Chapter 2: Neuroscience and Embodiment:Discoveries of the Body
“Perception is no more than successful hallucination.”
“If technology changes or augments the body, then - as the body is architecture’s conduit – architecture must change and vice versa. Therefore developments in medicine are as important to the progression of architecture as advances in building material, probably more so.”
In the field of emerging complex relationships between the subjective self in space, none I feel are more pertinent than that of the discoveries made by neuroscience in the past forty years.
As stated already, I have defined two sides of embodied architecture, the first being our relationship as subjective biological beings, to the world we live in. This sense of an embodied self within a subjectively created and experienced world has been long been speculated upon by philosophers has recently been extended by the scientific community through their explorations of the brain and the subsequent discoveries of complex systems of representation at play in forming our consciousness.
[The application of a phenomenological approach to neuroscience is one which may elucidate both the fields of philosophy and neuroscience.]
H does our ability to understand our biology relate to our ability to understand ourselves existentially? To understand the inner landscape of our anatomy and to witness its consequences on our sense of self and existence, is to give ourselves an altered sense of what may traditionally be believed through common sense. In the following three examples, each of which are startling discoveries made in the past twenty years, I will analyse the effect of them on our understanding of our ability to consume and create space.
1. Plasticity
In the early 1970’s William Greenough and a team of neuroscientists first documented the strange phenomenon of the growth of new dendrites and synaptic connections between existing neurons in the brains of rats when they took on new activities. This was the start of a massive upheaval of many of neuroscience’s most basic canons of opinion. Before this point the brain was seen as a fixed entity and therefore the relationship of a person to their environment was viewed as relatively simple. However, what plasticity made clear was that the process of perception created by the brain was highly subjective, that the experiences lived by a person formed the architecture of their brain, changing it every time and thus altering how they perceived space.
In human beings, it is now well documented through brain imaging technology that the human brain goes through a series of stages of development which prune and grow the neural connections according to it use in life. The term ‘use it or lose it’ is often applied to the description of the child’s brain. In the prenatal stage, the brain produces trillions more neurons and “synapses” (connections between the brain cells) than needed, by birth our brain has been pared down to 100 billion neurons, roughly as many nerve cells as there are stars in the Milky Way. During the first years of life, the brain undergoes a series of extraordinary changes. “The frontal lobes become active between 6 months and a year old, triggering the development of emotions, attachments, planning, working memory and attention. A sense of self develops as the parietal and frontal lobe circuits become more integrated, at around 18 months, and a sense of other people having their own minds at 3-4.” “Windows of opportunity” are critical periods in children’s lives when specific types of learning take place. If a child isn’t given the sensory stimulus before the end of each critical stage there are whole neural areas that die, never to be replaced. So experience determines the organisational structure of the brain, thus all future experiences will be experienced via the medium of this moulded brain based on previous experience.
In adolescence, a large portion of rewiring occurs and by the early twenties the brain is formed, the number of neurons relatively fixed. However, all through ones life, the brain has been shown to have a remarkable ability to rewire itself in response to new experiences and environments. For example if one learns to play a musical instrument, no matter how late in life, the brain grows new dendrites and neural synaptic connections, forming new pathways in which this information is processed.
Philosophically this has massive implications to the relationship of the self in space – to internal embodied architecture. Instead of our sense of self being defined by information that is transmitted directly to our consciousness, we are sponges of information that act in a looping feed; sensory information is communicated to our mind via our body and brain. It forms an internal mental map of what reality is, every time we absorb more information from the outside world our mind checks it for probability against the current mental map. Thus our experience of the outside world is in part created by our previous experiences of it.
The word Perception can easily be substituted on this statement on visio:
“Visual perception is not an optical image at all: what we call vision is actually a memory of the past, derived in the first place by touch and movement.”
This process continues indefinitely. Information comes in, is processed and checked and redesigns the map and so on. Therefore the experience of the self in space is wholly subjective, we truly do create the world we experience. This scientifically proved information correlates with Merleau-Ponty’s assumptions about subjective space and Deleuze’s notion of the crystal image. The once merely philosophical is now compounded by biological fact. (and extended??)What was once only accepted by and pondered upon by academics is now mainstream knowledge. This itself alters how we as a culture view ourselves in space and thus how we go on to consume space after this knowledge.
“…perception is an internally generated hallucination that we check against ‘data’”
An intrinsic part of this process, is the fact that our brain as the mediator of experience, is constantly making decisions about what we perceive based on previous experience and thus forming probability levels of reality. Therefore, our seamless sensical version of what we perceive is in fact our brain making estimations of probability and feeding them back into our consciousness.
Noise (random error information) accompanies all of the sensory information fed into our brains from the outside world. The internal mental map screens this information based on its probability, filtering the sensical from the non sensical. However, at breakdown points in the brain process, be it through a mental illness like schizophrenia, an accident to the brain or the ingestion of psychoactive drugs, these filtration systems are lost allowing strange connections to be made and strange sensations experienced. This offer glimmers of understanding into the mechanisations behind our normally seamless experience of the world.
“Hallucinations tell us that the brain can generate perceptions with minimal support from the retinal image. There is probably very little difference between a drug induced hallucination and the perception of faces in the clouds…”
“If the Bayesian philosophy of perception is correct, our perceptions are models, which we use to make informed guesses about the outside world…The process of perception involves selecting an internal model and then checking it against the data. The best model is the one that fits the data. As Richard Gregory says, perceptions are hypotheses. Sometimes two equally likely hypotheses fit the data, like the ambiguous figures of the duck rabbit and Necker Cube in figure X and the brain entertains them in turn.”
Similar occurrences can happen in real space (as opposed to 2d) Often so thought apparitions are ambiguous shapes that take on anthropomorphic forms to the anthropomorphically biased human eye. Or in more extreme situations where the a person has had large parts of their memory lost (i.e. chunks of their internal cognitive map are lost against which reality should be checked) can ‘remember’ events that never happened as the brain compensated as it does when it is normal and healthy by filling in the gaps. In these case though unlike it merely producing a seamless narration of life, it becomes fictitious.
“Patients with severe memory loss sometimes produce quite detailed ‘false memories’ to fill in the large gaps. They may well experience these memories as real, even though they are invented to cover up the lack of evidence.
All of the above examples further the notion of a fluid, subjective space, in constant flux; the subject and the world in permanent symbiosis.
Another key discovery in neuroscience which has large implications for the understanding of the self in relations to the outside world is that of mirror neurons:
TO BE WRITTEN UP BASED ON INFO BELOW:
mirror neurons:
“In the last decades, special mirror neurons have been found in the premotor area and in the posterior parietal cortex. They directly link perception to action: the perception of actions activates the relevant parts of the observer's motor system. Emotional expressions evoke resonance states inside the observer in a similar way. Besides underscoring the prereflective and implicit nature of intersubjectivity, this can provide an access to the neuronal basis of empathy and intuition.”
“Mirror neurons are premotor neurons that fire when the monkey performs object-directed actions such as grasping, tearing, manipulating, holding, but also when the animal observes somebody else, either a conspecific or a human experimenter, performing the same class of actions”
“Researchers at UCLA found that cells in the human anterior cingulate, which normally fire when you poke the patient with a needle ("pain neurons"), will also fire when the patient watches another patient being poked. The mirror neurons, it would seem, dissolve the barrier between self and others. [1] I call them "empathy neurons" or "Dalai Llama neurons". (I wonder how the mirror neurons of a masochist or sadist would respond to another person being poked.) Dissolving the "self vs. other" barrier is the basis of many ethical systems, especially eastern philosophical and mystical traditions. This research implies that mirror neurons can be used to provide rational rather than religious grounds for ethics.”
The connections that can be made between Merleau-Ponty’s symbiotic world of intersubjectivity, one where the subject
“The discovery of mirror neurons in the frontal lobes of monkeys, and their potential relevance to human brain evolution … is the single most important "unreported" (or at least, unpublicized) story of the decade. I predict that mirror neurons will do for psychology what DNA did for biology: they will provide a unifying framework and help explain a host of mental abilities that have hitherto remained mysterious and inaccessible to experiments.”
(wikipedia)A mirror neuron is a neuron which fires both when an animal acts and when the animal observes the same action performed by another animal (especially by another animal of the same species).[1] Thus, the neuron "mirrors" the behavior of another animal, as though the observer were itself acting. These neurons have been directly observed in primates, and are believed to exist in humans and other species
Many scientists also believe that neuronal mirroring can reflect in two directions, illuminating both the external world (of others) and the internal world (of self). By constantly observing and imitating others, we not only learn about them but about ourselves: How we see and think of ourselves; the meanings we ultimately give to our most intimate and “unsharable” experiences like pain; indeed the ongoing project of human creation in general as it works to fill the world with things that possess the capacity to reflect our humanity (5).
Thinkers like Sartre, Foucault and Lacan may have been exquisitely prescient. Mimesis may well turn out to be a prerequisite or stepping stone to self-knowledge. We observe, reproduce, impose patterns, and thereby understand. We can do this with objects that happen to cross our field of vision like the patient encountered by Friges Karinthy or the seal by Mark Doty. But we could also do this on a more sophisticated level. If a potential doppelganger doesn’t exist we can invent one. As Alphonse Daudet does in his dream of the boat with the damaged keel (mirroring his diseased keel-spine). And as many artists do in their poems and paintings. After finishing his masterwork, Flaubert is famously reported to have said of his creation: Emma Bovary, ces’t moi. The re-production leads to recognition. The same thing that painters do perhaps more self-consciously in their self-portraits and in the case of Frida Kahlo, her double self-portraits. Here the dictum of philosopher Nelson Goodman is most transparently realized: Comprehension and creation go on together (6).
.to be finished
(all references are included in the word document, the blog doesn't recognise them)
Sunday, 19 April 2009
Saturday, 18 April 2009
Chapter One (2,500)
Chapter One: Space through the body: The body in space: The Chiasm of Embodied Architecture
In this chapter, the term embodied architecture is defined as having two aspects, the internal and the external (try to come up with better terms for these). These two entities form a Möbius like topology which while appearing to exist on two separate sides are in fact one. I will explore these two notions principally through the writings of Merleau-Ponty and to a lesser extent Deleuze.
Merleau-Ponty’s as the forerunner of embodiment studies has been described as being the main explorer of the subject:
“It is doubtful that any other philosopher, phenomenologist or otherwise, has ever paid such sustained attention to the significance of the body in relation to the self, to the world, and to others. There is no relation or aspect of his phenomenology which does not implicate the body, or what he terms the body-subject … and significantly, his descriptions allow us to reconceive the problem of embodiment in terms of the body's practical capacity to act, rather than in terms of any essential trait.”
As already described briefly in the introduction, the internal embodied architecture can be described as our internal cognitive map which creates our sense of self in relation to the world outside. Merleau Ponty’s rejection of an objectivist standpoint in understanding perception defines this and places the individual body at the centre of experience.
The external on the other side is the manifestation of this sense of self: physical architecture, the work of art, through which the fully embodied experience comprised of the two can be reflected upon, altered and furthered. The role of art in understanding reality.
Within these aspects lie a vast world of thought which speculates on our existence within the world as corporal, fleshy subjective creatures in constant symbiosis with our environment.
The Internal aspect of Embodied Architecture:
Firstly, the interior notion of Embodied architecture: how we consume space via our bodies; how the translation from sensory input from an outside world is transformed via the medium of our bodies (including brain) into a sense of experience of reality, of a being existing in space.
The Subjectivity Of Space: The Inadequacy Of An Empirical /Objectivist Standpoint
Merleau-Ponty redefined the dualistic relationships of subject and object and the self in the world.
“He argued that the significance of the body, or the body-subject as he sometimes referred to it, is too often underestimated by the philosophical tradition which has a tendency to consider the body simply as an object that a transcendent mind orders to perform varying functions.”
