Blindness Embodied / Landscape Inhabited

Blindness Embodied / Landscape Inhabited

BR ANDON WANG

Blindness Embodied

Landscape Inhabited

BR ANDON WANG

Blindness Embodied / Landscape Inhabited

A Thesis Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Architecture in the Department of Architecture of the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, Rhode Island.

By Brandon Wang Rhode Island School of Design Class of 2016

Approved by Bachelor’s Examination Committee:

Jason Wood, Critic, Department of Architecture Primary Thesis Advisor

Chris Bardt, Professor, Department of Architecture Secondary Thesis Advisor

Anne Tate, Professor, Department of Architecture Thesis Project Coordinator

Here I sit in the still winter night on the drifting ice-floe, and see only stars above me. Far off I see the threads of life twisting themselves into the intricate web which stretches unbroken from life’s sweet morning dawn to the eternal death-stillness of ice. Thought follows thought—you pick the whole to pieces, and it seems so small—but high above all towers one form. Why did you take this voyage? Could I do otherwise? Can the river arrest its course and run up hill? My plan has come to nothing. That palace of theory which I reared, in pride and self-confidence, high above all silly objections has fallen

like a house of cards at the first breath of wind. Build up the most ingenious theories and you may be sure of one thing—that fact will defy them all. Was I so very sure? Yes, at times; but that was self-deception, intoxication. A secret doubt lurked behind all the reasoning. It seemed as though the longer I defended my theory, the nearer I came to doubting it. But no, there is not getting over the evidence of that Siberian drift-wood. But if, after all, we are on the wrong track, what then? Only disappointed human hopes, nothing more. And even if we perish, what will it matter in the endless cycles of eternity?

FRIDTJOF NANSEN exploring the North Pole, 1893

To my father, whose blindness taught me true sight, To JASON WOOD, for irreplaceable conversation and to whom I owe my discovered love for film, To CATHY LEE , without whom life would not exist, To my family, for their quiet, relentless support, To CRISTI BAQUERIZO , K AT HOBERT, DAEJEONG KIM , TREVOR KNEBEL , MICHAEL TODD , and SABA YA ZDJERDI , thank you.

Perfect, Straight Line

Blow Up the Language!

Kuwaiti Oil Fields

Time Does Not Exist

Everything Should be Seen

Oil and Ice

Tone

Modern Day Cathedral Builder

Greenland, Iceland...

Axis of Rotation

Aviation Slip

Inhabitate

Curvature of the Earth

Coincidence Rangefinders

Playing my Instrument

Weight

Dazzle Camouflage

Field Drawings / Field Recordings

Finding Center

Sextant

Storm of Disorientation

Footing

Time, Space, Light—The Universe

You Kicked Me in the Face!

Losing Ground

Originality Depends on Obscurity

This is Not a Thesis

Violence of the Line

Bárány Chair

100 Percent Book

Buoyancy

Where is North?

Death Masks

Down with Capitalism!

Zero Percent Book

Hoover Dam

Slime Mold

7000 Feet

Drive shaft and Crankshaft

Inside and Outside

Double Burial

Landscape Theatricality

What’s the Jig?

Endless Borders

Boat as Formwork

Copy of a Copy of a Copy

Trans-Alaska Pipeline

Formwork as Boat

Half-Inch Heart Attack

Poor, poor Oedipus Rex

Leverage to Lift

border cliff body landscape psyche territory north weight correction scale translation edge embodiment blindness trace phsycality blindness gesture disorientation propagation storm extension extrapolation scaleless collapse navigation measure gap horizon

embodiment

landscape

inhabitation

abstract

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a search for balance

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on seeing

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Stage 01 Scale

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Stage 02 Reach

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Stage 03 Bodily Translation

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Stage 04 (Dis)located Center

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on the horizon

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Stage 05 Disoriented Ground

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on ghosts

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on guiding

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on vertigo

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Stage 06 Instrumenting Navigation

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Stage 07 Landscape Inhabited

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bibliography

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ABSTRACT

This thesis is a statement in re-seeing and re-sensing the land. It was born(e) out a desire to embody blindness, a condition my father gained in 2009.

Embodying sight and inhabiting the tumbling gravities of the land formed the navigational pursuit of this thesis, and my life. To experience blindness is to navigate darkness, from which we forever wish to awaken. When we embody our senses beyond sight, a new line is born from the horizon, embedding itself deep into our bodies.

We have lost our sight and way in the landscape.

Presence with its scale of physicality, force, gravity, has been disoriented and consumed.

We are headed towards the cliffs of foresight and hindsight. When they give way, all that is left is primal embodiment.

The ground has shook, the storm has struck, the ice has shifted. We must shift. We must see the line of the land, and become it.

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A SEARCH FOR BALANCE

I am searching for balance between our sight and the physicality of the landscape—specifically, a balance between projection of sight and gravity of physicality.

The body is a ground for engaging with these forces, a field subjected to gravity, scale, and a relentless desire to orient the expansive land.

Sight is subject to weight, forces that resist any type of existential clarity. Our eyes decay, sight lines fall and distort over distance. Greeting us at the end of our reach is the cliff, severing the extent of our visual field from the scaleless realm.

