (ăl′ə-mĕn′tə-rē, -trē) 

adj.

1. Concerned with food, nutrition, or digestion.

2. Providing nourishment.

I learned this word when I tried to read a book about the political implications and history of water. It ended up being a little heavy and repetitive on the historical section at the beginning of the book and I had a hard time latching on before the book was due at the library. Nonetheless, I appreciated the way it likened body to body. Generally, it’s used when speaking about the esophagus and I liked linking the notion of that short essential distance with a grander one.

2.“be tender with yourself.” - MHYSA

So I feel like it’s my cultural duty to grasp, examine, and be aware of the topic of this article “Black Femme Sci-Fi and Unapologetic Softness”

It’s something that can be a little bit difficult to do, 1. because my peer group is not IRL | 2. because I have a complicated relationship with my identity like everyone else | 3. It can feel a little played out, because coverage of the topic can be redundant in taking the time to explain the fact that it’s reasonable and completely necessary to imagine a future with Black people in it.

That being said, I feel like beating that drum is important.

And that being said, I wonder how often Sci-Fi is a mis-used term when Contemporary may be more appropriate. But maybe I’m just bitter, and maybe I’d just like to live in a world that doesn’t deem it far fetched or revolutionary that Black Femmes have a vision of the future, Or that they can make work that doesn't directly reference their “place” in a hegemonic patriarchal power structure.. That there is voice and imagination outside of that and it’s not fictitious. But maybe that’s really Black Femme Sci-Fi of me and I’m just tired of reading about it and would rather push forward / move on.

Regardless, RAFiA’s work above resonated with me and I’m down for its starkness.

3. Your Place or Mine?

 ^^ “A Line Made By Walking” - Richard Long ^^

This is a work I came across the other day and it touched on some subjects that I’ve been interested in recently.

Richard Long is a British artist born in 1945 that has a portfolio that has focuses on Land Art, Performance, and Walking.

When I think about those subjects, I generally first think of Ana Mendieta (1948) for Performance/ Body/ Land and Francis Alÿs for Performance/ Walking.

There are 3 reoccurring themes that I’d like to address in reference to this piece.

1. Boundaries. How do we create them and where do they live? Are they mapped? Are they visible? How do they effect and affect? How do they change over time? Who decides that they’re there? Who draws the line?

2. Ecological Art. This article in Hyperallergic has some nice nuggets and references in it and relates well to the class I’m taking about Media and the Environment. It asks, as artists, how can we move beyond the notion that Land is material and that the Natural world is something that can be molded at our whim. We are in a moment where that thought process is not fruitful to perpetuate. What kind of relationships can we rekindle with the Earth to treat it fairly? How can we convey this way of thinking to an audience? What kind of action is most needed? Generally, an understanding or partnership with Science is paramount.

3. Perceived importance based on Origin. It could be read that Richard Long’s effect on the Land could have direct connotations with his British origins. Because he comes from a place that has participated as a forceful power in colonial efforts, his mark on the land is read differently than Ana Mendieta’s. Ana was from Cuba and fled to America as a child at the beginning of Castro’s regime. Both artists were experimenting with popular forms in their epoch, but Mendieta’s exhibits content that haunts. Perhaps my perception is effected by the cannon and I assume that Long’s Formal presentations are in direct response to other white male artists of the era. That Mendieta’s works feel more visceral because of my reading of her oppression.. I’m not sure if this is fair, but I feel it in my response, and I struggle with it as many others do as a sociopolitical symptom on a day to day basis. I’m not sure it’s reasonable, I recognize my bias, but I’m going to leave it there for now because this paragraph is getting long.

4. Your Place

^^ space given towards ‘minority’ consideration ^^

This article, “Place-making and the Politics of Belonging and Dis-Belonging” has some gems worth ruminating on. 

The last time I researched Belonging, it was in the context of Mental Health on college campuses. The effects of whether someone feels like they have a person to talk to, a shared public space that they’re welcome in, and access to needed resources can be a matter of life and death in a stressful environment that could otherwise be isolating.

This is very easily translated into ideas of city planning and development.

In my recent trips to Denver, it is very clear how things can fall apart and trust quickly erodes when part of the public feels that their being told that they don’t belong. This can be contentious when artists and designers are asked to “improve” or “create” these spaces. In those moments, it seems necessary to use your voice to identify holes in the process.