In Merleau-Ponty’s Primacy Of Perception' which can be summarised as "all consciousness is perceptual consciousness" he established a significant turn in the development of phenomenology by arguing that experience is always someone’s no matter how scientifically observed. The scientific experiment still relies on the cognitive faculties of the scientist, thus the study and exploration of this perceptual process takes supremacy over the conventional acceptance of the objectivity of science; thus the act of perceiving cannot as the objectivists and materialists state be passive. By the self perceiving the world, the subject is affected by the world, thus changing their (the subject’s) future perception of the world. Likewise, the subject and objects relationship is dynamic:(more definition needed here). Merleau-Ponty argues that these dynamic symbiotic relationships cannot be fully defined and expressed by laws of physics and chemistry as they have innate individual and mental qualities indescribable by equations or formulas.
He disputed the objectivist method due to its reliance on the tools of empiricism and intellectualism in deciphering reality, methods which attempted to be uncontrolled by perspective:
“If science aims at knowledge, it must seek to describe the world in that objective way, it must aim ‘to gain access to an object free of all human traces, just as God would see it’”
However, although opposed to a purely scientific analysis of the world, Merleau-Ponty still strongly advocated the use of science in furthering the knowledge of the cognitive process through the biology of the body
Not five senses - one sensing ; the holistic way we consume space and reality
“For him, perception is not merely the result of the functioning of individual organs, but also a vital and performative human act in which "I" perceive through the relevant organs. Each of the senses informs the others in virtue of their common behavioural project, or concern with a certain human endeavour, and perception is inconceivable without this complementary functioning. Empiricism generally ignores this, and Merleau-Ponty contends that whatever their efficacy in explaining certain phenomena, these type of scientific and analytic causalities cannot actually appraise meaning and human action. As one critic points out, "if we attempt to localize and sectionalize the various activities which manifest themselves at the bodily level, we lose the signification of the action itself"
“We are creatures that both see and move about among other creatures and things. The visible world and the world in which we move are intertwined—they are parts of our world and cannot be separated from one another.”
The topology of the Chiasm / Reversibility : The Past inside the Present
Chiasmic topology describes an eternal loop of feedback between environment and subject through time. One that can physically be visualised by the Möbius Strip.
“Rather than maintaining a traditional dualism in which mind and body, subject and object, self and other, and so forth, are discrete and separate entities, in The Visible and the Invisible Merleau-Ponty argues that there is an important sense in which such pairs are also associated. For example, he does not dispute that there is a divergence, or dehiscence, in our embodied situation that is evident in the difference that exists between touching and being touched, between looking and being looked at, or between the sentient and the sensible in his own vocabulary. On the contrary, this divergence is considered to be a necessary and constitutive factor in allowing subjectivity to be possible at all. However, he suggests that rather than involving a simple dualism, this divergence between touching and being touched, or between the sentient and the sensible, also allows for the possibility of overlapping and encroachment between these two terms.”
Reversibility:
“Touching and touched are not simply separate orders of being in the world, since they are reversible, and this image of our left hand touching our right hand does more than merely represent the body's capacity to be both perceiving object and subject of perception in a constant oscillation”
The Folded Body:
“To be an embodied subject then is to be an active being with needs which motivate actions and in relation to which elements in the surrounding environment are meaningful. It is to be in a world which is in this way partly a world of one’s own: one does not create the things in the world in the sense of bringing them into existence, but one’s needs and thoughts about the world rooted in one’s nature as a biological organism give a unity of meaning to those objects which make them into a single world”
Deleuze’s recollection-image or mnemosign: defined as “a virtual image which enters into a relationship with the actual image and extends it” further describes this chiasmatic topology. When an image is experienced in the present, the memory of the past experience sets up a relating virtual image, these merge to form a constant experience.
Deleuze furthers this concept with his definition of a Crystal-image or Hyalosign as “the uniting of an actual image and a virtual image to the point where they can no longer be distinguished.”
“…the indivisible unity of an actual image and ‘its’ virtual image…the image has to be present and past, still present and past, still present and already past, at once and at the same time. If it was not already past at the same time as the present, the present would never pass on. The past does not follow the present that is no longer, it coexists with the present it was. The present is the actual image, and in its contemporaneous past is the virtual image, the image in a mirror. According to Bergson, ‘paramnesia’ (the illusion of déjà-vu or already having been there) simply makes the obvious point perceptible: there is a recollection of the present, contemporaneous with the present itself, as closely coupled as a role to an actor. ‘Our actual existence, then, whilst it is unrolled in time, duplicates itself along with a virtual existence, a mirror image. Every moment of our life presents the two aspects, it is actual and virtual, perception on the one side and recollection on the other…Whoever becomes conscious of the continual duplicating of his present into perception and recollection…will compare himself to an actor playing his part automatically, listening to himself and beholding himself playing.” i.e. subjectivity and plasticity and intersubjectivity (to be summarised clearly)
(lots to be done to this bit)The External aspect of Embodied Architecture:
The external aspect of embodied architecture is one of the most valuable tools available to man to understand reality and ‘to make visible how the world touches us’.
Embodied architecture can be understood as the manifestation of an internal sense of reality. The production of buildings and spaces that represent, illuminate and allow reflection upon what the changing types of cultural and cognitive space of an era inhabits.
These spatial creations are then inhabited and consumed by individuals and cultures thereby going on to influence and affect the people who exist within them, further changing their notions of space and thus exhibiting a cyclical loop of progression of embodied space
As Juhani Pallasmaa the Finnish architect and academic wrote:
“The task of architecture is 'to make visible how the world touches us', as Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote of the paintings of Paul Cezanne. In accordance with Merleau-Ponty, we live in the `flesh of the world', and architecture structures and articulates this existential flesh, giving it specific meanings. Architecture tames and domesticates the space and time of the flesh of the world for human habitation. Architecture frames human existence in specific ways and defines a basic horizon of understanding. We know and remember who we are and where we belong fundamentally through our cities and buildings.”
The shifting relationship between subject and object through the ages can be seen clearly manifested in the art and architecture of the time.
Pre perspective:
Cartesian perspectivalism:
Otherwise known as one point perspective which came from southern European Renaissance ideas, it exemplified the Renaissance endeavor to incorporate science into all aspects of life. Although the word Cartesian stems from its association to René Descartes, Jay sees Cartesian perspectivalism as being contrary to Descartes philosophy . Jay quotes Richard Rorty from his 'Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" (1979) "In the Cartesian model the intellect inspects entities modeled on retinal images...In Descartes' conception - the one that became the basis for 'modern' epistemology - it is representations which are in the mind."
Jay finds fault in a number of areas with this method of vision, which assumes a fixed and singular eye / viewing point. Jay argues that that both viewer and painter are disembodied, writing that "the bodies of the painter and the viewer were forgotten in the name of an allegedly disincarnated, absolute eye." It is unnatural, not accounting for normal binocular vision or the dynamic, saccadic motion of the human eye. He writes
"In Norman Bryson's terms, it followed the logic of the Gaze rather than the Glance, thus producing a visual take that was eternalised, reduced to one"point of view" and disembodied." (p.7)
He also notes that this de-eroticises the art: "The moment of erotic projection in vision - what St Augustine had anxiously condemned as "occular desire" - was lost as the bodies of the painter and viewer were forgotten in the name of an allegedly disincarnated, absolute eye."
(More on architecture’s representation needed)
Baconian perspectivalism: The Northern European painting technique: Vermeer
As a sub group of Cartesian perspectivalism occuring in Northern Europe, in exemplified by the Dutch 17th century painters like Vermeer, in which the eye of the observer ceases , the frame is removed and the work is based around the objects existing independently of a viewer.
"The projection is, one might say, viewed from nowhere. Nor is it to be looked through. It assumes a flat working surface."
The emphasis is on the fragmentary nature of reality, "attention to many small things versus a few large ones; light reflected off objects versus objects modelled by light and shadow; the surface of objects; their colours and textures, dealt with rather than their placement in a legible space..." (p.13 - quoting Svetlana Alpers. The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth century p.44) Modern day photography and video are described as being the descendants of these method of vision.
The Baroque:
Jay is most interested and excited by this model of vision which he describes as "more radical alternative". Although introduces 'the baroque' by its conventionally understood context in the 17th century and its links to the Catholic counter Reformation, he goes on to state that "it may also be possible to see it as a permanent, if often repressed, visual possibility throughout the entire modern era."
Using the writing of the French philosopher Christine Buci-Glucksmann, La Raison Baroque of 1984 and La folie du voir of 1986, he sets up this third model as the one most relevant and appropriate to the reality of vision in the modern age. There are many comparisions to be made in the way in which he describes this vision with the writings of the deconstructivists such as Derrida. He writes, "the baroque self-consciously revels in the contradictions between surface and depth, disparaging as a result any attempt to reduce the multiplicity of visual spaces into any one coherant essence."
He himself compares it to other philosophical systems: "Leibniz's pluralism of monadic viewpoints, Pascal's meditations on paradox, and the Counter Reformation mystic's submission to vertiginous experiences of rapture might all be seen as related to baroque vision."
This notion of baroque sense of space first represented in the 17th century, has far reaching links to the contemporary, postmodern space we now inhabit as described by the shifting, dynamic relationships of Deleuze’s crystal image and Merleau-Ponty’s notion of embodiment.
Link paragraph
Merleau-Ponty’s deep and complex analysis of the role of art in deciphering philosophical experience leads to the further questioning of how to further these explorations. But what if this process/tool to explore the contemporary sense of space within a specific timeframe is applied to today as the context. What medium is best suited. This will explored in detail in Chapter 3.
In this chapter, the term embodied architecture is defined as having two aspects, the internal and the external (try to come up with better terms for these). These two entities form a Möbius like topology which while appearing to exist on two separate sides are in fact one. I will explore these two notions principally through the writings of Merleau-Ponty and to a lesser extent Deleuze.
Merleau-Ponty’s as the forerunner of embodiment studies has been described as being the main explorer of the subject:
“It is doubtful that any other philosopher, phenomenologist or otherwise, has ever paid such sustained attention to the significance of the body in relation to the self, to the world, and to others. There is no relation or aspect of his phenomenology which does not implicate the body, or what he terms the body-subject … and significantly, his descriptions allow us to reconceive the problem of embodiment in terms of the body's practical capacity to act, rather than in terms of any essential trait.”
As already described briefly in the introduction, the internal embodied architecture can be described as our internal cognitive map which creates our sense of self in relation to the world outside. Merleau Ponty’s rejection of an objectivist standpoint in understanding perception defines this and places the individual body at the centre of experience.
The external on the other side is the manifestation of this sense of self: physical architecture, the work of art, through which the fully embodied experience comprised of the two can be reflected upon, altered and furthered. The role of art in understanding reality.
Within these aspects lie a vast world of thought which speculates on our existence within the world as corporal, fleshy subjective creatures in constant symbiosis with our environment.
The Internal aspect of Embodied Architecture:
Firstly, the interior notion of Embodied architecture: how we consume space via our bodies; how the translation from sensory input from an outside world is transformed via the medium of our bodies (including brain) into a sense of experience of reality, of a being existing in space.
The Subjectivity Of Space: The Inadequacy Of An Empirical /Objectivist Standpoint
Merleau-Ponty redefined the dualistic relationships of subject and object and the self in the world.
“He argued that the significance of the body, or the body-subject as he sometimes referred to it, is too often underestimated by the philosophical tradition which has a tendency to consider the body simply as an object that a transcendent mind orders to perform varying functions.”
In Merleau-Ponty’s Primacy Of Perception' which can be summarised as "all consciousness is perceptual consciousness" he established a significant turn in the development of phenomenology by arguing that experience is always someone’s no matter how scientifically observed. The scientific experiment still relies on the cognitive faculties of the scientist, thus the study and exploration of this perceptual process takes supremacy over the conventional acceptance of the objectivity of science; thus the act of perceiving cannot as the objectivists and materialists state be passive. By the self perceiving the world, the subject is affected by the world, thus changing their (the subject’s) future perception of the world. Likewise, the subject and objects relationship is dynamic:(more definition needed here). Merleau-Ponty argues that these dynamic symbiotic relationships cannot be fully defined and expressed by laws of physics and chemistry as they have innate individual and mental qualities indescribable by equations or formulas.