The landscape is a field of physicality, an infinite topos with merging and diverging horizons. It is seen and experienced from all points of view— microscopic to aerial to satellite. Its scales collapse and expand together, simultaneously.

What happens when our sight is stolen, the horizon inverted, our realm blinded from the land?

How do we engage our state of disorientation to regain balance?

How do we regain balance between the eye, hand, and step when we truly inhabit the landscape?

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To align the body, to embody blindness, to inhabit the landscape.

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ON SEEING

He reaches for proximity while imagining distance.

I search for the cusp of visual extent while balancing in proximity.

The horizon—the furthest extent of visual land—offers a kind of sublimity toppled by an even greater catharsis: its robbery, the loss of sight. I can only simulate what it means to live, move, and writhe in darkness, to grope nakedly within immediate vicinity in search for stability, ground. My greatest fear is my submission to the black, so I bear the weight of near-darkness, carrying it to a psychic and emotional endgame. With machinery as my prosthetic, I can project a self-handicap, a visual destitution that collapses all scale of calm consciousness. I can self-situate in temporary or prolongued extreme disorientation, but I cannot know true darkness. I see for him, he sees through me.

The only hope is to retain some form of consciousness, a ever-slipping grip in the visible world as I relentlessly fall into the numbing black, the world now according to him. This grip must exist in the ground, in the land, in its farthest perceptual extent; it is a desperate attempt to reconcile something from this poverty. Irony is cruel, for the only way to overcome the weight is to extend this naked grope, to grasp despite incredible fear of the spatially unknown void. To cower, to slither and wither is instinctual; to submit to the dark is righteous; to slip into slumber in the yawning schism that separates me from the earth is absolutely primal. But inch by inch, creeping foot by creeping foot, I extend myself into the land, claiming what was rightfully mine when it was wrongfully taken. To take steps, mark territory, and extend the self into scale in spite of the gnawing fear of the fall.

Diffuse the optical cloud, the dense veil tightly suffocating your mind and movement. Move your trembling limbs despite their terror and doubt. Wade through the sludge, trudge through the spectacle: the spectacle of fear and the insurmountable landscape. Record your departure and force the land to accept your existence.

Is not seeing itself—seeing abysses?

Thus Spake Zarathustra

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BLINDNESS EMBODIED / LANDSCAPE INHABITED Stage 01 10.07.15 Finding Scale Find the line. Probe the body and territory to discover their scales.

Scale I 18” x 60” Graphite, vinyl paper

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There Will Be Blood (2007) Paul Thomas Anderson Film stills

A spatial threshold, a code for violence.

One minute in the untethered landscape is an infinite line.

Body and Landscape Body and Body Body and Psyche Body and Line There will be blood.

There will be conflict.

There will be death.

There will be scale.

There will be landscape.

Abstracting body and psyche; body and body; body and landscape into the infinity of a line, and expanding them relative to each duration in the film.

Each scene coded and scaled to these binaries. Bodies are born in, act upon, and die in the land.

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Scale II 36” x 144” Charcoal, bond paper Scale II (negative) 36” x 144” Excavated bond paper

Scale II in process Digital stills

Body localized as territory Territory rationalized as body (mis)translate a system weight (wait) of a system time as distance

Each mark is registered from the body’s reach. The reach approaches its torsional and rotational limits, recording the stress through the violence of the marked line. A probe of the expansive bodily horizon into space—a carving search for land.

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Bodily Territory 36” x 36” Charcoal, bond paper

Bodily Territory II 36” x 36” Charcoal, bond paper

Double Parallel Lines Walter De Maria Desert Cross Walter De Maria

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Bodily Territory III 36” x 36” Charcoal, bond paper

Bodily Territory IV 36” x 36” Charcoal, bond paper

Tracing a line through blind memory. The physial reach of the body’s arm records the mark. The extents of the reach terminate in the turbulent edges of the line.

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BLINDNESS EMBODIED / LANDSCAPE INHABITED Stage 02 10.28.15 Discovering Reach Enter scale(lessness). Act to (dis)orient in reach of the landscape. Find the extremities of bodily reach. See and feel without sight.

Scale: Territorial Gesture in process Digital stills

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The traverse through body and territory, two modes of performance and existence. A gestural mark made in space through scale among landscape.

Performance across scale Translation across scale Lag across scale Act across scale Entering / interring scale.

Expanding the scale of the navigating body while tracing its expansion. Three vectors, line after line, their origins finding location from a recovered memory of the last drawn line. (Re)tracing the land.

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Scale: Territorial Gesture 120� x 72�

Charcoal, bond paper

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Reach of (Dis)orientation 360” x 36” Charcoal, bond paper

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Disorientation through propagation to align with the scaleless, the landscape, the being beyond the being.

The cliff is no longer a moment, but a falling into collapse guided by its own inertia.

Desperately searching for something to hold onto, something recognizable and fathomable to retain its sanity, but motion prevents it.

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Drawing Reach Digital stills

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Whirling dervish Video stills

The turbulence between body and territory contains f(r)iction. Exiting body in pursuit of the territory— immeasurable through perception alone—is an inherently slippery performance or extraction. Our scales misalign, our metrics misinterpret. Metric, performance in pursuit of territory; scale, in terms of body. Act; performance as translation, operations that act and act and act and act until the moment of Release Breakage Give

Release from your grounded consciousness, from the heavy reliance on visual perception.

