Alec McCulloch Portfolio

The Haunting of Number 12 Overview

ARC8060 Mark Laverty | Alec McCulloch 140216273 | 140318027

Abstract Abstract Within an epoch defined by an unconscious sense of displacement; and Our external surroundings have become static, latent, haunted by the ghosts of the breakdown of a cohesive sense of temporality; we look to the home our present pasts and mistreatment of the world around us. Nature decays, just as for a sense of comfort and stability. our socio-temporal rhythms collapse in on themselves.

However, working from home has become the new norm, and with this

More than ever, we cling to the intangible texture of time.

And in haunting, time becomes a substance.

dramatic shift in circumstance, the traditional ways in which we perceive The studio is irregularly constituted into a domain charged with domestic activity, our domestic surroundings, and our true relationships with them, should causing a parallactic collision between otherwise separate worlds and leaving the be challenged. home studio as a mnemonic landscape of conflicting dynamics.

Our praxis explores investigations into the domestic studio we find ourselves confined to within periods of lockdown. Through use of forensic analysis, interrogation of the gaze, and exploration of the parallax [gap], we search for meaning within the residues left behind by previous occupation, questioning our sense of place, and searching for The allegorical home forms a site of ghostly transmission, from which our search presence in a time otherwise characterised by absences. for a sense of place and temporal stability confronts the spectre.

The Haunting of Number 12 records and archives our time in lockdown throughout the 2020/2021 pandemic, at our home on Chester Street, Newcastle.

Footage

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3N0rCjczm1M Materialisations of the unfathomable, captured.

There are three pivotal forms of documentation that showcase our findings:

Journal

The dispersion of filmic media through Zoom questions the audience’s embodiment to their online interface, haunting through the limitations of the computer screen and stimulating those fatigued in the monotony of domestic isolation.

The Haunting of Number 12 Our story, told exactly as it happened.

Archive

https://www.12chesterstreet.com/navigatingthevessel

In-depth analysis of all encounters and interactive drawings to navigate through Number 12.

The Haunting of

ARC8060 Collaborative Thesis

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The time is out of joint’[1]

Amidst an epoch of socio-cultural turmoil, the displacement of our corporeal and subsequent cerebral state, ceaselessly challenges our methods and approaches to the everyday. At no point within recent history has humanity felt so intrinsically connected, yet so distanced from itself and its societies. Never have we been so isolated from others as we are now. Working from

home

is the new

norm, and with this dramatic shift in circumstance, the traditional ways in which we perceive our surroundings and our true relationships with them should be challenged.

Deleuze describes the ‘studio space itself as an extended palette to the artist’.[2] However, when removed from our conventional working environment, the studio is irregularly reconstituted into a domain charged with domestic

activity, causing a parallactic collision between

otherwise separate worlds and leaving the

home studio

as a

mnemonic landscape of conflicting dynamics.

The constitution of the

domestic studio

from such a

contingency crafts an environment of unprecedented interactions. As the timelines of our

domestic and studio

lives become ever increasingly intertwined; so too do our very fundamental syntheses of reality. This intertwining unlocks a reorientation of perception through a parallactic entanglement in what is past and present, digital and physical, visible and invisible.

[2] - Vidler, A. (1999). The Architectural Uncanny : Essays In The Modern Unhomely. Cambridge, Mass. [etc.]: MIT press. p.55

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[1] - Hamlet as quoted by Jacques Derrida in ‘The Time is Out of Joint.’

Derrida, J. (1995). Deconstruction is/in America: a new sense of the political, [online] 32(11), pp.14-38. Available at: <https://www.jstor. org/stable/j.ctt9qfqqx.6?seq=25#metadata_info_tab_contents>.

[3] - Lacan, J. (1978). Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. NY & London, W.W. Norton and Co.

3 Number 12 The Haunting of

The Haunting of Number 12

More than ever, we cling to the intangible texture of time. and in haunting, time becomes a substance.

Written by: Alec McCulloch Mark Laverty ARC8060 Collaborative Thesis 140318027 140216273 4 Thesis

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24th June 2020.

As the epicentre of student housing and university halls tightens its grasp on Newcastle, Chester Street remains as one of the few artefacts of a long-lost working-class community. It is here that, despite these observations, we accommodate ourselves for the remainder of our student tenure in Newcastle.

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The Haunting of

Number 12

[4] - Mansons, (2021). 8 Bedroom Terraced House For Rent In Newcastle. [online] Mansons.net. Available at: <https://www.mansons.net/propertyto-rent/newcastle/ne2-1at/1876926> [Accessed 15 January 2021].

18, 16, 14, 12. Other than the gentle decay of the garden walls and missing railings that line the entrance, there is no immediate indicators as to what is held within…

We find modern walls and base units, fridge/ freezer, stainless steel oven and hob, dish washer and tiled splash backs crammed into a ‘open plan’ kitchen-living room.[4]

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Chapter 1 - Entry We move into the house as a collective of 8.

Little did we know that within this period, we would be confined to the home for work as well as rest.

Already a daunting prospect; we could never have predicted what was to come...

We set about recording our experience.

[5] - Vidler, A. (1999). The Architectural Uncanny : Essays In The Modern Unhomely.

Cambridge, Mass. [etc.]: MIT press. p.168

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30 August 2020

The pandemic worsened.

Obscured from the eyes of those that wish to scrutinise, 12 Chester Street has become a vessel within these times to escape social vilification.

Rules established by ‘forces’ whose fictitious opinions lack sympathy or consideration towards student culture, make our house ‘illegal’.

Upon exit, we immediately submit ourselves to scrutiny with our mere presence to one another.

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[15] - Power, A. and Mumford, K. (1999). The Slow Death Of Great Cities?. 1st ed. Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

It all unravelled when we began to survey and scan the house.

