MaHKUzine #6, Winter 2009 by maHKU

editorial

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s p at i a l p r a c t i c e s

5–8

dutch artistic research event # 3 andre as mueller

9 – 18

escaping the grid erik a jacobs lord

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s p at i a l s c e n a r i o s wim marseille

29 – 40

c r e at i v e c a s t s andre as gerolemou

41 – 49

transerium, a non-pl ace ilse beumer

reasearch reports

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m a p p i n g p u b l i c s pac e

colofon

6 journal of artistic rese arch winter 2009

edi tor i al

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Contemporary spatial design and the spatial research linked

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to it seem to fan out in all directions. Public space, counter -

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space, space of the non - place, interior space, self - managed

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space, urban space, found space, spaces of flow, space

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of creativity, smooth space, and striated space are just some

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of the space concepts that appear in mahku zine # 6, an issue

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devoted to spatial practices. Obviously, practice in this spatial

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context refers to activity and action in space not necessarily

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performed by consumers of space - although that does not

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seem to be excluded in the self - managed space radiating

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a Bourriaud ambience – but rather by professional designers

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of space. research report

In spite of the ample archive of spatial concepts, the profession

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of spatial designer is not an easy one to define in the 21st century. Whereas artistic interventions in space, in whatever form, open up

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a reservoir of knowledge produced by social interactions, – once coined relational aesthetics by Nicolas Bourriaud – enactments, and other performance - based phenomena related to the domain of visual art, the spatial design profession seems to drown in its spatial concepts without reaching theoretical shores. In other words, both interior designers and public space designers still lack a generally accepted and inspiring form of knowledge production. What, then, could knowledge production and a relevant theoretical discourse mean for those professional space designers? A phenomenological approach, in the sense of turning to designed space as such, seems inevitable. But how should one understand a designed space? Is it a constructed environment, as Parsons New School for Design claims, in an Art & Education e - flux? Is it bringing space to life in both interior and exterior forms? Do future theorists of designed space have to engage in objects connoting space and, for example, turn to Heidegger and his forms of Zuhandene developed in his rather dense work Time and Being? Could one even ask space designers to indulge in that type of philosophical deliberation? Both interior designers and public space designers could look at the domain of visual art for models and inspiration for developing a spatial design discourse. In that visual domain, theorists, curators, and artists collaborate in developing a field of artistic research while scanning exhibitions, trends, and individual works of art. Spatial design could address similar questions, including: What does our 21st century designed space, environment, or surroundings look like? What models of analysis could work in scanning them? What are the trends in those designs? What are examples of high - quality, professionally excellent designs? How could those three traces together produce novel concepts, insights and links with a theoretically inspirational field? These issues echo the initial background of the dare # 3 Graduate exhibition Spatial Practices ( Academiegalerie and Dutch Design Center, August 29 - September 12 )Ω, and the Spatial Practices symposium held at the Utrecht Centraal Museum on September 10, 2008.

Ω p p. 5 - 8

Indeed, spatial design has the capacity to create its own mode of

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knowledge production. Spatial research is able to produce a novel field of knowledge accompanied by a novel conceptual framework linked to spatial practices. mahku zine # 6 issue scans contemporary ventures

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and explorations in that future field of theory called spatial design knowledge production. ( awb )

andre as mueller

9 – 18 e s c a p i n g t h e g r i d erik a jacobs lord

19 – 28 s p at i a l s c e n a r i o s wim marseille

2 9 – 4 0 c r e at i v e c a s t s andre as gerolemou

41 – 4 9 t r a n s e r i u m , a n o n - p l a c e ilse beumer

research report 50 – 54

m a p p i n g p u b l i c s pac e

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s pat i a l p r a c t i c e s

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dutch artistic research event # 3

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andre as mueller

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After last year’s discussion on The Politics of Design, the third dare symposium’s title, “Spatial Practices”, seemed to shift the focus away

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from an all-embracing political debate towards specific, pragmatic

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and applicable practices. Held at Centraal Museum Utrecht on

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September 12th, the symposium presented talks by two artists,

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two architects and an architecture theorist. Its central theme was

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the potential of spatial research for current cultural practices.

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In recent years, the term spatial practice has been used to describe new forms of interdisciplinary practices responding to the rapid transformations of the contemporary city and the politics of territorial

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relations. Spatial practice describes both the critical analysis of spatial relations, and various forms of interventionist strategies.

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Spatial Practice is a term coined by Henri Lefebvre in The Production of Space, where he conceptualizes three basic types of spaces: Lived Space, Perceived Space, and Conceived Space. This model tends to distinguish among the symbolic meanings enacted in spatial form ( lived space ), the spatial patterns of everyday life ( perceived space ), and space as it is conceived through technocratic acts such as planning (conceived space ). Spatial Practice is introduced and described by Lefebvre as a wider conception of practice superordinate to and including any form of social practice, be it revolutionary or reformist. By that definition, Spatial Practice denotes any practice that challenges and alters existing configurations of space, based on the assumption that space is a product –shaped by conflicting forces that act upon it. Though this applies to any of the three above - named categories, Lefebvre assigns Spatial Practice mainly to the category of Perceived Space. It is here, in the space of social relations, of production and reproduction, and of experiences of daily life, where Lefebvre locates potential for the projects concerning alternative and counter - spaces. The construction of such alternative spaces is one objective in the work of Apolonija Sustersic. Though working within the art context, her projects are often realized in public space, deal with urban politics, and rely on the participation of the neighbors. Her concept of space includes social networks, paralleled by economic networks, from the micro-strategy of a free exchange shop to the analysis of powerful restructuring efforts like gentrification. The video and film archive “Video Home Video Exchange”, realized in 1999 in the Westfälischer Kunstverein in Münster, was a strategy to motivate the local audience into becoming an active part of their neighborhood. The act of exchange itself, where visitors could exchange their private home videos for feature films, stimulated participation and thus restructured the space of the community. The temporary Community Research Office at ibid Projects in East L ondon was set up to monitor the process of gentrification

in the local area. It attempted to explore the reasons, processes and consequences of change within urban development,

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where galleries and independent art spaces play an increasingly

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important role. For the project Garden Service, Sustersic, together with architect and theoretician Meike Schalk, installed a public art piece along

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the Royal Mile, the gentrified center of Edinburgh’s tourist industry.

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They transformed a neglected piece of public land into a garden with

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a simple trick: a stairway of five steps, installed to span a wall used

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to separate the land from the street. Besides the material elements

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of the stairs, benches, a table, and some flower pots, “Garden Service”

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consisted of programmed sessions of Sunday afternoon tea talks with

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the local inhabitants. The discussions were open to all and turned

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the garden into a forum for local initiatives focusing on city planning and environmental activism.

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Staffan Schmidt presented his and Mike Bode’s project Off the Grid, conducted as an artistic research PhD at the University of Gothenburg.

research report

The project put inhabitants of a Swedish social housing estate in

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a video interview dialogue with owners of so called off - grid homes in the Northeastern US. The term “off - grid” refers to living

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autonomously, in a self - sufficient manner, without reliance on public utility services like the municipal water supply, sewers, gas relectrical power grid. The project merged seemingly incompatible experiences: eight residents in Husby, an immigrant community outside Stockholm, and eight households not connected to the utility grid, in upstate areas of New England and New York State. The interviewees were paired together and handed unedited copies of each other’s reflections. The conversations revolved around three topics: travel, self - definition, and community. Both groups – despite their extremely different housing situations – consider the immediate living environments as a tool to define their identities. Self - definition stands out as central: it is opposed, delayed in its implementation, violated or threatened – still, all participants individually or collectively struggle to uphold it. The alleged freedom of the off - grid homeowners to control their environment seems to be the model for the residents of the Swedish

da r e # 3 , ac a d em i e g a l er i e , k r i s va n v ee n , fi n e a r t

welfare system, too. artistic research

Both speakers described their work as a form of artistic research aimed at the production of cultural knowledge. For Apolonija Sustersic, the experiences generated in various projects add up to a body of knowledge – e.g. about participation methods or communication

da r e # 3 , o p e n i n g s p ee c h , h a r m s c h elt e n s , d u tc h d e s i g n c e n t er

strategies – that then can be made available for other projects. But at the same time her projects can be seen as very concrete educational work, involving local inhabitants in the production of specific knowledge about their local situation. Staffan Schmidt worked in the format of a scientific report, applying research methods and documentation techniques ( e.g. interviews ) from the social sciences. His project produced a form of artistic knowledge, that is not directly applicable, yet it might change the configuration of imagined spaces for its participants and viewers. The idea of research is not a new phenomenon in the field of

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architecture. Research on design methods emerged in the 1960s

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and ultimately led to a break with modernist planning ideals. Architects and designers began to recognize the political entanglements of their disciplines, and experimented with strategies

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of participation, advocacy planning, or community design.

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Activist strategies appeared in architecture and approached the urban

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public space as a field of interventions. A concept that was developed

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in this context is Participatory Action Research, a method that

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approaches a given situation through research activities, involving

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participants and existing local social networks. By combining the idea

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of research with the idea of practice, this term might be an umbrella term for all the projects discussed in the symposium.

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Philipp Misselwitz talked about a collaborative research process to

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redefine the role of an art institution and its relation to the city in what he calls a Post - Public Environment. The project, done in collaboration with Nikolaus Hirsch, Markus Miessen and Matthias Göhrlich,

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accompanied the diverse activities of the European Kunsthalle Cologne during its founding phase in 2005 - 07. Since the new

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institution did not have its own exhibition space, the relation to its public had to be rethought, and a concept for temporary exhibitions in various public spaces was developed. In doing that, exhibition making became an interventionist practice and, at the same time a laboratory for the development and testing of new institutional models blurring the traditionally static boundaries between institution and city. For the exhibition project Models for Tomorrow, a range of publicly accessible sites in urban space were used. The exhibition venues offered various spatial concepts with varying opening times, represented commercial or public interests, located in the center or on the city’s periphery. The temporary, ‘unstable’ appropriation of found spaces for programmatic work opened up a field of possibilities to rethink the established ‘stable’ model of a Kunsthalle. Lukasz Stanek presented comparative research on Nowa Huta, “the first socialist city in Poland”, and Spangen, the working class neighborhood in Rotterdam. He argued that the current situation in both cities must be understood as post - socialist, since both cities experienced a major rupture in the late 1980s, related to the end of the Keynesian welfare state system. With the collapse of socialism in 1989, the housing production in Nowa Huta went quiet, while the economic basis of the city, its steel production, was suddenly challenged by a globalized steel market. Spangen experienced a similar crisis a year earlier when the almost 80 - year old Dutch housing act was dismantled and housing corporations were allowed to enter the real estate market. Both events marked a break with collectivist ideas. Collective consumption, and the supply of housing as part of the welfare system, turned into individual consumption and homeownership as part of a housing market. Despite the drastic changes in the last 20 years, Stanek argued, these post - socialist cities could not be reduced to sociological fossils nor tourist attractions. Instead, their transformation into neoliberal structures must be understood as mediated by the experiences of the local past. The vision of the socialist city, the memories of the inhabitants, the persistence of the practices of everyday life

da r e # 3 , p er f o r m a n c e , h el e n g r a s , fa s h i o n

and the material layout of the city still influence and mediate the

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restructuring of space in both Nowa Huta and Spangen. Doina Petrescu from the Paris-based Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée ( Studio for Self - managed Architecture ) pointed out the political

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dimension of their spatial practice. Devising micro - urban tactics,

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they aim to reconstruction ‘spaces of proximity’ from the margins

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of the capitalist city. As an example Petrescu presented a project for a community garden in the Paris district of La Chapelle,

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which has a large immigrant population. The community garden

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and a recently squatted house close by explore the possibilities of

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a collectively self-managed space. Using recycled materials and with the help of many local residents, a vacant plot was transformed

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into a space for public meetings for the entire neighborhood.

ilse beumer

The process of constructing as a collective experience and the appropriation of city spaces by inhabitants through participative activities created a collective subjectivity. That this practice is at the

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same time political, social and cultural became evident when the garden turned into a forum for political debate on local conflicts, e.g. between

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community activists and the city’s administration. All projects presented during the symposium shared the fact that they operated on the margins of the current capitalist production of space rather than in the center. The situation that Lukas Stanek observed in the post-socialist environments of Nowa Huta and Spangen seems to be rather typical conditions in which we currently work, as architects or artists concerned with spatial transformations. They are characterized by a dismantling of welfare - state social security networks, and their replacement by neoliberal demands for self - management. The interviewees in Staffan Schmitt’s video Off the Grid showed two distinct reactions to that dilemma, both confirming the neoliberal transformation of space: the dropouts discount the achievements of the welfare state in order to avoid its obligations, which they see as constraining their freedom. The social housing inhabitants, on the other hand, try to achieve a certain ‘self - definition’ within the homogenizing welfare state system. That raises the question of whether the idea of spatial practice is necessarily confined to marginality, to peripheral and temporal

da r e # 3 , d u tc h d e s i g n c e n t er , m a d e s i g n

interventions. Or might there be a possibility to think and operate spatial practice as a pervasive practice that could eventually push the production of space towards more emancipatory models?

da r e # 3 , m a h k u g r a d uat i o n c er em o n y

escaping the grid

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s m o o t h a n d s t r i at e d s p a c e in architec tur al design

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erik a jacobs lord

9 – 18 e s c a p i n g t h e g r i d erik a jacobs lord

What if our everyday spaces were comprised of more than what can

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be seen with the naked eye? They would not only appeal to the eyes,

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but to the nose, fingertips, and ears. This type of space would

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be difficult to define or even lay down in a plan because it cannot

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be described in black and white, just as a menu entry cannot define

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the define the delicate flavors of a dish, only list them. This space

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needs to be touched and lived in, explored with the senses, not only consumed with a rational eye. It is sometimes an impractical

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space because it is for people who, by nature of being human beings,

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are not practical themselves all the time themselves. This is a space that, when it feels like it, reaches towards poetry.

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Wolfgang Laib’s Wachsraum ( 1992 ) has these difficult, impractical, yet poetic qualities. A narrow but tall corridor is lined with plates of beeswax and lit by a single bare bulb. The honest nakedness of the bulb contrasts with the rich scents of the beeswax. The walls glow, but are impossible to render well in a photograph – the lighting is difficult and there is no natural way to get the image in frame. The space is actually too narrow, too tall without a standard functional reason. There is only the need to make an extraordinary impression. To experience it, you have to be there, walk through it, inhale deeply and run your fingers along the wall, taking in physical impressions that a reproduction could never give. Unfortunately the Wachsraum is relegated to a museum. What if it were possible in everyday life to have a wall worth stroking, or a special room in the house which is there for the sake of fun or mystery? This essay is about escaping the grid – the grid society sanctions for us, the grid our streets are laid out upon, and the grid inside the construction of our dwellings. Ringleaders Masterminds of the escape plan are Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari. Their book A Thousand Plateaus introduced fascinating new concepts of looking at the world which still inspire philosophers, artists, and thinkers to delve into concepts presented in that work. Here I will explore the DeleuzianΩ notion of smooth and striated space as characterized in A Thousand Plateaus and the significance it could bring to the physical space of architecture. Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of smooth and striated space is clarified in a collection of six models, one that is not final but open to expansion ( d & g 1987: 499 - 500 ). Each model sketches a different facet of the smooth/striated spatial relationship with a changing underpinning of the notion of space for each model. Although some of Deleuze and Guattari’s examples of smooth and striated space involve procedessural change over long periods of time ( the taming of the desert, the striation of the sea ), the transition and meeting of the two spaces can blossom like the unfolding bellows of an accordion, or burst out in violent fits like the wandering line an erratic heartbeat draws onto graph paper.