An environment—the landscape as a series of noncontinuous vertical planes—records the cliff. This cliff is the entrance into scalelessness, aligning with the landscape and yourself through an act of (dis)orientation.

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Drawing Reach In process digital media

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Exiting body in pursuit of the landscape—immeasurable through perception alone—is an inherently slippery performance or extraction.

Their scales are misaligned, their metrics misinterpreted. As a metric, this performance in pursuit of territory scale can be only understood in terms of body. As an act, this performance becomes a translation defined by its operations that acts and acts and acts and acts until it reaches a moment of release, breakage, give.

Body now in the landscape, or the scaleless, reaches a fictitious state that is beyond its physicality by losing awareness of its own scale.

Body performs outside of its corporeal dimensions. Body gains an existence within the realm of scaleless by leaving behind traces of its past. Body resides in a space of a propagating in-between, a whirlwind of disorientation and a search for refuge. But to where does it turn for recollection, or does it dare to continue?

In the chase for landscape, what became apparent was not only the scalar dimensions separating it and body, but also the types of operations to truly pursue its scale. The goal became the activation of the landscape by removing physicality and psyche. The event, through this erasure, traverses into the scale of the landscape by losing its awareness of its own scale and act of traversing.

The performance of the drawing is a propagation of the body. By repeating a motion, a fully immersed motion, focus turns from the physicality and ontology of the body towards its movement. Instantly the slumbering being is activated by its own repetitions, rapidly stripping away the complex layers that delay its action. The constant rotation pushes the boundary of inertia further and further, catapulting you almost into a state of delirium. The chaotic mosaic of physical disorientation, a psychic desperation for orientation, pitch blackness, and a surrounding orchestra: all these elements completely in flux— mental, spatial, metaphysical—re-combine as a transporting vessel into another realm. This realm is both completely outside of our forefront consciousness (we consistently search for stabilization, a datum) and right next door: a closing of the eyelids and a rotation of the body figure.

This datum—the horizon of the arm’s reach—is then subverted, rotating along itself to keep position but overhaul its velocity. The drawing is the trace chasing the body. It is the residue of the infinitely turning apparatus determined to shed its weight in reach of another scale.

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An important discovery from this drawing method—in particular to its construction and unknowingly slippery parameters—is not only the physical residue but its audio one. The dissonant touching and gouging of the paper because it has no backing animates it similarly to the movements of the actor. The linked rounded corners stand free from rigid support, and thus upon its activation, a striking of the charcoal, it too performs a dance but in addition emits a cry. A brief dull crack, and then silence. The continuous rotation of the body and striking of the tool brings to life the textural sound: the under-storm of disorientation.

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Reach of (Dis)orientation 180” x 36” Charcoal, bond paper

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double reach drawing the land digital still

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bodily extension drawing the land digital stills

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Tracing the Line of Distance I 12” x 12” Pen, vinyl paper

Tracing the Line of Distance III 12” x 12” Pen, vinyl paper

Tracing the Line of Distance II 12” x 12” Pen, vinyl paper

Tracing the Line of Distance IV 12” x 12” Pen, vinyl paper

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Tracing the Line of Distance V 12” x 12” Pen, vinyl paper Tracing the Line of Distance VI 12” x 12” Pen, vinyl paper

Extension towards origin; Collapse of weight; (Meta)physical boundaries of space; Disorientation of act; Removal of eye; Irruption of conscious.

The extension of the reach is met with the extremity of the drawing. The marks exist between the scales of body and its landscape.

Drawing origin through the origin.

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Tracing the Line of Distance VI 120” x 72” Charcoal, bond paper

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BLINDNESS EMBODIED / LANDSCAPE INHABITED Stage 03 Bodily Translation Search for hyperfocus, trace the land through the eye.

Draw (un)consciously behind the eye, translating the land through the body.

12.02.15

Atomizing Digital still

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Atomizing Digital still

Landscape as atom, an infinitely scalar spectacle, points of a continuum. Removal of the spectacle of the landscape to a point of no return: the cliff.

Bring the landscape into oneself, the realm of scale(less) to enter into (scale)less.

Drawing the landscape through the body. Tracing the line of the land with the (right) eye, reading the back of the head through a series of mirrors with the (left) eye. Visual shafts focus view to the most hyperpoint. The parallax difference marks the cliff, the expanding distance between body and land.

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Atomizing Digital stills

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Horizon Atomizer Pine, steel, acrylic, mirror, string

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Traced Atomization 96� x 36�

Ink, graphite, transfer ink, stonehenge

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Horizon Atomizer Pine, steel, acrylic, mirror, string

The end of the horizon collapses the relentless scale between body and landscape. The moment of collapse is the focus, the atomizing of scale, when planets compress to atoms.

Borders between become spaces between, scale transforms into performance. The cliff becomes a turbulent moment defying the understanding of relativity.

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Horizon Expander 96” x 16” x 108” Mirror, steel, birch ply, 200mm lens

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Searching for focus I–IV Digital stills Expanding focus I–II Digital stills

A steel extension arm holds a 200mm convex lens, which focuses and loses focus of the landscape through the reflection of curved mirrors. Distance of the lens relative to the mirror plane is measured against the distance of the eye relative to the lens, establishing a discourse between eye and landscape.