[6]

Upon first inspection, the house seemed inoffensively banal. Stripped to its bones. The necessity to house 8 students within a property clearly designed for smaller occupancy monopolised every crevice. All the furniture and loose items indicate deterioration from misuse, or are simply missing altogether. The home was retrofitted to be robust in its ability to minimise damage from the heavy handed student.

Built in the 1870’s, Newcastle saw a sharp rise in regional economic growth, with the expansion of industry giving rise to a demand for housing in/around the city centre.[15] From the day this property was first sold, until present day, 12 Chester Street has housed many a* family (and student) within it’s walls.

[6] - Merleau-Ponty, M. and Lefort, C. (1968). The Visible And The Invisible. Evanston [Ill.]: Northwestern University Press.

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Every sprawl within Newcastle City Centre’s 44.4sq mile radius has the traces of a high density student population engrained into its fabric.

Recent whispers float through Granger Markets stalls of the infectious graduates: noise complaints; yet another block of accommodation being erected on a site of

[7]

personal significance; excessive alcohol consumption leading to another secretion of vomit having to be swept away on the route back to Jesmond.

The demolition of primary schools, local bakeries, and a beloved pub, flattened to make way for students and motorways.

[7] - Graham, S. (2017). VERTICAL THE CITY FROM SATELLITES. LONDON: VERSO.

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With these newly imposed rules of isolation and confinement, ourselves and the larger scale student population, perhaps unconsciously, begin to restrict our exposure to outsiders, regressing and reducing our lives into secrecy.

And that’s when they appeared.

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15th October 2020 We feel something watching us, picking apart our every move, recording the processes of our day to day lives.

Little did we know that this was just the beginning... These paranoias would start to haunt us.

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We look to record and archive the newly apparent object using our conventional, architectural tools.

Our studies capture a glimmer of this spectral encounter, its resistance to precise documentation echoes its temporal impermanence.

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17th October 2020 In an effort to contain and record these spectral encounters, we begin to collate footage of our experiences.

I* started to notice it more and more: that which once seemed invisible, began to manifest viscerally.

The gap - between present and past, visible and invisible, digital and physical, slowly started to seep into the fabric of the house.

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Chapter 2 - The Living* Room */studio Abundant with domestic activity; the living room-studio space that we tirelessly inhabit, fractures in the event of the spectral.

The configuration of memory traces from an internal psyche.

8th December 2020 A spectre claims the body of a 30 Thesis

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damaged chair.

[8] - Sigmund Freud, trans. by Graham Frankland. (2005).

The Unconscious. London: Penguin Books.

Beyond the visceral, the parallactic interpretation by the machine renders vast chiasmic gaps, opening up Number 12.

We look to these unfathomable translations for revelations, however only voids and glitches are unearthed.

Cut directly in half, Unburied, unheimlich.

[8]

its fracture was The vessel has become a contingent

compounded by a severe

landscape of parallax

scorching; leaving the object

encounters.

scattered in two halves across the room.

The split ego

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Meticulously, we document and study the severed object.

Now using additional light analysis tools, we generate data on the anomaly.

As we discover at a later date, these recordings seep into the formal architectural drawings we gather. Haunting their representation.

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6th November 2020 The severed chairs final resting spot aligned to reveal another parallactic fault in our domain.

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The crudely interpretative, glitching nature of the scans animated the previously flat terrain of the coffee table.*

Scanned living room

Re-scanned monument

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7th November 2020 Exhaustive scanning of the living room drew a multitude of perspectives around the coffee table, its myriad of forms and functions dispersed throughout the data, describing endless configurations of domestic exchange.

For the 8 of us, the coffee table acts as an axis mundi for social interaction within the living room.

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Peripheral alteration, Digital entanglement, Chronologic dilation.

Materialisations of The Unfathomable.

21st November 2020 They breach further into our domain.

Parallactic imagery manifests upon areas of vulnerability and decay, claiming the fabric of Number 12

as its own. Through its seizure of our

domestic devices, it invites the eye to witness its abyssal parallax through a familiar gateway.

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The spectral object seeks to reveal something, yet conceal everything.

We attempt to rationalise the faint evocations of spatial qualities present on the door - tracking them back into the dwelling using common forensic techniques.

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4th December 2020 With the unburial of residues, detritus and (mytho)histories we reflect on the value of the past, what we choose to remember and forget, consciously or unconsciously. The temporal seepage that

Convergence point

follows seeks to constitute a domestic landscape of personal histories that form an unconscious experience of the space.

Through the consequent representation of this, the home is rendered as an allegorical formulation of the supressed ego.[9]

The compression of history and mythology within the domestic environment reorientates perception, evoking individual reflections on uncanny descriptions of the home and what it means to be situated within a domestic space whilst usually acclimatised to a more urban ontological experience.

[9] - Freud, S. and Strachey, J. (2001). The Ego And The ID And Other Works. London: Vintage.

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‘Operating as it does at the edges of language, the poetic image in architecture can be grasped only as a faint echo or evocation.’[10]

[10] - Perez-Gomez, A. (2018). Celebrating the Marvellous: Surrealism in Architecture. Architectural Design, 88, pp.26 - 29.

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Once again, we look to record and make sense of these uncanny discoveries; yet at every turn the object’s unfathomable condition rejects rationale.

persist

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The glitches seep through the fabric of the digital world they were conceived in. Their spectral vestiges pointing to the uncanny spill of a previous tale yet to be exposed.

‘The experience of being haunted is one of noticing absences in the present, recognizing fissures, gaps and points of crossover.’[11]

This was only the beginning...

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[11] - Shaw, K. (2018). Hauntology: The Presence Of The Past In TwentyFirst Century English Literature. Institute for Urban Design (US).

Pending the closure of our unavailing pursuit for vindication, that which initially appeared mundane and dormant, now proved fractured and splitting.

The homes fabric is haunted by the occupancy of its past, revealing to us what is to come…

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We map stills of the film onto architectural drawings of the home.

A collection of film stills and their relation to the living room.

Timestamps added for clarity.

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Chapter 3 - The Hallway 11th December 2020 It does not end with the living room.

