The Telescape: AA Studio Research Thesis 2017

TELESCAPE FACtory of the World

Nicholas Zembashi AA Diploma Unit 9 Unit masters Natasha Sandmeier, Manolis Stavrakakis 2016 - 2017

CONTENTS

Preface

9

INTRODUCTION

13

What

19

The Telescape

Why

21

Exploding Events

How

23

The Screen

THE TELESCAPE

27

Overture: True Stories

31

The Form: Footage

35

The Format: Screen

39

Epilogue: Telescape as Spectacle

47

EXPLODING TIME

55

The Origins of Time

57

War in the Gulf

63

The Oil Well 1.0

72

The Oil Well 2.0

76

Quantity and Absurdity: The Story of Oil

81

Faceted World

95

TRUTHINESS

103

Truthiness by Dr. Stephen T. Colbert

105

Facts

109

The screen; a site for stories

Headline News: We Have Never Been Modern by Bruno Latour

Fictions

117

Non-Linearity: Mulholland Drive by David Lynch

PHANTASMAGORIA

125

Media Aesthetics

127

War Is Beautiful

Of Beauty and the Ugly

135

The Ugly by Mark Cousins

NESTED SPACES The Box

169 171

Harry Houdini

Exterior: Shaping the World

179

Michael Heizer’s Cities

Interior: Aediculae

183

Flattening Event Space

SURFACE WORLD

205

The Vatican of Screens

207

Conclusion

FILM SCORE

225

PROJECT SCROLL

229

BIBLIOGRAPHY

321

8

PREFACE

Ladies and gentlemen; You don’t actually need me to stand for anything; You just need me to stand; To be the strong architect, the man of action; My God you are addicted to actions and slogans.

It doesn’t matter what I say.

It doesn’t matter what I do.

Just as long as I’m doing something spectacular, You’re happy to come along for the ride.

And frankly, I don’t blame you.

With all the foolishness and indecision in the discourse, Why not architects like me?

In the end I don’t care whether you love me or you hate me, Just as long as I win!

The deck is stacked.

The rules are rigged.

Fact and Fiction die in exploded time.

Welcome to the death of the Age of Reason.

There is no right or wrong; not anymore.

Only Surface, Only Spectacle.

There’s only being in ... and then being out.

I give you the Telescape

9

INTRODUCTION

THIS IS A TRUE STORY. The events depicted in this book took place on the surface of a screen.

At the request of the survivors, the names have been changed.

Out of respect for the dead, the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.

Telescape an interspatial region facilitating an event seen from a distance (from Greek τηλε-). the site of contemporary knowledge and memory Footage a recorded fragment of reality - collected for journalistic purposes Screen the apparatus where telescapes exist and where footage acquires narrative purpose Mince an action of editing footage; to reveal by degrees rather than directly (to deceive) Artefact a piece of footage Fact constructed by mincing footage Fiction constructed by mincing footage Truthiness the quality of a constructed fact Spectacle the prevailing Story and the reinforcer of truthiness Time exploded by the quantity of footage and compressed by mincing

16

WHAT The Telescape

The Telescape is the only site. If stories as rituals and events are constructed and displayed through architecture, then the site for such practises is no longer the building but the screen. A world of virtual volumes flattened in the surface of our media-infused world.

The Telescape facilitates events seen from a distance (tele- from Greek τηλε).

An ocular tele-hedonism at it’s utmost. We tele-communicate, tele-battle, tele-learn, tele-travel, tele-work. It is the site of contemporary knowledge and memory. Footage is its material and the surface of the screen its apparatus. The agglomeration of both footage and screen form the intra-spatial region of fact construction. What should be seen as a new kind of Memory Atlas, the Telescape is the site of architecture as story-telling and world building medium.

The questions put forward by the Telescape are not to fetishize technology, to be technophobic or to consider devices as visual gimmicks within architectural design. It is about the site of surface itself. An increasingly dominant place via which our perception of the world is constructed and where memory and knowledge are formatted.

19

WHY Exploding Events

A war may last for moths; a football goal for seconds. In their media coverage the former lasts for years, the latter for hours or even weeks. Time is exploded and scale collapses. A moment is exploded in time and the event resonates globally. The great disparity between what happens and the footage it generates is exacerbated more than ever due to the velocity, variety and volume of data. In the re-telling of an event facts become as constructed as fictions. Truth is irrelevant in the surface of the screen. Spectacle prevails. The story is everything.

In a world heavily saturated by imagery the exercise is one of omitting visual information and condensing fragments into a curated narrative of surfaces. Much like how renaissance fascination into classical fragments created new forms (such as the torso belvedere which had inspired the non finito of Michelangelo) so does the way we build our world through pieces of media snapshots. The way in which we allow for a multiplicity of realities to be reborn into coherent and consumable stories.

The world as we know it is but a mas collection of facets, through which reality becomes a game of perception. The question is ultimately one of aesthetics rather than content. In the Telescape form beguiles more than the need to verify content.

The spectacular is beautiful, the boring is ugly.

21

20

HOW The Screen

The screen is the apparatus for spatialising the condition of surface. Footage, as the principle material of our age, constructs the architecture of the Telescape.

At least 3 years of a 20 year-old’s life will have been spent staring at a screen – for leisure time alone. The ceaseless stream of visual data becomes an aesthetic overlay to every activity and every space: from the public to the domestic and even the body itslef. In the past 2 years alone we’ve produced more information than all of humanity has been accumulating over it’s entire recorded history.

The screen, essentially, grants a mydas touch to the user, turning the world into an image of sheer and utter spectacle. All is surface – the very reading of life: a scroll of headline feeds. What matters is how fast and for how long can you look.

23

THE TELESCAPE

“ Some truths are better kept behind a screen, Especially when they would look like lies; ‘T is strange,- but true; for truth is always strange; Stranger than fiction; if it could be told, How much would novels gain by the exchange!

How differently the world would men behold!

How oft would vice and virtue places change!

The new world would be nothing to the old, If some Columbus of the moral seas Would show mankind their souls’ antipodes.

What ‘antres vast and deserts idle’ then Would be discover’d in the human soul!

What icebergs in the hearts of mighty men, With self-love in the centre as their pole!

What Anthropophagi are nine of ten Of those who hold the kingdoms in control Were things but only call’d by their right name, Caesar himself would be ashamed of fame. ” Lord Byron, Don Juan, 1865

figure 2

30

OVERTURE True Stories

“Narrare necesse est - to narrate is necessary: We humans must narrate.

This fact was so and remains so, for we are our stories and stories must be told” 1 But at what cost?

Society’s imprisonment within the bounds of culture is what German philosopher Odo Marquard refers to as a symptom of humanity’s need to construct stories.

A precarious condition in which stories are polymythic in nature, becomes exacerbated through contemporary media, whereby information production is prolific; 2 “The 21st century citizen is subject to the age of the polymyth, a time in which one can find many social forces in the form of stories vying for prominence within that entity we call the self.” 3 The widespread technological ease with which events are recorded and disseminated in the form of footage (increasingly live) only adds to the maelstrom of competing narratives. The predominant casualty becomes ‘fact’. The convergence of fact and fiction in the illusionary constructs of the screen is creating an unprecedented state of collective distraction within the narrative phantasmagorias of media spectacle.

For Walter Benjamin, “architecture has always provided the prototype of a work of art that is received in a state of distraction and by the collective ... Buildings [and places] are received twofold: through how they are used and how they are perceived. Or to put it in a better way: in a tactile fashion and in an optical fashion.” 4 The optical becomes the crux of the argument: its apparatus is without a doubt the screen, the black glassy plain in all of its scales - from the human palm, to the private and public wall. Polymythic narratives of events, landscapes and architectures are flattened in the form of footage. The agglomeration of both footage and screen form an intra-spatial site of knowledge and memory - what should be seen as a new kind of Denkraum5 - the Telescape.

31

OVERTURE: TRUE STORIES

It is crucial, however, to stress that the premise lies in the telescape as a positive illusionary device for new architectural form; and not in a relativistic polemic about fact or reality. In a Kantian sense, what matters is not to explain “... why illusions are illusions, but ... why they are structurally necessary, unavoidable, and not just accidents.” 6 Within such a context, the exaggerated degree of fact construction is discussed for its narrative use and not necessarily its authenticity.

After all, fact itself poses a paradox.

According to Bruno Latour “... fact can have two contradictory meanings. On the one hand, our quasi-anthropological perspective stresses its etymological significance: a fact is derived from the root facere, factum (to make or to do). On the other hand, fact is taken to refer to some objectively independent entity which by reason of its ‘out there-ness’ cannot be modified at will and is not susceptible to change under any circumstances.” 7 Thus, the attempted objectivity of journalistic news reporting is of particular interest, since it is where fact is as constructed as fiction. In short, to return to Marquard, the modus operandi of the media is the mincing and stirring of myriads of fragmented polymyths to produce coherent and consumable monomyths as factual news spectacle.

Before footage and screen to be respectively assessed one ought to briefly refer to the endgame; the spectacle: the construction of fact under the guise of storytelling; the apotheosis of which is ‘The Colbert Report (TCR). Stephen Colbert constructs a monomyhtic persona that encompasses the polymythic elements of extreme Republican rhetoric and its appearance in American media culture. The deployment of news footage becomes intrinsic in that “Colbert shifts the focus away from actual cultural signs and events … onto the storytellers who narrate those media stories.

Consequently, by completely relying on the narratives and visual imagery of others, and by instantly internalising the stories coming from other newscasts, structurally TCR becomes ... modelled reality of modelled reality, whose focus is more on form ... and less on stories.” 8 The show, essentially, demands its viewers to overidentify with the form of media story-telling in order to interpret the parody.

Although TCR parodies the U.S. media system, its methodology, rather prophetically (in light of the UK EU referendum and US election outcomes) points to a global condition of hypernormalised news consumption and an utter disregard for facts over narrative delivery. 9 In other words, assessing the plethora of footage on a screen has become an exercise of Orwellian doublethink. So much so, it is increasingly impossible to tell which is a form of subtle ridicule,

32

THE TELESCAPE

sincere support, or a peculiar mixture of both. Competing distractors focus on the semiotic packaging and delivery of news rather than the plurality, veracity and authenticity of content.

Hence Colbert’s neologism of truthiness 10 - what one wishes to be true and not what is known to be true - reinforces this hegemony of form. It is henceforth imperative to examine the nature of this form, the footage.

1 Marquard, O., Philosophie des Stattdessen, (Stuttgart, Reclam, 2000), p.60 2

From IBM’s definition of Big Data: “Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion bytes of data — so much that 90% of the data in the world today has been created in the last two years alone. This data comes from everywhere: sensors used to gather climate information, posts to social media sites, digital pictures and videos, purchase transaction records, and cell phone GPS signals to name a few.” see: https://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/ bigdata/what-is-big-data.html, accessed December 1st 2016 3 Funk, W., Gross, F. and Huber, I.(eds.), The Aesthetics of Authenticity: Medial Constructions of the Real, (Bielefeld, Transcript Verlag, 2012), p.84 4 Benjamin, W. and Underwood, J.A., The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, (London, Penguin Books, 2008), p.33 5 Aby Warburg’s Denkraum (thinking room) and the Mnemosyne Atlas will be paralleled to my definition of the ‘telescape’ in the pages to follow 6 Žižek, S., Slavoj and Žižek, S., Less than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism, (London, Verso Books., 2013) p.9 7 Latour, B., Woolgar, S., Laboratory life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts, (2nd edn., United States, Sage Publications., 1979), p.175 8 Funk, W., Gross, F. and Huber, I.(eds.), The Aesthetics of Authenticity: Medial Constructions of the Real, (Bielefeld, Transcript Verlag, 2012), p.80 9 Alexei Yurchak refers to hypernormalisation as a condition that emerges from the Russian term stiob “differed from sarcasm, cynicism, derision or any other more familiar genres of absurd humour in that it required a [incredible] degree of overidentification with the object, person, or idea at which [it] was directed” He argues that this reality-destabalising, late-socialist conundrum is reappearing in the neo-liberal West. See p.181 from: Yurchak, A. and Boyer, D., American Stiob: Or, What Late-Socialist Aesthetics of Parody Reveal about Contemporary Political Culture in the West, Cultural Anthropology, 25, p.179-221, (2010) 10 “truth that comes from the gut, not books” and “the quality of preferring concepts of facts one wishes to be true, rather than concepts of facts known to be true”; see http:// www.obsnews.com/stories/2006/12/12/opinion/meyer/main2250923.shtml,

33

34

figure 3

figure 6

figure 4

figure 7

figure 5

figure 8

THE FORM Footage

“...when reporters talk about authenticity they primarily refer to the ‘intrinsic aesthetic quality of amateur images’ and how their often grainy and unfocussed nature merely signifies rather than guarantees access to the real.” 13 The democratisation of recording through mobile devices, namely smartphones, has granted omnipresence to media organisations. Through the eyes of amateurs any occurrence is captured and, most importantly, in real-time. Since it is impossible to predict the unpredictable and be present to record it, the rise of ‘amateur’ journalism has become a paramount feature in the construction of almost every media narrative. The aesthetic value of the source footage engenders the most heightened permutation of unquestioned factual from. There is no understating the significance of footage in its current formal understanding.