He disputed the objectivist method due to its reliance on the tools of empiricism and intellectualism in deciphering reality, methods which attempted to be uncontrolled by perspective:
“If science aims at knowledge, it must seek to describe the world in that objective way, it must aim ‘to gain access to an object free of all human traces, just as God would see it’”
However, although opposed to a purely scientific analysis of the world, Merleau-Ponty still strongly advocated the use of science in furthering the knowledge of the cognitive process through the biology of the body
Not five senses - one sensing ; the holistic way we consume space and reality
“For him, perception is not merely the result of the functioning of individual organs, but also a vital and performative human act in which "I" perceive through the relevant organs. Each of the senses informs the others in virtue of their common behavioural project, or concern with a certain human endeavour, and perception is inconceivable without this complementary functioning. Empiricism generally ignores this, and Merleau-Ponty contends that whatever their efficacy in explaining certain phenomena, these type of scientific and analytic causalities cannot actually appraise meaning and human action. As one critic points out, "if we attempt to localize and sectionalize the various activities which manifest themselves at the bodily level, we lose the signification of the action itself"
“We are creatures that both see and move about among other creatures and things. The visible world and the world in which we move are intertwined—they are parts of our world and cannot be separated from one another.”
The topology of the Chiasm / Reversibility : The Past inside the Present
Chiasmic topology describes an eternal loop of feedback between environment and subject through time. One that can physically be visualised by the Möbius Strip.
“Rather than maintaining a traditional dualism in which mind and body, subject and object, self and other, and so forth, are discrete and separate entities, in The Visible and the Invisible Merleau-Ponty argues that there is an important sense in which such pairs are also associated. For example, he does not dispute that there is a divergence, or dehiscence, in our embodied situation that is evident in the difference that exists between touching and being touched, between looking and being looked at, or between the sentient and the sensible in his own vocabulary. On the contrary, this divergence is considered to be a necessary and constitutive factor in allowing subjectivity to be possible at all. However, he suggests that rather than involving a simple dualism, this divergence between touching and being touched, or between the sentient and the sensible, also allows for the possibility of overlapping and encroachment between these two terms.”
Reversibility:
“Touching and touched are not simply separate orders of being in the world, since they are reversible, and this image of our left hand touching our right hand does more than merely represent the body's capacity to be both perceiving object and subject of perception in a constant oscillation”
The Folded Body:
“To be an embodied subject then is to be an active being with needs which motivate actions and in relation to which elements in the surrounding environment are meaningful. It is to be in a world which is in this way partly a world of one’s own: one does not create the things in the world in the sense of bringing them into existence, but one’s needs and thoughts about the world rooted in one’s nature as a biological organism give a unity of meaning to those objects which make them into a single world”
Deleuze’s recollection-image or mnemosign: defined as “a virtual image which enters into a relationship with the actual image and extends it” further describes this chiasmatic topology. When an image is experienced in the present, the memory of the past experience sets up a relating virtual image, these merge to form a constant experience.
Deleuze furthers this concept with his definition of a Crystal-image or Hyalosign as “the uniting of an actual image and a virtual image to the point where they can no longer be distinguished.”
“…the indivisible unity of an actual image and ‘its’ virtual image…the image has to be present and past, still present and past, still present and already past, at once and at the same time. If it was not already past at the same time as the present, the present would never pass on. The past does not follow the present that is no longer, it coexists with the present it was. The present is the actual image, and in its contemporaneous past is the virtual image, the image in a mirror. According to Bergson, ‘paramnesia’ (the illusion of déjà-vu or already having been there) simply makes the obvious point perceptible: there is a recollection of the present, contemporaneous with the present itself, as closely coupled as a role to an actor. ‘Our actual existence, then, whilst it is unrolled in time, duplicates itself along with a virtual existence, a mirror image. Every moment of our life presents the two aspects, it is actual and virtual, perception on the one side and recollection on the other…Whoever becomes conscious of the continual duplicating of his present into perception and recollection…will compare himself to an actor playing his part automatically, listening to himself and beholding himself playing.” i.e. subjectivity and plasticity and intersubjectivity (to be summarised clearly)
(lots to be done to this bit)The External aspect of Embodied Architecture:
The external aspect of embodied architecture is one of the most valuable tools available to man to understand reality and ‘to make visible how the world touches us’.
Embodied architecture can be understood as the manifestation of an internal sense of reality. The production of buildings and spaces that represent, illuminate and allow reflection upon what the changing types of cultural and cognitive space of an era inhabits.
These spatial creations are then inhabited and consumed by individuals and cultures thereby going on to influence and affect the people who exist within them, further changing their notions of space and thus exhibiting a cyclical loop of progression of embodied space
As Juhani Pallasmaa the Finnish architect and academic wrote:
“The task of architecture is 'to make visible how the world touches us', as Maurice Merleau-Ponty wrote of the paintings of Paul Cezanne. In accordance with Merleau-Ponty, we live in the `flesh of the world', and architecture structures and articulates this existential flesh, giving it specific meanings. Architecture tames and domesticates the space and time of the flesh of the world for human habitation. Architecture frames human existence in specific ways and defines a basic horizon of understanding. We know and remember who we are and where we belong fundamentally through our cities and buildings.”
The shifting relationship between subject and object through the ages can be seen clearly manifested in the art and architecture of the time.
Pre perspective:
Cartesian perspectivalism:
Otherwise known as one point perspective which came from southern European Renaissance ideas, it exemplified the Renaissance endeavor to incorporate science into all aspects of life. Although the word Cartesian stems from its association to René Descartes, Jay sees Cartesian perspectivalism as being contrary to Descartes philosophy . Jay quotes Richard Rorty from his 'Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature" (1979) "In the Cartesian model the intellect inspects entities modeled on retinal images...In Descartes' conception - the one that became the basis for 'modern' epistemology - it is representations which are in the mind."
Jay finds fault in a number of areas with this method of vision, which assumes a fixed and singular eye / viewing point. Jay argues that that both viewer and painter are disembodied, writing that "the bodies of the painter and the viewer were forgotten in the name of an allegedly disincarnated, absolute eye." It is unnatural, not accounting for normal binocular vision or the dynamic, saccadic motion of the human eye. He writes
"In Norman Bryson's terms, it followed the logic of the Gaze rather than the Glance, thus producing a visual take that was eternalised, reduced to one"point of view" and disembodied." (p.7)
He also notes that this de-eroticises the art: "The moment of erotic projection in vision - what St Augustine had anxiously condemned as "occular desire" - was lost as the bodies of the painter and viewer were forgotten in the name of an allegedly disincarnated, absolute eye."
(More on architecture’s representation needed)
Baconian perspectivalism: The Northern European painting technique: Vermeer
As a sub group of Cartesian perspectivalism occuring in Northern Europe, in exemplified by the Dutch 17th century painters like Vermeer, in which the eye of the observer ceases , the frame is removed and the work is based around the objects existing independently of a viewer.
"The projection is, one might say, viewed from nowhere. Nor is it to be looked through. It assumes a flat working surface."
The emphasis is on the fragmentary nature of reality, "attention to many small things versus a few large ones; light reflected off objects versus objects modelled by light and shadow; the surface of objects; their colours and textures, dealt with rather than their placement in a legible space..." (p.13 - quoting Svetlana Alpers. The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth century p.44) Modern day photography and video are described as being the descendants of these method of vision.
The Baroque:
Jay is most interested and excited by this model of vision which he describes as "more radical alternative". Although introduces 'the baroque' by its conventionally understood context in the 17th century and its links to the Catholic counter Reformation, he goes on to state that "it may also be possible to see it as a permanent, if often repressed, visual possibility throughout the entire modern era."
Using the writing of the French philosopher Christine Buci-Glucksmann, La Raison Baroque of 1984 and La folie du voir of 1986, he sets up this third model as the one most relevant and appropriate to the reality of vision in the modern age. There are many comparisions to be made in the way in which he describes this vision with the writings of the deconstructivists such as Derrida. He writes, "the baroque self-consciously revels in the contradictions between surface and depth, disparaging as a result any attempt to reduce the multiplicity of visual spaces into any one coherant essence."
He himself compares it to other philosophical systems: "Leibniz's pluralism of monadic viewpoints, Pascal's meditations on paradox, and the Counter Reformation mystic's submission to vertiginous experiences of rapture might all be seen as related to baroque vision."
This notion of baroque sense of space first represented in the 17th century, has far reaching links to the contemporary, postmodern space we now inhabit as described by the shifting, dynamic relationships of Deleuze’s crystal image and Merleau-Ponty’s notion of embodiment.
Link paragraph
Merleau-Ponty’s deep and complex analysis of the role of art in deciphering philosophical experience leads to the further questioning of how to further these explorations. But what if this process/tool to explore the contemporary sense of space within a specific timeframe is applied to today as the context. What medium is best suited. This will explored in detail in Chapter 3.
Introduction (770)
In search of Haecceity: Through and beyond the Chiasmus: Embodied architecture
Introduction:
In this paper, the notion of the chiasmus implied by the term embodied architecture is explored. This is attempted by an interweaving / cross pollination of the disciplines of philosophy, neuroscience and film. Merleau-Ponty’s notions of embodiment and the symbiotic relationship between the self and space/environment as well as Deleuze’s writing on the relationship between the virtual and the actual defined by the crystal image are used to decipher these distinct disciplines in relation to one another and to ultimately bring a clearer, subtly blended understanding of the loop like structure of embodied architecture and how these cross-disciplinary relationships can evolve and inform one another beyond current limitations.
The relationship between the self and the world that the self inhabits is defines our concept of reality. The fact that the body is the medium through which this relationship occurs, leads to an intrinsic binding of embodiment, space and experience. As this relationship is reflected upon and influenced and altered by new emergences in thought, new modes of embodiment can be described. This essay deals with how a current, contemporary notion of embodiment can be defined, one which reaches further is bridging and melding the gap between the initially recognisable inherent dualism of the concept.
This thesis proposes that two aspects of embodied architecture can be defined. First, the internal sense, which is the internal cognitive map of our perception of ourselves in relation to our surroundings, the absolute grounding of the body within space as the interface by which we can make sense of the world. The second is the external manifestation of this sense of self in the world, this is the conventional description of architecture, the one which we recognise in the stone carved cathedrals of the past and the steel and glass ambiguous forms of the present.
Recent discoveries about the physiology of the brain and the subsequent altering, evolving relationships between subject and object imply a new form of embodied architecture, a more dynamic interchange between the self and the environment. One which has been described / prophesised already in the 20th century by Merleau-Ponty, Baudrillard and Virillio among others.
This new embodiment by turn necessitates a new form of representation, one which has the ability to convey its complexity and corporality. In this paper I argue that new modes of representation in the multi-disciplinary medium of film are most suited to achieving this.
By viewing this second form of embodied architecture as a method of reflecting on the internal form of embodied architecture, External physical architecture (Embodied architecture) as the manifestation of our sense of self in the world can be seen as the tool by which we know reality more fully. This I argue is one of architecture’s important roles beyond its conventional use to merely shelter. Embodied architecture can be used to understand the world in ourselves and ourselves in the world. Architecture above all other art forms / disciplines has an ability to transmit meaning to human beings due to its spatiality; its ability to envelop, surround, immerse, to engage with multiple senses.
For embodied architecture to play its role as initially stated ‘to make visible how the world touches us’, to create external manifestations of our sense of self in space, I will argue it needs to embrace the representational tools available to it and given to it by the age it exists within. It needs to ask difficult questions about the fundamentals of representation? Does a building need to be functional on a practical, physical level to transmit meaning and reveal the truth? Indeed, can a fully physically realised space adequately represent such subtle and complex relationships? I argue that is cannot. That paradoxically only in the rejection of the obviously recognisable, physical architecture can we begin to truly represent space and ourselves in it realistically. I argue that the medium of film in its current multi-disciplinary phase of development is most suited to the representation of this form of intensely embodied space, one in which the senses are linked to a sense of oneself, one of immersion and transience, a landscape in which the two side of the chiasmus have started to merge into a pure haecceity (of subjective experience).
Alongside, the theoretical research and explorations of this subject a practical exploration will also be made. Although it will take its starting point for each point of departure from the theories discussed in each chapter, the approach will be more reflective and intuitive, providing visual interpretations of the concepts through drawing and montage in the first half and later a filmic representation.