Ω w h e n

d el eu z e a n d t h e a d j e c t i v e d el eu z i a n

a r e c i t e d i n t h i s e s s ay, i t i s a r ef er e n c e

to t h e w o r k o f b ot h d el eu z e a n d g uat ta r i .

Architectural space, as discussed in this essay, is suspended between

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the spatial, aesthetic, physical, and artistic models just as the field of architecture requisitely crosses into multiple disciplines in order

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to be realized. An architectural project may be well-engineered but

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aesthetically lacking, like European housing blocks from the 1980’s.

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Or, it could be aesthetically beautiful but not engineered well, as with

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the extension of Terminal 2e at the Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris

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which failed due to structural problems. Or perhaps the engineering

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was good, but the physical construction process was improperly done

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prohibiting the chemical process of curing concrete or good welds

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between steel joints. Just as a building cannot be evaluated on just

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one of these levels, so must a Deleuzian architectural space contain

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or transverse several concomitant models.

ilse beumer

Architectural space touches on the Deleuzian technological model because it is constructed, the maritime model because people travel in and navigate buildings ( the routing of space ), the physical model

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because architects must respond to gravity, and the aesthetic model because form and function are inseparable in the practice

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of architecture. For the purposes of this essay, architectural space will be handled as one fluid entity, the smooth and striated space with which, and within which the ( interior ) architect works. Before discussing architectural smooth and striated space, it will be helpful to look first at how smooth and striated space is defined by Deleuze and Guattari in A Thousand Plateaus. At first they define the spaces only by their relationship to each other: “ Smooth and striated space – nomad space and sedentary space –… are not of the same nature. No sooner do we note a simple opposition between the two kinds of space than we must indicated a much more complex difference by virtue of which the successive terms of the oppositions fail to coincide entirely. And no sooner have we done that than we must remind ourselves that the two spaces in fact exist only in mixture: smooth space is constantly being translated, transversed into a striated space; striated space is constantly being reversed, returned to a smooth space. … [ T ] he principles of the mixture, which are not at all symmetrical, sometimes [ cause ] a passage from the smooth to the striated, sometimes from the striated to the smooth, according to entirely different movements”. ( d & g 1987: 474 - 5 ). Smooth and striated spaces exist neither independently of each other, nor in any fixed proportion to each other. Movement between the two spaces is fluid, but does not have to be proportional or controlled;, that is, it could occur suddenly and violently or creep slowly along. Deleuze and Guattari use the sea as an example of smooth and striated space ( d & g 1987: 479 ). The sea was, at first, a purely smooth space. The earliest nomadic navigation was based on colors, sounds and noise – haptic navigation – based on sensory input. As the sea was gridded, cut into sections like a spherical pie, the space was gradually striated as the stars were traced in the sky and parallel lines mapped. Charts and calculations created an overlay system with the intentions to reveal and dominate. The same occurred thing happened to the skies once aeronautical space was explored. Once the domain of the birds, • the skies are now striated by the regular crossings of aircraft. That is not to say that there is no more smooth space inof the sky:

• r e g u l a r c r o s s i n g s o f a i r c r a f t.

one just has to observe starlings steal it back at dusk, swooping and

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swaying along enigmatic and unmappable paths through the air. Metal birds and natural birds are part of the smooth and striated

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whole in continuous mixture, sharing and struggling side by side.

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Important to architectural smooth and striated space is the notion

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of nomadic line. With this Deleuze and Guattari contrast the line of

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so - called primitive nomadic or smooth art – close-range, non - optical, haptic and expressive ( d & g 1987: 493 ) with that of striated art,

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which uses distant vision, clear orientation, and central perspective ( d & g 1987: 494 ). Deleuze and Guattari write that Egyptian art uses

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a horizon - free close - range visualization while the Greeks conquer

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depth and perspective with the use of optical space. Later, the authors contrast the abstract ( smooth ) line with the concrete ( striated ) line.

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The line is broadened into a plane, planes expand into the third dimension. Egyptian art ( reliefs as opposed to sculpture ) could be

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termed smooth in regards to its treatment of the background plane ( no horizon, figures float ), however its rigidity and regularity pulls

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it into striated space. At the Egyptian temple in Karnak, massive carved columns rise in a strict grid. This is the ultimate striated • space, the “space of pillars” ( d & g 1987: 370 ). Egyptians built for

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• s pac e o f p i l l a r s .

permanence, ruled with fear and upheld static traditions which assured longevity. The gravity and heaviness of the temple building illustrates the striation of Egyptian culture, however smooth – elements the carved forms floating in space on the columns – are indivisible from the whole. Roman architecture incorporates more smooth elements in comparison to other ancient cultures: the curved form of the arch plays against the heavily striated Greek architecture from which their building archetypes were inherited. Yet the arch in its symmetrical form is still inherently striated. The Colosseum in Rome ( finished 80 A.D. ) integrates more curved forms than any other known Roman building, however the arches are balanced in an elliptical grid. Smooth elements, however, invade Roman villa interiors via the wall paintings used for decoration. Both the Second and Third painting •• styles incorporate “smooth” qualities. In the high Second Style of painting, depicted here on the left from the Villa of P. Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale ( ca. 40 - 30 B.C. ) perspective is used, but it is acentered. Each element implies a different vanishing point, a dislocation for the eye and shattering of central perspective. The Third Style of wall painting, represented here by the “Black Room” of the Imperial Villa at Boscotrecase ( last decade of 1st century B.C. ) tended toward the surreal abstraction of architectural elements which floating against undefined backgrounds. Over the evolution of Roman painting, smooth elements emerge and retreat over time in contrast to the more clearly striated architectural forms. Smooth space and striated space did not spring into being emerge by being written about in the 1980’s; the underpinnings and forces have always been there in some shape or form, covertly or not, as in the examples from Egypt and Rome. Although it is not possible in this essay to catalogue smooth and striated space throughout architectural history, the case of Le Corbusier is particularly interesting. Corbusier’s book, Towards a new architecture and in particular the Villa Savoye

m a p p i n g p u b l i c s pac e

•• v i l l a at b o s c ot r e c a s e .

laid out and exemplified his principles of architecture. His design

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attitude, like that of many of the Modernists, was based on the mastery of nature, clean gridded elements which celebrated the achievements of industrialization. The Ville Radieuse plan of 1930 ( Frampton 1992:180 ) was a Modernist – and perfectly striated – utopia whose powerful influence still echoes throughout European housing

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developments today. Yet despite Corbusier’s mastery of striated space, smooth space snuck in the back door, not being the kind of visitor

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to knock. Corbusier’s paintings made later in life exhibit many signs

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of Deleuze and Guattari’s aesthetic model: abstract line, lack of clear horizon, and close-range vision. A “smooth” Corbusier is wholly present • at the Chapelle Notre Dame in Ronchamp, France ( 1950 - 55 ), where

2 9 – 4 0 c r e at i v e c a s t s andre as gerolemou

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the crab-shaped roof volume sidles up to thick concrete walls to only

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float above them. Small windows pierce through the walls, allowing light to paint an otherworldly sphere. The walls are covered with gunite ( Kostoff 1985: 732 ) or concrete sprayed onto a surface to create a deep

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texture which catches and plays with light. Corbusier uses all of these effects which appeal to the senses in what could be called a haptic

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space. The grid, the basis of striated space, is subjugated to make way for undulating forms, non-orthogonal connection and continuous figural variation. Aside from the treatment of the space, the structured program of Catholic religious space is applied as rigorously as ever, where the absolutely striated laws of the Church prevail. The crucial question an ( interior ) architect might ask is how to take account of smooth and striated forces in one design model, even if this is trying to tame the untamable or control the uncontrollable. Can a space with both smooth and striated elements even be designed, or must by definition smooth space come from outside, stealing in like a thief at night, rising out of a dark hiding place? One answer can be seen in the Watts Towers in Los Angeles, California. Here the artist Simon Rodia did not build to any plan but with found material and a “bottom-up” process of local decisions. His ideas changed during construction, meaning the construction changed during the building process. His structures adhere to fluid logic yet are heterogeneously constructed out of steel, cement and various other debris such as glass, china and broken bottles ( Harris 2005: 52 - 3 ). Rodia built his structures with close-range vision using his senses to create instead of sitting at a desk drawing plans and sections. Unfortunately this construction technique is not possible for designers working commercially, and certainly not for buildings which must be inhabitable. However, one could ask how possible it is for a designer – the person in control, the One Who Striates – to design smooth spaces into their work, that is, to let the smooth space in. A number of architects have spent their careers working with methods to make their work more dynamic by introducing new ways of designing or changing the role of the architect from God - like figure to the manager of architectonic elements. Kas Oosterhuis’ Trans-ports ( 2000 ) designed for the Architecture Biennale in Venice is a building which works like a giant, flexing muscle. The designer may program the computers that control the building, but in this case external data transported over the Internet as well as actions of on-site visitors determine the form or stance of the structure, which in turn may

• c h a p el l e n ot r e da m e i n r o n c h a m p, f r a n c e .

be any stage of tense or relaxed depending on all of the variables.

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The designer here is not designing the form, but the possibility of what the form may become. As Deleuze and Guattari state, the act or the space of becoming is, after all, inherently smooth ( d & g 1987:

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486 ). The grid in Oosterhuis’ design has been subsumed into a

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mechanical skin which is connected to computers that serves as its

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sensory input channels. The computer programs written in a rigid

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programming language exist in striated space, and the sensory input

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and output which cause the changing of the skin occupy smooth space

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in this work.

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The work of Frank Gehry and Greg Lynn also hovers at the “smooth”

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end of the spectrum. Both architects are known for their work with • the non - standard forms known as blobs. However when architectural space is fully striated ( such as Mies van der Rohe’s Seagram building,

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New York, 1958 ) or fully smooth ( Gehry’s Experience Music Project, Seattle, 2000 ) the result can be less than provocative. A mixture of

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smooth and striated space and the tension or conflict between them is not only necessary ( they do not exist independently of each other )

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but spatially more compelling. UN Studio explore specifically the mixture of the two spaces in their “blob to box” model which they developed for the Music Theater in Graz ( 1998-2008 ). Here they combine the strict technical program of the theater ( black box ) with more informal routing created for the milling audience milling about ( blob ). The two functions of theater and lobby and are combined into two discrete programs where movement from striated space to smooth space is choreographed. However, what happens when blob and box, the smooth and striated spaces, commingle and stage their dance in front of an audience for all to see? The crux of the matter of smooth and striated space for the designer may just be in the struggle between the two spaces, where they meet and/or repel each other and how one traverses into the other. But to be clear: it is impossible to design a smooth space, just as it is impossible to design the sea, a desert or the wind as described by Deleuze in his chapter on smooth and striated space in A Thousand Plateaus. A translation from the philosophical to spatial context is, in a strict sense, difficult if not impossible. This is the paradox that any designer must contend with and resolve for herself. Solutions such as Simon Rodia’s towers address fluidity and flexibility during the construction process, while Kas Oosterhuis uses precise technology to make a flexible structure. Corbusier’s chapel meanwhile could be termed a non - optic space that works primarily on a sensory level. These examples show the open - ended possibilities when working with the Deleuzian notions of smooth and striated space. While the mixture of smooth and striated spaces in physical spaces adds another dimension to design, their presence need never be a goal in itself but a means of achieving more interesting, provocative work. Crucial to smooth and striated space, but especially to the designer thereof, is the manner of transition from one space to the other and back. Deleuze and Guattari discuss the meeting point of smooth and striated space with the notion of the clinamen, defined by Lucretius in the first century B.C. Deleuze and Guattari see the clinamen as the difference between the straight line and the curve,

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• k a s o o s t er h u i s , t r a n s - p o r t s ( 20 0 0 ).

“ the smallest deviation, the minimum excess” ( d & g 1987: 371 ).

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They again refer to the clinamen in their physical model of smooth and striated space: the transformation from striated to smooth space happens either by declination ( the smallest deviation ) or by vortical

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flow ( d & g 1987: 489 ). Smooth space, “the space of contact”, systems of sounds or colors ( d & g 1987: 371 ), occupies this tiny

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space of deviation. This is where the action is, the crucial moment

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in which one atom veers off in a slightly different direction than

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the rest, causing a chain reaction of events to occur, or the genesis

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of new forms.

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In Lucretius’ atomist model of the universe, the world began as atoms • falling through the void in what we now call laminar flow. Without

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the clinamen, the “minimum angle of formation of a vortex”, atoms

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would not have been able to collide or interact and the world would not have been able to form ( Serres 2000: 6 ). The vortex brings

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development and opportunity for interaction and growth.

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Physics has told us that first there was atomic chaos and that order emerges from disorder, but really it is the other way around ( Serres 2000: 27 ). Disorder sets the stage for becoming. It generates,

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produces, and evolves. Vortical flow – one of the escape routes from striated space – arises out of and returns to laminar flow, or the flow of sheets of air or water which glide over each other in varying densities.Ω If the parallel ( striated ) layers are disturbed, vortical or whirling turbulent ( smooth ) flow is produced. While examples of flocking and turbulent flow logically lean towards chaos theory and the notion of randomness or chance, it is notable that Deleuze and Guattari, while writing about smooth and striated space, do not invoke either of the aforementioned terms or the language of chaos theory in A Thousand Plateaus. One could speculate that this was a conscious choice, as chaos theory predates the text by several decades. Turbulent flow does not imply randomness or chaos, and neither does the concept of smooth space. Smooth space may make a dramatic entrance worthy of a self-obsessive diva or wander in quietly like the mind of an abstracted professor, but never accidentally. “ For a long time turbulence was identified with disorder or noise. Today we know that this is not the case. Indeed, while turbulent motion appears as irregular or chaotic on the macroscopic scale, it is, on the contrary, highly organized in the microscopic scale. The multiple space and time scales involved in turbulence correspond to the coherent behavior of millions and millions of molecules.” ( Prigogine and Stengers 1984: 141 ). Turbulence is at once a boon and bane, destructive and constructive. A spinning top is the vortex in action, stable and instable, order and disorder at once, indeterminate in its short life ( Serres 2000: 30 ). Via the clinamen, the minimal angle, the vortex is a mechanism of escape, growth and ( re )birth, a way out and back again, one path between smooth and striated space. Jumping from Lucretius to Heisenberg and from the atom to the atomic particle, one step smaller and more elemental, the world of subatomic physics is even more uncertain than that of Lucretius’ atom. Subatomic particles are the nomads of the universe: elusive,

Ω h t t p : // h y p er p h y s i c s . p h y - a s t r . g s u . e d u / h b a s e / p f r i c . h t m l

• v o r t i c a l f lo w

evasive, difficult to find or measure. One doesn’t know exactly their velocity, where ( or when ) particles are according to the Heisenberg

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Uncertainty Principle, but one can predict the probability of where they may be and how fast they are going ( Kaku 1994: 114 ). A picture

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from the bubble chamber at the cern laboratory in Switzerland shows pi mesons in liquid hydrogen, creating spirals as they

decay.Ω

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Ω h t t p : // c d s w eb . c er n . c h /

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r e c o r d / 39 474

Here the particles shoot violently yet gracefully from a straight

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to a vortical path, winding away into new forms at different levels • of energy. These particles are not just swerving, they are

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transforming into a wholly new state.

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Let us consider the impact that working in and around the space of the clinamen has for architectural designers. As discussed earlier,

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achieving a truly smooth space may be in itself impossible.