“Placemaking in city/neighborhood spaces enacts identity and activities that allow personal memories, cultural histories, imagination, and feelings to enliven the sense of “belonging” through human and spatial relationships. But a political understanding of who is in and who is out is also central to civic vitality. How do current Creative Placemaking practices support this knowledge?”

5. Your Job

^^ “Neighbours” by Norman McLaren. NFB. Every time I try to share this online it gets no love and it makes me think they’re up to something ^^

This article is a good extension of the one before: The Afterlife: Art for Art’s Sake in the Experience Economy. 

It underlines the artist’s true role and what happens when it gets subsumed by corporate interest. What are the effects of turning a verb into a noun? When “artist” as questioning, reactive, and gritty becomes “creative”- subservient, quiet, fabricator for a paycheck.

Particularly this piece is in conversation with the development of Portland. But everyone knows all too well that it is not limited to that space. What jobs are you willing to take? How much effort are you willing to put into holding them accountable? What will you say in the face of “... those not willing to get vulnerable or self-reflexive. Those not willing to get hurt when confronting the pain of others, or willing to empathize vigorously enough wherein that pain is, however much possible, a shared experience.”

A good reminder that “we are the leaders we’ve been waiting for.” An empowering read, and helpful to me in this moment of finding balance in work and life.

6. Your Verbs

Speaking of what we can do as artists and as people, this New Yorker article: Is There Any Point to Protesting? shines light on whether recent actions have been effective, how they could be, and if that’s even the point.

I’ve struggled with contributing to protests, marches, etc and I feel like I have better words to describe how I feel:

I’ve never gotten what I’ve wanted by complaining. I’ve done better by calmly explaining my position and being part of organizing a solution. I’m not extremely reactionary or combative. Though I’ve come a long way in speaking my mind from the shy girl who hid behind her mother.

I’ve been scared to participate as a brown woman. Fearing someone else will not respect my body as much as I require.

But to be in a procession, which I last felt at Zozobra-- to be moving towards something with others en mass.. that has a special quality and sensation to it. 

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Expectations of Space

vv ^^ what it looks like to mean business ^^ vv

This is the entryway to his water temple. What’s most important here is the sensation of place. What happens when our normalcy is suspended and we submerge into a narrow and unusual space. What happens afterward is that we become prepared for anything because we are already out of our comfort zone. Somehow breathing underwater and ready for another miracle.

This is another work of Ando’s, the Benesse House. I thought you would be particularly fond of it. Similar things have come up in our discussions about physical space, but I’d like to address our recent ventures into the virtual.

The Game (...sry)

So what I’ve mentioned before about the suspension of belief is something that I find most groundbreaking and useful in first person adventure/puzzle games. Here, I’m specifically speaking of online gaming to jump ahead, but obviously there are plenty of other examples (i.e Game of Thrones) where expecting the unexpected allows you to advance.

I’ll take you through a short tour of my gaming history, beginning with

Cheater by ne0_shiny

Fundamentally, what I’d like to point out is that this breed of game establishes a language or a system of belief, understanding, or “rules” and then challenges you by anticipating your line of logic and forcing you to disrupt it to win.

now, we could liken this to a number of things in the real world...

but often the message in pop culture is that cheater’s never prosper.

In reality (whichever one), it is useful to think outside the box. It’s called creativity, and the more that you can exercise that muscle, ideally, the more diverse and rich the pool of ideas available. Additionally, when things are difficult to achieve or require a shift perception, they are more memorable and thus more effective. 

 Anti-Chamber

I’ll let the video speak mostly for itself, but ultimately, Anti-Chamber is an example and expansion of the experience of Cheater into a 3D virtual space.

An important thing to address here is the navigation of space, as we have developed overtime, the presence and perception of virtual space has shifted.

Crimson Room

This escape-the-room idea has been expanded and manipulated with different control mechanisms and rules to include other works like--

Example 4: Portal 1 & 2 

What is important here is the differentiating amounts of narrative, information provided to the user, and the mechanisms in which the user gains information and is rewarded for it.

SO what you’ll notice is that over time, the graphics and representations of space have gotten dramatically better.

This is where we have an opportunity to help create the next sensations and versions of these logic breaking storytelling and experience with the VIVE.

