Masters Thesis 2015

M i n d f u l n e s s

The Strangely Familiar

The Strangely Familiar

Hailey Casavant-Colby Thesis 2015 Part 1: An Architectural Investigation into the Uncanny.

Part 2: An uncanny representation of meditation.

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Table of Contents Part 1: Prospectus.......................1-27 Thesis Statement..............................29 Part 2: Mindfulness..................30-59

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Key Words Double-Take --- an instinctual desire to observe again, or more than once.

Curiosity --- something that catches your eye and draws you in; convinces you to discover further.

Surreal --- a dreamlike quality; questioning reality.

Subtlety --- something that can be easily overlooked; requires more attention.

Juxaposition --- the collision of opposites.

Ambiguity --- an unclear understanding of something, that makes you uneasy or fearful.

Uncanny --- the strangely familiar; a combination of things to make the mundane seem twisted.

The Sublime: ADJECTIVE: of such excellence, grandeur, or beauty as to inspire great admiration or awe.

VERB: (archaic) elevate to a high degree of moral or spiritual purity or excellence.

The uncanny can be described as everyday objects combined with one another to make an unusual pairing. As research shows, two familiar objects, such as a cloud and a room, are well known and can be overlooked in our daily routine until we see them together. Horror movies best exhibit this type of refocus of what is being observed in a scene; where the camera is zoomed into a specific spot, making us feel like something is about to happen at that point, only to have the blinds lifted to show what is really going on. This peak could lead to something we were waiting for the whole time or exactly nothing at all. From that pinnacle on, anxiety in the form of a heightened surprise will make us more alert of what our surroundings are and what might come next. Whether it is images, film, or places, it’s best to find ways to snap us out of our mindlessness state so that we may become more aware as human beings.

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Mind Map

Mindfulness

1: Something deceptively simple

2: the mundane

3: putting things into categories doesn’t allow for other perspectives. :installation of Richard Serra-Tilted Arc (awake people from their mundane commute.

Other examples: Torqued Ellipses

:movement & the subconscious Psychology Sigmund Freud – The Uncanny The Uncanny Psychology -Freud -Jentsch Literature -Edgar Allen Poe

: subconscious/Tell Tale Heart -Anthony Vidler

: ‘Unheimlich’ Film -Alfred Hitchcock

: anxiety, fear, terror

darkness is when the intimate becomes unfamiliar

Installations -The Uncanny Gallery at The Rochini Gallery

: cloud in room, fur in orb

-Serra

: Tilted Arc, Torqued Ellipses

-James Turrell: surreal light qualities -the uncanny evokes curiousity – makes you double-take on ‘familiar’ things or situations.

-use the uncanny to make a person aware for a full conscious experience instead of a blind pass through.

Sight isn’t stationary, an experience and awareness should be constant.

Examples : crypt with light coming from ?somewhere? : anthropomorphic windows : shadows conjure the unknown : John Bergeron – singing androids

Ambiguity ‘play around with the concept of reality’ : staircase to nowhere The Strangely Familiar Fig. 4

The

uncanny

will

not

leave

you

at

ease.

It

will

keep

you

on

your

toes.

Sigmund Freud

The uncanny is a Freudian concept that can be described as everyday objects combining with one another to make an unusual pairing, resulting in a feeling of it’s being as uncomfortably strange. The literal translation for ‘uncanny’ comes from the German word for unhomely, “unheimlich.” As research shows, two familiar objects, such as a cloud and a room, can be overlooked in our daily routine until we see them together. (fig. 3) Horror movies best exhibit this type of refocus of what is being observed in a scene; where the camera is zoomed into a specific spot, making us feel like something is about to happen at that point, only to have the blinds lifted to show what is really going on. This peak could lead to something we were waiting for the whole time or exactly nothing at all. From that pinnacle on, anxiety in the form of a heightened surprise will make us more alert of what our surroundings are and what might come next. Whether it is images, film, or places, it’s best to find ways to snap us out of our mindlessness state so that we may become more aware as human beings.