Before we weave our way upwards to the labyrinth of bedrooms, we are met with a space that is consumed by tertiary storage; workbenches, bicycles, coats, shoes, power tools, skateboards, ruck sacks, cleaning equipment, remnants of debris characterised by torn carpets, wonky balustrades, and an inherent darkness only to be broken by intermediate flashes of daylight from swinging doors along its path.

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[12] - Danielewski, M. (2000). House Of Leaves. United States: Pantheon. p.153

11th December 2020 A further tear within the fabric of the

Plan of the rupture

domestic

ruptured through the internal circulation.

Section of the rupture 60 Thesis

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Number 12

The masonry walls of the extension deviate from those of the household. Between this expansion*, a void is unveiled, enveloping the area of hallway that was once solid brick.

In our desperation to quickly repair the home, our studies of the extension’s parallactic gap revealed further mythohistories and contingent landscapes lurking within the common patchwork assortment of the student house interior.

Retraced back onto the gap, temporal cartographies expose and amalgamate the 62 Thesis

disparate structures.

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‘A profound modification of the object, which from the familiar is transformed into the strange, and as strange as something that provokes disquiet because of its absolute proximity’ [13]

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[13] - Mahmood Sami-Ali in Vidler, A. (1999). The Architectural Uncanny : Essays In The Modern Unhomely. Cambridge, Mass. [etc.]: MIT press.

11th December 2020 Further defects from the digital world enroach upon our domain.

Upon closer inspection, the form moulds itself around the plastered walls, hovering ominously within a plane previously uncharted.

An invitation to the unknown, the unfathomable reaches back.

From our records, we cannot distinguish between the objects form and shadows.

Its shadow spreads across the

The resultant abyss of their

gap, distorting the plaster walls

combination meanders and unfolds within the drawings.

that surround it.

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Abandonment sparks vigilance amongst the 8 of us.

Wandering the narrow passages of the hallway, its blackened walls offer little but a glimmer into the cosmos of uncertainty that feeds on it.

1941 Lambert’s Leap Public House As the luftwaffe filled the night skies of Newcastle, the landlord would not be shifted from his bar.

It was only through his perseverance to stay open and take refuge below in his cellar did he save the lives of the men and women whom frequented the Lambert’s Leap.

‘The living present is scarcely as self-sufficient as it claims to be; that we would do well not to count on its density and solidity, which might under exceptional circumstances betray us’.[14] 72 Thesis

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[14] - Fredric Jameson in Shaw, K., 2018. Hauntology: The Presence Of The Past In Twenty-First Century English Literature. Institute for Urban Design (US).

ros s. [15] an dc itie sm eet tem po ra l ipl e hic hm ult at w po int the rm ark s cte sp e the wi th nc ou nte r Th ee 74 Thesis

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[15] - Shaw, K., (2018). Hauntology: The Presence Of The Past In TwentyFirst Century English Literature. Institute for Urban Design (US).

We nicknamed it ‘The Bomb’.​

Al + Fe2O3 (25:75) A small percussion charge of gunpowder ignites the finely powdered magnesium and barium peroxide, bursting the highly combustible magnesium casing it is contained within. The resultant reaction exudes a fireball of solar magnitude.

The resultant reaction exudes a fireball of solar magnitude.

Moments before, the fabric of time captures the bomb.

We cannot escape its presence, the looming insecurity preludes despair.

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If allowing the political unconscious to

Watching…

surface demands engaging with the psychic dimension of architecture, then my* proposition is that architectural criticism be considered as a kind of ‘analytic object’, located in the area of overlap between architectural object and critic, with reference to the setting as the architecture of psychoanalysis.[16]

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[16] - Rendell, J. (2017). The Architecture Of Psychoanalysis.

1st ed. London: I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd.

Little assurance comes to those, that dwell beneath the spectre

Nor for that matter could one draw security, between splinters and shrapnel

For the fragile could not know the meaning, in time they will learn

It was that december, when the beloved made their departure,

that they did not return.

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A collection of film stills and their relation to the hallway.

Timestamps added for clarity.

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Chapter 4 - The Yard 27th January 2021 The yard, along with all the spaces of excavation within the project; become sites for melancholic reflection on the transience of human and digital existence.

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Historical rem ains and presen t carcasses cling to the crumblin g walls of the back ya rd.

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The yard clings onto past events.

Gatherings of yesteryear animate the space, revealing temporal cartographies of the past.

The relics of previous permanent and temporary structures are plotted throughout.

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27th January 1998 Another spectre casts its shadow across the yard.

It lurks on the periphery of our vision throughout our occupation... and perhaps for decades prior...

Illuminating the surface of this concrete tomb, it ceaselessly searches...

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Through archiving our spectral visitor, we encounter the voices of previous occupants.

They speak of a beloved household cat, lay to rest some 23 years ago, buried beneath the back yard.

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Prowling the perimeter of the yard, the ghost of our deceased feline ancestor tirelessly traces its vestiges, decade after decade.

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The yard has physically shrunken.

Mismatched brickwork and re-filled structural openings leave shadowless traces.

The walls of the yard had tilted inwards approximatly 3o from all sides.

Our vessel was collapsing.

*our

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3rd February 2021: A door is suffering from a temporal pathology.

Two histories collide.

The past extension’s projected surface occupies a psychical, spatial embodiment beyond its

Perspective Plan

perceived occupation of space.

102 Thesis

[17] - Shaw, K., (2018). Hauntology: The Presence Of The Past In Twenty-First Century English Literature. Institute for Urban Design (US).

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Glimpses of this haunting collision of past and present capture an impression of what is to come, a sense of hope within confinement.

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Through our research of previous planning applications, coupled with the mnemonic histories we have uncovered through research online and word of mouth, we can confidently speculate that the extension was erected in 1976.

We detect two histories, nearly 50 years apart, that amalgamate to form the hauntological extension.

We traced the remains and inflections of a previous extension to our home on Chester Street.