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Landscape is the measure between beings, operating on the cusp of the scaleless spectacle. Body is the gap between this measure, a volatile fissure expanding from atoms to galaxies, and back. The landscape is not a datum nor a scaleless plane. The body operates within its spatial relation to and (mis)aligns itself with the landscape to contest this perceived scalelessness.

One is not simply here and the other there; this distance collapses upon measuring the relentless scale. This moment of collapse atomizes landscape, eliminating its frame and inverting its imagery. Landscape is crushingly real and here, and its vast weight irrupted from the scaleless; the body is malleable and operable, acting and (dis)orienting towards scalelessness.

Borders between become spaces between, scale transforms into performance.

The horizon becomes a turbulent moment defying our understanding of relativity.

The cliff towards the scaleless marks the frontier of defeat; body enters landscape.

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BLINDNESS EMBODIED / LANDSCAPE INHABITED Stage 04 1.20.16 (Dis)Located Center Pivot the mast to trace the horizon, rotate to draw simultaneously. The body aligns the mast’s register with the line of the land, leaving the line of the afterlife behind, always behind and away from view.

Arbiter (Pt. 1) 20” x 42” Pen, transfer ink on Stonehenge, mylar

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Arbiter (Pt. 2) 20” x 42” Pen on Stonehenge, mylar

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Arbiter 20” x 84” Pen, transfer ink on Stonehenge, mylar

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Translating scale through projection of sight. Contour of the elevation of mountain ranges focuses to the scale of the eye, and body. Height creates distance, peaks become lines.

To expand the scale of the landscape by collapsing it into a drawing operated with the eye.

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Land Mast Digital still

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Sketchbook excerpts (pg. 82-87) 8” x 12”

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Land Mast Digital still

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Two drawing arms span a revolving central mast. One arm reads the horizon with a fixed register. This register aligns with two vertical mirrors, allowing vision both through to and behind the land. The second arm is fixed with retractable drawing joint, translating vertical movement from the first arm as a planar drawing on the ground. The two share a cable to equate angular displacement.

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Land Drawing II: Point A Video still

Land Drawing II: Point A Video still

Land Drawing II: Point A Video still

Land Drawing II: Point A Video still

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Land Drawing II: Point B Video still

Land Drawing II: Point B Video still

Land Drawing II: Point B Video still

Land Drawing II: Point B Video still

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Land Mast (detail) pine, birch ply, steel, concrete, mirror

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WHEN the streetlights fade.

THE land scape has changed.

WARM RAIN like judgment descends.

YOU don’t recognize me.

THEIR voice numbs me.

THESE pictures slowly fade.

SPEAKING words in a dead tongue.

I HAVE walked a road that lead me back to you.

FROM A window our glances met.

MY TRUE colors I cannot hide.

MEMORIES WITHER they are all gone.

FURTHER DOWN the steps get steeper.

YOU haunt me in my dreams.

I let go and fall deeper.

THIS will be the end of me.

CULT OF LUNA Dark City, Dead Man

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Land Drawing II 12’ dia.

Excavated snow Land Drawing II (pgs. 94-95) 12’ dia.

Excavated snow

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Land Mast pine, birch ply, steel, concrete mirror

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Fixed Radius, Fixed Center 72” x 36” rails, 36” radial device Birch ply, mdf, steel, pen

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Fixed Radius, Fixed Center Video stills

Free Radius, Fixed Center (f36) Device with adjustable radius, fixed rail width Fixed Radius, Fixed Center (3636) Device with fixed radius, fixed rail width Free Radius, Free Center (ff) Device with adjustable radius, without fixed rail width

A railed mechanism draws two points simultaneously, controlling one and that leads the other. Radial heads with variable extensions perform in (dis)accordance to the center register of 0,0. Rails and arm charted within a 1�x1� grid, adjust to meet the dislocated centers of a recorded line. Each head performs, then activates upon that performance.

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Free Radius, Fixed Center In process Digital media

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Drawing Center: Orientation I 36” x 36” Ink, vellum, digital media

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Drawing Center: Orientation II 36” x 36” Ink, vellum, digital media

Drawing Center: Orientation III 36” x 36” Ink, vellum, digital media

Drawing Center: Orientation IV 36” x 36” Ink, vellum, digital media

The line in the snow—a territorial marking—is reoriented back towardsa center, an immeasurable point. The perimeter of the line’s thickness are charted in the 1”x1” grid from the line’s center, retracing its radius towards the new center. Each cardinal orientation is drawn to its extent, then rotated to accommodate the full circumference of the line.

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Drawing Center: Reorientation 60� x 36�

Ink, vellum, digital media

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ON THE HORIZON

An infinite line, an ever expanding distance. The momentary kiss between the land and space, visually captured by their internal collapse.

Each step forward reveals a microscopic shift, a physical and perceptual rotation along the surface of the earth. The scale of the horizon lives in the atomic and the astronomical—a simultaneous abyss dividing ground and place.

