Against Intepretation: Constructing Difference for the Sake of Perspective or “If It Ain’t Broke, Break It[1]” Lennard Michael Ong Ee Wen Advisor: Gabie Strong Aug 20, 2010
This essay is an attempt at an amoral textual simulation. It accepts the contemporary as is and does not resist simulacra but embraces it. Any alternative is futile dreaming. It resists cynicism for dirty realism. In the absence of a defined agenda or manifesto, where’s the next ‘there”, or, where is the “now” now? Are We There Yet? A Roadmap of Where We Are and How We Got Here[2] Disneyland is constructed otherness, a deterrance machine constructed in order to rejuvenate the fiction of the real in the opposite camp. It constructs a language for the unreal through its blatant artificiality.
without cost: it has, through time, accrued extensive negative externalities. Slavoj Zizek, in Living in The End Times, framed them thus in four categories: the worldwide ecological crisis; imbalances within the economic system; the biogenetic revolution; and exploding social divisions and ruptures. The effects of this is, in his words, that “The global capitalist system is approaching an apocalyptic zero-point.” This is the equivalent of a ringtone going off in the movie - a distraction that destroys the fragile believability of the simulation. Exit Strategy #1: The Green Distraction and the Yellow Canary Almost comically, however, the ecological crisis as a potential distraction is increasingly being folded into the simulation as well. For example, “green” features are fast becoming red-herrings to smooth over the political and social wrinkles of a building. (The waterless urinal trumpeted as “green feature” is typically a red-flag.)
of marketing, a roman orgy of media tie-ins, viral marketing and celebrity plugs . In a mass media simulacra, the boundary between the “real/authentic” and the “imaginary/fake” becomes collapsed to the point where one becomes voluntary prisoners of their own creation, ignorant that we are all voluntary prisoners of our own creation. The involuntarily voluntary. The mash up as a model of the democratization of tools is an anticipatory model of how we may reclaim this true freedom. Through techniques of mash-up, it attempts to corrupt the puritanical narrative from within. It is a decoupling of the signifier from the signified. It melts fact into fiction and reforms it into intepretation. We design our own intepretation. Everything means everything/ anything/nothing at the same time. No facts, just intepretations.
The Squid Capusle project by LayerLA can, in this light, be read as an alternative that subverts this model.
A puritanical narrative is a linear history that is in itself a simulation for control. It has traces of a moral superstructure which allows capital to function unfettered. Ask enough “why” and we arrive at the empty center. A system justified by its own operation, a kafka-esque labyrinth with no point.
“The work enacts climate change as a delicate drama of temperature and humidity. Separate weather systems are created within the various chambers, representing both wet and dry zones by means of fog, vapour, and condensation. Floating over the courtyard area, the Squid Capsule invites visitors to speculate about the physical and visual representations of our climate, as well as lounge around on its tentacles.”[5]
The model of freedom engendered in this is the Do-It-Yourself attitude toward a productive culture that claims its own autonomy. This emerging culture is reflected in the emergence of the Creative Commons, which becomes a platform for other avenues such as Instructables.com, Make Magazine, TheCreatorsProject, Vice Magazine and a plethora of alternative media whose ethos is based in hacker culture.
Spielen Macht Frei
This experience of the unreal is predicated on a binary logic executed through Disneyland’s spatial boundaries: a n inside versus an outside. Inside- a constructed fake- therefore, outside it, an implied real. From the parking lot to the interior, the contrast is stark. By defining the unreal, it creates a contrast for everything else, that by defaultLennard becomes real. Disneyland is a simulation of the third order, i.e. it masks the absence of a profound reality. But Disneyland Michael is no longer relevant in LA. It is a martyr to the total simulation and is now being deployed in other emerging countries. In China, for Ong Ee Wen of/ “fake” Disneylands, the Shijingshan example, there are instances Amusement park[3]: a third order simulation built atop an existing Wang Yuwen simulation. Proof that our simulacra is almost water-tight.