At the end of the bed sat a woman reading
“Perception is no more than successful hallucination.”
attributed to the AI scientist Max Clones
Emily awakens to a strange woman reading, at the foot of her bed.
Chris Frith in his book Making Up the Mind: How the Brain Creates our Mental World gives the example of a lady named as Miss W whose experience illustrates how the brain is constantly making decisions about what we perceive based on probability rather than a stream of real information.
"One evening at dusk I went to my bedroom to fetch something I wanted off the mantelpiece. A street lamp threw a slanting ray of light in at a window, just sufficient to enable me to discern the dim outline of the chief articles of furniture in the room. I was cautiously feeling for what I wanted when, partially turning round. I perceived at a short distance behind me the figure of a little old lady, sitting very sedately with her hands folded in her lap, holding a white pocket-handkerchief. I was much startled, for I had not before seen anyone in the room, and called out, “Who’s that?” but received no answer, and, turning quite round to face my visitor, she immediately vanished from sight…."
In most reports of ghosts and visitations the story would stop here, but Miss W is persistent.
"Being very near sighted, I began to think that my eyes had played a trick on me; soI resumed my search in as nearly as possible the same position as before and having succeeded, was turning to come away when lo! and behold! There sat the little old lady as distinct as ever, with her funny little cap, dark dress, and hands folded demurely over her white handkerchief. This time I turned around quickly and marched up to the apparition. Which vanished as suddenly as before."
So the effect could be replicated. And what was the cause?
"And now being convinced that no one was playing me any trick, I determined to find out, if possible, the why and because of the mystery. Slowly resuming my former position by the fireplace, and again perceiving the figure, I moved my head slowly from side to side, and found that it did the same. I then went slowly backwards, keeping my head still unitl I again reached the place, when deliberately turning round the mystery was solved.
A small polished, mahogany stand near the window, which I used as a cupboard for various trifles, made the body of the figure, a piece of paper hanging from the partly open door serving as the handkerchief; a vase on the top formed the head and head dress, and the slanting light falling upon it , and the white curtain of the window complted the illusion. I destroyed and remade the figure several times, and was surprised to find how distinct it appeared when the exact relative positions were maintained"
attributed to the AI scientist Max Clones
Emily awakens to a strange woman reading, at the foot of her bed.
Chris Frith in his book Making Up the Mind: How the Brain Creates our Mental World gives the example of a lady named as Miss W whose experience illustrates how the brain is constantly making decisions about what we perceive based on probability rather than a stream of real information."One evening at dusk I went to my bedroom to fetch something I wanted off the mantelpiece. A street lamp threw a slanting ray of light in at a window, just sufficient to enable me to discern the dim outline of the chief articles of furniture in the room. I was cautiously feeling for what I wanted when, partially turning round. I perceived at a short distance behind me the figure of a little old lady, sitting very sedately with her hands folded in her lap, holding a white pocket-handkerchief. I was much startled, for I had not before seen anyone in the room, and called out, “Who’s that?” but received no answer, and, turning quite round to face my visitor, she immediately vanished from sight…."
In most reports of ghosts and visitations the story would stop here, but Miss W is persistent.
"Being very near sighted, I began to think that my eyes had played a trick on me; soI resumed my search in as nearly as possible the same position as before and having succeeded, was turning to come away when lo! and behold! There sat the little old lady as distinct as ever, with her funny little cap, dark dress, and hands folded demurely over her white handkerchief. This time I turned around quickly and marched up to the apparition. Which vanished as suddenly as before."
So the effect could be replicated. And what was the cause?
"And now being convinced that no one was playing me any trick, I determined to find out, if possible, the why and because of the mystery. Slowly resuming my former position by the fireplace, and again perceiving the figure, I moved my head slowly from side to side, and found that it did the same. I then went slowly backwards, keeping my head still unitl I again reached the place, when deliberately turning round the mystery was solved.
A small polished, mahogany stand near the window, which I used as a cupboard for various trifles, made the body of the figure, a piece of paper hanging from the partly open door serving as the handkerchief; a vase on the top formed the head and head dress, and the slanting light falling upon it , and the white curtain of the window complted the illusion. I destroyed and remade the figure several times, and was surprised to find how distinct it appeared when the exact relative positions were maintained"
Friday, 17 April 2009
Embodied Haecceity: Initial form for building
If our consciousness is understood to be both mediated by and part of our corporality, perhaps it is fitting to represent it in terms of an architecture of bodily organs whose structure and form develops from both our genetic makeup and the experiences we have over the course of our lives. It is our internal cognitive map which depends upon our existence as physical beings whole with our minds
Thursday, 16 April 2009
Neural Flash
Neural Flash from N Nivreen on Vimeo.
The camera is sucked in down through the entrance down a fiery corridor
Essay structure
Introduction: 500
Chapter One: Embodiment as architecture: Acknowledging the Chiasmus 1000
Basic research for my project: basic representations: initial images and explanations
Non body Plan, Borges – Labyrinths 500
Chapter Two: Embodiment through Neuroscience: Understanding the Chiasmus 1000
Initial chronogram: The neural language of stucco: shelves, stills - descriptions 500
Chapter Three A: Embodiment as film: Oneiric Haecceity: Bridging the Chiasmus 1000
Techniques for editing the film: Chronogram 500
Chapter Three B: Case studies, practical analysis of projects.
A.] Michel Gondry: Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind (1500)
1.Brief description overview of its plot and its relevance
2. Merleau-Ponty’s embodiment and this film
3. Deleuze’s method to approach how to understand memory and thus the representation of plasticity.
4. how this leads to a heightened/new sense of embodiment – we are our memories, we inhabit the world through them
5. Technical analysis of the film – linking to deleuze’s reading of decoupage etc…with ref to CGI – hypercinema / cybercinema –immersive sound
6. Conclusion / overview
Eternal Sunshine’s representation of one man’s memory does challenge previous cinematic notions concerning the act of remembering.
B.] Chris Cunningham Flex (500)
1.Brief description overview of its plot and its relevance 200 words
2. Merleau-Ponty’s embodiment and this film
3. Deleuze’s method to approach how to understand the body and brain
5. Technical analysis of the film – linking to deleuze’s reading of decoupage etc…with ref to CGI – hypercinema / cybercinema –immersive sound
6. Conclusion / overview
C.] Pattern Recognition (500)
1.Brief description overview of its plot and its relevance 200 words
2. Merleau-Ponty’s embodiment and this film
3. Deleuze’s method to approach how to understand the body and brain
5. Technical analysis of the film – linking to deleuze’s reading of decoupage etc…with ref to CGI – hypercinema / cybercinema –immersive sound
6. Conclusion / overview
D.] My project (1000) and lots of images
Chapter 4: Conclusion: Embodiment, Neuroscience, Film: Enveloped in the Chiasmus 1500
Long overview, discussing the merits and pitfalls etc of the cross disciplinary approach
Discussion / End 500
10,000 words
Chapter One: Embodiment as architecture: Acknowledging the Chiasmus 1000
Basic research for my project: basic representations: initial images and explanations
Non body Plan, Borges – Labyrinths 500
Chapter Two: Embodiment through Neuroscience: Understanding the Chiasmus 1000
Initial chronogram: The neural language of stucco: shelves, stills - descriptions 500
Chapter Three A: Embodiment as film: Oneiric Haecceity: Bridging the Chiasmus 1000
Techniques for editing the film: Chronogram 500
Chapter Three B: Case studies, practical analysis of projects.
A.] Michel Gondry: Eternal Sunshine of the spotless mind (1500)
1.Brief description overview of its plot and its relevance
2. Merleau-Ponty’s embodiment and this film
3. Deleuze’s method to approach how to understand memory and thus the representation of plasticity.
4. how this leads to a heightened/new sense of embodiment – we are our memories, we inhabit the world through them
5. Technical analysis of the film – linking to deleuze’s reading of decoupage etc…with ref to CGI – hypercinema / cybercinema –immersive sound
6. Conclusion / overview
Eternal Sunshine’s representation of one man’s memory does challenge previous cinematic notions concerning the act of remembering.
B.] Chris Cunningham Flex (500)
1.Brief description overview of its plot and its relevance 200 words
2. Merleau-Ponty’s embodiment and this film
3. Deleuze’s method to approach how to understand the body and brain
5. Technical analysis of the film – linking to deleuze’s reading of decoupage etc…with ref to CGI – hypercinema / cybercinema –immersive sound
6. Conclusion / overview
C.] Pattern Recognition (500)
1.Brief description overview of its plot and its relevance 200 words
2. Merleau-Ponty’s embodiment and this film
3. Deleuze’s method to approach how to understand the body and brain
5. Technical analysis of the film – linking to deleuze’s reading of decoupage etc…with ref to CGI – hypercinema / cybercinema –immersive sound
6. Conclusion / overview
D.] My project (1000) and lots of images
Chapter 4: Conclusion: Embodiment, Neuroscience, Film: Enveloped in the Chiasmus 1500
Long overview, discussing the merits and pitfalls etc of the cross disciplinary approach
Discussion / End 500
10,000 words
Entering the Haecceity
Entering the Haecceity from N Nivreen on Vimeo.
Meant to look like the portion highlighted is a patch of regrowth in a dead landscape
DYING ENTRANCE from N Nivreen on Vimeo.
Wednesday, 15 April 2009
Filmic Space: Representing the Chiasmus (Rough Chapter 3)
To restate the original premise of this thesis: architecture as a tool through which to know the ultimate truth. As a method of realising the synthesis of the internal and external, of the thought and felt, of seeing and being. Architecture as the embodiment of embodiment. Of representing experience so that experience can be reflected upon and further experienced to a deeper degree.
Neuroscience’s developments that have just been discussed demand a new expression. They describe complex dynamic networks in flux. They describe plastic subjectivity. They pose deep questions about the symbiosis of states. They describe the existence of consciousness on a cellular level, they hint at what our very consciousness may be. They propose the link that represents the chiasmus. They describe new mobius like topographies of space, one in which experience and perception feed back eternally. To represent this as a static image or merely to describe it as a graph, an arrowed diagram or a complex equation is to lose the essence of these new truths. The altered perspectives suggested and proved by neuroscience, point to movement, dynamism and the effects of time.
As Vivian Sobchack states in The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience “More than any other medium of human communication, the moving picture makes itself sensuously and sensibly manifest as the expression of experience by experience. A film is an act of seeing that makes itself seen, an act of hearing that makes itself heard, an act of physical and reflective movement that makes itself reflexively felt and understood.” In essence the filmic medium manages to both represent the embodiment of space while at the same time embodying space.
Deleuze speculates on the encompassing nature of cinematic space “the cinema provides such passageways of thought, showing itself to be a profound and sometimes rigorous surface that covers the visible world.”
For the purpose of this thesis I will be using the terms defined by Najmeh Khalili in her essay, Walter Benjamin Revisited: The Work of Cinema in the Age of Digital (Re)production. In this essay she defines two types of space which I feel make up contemporary current filmic space, hypercinema and cybercinema
“I have adopted the term hypercinema in order to refer to the formal aspects of a cinema which is equipped by 1) virtual reality and digital simulation at the level of mise-en-scene (such as virtual actors, digital spaces and hyper-real motifs), 2) artificial intelligence as an apparatus for capturing or constructing the image, in other words replacing the human eye behind the camera with that of a machine and 3) an interface which allows individual interaction with the narrative.”
In this essay she describes how, the medium through which filmic space is now expressed is altering its very makeup, in particular the rules that dictate narrative:
“Since the advent of sound, narrative film has dominated the scope of cinematic experience, to such extent that much of our film theories and cultural studies have been dedicated to using the language of film to convey a meaning or to decipher its text. The new digital and electronic technologies are well on their way to expanding the narrative dimension of hypercinema.”
The term cybercinema is defined to further the “narrative connotation of hypercinema”
“ 1) the poetics of the virtual imagery, or the non-narrative and oneiric possibilities provided by digital technology in creation of images which are not entirely divorced from meaning but are more dedicated to intensity and duration of an experience and to “haecceity” (referencing Deleuze)
2) the cult of digital image production and distribution.”
