MEMORIAL REPOSITORY Michael Cradock
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VISIONS OF HEAVEN / taken from renaissance imagery of the afterlife, assumptions, beatifications collected in Rome
models
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develop
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design 32 /
section AA
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initial concept
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isometric
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conceptual sections
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plans
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conceptual section
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section BB
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theory
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perspectives
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clay
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wood
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wax
site
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parchment
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city map
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flow diagram
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function and circulation
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ceci tuera cela
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site photographs and analysis
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conceptual section
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section CC
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development of the medium the medium as space beyond the existing medium
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WAX XI / Cold cast wax. PARCHMENT VII / Mould baked paper pulp.
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CLAY I / This space is cold, rough and dry. Not at all pleasant in many respects, however it bears the marks of the maker, imperfections, dips, sags and impressions which make its surface a pleasure to study. It also looks almost edible. The taste is earthy, crumbly and this is mirrored in the smell. II / Pictorial symbols appear in Iraq / Mesopotamia around 3400BC, carved into clay tabletsI. I find the amount of dust generated by writing makes longer passages difficult, forward planning and simplification of forms is necessary. III / Interwoven clay and paper.
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WOOD I / Very smooth and crisp to the touch, with a slight chalkiness from the sanded dust left on the surface. This makes its consistency on the palette unpleasantly cloying, it does not match the piney smell which is invigorating and zingy. The surface has a robustness and immovability that is very reassuring and present, though not forceful. It is a cosy space. II / Some of the oldest wooden tablets have been found in Vindolanda, in the North of England. It is supposed that wood was a hardier material when faced with the wet British climate and was used by the Romans as a means to bring Latin from the ContinentII. It is, however, nigh on impossible to write neatly on, without a hammer and chisel. III / Wood pulp, moulded form.
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WAX I / It forms a naturally smooth surface where gravity wins out yet, in other places, the casting process generates folds and bulges, urging you to touch. It is initially cool to the touch but soon takes on the warmth from your touch, becoming malleable. This space is markable, translucent, ephemeral, carveable. It smells musty. It tastes chemical. II / More of a jotter or notepad because it can be easily erased with a heated spatula, designed more for the ‘common man’III. Incredibly pleasant experience to write on, however it is largely illegible due to the excessive amounts of excess material generated in the process. III - V / Inverted ice moulds. VI / Ice moulded wax, textured as it dries. VII - VIII / Ice moulded wax, extreme temperatures. IX / Water moulded wax. X / Rolled ice moulded wax.
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PARCHMENT I / Has a permanence to it, something that offers a warmth, cosiness, informality. The roughness and organicism of the forms generated create an easiness; it is tactile, rough, occasionally perforated, dense in places. A more industrial method would make a colder, more clinical space. The colour helps create a warmth. It smells edible. It tastes dry. II / Library collections become large collections of parchment scrolls. By the 1st Century AD, the process becomes so advanced codices (books), even the pocket codex, are possibleIV. I find that to stop leeching, the pulp should be mixed with starch before it is dried, thus my ink runs. The quality of the writing surface is poor, yet this can be perfected with practice or industrial methods - mine remains primitive.
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III - IV / Form-moulded paper pulp. V / Water-ice moulded paper and wax compound. VI / Baked paper pulp and wax compound.
GENOME SPECTRA
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While the written word is ‘the ultimate realisation of centuries of the oral tradition’V, where does the introduction of technology into the literary tradition leave the culture of the written word?
ceci tuera cela
The phrase ‘ceci tuera cela’ (literally translated as ‘this will kill it’) is taken from Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame in which Frollo compares a book with his ancient Cathedral. In this context, he expresses his fear that the book will kill the need for a Cathedral, a physical place of didacticism. In essence, that the written word will destroy the image as the primary means of instruction. Since then, the phrase has been taken up by a number of academics to explore this phenomenon further. Marshall McLuhan, for example, compares the television to the book, perpetuating this supercession or destruction of one medium of communication by another. Today, the phrase is most commonly concerned with the idea that the computer will be the death of the book. Just as Michael Heim notes in his book Metaphysics of Virtual Reality, I too do not miss the irony of producing a book arguing that the death of the book is imminent.
Marshall McLuhan’s traces the evolution through the written word. He suggests three stages of development in his chronology: 1/
PRELITERATIVE / TRIBAL ERA spoken word ear
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GUTENBERG AGE written word eye
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ELECTRONIC AGE / RETRIBALISED MAN full sensory involvement senses immaterialVI
Let us begin with the change from Stage 1 to Stage 2. With the creation of the written phonetic alphabet, man develops an ability for linear, logical thought. This affects our perception of space. We are forced to see connections, uniformities, continuities. Compare this with Daniel Everett’s assessment of the language spoken (only spoken) by the Piraha tribe in Brazil and one sees evidence to back this upVII. Their speech is completely without connection. Everett has it that the insertion of phrases inside one another simply has no function in an entirely presenttense consciousness. Such a form of thinking states thoughts only in discrete unitsVIII. With the linearity that came with the written, rather than oral, world, we tended away from tribal societies towards a nationalism which extends this uniformity and makes patterns within society and identity. McLuhan goes onto suggest that knowledge obtained from a single source - books - is no longer favoured. With a digital world, nationalism becomes globalismIX. In a unified world, the shared national identity becomes a shared international identity. Finally, a unified support of a digital media is inevitable following his conclusion that ‘all extensions generate obsolescence’.