In this vein, Universal Studios is the next order of simulation: instead of blatant artificality, it is subterfuge. It extends the implication of the real (set up by Disneyland) and constructs a simulation of it. Citywalk by John Jerde simulates piazzas and urbanity by confusing fiction for fact. In its programmatic bombardment with ordinary: Panda Express, Pizza Hut and Budweiser beer, one equates outside life with the simulation. It sets the precedent for the authenticity of Rodeo Drive and The Grove. The Grove: a fourth order simulation, one that is aware of itself as a simulation. This self-awareness is a stasis and control: a resistance to alternative intepretation. The Grove looks the same today as it did 5 years ago and the Cheesecake from the Cheesecake Factory tastes no different. Its opposite, dingbats and hinterlands are the dissimlation: a reality with no perception of itself, and hence mutable to multiple intepretations and difference. Venice Beach, for example, is halfway between caricature and simulation. As an ecology “that is a space of the regeneration of the imaginary as waste-treatment plants”, the Ferus Gallery and associated artists, in this case, John Baldessari, were an attempt at critical resistance. His techniques did have the effect of expanding the field of art toward more contemporary territories: through his use of automatic and almost disposable techniques that borrowed from the layman, it became an art that had to deal with its imminent demise. Perhaps the showing of his work at the LACMA is a sign of its failure: its museumification signals its subsumption back into the dominant cultural hegemony, folded in through new apparatuses and tools of capital. (whether the field of “art”, or architecture for that matter, is even relevant today as an autonomous discipline and as an institution is another question. The recent appointment of Jeffrey Deitch as the new director of the MOCA suggests otherwise.[4]) (Three interesting works by Baldessari: Aligning Balls, 1972. Three Red Paintings, 1988. Crowd with Shape of Reason Missing, 1988) Resistance is Futile. So Keep Calm and Carry On. The accumulated efforts of our constructed simulations are not
B.Arch In opposition to the eternal present of the modernist gaze[6], the squid-capsule offers the participant a multi-sensorial experience Graduating that re-orients one’s perception toward ever changing conditions of temperature, wetness and different lighting qualities. Thesis
For example, unlike the constructed mise en scene of the Farnsworth 2010/11 House, the Squid Capsule reverses the hierarchy between architecture and its environment. It becomes an affective proxy for its environment: a potential canary that draws attention to our ecology. If only it weren’t so pretty. Exit Strategy #2: The Collective Individual and its Prostitution Our current simulation model has also redefined the state of our relation to the various institutions, both economic and social. Suspending moral judgement, the recent financial crisis in Europe and the riots that ensued in greece over pensions is possibly symptomatic of two things: 1) That this new form of reified relations is not sustainable and resists equilibrium or 2) That was the violent transition from the old social form to a newer one. In the first fiction, political incantation, such as the Watergate scandal, or the recent Bernie Madoff Trial or the recent Goldman Sachs witch trial, is used to put out fires of dissent: the moral imposition upon capital soothes over injustices with the assurance that there is justice. The truth it attempts to conceal is that capital is amoral: it was never linked by a contract to the society that it dominates... its instantaneous cruelty, its incomprehensible ferocity, its fundamental immorality. The fact is, Bernie Madoff is the logical consequence of the system he operated within. In the second, to extend Barthe’s[7], the sign - in this case, the structural sign of how we define our social relations - becomes an empty signifier. But freedom is always temporary: it is a vaccuum that is quickly filled with new constraints. The ironic truth is, true freedom is about the choice to give up freedom by committing to things: people, causes, beliefs, life. In one instance of this was instantiated as tragedy: in the wake of 1970’s Thatcherism, the sub-culture of punks[8] tore a hole that was tragically co-opted: Anarchy in the UK comfortably plays stores to manufacture desire for pre-ripped jeans and pleather jackets: “rebellion” as ineffective masturbation. The potential tragedy today is that this manufactured desire as a form of control is a perverted form of hypnosis that is fast becoming spectral - omnipresent but ever evasive - through a rhizomatic system
Southern
(the previous paper suggested that the Punks, in their direct opposition to the cultural mainstream, orchaestrated a cold-war California scenario of mutual reliance.)
of effectively resists The optimistic reading of this isInstitute that this system subsumption because it is inherently free. But the logic of capital is Architecture malleable. Already, as is evidenced through Facebook and the recent posting of personal profile information online[9], we have become commodities of ourselves. If It Ain’t Broke... No progress, no better, no worse. Whats different, how can it be different. Only through difference do can anyone construct perspective. In a post-humous tweet from the Twitter profile of Marshall McLuhan, “Stop asking “Is this a good or bad thing?” and start asking “What’s going on?”” Who is in control versus who believes they are in control. Break the fire alarm and run out naked. We don’t need to see the fire to smell the smoke. [1]Eric Owen Moss, Farewell Email to Chris Genik. July 2010. [2]pp 23, Jean Baudrillard, History: A Retro Scenario, Simulation and Simulacra. [3]Chinese Disneyland rip-off Cleaning Up Copyright Violations? The Japan Probe, 2007. http://www.japanprobe.com/2007/05/10/chinese-disneyland-rip-off-cleaning-up-copyrightviolations/ [4]MOCA says Jeffrey Dietrich is the New Director, The Los Angeles Times, http:// latimesblogs.latimes.com/culturemonster/2010/01/moca-says-jeffrey-deitch-is-its-newdirector.html [5]Squid Capsule by Layer, Frame Magazine, 2010, http://www.framemag.com/news/1293 [6]pp 32, The Temporary Contemporary, Sylvia Lanvin. Perspecta vol 34, 2004 [7]Barthes, Roland. “Rhetoric of the Image.” Image, Music, Text, edited and translated by Stephen Heath, 32-51. New York: Hill and Wang, 1977. [8]Hebdige, Dick. Subculture: The Meaning of Style. London: Methuen, Routledge. 1979. (selections) [9]Facebook Personal Info of 100M Users Published, CBSnews, http://www.cbsnews. com/8301-501465_162-20012031-501465.html
(Notebook Collage) Train Track & Ash Flower Auschwitz-Birkenau Summer 2006
Contents 1.0_ Looking for the Looking Glass loose boundaires 2.0_ A House in Search for a Home searching for relevance 3.0_Fairy Tales v2.0 the narrative 4.0_ This Becomes That losing and gaining in translation 5.0_ Random Wanderkammer homeless curios
version 4.0 last updated: October 10, 2010
Looking for the Looking Glass. “Which road do I take?” // “That depends on where you want to go.” // “I don’t know,” Alice answered. // “Then,” said the Cheshire Cat, “it doesn’t matter... any road will get you there.”