Hints towards its location

and programmatic function remained, 108 Thesis

yet its history was repressed.

A collection of film stills and their relation to the yard.

Timestamps added for clarity.

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Chapter 5 - The Bedrooms 16th February 2021 Harbouring minimal evidence of previous occupancy, this 15-yearold extension barely makes up a fraction of the entire lifetime of the house.

For ourselves, they linger outside...

Watching.

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16th February 2021 The yard has been lost.

Spectral entities within its perimeter - glare menacingly into the bedrooms.

Previously a space filled with prospects of social events and freedom from the claustrophobic indoors; now a playground for revenant strata.

The spectre illuminates Mark’s window, projecting shadows and refractions of detritus suspended on the window plane into his room.

.

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13th

15th April 2021 10th1st March 2021 March 2021 17th24th May 2021 25th March 2021 17th February 2021 16th February 2021 4th2021 May 2021 28th February 4th2021 April 2021 27th April

2nd

7th

Close studies of the residual debris captured on the window pane, consume the bedroom.

Previously a place of respite from production, these drawings linger, polluting the space with an atmosphere of prolonged confinement and unrelenting production.

Perhaps we will never leave this home.

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Melancholic Residues The palimpsest of residues and dirt fragments build-up over time on the suspended plane of desire.

The spectre records the process, with each new iteration, the drawings consume more of Mark’s room.

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Confined within these four walls, the mind locates fascination in the mundane, and

the

passage

of

time

becomes

120 Thesis

dilated.

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Infiltrated by darkness and consumed by misery, the uninvigorated mind neglects any prospect of escape.

Haunting raises spectres, and it alters the experience of being in time, the way we separate the past, the present, and the future.

The ghost, as I understand it, is not the invisible or some ineffable excess. The whole essence, if you can use that word, of a ghost is that it has a real presence and demands its due, your attention.[18]

122 Thesis

[18] - Gordon, A. (2011). Ghostly matters.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.

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Above the absolute, the purest strain of entrapment in Number 12, the light of the spectre diminishes.

The identical bedroom above offers an alternate rendition of our reality.

long anticipated

disintegration

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The comfort and security habitually offered within the bedroom, becomes discoloured in the light of hope.

Once a place of refuge from the pressures and demands of university work that so tightly grasp our living space, now bleeds as the gaze of the spectre overlooks our occupancy.

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Jolting and twisting, the ghost affirms its presence amongst us, confidently scribing stroke after stroke, strike after strike, every tear and spill recalling a nebula of fragmented memories.

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27th3rd February March 2021 2021 28th March 2021

A revealing of outlines only visible to the imagination.

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I-06-H

Day 84: An unremarkable affair, the creak of the door closer grows increasingly agitated.

I-06-P I-06-R

Day 87: Settles and rushes, smearing away yesterday’s weather.

I-06-L

Day 113: Back pains and headaches, defficiency and stagnation in the home, return to the ball?

I-06-S I-06-N

Day 119: Seven entire wash cycles, the tea towel dampeners are not helping.

I-06-W Day 155: What day is it, today?

Hiow many more weeks?

I-06-A Day 193: How are we going to move all of this stuff out?

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Grasping the window frame, our spectre evokes the anxiety of falling.

A dark history is revealed…

1752

Myth beholds a gruesome forty-five-foot plummet…

A shattered spine, an instantaneous demise and one miraculous survival.

Number 12’s

historical footprint is compounded, revealing

a gap in the parallax view, a gap of unfathomable nature that haunts our everyday.

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In all the history of Newcastle there is nothing more curious than the strange account of Mr Cuthbert Lambert.

The peculiar series of repeated events that embedded their mark into the grounds beneath our

home,

what they once

called ‘Lambert’s Leap’.

2021

Lambert’s Leap is now gone.

The setting that framed the legend of Sandyford Dene, its devout stone bridge and peaceful river bed; simply filled in. The Dene is now lost to memory, its tombstone obscured by today’s bus shelter. What was once a landmark of social culture, now forgotten.

Centuries reduced to years, years reduced to days; the fragmented embodiment of Lambert’s Leap weaves its last words into Number 12.

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24th 21stJune June2021 2021 Desperation for resolution scratches and scores its message across the studio Domestic stagnation has led us to speculate on what tabletop, the fragments of a new breed of is to come. Our drive to disband this prolonged communication offer a glimpse into the confinement echoes the desire to play with that which unknown inevitability. disjuncture is beyond these walls. The dilation of our temporal awareness and our newfound, albeit reluctant adaptation to the limited lifestyle, clouds the blissful memory of others. The gap to the outside widens, culminating a now incomprehensible interaction.

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The fall burns holes through the fabric of our minds, dismantling memories, undoing even the strongest powers of imagination and reason, possessing us with histories we should not recognise as our own, but that of the home.

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The fall writes new histories, new futures. The essence of our occupancy and the desire to once again - play with the world outside is forever engrained into the manuscript of Number 12.

Hopefulness is inscribed into our plane of vision, once a frame strewn with terror, now reduced and reconciled to a sanguine view.

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A collection of film stills and their relation to our bedrooms.

Timestamps added for clarity.

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New York: Hill and Wang. - Death of an Author

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Sarah Sze. London: Phaidon Press.

Evans, R. (1984). “In Front of Lines That Leave Nothing Behind” AA Files 6.

Fisher, M. (2014). Ghosts of my life. Winchester (UK) ; Washington (USA): Zero books.

Freud, S. and Strachey, J. (2001). The Ego And The ID And Other Works. London: Vintage.

Withy, K. (n.d). Heidegger On Being Uncanny.

Zizek, S. (2009). The Parallax View. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT.

Olkowski, Dorothea. (2006) Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Intertwining and Objectification. PhaenEx. 1. 10.22329/p.v1i1.31.

Parker, I. (2011). Lacanian psychoanalysis. New York, N.Y.: Routledge.