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However, architects such as Bernard Tschumi and Rem Koolhaas have dealt with the issue by interpreting the built environment as a fluid cinematic experience. Rather than as static object, architectonic

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spaces as viewed through a first-person frame of reference are perceived successively, like scenes in a film. These can be edited

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according to artistic vision of the director who choreographs jumps in time and place and manages the storyline. By viewing space in this fluid, dynamic way, a layer of smooth space can be grafted onto the

• a p i c t u r e f r o m t h e b u b b l e c h a m b er at t h e c er n l a b o r ato r y i n s w i t z er l a n d

architectonic object even though the object itself may not posses the qualities of smooth space. Bernard Tschumi did a series of explicit translations of film form ( cutting, jumping, device and counterpoint ) in his Screenplay Series ( 1978-82 ). Scenes from films inspire sequences and entire programs of architecture ( Tschumi 1997: 15 ). Beyond this early work, Tschumi has spent years exploring the connections between motion and program in his work. Just as progression is a necessity within several Deleuzian models of smooth and striated space, time becomes a key factor once architecture becomes filmic and processual. Along with the fascination of time and film in architecture, Tschumi experiments with and uses “in-between” space frequently in his work. According to him, “in-between space is activated by the motion of bodies in that space” ( Tschumi 1997:21 ), meaning that only the movement of users in the space – a wholly unpredictable flow – completes the space. His in - between spaces are often literally formed between two shells or skins and are, without the attendant users or program-makers, indeterminate in nature. In my view this connects again with the notion of clinamen in the sense that a clinamenic space is where the tide of smooth and striated space shifts. When applied to human experience, the vortex, the outcome of the minimal angle, takes on a more sinister quality. When dizziness or vertigo occurs, “the circumferential fringe of vision swirls in on the perpectival vanishing point in a vortex of potential experience, •• “like turbulent water around a drain.” ( Massumi 2004: 325 ). Up and

•• a v o r t e x o f p ot e n t i a l e x p er i e n c e

down are confused, the horizon and ground plane seem to rotate as in a vortex and in some cases the eyes themselves move in circular motion.Ω ( While vertigo is not generally desired as a condition, there are those that pay for the experience at amusement parks). Vertigo, or vortical experience, has been designed into architecture as a tool for transformation through the intentional ungrounding of the user. Two

Ω h t t p : // w w w . n eu r o lo gyc h a n n el . c o m / v er t i g o / d i ag n o s i s . s h t m l

examples show this effect particularly well: the Garden of Exile in Daniel Liebeskind’s’ Jewish Museum ( 1999 ), where uneven ground

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and tilting columns produce disorientation if not nausea. Lars Spuybroek uses the vortex as a generative principle of form in his project for an exhibition space, wet grid ( 1999 - 2000 ). Not only was the structure produced by interaction of vortices on a set of parallel lines, but by the

s p at i a l p r a c t i c e s 5 – 8 dutch artistic research event # 3 andre as mueller

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placing works of art above, below and around the visitor, imploring a tilting of the head, an arching of the back and other extreme

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positions. Vertigo and the vortex become part of the experience of space. ( Spuybroek 2004: 157 ). The vortex functions as a manifestation

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of smooth space, in feeling or in form. More importantly, it is an

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example of how smooth space can be designed via Spuybroek’s analog

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machine, which produces vortical, vertigo - inducing forms. The vortex,

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the progeny of the clinamen, breaks up the grid and instead of drawing a line between two points, spirals and dances around them. Dancing brings us back to where the clinamen was first described,

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by Lucretius over two millennia ago. The inbuilt contradiction of turbulence – of order that it creates but can also disrupt– can also be found in the language, in the gap between turba and turbo. Turba is a multitude, confusion and tumult, disorder. The Greek τυρβη, turbé, is also used to describe the mad dancing in Bacchic

festivals ( Serres 2000: 28 ). And there is a difference withto turbo, which describes the vortical and comparatively ordered movement of a spinning top, stable even while it leans and sways, but which only gives an illusion of rest. This is the movement of the wind, and of water. Lucretius writes of the streaming - chaos or laminar flow in the void, and the cloud-chaos, a fluctuation of oppositions ( Serres 2000: 30 ). There is no true rest in Lucretius’ universe, but only flow and streaming chaos changed by declination, the minimum angle, the vortex forming to create and destroy. The world around us is a flowing, dynamic system, whether we characterize it by the fall of atoms or the spinning of quarks. Even on the human scale there is a flow to life, a fluidity that surrounds us in nature, the seasons, in the path of a life. Yet as much as science tells us about nature or what we can observe ourselves, the architectonic objects produced by our culture place a greater value on static, rigid forms. Architecture is now in rehab after its long-term addiction to the grid. At the height of Modernism, and later during the reign of the “superstructure”, the grid on the engineer’s drafting table had thewas in danger of becoming more important than its inhabitants. By using the notions of smooth and striated space as tools of analysis and design, the grid can be mollified. The minimum angle can be set free to spiral away, dancing towards chaos and back, flowing between layers of smooth and striated space causing crashing storms or lulling them back to laminar flow. conclusion

“Do not multiply models,” write Deleuze and Guattari ( d & g 1987:499 ); but in this case, Messieurs, I will have to disappoint you. To understand smooth and striated space in terms of the physical environment

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I must do both multiplication and division. Architects are the ultimate

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jacks of all trades. Vitruvius wrote in 27 B.C. that a good architect must be educated in manual skills, scholarship, history, drawing, philosophy, medicine, and astronomy, ( though not expected to master

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all of them ), and today while the required fields of knowledge have shifted, the generalist approach of the architect

remains.Ω

Because the field of architecture touches on so many aspects such

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g r e . ac . u k / h i s t h e /

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vitruvius.htm

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as physics, material technology, social questions, psychology, art

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and philosophy, there is not one singular notion of smooth and

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striated space which could fit architecture as a whole. Instead, smooth

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and striated space simultaneously translates, traverses and reverses

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through a varying conglomeration of layers. Architectural space

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cuts through this to reveal a brilliantly variegated yet irrevocably

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fused cross section of its totality. The space of action at the clinamen, or the transformation from

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smooth to striated space and back, is present on scales from the

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subatomic to macrocosmic, yet part of the routine of daily life which may go utterly unnoticed. When approaching concepts

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of smooth and striated space in architecture, the designer can use the notions of clinamen and indeterminacy to initiate change within designed spaces. Just as the examples here have shown, smooth and striated space can be observed at many levels simultaneously, not as a rigid program but as a dynamic and omnipresent part of life. Architectural space is thus, in the Deleuzian sense, the coalescence or multiplicity of all possible smooth and striated spatial relationships within reach of the project. Designers are used to working with the directions of the wind and sun, but what about birdsong, the scents of cooking food cooking, or the path the cat takes while surfing sunbeams? Designing a space based on its smooth and striated aspects can be a source of new methodologies for approaching architectural space, whether done as a back room analysis, in a daydream, or as a significant role in the approach of the designer. In other words, this approach provides plenty of ways to let smooth space dance around the grid, to escape it and ricochet back. Spatial analysis and design only become richer when smooth and striated spaces are taken into account. Even the design process can benefit, as many designers have already proven. The mixture of smooth and striated space exists from site level to details and materials, but also in the emotional mixture of the spaces, use of sensoryial elements, variation of long- and close-range elements and homogenous and heterogeneous spaces. Not all projects may involve all layers, but in every case the opportunity for playfulness • and variation exists. 

• f r a n k g eh r y ’s e x p er i e n c e m u s i c p r o j e c t, s e at t l e , usa:

“n e v er

b el i e v e t h at a s m o ot h s pac e w i l l

s u f fi c e to s av e u s ”

sources

Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari A T h ousan d Pl at e aus: Capit alism an d Schizophre ni a ,

trans. Brian Massumi London, University of Minnesota press ( 1987 ).

( d & g 19 87 : 50 0 ).

Frampton, Kenneth

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Mod er n Archit e c ture: a Cr it i c al His t or y, 3rd e d.

London, Thames and Hudson, Ltd ( 1992 ).

s p at i a l p r a c t i c e s 5 – 8 dutch artistic research event # 3

Harris, Paul To Se e w ith th e Min d an d T hink through th e E ye:

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D e l euze, Fol ding Archit e c ture, an d Sim on Rodi a’s Wat ts To wer s” ,

p 36 - 60 of Ian Buchanan and Gregg Lambert eds. Deleuze and Space Toronto, University of Toronto Press ( 2005 ).

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19 – 28 s p at i a l s c e n a r i o s wim marseille

2 9 – 4 0 c r e at i v e c a s t s

Kaku, Michio Hy per spa c e

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“ New York, Anchor Books ( 1994 ).

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Kostoff, Spiro A His t or y of Archit e c ture , Se t t ing s an d Ritu als

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Oxford, Oxford University Press ( 1985 ). 56 c o l o f o n

Prigogine, Ilya and Isabelle Stengers O rd er O ut of C h a os

London, Bantam ( 1984 ). Serres, Michel T h e Bir th of Physi cs

trans. Jack Jawkes Manchester, Clinamen Press ( 2000 ). Tschumi, Bernard Archit e c ture in/of Mot i on

Rotterdam, NAi Publishers ( 1997 ).

s pat i a l s c e n a r i o s

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Since research emerged as an influential factor in art and design, interior designers have become aware of their poor theoretical

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background. In 2002, the magazine de Architect devoted an entire issue to that lack of theory. In the preface, Janny Rodermond

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stressed, “Nonetheless our educational system lacks a comprehensive

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stockpile of information on the history of the interior and on current

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developments and assignments. Without such a source and its ongoing development Interior Architecture cannot shed its stylistic, ornamental image” ( Rodermond 2002: 8,16 ). In the magazine,

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the cases presented showed promising practices incorporating a variety of research methodologies in the process of design. Yet, there were neither theories as basis nor concluding reflections

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to help in developing theory. One could say interior design is based on the references of case studies like a ‘science of jurisprudence’ ( Van Aller 2003 ). The renowned interior design cases seem to merely form a collective memory of references functioning as standards in practice-based research. In addition, many interior architects are convinced that the quality of the interior space is hard to define and even impossible to photograph. “The interior space cannot really be represented; you have to go there!” ( Spanjaard 2007 ). Indeed, the human experience is celebrated to such an extent in interior design that representations are considered insufficient and any reflection on design ideas tends to be ignored. How do interior designers deal with the lack of a theoretical discourse and research attitudes? To be sure, the field of interior design contains historical reviews, topical reflections, magazines full of case studies, discussions and symposia. However, in spite of all those publications, there is no general body of texts considered the theoretical basis for the profession. In the context of their interior design theory reader Intimus, Mark Taylor and Julieanna Preston state that when investigating several readers used in art schools and universities, there was a lack of a common collection of essays for interior design reflection. “Initial informal surveys of interior design/interior architecture and spatial art university programs revealed that not only approaches, outlooks and pedagogical philosophies differ, but also the scope of theoretical texts rarely repeat or identify a distinct set of readings,” they claim ( Taylor and Preston 2006: 6 ). All educators seem to borrow from different disciplines such as geography, sociology, anthropology, philosophy, and gender studies. In everyday practice, input for designers and their sources of inspiration differ greatly and seem to be mainly related to educational background. Their reference tools, however, seem to be mainly connected to a design attitude. For example, interior facilitators need an immense “library of materials” necessary for a design process where expenses and delivery time are the decisive factors ( De Bont 2008 ). In conceptual interior design offices, all kinds of visual sources serve to illustrate the design concept presented to the client. Such visuals

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are specifically utilized in design competitions where the designer is absent at the time of presentation ( Hasanzadeh 2008 ). The variety of

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sources of inspiration and reference tools in the interior design field make it hard to generate a coherent theoretical design discourse.

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The scattered picture so far generates two questions. First, is there an effective definition of interior design? Second, what is in fact

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the relation between theory and practice in interior design? These questions are closely related in the discussion on interior design and

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the development of a theoretical discourse and research attitudes.

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An important trace in the origin of interior design lies historically

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in craftsmanship. “Since furnishing is made out of different materials a designer has to coordinate the cooperation of craftsmen.” ( Boonzaaijer 1985 ) In the various European countries, other artisanal

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traditions have been influential in the profession. In France and Britain, wall decoration and upholstery were part of the profession, where the interior designer, or decorator, coordinated the dressing

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of space. In Germany and the Netherlands, interior design implied the coordination of carpentry, so the designer was known as an ‘ Indoor Architect’. In Italy, even today, one does not use the term interior designer; there are only architects or product designers. As the job of coordination expanded, interior designers started to distinguish themselves from the practical craftsmen and the commercial salesmen of interior equipment. Not only did interior designers highlight their aesthetic and artistic talents, they also proclaimed a doctrine of conventions for rationalized living and improved quality of life. The profession of interior design established associations and foundations promoting those ideals. In the Netherlands, the association Goed Wonen ( Good Living ) is a 1960s example of that trend. Similar to architects, interior designers organized themselves into professional organizations and devoted much time and energy to discussing the boundaries of their discipline. The interior designer’s position between architect and interior decorator was a difficult balance. In characterizing interior design as spatial profession, ornamentation and styling were rejected while an emphasis on the human scale set the profession apart from the architectural domain. The formulated competencies for the interior design profession had to be met by educational institutions. The result was a compromise in skills, knowledge and attitudes aiming at an all - round profession for interior architecture. Today, the organization of indoor space has become so complex that teamwork is needed, whith the interior designer not always in the leading position. The profession’s artistic and aesthetic approach is no longer sufficient for dealing with commercial, logistic, economic and organizational factors. The one - way process from assignment via design to completion must become less rigid, including a flexible time factor required by economic factors. The traditional phases of briefing, debriefing, sketch design, final design, contracting, and building are now interconnected, resulting in a process of propositions and adjustments. What is the impact of the development of the profession of interior design on today’s need for a theoretical discourse and research

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attitudes? In three examples of designers with roots in different

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disciplines, I will explore how strategies in design could affect a theoretical discourse. Marcel de Bont, interior facilitator, educated as a manager, now designs turn-key offices. ( www.huisvesting.nl )

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Ronald Hooft, artist designer, has a background in fine art, now designs avant-garde restaurants together with architect Herman Prast. ( www.pratshooft.nl ) Herman Verkerk, event architect, educated as an architect, is now engaged in interior design for the cultural sector. ( www.eventarchitecture.nl )

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Interior facilitator Marcel de Bont takes the burden of relocating

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an office and shows the client step by step which decisions must

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be made. The pragmatic agenda implies management and economy,

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but hardly generates new insights in the development of a theoretical

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discourse for interior design. Artist designer Ronald Hooft has a reputation of creating a design novelty in the restaurant world. In a fluent process of creativity, the location is being stripped,

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negotiations on kitchen equipment are starting, while design sketches are still rough outlines. In Hooft’s flexible process an overall view is important. “In parts of the sketches we know exactly what it will be; others are more flexible so they can change over the years. The spatial quality always should allow change, so you do not have to modify the construction. In our concept, the way things are attached to another is important: a floor to a ceiling, or a staircase as a transition area or resting area. That how what the interior architect is distinguished from the decorator.” ( Hooft 2008 ) Event architect Herman Verkerk does not propose a set of options, but creates a well - argued “optimum” – a cycle of acting and checking – for reflection. “Reality is adaptable; lines in your drawing have multiple interpretations whereas the amount of contextual information continues to increase,” says Verkerk. ( Verkerk, 2008 ) These examples show how multidisciplinarity in the field of interior design results in new approaches to the field. Both the artist designer and the event architect fully embrace complexity and design in a flexible and fluent process of propositions and adjustments. That fluidity of process seems to reflect our current Internet society. In The Rise of the Network Society, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, Emanuel Castells develops the concept of ‘spaces of flow’. Complexity and fluidity are captured in that 21st century notion of space. The spatial approaches of designers tend to vary between fixed identifications of the context to playful embracing of the fluid complexity. Yet, the developments in the practice of the profession seem to inevitably progress toward stressing the fluid and the complex. Such a design attitude could imply a multitude of fluent perspectives, rearrangements and scenarios. Such shift in design attitude could be demonstrated by further design practices. One of the icons of modernism, the butterfly chair by Arne Jacobsen, illustrates how contradiction, categorization and composition form the premises of functional design. The chair is divided in its two functional parts, a seat and a frame. The design process continuously optimizes the designated functions. The seat and back ought to be warm and bendy and thus made of plywood, while the frame has to be strong and thin, and so manufactured from metal.

