20: microcontollers and motion

Learning to activate and control systems with Arduino programming language. From right to left the images depict my success with simple procedures including how to command "on" an LED, how to pulse three LED's at different times, and how to make a simple switch command. The next steps will be to control a stepper motor and light sensors.

19: vertical imagination

[...Machinic analogues are quite prevalent in architectural history. Books 9 and 10 did refer explicitly to the making of machines a part of the making of architecture. Le Corbusier, was most renown for referring to architecture as a "machine for living". Even Shin Takamatsu took the almost nihilistic approach to developing architectural work as a machine aesthetic. Devoid of human interaction and finished using the same precise techniques and obsessive precision of a mechanical engineer.

Rather than a metaphorical transition or an analogue for a representation. . . meaning, program and ultimately use . . . [will be derived] from the embedded conditions [present in the monster].
--- Studio Brief: Patrick Harrop. 2008.

The above images are laser cutting templates. When assembled these pieces will form a preliminary substrate that will discuss the mechanics necessary to provide a controlled ascent and a controlled descent within a structure.
The next steps will be to determine how the structure will evolve to take into consideration the phenomenon derived from the Homunculus project:

1. EXPECTING THE UNEXPECTED
The puppet’s suggestive power is linked to its paradoxical status: while it is an inanimate object, its appeal depends on its seeming ability to “live.”
-------->micro-contoller programmed to control: sensory input, reducers, increment counters , stepper motors, pulleys, hoisting mechanisms.
-------->theatrical strategies, anamorphosis and illusion.

2. EXPECTING THE UNEXPECTED IN CERTAIN PREDICTABLE WAYS
What is most interesting about the puppet, from an architectural standpoint, is the interplay between its elements and gravity. The inter-relationship between the strings in tension and the load of the puppet creates a parametric situation where when one part moves, the rest follow suit in a predictable manner.
--------> tensile systems, Frei Otto( Institute for Lightweight structures), parametric relationships, iterative components.

18: where have all the grottos gone?

An aura of expectation surrounds the grotto. It is a relatively immutable element in the ephemeral world of the garden-- a place of repose and reunion, or of solitude, seclusion, and shade; a site of technological assemblages; a theatrical museum; a sanctuary of muses, a locus of enlightenment and poetic inspiration; a harbor for the fantastical; a passage way to a new reality. Grottoes were (and perhaps still are) invitations to expect the unexpected.

Architectural remains and a wealth of literary sources demonstrate the prevalence of grottoes throughout antiquity and the revival and transformation of the architectural motif within the Renaissance. Over time, 17th century grottoes, with their elaborate grotesque features and technologically fantastic gestures, were supplanted by an eighteenth-century enthusiasm for the grotto as a part of a deeper romanticism-- a nostalgia for antiquity and a desire to bring forth the innate or natural "genius of the place". In 1876-7 King Ludwig II constructed a grotto folly at Neuschwanstein castle. Composed of cast-iron stalactites and coated with cement, the artificial grotto was a private realm replete with winding stalactite path, crystal clear lake, and royal platform designed in the form of a shell.

How then, does the enchantment of the grotto resolve itself within a twenty first century perspective. If we dismiss the form of the cave, the waterworks, the mirrors and shells of antiquity--do we dismiss the aura as well? Or, can the aura be achieved through other means, other forms, other interactions. Can technology be a mode of working that re-introduces the metamorphic tradition of the grotto grotesque?


Image credit: from the film Being John Malkovich (1999). Craig Schwartz (John Cusak) stepping out of the elevator on the seven-and-a-halfth floor.

A puppeteer discovers a portal that leads literally into the head of the movie star, John Malkovich.

"The recurring journey within the narrative--from elevator, to tunnel in the wall, to Malkovich's mind, to a stretch of grass beside the Jersey Turnpike-- affirms that technology can serve as a non-standard but still effective gateway to the soul".

1. Miller, Naomi. Heavenly Caves. London: George Allen & Unwin, 1982. 7, 115.
2. Garfinkel, Susan. "Elevator Stories: Vertical Imagination and the Spaces of Possibility." Up Down Across: Elevators, Escalators, and Moving Sidewalks. Ed. Alisa Goetz. London: Merrell Ltd., 2003. 175.

17: simulacra and the "grotto-esque"

Over the last century, Western scholarly writing and thought trended towards reinterpreting all phenomena of the universe within a secularized psychological framework. This seduction of Western scientific materialism influenced writers to aestheticize the transcendental, summarizing the grotesque as a mere system of images, Roman ornament or architectural conceit. If the "grotto-esque" is to be condescended, then so too must the brilliant and influential individuals who embraced its stylistic and metamorphic traditions—Ovid, Kafka, Shakespeare, Graham Greene, Descartes, E.M Forester, Alexander Pope and the list continues including royalty (Louis XIV), nobility and clergy across Europe. From this position my thesis seeks to ask not: How did the grotto descend from “residence of the genius” into scorn; but rather, Where have all the grottos gone?

The grotesque is a mode that is, first and foremost, about crossing into a different and transformative order of reality—an enchanted space. My thesis proposes an examination of the grotto as the framework for an enchanted space, a space beyond a simple spatial void, drawn by boundaries of walls, floors and ceilings. A space made real through interaction and inhabitation. The intentions of this thesis are to reintroduce the grotto to contemporary architecture as a poetic work—as a space that is at once both mundane and extraordinary, a space that blends technology and myth into an enchanted space. Like the proscenium of the theatre, the grotto is a metaphorical portal, a place of passage— “to enter is to acknowledge the distance between outside and inside, between reality and illusion” .

Homunculus inhabits the realm of the "grotto-esque". The puppet's suggestive power is linked to its paradoxical status: while it is an inanimate object, its appeal depends on its seeming ability to "live." What is most interesting about the puppet, from an architectural standpoint, is the interplay between its elements and gravity. The inter-relationship between the strings in tension and the load of the puppet creates a parametric situation where when one part moves, the rest follow suit in a predictable manner. This dynamic system reveals how responsive architectonic scaled elements might become gesture. Such architecture becomes something that both changes over time and responds to changes in time.

NEXT STEPS
1. Readings: Richard Sennett's The Fall of Public Man.
2. Researching the contemporary grotto: elevators.

image credit: Monster's mouth. http://www.lindalappin.net/images

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