Let’s return again Tadao Ando and his Temple’s Interior:

We now have the opportunity to build and experience places like this by only lifting our fingers.

Additionally, we can break our and others sense of space like the paintings and installations of Damien Gilley

Ultimately, this was mostly for inspiration and motivation and since we’re seeing each other a lot more now, to serve as a document of progress in our ideation and trajectory. Now it’s your turn.

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Ants Circumambulate 

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The Concrete

By definition, “concrete” means:

- existing in a material or physical form; real or solid; not abstract.

- specific; definite.

Moving forward, we’ve discussed the need to further form and develop our ideas into less conceptual and more practical means. That being said, I would like to build off of our former posts while infusing some new sources of inspiration and posing a few questions to grow on. I’ve also started commenting on our former posts and maybe we can carry out brief conversations in the notes [ It would be helpful if we signed them like this or something (O) for legibility ]

We’ve discussed your interest in using colored concrete to create the dome shape. In the production of The Eternal Return, it seems that the materials used to create forms were less hefty or permenant, and I wonder weather this was due to cost or knowledge or experience (Steel Frames, Mesh and Scratch Exterior). We will need to research the most cost/effective way to go about this.

(oh, turns out its really cheap.. oh my god I don’t want to lift it though)

Suffice to say, what we’ve seen is that concrete can be very controlled and carries a sensation of weight and stability that interests me. Frank Lloyd Wright’s Textile houses carry this sort of repetitive texture that I’ve been envisioning, though I would like to address several alternative or potential ways we could use or imagine concrete.

I’d like to start with the two structures that brought me to this train of thought:

The tōrō ( lantern which should be investigated more in depth, for its variety of forms and materials ~~ hexagonal lantern = good option for point that leads to many pathways) 

(the last one obviously isnt concrete, but reminds me of large buddhist prayer wheels and I like it a lot.)

And Torii ( marker of Shinto shrine that acknowledges the transition from the profane to the sacred )

(seeing ^^this^^ structure makes me think of Nordic Runes and wonder if I should delve a little more in their direction)

So, following are a variety of different concrete investigations that I’ve culled that could bring some inspiration and quell thoughts for the future:

Jamie North’s bio-impregnanted concrete :

Eduardo Chillida’s embodied spaces:

Anish Kapoor’s Cement Prints

Armand Vailliancourt’s Vailliancourt Fountian

David Umemoto’s Brutalist Modular Cities

(This atmosphere is something that I’m really going for.. cool, airy, and solid with very complex navigation of space)

Mike Nelson’s 408 Tons of Imperfect Geometry

Rachel Whiteread’s Cast Interiors:

Lastly, this un-cited thing that is really cool:

I could go on and on, but ultimately, I’d like to point out that there is variety to this medium’s potential texture. It manipulates space very well and I believe that it brings with a potential atmosphere that when correctly placed and coerced, provides a sensation that has a lot of spiritual appeal for me.

I promise I’ll get to describing specifically what I’m interested in soon, but I feel like I have to direct towards specific sensations and developments of space (especially especially like David Umemoto’s Cities) to adequately convey what I mean.

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The pilgrimage to circumabulate Mt. Kailash, as depicted by Werner Herzog’s Wheel of Time Tibetan Buddhists -- clockwise Böns - counterclockwise  “ Some pilgrims believe that the entire walk around Kailash should be made in a single day, which is not considered an easy task. A person in good shape walking fast would take perhaps 15 hours to complete the 52 km trek. Some of the devout do accomplish this feat, little daunted by the uneven terrain,altitude sickness and harsh conditions faced in the process. Indeed, other pilgrims venture a much more demanding regimen, performing body-lengthprostrations over the entire length of the circumambulation: The pilgrim bends down, kneels, prostrates full-length, makes a mark with his fingers, rises to his knees, prays, and then crawls forward on hands and knees to the mark made by his/her fingers before repeating the process. It requires at least four weeks of physical endurance to perform the circumambulation while following this regimen. “

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And on with what I hope to avoid filing under “n” for “non sequitur”

Not to merely glance (glass?) over your developing themes of mirrors and reflection, or any of the other content of your last post, but it’s what...like 5 am, and I’ve been drinking black tea and scrutinizing the minutia of CV layouts for some time now, so no chance of a well researched post or reply presently. I did, however just see a post about this concrete work of F.L. Wright’s, and well...it seems to tie back nicely to some of my earlier posts.  

from Frank Lloyd Wright's Textile Houses

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Dramatic music aside, this is hardly a response to your recent post. Sin embargo, while on the subject of the theatrical vs the cinematic, and the agency of the individual, I thought I might as well share this. Kubrick’s use of perspective was conscious inspiration for Sarah and I while working on the Charter Office. The parallels should be obvious, with some explicit nods. 