Perez-Gomez, A. (2018). Celebrating the Marvellous: Surrealism in Architecture. Architectural Design, 88.

Power, A. and Mumford, K. (1999). The Slow Death Of Great Cities?. 1st ed. Joseph Rowntree Foundation.

Remarkable events in newcastle - https://babel.hathitrust. org/cgi/pt?id=hvd.32044081194680&view=1up&seq=9 Rendell, J. (2015). Talk: Jane Rendell ‘Site Writing’. [online] Available at: <https://soundcloud.com/artangel-2/rendell> [Accessed 15 January 2021].

Rendell, J. (2017). The Architecture Of Psychoanalysis.

1st ed. London: I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd. Shaw, K. (2018). Hauntology: The Presence Of The Past In TwentyFirst Century English Literature. Institute for Urban Design (US).

Friel, B. (1995). Translations. 1st ed. FSG Adult.

Frosh, S. (2013). Hauntings: psychoanalysis and ghostly transmissions. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Sigmund Freud, trans. by Graham Frankland. (2005).

The Unconscious. London: Penguin Books

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Appendix:

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/pedagogy of workings

Forensic Investigation Through representation of The Haunting of Number 12’ narrative, layering and stitching the story in its fragmented, ambiguous form; allows for the reader to continue making and connecting narratives between the ghosts.

The story does not end with this document, the archive located on www.12chesterstreet.com continues our story and analyses in much more detail, the mystery behind the architectural objects and drawings.

The adjacent image highlights some of the connections and forensic studies we’ve conducted into the spectrals.

The following appendix documents additional information regarding key characteristics and narrative relationships between the spectres.

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Site 3

Through the Keyhole Looking through the keyhole locates the project’s conceptual origin.

The device seeks to expose, uncover and fixate the gaze.

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Document: T- 0 1 - D

By Confidence Throughout our project we constantly evaluate our own critical stance towards the work we have produced.

Utilising the conceptual praxis of Deleuze (the artist’s studio being an allegorical experience of our unconscious), we reorientated our own perspectival view of our environment to that of an outsider, as to allow our investigation to be driven by our unconscious experience.

Due to the duality of our own conscious, using parallax as a form of interpretation of the allegorical home became a starting point which we utilised throughout the project.

Confidence model of Mark’s Bedroom

Photogrametry software harnesses parallax to position amounts of light relationally to each other in order to reconstruct a 3D environment, allowing an unbiased external environment to be constructed as our initial point of exploration.

The image opposite highlights which areas are predicted to have been modelled best by confidence, revealing the inverse as the voids and spaces of ambiguity within Number 12.

Camera Positioning

Camera Positioning

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Software interpretating the parallax images

Parallax Software The software utilises parallax to define depth within each image, these are subsequently referenced against one another to construct point cloud data that interprets the built environment.

By removing our agency when mapping the environment we have been so accustomed too, building upon the work of Roland Barthes’ Death of an Author[19] and Duchamps schema[20], the machine creates an unbiased view of the home.

By abstaining our authorial influence, replacing it with the machine, something unexpected, uncontrollable, unfathomable can be obtained.

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[19] - Barthes, R. and Heath, S. (1977). Image, music, text. New York: Hill and Wang.

[20] - Haralambidou, P. (2017). Marcel Duchamp And The Architecture Of Desire. [Place of publication not identified]: ROUTLEDGE.

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The Living Room Further analysis of the camera locations allowed us to precisely locate areas previously unseen or overlooked. These locations or ‘dead’ spots in our consciousness provided sites to explore our unconscious relationship with the living room.

A direct interrogation of our suppressed ego.

A stain lingered in one of the void spots, hiding in plain sight. It’s clarity inscribed its history, engrained into the house’s fabric, opening up another parallactic perspective.

Past vs Present.

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Define:

Parallax

‘the apparent displacement of an observed object due to a change in the position of the observer’[21]

Through exhaustive inhabitation during our tenancy and throughout the lifetime of the house, areas of uncertainty

within the home have become layered with the narratives of its occupation, unveiling a hauntological trinity of past, present and future simultaneity. The weight of history leaves traces of previously overlooked detritus, every aspect of the house becomes a scene of intense socio-

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[21] - Definiton of Parallax - www.dictionary.com. (2021). Definition Of Parallax | Dictionary.Com. [online] Available at: <https://www. dictionary.com/browse/parallax> [Accessed 15 January 2021].

[22] - Vidler, A. (1999). The Architectural Uncanny : Essays In The Modern Unhomely. Cambridge, Mass. [etc.]: MIT press. p.168

historical importance.

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Document: I-03-H ing the [23] - Chard, N. and Kulper, P. (2014). Fathom unfathomable. Princeton Architectural Press.

Site 2

Chance Encounters A forensic study.

A 2:1 detailed study into a fragment of the void provides a new insight into a contingent landscape.

Detritus/hairs located throughout the downstairs y bathroom have their movements forensicall ng. shavi of ritual the to traced back an Kulper & Chard describe the uncanny as ty rtain unce this and ty rtain intellectual unce their d beyon e imag ine... imag to provokes viewers didactic agency.[23] These detailed studies map the potential trajectories er of a few scattered hairs in order to reveal a deep story.

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Site 2

I n h a b i t i n g t h e Vo i d

The studies into the existing hidden spaces reveal temporal cartographies mapping the initial detritus and palimpsest the house exudes.

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Site 2

Chance Encounters Further developments allow us to treat the drawing as a median of conversation regarding the gap.

This composite drawing starts to overlay the two distinct interpretations of the site, exposing a palimpsest of chance encounters.

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Site 2

Tr a n s l a t e d T h r e s h o l d

Reconstructing the threshold from stitched fragments of narrative into something tangible, that could be reinserted back into the house, generated the proposal of a frame that could allow us to inhabit our own drawings.

The above images show the first iteration of the reconstructed threshold.

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Splitting of the Chair Reliquary The burning of the chair’s corporeal splitting ritualises the process of parallactic perception.