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Even aesthetically, the categorization continues: the parts are divided

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clearly in a distinctive connection; the seat’s bright colors attract attention while the frame’s appearance is downplayed in reflective chrome. The entire chair is a composition; it is literally constructed

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as an idealist expression. st

Conversely, 21 century design is not based on functional

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design, implying the notions of contradiction, categorization and composition. Today, design instead points to perspective,

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rearrangement and scenario. For example, for an “ideal home”,

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designer Hella Jongerius created a collection of layered perspectives

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filled with all possible choices of doors, plates, curtains and chairs. Jongerius’ color collection for Vitra rearranges historical colors

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used by Vitra to which transparent colored sheets are added so

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as to increase the number of possible color scenarios. While the modernists loved to project their ideal on a ‘tabula rasa’, today different perspectives are included as a means to reveal

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an insight in the unique case at hand. In this approach, two shifts are crucial. Firstly, the external spectator has become an internal

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participant. There is no longer the wish to come to an eternally valid analysis; the goal is to arrive at a particularly interesting option where contradiction shifts to multiple perspectives. Secondly, mapping the complete design contexts is decisive for arriving at a new understanding. The design is an attempt to reveal and elaborate on that understanding of the situation, so the act of design is mostly a rearrangement of existing facts rather than deliberately constructing forms following their predominant category of functioning. As a result the design is a flexible scenario rather than a fixed composition. Let’s explore these three characteristics of perspective, rearrangement and scenario further in interior design practices and see how they could play a role in a theoretical discourse. In his work, Herman Verkerk aims at a nuanced reality. Instead of making the design context abstract, interpreting it rigidly or starting from scratch, Verkerk analyses the design context as closely and from as many perspectives as possible. That analysis, however, is not directly connected to the result. It is a way of getting a well - balanced grip on the case. Verkerk says, “In the end it is a matter of what you take as the context, what data you accept to work with as a frame. That battle with the context is interesting. That is why analysis is so important, because it provides you with the information to transform a negative or neutral feature to a positive one. So when there is a repulsive ceiling • at the ‘Coming Soon’ shop , I think: Hmm, lovely, an ugly ceiling.” The modernist characteristics of contradiction, categorization and composition are still present in the design process but no longer play a dominant role. Streams of notions go beyond contradiction; categories are created in a fluent way, and compositions appear in a dynamic setting. The “optimum” and nuanced reality Verkerk works with is an attempt to create a specific context. Perspective, rearrangement, and scenario as characteristics of a topical design attitude are only partially incorporated. Many perspectives are utilized to arrive at a nuanced image of the context. Processing the information is based on rearrangement, such as observing and drawing in photographs, observing and reorganizing the photos. But the action

• h er m a n v er k er k , c o m i n g s o o n , a r n h em .

to make a design is closer to a composition than to a rearrangement.

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The result is not so much a scenario but as Verkerk calls it “an optimum to formulate a new coherence of many distinct aspects.” Interestingly, in Verkerk’s work, the alternation between analysis

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and design slowly moves toward a proposal that can be considered

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both as analysis and design. As a consequence, rearrangement

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and composition are interrelated. Though pure rearrangement

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would stick to the components at hand, and strict composition derives

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from additions in an empty setting, Verkerk works slowly towards

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an “optimum”, a best possible compromise arranging components

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as the design context requires. In so doing, he adds information coherently to arrive at a nuanced reality. An added layer unifies

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the complexity of interests. Flexibility is integrated in the design

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result, but since it is not explicit, as in a combination of scenarios, the insights into the particular design process are hard to grasp.

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An analysis of the design attitude, however, reveals the crucial

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points of attention, motivation and interpretation. Ronald Hooft celebrates complexity in another way. When he introduced • the case of his famous design for the Harkema restaurant , he did not talk about an aesthetic concept but started listing an immense amount of data, making it absolutely impossible to brief the commissioner. “ You can’t get a shark tank” is the office slogan. Hooft does not try to solve the design puzzle in its totality, but works step by step defining the crucial points of tension. For a new restaurant, he does not make plans, just a sketch, to be able to talk about the atmosphere. “ If I’d made a computer drawing right now, the client would think there was already a design, while the crucial point at the moment is to see if the kitchen supplier can do 70 cm less to create space needed to improve the route to the toilets.” What Hooft actually does is set up a complete arrangement in his mind and then decide what parts have to be adjusted to create a clear design. Multiple perspectives, rearrangements, and scenarios all play a role in the design process. In addition, design aspects imply function, logistics, routing, atmosphere, materials, colors, acoustics, commerce, legitimation, and graphics, and a host of other criteria such as commercial profit, wellbeing, and critical awareness. When we view Hooft’s interiors as artistic installations, the complexity, the critical visual form of the design, and the decisive details become crucial. Thus, designers do have particular ways of approaching the design context, and use various perspectives, rearrangements and scenarios to enrich the given context. It is interesting to see how Herman Verkerk has no preset ideal in any design context, but looks for unique cultural value, whereas Ronald Hooft creates a piece of work where space and experience are integrated. Could one conclude that the three notions of perspective, rearrangement, and scenario indeed are strong analytical tools and could act as a starting point for producing a theoretical discourse and a research attitude? Unfortunately, in the design processes discussed, perspectives are not strictly mapped in a rearrangement. The design result as such is complex and enriched by layers of information. A representation of the design will bring forth new interpretations and force the design to produce another process of discourse production.

• r o n a l d h o o f t, h a r k em a .

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Verkerk has collaborated for years with photographer Johannes

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Schwartz in an attempt to create a significant representation of his oeuvre. Coming Soon Arnhem provides images properly framed to exclude the building parts that would spoil the illusion ( Coming

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Soon Arnhem 2007 ). Schwartz manages to give an interpretation

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of the design implying the concepts in his two-dimensional art and creating compositions that form a new critical reality ( Verkerk 2008 ).

9 – 18 e s c a p i n g t h e g r i d erik a jacobs lord

Verkerk says, “I was at first shocked by the butt - naked character,

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but it sure is distinctive! And I am fond of the drawings that go along

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with it. They give a representation of the design in another way.

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It remains difficult though, reproduction.”

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Hooft accepts that his interiors do not easily reveal his intentions

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and simply starts a new chapter with replaying the former.

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“ The concept does not come across so well, it is a manifestation that the consumers get in magazines. But we are flexible while

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creating and can make something more decorative, or gloomy,

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or clear. We can be very diverse but as soon as you have made something people want that particular style signature. It takes

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more time to give a proper representation. Now we are doing a hotel and were asked to make a plan straight away. But it does not have any significance when you do not analyze and investigate all parameters, the program of demands. So instead we guide the commissioners through a completed work of ours to show we are capable to handle complexity and organize space satisfactorily. So, the prints are in the magazines but we like to walk through the real site instead and tell about the organization, and the complex information and work a designer needs. You have to convey that, otherwise people do not understand why you ask so much money.” In both Verkerk’s and Hooft’s design processes, representation is another layer to the work as a new translation directed by the chosen medium. Would stricter pursuite of the process of perspective, rearrangement and scenario give more coherence? To test the possibility of a design process where the forms of design derive more directly from an analysis, I initiated a workshop at the Utrecht School of the Arts. The workshop, called ‘Fullness’, intended to explore to what extent it would be possible to make a design based • directly on the analysis of the context . To begin, students were trained in how to handle data in a complex design context by mapping the appearance from different perspectives. Next they were asked to design a staircase in a particular classroom. As an investigation, they made a model of the existing design context taken from a particular perspective. Crucial at this point was that the entire phenomenon was taken into account from a specific perspective. If the perspective was, for example ‘frames’, then all phenomena were assessed on their framing quality. In this way, the mapping of the design context revealed hidden qualities, and students were amazed to see the diversity of models produced by one and the same existing design context. After the distinctive interpretation of the reality of the space, the design was simply a continuation of the chosen visual means used in the mapping. How can this study be significant for the development of a theoretical discourse? Two phenomena are striking: mapping of data is an

• w o r k s h o p, “f u l l n e s s”.

illustration of a mental attitude as such; and interpretation is clearly

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evident in the design outcome. An academic case bears the advantage of simplification. In such an assignment, aspects can be neglected although they are inescapable in reality. The challenge of the application

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of a ‘mapped design process’ would be to investigate the possibility of preserving a selected perspective in the final interpretation.

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Would such a ‘mapped design process’ more easily generate a theoretical discourse and a research attitude? That is tempting

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to assume. The design result is directly based on the interpretation

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of the context, and the analysis is mapped in a communicative and

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intelligent visual. However, the production of a theoretical discourse

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in the field of interior design depends on a variety of factors whereas

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the daily practice of interior design does not necessarily feel the

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urge to partake in it. Yet, notions such as perspective, rearrangement and scenario offer at least a toolkit for the start of both a research attitude and an theoretical discourse based on forms of analysis. conclusion

In an exploration of current positions in interior design, I have tracked various contexts, developments and influences that could affect the production of a theoretical discourse in interior design. Generally speaking, a theoretical discourse in interior design and a related research-based attitude are badly articulated, although the desire to be part of them is widely expressed. In this study, I came across a number of viewpoints, each with its own background, interest and validity. Let us summarize them and see how they could produce a sound conclusion with a future vision for interior design and theory. From a purely theoretical viewpoint, there is a wish to arrive at an investigation of the history of interior design. A categorization could serve to produce a vocabulary in generally valid terms, strengthening the profession and signifying its specific qualities. This wish, however, seems to be based on a modernist understanding of the practice of interior design, where reflection can only lead to a body of theory initiating good practice. In particular, architecture manuals, with their typologies and standardized measures, have served as a toolkit for modernist design. Interior design did not generate a similar theory, perhaps due to its wish to operate in a more human or artistic mode. Now that design practice is no longer oriented towards preset ideals, recapturing such a theory seems quite outdated. How then could a ‘body of theory’ and a related theoretical discourse be created? Topical theoretical texts on interior design could be selected and interrelate to one another. The reader Intimus mentioned above is an example of this. Two factors make such an endeavor difficult. There is hardly a heritage of manifestos or reflections by interior designers and the textual sources of inspiration are very disparate. So far, no editor has had sufficient authority to launch a general accepted reader on a theoretical discourse in interior design. Well - known architects or interior designers such as Rem Koolhaa or John Pawson, took a better chance in composing an inspirational book with a selection of texts and images.

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The relation of practice and theory has radically changed

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under the influence of the postmodern. As mentioned above, the modernist design process was based on standards and ideals.

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Therefore, theory could play an initiating role by describing

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cases and distilling values to help design the ultimate form.

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Research consisted of investigation and abstraction, implying

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notions such as contradiction, categorization, and composition. Theory was clearly distinct from practice and was celebrated wit

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a scientific authority to be applied in practice.

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Postmodern theory did not seek to articulate the absolute but

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introduced a multi-perspective approach to theory. Research

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transformed into an ongoing reflection aiming to reveal a variety

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of understandings in different design contexts. Consequently, the

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results are not ending in a proclamation of certainties, but continue to generate a discourse of complex reflection. In The Ref lective Practitioner, Donald Schön argues that the

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professional practitioner continuously reflects in action. “The unique and uncertain situation becomes understandable in the attempt to change it and changes in the attempt to understand it,” he reports on the mutual interaction between insight and change or, perhaps better put, between reflection and creation ( Schön 1983 ). A new insight changes the perception of the design context, and a manipulation of the design context reveals a new insight. The goal is neither the insight nor the change, but to keep the process of creation and reflection going. Here the potency of the designer as researcher becomes evident. The topical design process is conducted in a variety of ways, each providing another scenario for generating theory. However, it should be noted that the fluid pragmatic characteristics of the attitude runs the risk of becoming nihilistic. When the ideal is dismissed and the socio - economic objectives are taken for granted, no goal is left but efficiency. The case of the interior facilitator illustrates how such a practice lacks development and significance. The only theory that probably could be distilled from this is on applied management. The most exposed strategy for affecting theory by interconnecting creation and reflection is found in product - based interior design. The reflection in action here has led to a design process in which a variety of perspectives are fully embraced and the mapping of the design context leads to rearrangements that reveal new insights. In the best cases, the work itself functions as a signifier, and suggests that creation and reflection are enveloped in the final piece of design. A substantial amount of design has proven so provocative that reports and theoretical reviews offered it a position occasionally equated with the critical, challenging qualities of fine art. The design processes of Verkerk and Hooft may likewise be described as reflection in action. Their design proposals are suggested as hypotheses to check the consequences. The difference between the two designers only lies in the way of communication with the client. Verkerk continues the cycle of acting and checking internally and presents that as an “optimum” to the client; while Hooft is playfully checking the crucial points along the process of reflection in action.

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The problem in generating a theoretical discourse out of the delivery

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derives from the fact that the analysis is not mapped exclusively and the reflections are not reported. In daily practice there seems to be no necessity to do so. There is no lively discourse on new approaches,

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and forms of representation are merely occasional initiatives from the designers. Verkerk published some of his researches; Hooft surveys

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his ideas in installations or one - offs. Innovative use of mapping media, like that exposed in the ‘fullness’

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workshop, could be one tool to help visualize the interpretations

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of the design context, and so provoke a discussion that positions

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a variety of viewpoints. Theory would then provide us with positions to enable an underpinning navigational direction and so contribute

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to the development of the profession.

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In a theoretical review of the attitude of topical interior designers, it appears possible to abstract notions such as perspective, rearrangement and scenarios as a toolkit for analysis and the start of a theoretical

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discourse. Thus, any attempts to distill a theory out of design work would be to discover design attitudes and elaborate on what significance that attitude might have in certain contexts. Reflection on just the design outcome will inevitably lead to new interpretation, interesting in itself but with uncertain feed back for the theory of interior design. The wish for a theoretical discourse and a research-based attitude in interior design stems from different motivations. Theory once was part of the feedback loop with the practice of design, but never matured in interior design. Now that the process of design has been transformed and forms of artistic research have emerged in the theoretical domain, the relation of theory and practice has altered. For textual theorists, the challenge would be to elaborate on attitudes of designers and introduce tempting significations to stimulate the discourse. For designers, there is an opportunity to strengthen their work with a discernible interpretation of the context, and to create a theory in visuals. sources

Van Aller, Annelies personal conversation Utrecht ( 2003 ) De Bont, Marcel unpublish ed int er v ie w Amersfoort ( 2008 ) www.huisvesting.nl Boonzaaijer, Karel personal conversation Zeist ( 1985 ) Castells, Manuel T h e Rise of th e Ne t work Soc ie t y, T h e Infor m ation A ge: E conomy, Soc ie t y and Culture Vol. I Oxford: Blackwell Publishers ( 2000 ).