at the computer interface, the spirit migrates from the body to the world of total representation where information and images float through the Platonic mind without grounding in bodily experience MICHAEL HEIM / VIRTUAL REALITY
As the world becomes more and more digitalised, social commentators warn of a dehumanisation of societyX. The loss of the written word principally the book - takes us away from physical comprehension of sensation and towards a society in which instant exposure to disconnected visual images can gratify us. Baudrillard’s theories on this subject conclude that we already exist in a world of simulation: ‘all is composed of references with no referents; a hyperreality’XI. Academics such as Alison Muri and Marvin Minsky suggest that the reason for this lies in our understanding of human cognitive system. As we understand more about how we work as beings and the electrical charges that make up all we sense, we begin to comprehend reality on a level devoid of mystery and spirituality. At the same time, we begin to see similarities with how we see information on the screen, where that information is stored and where it comes from. Essentially, our bodies and our texts have become similarly coded bits. Our understanding of body and text has been reversed. For example, we can see DNA code written down before us, like computer code. The belief in a God-created-man and an interest in individuality is replaced by an existence signified by the computerised worldXII.
as the page becomes immaterial so the self is depicted as immaterial, flickering in a state of virtuality, snagged on the edge of the screen separating world from data OR the conscious mind freed from the body’s limitations suggest the fulfilment of a long-standing desire for transcendence, of which the electronic archive is a secularist versionXIII
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It is the case that, to a certain extent, a part of ourselves is already virtualised and that, when we die, we will have a sort of immortal presence outside of our bodies that exists only within the internet. Could it not be argued that Facebook, and similar social networking sites, is a recepticle for memories in the form of photographs and messages and photographs and information in the form of birthdates, school information etc (how representative this is of our true selves is up to the user however). We save copious amounts of personal information onto our phones, tablets, laptops, computers: pin numbers, bank details, contact details for ourselves, friends, family, medical records, previous addresses, web settings, passwords. And that’s just the information we give over the machine willingly. Our browsing habits are monitored to build up a profile of us online, keystrokes are logged, preferences saved and shared. Anyone of us has uttered at some point in recent history ‘my whole life is on this...’.
With the unification of body and machine, it is believed by some scientists that within 50 years it will be possible to totally submerge ourselves in technology, essentially downloading our minds onto a hard drive. It is already a common idea in science fiction literature, like Neuromancer and Johnny MnemonicXIV. To me, this obliterates the need for an afterlife in the religious sense as our minds could now live forever. Baudrillard suggests similar fears for a spiritual crisis in which computer simulation of human soul could see ‘the divinity’ being ‘volatised into simulcra’XV. Parallels can be drawn between this existence and the afterlife in the religious sense, however. Vivian Sobchack’s criticism on science fiction films have suggested, that an existence ‘as ghosts in the machine’ allow us to escape the ills of the physical world; which is essentially the definition of HeavenXVI. The idea of a digitised afterlife where people’s thoughts can be stored, or backed-up, begins to take shapeIXVII.
HIERONYMUS BOSCHE / TERRESTRIAL PARADISE / ASCENT OF THE BLESSED / FALL OF THE DAMNED / HELL
Instead of this afterlife being something outside of human consciousness, I propose that it can be something which is to be accessed by others: a huge database of the knowledge of the dead. However, if every single expired mind is on record, one can draw parallels with the oversaturation of ‘literature’ as a result of the freedom of selfpublishing on the internet. With a legal-deposit library in the contemporary sense, such a profusion of information means that secondary, even tertiary buildings are needed to house it. A hierarchy is established: the most useful records are held in the central library with less useful records relegated to enormous warehouse book stacks, still available to the public but not without special requests and delay. I want to create a judgement system to sort this information into useful and useless. If I continue my metaphor of an afterlife, one could suggest, in essence a heaven and a hell. The heaven full of rewarding, useful, inspiring knowledge, the hell full of base, degraded, irrelevant knowledge. I have been using last judgement or ‘doom’ paintings as a starting point for designing space.