Footage finds its etymological root in silent films - in which 1 foot of 35mm film corresponds to one second of screen time. Its contemporary treatment has a far greater resonance, as recorded, raw and unedited material (hence often requiring treatment and as shall be argued, a more calculated form of editing: ‘mincing’).

The very understanding of footage as a fragment of an event caught on camera establishes its nature within the ambivalence of ‘fact’ - as a constructed entity containing unalterable fact. It becomes a holy vessel for ‘fact’ as much as it is itself an ‘artefact’.

As Latour sates, “facts and artefacts do not correspond respectively to true and false statements. Rather, statements lie along a continuum according to the extent to which they refer to the conditions of their construction. Up to a certain point on this continuum, the inclusion of reference to the conditions of construction

35

THE FORM: FOOTAGE

is necessary for purposes of persuasion!” 14 Footage establishes its truthiness procedurally and through its own characteristics. These are surprisingly mirrored in the renowned renaissance fragment of the Torso Belvedere.

To claim that footage is to journalists and spectators today what the Torso Belvedere was to artists and historians for centuries past, could be far-fetched.

Although at first this seems as a perplexing comparison, there are certain aspects of the torso which can lend a critical reading to the form of footage and its narrative significance. Despite the Torso Belvedere’s lengthy history being beyond the scope of the argument, certain vitalities it possess become key.

Firstly, they both subscribe to a hegemony of from. Since its ‘unearthing’, believed to have been around the early 1400s, the torso “... will more often be referred to by its shape than by its name.... [with] an unfailing fascination with its fragmentariness.” 15 The form hijacks its identity (a topic of intense speculation often concluding in Hercules). The aesthetic potency of amateur footage behaves much like the torso in that its very authenticity draws from its gritty and informal quality. Footage, like an ancient fragment, is assigned value for its emotional punch and evocative link to a memory or event. What is more, first-hand amateur footage delivers the most engaging form of empathy with the ‘witness’ of a situation; an artefact with seemingly powerful factual efficacy. Quite misleadingly, this creates a perceived authenticity. “Witnessing is thus conventionally the lot of the victim rather than the perpetrator, as it ultimately concerns who has the moral right to tell the version of events that is recorded in history books.” 16 The ‘martyr’s’ (Greek - μάρτυρας: he who saw) participation in an event immediately legitimises his or her footage. The camera’s ‘objective’ seeing validates the martyr’s account. Consequently the lens becomes the martyr - joining both participant and spectator as authors of perceived reality. The fragment of footage is then delivered to media corporations, which become less concerned with further verifying it as they do with building it into a story. The torso retains a similitude in its author’s ambivalence: “...unique among all the rediscovered antiquities [is] the artist’s signature. Prominently displayed on the front of the base are the words: ‘Apollonios of Athens, son of Nestor, made [this work]’ ... However little can be proven beyond the signature, the artist cannot be traced ... [The signature] crucially provides an artist-centred destiny of the work.” 17 Once questionable, yet captivating-enough, evidence endorses a satisfying origin story the rest of the fragment - torso and footage alike - can be lent to further narrative constructions.

Latour, not only acknowledges this condition but further refers to the passage of an ‘object’ from one network of interpretation to another. 18 The fact is on its way to being ‘stabilised’.

36

THE TELESCAPE

Latour finds that “... the object becomes the reason why the statement was formulated in the first place. At the onset of stabilisation, the object was the virtual image of the statement; subsequently, the statement becomes the mirror image of the reality ‘out there’.” 19 In short, a story has the ability to render footage content as fact retrospectively. The factual origins of the torso immediately become irrelevant. Now it has transitioned into a network of artistic fantasy. It inspires Michaelangelo’s fascination with the non finito, William Turner is among those drawing it and Jeff Koons sets his identifiable blue orb upon it (figures 3,4,5).

Footage transcends it’s own origins in the newsroom. In Oliver Laric’s ‘Versions’ the questionable authenticity of an Iranian media image showing a missile launch leads to a myriad of artist re-imaginings (figures 6,7,8).

The treatment the torso was subjected to over centuries reoccurs with pieces of footage in seconds. Nonetheless, the Torso Belvedere inspires positive reconstructions, whereas footage is much more insidious in its power to render stories as ‘true’. The narrative purpose obtained via the format of the screen negatively distracts from the fact that “ultimately, both the fairy tale and the news account are stories.” 20 Having now established the form of footage and its various attributes, its mincing and stirring within the format of the screen will argue for the Denkraum of the Telescape. Aby Warburg’s Mnemosyne Atlas becomes vital.

14

Andén-Papadopoulos, K., Amateur Images and Global news, Edited by Kari / AndenPapadopoulos and Mervi Pantti, (Bristol, UK, University of Chicago Press, 2011), p.205 15 Latour, B., Woolgar, S., Laboratory life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts, (2nd edn., United States, Sage Publications., 1979), p.176 16 Barkan, L., Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture, (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2001), p193 17 Ibid, pp.194 - 195 18 This evident in Latour’s observation that only by virtue of shift between one network and another could a particular statement begin circulation as a fact. See: Latour, B., Woolgar, S., Laboratory life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts, (2nd edn., United States, Sage Publications., 1979), p.153 19 Ibid., p.176 20 Graddol, D., ‘The Visual Accoplishment of Facaulty’, in D. Graddol and O. LloydBarrett (eds), Media Texts: Authors and Readers, (Clevedon, Multilingual Matters, 1994), pp. 136-59

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figure 9

38

THE FORMAT Screen

“In this kind of material culture of an atlas technique Warburg found the ideal form for presenting his idea of an Ikonologie des Zwischenraums, an iconology of interval, or better, interspace, as he called his project in his notes to Mnemosyne” 21 Warburg’s seminal work consists of an unfinished collection of 79 panels (figures 9 and 11). In them, he sought to awaken ‘Mneme’; an ancient drive in pathos-laden meanings between fragments of art history and cosmography. Constellations of symbolic imagery, would jolt a spectator’s imagination, and stimulate memory.

Warburg’s interweaving of visual media (chiefly black and white photographs) shows “… the ‘migration’ (Wanderung) of symbols, motifs, figures, gestures and pathos formulas he was interpreting … the situation turned the plates into a specific site of knowledge.” 22 Such an optical site of knowledge is found in the screen. Its formatting of dynamic imagery in the form of footage, flattens the world while ushering in a dangerously powerful wave of Wanderung.

Places, packaged into media narratives, are internalised endlessly; drastically different scales and times exist behind clinically seamless, reflective interfaces.

Thus, the reading of screens, just like the Mnemosyne Atlas, “... gets turned into a literal corporealisation of Warburg’s figure of Wanderung or Wanderstraße, which he invented in order to describe the ‘migration’ of symbols, images, and astrological figures from culture to culture in both time and space.” 23 The heterogeneity of the world, (its polymyths), are transformed into a homogeneous schematic image in order to be projected onto a two-dimensional panel, the screen. Fragments of footage are formatted to exist simultaneously over a surface, on different screens viewed at once or indeed on screens viewed within screens.

39

figure 10

figure 11

THE FORMAT: SCREEN

“The illusory nature of film is a second-tier nature; it derives from editing.” 24 The mincing of footage elucidates a heightened editing condition. To mince is to reveal by degrees rather than directly. It is conducted both ways - by the media outlet’s selective formatting and subsequently the spectator’s own filtering.

Hence, with a deceptive undertone, mincing on screen refers to the multilateral editing process that influences a distracting rather than contemplative version of ‘Wanderung’. Therefore, mincing for journalistic purposes becomes more sinister.

The wandering eye of the spectator, the hand of the author with a corporate or government agenda, find power in manipulating narrative outcomes. This is not to entertain conspiratorial notions and the like. The power of mincing is far greater not in formulating lies but in omitting truths.

Warburg chooses his images - what to include and what to omit. He is mincing. On his panels, he proceeds by stirring. Stirring becomes the rearrangement of minced footage for the production of stories. The panels are a result of both operations, with gaps of conceptual and visual omission. These intervals provide the space for contemplation. “Even a well-established fact loses its meaning when divorced from its context.” 25 In the Mnemosyne Atlas new, constructive meanings emerge in the interval of a ‘Denkraum’; in the screen this interval is the Telescape.

A twenty-first-century Warburg would, without a doubt, be deploying the form of footage on the format of the screen for his atlas. “The iconology of interval that structures the configuration of the plates is accompanied by a different concept of interspace as part of a theory of acting. Here the interspace is the Denkraum, regarded as the aim of all civilising work in order to produce a distance to the outer world, and at the same time it is described as the ‘interval between propulsion and acting’.” 26 Hence the wandering that enables contemplation amongst the rearrangement of his panels - what he sees as the creation of a Denkraum - is arguably a trope concurrent within screen-space as well. This is the Telescape: the intervals of optical action in a continuous state of mincing and stirring footage.

In contrast to the static panels and conceptual space of the Denkraum, the Telescape is literally intra-spatial and ominously powerful in the screen. On the basis of this formatting, president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan topples a military coup through a video call. The set-up was one of ‘screens speaking to screens’.

Erdogan’s villa, a lavishly secure interior (of which a cream curtain is all that is seen), is on call with a CNN Türk newsroom. The news anchor holds up her smartphone screen to one of the studio cameras. Live footage of the president, engulfed by the news anchor’s hand, is then being disseminated throughout the country. Thus, the president harbours enough momentum to resist the coup.

In the meantime, a generation of smartphone holders record their tv screens

42

THE TELESCAPE

from other interiors and subsequently disseminate their own footage over social media (figure 9). The format encompasses both virtual and physical mediums of mincing and stirring. Disconnected spaces become minced into a narrative that commands action: stop the army!

The Telescape should not be understood as an attempt to establish an architectonic type of ‘screen effect.’ 27 It is more conceptually critical in the sense of Warburg’s Denkraum and as a contemporary mnemonic construct. On an architectonic level the question of the Telescape is concerned with the consequences of spatial narrative construction through the formatting of footage on screens. The Telescape is explored as medium for rethinking architectural form and design by acting via the screen. Figures 12 and 13 depict tests whereby both live footage (video calls) and recorded footage are minced on screens, traversing interiors, landscapes and media events.