The Uncanny was first psychologically explored by Ernst Jentsch in a 1906 essay, On the Psychology of the Uncanny. The first spatial and environmental relationship to the uncanny was underlined as a “lack of orientation”.5Sigmund Freud later defined the uncanny in 1919, stating that the strange cannot exist without the normal, and the unfamiliar wouldn’t exist without the familiar; with “canny” meaning possessing knowledge or skill. An architectural thesis must propose an idea for an experience of space. I propose a space that will be imperceptible to the familiar eye. An architectural thesis must propose an idea for an experience of space. I propose a space that will be imperceptible to the familiar eye. My thesis is going to snap people out of their subconscious state; i.e. a state of mind that is being solely preoccupied by the subconscious. to be made aware of the space surrounding them, in small scale, and being aware is the highest state of mindfulness.

Jentsch, Ernst. Zur Psychologie Des Unheimlichen. Halle A.S.: n.p., 1906. Print.

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The Uncanny Valley was coined by the robotics professor Masahiro Mori as Bukimi no Tani Genshō in 1970. It is a hypothesis in the field of human aesthetics which holds that when human features look and move almost, but not exactly, like natural human beings, it causes a response of revulsion among some human observers. The “valley” refers to the dip in a graph of the comfort level of humans as subjects move toward a healthy, natural human likeness described in a function of a subject’s aesthetic acceptability.

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Richard Serra

A translation to architecture might come in forms of hiding and revealing. As with Richard Serra’s Torqued Ellipses, only movement around and within these pieces will expose the implied space hidden internally. The affect that Serra’s Tilted Arc, Torqued Ellipses and also his Union of the Torus and the Sphere, makes on viewers has a lot to do with the scale of these pieces. The experience of wandering around, looking up and forward would not have been as impactful if they were 5’ or even an average 12’ ceiling height. The shape determines the movement about the space of the room and literally how you interact with the 16 foot steel…you would not be able to walk around these pieces without leaning to the side, experiencing moments of vertigo or even wanting to touch. Interacting with each of these works of art is a full body experience.

The Strangely Familiar is going to snap people out of their subconscious state, to make people aware of the space surrounding them. This might need to be a daily experience…but how do you put something in a space for people to experience for the first time one day, and have them expect nothing has changed when they enter in the same space the next day (or daily), to redirect their awareness to their journey all the time and every time.

If change is in the nature of the subconscious, then how can architecture exemplify temporality to enhance a need for constant awareness?

Victor Hugo talks about Une Maison Visonee, a house in the middle of nowhere, with boarded up windows and spider webs shading the windows, as an example of this eerie feeling the uncanny describes. Clearly the house has no residents and its architecture is that of other houses just like it, but the windows start to become anthropomorphic and entering seems like a bad idea. This house then is perceived as haunted and none dare to enter. But why? This feeling has been first introduced through the German word unheimlich, literally meaning unhomely. With an abandoned home in the middle of nowhere, uncanny is written all over it. To juxtapose a haunting exterior, an immediate uncanny experience, is the Donald Judd’s Prada store on a very inactive street in Marfa, Texas. The store’s architecture replicates that of its predecessors and houses products; yet it is contrastingly never occupied and too out of the way to visit.

Vidler, Anthony. The Architectural Uncanny: Essays in the Modern Unhomely. Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1992. Print.

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“I found very important the idea of the body passing through space, and the body’s movement not being predicated totally on image or sight or optical awareness, but on physical awareness in relation to space, place, time, movement.”1 1:Richard Serra, in an interview with Lynne Cooke and Michael Govan, in Richard Serra: Torqued Ellipses (New York: Dia Center for the Arts, 1997), pp. 27–28.

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Rochini Gallery

Despite initial appearances, the photographs of Berndnaut Smilde don’t rely on photoshopping or digital technology for their bizarre content. His clouds, which hang mysteriously in empty interiors, are created using a smoke machine combined with moisture. They float like ghosts, unexpected, surprising and rather lonely.

Adeline de Monseignat’s sculptures combine vintage animal fur and glass globes. The end results are intriguingly tactile, and also decidedly unsettling. They sit on the floor, or rest in piles of sand. In one example here, in which the globe sits on a tiny metal frame bed, the fur inside pulses slowly, falling and rising in drowsy breaths.

The exhibits in The Uncanny perfectly demonstrate Freud’s theory. There’s nothing inherently strange in glass or fur, clouds or empty rooms, but place them together in unexpected combinations and suddenly you find yourself encountering moments of pure magic.