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Melvin Bragg The Written World, Episode 1 (January 2012) Melvin Bragg The Written World, Episode 1 (January 2012) Melvin Bragg The Written World, Episode 3 (January 2012) Melvin Bragg The Written World, Episode 2 (January 2012) Melvin Bragg The Written World, Episode 4 (January 2012) Marshall McLuhan The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (University of Toronto Press 1962) Everett Language: The Cultural Tool (Pantheon 2012) Richard Wirick Abstractless Codes: Non-generalised Speech and the Upending of Contemporary Linguistics, Da pper Dan (January 2013) Marshall McLuhan The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects (Penguin 1967) Michael Heim Virtual Realism (Oxford University Press 1998) Jean Baudrillard Simulacra and Simulation (University of Michigan Press 1994) Alison Muri Virtually Human: The Electronic Page, the Archived Body, and Human Identity, The Future of the Page (University of Toronto Press 2004) Alison Muri Virtually Human: The Electronic Page, the Archived Body, and Human Identity Chris Speed Jean Baudrillard Simulacra and Simulation Marshall McLuhan The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man (University of Toronto Press 1962) Alison Muri Virtually Human: The Electronic Page, the Archived Body, and Human Identity
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SITE MODEL / wax cast from a vacuum formed mold stretched over a plywood former.
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ADJACENT TO THE CHURCH OF SAN NICOLA IN CARCERE / on the site of three ancient roman temples, the ground is still littered with rubble, its boundaries defined by the exposed ruins that give it such a rich historical reference. To the north, the an ancient theatre provides an imposing edifice, upon whole remains later medieval builders have constructed palaces. To the east, the Capitoline Hill, the seat of renaissance government and to the west, Tiber Island, the birth place of the city.
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1 / the church of san nicola in carcere and the teatro di marcello front mussolini’s ceremonial boulevard, here the five metre change in level is most visible.
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2 / the church dominates the ruins that once served the theatre and held a market.
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3 / north of the site, the layers of roman, medieval and rennaisance architecture are clearly visible.
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4 / the main entrance to the site is accessed from the late-constructed embankment that runs along the tiber, forming an informal piazza behind the church.
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development of the idea conceptualising sketchbook work
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INITIAL CONCEPT
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CONCEPTUAL SECTION / 1 200
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CONCEPTUAL SECTION / 1 200
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2013
2020
2038
HANS MEMLING / THE LAST JUDGEMENT / 1467-71
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Pray for the people your
For they won’t be when you’r
POINT OF OVERLAP
POINT OF OVERLAP
Pray for the people inside your
head For they won’t be there when you’re dead JOHNNY FLYNN As life fades, one retains one’s memories of the deceased within one’s mind, in effect extending the life of said person. Over time and with the greiving process, these memories fade until there is nothing left. Ultimately when all of the people die who retained memories, the remembered person is completely gone. However, it is also true that generations past leave a shadow on an individual or community, albeit an undetected one. Thus, my library forms a repository for the deceased, souls which gradually fade as the building become taller but whose shadows remain for a while in the people who visit the library.
AS LIFE FADES, ONE RETAINS ONE’S MEMO DECEASED WITHIN ONE’S MIND, IN EFFECT THE LIFE OF SAID PERSON. OVER TIME AN THE GREIVING PROCESS, THESE MEMORIE Pray for the people inside UNTIL THERE IS NOTHING LEFT. ULTIMATEL ALL OF THE PEOPLE DIE WHO RETAINED M your head THE REMEMBERED PERSON IS COMPLETEL HOWEVER, IT IS ALSO TRUE THAT GENERA LEAVE A SHADOW ON be THE ANthere INDIVIDUAL, For they won’t UNDETECTED ONE.
when you’re dead
THUS, MY LIBRARY FORMS A REPOSITORY Johnny Flynn DECEASED, SOULS WHICH GRADUALLY FA BUILDING BECOMES TALLER BUT WHOSE S REMAIN FOR ETERNITY IN THE PEOPLE WH AS LIFE FADES, ONE RETAINS ONE’S MEMORIES OF THE LIBRARY.
DECEASED WITHIN ONE’S MIND, IN EFFECT EXTENDING THE LIFE OF SAID PERSON. OVER TIME AND WITH THE GREIVING PROCESS, THESE MEMORIES FADE UNTIL THERE IS NOTHING LEFT. ULTIMATELY, WHEN ALL OF THE PEOPLE DIE WHO RETAINED MEMORIES, THE REMEMBERED PERSON IS COMPLETELY GONE. HOWEVER, IT IS ALSO TRUE THAT GENERATIONS PAST LEAVE A SHADOW ON THE AN INDIVIDUAL, ALBEIT AN UNDETECTED ONE. THUS, MY LIBRARY FORMS A REPOSITORY FOR THE DECEASED, SOULS WHICH GRADUALLY FADE AS THE BUILDING BECOMES TALLER BUT WHOSE SHADOWS REMAIN FOR ETERNITY IN THE PEOPLE WHO VISIT THE LIBRARY.
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POINT OF OVERLAP
AS DE TH TH UN AL TH HO LE UN
TH DE BU RE LIB
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DEVELOPMENTAL SECTION / 1 200
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memorial repository
FINAL SECTION AA / 1 200
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ISOMETRIC / 1 500
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memorial repository
SECTION BB / 1 75
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PERSPECTIVE I / memories are judged
PERSPECTIVE II / information, once requested, is formatted for reference.
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PUBLIC
REPOSIT MEMORY
REFERENCE
VOID VISITOR
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memorial repository
FINAL SECTION CC / 1 200
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