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If I was to invest a great deal of time into learning any software at the moment, it would probably be Unity.

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Manners of Procession

We are moved. We move together.

Large groups of people have historically had a willingness to transport themselves for the purposes of belief.

Million Man March, 2015 / March on Washington, 1963

“The Funeral Procession” - T. Coleman (This is a print that has been in my aunt’s house for as long as I can remember)

The need to travel to pay homage has been monopolized on and accounted for by “The Church” since the eruption of their spatial permanence.

To quickly summarize, churches offered the promise of blessed relics, people would travel from far and wide to visit them and make offerings to the canonized deity, more visits meant more patronage and money for the church, the design of religious space shifted over time to accommodate simultaneous religious practice (mass) and pilgrimage (ambulation of the service to see relics).

Ultimately, this has been mentioned to bring about the points-- 1. As a species, we like to circumambulate / 2. Space and form must accommodate for the movement of the audience. This isn’t a purely Christian or Catholic acknowledgement.

This is the Kabba. The most circumambulated structure in the world.

--Examples of this with other religious structures exist, but more on that later--

In an earlier post, I mentioned that the Theatrical differs from the Cinematic.

These are several works by Robert Morris. To offer another brief art historical summary-- In the wake of modernist expression, it became of the upmost importance for some artists to break from the tradition that art could exist in totality by itself. This oppositional notion posed that the viewer must be present to experience the work, and by extension, the viewer’s experience of the object was more the artwork than the formal object itself. This requires the acknowledgment of a particular and unique space and time, gives autonomy to the viewer, and is fundamental to the development of ideas that support installation art. This idea is known as the “Theatricality of Space”.

Here is another example of Morris’ work, of which I am particularly fond:

Here, we see play with phenomenons of perception in space and the active role of the individual.

((Also, if you get a chance, check out his explorations with felt. His investigations in materiality is super choice)).

I mentioned that the Theatrical differs from the Cinematic.

Within the Theatrical, the individual has agency and mobility.

The Cinema is an experience where you let facts wash over you. You absorb visual data that is presented in the same way to anyone else and you interpret it with an individual, but controlled scope of understanding.

Experience these things: (couldn’t pick one, but I made sure they were short)

(from one of my favorites - Wong Kar Wei’s “In the Mood for Love”)

(beautiful excerpt from Lars Von Trier’s “Nymphomaniac”)

You’ll notice that each of these clips utilizes different techniques, shots, and pacing. The way the information is delivered to you varies. It is a clue driven presentation of narrative. Extremely difficult and masterful storytelling, but the viewer is stagnant both physically and somewhat mentally.

How can we move beyond this? As we’ve noticed with Robert Morris, to ignite the viewer, it is necessary to integrate sensation and the acknowledge individual perspective.

Bare with me, but this is one of my all time favorite things and I believe it is a welcome link in this chain of thought:

We feel tension. We feel acknowledged. The fourth wall is non-existent.

These facts are evident, but the agency of the viewer is still bound by the choices of the director. To extend one step further, we must consider other ways that people now navigate through different spaces and do so in droves.

The controlled autonomy of the video game

Video games enact both theatrical and cinematic qualities to enhance user experience. More control is given to the user within a prescribed universe and the decision-making part of the brain is re-ignited, as in Morris’ “Labyrinth.”

See here in an example clip from the user experience of Mirror’s Edge:

Here the user moves through a controlled virtual space.

At this moment, I would like to raise 2 points of criticism about our installation at MeowWolf.

1. We are manifesting physical space that encompasses similar opportunities as a video game. My projection was a easter-egg cut-scene in the navigation of your room. We are operating in Expanded Cinema. We acknowledge the physicality of light and space, but my piece is (by necessity and assignment) very narrative driven. The exclusive autonomy that the viewer has is their presence and participation. Ultimately, the information and visual content of my work has a limited effect on them because it is dryly absorbed. I agree with the requirement to compel a viewer to perform an action to experience a work, but I feel the individual (rather than the viewer) may need more attention as an aware corporeal being.

