In View

the aesthetics + computation group - "At the mit media laboratory aesthetics + computation group we work toward creating provocative visual forms and contexts that inform advancements in the process of constructing digital expressions."

'Greater New York' - "Visual information can allow for a non-linear interpretation of any given element. Instead of one word following another in a narrative, any single image can interface with any other image in the visual field. That's not to say there aren't visual systems that have their own language, and that's something I'm thinking about a lot when I incorporate two or more specific visual systems, like a technical schematic and a computer interface." [Jesse Bransford - excerpt from a commentary solicited by Hudson at Feature, Inc., 1998 - and other artist's works and comments - P.S.1 and the Museum of Modern Art, NYC]

'Living in the Desert' - "When the people I take portraits of ask me what I want the pictures for, I answer that I want to show them to other people. I tell them that their life and their way of life is interesting to other people in other parts of the world. Basically, I seek to recognize myself in others . . . . " [Jeronimo Arteagas, at ZoneZero]

Curatorial Training Program - "Founded in 1987, the Curatorial Training Programme (l'Ecole du MAGASIN) offers professional exhibition-related training courses, which prepare students for the different jobs related to contemporary art. Over a 10-16 month period, the students take part in the institution's activities and organize an exhibition based on their own project. They can sign up for study trips and attend seminars that are open to artists, critics and historians. The programme includes introductory courses of arts management as well as theory classes. " [Magasin]

Paradise - "is the plans for a deserted metropolis, waiting to be filled. Each of its one thousand imaginary buildings is the location for some untold story, some unspoken dialogue, some as-yet-unmade theory, some unscrawled poem, some unlived life . . . . Paradise invites you to explore - read its stories, search its streets. Paradise invites you to write - to fill its buildings, write its dreams. [A web project initiated by the innovative UK arts ensemble Forced Entertainment]

New Gourna, Egypt - 'Honoring a Visionary if Not His Vision - A half-century ago a quixotic architect built this village from scratch, or rather from bricks made of sun-dried mud and straw. That architect, Hassan Fathy, created vaulted roofs punctured by small openings to direct and cool the prevailing winds, courtyards to give each owner a "private piece of sky," crooked streets to emphasize the intimacy of houses, communal wells to invite neighborly chats. It was Fathy's grand experiment, the realization of his evolving philosophy of creating cheap housing for the poor using native materials, indigenous designs and input from the people who would live in his buildings. "I hoped that Gourna might just hint at a way to begin a revived tradition of building, that others might later take up the experiment, extend it and eventually establish a cultural barricade to stop the slide into false and meaningless architecture that was gathering speed in Egypt," Fathy wrote in his 1969 memoir of the project, "Architecture for the Poor." New Gourna today is a sorry epitaph for Mr. Fathy, who died in 1989 at 89, an eccentric but at last cherished prophet in his native Egypt. The village is inhabited by the peasants he at once romanticized and vainly hoped to transform. But like many of the modern architects who were influenced by his philosophy, they have remade his vision on their own terms. Residents have plugged up the wind catches, drastically increasing the indoor temperature in summer and lowering it in winter. They have covered the courtyards, blocking out the sky. They have crammed concrete into the windows. And whenever one of the signature Fathy domes collapses -- as they tend to do from natural wear and a little help from the villagers -- the residents rebuild in reinforced concrete, mimicking the anonymous urban housing blocks Fathy so detested . . . . " [See the article: April 4, 2000. The New York Times - Honoring a Visionary if Not His Vision, by Susan Sachs.]

QUOTES: "For the creation of high artistic value, no simple sociological recipe can be given; the most sociology can do is to trace some elements in the work of art back to their origin, and these elements may well be the same in works of very different quality . . . . ."

"The 'modernity' of the Cretans was probalby connected with their factory-like purusit of art and their mass production for an enormous export market. On the other hand, the Greeks avoided the danger of standardization despite an equally advanced industrialization--but this only proves that in the history of art the same causes by no means always have the same effects or that the causes are perhaps all too numerous to be completely exhausted by scientific analysis." [p. 55]

"The autonomy of art discovered by the sixth century, and consistently practised by the fifth century, turned in the fourth century into aestheticism and now culminates in a highly skilful but irresponsible playing with forms and an experimenting with abstract means of expression --a license which, though still permitting some exquisite work to be done, plays havoc with the standards of classical art so that they become to a certain extent inapplicable . . . . "

". . . . Those scholars who are determined to find the mataphysical world-view of the Middle Ages in the earliest Christian art interpret all its obvious defects as against classical art as being simply due to conscious and deliberate choice; Riegl's theory of 'artistic intention' [Kunst-wollen] leads them to regard every failure of the power of imitative expression as a spiritual gain and a sign of progress. Their principle is, wherever a certain style seems incapable of solving a particular problem, to enquire whether this style was really intended to solve the problem in question. Now, this principle is undoubtedly one of the most fruitful ideas in the doctirine of 'artistic intention'; its value, however, is that of a working hypothesis, and it should not be pressed beyond proper limits; it is clearly absurd to interpret it in such a way as to deny all possibility of a gap between the artist's intention and his power of execution. [Cf. E. V. Garger: "Ueber Wertungsschwierigkeiten bei mittelalterlicher Kunst." Kritische Berichte zur kunstgeschichtlichen Literatur, 1932-3, p. 104.] [p. 124]

[Hauser, Arnold. The Social History of Art, Vol. I. New York: Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. 1951.]

THE WORK FEATURED ABOVE: "The Pompeii Forum Project is an interdisciplinary collaborative research venture sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the University of Virginia, and private contributors. . . . During June of 1995 archaeological photographer Aaron Levin used a large format camera (4"x5" negatives) to create archival quality black-and-white photographs of the buildings in the Pompeii Forum. . . "

A Weekly Dose of Architecture