The Conductor

Hans Scharoun's Berliner Philharmonie represents a true marvel in acoustics, each surface seemingly dialed in to produce pure tone, without distracting distortions, reverberation, and echo.  Within this space, there is a secondary architecture, something more akin to pure structure . . . a diagram of tension and compression.   Though notation is provided in a modest manner - sheet music, it is the conductor who animates the written word.  Every musician dividing his or her time between casual glances at the notes before them, and passionate, physical engagement with the conductor.  Like waves, he pulls them closer, only to push them away.  The scene is volumetrically, spatially, and physically controlled by his hands, and body.  He is the marionetteer of puppets, descendants of the Bauhaus Theatre.  More on that later!

Stairs: Reichstag. Informed and Unaware Performers

The front stairs of the Reichstag provided another opportunity to confront the issue of light and shadow on a folded form.  The digitized quality that results from the ebb and flow of cast shadows over surface and void; reducing the human form to pure information.  The poetic quality of this reduction is one of architecture's great offerings to humankind: an awareness of ourselves and our connection to our environment.  The daily interactions produced through the nearly sexual threesome of light, movement, and form is not to be taken as a given, accepted without reverence.  Under this type of analysis, the stairs and lighting are not part of a set, they are also performers, maybe the makers of performance.  While Annabelle, Sina, and the others provided the only conscious movements, the angle and intensity of the lighting, its multiplicity, projected a secondary performer - the shadow.  Engaged in an eternal dance, the shadow holds onto the stairs tightly, professing its form.  A continuous exchange of information that resulted in the video you have just watched.

The two performers who were aware of this video's making were surrounded by pedestrian users of the stairs, who contributed equally.

A Video Made a House

Gestalten:

A physical, biological, psychological, or symbolic configuration or pattern of elements so unified as a whole that its properties cannot be derived from a simple summation of its parts.

Oskar Schlemmer described light as a vital "plastic form."  His use of the term plastic is interesting, because he is basically stating that light makes form . . . even if the thing we see is not the actual physical shape.  Schlemmer contrasts this with the idea of haptic perception, which - to take Bloomer and Moore's summary:

"To sense a mountain haptically is to climb it, not just to look at it"
                                                                                                        (Trimingham, 49)
This video response to the previous solo performance on stairs is meant to be a gestalten.  It switches the role of the performer from a man under constant sun to a constantly moving sun, which performs as a sculptor on the architecture.  Light, shadow, and form all become a singular statement.  It does not need to be experienced haptically to be enjoyed as a performance; however, just like the previous video, it can become a performance between person(s), lighting (ambient and radiant), and a formal space.

Stairs: Solo Performance

One topic of interest is the issue of layering.  Building a three-dimensional composition through layering enables change over time and position.  Morphosis' project for Cooper Union used layering throughout the entire building.  By doing this, every movement of the eyes or light changes the space and the relationship of the students to that space.  This performance piece shows how a simple shadow can be layered over a surface, producing an analytic description of what stairs are.  The geometry of stairs breaks up (almost digitizing) shadows and creates a rhythmic acknowledgement of their rise/run relationship.  Interpretation of a  simple fact - sun on stairs makes for interesting shadows - allows for a design response.  Let's see what happens!     

http://www.morphopedia.com/

Cecil Taylor

"The first level or statement of three; an opening field of question: how large it ought or ought not to be.  From anacrusis to Plain, patterns and possibility converge, mountain sides to dry rock beds, a fountain spread before prairie, form is possibility; content, quality and change; growth in addition to direction found.  Third part is area, where intuition and given material mix group interaction.  Simultaneous invention heard, which these words describe.  The paths of harmonic and melodic light give architecture sound structures, acts creating flight.  Each instrument has strata.  Physiognomy, inherent matter-calling, stretched into sound (layers) in rhythms regular and irregular, measuring coexisting bodies of sound.  Measurement of sound is its silences.  Acknowledging silence, its definition in absence.  Reactive occult, in action unknowable – detached – rationalization of inaction and detachment, mathematical series, permutation and row-underlying premise = IDEA PRECEDES EXPERIENCE. 

The player advances to the area, an unknown totality, made whole through self analysis (improvisation), the conscious manipulation of known material; each piece is choice; architecture, particular in grain, the specifics question, layers are disposed, deposits, arrangements, group activity establishing the plain. 

Rhythm is life, the space of time danced thru.

Rhythm then is existence and existence time, content offers time quantity to shape: color mental physical participation."

                                                                              -Cecil Taylor (Unit Structure Liner Notes)

Cecil Taylor once said that he received more gratification looking at an architectural drawing by Calatrava than he ever did from a musical score (Brown, xviii).  Taylor was and is one of the most confusing jazz musicians.  He often stated that the audience should study music so that they would be responsive to his work, a statement which the saxophonist Branford Marsalis later labeled "self-indulgent bullshit" (Burns, Jazz).  From my perspective, my thesis is essentially the reverse engineering of his album Unit Structures, where he attempted to make jazz improvisation architectural.  "Rhythm is life, the space of time danced thru" . . . holy shit that is cool.

First of Many Thanks!

I forgot to mention . . . . thank you to Annabelle Tran, Max Dehne, Nathanial Vice, Nazli Ergani, and Caterina Belardetti.  I hope to archi-jam with you all again soon!

Hired Guns

This project was the first architectural improvisation, using a modular system.  I gave each of the four group members a one page descriptor of the objects at their disposal and let them play.  Their only task was to connect four points on the ground to four points on the window.  This video becomes an integral part to the presentation of the final object.  The performance carried all the risk of an improvised musical performance in that it relied entirely on the real time construction skills of the crew with no do overs.  The criticism that I received for this project was that the final object was no longer improvisation, but a static object.  Nailed!  Back to the drawing board.  Still fun and entertaining to watch though.

Architecture as a Record

Duke Ellington was once quoted as saying:

"Art is dangerous.  It is one of the attractions: when it ceases to be dangerous, you don't want it."

When in front of an arch-i-critical firing squad - with the ball decidedly not in my court - I find myself thinking of this quote.  How does improvisation find its way into architecture?  What paths have I already traveled that have led to another damn building (a derogatory term in this case)?  Where did the life of improvisation go once the realm of walls and rooms and bathrooms was breached? This has led me to the confusion of whether a building should be considered a record of an event or the site of one?  Maybe both!  

When I gather a group of people together to have an architectural performance, I get the same feeling that I once had performing music in front of a crowd.  That is a good sign.  The other day, I woke up around four in the morning and wrote "from music to performance to film to still image to architecture", which is one path I could take.  My task is to clearly elucidate this performance idea I have in my head to an audience through something that is architecture.