Thesis (Written and Design) Aims

My interest in this project was started by a desire to express the wonder I felt at learning about the way in which the human brain uses a complex process of translation and representation to take input sensory information and produce the normally seamless experience of reality that we feel.

The building and its life as a film is intended to explore this process, using the architecture as a definition of the structural systems, hierarchies and mechanisms at work.

But as I read and research more I realise that my real interest is in this representational process. The representational process of perception, the crossover between the theories of vision and the scientific evidence constantly emerging that shows the brain translates information and organises it in systems to produce our sense of perception.

The ongoing process of learning dictates how we perceive our surroundings. In the context of neuroscience, this is explained through plasticity, with visual theory, in terms of cultural context. I'm interested in this link.

Robin Evans in his book The Projective Cast, discusses architecture and its representation through the notion of projection. The line which I found most suitable for my research was

"Composition, which is where the geometry of architecture is usually sought, may still for convenience be considered the crux of the matter, but it has no significance in and of itself. It obtains all of its value via the several types of projective, quasi-projective, or pseudo projective space that surround it, for it is only through these that it can be made available to perception." (xxxi)

My thesis hopes to work in the transitional zone between this statement and the scientific theory of perception. Can how we consume space be understood both as both?. To understand the system at play in the consumption of space, I will look at both cultural contexts and their manifestations as visual constructs aswell as probing at realising through the design of my building and its projections in my film an intuitive depiction of the neurological processes at work in perception.

The baroque aesthetic is not incidental, as I spoke of earlier when discussing Martin Jay's essay Scopic Regimes of Modernity, the baroque vision (I will try to prove 0r at least discuss) is most appropriate in representing our current media-rich landscape. I want to prove that the notion of the baroque, one of fractured, multiplicitous vision is indeed analogous to the modern / postmodern age experience of vision. That evershifting viewpoints and a return to an individual ego-centred world is best expressed through the principles of the baroque.

The use of anatomical existing building elements of the brain, tissue, neurons, arteries etc, to create this baroque architecture is based on the initial metaphor of the brain as the ultimate systems architecture for producing perception. It is within the architecture of this organ that all modes and constructs of vision and their subsequent representations comes from.

So, in a sense, the written thesis aims to question space perception through the means of it representation in a cultural context and to conclude / suggest how this defines our perception of space within our current time. The physical / practical design thesis works alongside this research to test and represent the theories in an analogous architecture. This architecture aims to represent our reliance on our learned cultural context in the consumption of space as well describing the system it implies in a visually understandable way.

Proposed work for end of project:

1. Large plan showing the route of the protagonist through the infinite Borges like library, the only parts drawn in detail are her route. This is to represent that the brain's architecture is formed by its use, through our experiences which demand certain processes using specific areas in it. This plan is in a sense only one of many that could be drawn during different stages of the protagonist life, but the one I will produce is obviously of her current position in time, one which although produced as a combination of previous experiences / memories is not meant to be read as combination of all from all times.Piranesi's fragment drawing of ancient Rome





2. Series of smaller plans roughly A2 size which show slices through the brain building at different levels. The infinite nature of the building means that it can be read sectionally as well as in plan to an endless level. These drawings will address, the systems I have identified in how we process visual information into perception (neurologically and culturally)

3. A section showing these relationships

4. A film which deals with the relationship between the systems of perception and the output of experience. In it as discussed previously, the protagonist moves through two distinct spaces - one the library which represents her processes of perception and secondly the 'real' space where she both receives the inputs and experiences the outputs. For the sake of simplicity and clarity, her experiences will be limited in this space, it will all take part in one room.

5. A series of details of the areas of the building

A booklet documenting the production of all of the above