The yawning cavern of the horizon realizes the scale of the earth. The sky, otherwise an abstraction, vaults towards the horizon, refracting light and thus our sight to bend into the infinite line. From this curvature the landscape becomes real, a visceral birthing that connects the vectors of our sight and reach.

An extent, the furthest extremity of our scaled understanding. Horizons are our cognitive capacities; they are the thresholds between the known and unknown. It delineates the cusp between scales—scale of sight and scale of reach.

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BLINDNESS EMBODIED / LANDSCAPE INHABITED Stage 05 3.22.16 Disoriented Ground Become the Ghost and lead the Follower. Carry the weight forward through the land and gather speed towards the horizon. Record the disoriented journey of the eye and body, control the tumult of gravity in momentum. Sight line merges with the horizon, body wrestles the ground.

The Follower Pine, birch ply, steel, concrete, velcro straps, casters, mirror, pen

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Sketchbook excerpt (pg. 114-115) 8” x 12” The Follower (pg. 118-119) Digital still

We are connected, but not tethered.

We are tied, but dependent.

We writhe in search of the cliff, the cusp between body and ground.

We dance in perpetual momentum, in reach of the scaleless landscape.

A constructed double shadows me, connected to the body and bound by movement. Our different centers of gravity correct themselves, undergoing processes of alignment, misalignment, and realignment. Tipping and twisting, rotating and pivoting—the prosthetic follows my movements down the slope, its own momentum emerging from my struggle to realign our weights.

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Field Recording (Seismograph) I 12” x 40” Ink, bond paper

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Field Recording (Seismograph) II 12” x 40” Ink, bond paper

Field Recording (Seismograph) III 12” x 40” Ink, bond paper

Field Recording (Seismograph) IV 12” x 40” Ink, bond paper

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Field Recording (Rotation) I 36” x 22” Ink, styrene

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Field Recording (Rotation) II 36” x 22” Ink, styrene

Correcting Horizons (Field III) 24” x 18” Digital media

Correcting Horizons (Field IV) 24” x 18” Digital media

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What does it mean to lead a blind man?

What does it mean to walk the land?

What does it mean to disorient yourself?

What does it mean to see with your body?

What is the horizon in a blind man’s world? How does he register himself, find ground in the vertigo of disorientation?

What is the threshold between distances, and how is it recorded and understood in their most primal states? How much weight (dependence) does he place on his body to find gravity, to discover balance in blindness? What does center signify, and does it travel with you or remain as datum far ahead (or behind), a distant measure?

The field recordings overlay simultaneous information: projected horizon lines and the dislocated momentum of the constructed shadow. In the previous spread, an infinity of horizons records the weight of seeing and the weight of experiencing the landscape. In the following spread, stills capture the relentless realignments occurring between the leader and the shadow. The sight aligns with the body’s physicality carried across the land in pursuit of the register.

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Correcting Momentum I 00:12 Video stills

Correcting Momentum IV 1:03 Video stills

Correcting Momentum II 00:20 Video stills

Correcting Momentum V 1:28 Video stills

Correcting Momentum III 00:40 Video stills

Correcting Momentum VI 1:36 Video stills

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Correcting Momentum VII 2:50 Video stills

Correcting Momentum X 4:09 Video stills

Correcting Momentum VIII 3:04 Video stills

Correcting Momentum XI 4:21 Video stills

Correcting Momentum IX 3:31 Video stills

Correcting Momentum XII 4:45 Video stills

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ON GHOSTS

The blink of an eye, the passing of a shade. Peripheral, ephemeral, out of focus even when subjected to a direct gaze. It is immaterial, extraterrestrial, and visceral. It begets a second existence, one that is removed from the shackles of our recognizable one—ourselves. It is outside our domain, sometimes even our desire to understand, the cusp of our cognition. It engenders a heightened sense of presence, evoked from void. We feel it deep in the marrow of our bones, but can never fully see it. It remains hidden, clouded from clarity, illusive to sight, yet its substance is felt. Do we want to remain suspended in this immaterial limbo, that, in essence, supersedes our senses?

It moves through the landscape with deft silence. The land receives it, but is not altered by it. It can move through sand and stone, water and wind as if through a vacuum. Its state is languid, shifting through space in a deaf manner. This fluidity is a reminder of its incompleteness, its half-life; it is a shadow transforming into nothingness but never arriving.

I am his ghost. I transcend the body to become it, an immaterial substance. I guide his senses, he shadows me, following his ghost, paradoxically merging matter with an anti-matter, an absurdity. Felt but never seen, sensed but never understood. The anti-matter slips through his fingers before he can grasp. Despite an arm to hold, a guide to follow, the image is never fulfilled. The more he reaches, the quicker it fades, so he loosens his grip to a light touch.

A half-grasp of a half-life, half walking and groping along the full extents of the land. If I am the ghost, where do I stand? Do I lead in front, move abreast him? Am I the ground beneath his feet?

Dark, dark! The horror of darkness, like a shroud, Wraps me and bears me on through mist and cloud.

Ah me, ah me! What spasms athwart me shoot, What pangs of agonizing memory?