2. You mentioned before that you had an experience that a family felt too much like they were inside of a video game. This my be true, but ultimately, the issue is that it was overstimulating.

--- I would like to finish this post with the open ended question that I will also attempt to reconcile: How can we create a reverent user experience while incorporating the variety of spaces that individuals now exist in, and how can we best deliver autonomy AND narrative (or notion) successfully?

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Steeple framing study, round 1.

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An Inspired Hell

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Space Rites

Space Rites was an installation that New Orleans Airlift did in the Lower 9th Ward IN 2014. This show is of special importance to me, personally because it was my introduction to both the work and people of Airlift.  This was predominantly Taylor Shepherd’s baby, and when I showed up Taylor was the only person at St. Maurice church trying to figure out how he was going to stack a few dozen cathode ray televisions on a marble altar piece. His gratitude for me being there to enthusiastically build this thing with him all day was pretty startling at times. He’s like this warm-hearted, over-grown boy who is both brilliant and enthusiastic. 

Taylor Shepherd, photo by The New Orleans Advocate

This trip to New Orleans, was only a week during what amounted to a city-wide install period during the lead up to the opening of Prospect 3 (the 2014 "Biennial"). That week, I split my time between volunteering with Taylor on Space Rites a couple of days, and getting paid to do preparatory work for Pelican Bomb -- an arts publication who were currating a show called Foodways.

New Orleans Airlift presented Space Rites, a wildly diverse concert series, at the deconsecrated St. Maurice Church in the Lower 9th Ward. Inside artist Taylor Lee Shepherd's interactive sound installation, Altarpiece, made from over 50 rewired televisions, formed a giant, sound-responsive altar. Acting as invented oscilloscopes, the televisions reflected every sound that passed through the space in hypnotic patterns of light.

from New Orleans Airlift's page The setting, St. Maurice Church in the Lower 9, was built in 1857. There are a lot of holes in my history of this building, but I know that it is now owned by a single individual, and that a caretaker lives on the premisis to watch over it. This is a picture of a former altar piece: And with Taylors modifications: These tiles are made of cardboard and glued to the ceiling. Some of them have fallen due to the humidity. I'm not sure when they were installed, but the sound great, and are impossible to discern as cardboard at that distance. As Space Rites, the space served as a venue for a series of events in the badly damaged Lower 9th Ward, which has made a slow comeback post Katrina, and now battles the creep of gentrification while, at least as of the time I lived there in 2014-2015, still riddled with derelict and abandoned buildings and without a grocery store, school, or other essential community staples. A series of higher profile concerts were hosted in the space which included performers such as Nels Cline from Wilco, and New Orleans musician Quintron. These were balanced either by the inclusion of local community groups.

The final performance brought members of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra brass section into collaboration with the Van Hahn Lion Dance team from New Orleans East.This traditional Vietnamese dance team features two-person performers in Lion costumes alongside drummers.

Photo by Leo Brown On Sunday mornings, a weekly sermon was given in the space by Reverend Duplessis, of Mt. Nebo Bible Baptist Church.

Every Sunday visitors could hear and see his voice as he conducted his services through the oscilloscope altar - or what he called "Resurrection Technology." The Reverend's Lower 9th Ward congregation has been displaced since Katrina and currently holds services in his home. As his congregation continues rebuilding their own church nearly ten years after the storm, the Reverend used this moment to reach new audiences from an unusual pulpit.

Other community events, like the Mosquito Supper Club's Fais do-do and dinner party. To complete the circle of my relationship with this show, while Taylor was working on the City Park Music Box show in March and April of last year, he received an offer to buy the altarpiece from a major technology company in the Bay. He asked me and one other person to do the deinstall. I was fortunate enough to get to both put this piece up and take it down.

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Let’s Face It -- seating in Quaker meeting halls

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Reverent Beings: 1, 2, 3

1. The Structure and Form of Do Ho Suh

I drove by this steeple the other day and got very excited for several reasons. I love its clean lines and was immediately reminded of the Klu Klux Klan and the fabric works of Do Ho Suh.