21

Weigel, Sigrid, Epistemology of Wandering, Tree and Taxonomy, Images Re-vues [Online], (Hors-série 4, document 15, 2013), Accessed on October 2nd 2016: URL: http:// imagesrevues.revues.org/2934 22 Claudia Wedepohl, Ideengeographie. Ein Versuch zu Aby Warburgs ‘Wanderstraßen der Kultur’, Mitterbauer, H., Scherke, K., (eds.), Ent-grenzte Räume. Kulturelle Transfers um 1900 und in der Gegenwart, (Wien, Studien zur Moderne, 2005) p. 227-254.

23 Weigel, Sigrid, Epistemology of Wandering, Tree and Taxonomy, Images Re-vues [Online], (Hors-série 4, document 15, 2013), Accessed on October 2nd 2016: URL : http:// imagesrevues.revues.org/2934 24 Benjamin, W. and Underwood, J.A., The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, (London, Penguin Books, 2008), p.24 25 Latour, B., Woolgar, S., Laboratory life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts, (2nd edn., United States, Sage Publications., 1979), p. 110 26 Weigel, Sigrid, Epistemology of Wandering, Tree and Taxonomy, Images Re-vues [Online], (Hors-série 4, document 15, 2013), Accessed on October 2nd 2016: URL : http:// imagesrevues.revues.org/2934 27 Not in the sense the sense that Paul Virilio quite vehemently tries to describe screens in several neologisms of his (‘teletopographical’, ‘opto-electric’, ‘optic foyer’ etc.). See: Friedberg, A., The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft, (Cambridge, MA, The MIT Press, 2007), p.184

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44

iPhone

iPhone

iPad

iPhone

The World

Video Call Threshold

United Kingdom - Living Room

Cyprus Tool Shed

TV & PC Monitor

Media Threshold

iPad

Cyprus Bedroom

PC Monitor

Video Call Threshold

Video Call Threshold

SLR Camera

THE FORMAT: SCREEN

figure 12

Video Call Threshold

Video Call Threshold

iPhone

United Kingdom - Living Room

Cyprus Coastal Promenade

TV & PC Monitor

Media Threshold

iPad

iPad

iPhone

iPhone

SLR Camera

THE TELESCAPE

figure 13

The World

45

figure 14

figure 15

46

EPILOGUE Telescape as Spectacle

“Magician and surgeon behave like painter and cameraman. The painter, while working, observes a natural distance from the subject; the cameraman, on the other hand, penetrates deep into the subject’s tissue.” 28 The very nature of surgical penetration into reality digs into a far deeper realm of distraction. A pit in which any fragment of footage, as has been argued, can be served up as fact if the aesthetic qualities and narrative format amount to an emotionally ‘authentic’ spectacle. In other words, as one probes deeper into the camera, or indeed the screen, the proximity to fact only fades to reveal the magician staring back at the other end. Fiction, as heightened reality, is all-over the Telescape. Its distracting potential, spear-headed by the practises of media operators, does not necessarily centre around the intentional construction of lies.

It need not be intentional deception at all. The mincing, stirring and omission of over-abundant footage can generate multiple fictions, even accidentally, while maintaining ‘authentic’ fragments. The Telescape is at once distracting and contemplative.

“Twenty-first-century century journalism, like the nineteenth-century-novel, is a realist cultural form which generates the effects of reality rather than straightforward representations of reality itself ” 29 The dangers of distraction lie in the spectacle. As delineated by the aesthetics of amateur footage and the hegemony of form, contemporary methods of narration employ such an authentic degree of visuals that fact and fiction are indistinguishable. News reporting is the zenith of contemporary fictional realism, with its content taken by its spectators as unquestionable and objective fact. “…Cinema does not include attentiveness.

The audience is an examiner but a distracted one.” 30

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EPILOGUE: TELESCAPE AS SPECTACLE

The spectacle draws from the Telescape’s qualities of distance and collapsing of exteriors into interiors. 31 With the proliferation of both footage and screens, one interiorises the world in their palm, often without even having to crawl out of their bed. Footage, generated by anyone finds its way into narrative spectacles that follow society beyond the public realm, burrowing deep inside their most private and intimate spaces. The mobile screen has annihilated the stationary theatre or cinema goer and (what has been for centuries) a relatively fixed relationship with the stage.

Susan Buck-Morss, in her essay ‘The Dialectics of Seeing’ refers to the Arcades of Paris as the urban pinnacle of societal mass distraction within the bounds of capitalism. “The covered shopping Arcades of the nineteenth century were Benjamin’s central image because they were the precise replica of the international consciousness, the unconscious of the dreaming collective. All of the errors of bourgeois consciousness could be found there (commodity fetishism, reification, the world as ‘inwardness’), as well as (in fashion, prostitution, gambling) all of its utopian dreams. Moreover, the arcades were the first international style of modern architecture, hence part of lived experience of a worldwide, metropolitan generation.” 32 Retail utopias, collective wishes, even nostalgia for constructed pasts, have manifested in contemporary technologies of glass and metal. No longer an arcade but a screen.

If an altar of consumerism could elevate one singular object it is that of the screen.

Inside it, a religion of pure cult constructing its dogmas. The interspace between footage, the Telescape, is easily manipulated to distract. “This religion does not primarily function through a set of ‘ideas’ on the level of an ‘orthodoxy’, but rather on the level of material practises, an ‘orthopraxis’, an ensemble of ‘normalising’ practises and rituals” 33 The construction of fact is consequentially intrinsic to a global consumerist orthopraxis. Footage has become a commodity of neo-liberal capitalist spectacle; and glass, the material of its formatting apparatus - the screen.

The conceptual role of glass merely heightens the sense of technological irony in regard to modernism - once a symbol of political transparency it has come to define near-absolute obscurity.

The Telescape has to become a space for contemplation and constructive thought not of distraction. It is compelled to complete Warburg’s unfinished project, that envisaged the impossibility to synthesize a pictorial knowledge (the astrological map), the order of space (the Wanderstraßenkarte), and the episteme of descent (the genealogical schema), into one model; the Atlas. 34 Therefore, in an age of infinitesimal production and commodifying of footage (even in the aesthetic fetishism, in Benjaminian terms, of amateur footage), the Telescape is a

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THE TELESCAPE

two-etched sword. However, like Warburg’s Mnymosene Atlas, footage can also become a critical trans-spatial and trans-historical tool. One could refer to filmic works such as those of Harun Farocki to perhaps begin understanding interspatial contemplation amidst the mincing and stirring of footage.

“Influenced by Bertolt Brecht and Godard, [Farocki’s] sharp gaze tinged with moral intent was fixed on the links between individuals, society, politics and moving images; on the efforts that shape and condition us; and on the violence all around us. The direct, manifest and brutal violence we know and recognise, and the less explicit but pervasive and therefore insidious violence that passes via the media and technology.” 35 Although much could be said about his oeuvre, a 2015 posthumous exhibition brings all his projects together into an Atlas. Narratives that question the perception of current affairs are set against each other to further provoke relationships. It is as close as one could parallel an contemporary atlas of footage and screen to Warburg’s Mnemosyne (figure 14).

28

Benjamin, W. and Underwood, J.A., The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, (London, Penguin Books, 2008), p.25 29 Andén-Papadopoulos, K., Amateur Images and Global news, Edited by Kari / AndenPapadopoulos and Mervi Pantti, (Bristol, UK, University of Chicago Press, 2011), p.203 30 Benjamin, W. and Underwood, J.A., The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, (London, Penguin Books, 2008), p.35 31 One could even dare over-simplify Deleuze’s philosophy of the Baroque Fold and compare it to the materiality of the screen - the seamless separator of interior from exterior where both inform each other infinitely whilst never interacting However, this comparison could be an interesting discussion in a separate investigation, even drawing relationships between the spectacle to baroque philosophy and the current state of screenic distraction a Neobaroque condition. See: Lahiji, N., The Adventures with the Theory of the Baroque and French Philosophy: Deleuze, Lacan and Badiou, (London, United Kingdom, Bloomsbury Academic, 2016) 32 Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project, (8th edn. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1991) 33 Benjamin, W., ‘Capitalism and Religion’, in Walter Benjamin, Selective Writings, Volume I, 1913-1926, ed. Bullock, M., Jenbnings, M. W., (Cambridge, MA, The Balknap Press of Harvard University Pres, 1996), p.41 34 To radically stretch the argument even further, the Telescape could even become a technological, intraspatial tool for joining ‘culture’ and ‘nature’ in Latour’s sense, as he argues for the need to do so in ‘We Have Never Been Modern’. Interestingly; in the

49

EPILOGUE: TELESCAPE AS SPECTACLE

figure 16

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THE TELESCAPE

book he introduces his premise through his reading of a news article and the thematic ßrelationships, or indeed lack there of, between the articles of news. See: Latour, B. and Porter, C., We Have Never Been Modern, (3rd edn. Cambridge, MA, Prentice Hall / Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993) 35 The Atlas of Harun Farocki’s Filmography, 2015, [Online]: https://www.google.com/ culturalinstitute/beta/asset/atlas-of-harun-farocki’s-filmography/8wGD6OfEo3J5tg , Accessed December 2nd 2016 36 See Alain Badiou, Conditions, from: Lahiji, N., The Adventures with the Theory of the Baroque and French Philosophy: Deleuze, Lacan and Badiou, (London, United Kingdom, Bloomsbury Academic, 2016), p.5 figure 1: Nicholas Zembashi, ‘Telescapes’, Test_01 figure 2: Salon: ‘Stephen Colbert’s greatest hits: Our favorite moments from 9 years of “The Colbert Report”, [Online], http://www.salon.com/2014/12/19/stephen_colberts_ greatest_hits_our_favorite_moments_from_9_years_of_the_colbert_report/ figure 3: Couns Weekly: ‘British Museum explores beauty of human body in Greek art’, [Online], https://www.coinsweekly.com/en/Archive/British-Museum-explores-beautyof-human-body-in-Greek-art/8?&id=3235&type=n figure 4: Ruhm und Rätsel – der Torso vom Belvedere, [Online] http://syndrome-destendhal.blogspot.co.uk/2013_08_01_archive.html figure 5: Jeff Koons, Gazing Ball (Belvedere Torso), plaster and glass, 71 1/2 x 29 7/8 x 35 1/8 inches, 181.6 x 75.9 x 89.2 cm [Online], http://www.jeffkoons.com/artwork/gazingball/gazing-ball-belvedere-torso#sthash.RT8iiN9U.dpuf figures 5, 7, 8: Oliver Laric Missile Variations, official webpage, [Online], http://oliverlaric. com/missilevariations.htm figure 9: Radio from Reina Sofia Museum: ‘Aby Warburg, detail of the Mnemosyne Atlas, 1924-29’, [Online] http://radio.museoreinasofia.es/en/fugue-ideas figure 10: ‘Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan President Recep Tayyip Erdogan speaks on CNN Turk via a FaceTime call in Istanbul on Friday, July 15, 2016, after members of the country’s military attempted to overthrow the government’, [Online], http://edition. cnn.com/2016/07/15/asia/turkey-military-action/index.html figure 11: Creational Experiments: ‘Aby Warburg, detail of the Mnemosyne Atlas, 192429’, [Online], https://curatorialexperiments.wordpress.com/tag/universal-addressabilityof-dumb-things/ figure 12: Nicholas Zembashi, ‘Telescapes’, Test_02 figure 13: Nicholas Zembashi, ‘Telescapes’, Test_03 figure 14: Art Agenda: ‘All the World’s Futures’, View of Atlas of Harum Farocki’s Filmography, [Online], http://www.art-agenda.com/reviews/all-the-worlds-futures/ figure 15: Pinterest, Explore Aby Warburg, Librarys, and more!, [Online], https://www. pinterest.com/pin/510947520207801833/ figure 16: Nicholas Zembashi, ‘Telescapes’, Test_04

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EXPLODING TIME

THE ORIGINS OF TIME An Etymological History

The word ‘time’ is the most commonly used noun in English. It is deceptively versatile. It can be an abstract idea – the time that physicists talk about. But it can also be a discrete moment (‘I smile every time the cat dances’) or the exact hour of the day. Other languages use three words to describe these three senses. In French they correspond to temps, fois and heure. In German, they are zeit, mal and Ur. Even in Old English, we used two different words: tid, meaning a chunk of time (like ‘eventide’) and tima, which was their equivalent of ‘hour’. Gradually these distinct senses have coalesced into one, multipurpose word.

