Encyclopedia

This is a first stab at trying to organize some material for a thesis. For now I’m working with the form of an encyclopedia, one that includes information that informs or inspires my practice, as well as personal memories, dreams etc. I’m organizing it in alphabetical order for now, the floating words and letters are place holders that I will be filling in.

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Alpine Architecture is a book published by then unknown German architect Bruno Taut in 1918. In it 30 watercolor drawings depict elaborate crystalline structures, most of which are speculatively situated in various Alpine regions. The book was originally printed in an Atlas size format and breaks down into five sections. As the book progresses the drawings become more complex and fantastical, by the fourth section “Earth’s Crust Building” the drawings are from the vantage point of outer space and depict crystalline structures covering the entire earth. By section five “Astral Building” Taut has left the earth completely and is now describing floating architectural structures among the stars.
Excerpt from a letter to his wife Hedwig, dated November 2, 1917:
-- What is it about which all the fuss in the world is being made nowadays? Eating, drinking, knives, forks, appliances, railways, bridges, etc. And what comes of it all? The “good” life? Isn’t that ridiculous? Everything revolves around feeding, flags, comfort. Then the great expenditures of factories and slavery. Childish! Less than an animal that at least innocently enjoys the moment. People must have a task that involves them so deeply that they subordinate everything to it. They may moan about slavery even then – but they will see their works accumulate, their earth become more beautiful. Just imagine, we – our children will surely use the aeroplane as a matter of course, as we today use trains or cabs. And then, below them, the radiant, continually growing splendor! Lonely great beauty as the work of men – can’t this be piety as well? – I know, for you the quiet beauty of nature is enough. For me too, as long as I am alone or quietly with another person. But we human beings are herd animals too, and this herd must be prodded to greatness – roughly if need be! – to prevent it’s becoming dangerous. If people can create this greatness, which has begun in rudiments in ancient India, China, Egypt, then their works will appear like a piece of nature which will later speak as profoundly as a tree in the forest. –

Afterimage and Anti-image
An afterimage is an optical illusion that refers to an image continuing to appear in one’s vision after exposure to the image has ceased. A common after image is seeing an image in complimentary colors after staring at it for awhile and them looking away, to a blank wall or sheet of paper.
Joseph Beuys developed ideas about what he called the Anti-image. Believing that everything was connected to it’s opposite whether it was visibly present or not. With his use of mundane materials and dull colors he hoped that his work would create inside the viewer “a very colorful world as an anti-image”.

The Beach at Cleone

Cyanotype
Sir John Hensel invented the cyanotype process in 1842. A photo-sensitive chemical solution is used to coat a sheet of paper or fabric. A positive image is produced by exposing it to a source of ultraviolet light (such as sunlight) with a negative. After exposure the print is flushed with water and the result is an insoluble blue dye known as Prussian blue. A friend of Hensel’s, Anna Atkins (1799-1871) was an English botanist who within a year of it’s invention adopted the cyanotype process to solve the problem of making accurate drawings of scientific specimens and is considered to be the first female photographer. She self published the first installment of British Algae: Cyanotype impressions – only 12 copies were printed and is the first book illustrated exclusively with photographic images. Around the same time Atkins was using cyanotype to record plant species discoveries the process was also taken up by architects and engineers to make copies of their drawings – what we now refer to as blueprints.

Cenotaph a Newton

Dream, July 2005, Tokyo, Colleen is 6 months pregnant
I am sitting on a sofa in the living room, writing in a journal I use to record my dreams as if it were a diary. Our roommates, Keiko and Muto, enter the room with a group of friends. They are saying goodbye. I notice a small boy hanging around Muto’s legs, and a baby girl on his shoulders. The baby has straight silvery hair, big brown eyes, and is apparently half Asian/half Caucasian - besides me the only non-Japanese person in the room. The boy, speaking to the baby points at me and whispers “That’s the foreigner”. The baby turns to face me and gives me a smile so radiant it’s like the sun is emanating from her face. I immediately feel a strong urge to approach the baby, but when I stand and begin to walk a wave of energy like a force-field coming from her smile hits me and knocks me back onto the sofa. My body is paralyzed and tingling and I feel myself loosing consciousness. I wake with a jolt feeling like a strong electric current has just run though my body.