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Coming Soon Ar nh em;

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www.comingsoonarnhem.nl www.landstradevries.nl www.eventarchitectuur.nl/wordpress/?p=38

s p at i a l p r a c t i c e s 5 – 8 dutch artistic research event # 3 andre as mueller

Hasanzadeh, Lisa

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unpublish ed present ation Amsterdam ( 2008 )

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www.concreteamsterdam.nl

wim marseille

erik a jacobs lord

2 9 – 4 0 c r e at i v e c a s t s

Hooft, Ronald unpublish ed int er v ie w Amsterdam ( 2008 )

andre as gerolemou

41 – 4 9 t r a n s e r i u m , a n o n - p l a c e ilse beumer

www.pratshooft.nl research report

Rodermond, Janny

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d e Archit e c t 20 02/8, “An Arg um ent for More D isc iplin e-R el at ed Information”. Schön, Donald A. T h e R ef l e c tive P ra c tition er, How P rofessionals T hink in A c tion New York: Basic Books ( 1983 ). Spanjaard, Kees unpublish ed int er v ie w Amsterdam (2007) Taylor, Mark and Julieanna Preston Intimus Int er ior D esig n T h eor y R ead er Oxford: Blackwell Publishers ( 2006 ). Verkerk, Herman unpublish ed int er v ie w Amsterdam ( 2008 ) www.eventarchitecture.nl

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c r e at i v e c a s t s

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introduction

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What is divination? It is the art or act of foretelling future events or revealing secret knowledge ( sometimes supernatural ) by means

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of augury or a supernatural medium. You could also regard it

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as an inspired guess or premonition. The traditional deﬁnition

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of divination encompasses its facts as well as the social and

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psychological implications and inﬂuences. One should not confuse

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divination with fortunetelling; where divination is based on rituals

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and has a social effect, fortunetelling serves the individual for his or her personal purposes. Divination is still in use today among many African countries if

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not all. There is no culture that does not contain one form of a divining system or another. Many people speak of divination as a superstition, and it is through this superstition that divination holds some credibility. The local African people have built their lives on foundations of a faith, but where we as westerners might call it superstition, they call it traditional healing. An African diviner, or Sangoma, is successful because of his understanding of the minds of his people. The success is mainly measured by how effectively the diviner can solve cultural, social, psychological, and physical problems. To show that the power of divination largely relies on its social influence, an example is needed. Julian and Tara, a couple from one of Johannesburg’s residential areas in South Africa, had not had any break-ins since a Soweto Sangoma “fortified” the perimeter of their home with protective spirits. In an hour - long daytime ritual, the medicine man shuffled and danced along the perimeter, chanting and calling loudly on the spirits to take residence on the couple’s property and bring all manner of awful misfortune to those who attempt any mischief. As much as anything, the Sangoma was preying on the beliefs of everyone within earshot. He was letting them know that spirits were now resident on Julian and Tara’s border and would be unsparing in the way they dealt with trespassers. This is not to say that he did not actually unleash vengeful spirits from his kudu skin medicine bag. So the spirits live as surely in the boundary’s shrubs as they do in the minds of the people in the area. Either will do. This example shows how important the social influence is in the treatment of a problem through the use of African divination. It is based on the belief that power resides in spells and medicines that can be used by humans to control their environment. As South African social anthropologist David Hammond - Tooke points out, “ Magic in itself is morally neutral and its nature depends upon its use.” the apprentice

As an apprentice to a Sangoma, a young person would begin by inheriting knowledge about his culture, his traditions,

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his environment and his people. Learning about the myths,

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history and traditions of his people give a good foundation for an apprentice. Even though some knowledge might be outdate

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in comparison to the western belief system, it is important

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for the apprentice to know all the intricacies about his people.

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Social, traditional symbols and metaphors need to be learnt

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and play an important role in the process of traditional healing

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and divination, and allow for deeper connections to the people

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and their psyches. This knowledge plays an important role for

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the Sangoma when treating problems and provides understanding

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on how his people think. Another important aspect in an apprentice’s

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learning period is the collection of and the building of relationships to his divinatory tools.

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These tools are objects that consist of bones, stones, sticks, shells and other such paraphernalia. The process of collection takes years

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and is a long process of building relationships with each object. Each object in the collection represents some aspect of society • and life. Table 1 shows a few Zulu divinatory meanings and some of the items that represent them. Throughout Africa, Sangomas use certain objects that are standard and represent the same thing

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• ta b l e 1: s y m b o l i c o b j e c t s u s e d i n a f r i c a n d i v i n at i o n .

Symbolic objects used

w e a lt h

H o of tips , a b alo ne shells , le o p ard b o nes o r teeth, nu t shells , tur tle shells , c at tle b o nes o r te eth.

luck

Starting off with an object, the Sangoma would need to build a relationship with it, and that is done through meditation. By holding the object in his hands and at the same time recalling all his knowledge, personal experiences and memory about the aspect the object represents, he in a way embeds the information into the object through touch and thought. After hours, days and even weeks of building a stronger relationship with the object, he is then ready to move on to the next object. After years of collecting objects and building up a collection, the young Sangom is now ready to start practicing on his own.

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meaning

throughout different tribes. They also use objects that are unique and personal and are found by the individuals themselves.

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A b alone shells , le o p ard b ones or teeth, nut shells , se a shellsb ones , hyen a b ones , c ro c o d ile b ones , ant b e ar b o nes .

losses,

Tur tle shells , se a shells , m onkey b ones , se a urc hin

d e at h

spines , d o g b ones , hyen a b ones , c ro c o d ile b ones , ant b e ar b o nes .

secrets,

Tur tle b ones or b roken shells , spid er s , m onkey

sacred

b o nes , nu t shells , duiker b o nes , ant b e ar b o nes .

knowledge,

Tur tle shells , lio n b o nes o r te eth , nu t shells .

strength

f a m i ly,

S e a urc hin sp ines , c ow te eth , nu t shells ,

life

b a b o o n b o nes .

kindness

S p r in g b ok b o nes , nu t shells .

leadership

L io n b o nes o r te eth , le o p ard b o nes o r te eth.

time,

S p r in g b ok b o nes , m o nkey b o nes , le o p ard b o nes ,

changes,

sp iral se a shells , duiker b o nes .

By understanding the social dynamics, we can put the superstition and fantasy aside for one moment and look solely at the process, at the system. If I simplified divination, it would go like this: a question is asked, and by using a group of symbols, an answer is formulated through interpretation. The question can be anything, anything relevant to the problem at hand, like career choices, illnesses and relationship problems. By using symbolic objects through the system, probable answers are generated. Each individual object is a key that helps the Sangoma remember an aspect of society; like love, money, masculinity and fear. When these objects are thrown down, they fall randomly to the ﬂoor. The Sangoma would then interpret the objects according to their position and topography in relation to each other. The answer is an interpretation by the Sangoma in reference to the question asked. The random arrangement of symbolic objects, followed by an interpretation of the physical and symbolic relationships between these objects, forms the basic rule of many divinatory tools. The information that is useful to us through divination is embedded in our nonconscious and in the complicacies of relationships between the various aspects, people and items that make up our lives. This information in our

life wisdom,

C ow r ie S hells

decisions

o b s ta c l e s ,

T ig er ’s Eye G emstones

illnesses

i m m o r ta l i t y, rebirth

S n ake sk in o r b o nes .

nonconscious is illusive yet divination allows us to access it.

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In order to improve our understanding of information we need to categorize it a bit better. Ludwig Boltzmann was an Austrian physicist and he had a rather simple idea; he distinguished between what are

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known as macrostates and microstates. In physics, macrostates are such things as temperature, pressure and volume. Macrostates could

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be seen as primary objects or concepts that can be broken down into many smaller independent fragments. Microstates consist of accurate

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descriptions of the behavior of each of these individual fragments.

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Alone, microstates do not play important roles in the understanding

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of the bigger picture; it is the combination of microstates that give understanding and insight. Macrostates and microstates can be

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related to information.

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e x f o r m at i o n e xc h a n g e

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In everyday life, we could consider information as a summary of an experience. We recount the macrostates of our lives, never the individual microstates that make up the experience. The microstates have been discarded leaving behind what we consider information. There is however more potential information in a microstate than in a macrostate. If we were to converse the intricate little details that re-volve around the mediocre events that make up our daily lives, we would not have enough time to reach the petty events themselves though, so we summarize. Not that the details are not important or that we don’t pay attention to them ( we most certainly do ), it’s just that they play a more important role to our nonconscious than to our conscious minds. Exformation is a term coined by Danish physicist Tor Nørretranders. Exformation is everything we have in our heads but do not actually say out loud. As an example, if I were to talk about sheep, it would only be intelligible for the other person if they had a prior idea of what sheep are, their behavior and their purpose. This knowledge might be expected due to the very important part sheep have played in our history and culture. One cannot measure the exformation of a statement because it all depends on an individual’s prior knowledge of the subject. But information can be measured, because it is so compact and fits into one sentence: “Humans can be sheep sometimes.” This sentence is a macrostate and a metaphor and compares human behavior to the behavior of sheep. Sheep are gregarious, thus very social and enjoy the company of their own kind. They also travel together and are usually led by one individual to the chosen destination of that individual. Microstates like these play important roles in the understanding of the macrostate. Therefore by saying that humans can be sheep sometimes, the statement identifies the times when humans flock together, follow and do not act independently as their free will permits. The knowledge about sheep, as in this example, not only covers the scientific and behavioral facts that an individual might know about sheep, but also any personal experience he or she might have. All the intricate knowledge that the individual might have collected

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throughout life, whether valuable to this macrostate or not,

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could act as exformation. Traditional healers, like Sangomas, rely on the exformation that is buried within their minds. Their experiences and their prior

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knowledge about multiple facets of life build up their divining vocabulary. This divining vocabulary is made available to the

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Sangoma through his divinatory tools. The bones, sticks, shells and other objects allow for the Sangoma to extract the already

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available exformation in the nonconscious and to articulate it

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in a more condensed way, as information, through a casting.

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micro

- m a c r o s tat e s

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Symbols could be seen as macrostates. A single item, representing

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a greater amount of information, or better said exformation. Without the knowledge behind the symbol, the reference would not exist. This knowledge however is not conjured out of thin air,

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it is taught. We learn to read signs. In divinatory methods such as African bone-throwing, tarot readings, or tea-leaf readings, the external symbols ( the bones, the cards, the leaf markings ) represent states in society that we understand and experience in our everyday lives; emotions, people and other inﬂuences and behaviors. To become a diviner you would begin by building up symbolic references. Each object would entail a new-found relationship between you and the exformation it embodies. The process would demand conscious acknowledgement of nonconscious exformation. For example, for a Sangoma, a cowrie shell could represent time. Time has played a very important role in our lives and our personal experiences of time till today, built up our knowledge and our understanding of it through our memories. After embedding the knowledge into the shell it becomes a symbol of every single experience, all your knowledge and all your intuitive understanding of time. When you come across this glossy shell in a casting, a mass of exformation is implied through it. The relationship the apprentice would need to establish with a cowrie shell would be interrelated to that society. Representations and interpretations of the shell change with every reading or cast. Each object in a cast stands alone in its meaning, and more importantly, forms a symbiotic relationship with the other objects around it. So we could say that the combination of a certain number of macrostates, represented in this case as the symbolic objects of a Sangoma, together with the problem that is to be solved, form an arena for the Sangoma to invent solutions that might not have been recognized before. secret users

The dead were often treated as though they were still alive ( being seated on chairs, dressed in clothing, and even fed food ); dead bodies were presumed to be still living and the source of auditory hallucinations. Jaynes argues that divination, prayer and oracles

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developed when consciousness took over and when the “voices

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of the gods” died with bicameralism during the second millennium BC. Diviners like the Sangomas and religions like Christianity can

be seen to have replaced the loss of the bicameral mind and have been

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a part of our societies until today.

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Divinatory systems have survived these thousands of years just

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like our modern day religions have. And just like our religions

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the divinatory systems aim at offering a renewed connection from

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man to divine being. We could therefore see that consciousness

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and divination run hand in hand, and until traces of bicameralism

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are utterly eradicated from our minds, the latter will still exist in our

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societies; if not as a central pivot, then as something that will always

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seem intriguing to us.

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consciousness

research report

You may now ask what consciousness really is. If I were to try

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and deﬁne consciousness I would like to start by saying what it is not. Consciousness is not perception, it is not cognition, and it is

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not knowledge. Consciousness could be defined as an awareness of self. Jaynes gave us a great definition of it: “Consciousness is a much smaller part of our mental life than we are conscious of, because we cannot be conscious of what we are not conscious of. How simple that is to say; how difficult to appreciate! It is like asking a flashlight in a dark room to search around for something that does not have any light shining upon it. The flashlight, since there is light in whatever direction it turns, would have to conclude that there is light everywhere. And so consciousness can seem to pervade all mentality when actually it does not.” ( Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind ). According to Tor Nørretranders our conscious minds only process up to forty ( 40 ) bits per second, where as our nonconscious minds can process up to eleven million ( 11,000,000 ) bits per second. This shouldn’t worry us because both the conscious and the nonconscious minds both play important roles. Our nonconscious minds handle all the microstates that enter through our senses. These details are often too overwhelming and do not necessarily play such an important part individually, like all microstates, but form part of the macrostates that our conscious minds use to communicate. Macrostates require far fewer bits per second to be transmitted, compared to microstates. On the right are some • example activities and their required conscious bandwidth. Our senses are directly linked to our nonconscious. Incoming information ( microstates ) from our senses is matched with data in our memories, and undergoes a process before it is relayed to our consciousness in order to be articulated ( as macrostates ). Very little of the original sense remains and is present in the resulting action of consciousness. Because the nonconscious processes, filters and summarizes

• m e a s u r i n g c o n s c i o u s b a n d w i dt h a c t i v i t y/ m a c r o s tat e

Bits / Sec

silent reading

reading aloud

typewriting

p i a n o p l ay i n g

m u lt i p ly i n g a n d

the incoming exformation, the original input is lost and we cannot truly experience it ﬁrsthand; we only experience the condensed macrostate as information. The exformation, although it may sound passive, does actively inﬂuence our behavior; but we do not always have control over how it does that.

adding two numbers counting objects

The nonconscious works primarily on the principle of association. Like the Memory Card game ( having microstates acting as the cards ),

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the nonconscious associates related and similar subjects. But unlike the memory card game, it can also associate seemingly unrelated

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subjects that do not normally occur together. Because in this case,

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exformation chieﬂy belongs to the nonconscious, information

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to the conscious. Due to the nonconscious power of unrelated

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association, our ability to create metaphors and symbols arises.

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So we see that our nonconscious is a well of exformation waiting

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to inform.

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It would be great if we could easily access what is in our nonconscious

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minds but unfortunately we cannot. Divination, however, could

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allow us to improve the relationship between the conscious and

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the nonconscious in order to access this exformation and to articulate it consciously as information.

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removing the mask 56 c o l o f o n

Spirituality and rituals form a foundation for African divination. A Sangoma’s work is effective through ceremonial events and beliefs of certain types of magic. Magic possesses two contrasting components: white magic and black magic. White magic would generally involve rituals that are open to the society and they are usually practiced by Sangomas, where as black magic is secretive and usually used against the good of the society. Witchcraft and sorcery are two types of black magic that are practiced in Africa. In Africa witchcraft forms a fundamental part of most people’s thinking about illnesses and misfortune. For the Sangoma it is imperative to have a thorough understanding of the people who hold such beliefs. There is a very close resemblance between the foundations of witchcraft and western religions; magic and faith. Both have provided for secular and social stability. The belief in witchcraft arose from the people’s need to ﬁnd a cause for their misfortunes. Sangomas, apart from healing these misfortunes caused by malevolent witchcraft ( hence witchdoctor ), have additional technical and social skills. Sangomas are involved in exploring the supernatural and in making the unknown accessible to everyday life; we thus call them diviners. Whether or not he or she is involved in healing, a diviner’s prime function is to grasp consciously, and to bring out into the open, the secret and nonconscious motives causing an individual to become ill, or to create a social disturbance. Diviners are in fact the psychologists, psychiatrists, physicians, priests, confessors, councilors, and historians of their people. All these functions are brought together to form a highly effective institution that depends greatly on social consensus. To be valuable in an individual situation, or valid in a social context, a diviner and a technique of divination need only have dramatic truth. “ Mystery is the catalyst for imagination”, words of wisdom by J.J. Abrams from his ted presentation in March 2007, entitled Mystery Box. Mystery is when something is not fully comprehended, when it confuses and evades understanding. In order to fully

understand the effects of mystery, one can deﬁne transparency.