One half of our unconscious is charred, resilient to external conditions although distinctly domesticated, the other fragile and vulnerable.

Works of art [and architecture] are haunted, not only by the inital [experience]... but by the ideal forms of which they are imperfect instances, but also by what escapes representation’.[24]

The chair is po sitioned relativ ly to the drawin g of the front room.

Chipped fragm ents

of the burnin g chair catch fire and drift onto the cartography

Document: I-04-B

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[24] - The Guardian. (2020). Hauntology: A Not-So-New Critical Manifestation. [online] Available at: <https://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2011/ jun/17/hauntology-critical> [Accessed 29 December 2020].

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[25] - Danielewski, M. (2000). House Of Leaves. United States: Pantheon.

Document: I-06-G

Illuminating the Gaze

[26] - Lacan, J. (1978). Seminar XI: The Four Fundamental Concepts of Psychoanalysis. NY & London, W.W. Norton and Co.

Stemming from our study of the yard, our relationship to this enveloped space became an object of scrutiny.

Searching for a sense of place, the study looked to ground us in the reality of our situation. ​ The study was conducted over a series of months. We meticulously recorded the build-up of detritus on the window pane, mapping the accretion of residue that accumulated.

The device resided outside Mark’s window. Just like ‘The Fall’ situated above, lingering outside Alec’s window ; the constant reminder of the intoxication into the study is a reminder of the endeavour to escape from our everyday reality.​ The device represents what Leonard claimed as a ‘sensation of space’ where the final result ‘in the perceptual process is a single sensation - a ‘feeling’ about that particular place… The detailed study uses precise drawings to form a mnemonic ‘sensation of [s]pace’.[25]

Illustrated in Lacanian schema[26], the trapped gaze looks to capture a perspectival view of the outside world.

However, a tainted, suspended, plane captures this desire and obstructs it with the build-up of detritus and filth.

The magnitude of studies reflects a sense of prolonged duration (isolated), that in turn generates an atmosphere of melancholy and hopelessness.

The image/screen that keeps the elments out, also contains the desires within.

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Document: H-02-CC

Conception

Drawing Restraint Initial design ideas to represent ‘The Fall’ looked to embody the generative process of mythologising memory.

To translate the unfathomability of the fall within the event ‘Lambert’s Leap’, the easel acts as a drawing device simulating repetitive mistranslation.

As a form of restraint during the making of the piece, we experimented with using the devices existing structural framework.

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Interation 2

Interation 1

Much like the work of Matthew Barney’s ‘Drawing Restraint’ and Rebecca Horn’s oeuvre, ‘The Fall’ harensses the ontological and mnemonic potential of the salvaged easel.

Along with being a canvas prop for the artist, the easel is also a framing device to a psychical space. For the composer to construct their image; they must appreciate their own presence within space to metaphysically frame a scene.​

[27]

The manipulation of our own recycled easel looks to achieve the same objective, however the production of the image is obstructed by its form. The easel sits outside the upper bedroom window, allowing the canvas to drop into the room below. This allows both participants to construct their respective forensic study of their external views.

The parasitic nature of the design responds to the increased demand to produce architecture as students. This anxiety lingers over us at all times, even intruding into the bedroom: normally a place of retreat and solitude from such pressures.

The story of Lamberts Leap inspired the location of the device. Cantilevered from the wall by two steel brackets that hook onto the window, the insecurity and fragile nature of the design highlight the past misfortune’s that occurred in proximity of 12 Chester Street.​ The easel was to be used as a tool to interpret the tale, its abstraction highlighting the unfathomable scenario playing out with Cuthbert Lambert surviving a seemingly unimaginable drop.

This would be coupled with the study into the precise movements of the horse falling conducted down below.

[28]

However the sheer tension and looming gravitational anxiety of the object positioned in situ, was enough to allude to this; subsequently the programmatic functioning of the machine was freed up to focus on the ceaseless study of the perspectival view from our rooms.

[30]

[29]

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Images: [27] - Roth, L. (2019). The (In)Animate World of Rebecca Horn | | Flash Art. [online] Flash Art. Available at: <https://flash---art.com/article/ the-inanimate-world-of-rebecca-horn/> [Accessed 25 May 2021].

[28] - Ruthie, V. (2016) Matthew Barney’s Drawing Restraints. [online] Available at: <https://seattleartistleague.com/2016/11/18/matthewbarneys-drawing-restraints/> [Accessed 25 May 2021].

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Images: [29] - Latimer, Q., 2010. Matthew Barney. [online] Frieze.com. Available at: 2021].

May 25 [Accessed <https://www.frieze.com/article/matthew-barney-1> [30] - Diller, E., Scofidio, R. and Renfro, C., 1989. Para-site. [online] DS+R. Available at: <https://dsrny.com/project/para-site?index=false &tags=installation&section=projects> [Accessed 25 May 2021].

Document: H-02-CE

The entire design and construction of the installation spanned over 5 phases in which we had to build our design and prototype the next set of parts for it.

Recycled and unused components from the various prototypes built for our Linked Research modules, that we had been developing in the yard for the past year, provided structural stability to hollow pieces of the easel’s extended leg.

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Once we were confident of the installation’s structural capabilities, and our feasibility/ risk assessments had been approved by the university, we set out to design the many moving parts and mechanisms that would allow a user to manipulate a drawing tool across a canvas from inside the bedroom, using a series of ropes and pulleys.

Given our student occupation, any installations we produced could not exert any permanent changes to the house.

Therefore, in order to suspend the easel at this height, we designed a steel bracket system that would clip on to the window opening, with fully flexible deployment and no drilled fixings.

As the design developed, the installation became much heavier. To combat this, we developed a steel suspension cable that would span from the steelwork core of the easel, to the window bracket, via the top of the window, minimising the moment force exerted from the centre. This also allowed us to see the level of tension by observing the extension of the springs, and allowed us to adjust this force by tightening the cables.