Using this notion of ‘filmic space’ I hope to analyse the philosophical meanings gleaned from the developments in neuroscience with regard to embodiment and show that it indeed is best suited to further understanding and experiencing of this embodied space and therefore of the essence of space itself. That it is best placed at this current time to ‘reveal the truth’ (find this quote, its somewhere in Visible and Invisible, MP)
“Deleuze is engaged in the work of concept creation ‘alongside’ the cinema. New concepts are invented, on the basis of some well-known philosophical themes and then put to work in the cinema.”
“For what is interesting in philosophy is that it proposes a cutting [decoupage] of things, a new cutting: it groups under a single concept things that one would have thought were very different, and it separates from it others which one would have thought very close. Now, the cinema by itself is also a cutting of visual and sound images. There are modes of cutting which can converge.”
“For Deleuze, the philosopher ‘works alongside’ the cinema, producing a classification of its images and signs but reordering them for new purposes…Cinema and philosophy are brought together in a continuing process of intercutting. This is philosophy as assemblage, a kind of provoked becoming of thought.”
In Cinema 2, Deleuze is “concerned with the taxonomy of the time-image and its signs, which are called ‘chronosigns’. These are signs of the order of time, of its internal relations and signs of time as series. Both types of signs bring the notion of truth into question and the book culminates in powerful discussions of the powers of the false in the cinema, thought in the cinema and the body and the brain…..The time image which Deleuze releases from modern cinema gives him a new line of approach to a number of important problems of modern thought: the undecidability of truth and falsity, the relation of inside and out, the relation between the brain and the body.”
“Antonioni does not criticise the modern world, in whose possibilities he profoundly ‘believes’: he criticises the coexistence in the world of a modern brain and a tired, worn-out, neurotic body. So that his work, in a fundamental sense passes through a dualism which corresponds to the two aspects of the time-image: a cinema of the body which pulls all the weight of the world and modern neurosis; but also the cinema of the brain, which reveals the creativity of the world; its colours aroused by a new space-time, its powers multiplied by artificial brains.”
Using Deleuze’s approach: i.e. through the creation of cinematic spaces, I hope to unravel new philosophical truths about the self in space and the new dynamic relationships of environment, subject and experience suggested by neuroscience. In this manner, Deleuze as a tool aids in fulfilling Merleau-Ponty’s desire for truth.
Neuroscience’s developments that have just been discussed demand a new expression. They describe complex dynamic networks in flux. They describe plastic subjectivity. They pose deep questions about the symbiosis of states. They describe the existence of consciousness on a cellular level, they hint at what our very consciousness may be. They propose the link that represents the chiasmus. They describe new mobius like topographies of space, one in which experience and perception feed back eternally. To represent this as a static image or merely to describe it as a graph, an arrowed diagram or a complex equation is to lose the essence of these new truths. The altered perspectives suggested and proved by neuroscience, point to movement, dynamism and the effects of time.
As Vivian Sobchack states in The Address of the Eye: A Phenomenology of Film Experience “More than any other medium of human communication, the moving picture makes itself sensuously and sensibly manifest as the expression of experience by experience. A film is an act of seeing that makes itself seen, an act of hearing that makes itself heard, an act of physical and reflective movement that makes itself reflexively felt and understood.” In essence the filmic medium manages to both represent the embodiment of space while at the same time embodying space.
Deleuze speculates on the encompassing nature of cinematic space “the cinema provides such passageways of thought, showing itself to be a profound and sometimes rigorous surface that covers the visible world.”
For the purpose of this thesis I will be using the terms defined by Najmeh Khalili in her essay, Walter Benjamin Revisited: The Work of Cinema in the Age of Digital (Re)production. In this essay she defines two types of space which I feel make up contemporary current filmic space, hypercinema and cybercinema
“I have adopted the term hypercinema in order to refer to the formal aspects of a cinema which is equipped by 1) virtual reality and digital simulation at the level of mise-en-scene (such as virtual actors, digital spaces and hyper-real motifs), 2) artificial intelligence as an apparatus for capturing or constructing the image, in other words replacing the human eye behind the camera with that of a machine and 3) an interface which allows individual interaction with the narrative.”
In this essay she describes how, the medium through which filmic space is now expressed is altering its very makeup, in particular the rules that dictate narrative:
“Since the advent of sound, narrative film has dominated the scope of cinematic experience, to such extent that much of our film theories and cultural studies have been dedicated to using the language of film to convey a meaning or to decipher its text. The new digital and electronic technologies are well on their way to expanding the narrative dimension of hypercinema.”
The term cybercinema is defined to further the “narrative connotation of hypercinema”
“ 1) the poetics of the virtual imagery, or the non-narrative and oneiric possibilities provided by digital technology in creation of images which are not entirely divorced from meaning but are more dedicated to intensity and duration of an experience and to “haecceity” (referencing Deleuze)
2) the cult of digital image production and distribution.”
Using this notion of ‘filmic space’ I hope to analyse the philosophical meanings gleaned from the developments in neuroscience with regard to embodiment and show that it indeed is best suited to further understanding and experiencing of this embodied space and therefore of the essence of space itself. That it is best placed at this current time to ‘reveal the truth’ (find this quote, its somewhere in Visible and Invisible, MP)
“Deleuze is engaged in the work of concept creation ‘alongside’ the cinema. New concepts are invented, on the basis of some well-known philosophical themes and then put to work in the cinema.”
“For what is interesting in philosophy is that it proposes a cutting [decoupage] of things, a new cutting: it groups under a single concept things that one would have thought were very different, and it separates from it others which one would have thought very close. Now, the cinema by itself is also a cutting of visual and sound images. There are modes of cutting which can converge.”
“For Deleuze, the philosopher ‘works alongside’ the cinema, producing a classification of its images and signs but reordering them for new purposes…Cinema and philosophy are brought together in a continuing process of intercutting. This is philosophy as assemblage, a kind of provoked becoming of thought.”
In Cinema 2, Deleuze is “concerned with the taxonomy of the time-image and its signs, which are called ‘chronosigns’. These are signs of the order of time, of its internal relations and signs of time as series. Both types of signs bring the notion of truth into question and the book culminates in powerful discussions of the powers of the false in the cinema, thought in the cinema and the body and the brain…..The time image which Deleuze releases from modern cinema gives him a new line of approach to a number of important problems of modern thought: the undecidability of truth and falsity, the relation of inside and out, the relation between the brain and the body.”
“Antonioni does not criticise the modern world, in whose possibilities he profoundly ‘believes’: he criticises the coexistence in the world of a modern brain and a tired, worn-out, neurotic body. So that his work, in a fundamental sense passes through a dualism which corresponds to the two aspects of the time-image: a cinema of the body which pulls all the weight of the world and modern neurosis; but also the cinema of the brain, which reveals the creativity of the world; its colours aroused by a new space-time, its powers multiplied by artificial brains.”
Using Deleuze’s approach: i.e. through the creation of cinematic spaces, I hope to unravel new philosophical truths about the self in space and the new dynamic relationships of environment, subject and experience suggested by neuroscience. In this manner, Deleuze as a tool aids in fulfilling Merleau-Ponty’s desire for truth.
Tuesday, 14 April 2009
Saturday, 11 April 2009
Entrance Wall
Unfinished....bit more to be done to it....colour at the entrance Emily stands before etc
The building is a dead skeletal grey structure
Chapter two - Rough, no references
Chapter 2: Neuroscience and Embodiment
In the field of emerging complex relationships between the subjective self in space, none I feel are more pertinent than that of the discoveries made by neuroscience in the past forty years.
As stated already, I have defined two sides of embodied architecture, the first being our relationship as a subjective biological being to the world we live in. This sense of embodied self within a subjectively created and experienced world has been speculated upon by philosophers since the beginning of accounts and is now today being proved scientifically as we explore inside the brain and discover the complex systems of representation at play.
The application of a phenomenological approach to neuroscience is one which may elucidate both the fields of philosophy and neuroscience.
To begin with, how does our ability to understand our biology relate to our ability to understand ourselves philosophically? To understand the inner landscape of our anatomy and to witness its consequences on our sense of self and existence, is to give ourselves an altered sense of what may traditionally be believed through common sense. In the following three examples, each of which are startling discoveries made in the past twenty years, I will analyse the effect of them on our understanding of our ability to consume and create space.
Plasticity
William Greenough and a team of neuroscientists over forty years ago documented the strange phenomenon of the growth of new dendrites and synaptic connections between existing neurons in the brains of rats when they took on new activities.
In human beings, it is now well documented. The human brain goes through a series of stages of development which prune and grow the neural connections according to it use in life. The term ‘use it or lose it’ is often applied to the description of the child’s brain. As a baby we have between a trillion to x neurons.Between the age of 0 and x (3-6) over 2 thirds of these will be pruned away to form clear neural pathways as the child learns to talk / walk and think. The sad thing is that this stage is so critical and if a child isn’t given the sensory stimulus at this stage, there are whole neural areas that die, never to be replaced. So experience determines the organisational structure of the brain, thus all future experiences will be experienced via the medium of this moulded brain.
All the way through life this process continues in a more refined manner. In adolescence, a large portion of rewiring occurs and by the early twenties the brain is formed, the number of neurons relatively fixed.
However, all through ones life, the brain has been shown to have a remarkable ability to rewire itself in response to new experiences and environments. For example if one learns to play a musical instrument, no matter how late in life, the brain grows new dendrites and neural synaptic connections, forming new pathways in which this information is processed.
Philosophically this has massive implications to the relationship of the self in space – to internal embodied architecture. Instead of our sense of self being defined by information that is transmitted directly to our consciousness, we are sponges of information that act in looping feed; sensory information is communicated to our mind via our body and brain. It forms an internal mental map of what reality is, every time we absorb more information from the outside world our mind checks it for probability against the current mental map. Thus our experience of the outside world is in part created by our previous experiences of it. This process continues indefinitely. Information comes in, is processed and checked and redesigns the map and so on. Therefore the experience of the self in space is wholly subjective, we truly do create the world we experience.
What is interesting about this phenomenon beyond the subjectivity of experience, is the fact that, unbeknownst to our consciousness, a high level of noise (random error information) is also fed into our brains. The internal mental map screens this information based on its probability, filtering the sensical from the non sensical. However, at breakdown points in the brain process, be it through a mental illness like schizophrenia, an accident to the brain or the ingestion of psychoactive drugs, these filtration systems are lost allowing strange connections to be made and strange sensations experienced. Is this a truer sense of reality? Clearly not but it does offer glimmers of understanding into the mechanisations behind our normally seamless experience of the world.
mirror neurons
In the field of emerging complex relationships between the subjective self in space, none I feel are more pertinent than that of the discoveries made by neuroscience in the past forty years.
As stated already, I have defined two sides of embodied architecture, the first being our relationship as a subjective biological being to the world we live in. This sense of embodied self within a subjectively created and experienced world has been speculated upon by philosophers since the beginning of accounts and is now today being proved scientifically as we explore inside the brain and discover the complex systems of representation at play.
The application of a phenomenological approach to neuroscience is one which may elucidate both the fields of philosophy and neuroscience.
To begin with, how does our ability to understand our biology relate to our ability to understand ourselves philosophically? To understand the inner landscape of our anatomy and to witness its consequences on our sense of self and existence, is to give ourselves an altered sense of what may traditionally be believed through common sense. In the following three examples, each of which are startling discoveries made in the past twenty years, I will analyse the effect of them on our understanding of our ability to consume and create space.
Plasticity
William Greenough and a team of neuroscientists over forty years ago documented the strange phenomenon of the growth of new dendrites and synaptic connections between existing neurons in the brains of rats when they took on new activities.
In human beings, it is now well documented. The human brain goes through a series of stages of development which prune and grow the neural connections according to it use in life. The term ‘use it or lose it’ is often applied to the description of the child’s brain. As a baby we have between a trillion to x neurons.Between the age of 0 and x (3-6) over 2 thirds of these will be pruned away to form clear neural pathways as the child learns to talk / walk and think. The sad thing is that this stage is so critical and if a child isn’t given the sensory stimulus at this stage, there are whole neural areas that die, never to be replaced. So experience determines the organisational structure of the brain, thus all future experiences will be experienced via the medium of this moulded brain.