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Transparency occurs when there is no distortion between what is conveyed and what is witnessed. When transparency is achieved in the present, an unambiguous future can be predicted. Transparency

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allows for the witness to control the next step. By having this knowledge, the witness is conﬁdent in making any decisions that

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might change the situation’s known outcome. Transparency provides a calm and predictable situation that is powered by the knowledge

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currently at hand. Transparency satisﬁes when the situation at hand

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is familiar and does not need improvement. But transparency can

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sometimes lead to stagnation; leaving the witness wondering “If it ain’t broke, don’t ﬁx it.” One thing that does challenge transparency,

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that lures us into a creative state of mind and that unclenches our

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brain, is mystery. By offering suspense, intrigue, curiosity, and a little bit of fear, African divination has managed to push the boundaries of the fantastical

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and yet stay practical. Apart from the superstition, the tradition, the psychology and the mystery behind it, African divination has an underlying system that is common to all form of divination. The system is comprised of symbolic objects and their interpreter. Through this system, the diviner is relieved of the burden of remembering all the possible dynamic outcomes of a situation. Once uncertainty enters our lives through problems at home or at work, an opportunity to harness the mystery behind the uncertainty enters too. Solutions could be hidden between the bits and pieces that make up our problems. In light of Part 2: Exformation Engine; bits and pieces represent microstates that generate macrostates. The details of our microstates are, however, hidden in our nonconscious minds. In order to access the exformation that lies in our nonconscious, one must possess the skill to hover between a conscious and a nonconscious state of mind. Liminality is one such skill that blurs the boundary zone between two established spatial areas Ethnographer and folklorist Arnold van Gennep described the phases of liminality in his book The Rites of Passage; by reaching a liminal state of consciousness, where one would be on the border of the nonconscious and the conscious spatial areas, one would have access to all the exformation and microstates of the nonconscious and also be able to consciously contextualize to form informative macrostates. Diviners have this ability and can reach a state of liminality through trances induced with the possible help of herbs and medicines. A diviner’s importance is partially based on his or her experience in dealing with the different states in a trance. They have the experience and the skills to understand and interpret. Chance plays a very important role in divination. Each reading or cast opens up countless probabilities of interpretation When dealing with chance, one will inevitably come across randomness. Randomness is when something occurs without an identiﬁable pattern, and alone simply represents unintelligible confusion. But when randomness is introduced in combination with an established pattern, change is made possible. Our nonconscious cannot be categorized and is like a messy basement ﬁlled with all the microstates learnt throughout life,

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yet thanks to Julian Jaynes’ deﬁnition of consciousness in his metaphor The Flashlight ( Part 3: Secret User ), we can paint a clearer

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picture for ourselves. If we were to use our ﬂashlights to see into our

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messy basements, it will seem that we “permeate” the basement

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and its contents. But because we will look for answers in a structured, conscious and logical way, we will not be able to ﬁnd creative

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solutions; we will be limited to the micro - states that reﬂect the predictable patterns of our consciousness. Therefore divination offers an established pattern ( the system, symbols as objects, randomness )

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that is ﬂexible enough to encourage innovative possibilities ( personal interpretations through experience ), derived from an elusive nonconscious.

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c r e at i v e c a s t research report

Instinct lies at the most basic programmed level of our nonconscious

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mind and cannot be removed. It is based in our nonconscious and never surfaces in our conscious minds. However, its results and effects can be acknowledged by our conscious minds. Instinctual behavior is shaped by biological necessities such as survival and reproduction; it is immediate and requires no conscious thought to work. This is proof that our senses are directly connected to our nonconscious and that not all microstates need be attached to macrostates. Because instinct remains among microstates, it does not surface to the conscious mind to be uttered as a macrostate before it kicks in. One step up and we find the level of intuition. Intuition is defined as awareness without logical thought. When an outcome that helps us grasp the hidden nature of things arises, that’s when you know intuition has occurred. Though instinct tells us to run, intuition guides us in which direction. In her book Natural - Born Intuition, Dr Lauren Thibodeau introduces intuition as a sixth sense appended to our already existing five: sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell. Her definition of intuition is a combination of the five senses and also incorporates each person’s unique life experiences and values. In Thibodeau’s book, intuition is interpreted more as a verb than as a noun. Intuition can be compared to knowledge; whereas knowledge, or cognition, is the general awareness of information, facts, ideas, truths and principles; it is also an external entity and many people can share this awareness. It is through logic that knowledge is valid and its purpose is to be available to everyone. Intuition on the other hand is defined as being based in the present and by being internal, personal and subjective. Like a lot of left - right brain associations, knowledge could represent the left half of the brain and intuition, the right half. In the process of relationship - building performed by Sangomas in African divination, both the worlds of intuition and knowledge are used. The earthly world of the physical item, to which the relationship is being built, is linked to earthly experiences, the logical understanding of how things work and the direct physical attributes the object and its symbol possess. The earthly world

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of the item and its symbol is available to all Sangomas. The unseen

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world of the object is intricately linked to, and only to, the Sangoma as an individual. The personal experiences, the feelings attached to them and the intuitive understanding of the item cannot be shared

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by the many that practice African divination. It all happens in the mind and soul of the diviner; all that happens in the unseen world of the

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diviner is linked to his/her intuition. Intuition is just as complex ( if not more ) than the logical mind.

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Intuition can be broken up into four categories: visual, auditory,

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sensory and gut/body - based intuition. We all utilize a certain

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percentage of each category, but visual intuition, however, is used the most.

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divine intuition

The visual, today, plays a very important role in our decision - making. We design logos, posters, adverts, clothing, homes ( interior and

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m a p p i n g p u b l i c s pac e

exterior ), products and technology all on how we perceive them, how they visually trigger a response. How things ‘look’ is such a big process in our minds that it affects almost everything in our lives, from food to religion. Visual input has played an important role in society throughout history. Even in prehistoric rock art found in Africa, pigments from stones and plants were used to communicate. African tribes paint their homes in vivid colors; their clothes are covered in multicolored beads; every aspect of their lives is garnished with stimulating visual characteristics. We could take a look at our everyday language and see that we often refer to color in our speech to describe moods and emotions. We say, “he was green with envy”, “you look blue today”, “purple with passion”. We also use visual references in our speech such as “I wish I’d seen that coming” or “I see what you mean”. If we were to pay attention and notice how many times we use visual references in our speech, we would be amazed how important the visual is. As you can imagine, there are so many symbols in our world today; not only visual, but also linked to our other senses. Symbols are not only the symbols we know like the cross, the horse shoe, the book, the shopping cart or the broken wine glass on the side of a cardboard box. Symbols can also be personal references to events that we have experienced in our childhood and throughout our lives. Take the jasmine shrub for example; it is not a symbol known to many, representing one thing. The jasmine shrub could represent something specific to me though; it could remind me of my grandmother. It could symbolize the green fingers she has, the nourishing, the motherly nature, the patience and concern she showed when she cared for her flowers ( and in turn her grandchildren ). The jasmine shrub is a symbol that visually and olfactorily triggers feelings that are personal to me. These feelings, irrelevant of the fact that I am in tune with my emotions at the time, will arise, influencing what I have on my mind at that moment and the actions that will follow. These feelings form a part of my intuition. The fact that I acknowledge the symbol consciously means that I can also document it and keep a track of it for future references.

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There are many personal symbols in our everyday lives. Some we

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do not consciously realize when we experience, but still play an important role in our intuition. By documenting these symbols,

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we are able to build up our own personal dictionary of symbolic

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meanings. As adults we tend to mask our intuitive senses. The overwhelming

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incoming stimuli, the mounting duties, and bombarding stresses

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build up to form a massive pillow that smothers any intuitive sense.

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Headaches, butterﬂies in the stomach and backaches are some ways

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the body uses to communicate to our conscious minds. We often have

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the motto “no pain, no gain” and confuse intuitive messages with fatigue, bad eating patterns or a bad mattress. In fact, the physical

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effects of stress are signs from the body telling us that we are

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overdoing it. Intuition represents the bridge between our nonconscious and our conscious minds. Through the different kinds of intuition, whether

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it be visual or gut/body - based, our nonconscious mind reaches out to communicate. Sometimes logic can be deceiving. Sometimes the routine of daily life makes us stagnant. Information and guidance is not always external and sometimes external guidance and inﬂuence can be misleading. Intuition is the nonconscious’ voice and it speaks through our intuitive senses. By removing the mask of divination, an intricate system between symbols and interpretation is revealed. For this system to be effective, the users need to be open to it. Divination cannot be mastered if it is approached by sheer logic and constructive association. Only by allowing intuition to bridge our conscious and our non - conscious minds, can we truly harness what divination has to offer. a c c e s s i n g c r e at i v i t y

Creativity is something often associated to the design field. But what is it exactly? There are roughly one hundred scientific definitions of creativity; therefore it is not difficult to claim that creativity is a puzzle, a paradox and shrouded in mystery. Many people conjure up creativity without a conscious understanding of how it came to be. In the dictionary definition of creation, to bring into being or form out of nothing, creativity seems to be not only beyond any scientific understanding, but even impossible. It is hardly surprising, then, that some people have explained it in terms of divine inspiration, intuition, or insight. If we look a few paragraphs back, intuition is defined as communication from the nonconscious to the conscious mind. If we were to allow creativity to possess this definition for a while, it might help us understand it better. The new definition of creativity would sound like this: Creativity is a method of communication used by the nonconscious mind to guide our conscious mind into making decisions. Maybe not all decisions, but in light of this new definition, creativity has now become something internal. If we were to approach creativity from this perspective, then every one of us has the potential to be creative. We all have a friend that we could consider creative. We might sometimes consider ourselves to be creative. This creativity flourishes

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when there is usually little or no inﬂuence by logic and deliberation.

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By becoming child-like; idealistic and experimental, we discard the habitual manner with which we often deal with problems. Issues no longer need to be solved traditionally. We borrow ideas

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from one context and project them onto new circumstances without realizing that we have been creative until we take a step back.

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There is no doubt that at some point at work or in our daily lives, creativity has sprung up to surprise us. We need to understand

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that creativity is not a talent; it does not materialize if or when

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we get inspired. Creativity is a skill. It can be learnt and developed.

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There is however some confusion about creativity. A creative solution needs to have value, it needs to be credible. To reach a creative

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solution, there also needs to be a creative process. During this process

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of challenging the old, combining the known and experimenting with new, there is a slight chance that we might not succeed in developing something truly creative. But this should not discourage

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us and we should not name these hiccups as mistakes or errors, but as experiences. The search for something inventive is a journey that requires full participation. Divination is one method that encourages the development of creativity. It is a tool that challenges our logic. If we were to approach problems using our regular logical thinking, we will only reach solutions that make sense to us. And so, by looking within and trusting intuition, quantum leaps of creativity will be achieved, in turn breaking the linear functionings of consciousness. sources

Arnold van Gennep T h e Rit es of Passage London: Routledge ( 2004 ). David Hammond-Tooke T h e Bantu- speaking Peopl es of South er n Af r ica London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, ( 1974 ). Edward de Bono How To Have Creative Id eas London: Vermillion ( 2007 ). Edward de Bono L at eral T hinking London: Penguin ( 1970 ). Julian Jaynes T h e O r ig in of Consc iousn ess in th e Breakd ow n of th e Bicam eral Mind New York: Houghton Mifflin Company ( 1976 ).

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Lauren Thibodeau

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Natural-Bor n Intuition Franklin Lakes: Career Press ( 2005 ).

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Lyall Watson Lightning Bird

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London: Hodder and Stoughton ( 1982 ).

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Philip M. Peek

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Af r ican D iv ination Sys t ems

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Bloomington: Indiana University Press ( 1991 ).

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Raymond Buckland and Kathleen Binger

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T h e Book O f Af r ican D iv ination Vermont: Destiny Books, Inner Traditions International Ltd ( 1992 ).

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Tor Nørretranders T h e User Illusion New York: Viking, Penguin Group ( 1991 ).

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tr ansferium, a non - pl ac e

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transferium

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‘Extra North - Holland Transferia for Nineteen Million Kilometer -

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Reduction’, was the headline for a 2004 article in Verkeerskunde,

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a magazine for public space professionals. The additional transferia

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are the result of a successful 1993 pilot developed by the Dutch Ministry of Transport in cooperation with the Dutch highway service ( anwb ) and transport companies at nine locations in the Netherlands.

2 9 – 4 0 c r e at i v e c a s t s andre as gerolemou

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The purpose of this pilot project was to improve accessibility and

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quality of life of cities, a concept that had be attractive to the general public. Drivers need to be persuaded to park their cars at transferia

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and then take public transportation into the city. More wide - scale

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use of tranferia would create cities not dedicated to cars. Transferia could turn that utopia into reality.

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The current transferia offer safe, fast and comfortable transfer points from cars to public transportation, such as the train, subway, tram, bus, or boat. Safe implies constant video surveillance of cars and people; fast means well - organized, little wasted time, and frequent and fast public transport; comfortable refers to covered walkways between the parking lot and the boarding area, heated waiting rooms with restrooms, phones and travel information. Usually, transferia have bicycle racks and a snack kiosk as well. Greater transferia even boast facilities like tourist information centers and restaurants. Most of the transferia are on the edge of cities where highways and public transportation meet. Therefore, transferia could reduce traffic jams and parking issues in urban areas. At transferium Ridderkerk, cars can be parked for free. The public transportation link here is to the Fast Ferry, to downtown Rotterdam or Dordrecht. The location is suitable for cars coming via highways A15 and A16. Moreover, the location offers a beautiful view of the junction between the Noord, Lek and New Maas rivers. The free parking and the magnificent view are what should attract visitors, • since other facilities are lacking . Instead, transferium Ridderkerk

• t r a n s f er i u m r i d d er k er k .

looks cheap, grey, and static, thus, it does not meet the transferium and facilities goal from the 1993 pilot. A design by Zwarts & Jansma • ( 1999 ) , shows how facilities may be fitted into the transferium.

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• d e s i g n z wa r t s & j a n s m a

s p at i a l p r a c t i c e s

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The design looks upgraded and comfortable, but still not very dynamic. •• The busy transferium Amsterdam Arena stands in immense

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•• t r a n s f er i u m

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a m s t er da m a r e n a

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contrast to Transferium Ridderkerk with its quietness and simplicity. Amsterdam Arena transferium has more to offer than parking ( underground beneath the field ) and transport connections alone.

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A big, commercial boulevard runs through the location and offers ••• shopping, sports and leisure. Those facilities have fully absorbed the transferium’s surroundings. Because of the multiple use of space, the Amsterdam Arena transferium does not seem to have any boundaries, indicating optimal use of location. In addition, there are benches, lampposts, bicycle parking, and facilities everywhere.

••• a m s t er da m a r e n a , b i g c o m m er c i a l b o u l e va r d

Does such integration of functions convey the potential value of transferia? Are they urban junctions? Or are they just isolated islands in the landscape? transferium as non-place

In Non - places, Marc Augé states, “If a place can be defined as relational, historical and concerned with identity, then a space which cannot be defined as relational, or historical, or concerned with identity will be a non - place.” ( Augé 1995: 77, 78 ) Augé creates the concepts of ‘places’ and ‘non - places’. The ‘places’ have an anthropological connotation; they are social spaces full of monuments continuing over time and generations, like a historical city center with its own identity and history. Augé mentions several examples of non - places: highways, airports, train stations, hotel chains, amusement parks, supermarkets, and means of transportation themselves. To that list transferia can be •••• added. The transferium is a non - place where individuals are

••• • l ef t : t r a n s f er i u m b a r n e v el d - n o r t h m i d d l e : t r a n s f er i u m l ei d e n

‘t

schouw

r i g h t : pa r k & r i d e l el a n t s a lt i n g

( g r e at

britian)

freed of their identity, their historical and social bonds. The transferium

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as non - place creates the “shared identity of passengers, customers, or Sunday drivers.” ( Augé 1995: 101 ) One could say that the drivers

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and travelers of the transferium are lost in a temporary, dynamic flow.