By looking down the legs of the easel, we can view the level of deflection in them, and thus determine if the cable should be tightened or loosened. When the easel was installed on the upper window, we did this by hanging a small mirror out of the window and angling it so that we could see a view parallel to that of the leg.

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Installation and testing of the device and its drawing mechanism was very successful.

The ink drawing was produced at ground level on Mark’s identical window, in order to minimise health and safety risks.

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The true nature of the table leg has two distinct parallactic fault lines: from one angle we observe what seems to be its conventional silhouette, from the other its fluid nature and the perception of its factuality is confronted when the parallax unfolds.​

In representing the coffee table as an object of fluid form; the home hints towards a temporal depth that spotlights our entanglement within this precarious point of history with which we find ourselves caught up within.

The two halves of the split body reveal the initial setting up of the photogrammetry software that produced the glitched output of the table.​ When read as a collective, the house is viewed as a severed entity, we question our relational thinking to our own space and how this is perceived by others too. ‘The image as an amorphous fragment rather than an organic totality - producing rather than ambiguity, a flexibility of meaning’[31]

Document: G-02-K

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[31] - Rendell, J. (2015). Talk: Jane Rendell ‘Site Writing’. [online] Available at:

<https://soundcloud.com/artangel-2/rendell> [Accessed 15 January 2021].

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Document: T - 0 1 - AY

Scan 1

G l i t c h e d Wo r k s p a c e

Contingent landscapes form over the worksurfaces we previously thought of as static and banal.

The surface became animated and distorted, only through the parallactic view was this visible, unearthed.

The discovery of these dynamic landscapes allowed us to reflect on the unseen, unfathomable nature of the space.

Coffee cups, pens and laptops glide over the surface eachday, sometimes leaving traces, residues, other times remaining distinctly invisible.

This transient landscape formed the theoretical inception of the splitting of number 12.

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Scan 1

G l i t c h e d Wo r k s p a c e At times the images became practically unrecognisable, only hints towards the actuality of the space are seen in fragments, such as the plant on the window sill in this case.

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Elevational View

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Glowing Glitch

Scan 2

Parallax Gaps

Residual light is reflected/refracted surfaces, causing a distortion into the space beyond.

The living room window extends out onto the urban realm. This distortion allowed us to engage with the introverted world that the digital parallax formed. We began to delve into what this uncanny parallel world symbolised in response to the external world, that seemingly resembled something uncanny and melancholic like a painting from De Chirico.

Both were more alike than we could imagine.

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Document: T- 0 2 - D

Past Futures

Displaced around the Axis Mundi A previous development phase of the project envisaged the displaced door handle as an axis mundi from which the house would rotate around. Unconscious fragments of the home start to overlap and intersect eachother.

As our own intoxication with the project heightened, we became further displaced from our external environment, the home became a complex of rigourous inhabitation.

In order to represent this awareness, we allowed the project to consume our bedrooms, usually a place of freedom and relaxation from architectural production, instead of altering the structure of the home further.

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Past Futures

Utilising Stereoscopy To further enhance the idea of parallax that has been a praxis for design developement throughout the project, Stereoscopy was an option to be utilised within the video/portfolio document.

Here are some examples of the stereoscopic image of the hallway: with the axis mundi of the heart acting as a pivot point, narrowing the hall as you walk through the space.

Due to time constraints and the project developing spectres located to the rear of the property, these ideas were left on the (digital) drawing board.

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Camera 2

Camera 1

Scan 3

Simulating Glitches

An experiment into how much we could inform a glitch allowed us to further explore what a glitch in either of these worlds (external and internal) represented.

2 Cameras are set up to map the dynamic movement of our flatmate performing a daily ritual of lying down on our sofa to watch TV. The resulting images are combind in photoshop to create animated photos, a form of chronophotography popularised

by Etienne Jules Marey.

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These altered photos are relayed into the photogrammetry software.

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Site 1

Forensic Analysis The stain is a clue to an event. A regul ar occurrence within the student house is the spilling of drinks, typically beer.

The spill, previously hidden, is a residual of memory.

We forensically analyse how the spill could be formed, mapping the trajectory and using the context of the closely proximate sofas and coffee table to make contingen t drawings.

Two iterations are made, one representi ng the repressed, the other the exposed.

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Document: T- 0 4 - D

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Drawings We translated our findings and investigations into mappings.

Contrasting in style, the parallax between us provides room for conversation about ideas and discoveries through the drawing medium.

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Forensic data Each of our drawings contains the desire to frame the spectral objects as entities that resemble the hope to stabilise ourselves within times of turmoil and displacement.

As this praxis developed, the spectres gained characteristic personalities, some speak of loss and trauma, others of hope and play.

The adjacent drawings chart our endeavour to control and understand the spectres.

Akin to the tracing paper’s ontological condition, the layering and slippage of each revenant spectre into their context escapes comprehension. Our longing for understanding is futile and uncontrollable.

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Document: T- 0 5 - B

The Spectres of Chester Street

Entry into the house

Film Storyboard The narrative of the house as a allegorical formulation of our thoughts and unconscious, directly related to the socio-temporal situation we find ourselves embedded within.

Entering the house

Glimpse through the hallway Through the key hole

The process and representation unconsciously started seeping into our collaborative efforts.

The dark, distorted and fragmented world became our domestic environment and site, almost closing in on itself, trapping us within.

Wreckage of bikes

To escape the real world and devise our own melancholic virtuality was quite therapeutic in a way.

Escapism in it’s rawest, most uncanny form.

Into the Void Glitched living

Uncanny workspace

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Zoom Introduction/Greetings Glitch of Digital

Interaction between Live & Digital

Haunting Zoom The second iteration of the film goes beyond the haunting of the house into haunting the medium of dissemination.

Bigger Glitch

Mark goes to try fix + slippage

Utilising Television films such as BBC’s Ghostwatch and Inside Number 9 Live: Dead Line as precedent; the haunting of our work extends into the digital.