All the way through life this process continues in a more refined manner. In adolescence, a large portion of rewiring occurs and by the early twenties the brain is formed, the number of neurons relatively fixed.
However, all through ones life, the brain has been shown to have a remarkable ability to rewire itself in response to new experiences and environments. For example if one learns to play a musical instrument, no matter how late in life, the brain grows new dendrites and neural synaptic connections, forming new pathways in which this information is processed.
Philosophically this has massive implications to the relationship of the self in space – to internal embodied architecture. Instead of our sense of self being defined by information that is transmitted directly to our consciousness, we are sponges of information that act in looping feed; sensory information is communicated to our mind via our body and brain. It forms an internal mental map of what reality is, every time we absorb more information from the outside world our mind checks it for probability against the current mental map. Thus our experience of the outside world is in part created by our previous experiences of it. This process continues indefinitely. Information comes in, is processed and checked and redesigns the map and so on. Therefore the experience of the self in space is wholly subjective, we truly do create the world we experience.
What is interesting about this phenomenon beyond the subjectivity of experience, is the fact that, unbeknownst to our consciousness, a high level of noise (random error information) is also fed into our brains. The internal mental map screens this information based on its probability, filtering the sensical from the non sensical. However, at breakdown points in the brain process, be it through a mental illness like schizophrenia, an accident to the brain or the ingestion of psychoactive drugs, these filtration systems are lost allowing strange connections to be made and strange sensations experienced. Is this a truer sense of reality? Clearly not but it does offer glimmers of understanding into the mechanisations behind our normally seamless experience of the world.
mirror neurons
Thesis Introduction (Rough)
In this paper the relationship between embodied architecture, neuroscience and filmic space are explored using phenomenology as the tool to relate them to one another.
The altering, evolving relationships between subject and object suggested by new discoveries about the physiology of the brain imply a new form of embodied architecture. This new embodiment by turn necessitates a new form of representation, one which has the ability to convey its complexity and corporality. In this paper I argue that new modes of representation in the multi-disciplinary medium of film are most suited to achieving this.
In turn the paper will then explore how theses cross-disciplinary relationships can evolve and inform one another beyond their immediate and initial goals.
Architecture is the tool by which we can see the truth, as the manifestation of our sense of self in the world. This I argue is architecture’s most important role. To understand the world in ourselves and ourselves in the world – in a physical, phenomenological way, not merely objectively . Architecture above all other art forms / disciplines has an ability to transcend due to its spatiality; its ability to envelop, surround, immerse, to engage with multiple senses.
At this point it should be noted that two forms of embodied architecture can be defined. First, the internal sense, which is the internal mental map of our perception of ourselves in relation to our surroundings, the absolute grounding of the body within space as the interface by which we can make sense of the world. The second is the external manifestation of this sense of self in the world, this is the conventional description of architecture, the one which we recognise in the stone carved cathedrals of the past and the shining forms of the present.
In recent times our sense of self and our place in the world has radically altered due to technological and scientific advancements. In this paper I am focusing on the changes implied by advancements in neuroscience, in particular that of mirror neurons, place cells and plasticity. However, the backdrop of a post modern landscape of complex media space, the dynamic system of the Internet and scale bending phenomenon that is nano-technology is always present as the same fabric that comprises our experience and understanding of the world.
Recent discoveries in neuroscience can easily be read as radically shifting relationships between subject and object, creating a more dynamic interchange between the self and the environment. One which has been described / prophesised already in the 20th century by Merleau-Ponty, Baudrillard and Virillio among others.
When analysed a new landscape is implied, a truly embodied internal architecture in which subjectivity and inter subjectivity reign.
For embodied architecture to play its role as initially stated in ‘revealing the truth’, to create external manifestations of our sense of self in space, I will argue it needs to embrace the representational tools available to it and given to it by the age it exists within. It needs to ask difficult questions about the fundamentals of representation? Does a building need to be functional on a practical, physical level to transmit meaning and reveal the truth? Indeed, can a fully physically realised space adequately represent such subtle and complex relationships? I argue that is cannot. That paradoxically only in the rejection of the obviously recognisable, physical architecture can we begin to truly represent space and ourselves in it realistically. I argue that the medium of film in its current multi-disciplinary phase of development is most suited to the representation of this form of intensely embodied space, on in which the senses are linked to a sense of oneself, one of immersion and transience.
Looking at the history of film theory which developed alongside philosophical theories of self I will reference Merleau-Ponty, Eisenstein, Deleuze and more recently Vivian Sorbach in developing a language which can be used in our current time. Next I will inspect a series of case studies in the light of such theories.
Taking a number of case studies, I will look at the versatility and complexity of the medium in communicating new notions of space and the subjectivity of space due to our brain’s method of processing it. With the feature film ‘ Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ by Michel Gondry, the link between memory (which is another word for the accumulation of sensory experience embodied) and our sense of self in the world is beautifully conveyed using conventional film and heavy use of CGI and post production.
Without these new methods of film making I argue this revealing sense of how we create our own realities would be impossible.
Next I will look at piece of work which explores a sense of immersion by using a carefully crafted visual and sound landscape using the human body as its only prop: ‘Flex’ by Chris Cunningham.
As the final case study, I will discuss my own project as a cross disciplinary attempt to express the internal sense of embodied architecture as an external manifestation of itself in the medium of film, using all of the research I have undertaken with regard to phenomenology and neuroscience.
Finally I will look at how while the manifestation of embodied architecture in filmic space encourages and helps us to understand the world as it is, it also has reaching consequences for each of the other disciplines, through engagement with the other techniques. Neuroscience benefits through the enhanced visualisation techniques afforded by filmic space, speeding up understanding and communication among scientists and between the scientists and other disciplines. Therefore as the technology increases the growth and development of ideas is exponential.
By reassessing the relationships afforded and revealed by the mergence of embodiment, philosophy, neuroscience and film; the contradictions, the illuminations the successes, I will look to the future, using the thesis as a methodology for understanding the present through works of art and technology. I will speculate on potential
The altering, evolving relationships between subject and object suggested by new discoveries about the physiology of the brain imply a new form of embodied architecture. This new embodiment by turn necessitates a new form of representation, one which has the ability to convey its complexity and corporality. In this paper I argue that new modes of representation in the multi-disciplinary medium of film are most suited to achieving this.
In turn the paper will then explore how theses cross-disciplinary relationships can evolve and inform one another beyond their immediate and initial goals.
Architecture is the tool by which we can see the truth, as the manifestation of our sense of self in the world. This I argue is architecture’s most important role. To understand the world in ourselves and ourselves in the world – in a physical, phenomenological way, not merely objectively . Architecture above all other art forms / disciplines has an ability to transcend due to its spatiality; its ability to envelop, surround, immerse, to engage with multiple senses.
At this point it should be noted that two forms of embodied architecture can be defined. First, the internal sense, which is the internal mental map of our perception of ourselves in relation to our surroundings, the absolute grounding of the body within space as the interface by which we can make sense of the world. The second is the external manifestation of this sense of self in the world, this is the conventional description of architecture, the one which we recognise in the stone carved cathedrals of the past and the shining forms of the present.
In recent times our sense of self and our place in the world has radically altered due to technological and scientific advancements. In this paper I am focusing on the changes implied by advancements in neuroscience, in particular that of mirror neurons, place cells and plasticity. However, the backdrop of a post modern landscape of complex media space, the dynamic system of the Internet and scale bending phenomenon that is nano-technology is always present as the same fabric that comprises our experience and understanding of the world.
Recent discoveries in neuroscience can easily be read as radically shifting relationships between subject and object, creating a more dynamic interchange between the self and the environment. One which has been described / prophesised already in the 20th century by Merleau-Ponty, Baudrillard and Virillio among others.
When analysed a new landscape is implied, a truly embodied internal architecture in which subjectivity and inter subjectivity reign.
For embodied architecture to play its role as initially stated in ‘revealing the truth’, to create external manifestations of our sense of self in space, I will argue it needs to embrace the representational tools available to it and given to it by the age it exists within. It needs to ask difficult questions about the fundamentals of representation? Does a building need to be functional on a practical, physical level to transmit meaning and reveal the truth? Indeed, can a fully physically realised space adequately represent such subtle and complex relationships? I argue that is cannot. That paradoxically only in the rejection of the obviously recognisable, physical architecture can we begin to truly represent space and ourselves in it realistically. I argue that the medium of film in its current multi-disciplinary phase of development is most suited to the representation of this form of intensely embodied space, on in which the senses are linked to a sense of oneself, one of immersion and transience.
Looking at the history of film theory which developed alongside philosophical theories of self I will reference Merleau-Ponty, Eisenstein, Deleuze and more recently Vivian Sorbach in developing a language which can be used in our current time. Next I will inspect a series of case studies in the light of such theories.
Taking a number of case studies, I will look at the versatility and complexity of the medium in communicating new notions of space and the subjectivity of space due to our brain’s method of processing it. With the feature film ‘ Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind’ by Michel Gondry, the link between memory (which is another word for the accumulation of sensory experience embodied) and our sense of self in the world is beautifully conveyed using conventional film and heavy use of CGI and post production.
Without these new methods of film making I argue this revealing sense of how we create our own realities would be impossible.Next I will look at piece of work which explores a sense of immersion by using a carefully crafted visual and sound landscape using the human body as its only prop: ‘Flex’ by Chris Cunningham.
As the final case study, I will discuss my own project as a cross disciplinary attempt to express the internal sense of embodied architecture as an external manifestation of itself in the medium of film, using all of the research I have undertaken with regard to phenomenology and neuroscience.
Finally I will look at how while the manifestation of embodied architecture in filmic space encourages and helps us to understand the world as it is, it also has reaching consequences for each of the other disciplines, through engagement with the other techniques. Neuroscience benefits through the enhanced visualisation techniques afforded by filmic space, speeding up understanding and communication among scientists and between the scientists and other disciplines. Therefore as the technology increases the growth and development of ideas is exponential.
By reassessing the relationships afforded and revealed by the mergence of embodiment, philosophy, neuroscience and film; the contradictions, the illuminations the successes, I will look to the future, using the thesis as a methodology for understanding the present through works of art and technology. I will speculate on potential
Friday, 10 April 2009
Timeline and Workflow breakdown
53 10 April: Plan for the rest of the year: DONE
52 11 April:
50 13 April Monday: Half day off: 7 WEEKS TO GO
48 14 April Tuesday
47 15 April Wednesday
46 16 April Thursday
45 17 April Friday
44 18 April Saturday
43 19 April Sunday
42 20 April Monday 6 WEEKS TO GO
42 21 April Tuesday
41 22 April Wednesday
40 23 April Thursday
39 24 April Friday
38 25 April Saturday
37 26 April Sunday
Images for thesis and thesis layout
Drawings
36 27 April Monday
Images for thesis and thesis layout
Drawings
35 28 April 5 WEEKS TO GO
Bring thesis to be bound
Drawings
34 29 April Wednesday
Drawings
33 30 April Thursday
Drawings
32 1 May Friday
Photoshop image of megalopolis (for after effects and portfolio)
31 2 May Saturday
Photoshop image of megalopolis (for after effects and portfolio)
30 3 May Sunday
Altered room 3 after effects
29 4 May Monday
Megalopolis c4d
28 5 May THESIS HAND IN: 4 WEEKS TO GO
megalopolis with sfx in after effects
27 6 May Wednesday
Mirror scene
26 7 May Thursday
Mirror scene
25 8 May Friday
Mirror scene
24 9 May Saturday
Mirror scene
23 10 May Sunday
Mirror scene
22 11 May Monday
Mirror scene
21 12 May 3 WEEKS TO GO
Intricate growing shelf structure atrium cinema 4d
20 13 May Wednesday
Intricate growing shelf structure atrium cinema 4d
19 14 May Thursday
Intricate growing shelf structure atrium cinema 4d
18 15 May Friday
Intricate growing shelf structure atrium cinema 4d
17 16 May Saturday
Intricate growing shelf structure atrium cinema 4d
16 17 May Sunday
Intricate growing shelf structure atrium cinema 4d
15 18 May Monday
Intricate growing shelf structure atrium cinema 4d
14 19 May 2 WEEKS TO GO
Edit and sound
13 20 May Wednesday
Edit and sound
12 21 May Thursday
Edit and sound
11 22 May Friday
Edit and sound
10 23 May Saturday
Edit and sound
9 24 May Sunday
Edit and sound
8 25 May Monday
Edit and sound
7 26 May 1 WEEK TO GO
6 27 May
Portfolio
5 28 May
Portfolio
4 29 May
Portfolio
3 30 May
Portfolio
2 31 May
Portfolio
1 1 June
Portfolio
0 2 June: HAND IN!