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The space of travelers is the archetype of the non-place.

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i n f o r m at i o n d e s i g n

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Non - places are defined by the use of words and pictures. They form

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the manual for these transit places. Augé states, “The link between

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individuals and their surroundings in the space of non-place is established through the mediation of words, or even texts”. ( Augé

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1995: 94 ) The information can be provided in different formats, but

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mostly it is in the form of signs along the route. There are, however, topical examples of information absorbed in the design of the location. • The parking garage of the Hotel Puerta de América in Madrid

• t er e s a s a p e y, h ot el p u er ta d e a m ér i c a ,

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madrid

( 20 05 ). 56 c o l o f o n

designed by Teresa Sapey is such an example. The garage uses information in the form of icons. These icons, constructed from the work Liberté by French poet Paul Éluard, tell you where the exit is and point you in the right direction. Other icons do not give information •• about the garage itself, but express the freedom of art. The entire

•• t er e s a s a p e y, h ot el p u er ta d e a m ér i c a , madrid

( 20 05 ),

e x p r e s s t h e f r ee d o m o f a r t .

design and text of the symbols shows, as it were, the road to freedom, drawing a symbolic contrast with the dark underground space. Another example is the 10 - mile spiral, a concept for Las Vegas by ••• Aranda/Lasch. With the goal in mind of avoiding traffic jams and ‘ unjamming’ Las Vegas, the architects designed a structure/building

••• aranda /lasch, 10 - mile spiral, las vegas ‘d ir t y ’

( 2004 ).

spir a l

a n a lgori t hm ( see opp osi t e ) is employ ed to deri v e a heli x , w hose r a dio ‘ va ries ’ r a n domly a s i t climbs a n d t hen fa ll s back dow n to t he va lle y flo .

e x t rud e dim n o : n o

a s t ruc t ur a l curb is e x t ruded to 4.6 m to s t iffen t he r a mp.

dim a rrp oin t, n redim a rrline

( no )

ini t i a l r a dius dim r a dius : r a dius

cre at e heli x for n

0 to n o s t ep 1

= a rr ay ( r a dius )*sin ( n ), ( r a dius )*cos ( n ), n / 2 ) ( n ) = a rrp oin t dim r a n dom < . 5 t hen r a dius = r a dius + 1 + ( rn d ( ) * 1,5 )

a rrp oin t a rrline

int ersec t ion - loa d t r ansfer in t ersec t ion p oin t s be t w een t hese s t rip s a re t r a nsfer p oin t s t hrough w hich t he s t ruc t ure ’ s loa ds a re ch a n nelled to t he groun ds .

el se r a dius

r a dius + 1

- ( rn d ( ) * 1.5

en d if ne x t

b e a ms t he s t ruc t ure is op t imized to a llow v ie w s ou t ot t he va lle y : m at eri a l is re ta ined in t he a x i a l line of s t res s a n d remov ed w here t he curb is n ot doin g a n y s t ruc t ur a l work .

where the arrival of the drivers is slowed down by their moving in

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the spiral. On the spiral lanes, texts from well - known signs along the Las Vegas roads such as ‘Welcome to Las Vegas’ or ‘Drive Safely’

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connect the city to the parking garage users. But that is not the only

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form of information the architects have employed in their design.

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To give the spiral a symbolic relationship with Las Vegas, the gambling

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capital of the world, the architects used images of numbers, colors,

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and bank notes on the lanes of the spiral to introduce the ‘slow’

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drivers to gambling in Vegas.

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Information in words, texts, and images, in the non-place ensure

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it becomes part of the rhythm of daily life. Marc Augé states, “Words

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and images in transit through non - places can take root in the – still diverse – places where people still try to construct part of their daily life.” ( Augé 1995: 109 ) A design by Buschow Henley Architects • illustrates how close daily life and non-place can get. In their concept

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• b u s c h o w h e n l e y a r c h i t e c t s , ‘ pa r k+ j o g ’, ( 19 9 8 ).

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56 c o l o f o n

for ‘Park + Jog’, a form of daily life is constructed by using a transfer point. Through symbols, people are encouraged to park their car at the end of the highway, then change clothes and jog, swim, walk or ride to Manchester City. After a hard day of work or classes, people can jog back, take a refreshing shower at facilities on the roof terrace of the car park, and drive home. t r a n s f e r i a l o c at i o n s

While the city plays a prominent role in daily life, transferia and park&rides seem to be forgotten places. But these places could use that location between city and highway. The city is like an interior, where people return through the entrance every time. The entrance could be a transfer point in the form of a transferium or park&ride, a link between the city, with its public transportation network, •• and suburbia, with its roads for private vehicles. The entrance

•• l ef t : t r a n s f er i u m h o o r n , n e a r to t h e c i t y. r i g h t : t r a n s f er i u m b r eu k el e n .

should fit the interior and it should be an invitation to the world.

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An entrance between an inner and outer space has two sides, and can have different views to the inside and outside. The transfer point

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is a neutral point on the map with a temporary use. The abstract

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character makes it hard to integrate the transferia in their surroundings.

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Transferia should absorb the qualities of the entrance/exit to really

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function as a dynamic doorway and to give entering and leaving

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a flowing shape.

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s tat u s a n d a p p e a r a n c e

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Transitional places such as highways could be viewed and designed

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from different angles. For example, the mid - 20 - century German

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Autobahn was intended to be a cultural aesthetic monument, to stir feelings of national pride in drivers and passengers. The Autobahns • were strongly embedded in the landscape. Another example is

• r ei c h s au to b a h n , n e a n d er ta l

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( 1936 ). 56 c o l o f o n

the parkway, a ‘human’ road as part of nature, supply following •• the language of the land. “There must be unrestricted freedom

•• merrit parkway, connecticut usa (1935- 1940 ).

of movement and a pliable traffic flow, which can be maintained regularly. This flow should be without interruption or collision.” ( Nijenhuis & van Winden 2007: 82 ).The lanes offer the driver a view of the landscape. When speeding along the lanes, new images are revealed time and again to drivers and passengers. The driver “ experiences the spaces of the landscape as an exciting succession of wide and narrow views,” writes Hans Lorentz in ‘Die Mitarbeit de lebendigen Natur”. The subtly designed landscape areas guide the driver and “anticipate a sublime experience without active interaction of consciousness. The beauty of the road, then, lies in the rhythm of the change of space and the rhythm becomes a feeling of tension and release” ( Nijenhuis & van Winden 2007: 134 ). “These roads and highways, however, could not satisfy the rapidly rising demand of mobility. And as Wilfried van Winden states, landscapes urbanize and the cities are like parasites on the highway networks” ( Nijenhuis & van Winden 2007: 83 ). Today, the highways are no longer part of an aesthetic culture. This is also true for highway parking spaces and transferia/park & rides. Why are these dynamic spaces not appreciated? How can these culturally neglected non-places regain aesthetic qualities? Wilfried van Winden claims that the Parisian Périphérique could be considered the contemporary urban highway. It is tempestuous ••• and dynamic; it could be called the diabolical highway. A design for a parking lot over the river Seine by the architect Konstantin S. Melnikov from 1925, never constructed, has both dynamics and

••• t h e p h er i p h er i q u e , pa r i j s .

representation.The dynamic structure of steep slopes and parking decks offer the motorist a spectacular view of the Seine Melnikov • wanted to please the user with his design.

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• k o n ta n t i n s . m el n i ko v,

s p at i a l p r a c t i c e s

c a r pa r k o v er t h e s ei n e

( 1925 ).

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Indeed, a spectacular view can be a tool to make a transferium exciting. oma, however, has employed dramatic techniques in its L’Espace Piranésien design ( part of the master plan •• for Euralille ). oma’s challenge was to create a Gordian knot

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•• l’e s pac e p i r a n e s i e n , eu r a l i l l e ( 19 8 8 -19 91 ).

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56 c o l o f o n

out of a small junction where metro, train, highway, and sidewalks intersect. A mixture of ramps, elevators, escalators and railroad tracks were used to make the Eurostar station as dramatic as possible. Dramatics are also evident in the aerial photo of the park with pool and metro station Nus de la Trinitat opened in 1990 in Barcelona and ••• ••• e n r i c b at l l e , n u s d e l a t r i n i tat, b a r c elo n a designed by Enric Batlle. An enormous nexus of roads circumvents ( 19 9 0 ). a reasonably small park, which seems to have adjusted itself to its surroundings. But when one enters the park, the roads are hardly present and the place makes a silent and monumental impression. m o b i l i t y a n d s pac e

“ The retreat of the dynamic perception made traveling a paradoxical experience: in the heart of the outer movement one would experience the absence of the world and a standstill in space. One feels no distance between departure and arrival” ( Nijenhuis & van Winden 2007: 130 ). “The observation of the surrounding starting from the movement” ( Nijenhuis & van Winden 2007: 81 ) is, in Nijenhuis’ view, the new ‘artistic vision’ where public space could be involved. It is a dynamic thought that can be illustrated by Futurism and •••• its love of speeding cars. The figure right gives an example of a futuristic image by the artist Umberto Boccioni. The artist did not seek pure form, but pure pliable rhythm. He constructed the action of bodies. Such dynamics, translated into architecture, produces spiral structures instead of static buildings. A flow of mobility guided by a design of action can be noticed in the Master plan of Stirling Wilford & Associates ( in association with Walter Nägeli ) for the Braun headquarters in Melsungen. The visitor and employees are taken on a journey built out of short environmental encounters, first as drivers and later as pedestrians.

•••• u m b er to b o c c i o n i , m u s eu m o f m o d er n a r t, n e w yo r k .

At the entrance, the road follows a canal around a lake. After a viaduct

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and a pass - through an opening in a heavy concrete wall, the formal landscape abruptly transforms into an informal one with industrial

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buildings. Once in the parking garage, a spiral brings the motorist

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from deck to deck. When leaving the parking garage on foot one is

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led to a destination via dramatic bridges and staircases. The parking

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building and the landscape are indissolubly linked and the mobility/

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action experience creates surprised motorists. Simon Henley says

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about this plan, “Pleasure comes from the devices employed to move

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cars and people through the section, from the light, and from the intimate encounters that particular situations afford.” • ( Henley 2007: 81 )

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• s t i r l i n g w i l f o r d ,

b r au n h e a d q ua r t er ,

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41 – 4 9 t r a n s e r i u m , a n o n - p l a c e

m el s u n g e n

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( 19 8 6 -19 92 ).

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56 c o l o f o n

A transferium is part of the dynamic world of mobility. Also Sain’Elia •• ( Città Nuova 1914, and Le Corbusier ( La ville contemporaine 1922, )

•• l ef t : a v i l l e c o n t em p o r a i n e ( 1922 ), r i g h t : s a n t ’ el i a

( 1914 ).

used a hybrid form of mobility to reach their goal of “absorbing the dynamic world of mobility into the static world of the city.” Sin Centre ••• m i c h a el w eb b , s i n c e n t r e lo n d o n , ••• ( 1959 - 62 ) by the English architect Michael Webb is another hybrid ( 1959 -19 62 ). design, where both vehicle and pedestrian are incorporated into a circulating, mobile system ensuring that the large flow of people is easily guided through different spaces. In the Roissy - Charles airport of the architect Paul Andreu, different worlds of mobility remain •••• separated. The architectonic layer encompasses the whole. function or form

•••• p au l a n d r eu , a i r p o r t r o i s s y - c h a r l e s d e g au l l e ( 1959 -19 62 ).

Hybrid designs for transferia combine different means of transportation, while employing diagrams and structures, often three - dimensionally translated. The above-mentioned Aranda/Laschs 10 - mile spiral is a complex design for a parking solution combined with a road originating from a “dirty” spiral flowing from algorithms ( a mathematical approach to achieve a architectonic solution ).

The dirty spiral has undergone several metamorphoses and has

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become a structure of its own, more a dynamic building than an infrastructure. “What makes the multi-store car park recognizable –is it the function or the form?” asks Simon Henley ( Henley 2007: 207 ) .

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The function of a transfer point in a transferium is clearly determined

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by the governmental rules and has to meet requirements on functional

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levels as well. But the shape is free of restrictions. What is this shape?

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How can it transcend the function? A shape must be attractive and

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dynamic and be able to take the commuter on a journey through

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the transferium. The function can be subsequently connected to the

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shape. If the shape has a guiding and recognizable effect, the shape

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can become more abstract, like in Zaha Hadid’s works. Zaha Hadid Architects have based their car park Hoenheim - Nord • in Strasbourg on the concept of “patterns of movement”. Hadid describes this concept as “a field, where the patterns of movements

• z a h a h a d i d a r c h i t e c t s , pa r k+ r i d e h o e n h ei m - n o r t h , ( 19 9 8 -20 01 ).

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str asbourg

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56 c o l o f o n

are engendered by cars, trams, bicycles and pedestrians, each has a trajectory and a trace, as well as a static fixture. It is the transition between transport types that is rendered as the material and spatial transitions of the station, landscaping and the context.” ( Henley 2007: 83 ) The result is a car park resembling an abstract work of art. The graphic shape has clearly transcended its function in this design. The static parking lot has changed into the form of an inspiring dynamic field, which creates more possibilities than the function of parking alone. conclusion

The potential of the transferia does not lie in the implementation of functions, but in the design of the place. The design must guide travelers on their daily trip through the transferium from arrival to departure. Shapes such as slopes, symmetries, diagonals and semi circles, turn the transferium into a dynamic and impressive design. But also the routing through the transferium and its buildings is a true challenge. The use of staircases, walkways, views, columns, can give a transferium a dramatic character. By shaping a transferium aesthetically, movement can be created, turning the outside space into an interesting experience.

Transferia are a flowing link between city and highway. The continuous

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motion of arrival and departure implies the dynamic notion of speed. The speed can produce shapes; a spiral has the capacity to create speed

s p at i a l p r a c t i c e s

and a moving panoramic view. Instead of forcing the drivers to drastically

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reduce speed when leaving the highway and entering the transferium,

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the design can be dynamic with the help of spirals, slopes, curves and

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certain material to turn the flow of speed up or down. The information at a transferium can be designed incorporating different layers of speed

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while guiding the traveler through the transferium.

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The transferium design should create an attractive and supple transfer

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for the travelers. The fluent motion and expressive information could all contribute to what a transferium should be: an experience between

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city and highway.

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sources

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Augé, Marc ( 1995 ) Non pl a c es: Introdu c tion t o an Anthropolo g y of Super m od er nit y New York: Verso Books. Henley, Simon ( 2007 ) T h e Archit e c ture of Parking London: Thames & Hudson. Nijenhuis, Wim & Wilfried van Winden ( 2007 ) D e D iabolisch e Sn elwe g Rotterdam: Uitgeverij 010.

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s p at i a l p r a c t i c e s 5 – 8 dutch artistic research event # 3

The ambition of Henk Slager's professorship in Artistic Research

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is to connect with concrete developments in the field of visual art.

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This year, Henk Slager's curatorship of the 7th Shanghai Biennale,

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Translocalmotion, offered an excellent opportunity for such ( connection. www.shanghaibiennale.com ) During Translocalmotion,

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the Utrecht Graduate School of Visual Art and Design was able to

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elucidate its focus on Research - Based Practices further in the context of an international platform. Two mahku Fine Art lecturers – Tiong

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Ang and Jeanne van Heeswijk– were invited to develop new projects

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for the 7th Shanghai Biennale. Both projects stressed the mapping of the micro-political conditions constituting Shanghai's public space. Similar projects were executed by artists such as Ricardo Basbaum,

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Ursula Biemann, Mariana Castillo Deball, Lonnie van Brummelen & Siebren de Haan, Inci Evenir, Harun Farocki and Hito Steyerl.