So I may not be your average southern yellabone, because I’m fascinated by the KKK. Growing up with a black father who was a history buff, Third Reich and Grand Wizard were terms that I knew and were greatly desensitized to. My father’s approach to ignorance and malice was investigative. Maybe this is where I realized that you can cope with fear and pain by learning and becoming informed enough to laugh in the face of hatred.

Say what you will, but the KKK have always been dedicated to ritual that brings together a collective group. Firm unwavering belief. Secret sacred spaces that resonate eerie truths.

This is the Third Floor of an Artist Residency that I think I’ve mentioned to you before. Klan meetings used to be held here and you can feel the history in the space. The breeze comes in the windows so softly and it’s beautiful.

I bring this up for 2 reasons. To illustrate how sacred space relies on form and history. And to bring to attention the fact that all sacred spaces are not clean.

(Goddamnit if I don’t love me a silly hat)

This is Do Ho Suh. He is a South Korean who studied traditional painting in Korea, served in the military, and went on to study in the best schools in the US. You could watch a PBS special about him, but here’s what’s really important:

soft considerations of how people navigate public and private space. thinking about how we see and what we see where we live. clean architectural lines and nearly impossible accuracy and scale.

2. The Implied Presence of Mona Hatoum

This is she. I first saw the work of Mona Hatoum (Palestenian born in Lebenon living in London) at the Rachofsky Warehouse in Dallas. It should be mentioned that the Warehouse can discussed on its own as a reverent and sacred space. ---There can be something to be said about the endeavors in art that we’re trying to make: Public and Accessible. But the privacy and exclusivity and seriousness of viewing the Rachofsky collection has been unparalleled in my experience as an impacting and extremely well curated exhibition.

This is the piece I saw at the Warehouse. A prototype of a larger scale version, both entitiled “ + and - ”. I love the simplicity of the mecahism, the cleanliness of the presentation, and the subtlety of concept. (The exhibition it was a part of was about the development and presence of Geometry in art from Modernism to the Contemporary)

(from top to bottom: “Dormiente” , “Impenetrable” , “Drowning Sorrows” , “Incommunicado” , “Current Disturbance”)

What I appreciate in these works is the quietude in which conceptual textures and spaces are played with. I think it’s important to think about the fact that ideas can be represented with an absence or imagined sensation rather than directly or forcefully. It leaves more breathing room and ignites brains.

The last piece, “Current Disturbance”, is one that I am particularly fond of. Especially because of its form, quality of the light, boundaries of space. You can also hear the buzzing of the lightbulbs as they dim in and out, which is a good segway into our final artist.

3. The Spatial Sounds of Zimoun

I’ve spoken a little bit about the sensation of the space that we create. This is something that is crucially important to me and something that I believe could benefit from an ambient and natural seeming soundscape.

If it hasn’t become apparent yet, stylistically, I feel that cleanliness is next to godliness in some circumstances. Zimoun is a perfect example of regulated randomness. I know the video may look long... but all of these pieces are mesmerizing. So without further ado:

I’ve tried to display examples that share a common theme of intricate simplicity that I really admire. I would like to push towards something that resonates in the same way.

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Important Words

Firstly, I’d like to thank you for your efforts in making this conversation legible and inspiring. I believe in this existing as a work of art and I think that our voices will be evident. If you’d like to use some sort of tagging system, I’m all for it. Though I rather like this fluid “call and response” method we’ve set up for ourselves.

I don’t have any concrete solutions for how I’d like this project to ultimately manifest.. but I’m interested in planting seeds of inspiration and sharing ideas that will undoubtably inform our process. So I’ll begin:

Words of great importance:

REVERENCE - n. 1. a feeling or attitude of profound respect, usually reserved for the sacred or divine; devoted veneration 2. an outward manifestation of this feeling

SACRED - adj. 1. devoted or dedicated to a deity or to some religious purpose; consecrated. 2. entitled to veneration or religious respect by association with divinity or divine things; holy. 3. pertaining to or connected with religion (opposed to secular or profane). 4. reverently dedicated to some person, purpose, or object; consecrated: a morning hour sacred to study. 5. regarded with reverence: the sacred memory of a dead hero. 6. secured against violation, infringement, etc., as by reverence or sense of right: sacred oaths. 7. properly immune from violence, interference, etc.; inviolable.

You’ve touched briefly on something that I feel is very important to our cause and I’ll take some time to elucidate why it’s so important to me.