3 June
4 June
to be fitted in somewhere:
Mirror room: cinema 4d extras
Dome room final scene:cinema 4d extras
Mirror room
Dome room final scene
animated tendrils
2 Plans
2 Sections
B(Log) Book
Manuscript / Anatomy Drawing layout for portfolio book
52 11 April:
- 1000 words chapter 2: 2hours Half DONE...to be finished
- Build bedroom scene 1 2 walls done: 1 more wall plus door to do, plus bed
- Opening scene image: skeletal wall and door Half DONE...to be finished
- Define drivers of structure and growth in library NOT DONE
- Sketch up plan / section NOT DONE
50 13 April Monday: Half day off: 7 WEEKS TO GO
- Define drivers of structure and growth in libraryNOT DONE
- Sketch up plan / sectionNOT DONE
- Bedroom scene 1 NOT DONE
- Opening scene image: skeletal wall and door Half DONE...to be finished
48 14 April Tuesday
- Define drivers of structure and growth in library NOT DONE
- Sketch up plan / section NOT DONE
- 1000words: Chapter 3: 2hours NOT DONE
- Opening scene image: skeletal wall and door after effects Half DONE...to be finished
- neural surge NOT DONE
47 15 April Wednesday
- Book studio Not open today!
- Define drivers of structure and growth in library DONE
- Sketch up plan / section of overall scheme DONE
- 1000words: Chapter 3a: 2hours Partially done..to be finished
- Opening scene in after effects: Partially done..to be finished
- 1000words: Chapter 4:2hours NOT DONE
- model and animate a tendril NOT DONE
- bring into after effect and add particular NOT DONE
- Drawing plan collage NOT DONE
46 16 April Thursday
- 400 words: Chapter 3: 45 minutes 07:30 - 08:15 DONE
- Finish opening scene 8:15 - 10:00 DONE
- Through the door and neural surge 10:00-13:00 some DONE need 4 more hours
- 1500words: Chapter 3b:2hours (Case Studies) 15:00-18:00 some DONE more to do
- Model /Draw / Collage the organ planet PartiallyDONE..to be finished
18:00 - 21:00 - Finish door and neural surge 21:00-00:00DONE
- Watch eternal sunshine and take notes 00:00 - NOT DONE
45 17 April Friday
- Watch eternal sunshine and take notes 7:30-9:00 DONE
- Finish organ building object 10:00-12:00 PartiallyDONE..to be finished later
- Case Study: eternal sunshine 1,500 12:30 - 14:00PartiallyDONE..to be finished later
- Chapter 1 16:00-18:00 1,500 PartiallyDONE..to be finished later
- New plan which has the mirrored room in it, sketched up: make up the reason 16:00 NOT DONE
44 18 April Saturday
- birdwoman head: morning DONE
- Introduction DONE
- Chapter 1: Finish 1130-13:30 DONE
- Sketch out New plan which has the mirrored room in it 14:00-16:00NOT DONE
- Chapter 2:PartiallyDONE..to be finished later
- Chapter 3A: 17:00-19:00
- Sketch out New plan which has the mirrored room in it 19:00-20:00 NOT DONE
- Chapter 3: Case study 1: 20:00-22:00NOT DONE
- Chapter 3: Case study 2: 22:00- 23:00NOT DONE
- Chapter 3: Case study 3: 23:00-23:30NOT DONE
- Chapter 3: Case study 4:Own Project (Summary): 23:30- 00:30NOT DONE
43 19 April Sunday
- Finish Chapter 2 10:30 - 13:00PartiallyDONE..
- Sketch out New plan which has the mirrored room in it 14:00-15:00 NOT DONE
- Chapter 3a 15:00-16:00 PartiallyDONE..
- Chapter 3: Case study 1: 16:00-18:00 NOT DONE
- Chapter 3: Case study 2,3: 19:00- 20:30 NOT DONE
- Chapter 3: Case study 4: Own Project (Summary): 20:30 - 22:30 NOT DONE
- Add images and write up own project development for each chapter 22:30- 00:30NOT DONE
42 20 April Monday 6 WEEKS TO GO
- Book studioDONE
- Finish Chapter 3a DONE
- Chapter 3: Case study 1: DONE (for the moment - more to add)
- Chapter 3: Case study 2,3: NOT DONE
- Add images and write up own project development for each chapterNOT DONE
- Indesign layoutDONE
- add picsNOT DONE
- Assemble thesis and send to vesnaNOT DONE
42 21 April Tuesday
- Finish draft! DONE
41 22 April Wednesday
- Tutorial at 1DONE
- Buy paper for thesis
- Look at previous theses DONE
- Sketch up plan with mirror room 10:00-12:00NOT DONE
- Scan 9:00-10:00 DONE
40 23 April Thursday
- Sketch up storyboards for mirror room scene
- Sketch up plan for mirror room and dome DONE
- model up basic shape of dome c4d DONE
39 24 April Friday
- Collect camera at 10DONE
- Bring back bookDONE
- More detail to the C4D model 12:00-15:00
- set up mirrors in c4d and add test footage 15:00-20:00
- model growing tendrils 21:00-00:00DONE
38 25 April Saturday
- sketch up head shots for shoot
- Shoot Emily
- 1000words
- Bird woman room
- model growing tendrils
37 26 April Sunday
Images for thesis and thesis layout
Drawings
36 27 April Monday
Images for thesis and thesis layout
Drawings
35 28 April 5 WEEKS TO GO
Bring thesis to be bound
Drawings
34 29 April Wednesday
Drawings
33 30 April Thursday
Drawings
32 1 May Friday
Photoshop image of megalopolis (for after effects and portfolio)
31 2 May Saturday
Photoshop image of megalopolis (for after effects and portfolio)
30 3 May Sunday
Altered room 3 after effects
29 4 May Monday
Megalopolis c4d
28 5 May THESIS HAND IN: 4 WEEKS TO GO
megalopolis with sfx in after effects
27 6 May Wednesday
Mirror scene
26 7 May Thursday
Mirror scene
25 8 May Friday
Mirror scene
24 9 May Saturday
Mirror scene
23 10 May Sunday
Mirror scene
22 11 May Monday
Mirror scene
21 12 May 3 WEEKS TO GO
Intricate growing shelf structure atrium cinema 4d
20 13 May Wednesday
Intricate growing shelf structure atrium cinema 4d
19 14 May Thursday
Intricate growing shelf structure atrium cinema 4d
18 15 May Friday
Intricate growing shelf structure atrium cinema 4d
17 16 May Saturday
Intricate growing shelf structure atrium cinema 4d
16 17 May Sunday
Intricate growing shelf structure atrium cinema 4d
15 18 May Monday
Intricate growing shelf structure atrium cinema 4d
14 19 May 2 WEEKS TO GO
Edit and sound
13 20 May Wednesday
Edit and sound
12 21 May Thursday
Edit and sound
11 22 May Friday
Edit and sound
10 23 May Saturday
Edit and sound
9 24 May Sunday
Edit and sound
8 25 May Monday
Edit and sound
7 26 May 1 WEEK TO GO
6 27 May
Portfolio
5 28 May
Portfolio
4 29 May
Portfolio
3 30 May
Portfolio
2 31 May
Portfolio
1 1 June
Portfolio
0 2 June: HAND IN!
3 June
4 June
to be fitted in somewhere:
Mirror room: cinema 4d extras
Dome room final scene:cinema 4d extras
Mirror room
Dome room final scene
animated tendrils
2 Plans
2 Sections
B(Log) Book
Manuscript / Anatomy Drawing layout for portfolio book
Storyboard breakdown and explanation
"I thought of a labyrinth of labyrinths, of one sinuous spreading labyrinth that would encompass the past and the future and in some way involve the stars"
Borges
1. An indistinct blurry, light shimmering form fills the screen, the click and whir of something can be heard, maybe a faint melody.
After Effects
2. A massive grey skeletal wall of hardened organic forms fills the screen.
Photoshop.After Effects.particular
photoshop image 1
3. The shot zooms in on a patch of brightened area, a pinkish tendril like door with a girl standing before it.
Close shot of her face and then open shot in quick succession
Photoshop.After Effects.particular.footage
4. The new scene is a pair of eyes opening, looking down at strangely large hands on a duvet cover / blanket. The scene is very dark, the rest of the room is unviewable. The sense of the body of the protagonist is emphasised, all is silent but her breathing and heartbeat. When she breathes out, cold air forms little clouds.
footage.aftereffects for breath.particular for dust
breath sfx 1
5. The girl is walking through the door, we see it is made from fleshy neural pieces. A sharp noise accompanies an electrical flash and explosion and the camera is sucked forward, light illuminating a corridor that grows before it.
Photoshop.After Effects.particular.footage
explosion / electricity sfx 2
6. The scene is brighter, the room is made visible. It is a small, stark room with faded wallpaper, a window with the curtains drawn to the left of the bed, a door on the opposite wall which is slightly ajar, a sliver of silver light creating a line of light on the floor. At the end of the bed a woman sits completely still her head turned towards the window, her head is of a bird of some description. The atmosphere is sinister, the only sound is still the breathing of the protagonist.
The door is slowly moving letting the light spill across the floor revealing floorboards.
Cinema 4d.Photoshop.After Effects.particular.footage
Comp Emily with bird sfx 3
7. The light spill crosses the library shelves, revealing Emily reading a book from the shelves as she stands. Quick cut flash to the previous scene door opening. The tendrils are moving, creating more intricate shelf structures, that get higher and higher.
Photoshop.After Effects.particular.footage
Build tendrils in Cinema 4d 1
8. The bedroom is brighter and changed, the woman is gone, it is longer and the tendrils are growing up the walls in the shadows almost imperceptibly. The light dims and brightens, the scene blurs. She is moving, we hear the rustle of her clothes, the music surges slightly.
Cinema 4d.Photoshop.After Effects.particular.footage
Tendrils in Cinema 4d 2
9. The corridor is altered, grander, stronger, more complex. Emily looks upward and the camera follows her gaze. An electrical pulse is bringing the the building to life. It is stories and stories high of flying buttresses heavy with the stucco of moving cerebral tissue laden with books.
Photoshop.After Effects.particular.footage
Cinema 4d silhouettes 2
Explosion sfx 2
10. Likewise the bedroom is much bigger now and brighter still, the wallpaper has been replaced by plain white walls the curtains are a different colour and a vase of flowers sits on the chair at the end of the bed. The view is from someone standing and walking. The chopping noise of the fan is still audible.
Photoshop.After Effects.
11. On the beat of the chopping noise the camera flies out of the top of the building revealing a bizarre landscape of a massive building that is growing. There are staircases that stop midway through poking out the top of the building, archways to nowhere, light and sparks flicker across is illuminating it as it does so.
Photoshop.After Effects.particular.Cinema 4d
Cinema 4d silhouettes 3
12/ The curtains are blowing in the wind, the fan whirs, she is moving, the blurry chop of the all the rhythm abstracting to the next scene. Her breathing is faster.
Cinema 4d.After Effects.particular
13. To the pulse of her breathing the shot expands out showing electricity spreading in all directions revealing a larger and larger landscape, the centre illuminated and spreading its light.
Photoshop.After Effects.particular.footage. Cinema 4d
Cinema 4d curtains 5
14. The camera pulls out jerkily to reveal that it is the pupil of Emily's eye. There is no sound. There is a flash of her facing herself in the mirror her hand against the glass. Black to light
Photoshop.After Effects.particular.footage.