Furthermore, two lecturers at mahku's MA Design faculty worked as editor ( Annette W. Balkema ) and designer ( Chris Vermaas ) on a parallel publication: The Shanghai Papers ( Hatje Cantz, Ostfildern, 2008 ). For this second Translocalmotion "catalogue", participating artists were invited to discuss their own research projects. That points to another important emancipatory focus of the professorship in Artistic Research, i.e. artists' contextualization of their own artistic practice. Alongside these artistic explorations, research-based practices, and documentary aesthetics, the curator organized an international symposium directed towards the evaluation and discussion of similar research issues such as the topic of knowledge production, ( public ) art as a tool for urban research and, ultimately, current curatorial models. The symposium, Mapping Public Space, took place on September 8 in the Shanghai Art Museum before the opening of the 7th Shanghai Biennale 2008.

Mapping Public Space started with a keynote statement by Irit Rogoff ( Goldsmiths’ College, London ). Rogoff addressed the concept of Documentary Turn, a concept that should not be viewed, she claims, as a focus on commentaries and coverages, since that would stress too much the issue of user reduction evoked by the image of consumptive knowledge. Rather, a documentary turn relates to a temporal suspension, an intensifying enactment of Agamben’s Homer Sacer, “ he who has been killed but not yet sacrificed.” Rogoff considers this a clear shift from a discussion of disasters and catastrophes as traumatic events towards an understanding of a necessary temporal suspension which is part of the processes of "trying to know". Thus, the documentary turn of artistic practice could be viewed as a form of knowledge in suspension, a form of knowledge production starting from the creative practice in the form of an actualization and interconnection of modes of the discourse on security, the globalizing economy, and the implied consumptive rhetorics of a need to know.

Mika Hannula ( Gothenburg School of A rt/mahku ) outlined a theoretical approach to the analysis of public space as constant

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process. In and through the acts and interventions of contemporary

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art, public space is about becoming a specific and particular place. Thus, public space is a process moving from a general space towards a unique place: a place created and generated both physically and

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discursively and relying greatly on our ability and willingness to engage in social and spatial imagination. Hannula also pointed to the productive dilemma of contemporary art projects ( both temporary and permanent variations ) in a situation where

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9 – 18 e s c a p i n g t h e g r i d erik a jacobs lord

19 – 28 s p at i a l s c e n a r i o s

we have become aware of the involvement in a double act in all our

wim marseille

representations of reality. We describe a version of the world while

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at the same time, through this description, we affect how reality is shaped and comprehended. We are never outsiders; we are always

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part of the problem, part of the mess. Both ourselves and our versions

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of the world are always a negotiated and value-laden combination of the five c’s: contextual, contested, conflictual, confused and also, hopefully, compassionate.

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m a p p i n g p u b l i c s pac e

In his presentation, Xu Jiang ( Dean, China Academy of Art ) addressed phenomena constituting the location Shanghai, such as the city as machine of migration, the birthplace of urban culture, the history of assimilation and distribution of ideas. Some of those ideas pertain to the critical link with an emerging mass culture and cultural industry. The important challenge and research issue for the Shanghai Biennale – a biennale continuously focused in its explorations on the city as context – will continue to imply the possibilities for mapping out a unique strategy for the study of urban culture in the local/global context. Kasper Koenig ( curator, Skulpturprojekte Muenster ) approached the urban issue from a historical perspective, within the context of the Muenster exhibition as a decennial manifestation. What have been the various methodologies and methods of production during the last four editions? In 1977 Europe, the reflection on the relationship between private and public was not yet an issue. It could be the case that urban issues at that time were largely an American focus, where the two domains of private and public already intermingled; demonstrated, for example, by Michael Asher’s mobile caravan project. For German artists the issue of private and public was irrelevant. Joseph Beuys even referred to ontological kitsch in that context. By 1987, European artists had become fascinated by urban issues. They considered themselves mediators and looked to further explore the ideological distinction between private and public. In 1997, that artistic attitude as such was critically questioned. To what extent could visual art contribute to changes and to what extent does art confirm a status quo? Negotiation seemed to be the main concept in 1997. In addition, the notion of “event” emerged in the form of uncompromising, raw propositions. In 2007, research tended to emphasize an anthropological focus, demonstrated in issues such as the Human Existence and Public Space in the Age of Privatization. An Asian example of reflection on public space is discussed by Young Chul Lee ( curator of Anyang City Public Art Project 2005, Korea ). In his lecture, art’s task is formulated clearly and distinctly: further articulation of what is already intrinsically present within the urban structure, and further reflection on the specificity of a local identity.

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That implies new requirements for artistic productions. Artistic

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productions should be executed in an in - between domain, between the bureaucratic and the artistic, between architecture and art,

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between ecology and commercialization. Ultimately, visual art should

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focus on the development of rhizomatic, non - hierarchical, urbanist

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models from artistic practices such as can be seen, for example,

9 – 18 e s c a p i n g t h e g r i d

in John Körmeling’s and in mvrdv’s work.

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Finally, Translocalmotion offered students from twelve international art academies ( including students from mahku ’s Spatial Design Faculty )

19 – 28 s p at i a l s c e n a r i o s

the opportunity to be part of a two-week international summer school.

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The goal was to map the possibilities and preconditions of public space in Shanghai and present the outcome in the form of an exhibition. ( HS )

andre as gerolemou

wim marseille

41 – 4 9 t r a n s e r i u m , a n o n - p l a c e ilse beumer

sociolinguistic symposium april 2008 research report

y o u b e t t e r g o n o w, b e f o r e y o u t e l l m e t h i n g s

50 – 54

m a p p i n g p u b l i c s pac e

i d o n ’t wa n t to k n ow. 56 c o l o f o n

computer: I learned to talk about it. I never could before. visitor: Mmm-hmm. I understand. computer: Yes, I’m rather disillusioned. But urm, do you have any plans for tonight? visitor: Me? No, I have no plans for tonight. How about you? computer: Well, I have no choice. visitor: Yes um, but, eh, who are you actually? Are you just calling this number? computer: You better go now, before you tell me things I don’t want to know. visitor: No, yes, all right, but then you’ll have to tell me who you are.Ω

Ω t r a n s c r i p t s

f r o m t el ep h o n e r e c o r d i n g s

( u t r e c h t 20 0 6 &

a m s t er da m 20 0 8 ).

t r a n s l at i o n s f r o m d u tc h by au t h o r

(k arien

A one - to - one conversation is like a game in which both conversation partners follow unwritten rules of Cooperation, Politeness and Relevance. Relevance is particularly interesting. Its theory can be explained as the wish to make sense of what the other is saying, however improbable this may be. Until recently I was not aware of these theories, other than that I use them unconsciously in the context of my interactive sound installation Telephone. Telephone is a computer device for ( semi - ) public space created together with sound designer Slobodan Bajic. It lures passers-by into a telephone conversation without them realizing that they are talking to a machine instead of a natural conversation partner. Telephone consists of a sound archive of pre-recorded utterances, sorted into categories. The voice of the visitor activates the computer, which randomly picks phrases from relevant sets, and plays them back in an attempt to maintain a dialogue. computer: And how are things with you? visitor: Well, it’s ok here. Lots of nice paintings and um... well... how can I phrase this... computer: Brilliant! visitor: I’m transferring you to... computer: Sorry, I was distracted. You were saying?

va n a s s e n d el f t ).

visitor: I’m transferring you to someone else!

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computer: Yes, that is a possibility but I never experienced it that way. s p at i a l p r a c t i c e s

Tone of voice, phrasing and timing are decisive elements in the

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development of a balanced telephone conversation. Speaker gives

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listener a turn by prolonging a syllable, dropping the voice’s pitch

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level or by using stopgaps. ‘Empty’ remarks such as bromides, stopgaps and fillers ( e.g. it’s like, well you know how it is ) help to keep a

erik a jacobs lord

19 – 28 s p at i a l s c e n a r i o s

conversation going, particularly in everyday conversations where the

wim marseille

‘ purpose is more social interaction than exchanging information;

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utterances that do not communicate meaning but open the channels of communication. They fulfil a social function and that is their

andre as gerolemou

41 – 4 9 t r a n s e r i u m , a n o n - p l a c e

principal aim.’

ilse beumer

The challenge with Telephone is to draw the visitor into the conversation by ( a ) introducing a personal, emotional story; ( b ) asking the visitor for response; and ( c ) using bromides to keep

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m a p p i n g p u b l i c s pac e

the conversation going. This way the visitor is drawn into answering a question or replying to a remark without questioning who is on the line. Generally, Telephone’s visitors react to a question or remark spontaneously and seem to forget previous utterances. The result is a random but believable conversation, although a confusing one, as the conversation partner at times seems a bit odd to the visitor. It is surprising to see how the visitor takes great pains to salvage the conversation. computer: I learned to talk about it. I never could before. visitor: But that’s good. computer: It’s all a bit nonsense, don’t you think? visitor: Well, no, when something’s bothering you, you should be frank about it. The installation’s randomness makes it difficult to keep a conversation going. But as mentioned above, this is not necessarily a problem since in everyday conversations social contact is prominent. It only becomes awkward when the visitor asks a specific counter-question, ( e.g. What’s your name? ). Nonetheless, the computer’s answer might still be acceptable, given that carefully phrased bromides are such strong elements in a conversation. computer: Beautifully spoken! I love you, we all love you! visitor: That’s disgusting! Why do you love me? computer: Yes, I also think it’s unfair but there’s not much one can do about it. Last April I presented Telephone at the 17th International Sociolinguistic Symposium in Amsterdam. My presentation was received with interest. Although researchers were surprised by the archive and responses, they disputed the randomness of the project. To turn my artistic research into proper sociolinguistics, I would have to narrow down my premises to a small archive of phrases on one topic for a specific type of interlocutors in a carefully chosen location. Until then I will be more of a funny novelty to the theorists. But my

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aim is not to do general sociolinguistic research; I am simply intrigued

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by the philosophical questions and psychological effect of everyday language in interaction. Via the Sociolinguistic Symposium I came into contact with

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researchers from Huddersfield University in the UK . This group develops a methodology for the emerging field of Language in

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9 – 18 e s c a p i n g t h e g r i d

Conflict. Conflict speech and impoliteness form part of Critical Discourse Analysis, which investigates how authority, inequality

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19 – 28 s p at i a l s c e n a r i o s

and power are transmitted through language. In a one - to - one

wim marseille

conversation, if one of the interlocutors ignores the rules of

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Cooperation, Politeness and Relevance, the power balance crumbles. The control shifts to the one that broke the rules; he is now in charge,

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41 – 4 9 t r a n s e r i u m , a n o n - p l a c e

because he put his interlocutor on the wrong footing. Often this

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means the end of the interaction. Interlocutors become strangers to each other and communication stops. With Telephone, who is ruling the conversation? Telephone’s behavior

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m a p p i n g p u b l i c s pac e

as a conversation partner can come across as nonsensical, ironic, too direct or rude - all forms of impoliteness. The installation could thus be considered an example of how to trigger conflict in language, with the computer as culprit. computer: Sorry, I was distracted. You were saying? visitor: No nothing, I didn’t say anything. computer: Well, that is a conversation that we certainly should have some day. ( Karien van Assendelft ) utrecht research lecture

A few times a year, the professorship in Artistic Research invites a guest speaker within the context of the Utrecht School of the Arts’ General Studies program. The invited speakers are all based in a research practice and engaged in the question of the specificity of artistic knowledge production and how that knowledge production is related to curatorial models. Mika Hannula has talked about the development of an exhibition model out of four presented PhD projects. On November 26, 2008, painter Luc Tuymans, who recently was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of Antwerp, lectured about the status of artistic research in the academic landscape of Belgium. Tuymans particularly focused upon the Brussels model, a PhD program for artistic researchers developed by Hans de Wolff at the Free University of Brussels. Within an artistic research framework, Tuymans discussed three exhibitions of his work in Museum Budapest, Haus der Kuenste Munich, and Museum Warzawa, while explaining how the exhibition of paintings is not merely a matter of mounting them on the wall. Rather, each exhibition set-up is a deliberate spatial and installative articulation of a concept. One of those concepts is the delusion of the utopian idea – in Tuyman’s view the ambiguity between religion and power – as constituted by the iconography of the Order of Jesuits. Tuymans claims that the utopian will ultimately lead to an absolute vacuum, via the topography of entertainment and obscenity in reality television.( Luc Tuymans )

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s p at i a l p r a c t i c e s 5 – 8 dutch artistic research event # 3 andre as mueller

9 – 18 e s c a p i n g t h e g r i d erik a jacobs lord

19 – 28 s p at i a l s c e n a r i o s wim marseille

2 9 – 4 0 c r e at i v e c a s t s andre as gerolemou

41 – 4 9 t r a n s e r i u m , a n o n - p l a c e ilse beumer

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55 56 c o l o f o n

m a h k u zin e 6

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journal of artistic research

s p at i a l p r a c t i c e s

w in t er 2009

m a h k u zin e

5 – 8 dutch artistic research event # 3 andre as mueller

journal of artistic research h o s t e d b y t h e u t r e c h t g r a d u at e s c h o o l o f v i s u a l a r t a n d d e s i g n

( mahku )

9 – 18 e s c a p i n g t h e g r i d

i s s n : 18 8 2 - 4 7 2 8

erik a jacobs lord

19 – 28 s p at i a l s c e n a r i o s c o n ta c t

wim marseille

mahkuzine

2 9 – 4 0 c r e at i v e c a s t s andre as gerolemou

u t r e c h t g r a d u at e s c h o o l o f v i s u a l a r t a n d d e s i g n ina boudier

- bakkerl a an

41 – 4 9 t r a n s e r i u m , a n o n - p l a c e

3582 va u t rech t

ilse beumer

the netherl ands mahkuzine@mahku.nl

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m a p p i n g p u b l i c s pac e

website w w w.m a hku.n l

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editorial board henk sl ager

( general

editor

)

a n ne t t e w. ba lk em a arjen mulder jessica gysel final editing a n ne t t e w. ba lk em a l anguage editing jennifer nol an t r a n s l at i o n s global vernunf t design chris t i a a n va n dok kum, m a hk u /m a edi tori a l desig n

earn m a hk u is pa r t o f t h e euro p e a n a r t is t i c rese a rch n e t work , t o g e t h e r w i t h t h e h e l s i n k i s c h o o l o f a r t, m a l m o s c h o o l o f a r t, gradcam

( dublin ),

s l a d e s c h o o l o f a r t, l o n d o n a n d v i e n n a

s c h o o l o f a r t.

pa r t i c i pa n t s k a r i e n v a n a s s e n d e l f t, m a h k u g r a d u at e , m a f i n e a r t. i l s e b e u m e r , m a h k u g r a d u at e d e s i g n , p u b l i c s pa c e d e s i g n . a n d r e a s g e r o l e m o u, m a h k u g r a d u at e d e s i g n , e d i t o r i a l d e s i g n . e r i k a j a c o b s l o r d , m a h k u g r a d u at e d e s i g n , i n t e r i o r d e s i g n . w i m m a r s e i l l e , c o u r s e l e a d e r m a i n t e r i o r d e s i g n , m a h k u , u t r e c h t. a n d r e a s m u e l l e r , r e s e a r c h e r j a n v a n e y c k a c a d e m y, m a a s t r i c h t ; co

- c u r at o r

s y m p o s i u m s pat i a l p r a c t i c e s .