Drone Music
Drone music is composed around a sustained tone that establishes a harmonic center for its accompanying elements; this might be a single note repeated indefinitely or, at the opposite extreme, all of the scale’s notes spread across numerous octaves. Other aspects include extended duration, modular repetition, and a focus on overtones.
Influenced by the music of India, Indonesia, and Africa, drone is often played in alternate tuning or just intonation.

Electricity
Although we know it exists none of our five senses correlate with it directly. We know it only through it’s effects, which we have learned to harness, yet we have no idea what it is in and of itself…

Froebel’s gifts

Flatland

Gravity

Goethe’s theory of color

H

I

J

K

Length of a meter

Memory
When I was growing up in southern California, my grandpa Toby lived in San Francisco. He came down to visit us a few times a year and would often take me and my sister to play at the beach. One day we were sitting in the sand watching the ocean when he told us, “I want you to remember this moment for the rest of your life, look around, take in the details, and try to commit everything to memory.” My sister and I both quietly looked around and took in the scene. Nothing particularly distinguishing or eventful about that moment, waves crashing on the shore, slightly cold sand, slightly pink sky, not unlike most of the other days he took us to the beach. I probably would have forgotten it and never thought about it again, expect that each time he visited he asked us if we remembered that moment on the beach. He would say “Do you remember what I told you to remember?” And we would say “What?” then think for a second, “Oh yeah.” He still to this day asks me sometimes when we’re talking on the phone. Over the years my brain turned this simple memory into something of a fixation, something so important that it must never be forgotten, and so a few times a day it pops up out of nowhere and replays in my head… Sitting on the beach with my sister and grandpa, the waves, the cool sand, the pinkish sky…

Moon Illusion

Naqushbandi School
One of The largest sects of Sufis is the “Naqushbandi School”, commonly referred to among Arabs as “The Designers”. Their primary work is the encoding of information from the Koran into rugs, calligraphy, and architecture. The Sufis believe the Koran is a code, a mystery, and to solve it is to become enlightened.

O

Persistence of Vision

Point, Sphere, Plane

Polarity

Perspective

Public Outdoor Room

Queen of Night
In the scenography from Mozart’s opera the Magic Flute, the power of the Queen of Night’s hold over the universe is depicted by her ability to constrain all of the stars in a geometric pattern. They appear like ribs in the vault of the night sky.

Rainbow

Repetition

Scale
All beings have roughly the same number of heartbeats per life – 25 million. Small creatures live on a shorter time scale than large animals. Rats live about three years, rabbits seven, humans 70, and blue whales 120. Since the rate of respiration is coupled with heartbeat – one breath for every four heartbeats – the rate of breathing also decreases with increasing size. We all notice and mark the passing of time based on rhythms and cycles of nature, but it would seem that the rhythms happening within our own bodies play a large part in our experience of time, and that those rhythms ground us in our relative time scale.
Only a being the size of a human could effectively control fire. A campfire is the smallest fire that is both controllable and reliable. A smaller fire is too easily blown out and a larger fire too easily becomes out of control.

T

Universal Language

V

Wonder of Jena

X

Yesterday

The discovery of Zero

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Some artists, designers, architects (In no particular order):

Bruno Taut
Ad Reinhardt
Adolf Loos
John Cage
Jasper Johns
Yayoi Kusama
Fluxus
Gerrit Rietveld
J J P Oud
Hans Arp
Goethe
Marcel Duchamp
Joseph Beuys
Enzo Mari
Louis Khan
Rudolf Steiner
Yves Klein
Joseph Albers
Hans Haacke
James Turrell
Robert Irwin
Piet Mondrian
Leonardo DaVinci
Etienne-Louis Boullee
Jean-Jacques Leque