As a culture, the spaces that we have created to facilitate our current habits of consumerism have slowly lost consideration for humanity as an independently feeling and thinking group. The mentality of human beings is something that needs to be nurtured and maintained. The community spaces, as they currently exist in both the religious and secular realms, are of increasingly similar form. They are rectangular and they have little elegance because their function emphasizes complacent emotion.

(The church I grew up in was an old Wal-Mart building, no joke. It’s closed now and is some other church, so who knows what happened, but I think it’s very conveniently placed between the Wendy’s and the Taco Bell )

(Interior Shot)

Human life is complex. And we have build structures throughout our existence that provide opportunity for reflection. In times where it feels as though tensions between nations and neighbors are palpable, I believe it is necessary to create space and place that is sacred and offers moments of reverence for the population. We have lost so much respect for our fellow man. And if we have not, and it has always been this way, then it is evident that we need more practice.

In the digital age, it is no longer completely viable to attempt to connect with people exclusively through cinematics. The beauty of the cinema is that a sensation washes over you. But sensation exists in addition to the eyes and the ears. With an influx of digital data and virtual space, I believe it is necessary to reinvigorate the populations understanding of movement and touch. These sensations are fading and must be utilized and practiced because they are important parts of being that should not be thoughtless. The narrative should be open. (More on the difference between Cinematic and Theatrical later // Lights, Camera, Action, Scene)

We hold many places as sacred, but often this exists on a personal level. Not everyone shares respect for the same things. What place makes you feel safe? What place do you return to again and again to address your self? When do you reflect? -- the bathroom? 

How desperately important is it for individuals to have the opportunity to care for their inner selves and for that to be built into the routine of daily life?

This is religion. A repetitive action based on belief of overwhelming importance.

Art is my religion and my compulsion and my conduit to addressing the world as I attempt to understand it. During a very formative time in my life, the museum was my church.

Religious action has the opportunity to be secular. We see the necessity for it in public shrines and memorial cites and football games. 

This is a link to a very memorable and important discussion that I listened to earlier this year.

In the Jewish faith, repentance is addressed in a way separate from how I was raised to approach it. Louis Newman is a professor of religious studies and writer on Jewish ethics and has a lot of interesting things to say about the potential of building in special moments to address where you have strayed from yourself without shame and with purpose.

This is from a podcast called On Being and I’d highly reccommend it. It offers lots of variety in addressing spirituality in a very soft-spoken-NPR kind of way

[leovia-blog]

Confluence of Two Styles and Their Meanings

So I sent you an Instagram message hinting at this earlier, and granted I’ve had way more caffeine today that one needs to make it through an average Tuesday, but I’ve been really struck lately by this Instagram account Socialist Modernism, and I’ve been thinking about the world view that informed the architectural styles of the former Soviet Bloc, these at least supposedly egalitarian, utilitarian, and theoretically mostly atheist values. (This is like a grossly over-simplified outsider take, right?) So these somewhat collectivist values, perhaps not explicitly the atheistic one, but nevertheless, are ultimately unavoidable in the face of over-population on a finite planet, and even more so in the futurist conception of life in a closed structure in space, right?  In my values, for society to survive itself, there’s also this need to move towards placing an importance on decentralization, non-hierarchical social structure. That doesn’t necessarily create a place for sacred architecture that includes something like a pulpit -- a pedestal for one authority figure to address a congregation. The Baha'i Temple in Chicago does a really great job of addressing this in much the same way Quaker meeting halls all over the country do -- there are merely an array of places to sit which radiate out from the center and everyone ends up facing everyone else. And that’s great for places of reflection, but what about the other aspects of daily life that serve more utilitarian purposes (like the the street, or the grocery store) that ultimately might benefit enormously from incorporating a measure of reflection?

So lately I’ve been playing with these two notions -- the somewhat collectivist architecture of the former Soviet Bloc that seems to lift up the group as opposed to the individual, with the self-reflective qualities of traditional sacred architecture. This consideration in still very much in its infancy, but the idea of these modernist concrete structures with colors, patterns and textures bordering on the Holy is fascinating me lately.  

[leovia-blog]

This is Hamilton Pool near Austin. This, coupled with the Pantheon, is the real inspiration for the dome idea I’ve been trying to describe.