15. She is in a vast mirrored hall that encircles her like a strange optical effect but she is in it. It envelops her. There is a light at one end of it, a grand hall.
Photoshop.After Effects.particular.footage. NEEDS TO BE FIGURED OUT!
Cinema 4d 6
16. She is facing herself in the mirror, the room is illuminating around her, the curtains blow harder, the door is opening she remains facing herself.
Photoshop.After Effects.particular.footage.
Cinema 4d 7
Alter room in after effects 5
17. She is now below a massive dome, immensely detailed with moving growing parts, the walls below flanked with golden books. The camera moves further and further into the dome, the chop of the fan becomes louder
Photoshop.After Effects.particular.footage. NEEDS TO BE FIGURED OUT!
Cinema 4d 8
18. She is lying looking up at the fan, the air is bright and warm, the fan merges with the cathedral/library space.
Photoshop.After Effects.particular.footage. NEEDS TO BE FIGURED OUT!
Cinema 4d 9
Borges
1. An indistinct blurry, light shimmering form fills the screen, the click and whir of something can be heard, maybe a faint melody.
After Effects
- Build fan, import to after effects, alter
2. A massive grey skeletal wall of hardened organic forms fills the screen.
Photoshop.After Effects.particular
- Create image on photoshop from collage
- Import to after effects, add dust with trapcode particular
photoshop image 1
3. The shot zooms in on a patch of brightened area, a pinkish tendril like door with a girl standing before it.
Close shot of her face and then open shot in quick succession
Photoshop.After Effects.particular.footage
- Comp footage of Emily into after effects scene
- Dust with trapcode particular
- Add lights to acheive depth of door
4. The new scene is a pair of eyes opening, looking down at strangely large hands on a duvet cover / blanket. The scene is very dark, the rest of the room is unviewable. The sense of the body of the protagonist is emphasised, all is silent but her breathing and heartbeat. When she breathes out, cold air forms little clouds.
footage.aftereffects for breath.particular for dust
- Shoot footage of Emily in bed
- Comp into after effects, add breath
- Add distortion to hands
breath sfx 1
5. The girl is walking through the door, we see it is made from fleshy neural pieces. A sharp noise accompanies an electrical flash and explosion and the camera is sucked forward, light illuminating a corridor that grows before it.
Photoshop.After Effects.particular.footage
- build 3d scene in after effects / cinema 4d into which the camera can be sucked
- Add explosion / sparks / electricity in after effects
- Add lights to acheive depth of door
explosion / electricity sfx 2
6. The scene is brighter, the room is made visible. It is a small, stark room with faded wallpaper, a window with the curtains drawn to the left of the bed, a door on the opposite wall which is slightly ajar, a sliver of silver light creating a line of light on the floor. At the end of the bed a woman sits completely still her head turned towards the window, her head is of a bird of some description. The atmosphere is sinister, the only sound is still the breathing of the protagonist.
The door is slowly moving letting the light spill across the floor revealing floorboards.
Cinema 4d.Photoshop.After Effects.particular.footage
- Build 3d room in after effects
- Build door and sliver of light in Cinema 4d (unless doable in after effects)
- Shoot Emily, comp into after effects room, comp in birds head
Comp Emily with bird sfx 3
7. The light spill crosses the library shelves, revealing Emily reading a book from the shelves as she stands. Quick cut flash to the previous scene door opening. The tendrils are moving, creating more intricate shelf structures, that get higher and higher.
Photoshop.After Effects.particular.footage
- Shoot Emily standing
- Cinema 4d tendrils for close up
- After effects for general scene
- Photoshop collage for overall image of scene
Build tendrils in Cinema 4d 1
8. The bedroom is brighter and changed, the woman is gone, it is longer and the tendrils are growing up the walls in the shadows almost imperceptibly. The light dims and brightens, the scene blurs. She is moving, we hear the rustle of her clothes, the music surges slightly.
Cinema 4d.Photoshop.After Effects.particular.footage
- After effects built room
- Cinema 4d tendrils comped in
- After effects sfx
Tendrils in Cinema 4d 2
9. The corridor is altered, grander, stronger, more complex. Emily looks upward and the camera follows her gaze. An electrical pulse is bringing the the building to life. It is stories and stories high of flying buttresses heavy with the stucco of moving cerebral tissue laden with books.
Photoshop.After Effects.particular.footage
- Comp footage of Emily into after effects scene
- Dust with trapcode particular
- Add lights to acheive depth of door
Cinema 4d silhouettes 2
Explosion sfx 2
10. Likewise the bedroom is much bigger now and brighter still, the wallpaper has been replaced by plain white walls the curtains are a different colour and a vase of flowers sits on the chair at the end of the bed. The view is from someone standing and walking. The chopping noise of the fan is still audible.
Photoshop.After Effects.
- Build scene in after effects
11. On the beat of the chopping noise the camera flies out of the top of the building revealing a bizarre landscape of a massive building that is growing. There are staircases that stop midway through poking out the top of the building, archways to nowhere, light and sparks flicker across is illuminating it as it does so.
Photoshop.After Effects.particular.Cinema 4d
- Photoshop image
- After effects comp with trapcode
- Cinema 4d for silhouette of shapes, distance
Cinema 4d silhouettes 3
12/ The curtains are blowing in the wind, the fan whirs, she is moving, the blurry chop of the all the rhythm abstracting to the next scene. Her breathing is faster.
Cinema 4d.After Effects.particular
- Curtains in Cinema 4d
- After effects for sfx
13. To the pulse of her breathing the shot expands out showing electricity spreading in all directions revealing a larger and larger landscape, the centre illuminated and spreading its light.
Photoshop.After Effects.particular.footage. Cinema 4d
- Photoshop image
- Cinema 4d model of this for depth shot
- Comped in After effects with lights sfx etc
Cinema 4d curtains 5
14. The camera pulls out jerkily to reveal that it is the pupil of Emily's eye. There is no sound. There is a flash of her facing herself in the mirror her hand against the glass. Black to light
Photoshop.After Effects.particular.footage.
- Footage of Emily looking in mirror
- Comped into aftereffects built room
- Comped in After effects with lights sfx etc
15. She is in a vast mirrored hall that encircles her like a strange optical effect but she is in it. It envelops her. There is a light at one end of it, a grand hall.
Photoshop.After Effects.particular.footage. NEEDS TO BE FIGURED OUT!
- Photoshop image
- Cinema 4d model of this for depth shot
- Comped in After effects with lights sfx etc
Cinema 4d 6
16. She is facing herself in the mirror, the room is illuminating around her, the curtains blow harder, the door is opening she remains facing herself.
Photoshop.After Effects.particular.footage.
- Footage of Emily looking in mirror
- Comped into aftereffects built room
- Comped in After effects with lights sfx etc
Cinema 4d 7
Alter room in after effects 5
17. She is now below a massive dome, immensely detailed with moving growing parts, the walls below flanked with golden books. The camera moves further and further into the dome, the chop of the fan becomes louder
Photoshop.After Effects.particular.footage. NEEDS TO BE FIGURED OUT!
- Footage of Emily looking up
- Comped into aftereffects built room
- Comped in After effects with lights sfx etc
Cinema 4d 8
18. She is lying looking up at the fan, the air is bright and warm, the fan merges with the cathedral/library space.
Photoshop.After Effects.particular.footage. NEEDS TO BE FIGURED OUT!
- Comped into aftereffects built room
- Comped in After effects with lights sfx etc
Cinema 4d 9
Latest incarnation of film...
Key words: Embodiment, symbiotic evolving loop between subject and environment, self awareness, intersubjectivity.
Viewing the mind and consciousness as an potentially infinite set of possible architectures defined by the feedback between experience and process. The film explores this feedback and the relationship between the world experienced by the subject, and the internal mental map produced by the brain that represents the real world and is formed by the sensory information from it. When the information from the world is fed into the internal mental map it alters it (plasticity) thus changing how the next batch of information is perceived.
In this film, to highlight these processes the protagonist is ill, suffering from amnesia, unable to properly recognise her surroundings as she has lost her internal mental map and thus the probability of all forms of reality are equally viable to her mind. The random interference and noise we all experience are unfiltered and take equal precedence in importance and validity.
This film is about her recovery, the rebuilding of her brain and the subsequent rediscovery of the complex structure which represents her internal mental map, the sum of her life's experiences. The building therefore already exists, but has lain in ruin after her accident, grey and dead and dark and invisible.
As she awakens for the first time from a long sleep she opens her eyes and the sensory stimulation stirs her mind, memory and previously known truths. The skeleton that is her mind building starts to grow and rebuild and work once again, absorbing sensory information, processing, adding to the building, re assembling the knowledge, reconfiguring, updating, adapting itself to the new probabilities.
Likewise her bedroom, shifts and alters from the surreal to the normal and beautifully banal. The pivotal point of the film is when she encounters herself in her mirror and reaches out to touch her hand against the glass. The mirror stage as described by Lacan is key developmental stage in a human's understanding of their position within the world; the identification of the self as other as distinct from the environment as a subject. Likewise in the past 20 years 'mirror neurons' have been discovered by neuroscientists, cells that fire when an animal / human observes another or self doing the same action that they are undertaking.
From this point the reality she experiences becomes more beautiful but more real. From the minute to the gargantuan lonliness of the universe the building loops and for one shocking moment as she looks in the mirrror we see her in both places, realising that they are one and the same, albeit different incarnations of each other. The camera moves into the pupil of her eye as the transition
As she absorbs the room, switching on the light, breathing deeply, opening the curtains wide, in the library, the room expands further and further, revealing a massive renaissance building in a dynamic state, brightening like the room, the pulsing of the organic forms in rhythm with her hearbeat and breathing from the 'real space'.
She moves through the space under the cuppola towards a brightly shining exit.
In the bedroom she moves towards the door, the same brightness ensues. Fades to reveal an actively altering corridor which looks strangely like the library...
Viewing the mind and consciousness as an potentially infinite set of possible architectures defined by the feedback between experience and process. The film explores this feedback and the relationship between the world experienced by the subject, and the internal mental map produced by the brain that represents the real world and is formed by the sensory information from it. When the information from the world is fed into the internal mental map it alters it (plasticity) thus changing how the next batch of information is perceived.
In this film, to highlight these processes the protagonist is ill, suffering from amnesia, unable to properly recognise her surroundings as she has lost her internal mental map and thus the probability of all forms of reality are equally viable to her mind. The random interference and noise we all experience are unfiltered and take equal precedence in importance and validity.
This film is about her recovery, the rebuilding of her brain and the subsequent rediscovery of the complex structure which represents her internal mental map, the sum of her life's experiences. The building therefore already exists, but has lain in ruin after her accident, grey and dead and dark and invisible.
As she awakens for the first time from a long sleep she opens her eyes and the sensory stimulation stirs her mind, memory and previously known truths. The skeleton that is her mind building starts to grow and rebuild and work once again, absorbing sensory information, processing, adding to the building, re assembling the knowledge, reconfiguring, updating, adapting itself to the new probabilities.
Likewise her bedroom, shifts and alters from the surreal to the normal and beautifully banal. The pivotal point of the film is when she encounters herself in her mirror and reaches out to touch her hand against the glass. The mirror stage as described by Lacan is key developmental stage in a human's understanding of their position within the world; the identification of the self as other as distinct from the environment as a subject. Likewise in the past 20 years 'mirror neurons' have been discovered by neuroscientists, cells that fire when an animal / human observes another or self doing the same action that they are undertaking.
From this point the reality she experiences becomes more beautiful but more real. From the minute to the gargantuan lonliness of the universe the building loops and for one shocking moment as she looks in the mirrror we see her in both places, realising that they are one and the same, albeit different incarnations of each other. The camera moves into the pupil of her eye as the transition
As she absorbs the room, switching on the light, breathing deeply, opening the curtains wide, in the library, the room expands further and further, revealing a massive renaissance building in a dynamic state, brightening like the room, the pulsing of the organic forms in rhythm with her hearbeat and breathing from the 'real space'.
She moves through the space under the cuppola towards a brightly shining exit.
In the bedroom she moves towards the door, the same brightness ensues. Fades to reveal an actively altering corridor which looks strangely like the library...
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