The oldest root of the word time is dā ; a Proto-Indo European prefix meaning ‘to cut or divide.’ That makes sense – in all its various guises, time is a measure of the space between things. The Greeks went even further than we did in stretching this meaning. In Ancient Greek, dā-mo became the distance between different types of people, as in demos or ‘ordinary citizens’ and even between the Gods and humans: dai-mon meant ‘divider’ and gave us the words daimon or demon.

In the International System of Units (SI), the unit of time is the second. It is an SI base unit, and it is currently defined as “the duration of 9 192 631 770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium 133 atom” In the construction of history and the arrangement of facts and events along a timeline issues would always arise. A prominent one being the Phantom Time Hypothesis.

According to the Phantom Time Hypothesis, the period between 614 AD and 911 AD didn’t exist; the history normally attributed to that time is either a

57

THE ORIGINS OF TIME

Kairos (Time), fresco by Francesco Salviati, 1552-1554, Palazzo Sacchett

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EXPLODING TIME

misinterpretation or a deliberate falsification of the evidence. If this were true, Charlemagne (reigned 768-814) never existed and the year 2012 is actually 1715 AD. The idea was created in 1990 by a man called Heribert Illig and has since been developed by other German historians as well as conspiracy theorists.

Arguments in favour of the theory are as follows: The apparent stagnation in the development of architecture, ceramics and thought as well as the lack of substantial documentary evidence – this is why the first part of this period is called the ‘Dark Ages’ - suggests this period simply didn’t exist.

There is very little archaeological evidence which can be reliably dated to this period; our account is based on a quite limited number of written sources (which could be faked or just wrong).

The Pope introduced the new Gregorian calendar in 1582 to replace the Julian one, when it was 10 days out of sync. If the error had been building up since the introduction of the Julian calendar in 45 ad, it ought to have been 13 days out – so the intervening period must have been overstated by 300 years. Mainstream historians have a simple explanation, though: the purpose of the change was to bring the calendar into line with the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, not with 45 AD – which accounts for the discrepancy.

Architect, astronomer, educator, philo­logist, folklorist, lawmaker, statesman - the range of achievements credited to Charlemagne is so great that it implies he is a mythical figure.

If Phantom Time Hypothesis holds up, who created the fake, and why? Perhaps the Holy Roman Emperor Otto III wanted to be on the throne at the time of the Millennium, 1000 AD, so he got chroniclers across Europe to invent and document an extra 300 years. Illig’s followers face many difficulties of course: the theory has yet to explain how it would fit into the history of the world outside Europe, or into astronomical records, or into the tree-ring data. More interdisciplinary research needed, they say.

59

THE FIRST GULF WAR lasted

800 hours, but it generated over

20 000 hours of footage

62

WAR IN THE GULF Generating Footage

Operation Desert Storm (17 January 1991 – 28 February 1991) in its combat phase, was a war waged by coalition forces from 34 nations led by the United States against Iraq in response to Iraq’s invasion and annexation of Kuwait.

The war is also known under other names, such as the Persian Gulf War, First Gulf War, Gulf War I, Kuwait War, First Iraq War, or Iraq War before the term “Iraq War” became identified instead with the 2003 Iraq War (also referred to in the US as “Operation Iraqi Freedom”). The Iraqi Army’s occupation of Kuwait that began 2 August 1990 was met with international condemnation, and brought immediate economic sanctions against Iraq by members of the UN Security Council. US President George H. W. Bush deployed US forces into Saudi Arabia, and urged other countries to send their own forces to the scene. An array of nations joined the coalition, the largest military alliance since World War II. The great majority of the coalition’s military forces were from the US, with Saudi Arabia, the United Kingdom, and Egypt as leading contributors, in that order.

Kuwait and Saudi Arabia paid around US$32 billion of the US$60 billion cost.

The war was marked by the introduction of live news broadcasts from the front lines of the battle, principally by the US network CNN. The war has also earned the nickname Video Game War after the daily broadcast of images from cameras on board US bombers during Operation Desert Storm.

The initial conflict to expel Iraqi troops from Kuwait began with an aerial and naval bombardment on 17 January 1991, continuing for five weeks. This was followed by a ground assault on 24 February. This was a decisive victory for the coalition forces, who liberated Kuwait and advanced into Iraqi territory. The coalition ceased its advance, and declared a ceasefire 100 hours after the ground

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WAR IN THE GULF

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EXPLODING TIME

campaign started. Aerial and ground combat was confined to Iraq, Kuwait, and areas on Saudi Arabia’s border. Iraq launched Scud missiles against coalition military targets in Saudi Arabia and against Israel.

The Gulf War began with an extensive aerial bombing campaign on 16 January 1991. For forty-two consecutive days and nights, the coalition forces subjected Iraq to the most intensive air bombardment in military history. The coalition flew over 100,000 sorties, dropping 88,500 tons of bombs.

The war was heavily televised. For the first time, people all over the world were able to watch live pictures of missiles hitting their targets and fighters departing from aircraft carriers. Allied forces were keen to demonstrate their weapons’ accuracy.

In the United States, the “big three” network anchors led the war’s network news coverage: ABC’s Peter Jennings, CBS’s Dan Rather, and NBC’s Tom Brokaw were anchoring their evening newscasts when air strikes began on 16 January 1991. ABC News correspondent Gary Shepard, reporting live from Baghdad, told Jennings of the city’s quietness. But, moments later, Shepard was back on the air as flashes of light were seen on the horizon and tracer fire was heard on the ground.

Still, it was CNN whose coverage gained the most popularity and indeed its wartime coverage is often cited as one of the landmark events in the network’s history (ultimately leading to the establishment of CNN International). CNN correspondents John Holliman and Peter Arnett and CNN anchor Bernard Shaw relayed audio reports from Baghdad’s Al-Rashid Hotel as the air strikes began.

The network had previously convinced the Iraqi government to allow installation of a permanent audio circuit in their makeshift bureau. When the telephones of all of the other Western TV correspondents went dead during the bombing, CNN was the only service able to provide live reporting. After the initial bombing, Arnett remained behind and was, for a time, the only American TV correspondent reporting from Iraq.

In the United Kingdom, the BBC devoted the FM portion of its national speech radio station BBC Radio 4 to an eighteen-hour rolling news format creating Radio 4 News FM. The station was short lived, ending shortly after President Bush declared the ceasefire and Kuwait’s liberation. However, it paved the way for the later introduction of Radio Five Live.

Two BBC journalists, John Simpson and Bob Simpson (no relation), defied their editors and remained in Baghdad to report on the war’s progress. They were

65

WAR IN THE GULF

66

EXPLODING TIME

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WAR IN THE GULF

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EXPLODING TIME

responsible for a report which included an “infamous cruise missile that travelled down a street and turned left at a traffic light.”

The war marked the use of highly advance technologies from precision guided missiles, to Airborne warning and communication systems and GPS. It was the first war where satellite technology was as important militarily as it was for live media coverage. In the context of media coverage of the Gulf War, Annex Foxtrot was the name given to a 10-page policy memo dated January 14, 1991. It outlined heretofore unprecedented Pentagon restrictions on news reporting of the Gulf War.“News media representatives will be escorted at all times. Repeat, at all times,” wrote Captain Wildermuth. The memo established press pools that gave the Pentagon control over who could talk to troops and under what conditions, as well as control over much of what could be reported. The restrictions also provided for prior restraint of material deemed dangerous to national security.

Finally, the Gulf War oil spill was one of the largest oil spills in history. Early estimates on the volume spilled were at 11,000,000 US barrels (1,300,000 m3).

These numbers were significantly adjusted by later, more detailed studies, both by government (4,000,000 US barrels - 480,000 m3 - to 6,000,000 US barrels 720,000 m3) and private (2,000,000 US barrels - 240,000 m3 - to 4,000,000 US barrels - 480,000 m3) researchers. The slick reached a maximum size of 160 km by 68 km and was 13 cm thick in some areas. Despite the uncertainty surrounding the size of the spill, figures place it several times the size (by volume) of the Exxon Valdez oil spill.

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THE OIL WELL 1.0

iPad Cam - time elapsed 00:00:00

GoPro Cam - time elapsed 00:00:00

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EXPLODING TIME

iPhone Cam - time elapsed 00:01:01

iPad Cam - time elapsed 00:02:31

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THE OIL WELL 2.0

74

EXPLODING TIME

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THE OIL WELL 2.0

iPad Cam - time elapsed 00:00:00

Web Cam - time elapsed 00:00:30

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iPad Cam - time elapsed 00:00:00

EXPLODING TIME

iPhone Cam - time elapsed 00:02:38

iPhone Cam - time elapsed 00:03:05

Go Pro Cam - time elapsed 00:03:05

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THE OIL WELL 2.0

78

EXPLODING TIME

79

80

QUANTITY AND ABSURDITY The Story of Oil

- You flip on the camera, it’s news. I can’t believe we’re staring at the rape of Kuwait with a camera ... and we’re not shooting!

- We’ll get a story. We’re in Kuwait.

- Nobody’s in Kuwait. Come on!

- We’re in hell!

- This was the biggest forest in the history of the world. Dinosaurs! Then it all died, rotted, and turned into oil. Now we’re here. Basically, we’re fighting to see who gets to desecrate the cemetery. Who gets the oil. No wonder there’s been so much bad blood. It’s always been lousy karma to be a grave robber.

‘Three Kings’, directed by David O. Russel, 1999

The absurdity between event and reconstruction is as extreme as being blissfully ignorant of the facts. The story of oil and the interest in manufacturing narratives that allow for wars to secure its possession, is evident in bottled water: • Producing bottles for annual American consumption requires the equivalent of more than 17 million barrels of oil, not including the energy for transportation.

• Plastic water bottles can take between 400 and 1,000 years to decompose.

• 1/4 of the amount of a bottle of water is the amount in oil required to produce it.

• Bottled water costs over 1,000+ times more than tap water.

• Last year, the average American used 167 water bottles, but only recycled 38.

• It takes 17 million barrels of oil to produce plastic bottles yearly. This could fuel 1 million cars for a year.

• Through aggressive smear campaigns, powerful soft-drink manufactures flood the media with anti tap water adds to manufacture demand for bottled water and decrease interest in maintaining free, good quality, tap water.

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QUANTITY AND ABSURDITY

‘

84

this bottle . . .

EXPLODING TIME

. . . took a lot of oil to make

’

by Scientist, from lab findings, in recent years

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QUANTITY AND ABSURDITY

‘

88

this story is so done . . .

EXPLODING TIME

. . . waste of my fucking time

’

by actress, acting as a Reporter, in a film

89

74

75

94

FACETED WORLD The Screen; a Site for Stories

Footage is nourishment for the eye; innumerable fragments of a world woven into digestible stories – The screen, their narrative yarn; an apparatus weaving polymyths into a monomyth served up as news. The event is exploded; footage of what happened is a snow flake turned into an avalanche. The earth as we know it, is but a collection of facets representing itself.

As information in the form of imagery is constructed with exponential velocities, varieties and volumes, place becomes elusive – time is exploded. Fact and fiction become indistinguishable in a world where truth is more fiercely replaced by truthiness.

Never has the world been seen in slower-motion, in more scrutinising detail, in higher definition – more space, more time more and more and more and more. Be it a screen, virtual image or all-out augmentation, surface is the new creed; all else is a prop for displaying a multifaceted world that seems to have no z-axis.