// Genesis, or Involuntary Freedoms Through Architecture // Unplanning the Plan for a Plan 1.0 Fairy Tales: A Bedtime Story for the Future What does it mean to be modern? The difference is in our careful distinctions between nature and society, politics and science, good and bad. In short, a purifying categorical world view: the fracturing of a whole into parts to be manipulated with optimism. (see: CIAM doctrine)
Once upon a time, a dirty and messy situation was made into a clean and orderly promise. Precarious living conditions were rationally repackaged into solidified blocks for living, working and playing, respectively (see, diagram1.1). Through expert global maneuvering, economic stagnation became universal prosperity (see, diagram 1.2). Wildness was neatly quarantined and inoculated against any possible illness or harm to the inhabitants (see, diagram 1.3). The island was an airtight masterpiece that couldn’t be argued against: a place without contradictions. It was a well-oiled machine to live die in. Everyone lived happily ever after in this systemic equilibrium.
This thesis is the Joker to this hou se of cards. Assuming the planne d as its zero condition, it takes the position of aberrant play and nature to un-plan the city.
_to investigate selfpropogating systems thinking through words // what is the difference between a junkyard and a jungle? // how does one study ecosystems? // what will the variables at play be? //
_to horizontalize relationships thinking through words what relationships are there? // where are the imbalances? // who are the relevant critical thinkers? // what is the architectural equivalent of hierarchy vs non-hierarchy? //
// Bandwidth of Ambition
_to materialize residual _to deploy a catalogue or invisible biomes of tools at various time and spatial scales thinking through words what is in the periphery? // what environments nurture them? // why were they undesirable? // cheap&chic
thinking through words is architecture autonomous? // what is my hunch of architecture? // how could it operate at different scales? // what kind of games are there?
A House in Search for a Home. An building idea should give back its own history. This is his attempt to look at himself looking at the world looking back at him.
perfectday notebooks travels Excavations
// A Map to Get Lost In (detail)
Personal History
projects correspondances
Wanderkam
note to self: to be kept loose material is developed.
LaJetee(film) NeverLetMeGo(film) both films feel independent of a historical chronology, like a future that happened in the past. Or conversely, a past that happened in the future. they are simultaneously pressingly relevent, but timeless.
Children of Men(film) an oblique critique on culture with its focus of the dirty realism of the here-now, the subject of the film is a subtle undercurrent. what you see is not what you get.
EdgarDeg
his sensibilities (composition&fram stroke&texture) im paintings with a fe voyeuristic momen in time. like jean-fr subject matters ar for their banal, vul vulnerable qualitie made evident.
"TheCaseAgainstHomeOwnership", Times(Sept62010) LA +5degrees, coffeshop conversation
r Plants", FastCompay(June2010)
stCompany(March2010) Lifestyle Changes Environmental Issues
Sanford Kwintor, Requiem of the City
Soft Infrastructure Changing Hierarchies
oud Computing
Biopolitics&Urbanism
etics
Matters of Concern
Urban Interventions Personal Projects in Public Spaces
Reyner Banham, Architecture of the Well Tempered Environmen
scenaric generators
Environmental Systems Matters of Fact
AD, Energies: New Material Boundaries
conceptual drivers
Research Map Personal History
Aberrant Technology
Michel Smyth, Digital Blur
David Gissen, Subnatures chewing gum
Architectural Discourse r&sie, Spoiled Climate Wanderkammer
Rem Koolhaas, OMA
note to self: to be kept loose until more material is developed.