Oedipus Rex

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ON GUIDING

I am his prosthetic, his other self. He clutches my arm as I navigate, treading slower than my pace; he has grown aware of the slight cracks and slopes. The ground is his guide, I am his handicap. Sight is gone, but other sense remain; over time, they augment, heighten to recuperate their lost one. Over such time, his hearing has sharpened, touch grows more sensitive. Before we walk, my arm extends out towards him, and he reacts as if he could see, reaching out smoothly to accept my arm. As we walk, his grip on my forearm becomes more and more present: the slight sweat from his fingers, his muscles shift and twitch, nails gently graze my skin. Words slip through our tongues, we exchange small and not-so-small thought as our steps claim more and more land. No matter his stumbles in the dark, he has come to accept his state. But, despite the poetry of his grip, my own longing to recover what has been lost, will I be able to accept it?

It is a curious thing, being a temporary surrogate eye. I scan the horizon and our immediate environment to ensure his safe passage, negotiating through spoken word—“step over this curb”—and physical nudges. It is an immediate translation of ground to (his) mind, hinted at by my own movements in scaling a certain terrain. He already understands to a certain degree the conditions of the outer world, validated by the movements of his surrogate, his other self. In a sense, I become his material ghost: navigation found through essence, search found by his own lack of some-thing. The ghost moves abreast him, a living cane from his own blood now set out to guide—an artificial, temporary sight realized only through sound and micro-movements. The ghost and the ground become the registers, working in tandem to give him sight.

In the end, I am just a guide. He is not obliged to follow each directive, read each movement.

We are connected, but not tethered.

We are tied, but not dependent.

We dance in endless momentum.

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Scale of Momentum 48” x 32” Ink, graphite, vellum

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The scales of momentum compound upon each movement in space. The radial fields of situation turn from each of the Ghost’s motions. The horizons of the eye, hand, and foot create a field of potential sites of rest and upheaval. In the next spread, these horizons are reconnected and projected through the sight of the Follower, a blinded reorientation.

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Converged Sight Lines 48” x 32” Graphite, vellum

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Reoriented Horizons 48� x 32�

Graphite, vellum

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ON VERTIGO

The dizzying sensation you perceive upon losing sight unfolds over time into a kind of vertigo. Your feet begin to lift and your weight begins to float, as if density has vanished and the slightest whisper magnifies in exponential volume. The head instinctively turns, as if to align with a greater rotational force, a centrifuge for the conscious. We fight to resist these sensations, this overbearing fatalism subjecting you to the will of your environment. Your feet, despite their lifting sensation, are still rooted to the ground, retaining a static equilibrium with the earth.

Reorienting towards disorientation.

Relocating towards dislocation.

Navigating the cliff of disorientation.

The vacuous state of disorientation can be a frightening psychology to experience. Upon losing sight, the world spins at a visceral speed, the earth shifting violently beneath your feet. Location becomes compressed against your chest, breath lacerated from your tongue, eye rolled back to view the skull. Scales collapse, as the furthest mountain feels like an arm’s reach away. Dimensions slide against each other, bodily matter slipping against the grain of space. Time dilates, expanding beyond a recognition of our own scale.

As you struggle to retain your sense of orientation, your fingers slip from the grip of reality; the earth pivots, edging you towards the abyss. You enter into whirling disorientation, a sense of dislocation, loss of ground.

Gravity disappears, twisting all matter into a chaotic state. This whirling generates momentum, your new realm. Writhing in momentous freefall, your body acquires a raw cognition of the earth, a new understanding of the spatial landscape through a desperately endless search for ground.

Vertigo begets momentum, momentum begets dislocation.

Dislocation begins a re-search for oriented ground.

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BLINDNESS EMBODIED / LANDSCAPE INHABITED Stage 06 4.22.16 Instrumenting Navigation Facing and navigating. To create, draw, and reference the line in the land. The horizon tilts around us, causal to our step across the terrain. Align sight with the navigation, merge the eye and body.

Walking a Line in the Sand Digital still Walking a Line in the Sand Digital still

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Walking a Line in the Sand Digital still

The fulcrum between sight and ground, the body wields instrumentality to chart the line. It aligns itself through the blindspot, towards a projected navigational North. It becomes the map, coursing through the earth like the deep pain from the cold through to the bones, finding another path. It engages gravitationally with the ever-changing landscape.

Where must we face and how must we navigate? We must enter the scale of the land to regain orientation, an orientation foreseeing through hindsight our scale among the land.

A steel instrument surveys according to dead reckoning, the future projection of location through aligning with past positions. At an interval, a post is driven into the ground, drawing a line. The spine aligns with the instrument’s back, keeping sight forward, while two mirrors allow hindsight.

When a post aligns with the blindspot between the mirrors, and the distance interval is reached, a post is driven. The navigational course endures until it reaches (t)here.

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Walking a Line in the Sand Video still Walking a Line in the Sand Video still

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Walking a Line in the Sand Digital still

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Walking a Line in the Sand Video still Walking a Line in the Sand Video still

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Whirling Horizons Video still

Whirling Horizons Video still

Whirling Horizons Video still

Whirling Horizons Video still

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Whirling Horizons Video still Whirling Horizons Video still

I become the whirling dervish, spinning to reach a state of pure disorientation. The spine and the pendulumare forced to follow the speed of the arms. The body becomes the centrifuge, its dead axiality separating the orientations of rate. The peripheral horizons then merge, with the world collapsing into itself. The body creates a dependent relationship between speed, axis, weight, and gravity. The land lifts its heavy head to spin into disorientation.