In the Telescape, despite the eradication of conventional time, scale and even volume, a new space of memory and knowledge is constructed, with its own depth and volumetric attributes. It goes beyond the body of the screen itself; it merges the immaterial and the tangible; the meticulously staged and the accidental of the everyday; it blurs the boundary between facts and fictions; interiors and exteriors.

The search for truth in the Telescape is less important than an obsession with story-telling. It is a place of wonder; an imaginarium. Truthiness is the only measure by which reality is confirmed in the screen. Truthiness has an aesthetic.

It occupies space and it has tangible consequences. Above all it can be designed.

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FACETED WORLD

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EXPLODING TIME

97

At last! The 1991 Show!

The ballet on the burning stage.

The documentary seen Upon the fractured screen The Situation Tragedy Cliffhangers with no hope The water-colour in the flooded gallery...

Though you doubt your leader’s moralities you decide it is more at ease In the Land Of Do-As-You-Please than outside in the cold.

But the backdrops peel and the sets give way and the cast get eaten by the play There’s a murderer at the Matinee, there are dead men in the aisles And the patrons and the actors too are uncertain if the show is through And with side-long looks await their cue but the frozen mask just smiles.

TRUTHINESS

TRUTHINESS

by Dr. Stephen T. Colbert

Truthiness is the belief or assertion that a particular statement is true based on the intuition or perceptions of some individual or individuals, without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts. Truthiness can range from ignorant assertions of falsehoods to deliberate duplicity or propaganda intended to sway opinions. Stephen Colbert, portraying his character Dr. Stephen T. Colbert, chose the word truthiness just moments before taping the première episode of The Colbert Report on October 17, 2005, after deciding that the originally scripted word – “truth” – was not absolutely ridiculous enough: “We’re not talking about truth, we’re talking about something that seems like truth – the truth we want to exist”, he explained.

Colbert refreshed “truthiness” in an episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on July 18, 2016, using the neologism “Trumpiness” regarding statements made by Donald Trump during his presidential campaign. According to Colbert, while truthiness refers to statements that feel true but are actually false, “trumpiness” does not even have to feel true, much less be true.

Do facts or fictions even matter when both are as constructed as each other? Any means necessary to stretch an event are exploited, truth becomes a casualty of time – the story’s power lies in truthiness! It doesn’t matter what you’re saying, only how many times you say it. Repeat it enough times and it becomes fact nonetheless. It boils down to belief – detached from fact and addicted to narrative.

The Story prevails - Truth has always been highly overrated since representation always taints the event.

Source: Truthiness, Wikipedia [online]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truthiness, accessed 23rd June 2017

105

108

FACTS Headlines: We Have Never Been Modern by Bruno Latour

On page four of my daily newspaper, I learn that the measurements taken above the Antarctic are not good this year: the hole in the ozone layer is growing ominously larger. Reading on, I turn from upper-atmosphere chemists to Chief Executive Officers of Atochem and Monsanto, companies that are modifying their assembly lines in order to replace the innocent chlorofluorocarbons, accused of crimes against the ecosphere. A few paragraphs later, I come across heads of state of major industrialized countries who are getting involved with chemistry, refrigerators, aerosols and inert gases. But at the end of the article, I discover that the meteorologists don’t agree with the chemists; they’re talking about cyclical fluctuations unrelated to human activity. So now the industrialists don’t know what to do. The heads of state are also holding back. Should we wait? Is it already too late? Toward the bottom of the page, Third World countries and ecologists add their grain of salt and talk about international treaties, moratoriums, the rights of future generations, and the right to development.

The same article mixes together chemical reactions and political reactions. A single thread links the most esoteric sciences and the most sordid politics, the most distant sky and some factory in the Lyon suburbs, dangers on a global scale and the impending local elections or the next board meeting. The horizons, the stakes, the time frames, the actors — none of these is commensurable, yet there they are, caught up in the same story.

On page six, I learn that the Paris AIDS virus contaminated the culture medium in Professor Gallo’s laboratory; that Mr Chirac and Mr Reagan had, however, solemnly sworn not to go back over the history of that discovery; that the chemical industry is not moving fast enough to market medications which militant patient organizations are vocally demanding; that the epidemic is spreading in

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FACTS

sub-Saharan Africa. Once again, heads of state, chemists, biologists, desperate patients and industrialists find themselves caught up in a single uncertain story mixing biology and society.

On page eight, there is a story about computers and chips controlled by the Japanese; on page nine, about the right to keep frozen embryos; on page ten, about a forest burning, its columns of smoke carrying off rare species that some naturalists would like to protect; on page eleven, there are whales wearing collars fitted with radio tracking devices; also on page eleven, there is a slag heap in northern France, a symbol of the exploitation of workers, that has just been classified as an ecological preserve because of the rare flora it has been fostering!

On page twelve, the Pope, French bishops, Monsanto, the Fallopian tubes, and Texas fundamentalists gather in a strange cohort around a single contraceptive.

On page fourteen, the number of lines on high-definition television bring together Mr Delors, Thomson, the EEC, commissions on standardization, the Japanese again, and television film producers. Change the screen standard by a few lines, and billions of francs, millions of television sets, thousands of hours of film, hundreds of engineers and dozens of CEOs go down the drain.

Fortunately, the paper includes a few restful pages that deal purely with politics (a meeting of the Radical Party), and there is also the literary supplement in which novelists delight in the adventures of a few narcissistic egos (‘I love you ... you don’t’). We would be dizzy without these soothing features. For the others are multiplying, those hybrid articles that sketch out imbroglios of science, politics, economy, law, religion, technology, fiction. If reading the daily paper is modern man’s form of prayer, then it is a very strange man indeed who is doing the praying today while reading about these mixed-up affairs. All of culture and all of nature get churned up again every day.

Yet no one seems to find this troubling. Headings like Economy, Politics, Science, Books, Culture, Religion and Local Events remain in place as if there were nothing odd going on. The smallest AIDS virus takes you from sex to the unconscious, then to Africa, tissue cultures, DNA and San Francisco, but the analysts, thinkers, journalists and decision-makers will slice the delicate network traced by the virus for you into tidy compartments where you will find only science, only economy, only social phenomena, only local news, only sentiment, only sex. Press the most innocent aerosol button and you’ll be heading for the Antarctic, and from there to the University of California at Irvine, the mountain ranges of Lyon, the chemistry of inert gases, and then maybe to the United Nations, but this fragile thread will be broken into as many segments as there are pure disciplines. By all means, they seem to say, let us not mix up knowledge, interest, justice and power. Let us not

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TRUTHINESS

mix up heaven and earth, the global stage and the local scene, the human and the nonhuman. ‘But these imbroglios do the mixing’, you’ll say, ‘they weave our world together!’ ‘Act as if they didn’t exist,’ the analysts reply. They have cut the Gordian knot with a well-honed sword. The shaft is broken: on the left, they have put knowledge of things; on the right, power and human politics.

Source: Latour, B. and Porter, C., We Have Never Been Modern, (3rd edn. Cambridge, MA, Prentice Hall / Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993)

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IT DOESN’T MATTER WHAT YOU’RE SAYING

ONLY HOW MANY TIMES YOU SAY IT

116

FICTIONS Non-Linearity: Mulholland Drive by David Lynch

Non-linear narrative, disjointed narrative or disrupted narrative is a narrative technique, sometimes used in literature, film, hypertext websites and other narratives, where events are portrayed, for example out of chronological order, or in other ways where the narrative does not follow the direct causality pattern of the events featured, such as parallel distinctive plot lines, dream immersions or narrating another story inside the main plot-line. It is often used to mimic the structure and recall of human memory.

This trend is exacerbated in the way news media try to construct linear stories out of often disjointed fragments. The battle for linear truth only reinforces truthiness.

In Mulholland Drive, a dark-haired woman is left amnesiac after a car crash. She wanders the streets of Los Angeles in a daze before taking refuge in an apartment.

There she is discovered by Betty, a wholesome Midwestern blonde who has come to the City of Angels seeking fame as an actress. The woman adopts the name Rita. Together, the two attempt to solve the mystery of Rita’s true identity. The story is set in a dream-like Los Angeles, spoilt neither by traffic jams nor smog.

For the first part of the film the non-linearity of Lynch’s narrative structure is most evident. The characters, Rita and Betty aside, appear to have little links between them and their plot trajectories. The narrative threads begin converging in the second part of the film however notable gaps and unresolved plot points still appear. In the final part of the film, Rita and Betty are revealed to be other characters entirely. The entire film was an illusion, a dream in Betty’s real identity, Diane. Diane is a heartbroken actress after her lover film star Camilla (Rita) leaves her for director Adam. She hires a hit-man to murder Camilla but the guilt is too overbearing and she commits suicide.

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FICTIONS

0:00

0:05

dancing/enter dream

0:10

Mulholland Dr. accident - Rita escapes

0:55

Rita & Betty Investigate

1:45

Rita hiding

1:00

where’s Adam?

Adam at Park Hotel

1:50

Rita & Betty at Silencio!

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police

0:20

0:15

Winkie’s - Homeless Man

Betty arrives in LA

Rita Phone hiding Calls

Betty finds Rita

1:10

1:05

Rita & Betty

0:25

Adam & Cowboy

1:55

Rita’s Blue Box Diane & Cowboy

1:15

Betty & Rita rehearse

2:00

Betty IS Diane Selwyn Rita IS Camilla Rhodes

Betty’s audition

2:05

Diane, Camilla & Adam on set

invitation to Mulholland Dr.

6980 Camil

TRUTHINESS

0:30

ita

Adam shown “The Girl” for the role

1:20

udition

0:40

0:35

htiman

6980 Mulholland Dr. Camilla picks Diane up

The dinner at Adam’s

Homeless Diane hires Hitman man & Box

1:35

Rita & Betty investigate Diane Selwyn

2:20

2:15

0:50

Rita’s key and money hitman Rita & Adam Adam & wife Rita at Pink’s Betty driving remembers

1:30

1:25

Adam sees Betty & Camilla Rhodes

2:10

0:45

Diane’s MontageSILENCIO! suicide

1:40

Rita & Betty make love

2:25

End Credits

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FACT

PHANTASMAGORIA

MEDIA AESTHETICS War Is Beautiful

The aesthetic of media is a twofold – a phantasmagoria versus the tedium of the hyper-normalised – in other words, the Spectacular is Beautiful the Boring is Ugly.

What chewing gum is for the mouth, are buildings for the body, and footage for the eye – always received in a state of distraction. In their rerecording, a war can last for centuries and a goal for years. The concept of ‘now’ is eradicated in the surface; a replay of events happening over and over again.

The masses at spectator sports, concerts or revolutions are always staring at and through the screen – reality always wanting a cinematic steroid. Attentionmanagement is no longer an authority’s or advertiser’s realm but everyone’s! – humanity has become the curator of it’s own appearance it’s past, present and future.

And here your story begins; as these stories often do; between the ripples of footage; within the chasms created by oversupplied image-of-fact and fact itself.

These are your sites: a desert and a stadium. Retreating soldiers have set fire to 700 (605 to 732) oil wells. If left the fires would rage on for a hundred years. 1.9 million barrels per day (300,000 m3/d) are being ejected into the desert whilst 25hrs of footage cover every single hour of war.

Time is exploded. Footage is left in vast quantities as you go about your daily activities while a society of facts is transitioning to a society of data. Within the transition an audit of collective mood occurs. Footage becomes a prop in the theatre of war; you are now left to perceive and interpret the content for aesthetic pleasure. War, like football, is a spectator sport. All efforts to aestheticise politics culminate to one point. That one point is war! And it is beautiful!

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It is beautiful.

Because thanks to gas masks, terror inducing megaphones, flame-throwers and small tanks, man’s domination over the subject machine is proven.

It is beautiful.

Because it ushers in the dreamt-of metallisation of the human body.

It is beautiful.

