I’ve thought before about the camera as a censor. Image-processing software only enhances that capacity… so the trick with these photos has been to try and keep their tone true to memory, true to my visual experience, rather than creating something that didn’t actually exist. Which, too, is fine, but that’s not what I’m after, here.

A friend and I went to the Dunes in early February. Architects both, we naturally brought our cameras. These are the photos I like best.

The scale of this place is confoundingly beyond my normal environs.

Love this space. It made me think of Roden Crater. The top edge of the dune is the horizon… it could be the end of the world. Certainly it’s the edge of my experience.

This was just gorgeous. We guessed it was formed by runoff from fall and winter storms.

Antarctica… or a Lake Michigan ice shelf. Despite being there, I am still taken aback by the image, and can’t quite remember the scale.

Same here. The vast frozen… More below the break.

(more…)

This post is written in response to an article about J. S. Bach, entitled Unity of the heart and mind in the music of J. S. Bach.

Though you may want to read the whole thing, I’ll summarize. The author introduces the article by noting the division that sometimes arises between intellect and emotion, heart and mind, thought and intuition. “The abstract and academic are seen as artificial, as if learning somehow interferes with the expression of one’s natural self.”

He places Bach’s work in context, where complex baroque music gave way to the simpler Galant style, which seeks to be easily accessible and pleasing to the listener. The remainder discusses Bach’s work and historical context, and the history of a frequent present-day assumption that nuanced thinking and intuition or direct experience are mutually exclusive, in more detail. He closes by noting that since Bach clearly did create work both beautiful to the casual listener and complexly nuanced to the scholar, that Bach’s work demonstrates that these two sides are not mutually exclusive.

Which brings us to my commentary. I wonder about the artist’s intent. Was Bach’s work meant to be beautiful? You’d think so. I might argue that the structure exists to support the music – just as beautiful poetry can be written in strict meter, and can be supported by form rather than bound by it. Certainly there’s plenty of modern art that has a similar relationship. And there’s plenty where the structure – intellectual structure – exists for its own sake, or that the artist did not insist that the art must also be beautiful, or it was impossible to have both, &c. I can appreciate those sorts of things… once I’ve read the placard on the wall, and don’t get me started on that.

Okay, I’ll start. An aside on my own preferences: when I see an object and I don’t know or care what it is, or who made it, or why, and I just like it, or am intrigued by it, or am mystified, or otherwise drawn to it – that’s the good stuff. Learning the details only adds a richness to my already-existing appreciation. I don’t want my work to depend upon the placard. Maybe it’s because architecture doesn’t provide them: I, the architect, walk away, and that’s it.

In the end, assuming adequate skill, I suspect it’s a question of intent.

There is a link, definite but of uncertain detail, between the work I make now, and have made in the last ten years and more, and my first architecture. It truly is my first architecture – the first time in architecture school that we were assigned to create a space, a passage.

The thing derives from a pair of objects, abstracted. Those days, we drafted everything by hand, in graphite – lead holders and all – on Arches hotpress paper with a nice deckle edge. First we drew the two objects, intersecting: in plan, elevation, section, and axonometric. The axon was nearly impossible; my objects were simple, but had I skewed one object in two directions. I think we had to draw a bunch of sections, that I overlapped mine to make them fit, or maybe I just wanted to draw a bunch of sections. Then, we selected square areas from our line drawings, scaled and interpreted the lines into models – 6×6x1.5″ in size. I made mine from chipboard and from foamcore – on the former, I sliced my thumb open around 2am, while listening to Jars of Clay’s album “Much Afraid,” which I will forever associate with long solitary nights in the southwest corner of Crown Hall. Should have gotten stitches; I still have a nice scar. The next step was to combine those four models, stretching and altering as we liked, to make a basswood model 6″ high, 6″ wide, and 12″ long, scale 1/2″ = 1′-2″. The base was 18″x18″, made of 1/2″ MDF. We were supposed to consider not only the space, but also the path of travel through it, and the interaction of light throughout the day.

My model has a certain sense of mass to it. It’s in part derived from the objects, in part from how I extrapolated solid and void from a line drawing. One of the lightest and most minimal models in my class had only mechanical connections. It’s the sort of thing I love and wish I made, but I have always tended toward more visual heft.

The model is now a bit careworn. It’s survived a multitude of moves and even more falls from its perch atop the television. The basswood is ten years older, glued joints have opened, fibers have warped. I goofed a couple of details entirely when I made the thing – next time different, I suppose. Here it is.

The drawn representation that we architects have been taught to understand as paramount is the plan view. And yet – of the photos I took of the model, I think it’s the most enigmatic in regards to providing a sense of the space.

The intended passage is essentially a climbing spiral – from afar, entering under the ramp, up and around the stairs, up the ramp, over and out.

Another elevation view.

This is from eye level, or thereabouts.

End elevation.

My favorite space was always that little pocket under the ramp. I imagined, and still imagine, sitting there.

This view most closely resembles how I see the model from my perch at the computer. I like the intersection of that tiny column with the big triangle. Had fun cutting it in, too, as I recall. I still enjoy a lot of moments about this model.

Last view: from above.

It was a bit of a research excursion in the Metroparks. These are from around and about the Brookpark Road bridge, 3 January 2010. A few details, a bit of an adventure, and a structure.

Another image has more context than this: cutting away the context forces one to negotiate directly with particular content. To an extent it abstracts the information. Still, I could do with less snow, to draw this further toward scalelessness.

The outlet was forty or sixty feet above the creek bottom, and probably a couple hundred feet away. What happened was: wandering along, well above a creek, I saw a waterfall “over there” that I wanted to investigate, looked at the terrain, picked an approach, and away I went, traversing and climbing.

I am fascinated by seeing through the water – maybe, too, by seeing through the water while seeing what’s reflected in it. I’ve made photos about that before.

Slate or shale – slate breaks down into shale and then into clay – and algae. Again, removing context abstracts is, removes scale.

A moment in the life of a creek.

Slide.

More after the break. (more…)

New gallery: my undergraduate portfolio! I’m excited to have it posted. While I haven’t yet decided how to narrate the projects, you can still go see the images. Therein lay the origins of my present interests – experience, space, object.

View it all here: Selected Projects 1999 – 2004 Undergraduate Portfolio.

Above, some space studies.

Above, development of spatial ideas. Yes, it started with a crushed toilet paper tube. This, and many other strange stories, yet to come.