01: range of motion

Through out the vivisection I’ve also been looking closely at architectural works and theories inspired by my previously posted list of obsessions. I’ve also been trolling through pictures of my recent travels through Western Europe, Italy and Croatia. The work of John Hedjuk and the short stories of Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges are currently, at the forefront of my explorations. I am arrested by the cultural poetics in both of these works and I plan to incorporate the richness of narrative into my own approach as it progresses. I have just read Borges’ The Library of Babel from his collection of short stories entitled Labyrinth. For now, I am fascinated by Borges delicate description of the universe as a many tiered library of hexagonal galleries and interconnected air shafts. The library is “unlimited and cyclical. If an eternal traveler were to cross it in any direction, after centuries he would see that the same volumes were repeated in the same disorder (which, thus repeated, would be an order: the Order)”. I can’t help but imagine that this eternal traveler must be a machine or a program running repeatedly through the matrix of the library. I wonder what the web of this machine in continuous motion would look like after centuries of travel.

I’ve also been reading way too much Douglas Adams. I keep getting trapped in his fantastical world of machines, aliens and the ridiculously unexplained. I read Hitchhiker a while ago—but for now I’ve read The Restaurant at the End of the Universe and Life, the Universe and Everything. I think what I find so interesting about Adams is that his narratives seem to mimic my thought processes. I have a tendency to hop, skip and jump from one interest to another, dappling intensely for a while in areas only to be attracted by something “shiny” – another idea, or inspiration that can’t be ignored. The creative process is an intimate one, and I think the more we learn about how we work and think, the easier it becomes to create successfully. Adam manages to haul the reader back and forth across his narrative, sometimes violently, sometimes s-l-o-w-l-y, but you never forget that he is in control. The story makes sense despite itself. I hope to manifest some of this manipulated chaos in my own work. I want to explore my own idiosyncrasies through this final project.