Because it enriches a meadow by adding the fiery orchids of machine guns.

It is beautiful.

Because it combines riffle-fire, barrages of bullets, lulls in the firing and the scents and smells of putrescence into a symphony.

It is beautiful.

Because it creates fresh architectures those of the large tank, geometrical flying formations, spirals of smoke rising from burning cities, and much else besides.

And it is everywhere.

On all your screens. In all your pockets. Instantly accessible. Live. On Replay. 24-7.

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OF BEAUTY AND THE UGLY The Ugly by Mark Cousins

That the ugly is, is central to this argument.1 But to assert this is to contradict a long tradition which seeks to relegate ugliness to the status of a philosophical problem of the negative. Since antiquity, beauty has been regarded as possessing a privileged relation to truth. From this it follows that an ugly representation, or an ugly object, is a negation not just of beauty, but of truth. The category of beauty plays an epistemological role; it represents the truth of an object. Ugliness belongs to whatever negates that truth. It belongs to a series of categories which similarly distort the truth of objects. It belongs to what is contingent, for contingency cannot admit of the truth of objects. It belongs to what is individual, for individuality does not express the truth of an object. It belongs to the hell of error; it can never accede to the heaven of what is ideal and what is necessary. This philosophical drama, in which the forces of truth and of error wage war over the territory of art, determines the character of ugliness. Ugliness is condemned to the role of the mistake, to the role of the object that has gone wrong. Ugliness does not exist as such, but only as a privation of what should have been. It belongs to the same family of ‘error’ as the merely contingent or the grossly individual. It has negated what is real, what is a true object of thought.

Ugliness, contingency, individuality are all terms which belong to the pole of negation. As a consequence of these philosophical axioms, it follows that ugliness will be thought of from the point of view of beauty. At a logical level, ugliness is the negation of beauty; at the level of perception, ugliness is the opposite of beauty. All speculation about ugliness travels through the idea of what it is not.

This is indeed characteristic of philosophy’s attempt to postpone or prevent any encounter with ugliness as such. Ugliness is always shadowed by the beautiful. The argument that will be presented here is part of an attempt to suggest that ugliness has little to do with beauty and that, in fact, beauty and ugliness belong to quite different registers.

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What we might call the philosophical account of ugliness was already laid down in antiquity. For Aristotle, the beautiful object is one which has the ideal structure of an object; it has the form of a totality. The romance of Western philosophy with the category of the totality is well documented.2 Here it means that the art object must be articulated as a whole. This in turn guarantees that it exhibits the proper relations to itself and to what is not itself, to its inside and to its outside. Its form is clear and distinct. Internally it exhibits coherence; externally it establishes a sharp boundary between itself and the world. This establishes a relation between perfection and the idea of the beautiful object.

In this case, perfection does not mean, as it does to us, the zenith of beauty.

The perfect object is, rather, one which is finished, completed. Any addition or subtraction from the object would ruin its form. The idea of being finished relates, not to an aspect of the duration of the work, but to the expression of an indivisible totality. This idea may have lent, historically, a certain drama to the moment of completing a work - that separation of the artist from his work which echoes the separation of God from His Creation.

But the account of God’s working week was really about coherence rather than time. This stress upon the object’s being perfect and therefore finished already suggests a philosophical criterion as to what will function as ugly. It is that which prevents a work’s completion, or deforms a totality ? whatever resists the whole. An ugly attribute of a work is one that is excessively individual.

It is not just that monsters and characters from low life belong to a class of objects which are deemed ugly; it is that they are too strongly individual, are too much themselves. As such, they resist the subordination of the elements of the object to the ideal configuration of a totality. The ugly object belongs to a world of ineluctable individuality, contingency, and resistance to the ideal.

Yet it is here that Aristotle and others make an initial concession to the idea of ugliness, a concession which haunts future speculations concerning the relation between beauty and ugliness. Firstly, ugliness plays a part in comedy.

While tragedy has always been discussed in terms of the nobility and coherence of its effects, comedy presents philosophers with a difficulty, for comedy may incorporate the disgusting, the grotesque and the incoherent. Secondly, ugliness appears in discussions of mimesis. If the task of the work of art is to represent, does the beauty of the representation lie in the object which is represented or in its representation? If in the latter, can we then conceive of a beautiful representation of an ugly object? Lastly, ugliness appears in discussions concerning the nature of genius. What sets die work of a genius apart from that of an artist who merely makes a beautiful object? In classical and subsequent hymns to genius something of the following impression may be formed: genius has a sublime relation to structure. Rather than effortlessly

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and swiftly creating a totality, the genius may incorporate alien objects into the structure of a work, elements that would defeat a lesser artist, in whose hands the whole would break down into a ridiculous collection of incompatible fragments.

The genius is able, indeed needs to, pit himself against a seemingly impossible task - to mould individual, inappropriate elements into a final whole. The greater the difficulty, the greater the final impression that the totality makes. In this sense the ugly is part of the power of genius.

This account of genius introduces a permanent instability into subsequent discussions of beauty and ugliness; a dialectic between the two is now played out through the issue of the coherence of the totality. Ugliness can deform a work, but it can also strengthen it. For the stronger the totality of a work of art, the more it has had to overcome those elements within itself that oppose its unification.

Indeed, if this is true, a new doubt about a certain type of beauty arises. If the structure of a beautiful object has been too little tested by whatever opposes that structure, then it is condemned to occupy a place which is the inverse of genius.

It is facile, ‘merely’ beautiful.

Ugliness, by complicating beauty, achieves an ambiguous status - utterly excluded from beauty, and at the same time a ‘moment’ in the unfolding of a beauty whose form as a totality is all the more triumphant for having overcome the resistance to itself in its ‘moments’ of ugliness.

The discourse of aesthetics, especially in Kant’s Third Critique, fundamentally complicates and radically skews A this relation, but does not reverse it.

Commentators have frequently identified the category of the sublime as one which overthrows the limits of the classical conception of beauty. Certainly, conceptions of the sublime seem to license types of art production that are characterized by a lack of the proportion and symmetry which figure in descriptions of the beautiful object. That which is vast, ill-defined, irregular or capable of stirring negative emotions is now admitted to aesthetics under the description of the sublime. But we should resist reaching a conclusion that is based upon an idea of the content of a sublime representation or production, for in theoretical terms the situation is more complex. It is true that within the sublime the attributes which define the beautiful object (its perfection, its existence as a totality) seem to be displaced by an incitement, to that which seems to have no limit, no proportion - * to what is wild. But this is an inadequate characterization of the sublime, which essentially consists in a certain relation between an object which is fearful or awful and a subject who survives the experience of that object. Kant says, “consider bold, overhanging and as it were threatening rocks, thunder clouds piling up in the sky and moving about accompanied by lightning and thunderclaps, volcanoes

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with all their destructive power, hurricanes with all the devastation they leave behind, the boundless ocean heaved up, the high waterfall of a mighty river and so on. Compared to the might of any of these, our ability to resist becomes an insignificant trifle. Yet the sight of them becomes all the more attractive the more fearful it is, provided we are in a safe place. And we like to call those objects sublime because they raise the soul’s fortitude above its usual middle range and allow us to discover in ourselves an ability to resist which is of quite a different kind, and which gives us the courage [to believe] that we could be a match for nature’s seeming omnipotence.” 3 What is made clear here is that the sublime is neither an image nor an object of a particular type, but the enactment of a scene in which the subject and object have a dynamic relation to each other within a specific setting. The awfulness of the object does not immediately threaten the subject, but rather - given the subject’s safety-in danger - it awakens in the subject an apprehension that his potential scope, even his scale, is greater than the vast and fearful object. It is in this sense that Kant refers to God as fearful. Our sense of the extension of the soul depends on our surviving a sense of this awful, fearful character. But if this relation collapses, leaving only fear in its place, then we can have no Christian experience of the soul. We simply fear something; it does not matter whether it is God or a spider. We are afraid and we flee. Indeed, there seems to be something almost inescapably cinematic about Kant’s description of the site of the sublime.

I sit (safely) confronting such arresting, awful, fearful representations.4 As long as the gap between the subject and the object constitutes a margin of safety, as long as the subject does not cross that fateful boundary between the fearful and 62 fear, the relation of the sublime can be maintained. If it is crossed, if the subject goes too far or the object comes too close, the sublime will collapse. The paradox of the sublime - or rather its inherent ratio - is that the closer I am to the boundary, the more intense is my experience of the sublime. The moment of its zenith is also the moment of its collapse.

But the vastness of the object, its indistinctness, its lack of proportion or symmetry, does not necessarily signal a revolution in the relation between beauty and ugliness has occurred. For, if the totality of the object seems to be absent in all these sublime representations of the world with its unfinished and unlimited character, this does not mean that the sublime abandons the category of the totality. Here, totality is an attribute, not of the object but of the subject, and of the subject’s relation to the object. The subject of the sublime, who now, in an important sense, has become, if not the work of art, then part of its work, is completed within the moment of sublimity. The attributes of symmetry and proportion, which now may seem to be lacking in the object, none the less reappear as a symmetry and

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proportionality between the subject and the object. The subject always ‘fits’ over the object, demonstrating that the subject ‘comprehends’ it, can contain it as an experience, and is, finally, more extensive than the object. The subject becomes a kind of subjective overcoat for the object. The sublime therefore depends upon a permanent separation and a permanent connection between the subject and the object. The relations of the sublime do not undo the story of the totality.

We can now move to a hypothesis concerning ugliness: Aesthetics cannot deal with ugliness, save as a negation and as a moment of beauty. Aesthetics is the theoretical knowledge of beauty and the subject’s relation to beauty, and it therefore follows that there cannot be an aesthetics of ugliness. It also follows that the experience of ugliness is not an aesthetic experience as such. Kant’s notion of aesthetic experience and of judgement cannot admit propositions such as ‘This is ugly’. The judgement ‘This is beautiful’ does not have an opposite. The failure to form a judgement of beauty is just that; it is not an assertion of ugliness. If ugliness is to become an object of inquiry, this inquiry will have to be conducted outside the scope of aesthetics. But like aesthetics it cannot afford to collapse into the relativism of taste. For, if the investigation of the ugly is reduced to the question of what is held, here and now, or there and then, to be ugly, there is nothing to say, beyond the fact that some people say one thing, some another. The sociological and historical investigation of personal preferences, or the cultural machinery of taste, can never accede to the problem of beauty and ugliness. For that problem is not about the variability of taste, but about a certain modality of subjectivity in relation to the object.5 We have argued that beauty and ugliness operate in different registers, but this much they do have in common: they cannot be accounted for in terms of the way in which a culture imposes a scale and a hierarchy of preferences. The problems of beauty and of ugliness both exceed, though differently, the way in which cultures use the terms. Like beauty, ugliness entails a certain relation of a subject to an object; nor can ugliness be reduced to a set of attributes which are assigned to it. It exists, decisively and fundamentally, within the relation. But what is this relation?

The next hypothesis is as follows: The ugly object is an object which is experienced both as being there and as something that should not be there. That is, the ugly object is an object which is in the wrong place. It is important to detach this definition of ugliness as far as possible from aesthetics, for it is not at all a question that an object, having been judged to be ugly, is experienced as some? thing which should not be there. This is not a theory of propriety. It is, rather, that the experience of the object as something which should not be there is primary and constitutive of the experience of ugliness. At this level such an experience

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is identical to the idea of its being in the wrong place. This does not mean that there is a right place for the ugly object; there is no such place. For this is not a relation of incongruity or impropriety; the ‘wrong place’ is an absolute. But in what respect is the ugly object an object which is in the wrong place? Briefly, from the position of the subject to whom the object discloses itself as ugly.

But where may we look for help in thinking out the issue of some? thing which is out of place? Undoubtedly the strongest thoughts about what is ‘out of place’ come from religious taboos and from the clinical analysis of obsessional neurosis.