Kazuyo Sejima, SANAA
Men(film)
EdgarDegas(painter)
ChuckClose(painter)
YoshioTaniguchi(architect, MoMA_ny)
// A Map to Get Lost In (Partial
Overview)
Wildness
nt
Possible Outputs?:
Residue
//DiscourseDiagram_positioningdiagram //ResidualScan_material/resource palette //MeltMap_bandwidth of actor-network at play (programming?) //Playtime_
Melt Play
Old/New?
chewing gum
Architectural Discourse
Wanderkammer note to self: to be kept loose until more material is developed.
LaJetee(film) NeverLetMeGo(film) both films feel independent of a historical chronology, like a future that happened in the past. Or conversely, a past that happened in the future. they are simultaneously pressingly relevent, but timeless.
Children of Men(film) an oblique critique on culture with its focus of the dirty realism of the here-now, the subject of the film is a subtle undercurrent. what you see is not what you get.
EdgarDegas(painter) his sensibilities (composition&framing, quality of stroke&texture) impregnate his paintings with a feeling of a stolen voyeuristic moment, a frozen instant in time. like jean-francoise millet, his subject matters are also intriguing for their banal, vulgar and vulnerable qualities. the non-heroic made evident.
ChuckClose(painter) a chuck close painting is intriguing for its scalar relationship to resolution: from far, a portrait. up close, an abstract pattern of dots, lines and colour. this looseness between real/abstract and their oscillation (how the object gains and loses its connotative associations) through the movement of the viewer is tantalizing.
YoshioTaniguchi(architect, MoMA_ny) transparent conceptual parti while choreographing an exciting spatial journey of platonic volumes, flat planes and residual aberrance.
Stage 0: Offline Planning
"TheCaseAgainstHomeOwnership", Times(Sept62010) LA +5degrees, coffeshop conversation
) Plants", FastCompay(June2010) #2Power ailTiny "Super // A Map to Get Lost In (det "The World's 50 Most Innovative Companies", FastCompany(March2010) Lifestyle Changes
LA Project Aims to Make Parking Easier
Environmental Issues Soft Infrastructure Changing Hierarchies
Bacteria causes Rain, NewYorkTimes
Cloud Computing
Biopolitics&Urbanism
BioGenetics
Matters of Concern
scenaric generators
Environmental Systems
perfectday Matters of Fact
notebooks
conceptual drivers
Research Map
travels Excavations
Personal History
Aberrant Technology
projects correspondances chewing gum
Architectural Discour
Wanderkammer note to self: to be kept loose until more material is developed.
Narrative Required LaJetee(film) NeverLetMeGo(film) both films feel independent of a historical chronology, like a future that happened in the past. Or conversely, a past that happened in the future. they are simultaneously pressingly relevent, but timeless.
Children of Men(film) an oblique critique on culture with its focus of the dirty realism of the here-now, the subject of the film is a subtle undercurrent. what you see is not what you get.
EdgarDegas(painter) his sensibilities (composition&framing, quality of stroke&texture) impregnate his paintings with a feeling of a stolen voyeuristic moment, a frozen instant in time. like jean-francoise millet, his subject matters are also intriguing for their banal, vulgar and
ChuckClose(painter) a chuck close painting is intriguing for its scalar relationship to resolution: from far, a portrait. up close, an abstract pattern of dots, lines and colour. this looseness between real/abstract and their oscillation (how the object gains and loses its connotative associations) through the movement of the viewer
YoshioTaniguchi(architect, MoMA_ny) transparent conceptual parti while choreographing an exciting spatial journey of platonic volumes, flat planes and residual aberrance.
Berlin
//Figure
//Green Spectrum
//Blue Spectrum
//Grey Spectrum
Tokyo
New York
London
Singapore
// Location: Singapore // Site: Pershing Square / Now-Here // Context: Nowhere / No-Where Singapore opposite page: Comparative Urban Morphologies constructed from Infra-Red Landsat Images. image sources: NASA landsat public image archive. (2005) above right: GDP per capita vis a vis immediate geographic neighbours. Not adjusted for inflation and converted to US dollars applying market exchange rates source: World Development Bank Indicators (updated October 1 2010) right: Selected information points. source: CIA World Fact Book (updated June 2010)
Area:
Environment - current issues:
Population:
total: 697 sq km land: 687 sq km water: 10 sq km
industrial pollution; limited natural fresh water resources; limited land availability presents waste disposal problems; seasonal smoke/haze resulting from forest fires in Indonesia
4,657,542 (July 2010 est.)
Natural resources: fish, deepwater ports Land use: arable land: 1.47% permanent crops: 1.47% other: 97.06% (2005)
Urbanization: urban population: 100% of total population (2008) rate of urbanization: 1.2% annual rate of change (2005-10 est.)
Labor force - by occupation: agriculture: 0% industry: 23.8% services: 76.2% (2008)