Fig. 9

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All Images Credit:

“The Uncanny, Ronchini Gallery.� My Search for Magic. N.p., 2 Feb. 2013. Web. 16 Oct. 2014. http://mysearchformagic.com/2013/02/02/the-uncanny-ronchini-gallery/

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Fig. 11

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The feeling of uncertainty. Footsteps reverberating through an empty house, the anticipation building as you wait for the villain to walk into the frame, all anxiety at its perceptual peak until the focus shifts, and you realize he was already there. The Strangely Familiar will disrupt a blind, subconscious state of mind. Through the creation of a surreal setting, it will make you double take, and question whether or not something is different from the usual. Combinations of objects/places/beings that don’t seem to belong with each other and question your previous notions of the familiar will display the uncanny. An architecture/figure/atmosphere of curiosity, abnormality, and revelation will be created. If everything is as it ‘should’ be, then it will go unnoticed by the familiar eye. The strangely familiar is an architectural 23 investigation into the world of the uncanny, revealing that which perhaps should remain unnoticed.

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“It will play around with concepts of reality, presenting images and objects, which are both unnatural and strange, yet, strikingly familiar.2” the unfamiliar wouldn’t exist without the familiar

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With each image there is an attempt to make you double take, become curious, experience a subtle surrealness, and see what the uncanny could look like, while experiencing something of a sublime nature.

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Thesis Statement

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This thesis is rooted in Mindfulness: the intentional, accepting and nonjudgmental focus of ones attention on the emotions, thoughts, and sensations occurring in the present moment. the meditational focusing on the breath; inhalation

practice of movements of and exhalation.

My thesis means to create a setting that allows for maximum mindfulness; a sublime setting that touches upon the uncanny to heighten all senses for transcendence to an enlightened state of being , with full awareness and a consciousness of mind that is constantly in the immediate present. AKA Mindfulness. It means to interrupt a mindless habitual behavior that many experience daily, and create a new mindful memory within a series of meditational spaces.

In the dark we are unfamiliar with our surroundings; for only then are we able to purely reflect on our body and mind.

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Fig. 14 30

N 42 17. 904 W071 02.783

The criterion for a successful site is as follows: a place that is acknowledged and visibly accessible constantly. Thousands of commuters travel in and out of the city of Boston everyday, passing by the National Grid gas tank featuring the world’s largest copy written art piece by Corita Kent. A gas tank as itself is something of a large scale, eyesore; this tank alongside Highway 93 and Morrissey Boulevard, with Corita Kent’s colorful Rainbow Swash, brings new meaning to a mundane, everyday object, and transforms it into a now well-known landmark while acting as a point of reference for thousands every morning, evening and the time in between. The massive familiarity of this specific object makes it such a good canditate to undergo a transformation to an interruption of the many subconscious driven minds travelling their habitual mundane routes. A deceiving unfamiliarity mixed with the familiar engages the curious mind to be brought to an full present state of awareness and forms into something that resides in your mind as strangely familiar.

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The criterion for a successful program is as follows: an interior venue that is not necessarily visited daily, but maybe monthly or annually.

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1/256” = 1’0” 35 Site Plan

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As behaviors are repeated in a consistent context, there is an incremental increase in the link between the action and its context. This increases the automaticity of the action and affects the efficiency, awareness, intentionality and controllability. Habitual behavior often goes unnoticed in persons exhibiting it, because a person does not need to engage in self-analysis when undertaking routine tasks. Old habits are hard to break and new habits are hard to form because the-pathways.

To activate the subconscious mind is to break the habit of automaticity, to function as a fully aware human being who is present in mind in their daily routines and rituals.

The Buddhist Anapanasati is a form of training using the meditational practices of inhaling and exhaling. Focusing solely on the inhalation and exhalation of your own breath allows one to be fully present in the moment of their own breathing. This mindfulness of breathing is translated through the Pali term sati, literally “memory�; defined as, to remember, a presence of mind, attentiveness to the present (rather than in regards to the past memory.) Meditation occurs in this practice to achieve enlightenment, transformation, and finding existential meaning.

If Mindfulness comes from the Buddhist interpretation of a focus on breathing, then putting a mediation space of awareness of breath in a Gas Tank is uncanny.

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From a site that we have previous ideas about, to a twisting of our familiar we are awakened from our subconscious slumber.

Through an uncanny and sublime experience of hiding, revealing, exposure and self-reflection have we become fully aware of what we are experiencing in the exact moment of experience.

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Through the removal of the paint, an alterior interior, unfamiliar to our previous beliefs, is revealed.