Both sources (if indeed they are not the same source) betray an underlying concern with things being in their place, and the opposite of this, which is dirt.

Mary Douglas has famously remarked that dirt is matter out of place. What makes dirt dirty is not its substantial form, however much we commonly believe this to be the case, but the fact that it is in the wrong place. In Judaism the earliest ideas concerning sin were expressed, not as abstract issues of ethics, but as the material problem of the stain. And it is the stain which leads that early notion of sin to imagine its expiation in terms of purification rather than restitution. A stain must be cleansed.6 Is this because the stain is ugly? The stain is not an aesthetic issue as such. It is a question of something that should not be there and so must be removed. The constitutive experience is therefore of an object which should not be there; in this way it is a question of ugliness. This connection between a thing being in the wrong place, sin, and ugliness still obtains where the prohibitions within a culture take the form, not of elaborate reasoning, but of swift revulsion from the ‘ugliness’ of an act. An economy of dirt is therefore one way of opening up the question of ugliness.

This economy can also be translated into spatial terms. As a first approximation, in so far as dirt is matter out of place it must have passed a boundary, limit or threshold into a space where it should not be. The dirt is an ugly deduction from ‘good’ space, not simply by virtue of occupying the space, but by threatening to contaminate all the good space around it. In this light, ‘dirt’, the ugly object, has a spatial power quite lacking in the beautiful object. One way of clarifying the difference between the registers of beauty and ugliness is to translate them into topological entities. Broadly speaking, the beautiful object remains the same size as itself, while the ugly object becomes much larger than it is. There is an important reason for this. All objects exist twice, both as themselves and as representations of themselves. But I have a vested interest in pretending to myself that this is not so, for if I were forced to recognize this I would have to conclude that my own existence - as myself and as my representation of myself - are different, and in certain conditions might even come apart. It is not just an idealization of the human body which is implied in the Vitruvian scheme of proportion; it is a manic

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insistence that an even more fundamental proportion in man is guaranteed: that he takes up only as much space as his form displaces. This phantasy depends upon a conviction about isomorphism, about the relation between objects and space.

Firstly, that there will be an isomorphic relation between an object and the space it occupies. Secondly, that there will be an isomorphic relation between the outside of an object (representation) and its inside (existence). Thirdly, that this is most true when the object is a human being. For the thought of an inside being larger than its outside is one which repels human beings.

But how different is the space of the ugly object, and how little Archimedes understood of it. Contamination, at a logical level, is the process whereby the inside of an object demonstrates that it is larger than its outside or representation.

This is one reason why it is important for architecture to be able to think the ugly object. It is also the topographical reason why the ugly object as dirt is not merely a question of ‘where the object shouldn’t be’. It is not just that the ugly object has trespassed into a zone of purity, for the ugly object is voracious and, through contamination, will consume the entire zone. This demonstrates that an important aspect of the ugly object is its relation to space - including, as we shall see, the space of the subject.

No one knows this better than the obsessional neurotic. Leaving aside the question of cleansing as a form of assuaging guilt, it is clear that for the obsessional the answer to the question ‘Where should the object not be?’ is ‘Close to me’. It is not just that the obsessional wants to keep ugly objects as far away as possible; it is, rather, that they become ugly by getting closer. Underlying this is the conviction that what is at a distance is under control, and what is closer is out of control. The obsessional thinks in terms of the formula that ugliness is a function of proximity, but also thinks that the way to stop an object getting closer, to bring it under control, is to clean it. This involves a phantasy about gleaming surfaces; whatever gleams is sufficiently distant from myself. What I polish recedes; what is dirty approaches. But the hopelessness of the task of cleaning is all too apparent. The more you clean something, the dirtier it gets. As the surface is cleaned it reveals those fewer but more stubborn stains which demonstrate even more starkly how the remaining stains consume the surrounding space. The case of the obsessional shows that the ugly object, in its relation to the subject, is not static but is always eating up the space between it and the subject.

But what is this subject? Why is it confronted by something which is in the wrong place? In order to answer this it is necessary to remember that the ‘subject’ referred to here is not the ‘subject’ that Kant has in mind, nor the subject of philosophical discourse in general. Still less is it the ‘subject’ that serves as the bearer of cultural

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codes in the human sciences. It is, rather, the subject that responds to objects as a determinate psychical apparatus, that is, as a radical division between unconscious and conscious life - a being which is the locus of desire as well as the locus of institutions of defence against those desires.

This has immediate consequences for a psychoanalytic account of the difference between our responses to beauty and to ugliness. In so far as beauty may be taken as an object of desire, the subject is governed by the pleasure principle. But it is the nature of desire to work in respect of representations. ‘Representation’ here does not refer to the nature of an object, whether it be a painting or a person: it refers, rather, to the fact that the economy of desire is intrinsically about representation.

All objects of desire are representations, since they are substitutions for something that is experienced as having been lost. This economy of desire can be illustrated by reference to the infant. The infant does not experience desire as long as he is satisfied. The first gap in existence occurs with a lack of satisfaction. The infant does not exactly ‘experience’ this lack. Rather, experience is born of it.

The infant deals with the lack of satisfaction by hallucinating what he imagines is the object that would restore satisfaction. But hallucination involves a relation to a representation; it does not produce satisfaction. The representation, in this sense, is a substitute for something which is now lost, and which constitutes the subject as a complex of lacks. The infant assumes subjectivity as the catastrophic precipitation into a world of desire (lack) and substitutions for a lost object.

However much the subject strives to fulfil his desires, the economy of lack can never be satisfied. The lost object can never be found because it is no longer an object; it is the condition of desire. Caught between what is experienced as lost and the illusions of desire, the subject follows the plot of his own fiction.7 This economy governs both the life of phantasy and life in the world. But the world includes obstacles to desire; indeed the world itself may be thought of as an obstacle to desire. It is this which leads Freud to define ‘reality’ in a special sense, one which is quite alien to definitions offered by philosophers or by the human sciences. If the philosopher defines reality or existence as the sum of what there is, and if the anthropologist defines it as the sum of what there is from the standpoint of a culture, those definitions are no part of Freud’s reasoning. For him reality is anything that functions as an obstacle to desire. The idea of ‘reality testing’ is not the cognitive adventure that psychologists imagine, but the painful t blow, or wound, that is delivered to our narcissism. Reality is that which, being an obstacle, both arrests and denies us our pleasure. It is in this sense that we can consider a thesis which might otherwise seem petulant and melodramatic: The ugly object is existence itself, in so far as existence is the obstacle which stands in the way of desire. And so it is, from the point of view of desire, that the ugly

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object should not be there. Its character as an obstacle is what makes it ugly.

But the human being is not a stoical being. Far from accepting his or her fate in a world of obstacles, the human being resorts to the primitive mechanism of projection: whatever is not a friend of desire is an enemy which seeks my destruction. Late in his life Freud reformulated his definition of reality in the dark and laconic observation that reality is equivalent to castration. Whatever is an obstacle is invested with the power to punish or annihilate me; it, in a literal sense, is coming to get me. At this point the clinical observation of the obsessional neurotic applies to the daily life of humanity. The ugly object, as obstacle, is a punitive force which is sweeping towards me. The response to this threat can be twofold - to destroy the object, or to abandon the position of the subject. Since the former is rarely within our power, the latter becomes a habit. The confrontation with the ugly object involves a whole scheme of turning away. The child’s closing of the eyes rehearses the vanishing of the subject. Not looking, turning my back, inattention: all betray the fugitive reaction to the ugliness of that which exists.

This is a defence against a reality which shows that the relation to ugliness is quite different to the movement of desire, and is fought out on another plane. Such an account provides, however, only a view of the relation to ugliness at the level of the ego and its defences. There is another story, more obscure and obscene, about the relation between the unconscious and ugliness. It is an account of the ecstasy which the unconscious enjoys in all that is dirty, horrifying and disgusting - that is, of ugliness as an unbearable pleasure.

Notes 1. This article, which is the first part of two articles, is a synopsis of twenty-two articles on ugliness delivered at the AA in the academic year 1994/95. It attempts to present ugliness as a distinct problem, one that cannot solely be accounted for by aesthetics. It is concerned to develop, in a preliminary way, a psychoanalytic account of ugliness, in so far as ugliness involves experiences which are, at least in part, unconscious. I would like to thank the audience at these lectures and at previous lecture series. The comments made at the seminars after the lectures have allowed me to reformulate what I have tried to say.

In particular I would like to thank Michael Newman, Brian Hatton, Olivier Richon, Pam Golden and Gordana Korolija.

2. The work, especially the early work, of Jacques Derrida is exemplary in this respect.

Much of what he characterizes as the ‘metaphysics of presence’ is also a privilege which is consistently accorded to the category of the totality, and more generally to whatever makes up a ‘whole’.

3. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgement (Indianapolis, 1987), p. 120.

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4. In a section which follows the quotation above, Kant gives an unusual definition of the brave soldier: ‘one whose sense of safety lasts longer than others’.

5. Since the late eighteenth century an argument has existed that assertions that something is beautiful or ugly are nothing more than a linguistic assertion that the subject ‘likes’ or ‘dislikes’ something. As such, asesthetics is ruled out of court, in favour of the analysis of preferences or taste. Contemporary sociology attempts to show how the mechanisms of taste serve the interests of certain social classes and relations of cultural prestige. But these forms of argument, however appealing, fall short of Kant’s problem.

6. There is a necessary ambivalence about the stain itself which must be cleansed, or the place of the stain. The space as a whole has been violated. Contamination is a process which by definition spreads. This is why both religious taboos and the obsessional are concerned with minutiae. For even the tiniest violation of a boundary always has large consequences. 7. This is an absurdly contracted statement of a psychoanalytic view of the birth of the subject, which is so different from the birth of the infant.

It is concerned to signal that from the point of view of desire all objects are also representations . Such a condition reaches a point of intensity in the wish to see. For what is it that we wish to see, beyond what we see?

Source: ‘The Ugly’: Part i in AA Files no. 28 (Autumn 1994), pp. 61-4

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Ugliness, I argued in the first part of this article,1 can be thought of not simply as the negation of beauty but as having a real and independent dimension in which it is experienced as that which is there and which should not be there. Rather than a lack (of beauty), it is an excess - an excess which comes to threaten the subject. The source of this threat, I argued, was a change in the balance between the existence of an object and its representation. For an object to accord with the safety which is implied by classical notions of beauty it must accord with a certain law of proportionality,2 not the kind which can be found in architectural discussions of proportion but a proportionality none the less. If we grant that an object exists twice - firstly as a representation of itself and secondly as its existence, then the outside of a thing (representation) must enclose the inside of a thing (existence). This proportionality, in which the exterior Overcoats’ the interior, in which the object as representation contains the object as existence, has the necessary consequence of changing the nature of the distinction between the exterior and the interior. This is a notorious problem, in any case. So many discussions of interiority and exteriority build a wall between the two categories and so cannot think about the problematic character of a wall. Some discussions abolish the distinction between interior and exterior and so cannot think about the problematic character of the abolition of a wall. But from the point of view of this question of ugliness the question of exterior and interior has to be reframed as the distinction between representation and existence. The ‘exterior’ of a building, then, is not a simple empirical reality - the ‘outside’ of a building.

Indeed, it is important to recall that the outside of a building can never be reduced to an empirical fact. The exterior of a building is not the last spatial moment of a building before it passes into what is not itself. It is what represents the building to a subject. It follows, then, that the conventional architectural categories of interior and exterior are not only of little help; they are an obstacle, in so far as they always return the problem of the inside and the outside to the phantasy of, say, a solid cube. Such an object, with its apparently vivid manifestation of what is an inside, of what is an outside, and of what is a surface, is an obstacle to the reframing of the question from the point of view of the issue of ugliness. The exterior is the representation of the object for the subject, and therefore includes much which is ‘inside’ the object. The interior is the existence of the object and therefore can include anything on the ‘outside’ of the object which has not been submitted to a regime of representation. It is in this sense that ugliness arises as and when the interior of the existence of an object exceeds, for a subject, its representational exterior. It might be tempting to regard this event as a simple issue of something leaking or bursting out of a representational shell. And indeed images of seeping and leaking and of bursting and exploding will inevitably dominate literary and graphic attempts to capture this moment. In fact the situation is more complex, as can be seen if this moment is considered from the viewpoint of the subject rather than the object.