Part live performance/ pre-recorded fragments, the unstable temporality of the digital world of zoom is compounded by the presence of ghosts.

Digital World

Being Surveyed Mark returns in the Digital World Empty - Reflection in the TV

Document: T- 0 5 - C

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Watching us

Coming Closer

Coming into the Living Room

Haunting Zoom Interweaving moments of live feed/zoom interface and pre-recorded hauntology, the film looks to haunt the digital ontology.

The house shifts and fragments as the performance unfolds.

Our meticulous studies start to shist in meaning, the obsessive and forensic nature of themselves becoming more menacing and melancholic.

Utilising typical tropes of zoom calling and live television broadcast incorporates the conscious ego into the unconscious world of spectres and poltergeist.

No one there

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the repetitions ‘One way in which es of history iti inu and discont through the are manifested is technologies w ne emergence of record and which allow us to [32] st.’ pa e th replay - Coverley

[32] - Coverley, M. (2020). Hauntology: Ghosts of

futures past. Chicago: Oldcastle Books, p. 11.

Performance Mapping The project seeks to expand our work beyond this perceived limitation, bleeding hauntological principles through this threshold not least to stimulate an audience in a time where domestic activity lacks spontaneity and excitement, but to allow spectators to become aware of their embodiment to the zoom interface, and present the viewer with a situation that provokes an experimental discourse similar to that of which we are carrying out in our home, miles apart.

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The experimental trajectory of our collaborative effort takes the direction of a performative nature. As a product of lockdown confinement and the multitude of restrictions placed upon our studies - the computer screen has become our only threshold between that which enters our home, and that which leaves it, namely through conferencing interfaces such as Zoom, condensing our outputs into a fine stream of radio waves, to be interpreted globally upon the screens of others.

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Installations The drawings and areas of interest are marked out on our original scans.

We develop these together, writing ideas and theory behind each of the pieces.

These are relationally translated back into their associated places in the house.

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[33] - Frosh, S., 2013. Hauntings: psychoanalysis and ghostly transmissions.

Basingstoke,: Palgrave Macmillan, p.123.

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Spectre of the yard Throughout the course of our university degree, alternate projects and their heavy duty prototypes have been constructed in the yard. In collaboration with university officials, our supervisor (Graham Farmer) was invited to the house to examine the prototype and provide feedback.

Upon divulgence of our address, 12 Chester Street, our supervisor informed us of his wife’s previous tenancy in the same house, decades prior, and the event that saw her bury her deceased cat in the back garden.

Now overlaid with concrete, the yard marks the permanent tomb of this carcass of historic occupancy.

The ghost endevours to locate the burial site of this lost household pet, casting its shadows amongst the brittle concrete of the back yard, detecting faults and deformations in its surface, where the ground may have been disturbed during the lifetime of concrete groundwork due to the decomposition of the carcass beneath it.

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[34] - Coverley, M. (2020). Hauntology: Ghosts of futures past. Chicago: Oldcastle Books, p. 51.

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Define:

Hauntology ‘In Derridan philosophy, the paradoxical state of the

being nor nonbeing.’[35]

[36]

Haunting its own ontology, hauntology draws attent ion

the ephemeral nature of the present and offers the

as neither being or non-bring, alive or dead – the

spectre, which is neither

to

spectre

ultimate conceptual, and cultural, paradox.[37] This concept alludes to suggest that our domestic aspects are dually haunt ed by their

histories and futures.

Within the analytic space, different dimensions of

unfold, and a tension between old and new is set

time

in motion.[38]

This tension establishes a reorientated perception

of a parallax view, deferring alternate viewpoints across the realm s of time, space and reality. Such a conceptual apparatus expos es that of

a parallax gap, the condition of uncertainty betwe

en binary planes that evades comprehension, the object which can never be pinned down to any of its particular properties.

The very

cause of the parallax gap, that Unfathomable X which

forever eludes the symbolic grasp, and thus causes the multi plicity of symbolic perspectives.[39] The pursuit of Unfathomable X within the parall chiasm reveals new perspectives, not that which

actic

is simply a compromised collage between our definitive viewp oints, but that which transcends a deeper understanding of the bigger

picture.

[35] - Definition of Hauntology - Findwords.info.

(2021). What Does Hauntology Mean. [online] Available at: <https://fi ndwords. info/term/hauntology> [Accessed 15 January 2021].

[40] - Shaw, K., (2018). Hauntology: The Presence First Century English Literature. Institute for UrbanOf The Past In TwentyDesign (US).

[40]

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[36] - Definition of Hauntology - Findwords.info.

(2021). What Does Hauntology Mean. [online] Available at: <https://fi ndwords. info/term/hauntology> [Accessed 15 January 2021].

[37] - Shaw, K., (2018). Hauntology: The Presence Of The Past In TwentyFirst Century English Literature. Institute for Urban Design [38] - Rendell, J. (2017). The Architecture Of Psychoan (US). alysis.

1st ed. London: [39] - Zizek, S. (2009). The Parallax View. CambridI.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd. ge, Mass.: MIT. p.18

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Performance Mapping Experimentations with the representation of the spectral traces and palimpsest of the home are devloped through hand drawing and digital overlays.

A reality and rawness only cheived by hand drawing creates a plane on which the uncanny scans developed through the photogrammetry software look to create a fractured, unstable representation of the home.

We eventually decided on an axonometric drawing to house all the hauntological strata due to their encroachment into the home on multiple levels.

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‘The structure of the archive is spectral’, Derrida writes, ‘It is spectral a priori: neither present nor absent ‘in the flesh,’ neither visible nor invisible, a trace always referring to another whose eyes can never met’: a ghostly presence, oppressed by the ever-expanding weight of the past, the archive is haunted by that which is missing or excluded.’[38]

[41] - Coverley, M. (2020). Hauntology: Ghosts of futures past. Chicago: Oldcastle Books. p.86.

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