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What is lost over time, over distance.

What of our sight, our step.

The drawn line of our spines recourses the line of the land. We become aware of the line by losing sight.

Over time, over distance, over gravity, we seek and lose awareness. We become blind to time over time, to distance over distance to weight over gravity. We become aware of our blindspots, blind to calculated measure. Conscious and unconscious blindness.

Measure is intuitive, inert, primal.

We forsake all notion of measure, of calm calibration to a primal existence in scale. We fight to endure, to survive in the land in night. We betray sense and rely on ground, our (un)steady footing navigating.

The fire of cold that sears through our bones is the northern fire to which we walk. The spine directs the gravitational path across ice. We inhabit the tools we carry, instrumental to guidance by day and survival by night. We inhabit the landscape.

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BLINDNESS EMBODIED / LANDSCAPE INHABITED Stage 07 5.26.16 Landscape Inhabited Align the spine. Align the tent. Align sight. Align navigation. Align the landscape. Become the line of the land: control it through embodiment, possess it through inhabitation.

Inhabiting Video still 14’47”

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Pitching and inhabiting a tent in the landscape. The rhythms of the body align with the sweeping of the tarp; the duration aligns with the scale of the land. Breath, body, and psyche in sync with wind and space.

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Building Video still

Building Video still

Building Video still

Building Video still

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Breathing Video still

Breathing Video still

Breathing Video still

Breathing Video still

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Inhabiting Video still

Inhabiting Video still

Inhabiting Video still

Inhabiting Video still

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Seeing Video still

Seeing Video still

Seeing Video still

Seeing Video still

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We have lost our sight and way in the landscape. Presence with its scale of physicality, force, gravity, has been disoriented and consumed.

The body consumes in pursuit of the line: a line of marking, carving, a physical and metaphysical control of the land.

(A) line the spine.

(A) line the tent.

(A) line embodied sight.

(A) line navigational (re)course.

(A) line across the landscape.

Line of the land is the line of the body. Its line is our line; we share it, become it, inhabit it, embody it, draw it, align it, re-center it, correct it, navigate it, project it, consume it, exploit it.

Our spine re-corrects the navigation, recourses the line in the land.

We become aware of the line by losing sight, inhabiting it.

We become blind to time over time, to distance over distance, to weight over gravity.

We are headed towards the cliffs of foresight and hindsight. When they give way, all that is left is primal embodiment.

The ground has shook, the storm has struck, the ice has shifted.

We must shift. We must see the line of the land, and become it.

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Line Across Greenland 9’ x 9’ Graphite, charcoal

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1 step 1000 miles Unwavering line Changing ground Projection of sight Ice coast

Line Across Greenland

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Balancing Trap 9’ x 9’ Graphite, charcoal

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Deadfall trap Deadweight Human pipeline Line of oil Weight of bearing Gravity of projection

Balancing Trap

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(Re)course 9’ x 9’ Graphite

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Mile long sight (Mis)step Foresight ahead Hindsight calibration Dead reckoning Dead ahead

(Re)course

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Core 9’ x 9’ Graphite

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Ice coring To the depths Earthly alignment Consume the line Leverage and weight Glacial foundation

Core

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Spinal Apparatus 9’ x 9’ Graphite, charcoal

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Spine and sight Bodily prosthetics Arctic survival Through wind and snow Navigational construct Valleys of death

Spinal Apparatus

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Surveying 9’ x 9’ Graphite, charcoal

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Surveying ahead Foreseeing hindsight Balance the horizon Tilt the body Peripheral view Calibrating the line

Surveying

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Polar Night: Cliffs 9’ x 9’ Charcoal

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Foot and mile 1000 steps Crossing cliffs Scale of land Rock Edge

Polar Night: Cliffs

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Polar Night: Pendulum 9’ x 9’ Graphite, charcoal

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Instrument of orbit Surveying gravity Follow the moon’s path Foresee momentum Pendulum of the body Grounding us

Polar Night: Pendulum

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Polar Night: Coastline 9’ x 9’ Graphite, charcoal

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Receding rock Changing coast Walking the line Distance over time Unwavering line Spanning ground

Polar Night: Coastline

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Polar Night: Projection 9’ x 9’ Graphite, charcoal

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Projection of sight Seeing blindly Trudging, enduring Across the land Sight overcomes physicality Night in pursuit

Polar Night: Projection

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Polar Night 18’ x 18’ Graphite, charcoal

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Bed 9’ x 9’ Graphite

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Feel cold Endure wind Watch the line Enter shiver Bed of ice Glacial sleep

Bed

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Inhabitation 9’ x 9’ Graphite

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Instrument is the tent Tent is the wind Align the stakes Reduce draft Cold in darkness Deathly inhabitation

Inhabitation

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Inhabitation (Final Presentation) Digital still Inhabitation (Final Presentation) Digital still

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Inhabitation (Final Presentation) Digital still

Inhabitation (Final Presentation) Digital still

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Inhabitation (Final Presentation) Digital still

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Inhabitation (Final Presentation) Digital still Inhabitation (Final Presentation) Digital still

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Inhabitation (Final Presentation) Digital still

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Inhabitation (Final Presentation) Digital still

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When we lose ourselves in scale; When we forsake measure to become a primal existence; When we inhabit the tools we carry, instrumental to our guidance and survival; When the cold coursing through your spine redraws your sight ahead; When the horizon tilts around us, bending to and at our will to foresight; When our (un)steady footing sends us into vertigo; When our unwavering heading forward collides with the gravity of step; When we grope blindingly with our eyes and bodies, orienting ourselves in the snow mass; When the polar night and endless moon measure time; When we feel darkness and endure the freeze, submitting to the black; When we lie at night at the mercy of the wind shaking our shelter, hoping to awake again;

Then, we truly enter the landscape.