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At an overwhelming scale, the sublime atmosphere created will capture our focus and direct us to the start of our journey.

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Through an inconspicious entrance we are slid into a dark room, only to hear the subtle movement of the ocean.

As a first step we focus on our breath and meditate on self.

After experiencing an awakening, we circumambulate around an uncanny structure, with glimpses of an exterior world every so many feet.

We see things above us, people, structure, a light; but only attaining the patience to revolve around our past self meditation will we be able to reach a higher space to achieve enlightenment.

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We are familiar with everything in the light, but when darkness sets, we are surrounded by the unfamiliar. And since the familiar wouldn’t exist without its counterpart, herein lies the uncanny.

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The natural and constant rise and fall of the harbor reminds us of passing time.

Alone we each sit in the dark, with nothing but a faint light from above; shimmering and reflecting off of the growing tidal pool that consumes and reveals a radial well of seating four times a day.

Structural columns with a center axis mundi relate us to the sky and bring us back to the water to ground us.

Here we are able to meditate and reflect on ourselves.

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Over time the city of Boston has been constructed on massive amounts of landfill.

This site, located alongside Interstate 93, has seen two 146’ tall tanks holding natural gas that supply to the surrounding areas; the first having the original artwork of Corita Kent, and the second with a replica.

The original tank’s footprint can be seen before entering through the replica’s skin.

An elevated platform connects from the entrance to the bottom extents of the middle red stripe; this action of walking past the ghost of the first tank, onto and through the second, and out to the Boston Harbor is transitioned through a beach-like manipulation of the site, allowing the ocean water to take over and consume the site during high tide.

An interior form generated from the simple need of oppositional spaces, is created with an hourglass shape to almost entirely enclose a lower half and a juxtaposing entirely exposed higher realm.

Each floor slab has a slight transparency so that from floors above and below, the trace of other human movement can be seen and tracked.

A continuous, unbroken ramp travels up between the perimeter of each floor and the existing steel skin, transitioning slowly, forcing humans to occupy and take time traveling through the structure that supports the inner and outer form.

As we travel from a meditation space on self, taking time to reach a higher space of light, we transition from a focus on self to all other things of this world.

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At the end of our journey we are able to reflect on all that has passed us and all that is to come.

We are cloaked in light with shadows passing over us. Shadows of the past, and shadows of what is present.

Time will eventually run out on each of us.

Every season the elements of this earth go through a cyclical ritual of death and rebirth.

In Buddhism, enlightenment is awakening from one’s delusions, especially the delusions of the ego and of a separate self.

“That myriad things come forth and experience themselves is awakening. In ritual, quiet yourself and let the myriad things experience themselves.”

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Notes Figure 1: Videodrome. Dir. David Cronenberg. 1983. Figure 11: “Pooh Bear for Dinner.” HC Figure 2: Hailey Colby. 2014.

Figure 12: “Staircase to ?” HC

Figure 3: The Uncanny, Ronchini Gallery.” My Figure 14: “Gas Tank Rainbow Mural by Corita Kent - Boston, Search for Magic. N.p., 2 Feb. 2013. Web. 16 Oct. MA - Murals on Waymarking.com.” Gas Tank Rainbow Mural by 2014.

Corita Kent - Boston, MA - Murals on Waymarking.com. N.p., http://mysearchformagic.com/2013/02/02/the-un- 27 June 2007. Web. 09 Dec. 2014. <http://www.waymarking. canny-ronchini-gallery/xcx com/waymarks/WM1QXM_Gas_Tank_Rainbow_Mural_by_Corita_Kent_Boston_MA>.

Figure 4: Pierini, Guido R. “James Turrell.” BOUMBANG. N.p., 14 July 2012. Web. 10 Dec. 2014. <http://www.boumbang.com/james-turrell/>.

Figure 5: Taylor, Ashley. “Almost Human.” » Scienceline. N.p., 3 Jan. 2012. Web. 10 Dec. 2014. <http:// scienceline.org/2012/01/almost-human/>.

Figure 6: Barnes, Richard. “Richard Serra.” Dia Art Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Dec. 2014. <http:// www.diabeacon.org/exhibitions/main/96>.

Figure 7: Diagrammatic Sketch. Hailey Colby Figure 8: Movie Still. Hailey Colby.

Figure 9: “Dead End” HC

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