FILMOGRAPHY

DISCOGRAPHY

Casa de Areia, 2005. Andrucha Washington.

Altar of Plagues, IRE. White Tomb, 2009.

Chasing Ice, 2012. James Balog.

Corrupted, JAP. El Mundo Frio, 2005.

Essential Killing, 2011. Jerzy Skolimowski.

Cult of Luna, SWE. Somewhere Along the Highway, 2006.

Happy People, 2013. Werner Herzog, Dmitry Vasyukov.

Curry, Jessica and The Chinese Room, UK. Dear Esther, 2012.

Interstellar, 2014. Christopher Nolan.

Earth, USA. The Bees Made Honey in the Lion’s Skull, 2008.

Koyaanisqatsi, 1982. Godfrey Reggio.

Field Rotation, GER. Acoustic Tales, 2011.

La Région Centrale, 1971. Michael Snow.

Köner, Thomas, GER. Daikan, 2002.

Lessons of Darkness, 1995. Werner Herzog.

Lustre, SWE. Night Spirit, 2009.

Samsara, 2011. Ron Fricke.

A Winged Victory for the Sullen, BEL, GER. Atomos, 2014.

Solaris, 1972. Andrei Tarkovsky.

Zimmer, Hans, GER. Soundtrack for Interstellar, 2014.

Snowpiercer, 2014. Bong Joon-ho.

Sound of Insects, 2010. Peter Liechti.

Synecdoche, New York, 2008. Charlie Kaufman.

There Will Be Blood, 2007. Paul Thomas Anderson.

The Turin Horse, 2011. Béla Tarr, Ágnes Hranitzky.

Vertige d’une rencontre, 2009. Jean-Michel Bertrand.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Bentham, Jeremy. The Panopticon Writings. Brooklyn, NY: Verso, 1995.

Calvino, Italo. If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler. New York: Harcourt, Inc., 1981.

Corner, James and Alison Bick Hirsch, eds. The Landscape Imagination.

New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 2014.

Crowther, Paul. The Kantian Sublime. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.

Ghidoni, Matteo, ed. San Rocco: Ecology, no. 10 (2014).

Girot, Christophe and Fred Truniger, eds. Landscript 1: Landscape Vision Motion. Berlin: jovis Verlag GmbH, 2012.

Lin, Maya. Boundaries. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000.

McCarthy, Cormac. Outer Dark. New York: Vintage, 1993.

McGill, Douglas C. Michael Heizer: Effigy Tumuli. New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc., 1990.

Netz, Reviel. Barbed Wire. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2004.

Olscamp, Paul J. René Descartes: Discourse on Method, Optics, Geometry, and Meteorology. New York: Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1965.

Perez-Gomez, Alberto and Louise Pelletier. Architectural Representation and the Perspective Hinge. Cambridge: The MIT Press, 2000.

Peters, John Durham. The Marvelous Clouds: Towards a Philosophy of Elemental Media. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015.

Shapiro, Gary. Archaeologies of Vision: Foucault and Nietzsche on Seeing and Saying. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2003.

Tanizaki, Jun’ichiro. In Praise of Shadows. Sedgwick ME: Leete’s Island Books, 1977.

Vogt, Günther. Landscape as a Cabinet of Curiosities. Zurich: Lars Müller Publishers, 2015.

It is beyond conception, even to us, that we are dwelling on a colossal ice raft, with but five feet of ice separating us from 2,000 fathoms of ocean, & drifting along under the caprices of wind & tides, to heaven knows where. photographer stranded on a capsized The Endurance in Antarctica for 2 years

FR ANK HURLEY,

Maybe I’m just asking you to pay closer attention to the land.

MAYA LIN

And if the worst, or best, happens, and Death comes for you in the snow, he comes disguised as Sleep, and you greet him rather as a welcome friend than a gruesome foe.

APSLEY CHERRY-GARR ARD upon the Terra Nova Expedition in Antarctica, 1910 to 1913

This book is a documentation of the collective body of work completed between September 2015 and May 2016 towards a thesis project.

This book was set in Arnhem, Georgia, and Source Sans Pro typefaces.

Arnhem was designed by FRED SMEIJERS in 1998 for OurType. Georgia was designed by MATTHEW CARTER in 1993 for Microsoft Typography.

Source Sans Pro was designed by PAUL HUNT in 2012 for Adobe Type.

This book was designed with Adobe Indesign Creative Cloud 2015.

This book was designed by BR ANDON WANG , May 2016.