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When the order of representation still contains the existence of an object, the subject remains within a certain proportional relation to the object. This relation permits the subject a sufficient portion of narcissism for the subject to ‘appreciate’ the object. As long as the object signifies for me, I am sustained by the object, which is in a sense a mirror for me. We can imagine that when this elementary safeguard becomes intensified and elaborated in formal schemes of proportion and symmetry in architectural design and theory we have to pose the question of the relation between symmetry and reflection. The topics of beauty and narcissism draw clpse together in this respect.3 But the moment of ugliness follows a quite different path. From the point of view of the subject this moment occurs when the inside of the object bursts traumatically through the subject’s own phantasy of what makes up the inside.

We are concerned here, not with the object as such, not with the inside of the object as such, but with how these are refracted in the phantasies of the subject for whom ugliness is preparing itself. The assertion that an object exists twice, as representation and as existence, is not a question of trying to divide the object into two aspects. It involves the causal proposition that, as long as the representational order of the object overcoats its existence, it also determines the phantasy of what the inside is. If this seems relentlessly abstract, the question can be illuminated by considering the human face. When I experience another’s face in the order of representation and expression, I do not experience the face as the exterior of a head any more than I experience it as a surface of representation. The face as representation dominates my experience to the point that the perception of the head as a physical volume, which therefore implies an inside, is repressed.

Everything I see is organized around the face as a vehicle of expression. The eyes, the nose, the mouth, the structure of the face are all filled with and determined by the phantasy/fact of expression. Moreover, this interpretation of the face is not limited to the reading of a surface, as distinct from what lies behind a surface. The experience of the meaning of the face determines the phantasy of what is behind the face. Facial expression seizes possession of a depth-which, is implied. In reading the surface, I fill out what is behind the surface with the depth of the surface. I do not perceive an object divided between its representational surface and its interior existence. In so far as I am grasped by the object as representation, it creates a depth in which I perceive the representational order permeating the object all the way through. When I look at you, I do not only imagine that the surface of your face epitomizes an expression; the experience of your face overwhelms any thought of what might lie behind it. The depth of your face exhausts any question of ‘behind’. This phantasy is shockingly curtailed by the sight of a facial wound. Suddenly the phantasy of depth is shattered by the perceptual registration that there is a behind to the face and that, far from

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supporting the experience of depth, it projects the stuff of another order, or disorder. The sight of subcutaneous reality, the sudden, crazy sight of flesh and bone is altogether too much. It seizes my attention because it does not signify, because of its evident character of being too much, too close, too soon. It does not so much undermine as ‘overmine’ the face and its expressive economy. The face does not collapse; the face is thrown off. The depth of expression is relegated to the surface of a mask. The moment of ugliness, then, is the shattering of the subject’s phantasy of what makes up the object, in which the object is permeated by its surface just as a face is, and not that there is a non-signifying interior whose pressure to appear is concealed only by the temporary and mendacious skin of a mask. The trauma, for the subject, is occasioned by the sudden appearance of ‘stuff, the stuff which threatens to overwhelm and engulf the subject, and to c?ntaminate the subject with its own lack of meaning.

But this way of stating the argument, here and in the previous article, places too much stress on the excessive materiality of the ugly. In many films which turn upon the threat to human beings by aliens, this excess frequently takes a literal form. The dynamic of the subject’s relation to the alien is that the way in which the alien contaminates space expresses itself as a ceaseless move towards - a pursuit of - the subject. The ugliness of the alien always begins to betray itself through an indistinctness of form; the alien is equivalent, not to its form, but to the stuff that leaks through its form. The movement of the alien towards the human being is also expressed by the increasingly liquid character of the former. The first contact the alien makes with the human subject is though the transmission of a kind of ontological drool. The defences of the subject are redoubled in the attempt to brush off this stuff, the ugly, and to re-establish the radical physical difference between the subject and the ugly object. At the last moment before which the subject is engulfed by the stuff of the alien, the subject produces a response which already announces its defeat - that of vomiting. Vomiting as a defence contains the following paradox - that to vomit is a last ditch attempt to expel aspects of the impending ugly object, but at the same time it is already identified with the ugly object in precisely that action of spreading itself about. The final collapse of the subject and its defences comes about in precisely the action of the ugly 4 object revealing to the subject that they are the same. But this type of account, with its stress on the excess of stuff as that which characterizes the ugly object, while it may document the case what is there and should not be, is likely to be misleading.

For there is a special case of that which is there and should not be; it is that which is not there and should be.

In Gustave Leroux’s novel The Phantom of the Opera the opera ghost circulates through Garnier’s Opera House as a rumour. He sidles into the narrative as the

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collection of stories which are told about him, and as the unseen spectator in Box 5. These stories are not only descriptions of a ghost, but ghosts themselves apparitions of what is not fully there. For the signs of a ghost whisper of a special type of reality, one that redistributes the usual relations between the seen and the unseen. It is not that the ghost is either seen or not seen, visible or invisible; usually a ghost is partly seen and partly not seen. It is, rather, that the sight of the ghost is ‘unnatural’. The girls of the corps de ballet take their conviction about the ghost from the words of Jacques Busquet, the chief scene-shifter: ‘He is extraordinarily thin and his dress coat hangs on a skeletal frame. His eyes are so deep that you can hardly see the fixed pupils. All you see two big black holes, as in a dead man’s skull. His skin, which stretched across his bones like a drumhead, is not white but a dirty yellow. His nose is so little worth talking about that you can’t see it side-face; and the absence of that nose is a horrible thing to look at! The novelist ignores the conventions of logical analysis and the analysis of visual perception, and does so quite correctly. But surely one sees what one sees?

It might be possible to ‘see’ something that isn’t there, just as it is possible to see something that is there. All manner of distortion might be allowed to fall between the act seeing and the facts of what is there, distortions that would fall somewhere between hallucination and inattention. But to stare something which is not there seems to make no sense (nor to have any reference). How could we tolerate such an under-determined world as one in which I can stare at what is not there? If something is not there, it should not be there to stare at. ‘If absent, then not present’ might be the schoolmaster’s report on the alternatives offered by existence, .where presence and absence must be taken be mutually exclusive arid jointly exhaustive categories. But it is just such a world that the ghost comes to trouble, and just such a logic that he comes to haunt. The ghost teaches a lesson in complexity that in an in-between world the status of what is present and what is absent is not so swiftly resolved. True, viewed from the point of view of presence, the nose is absent. In the inventory of perception there are many things, but nose there isn’t. There is no nose here. But negation is the enemy of this kind of clarity. It refuses to be simply the opposite of affirmation. At the very moment when negation denies the existence of an object (There is no nose here . . .), behind the back of the proposition it creates a ‘negative object’, the shadow of an object which isn’t there. Now, viewed from the point of view of absence, a ‘no-nose’ begins to make itself manifest; indeed, it is that which is a ‘horrible thing to look at’, the absence of that nose. The consequence of this is the idea that the relations between what is present and what is absent are relations which are not mutually exclusive. An absent object may even as an object of perception in a world of all that is missing. The existence of objects, and the modalities of their existence, must be viewed not exclusively from the point of view of presence but from the point of view of its ‘ghost’ - the negative world of inverse

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objects. Far from there being two terms which may apply to the existence of an object, there are at least four. From the side of presence we may state, ‘There is a nose’ or ‘There is no nose’. But already the negation begins to point to another world, which we can formalize in the following way: ‘There is a no-nose’, and its further negation, ‘There is no “no-nose”’. It can be immediately grasped that one vital consequence of negation is that, far from being a singular and decisive operation that mirrors affirmation, it is something quite different. Affirmation and negation are not symmetrical. Negation keeps open a relation to the ghosts of objects, to a world of shadows without objects. In unconscious life negation must be regarded as a productive force rather than a limitation, or privation, of objects there might be for experience. Freud insists that the unconscious does not understand negation in its conventional sense, any more than it understands the conventional categories of space, time and causality.4 The unconscious is not governed by those transcendental categories by which philosophers have sought to police the operations of what used to be called the ‘mind’. It is possessed by an unstoppable positivity. The unconscious experience of a ‘negative object’ is positive, real and direct. ‘There is a “no nose”’, is the propositional form of the scene-shifter Jean Busquet’s experience. The consequences for the investigation of unconscious relations to objects and spaces are radical and blunt; the subject relates (in the question of ugliness) not only to those objects and spaces which are there and should not be, but also to those objects and spaces which are not there and should be.

But why is the ghost’s missing nose so ugly? Or, in the context of this argument, why is a missing object equivalent to an excess? In the case of the excess, what is at stake is the threat to the subject, the threat that the subject would be overwhelmed.

It must follow that the missing object must have the same effect. Psychoanalysis has at least two distinct accounts of what is missing. It conceives of the sources of missing objects according to two separate logics; in one case it is of punishment, in the other case it is of loss. Now, although the sources of punishment and of loss may seem utterly distinct, in practice they become importantly linked and intertwined. I may suffer punishment as a forfeit, as a loss, as a configuration of what is vital. Or I may experience loss as a punishment, that my loss is a sign of reality’s persecution of me. Within the discourse of psychoanalysis this is usually presented as a differential speculation on the role of the penis and the breast. A phenomenological drama is drawn out of each organ - the drama of castration, on the one hand, and of separation on the other.5 Each infant in the ‘long march’ to becoming an ex-child must negotiate the passage of separation and the fear of punishment which is given its emblem in the anxieties around castration. Such a passage is not constituted by an event, a trauma and its aftermath, but rather in the continuous, ceaseless relation, with its irruptions, its repetitions, its histories

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between the subject and absent objects. To many they will seem quixotic and arbitrary. It is enough here to keep in mind that the experience of loss and the fear of punishment can easily find a path to each other. Loss can easily be experienced as a punishment; punishment can easily take the form of loss. In either case the subject is threatened with the loss, not of a thing, but of something which was included in the definition of the thing. Without it I am not.

Or we could say that the ghost haunts or ‘underwhelms’ the subject. The ghost places me in a world where I lack that which I need in order to be. If the original definition of the ugly was that it overwhelmed me in its excess, that it closed in on me and blotted out the minimal extent of narcissistic self-possession which I need in order to be separate in the world, here I face the opposite case, but a case in which the outcome is the same. I am underwhelmed by the object, which takes away what I need to be. Excess and lack tend in the same direction, though they take different routes. The lack takes two differing forms, and two differing logics - that of the ghost, and that of the mask. The ghost is a trace of representation which lacks the means to come into existence. It haunts us. That is, it robs us of our conviction that we exist. If it touches us, its coldness robs us of the heat of our substance. Even to see it is to begin to lose our sight of the world, for it transforms the relation between what is normally seen and what is not seen.- In seeing negative objects we lose our footing in existence. We glimpse our lack of life, the death of what we need to live. Traditionally this is the vanitas, the reminder of mortality. In terms of building it appears as those spaces which can be thought of as a vacuum, negative constructions in which we experience-a kind of horror. A missing stair is not simply dangerous; it needs us to lose our footing, indeed it needs our footing. We are always less by being here. The ‘ghostly’ space is at the opposite pole from the undead. The undead are not simply not dead: they are far too much alive, they manifest an altogether excessive life.6 But this invasive contaminating life is stripped of all signification. It has a murderous vivacity which gorges upon meaning, wolfing down signs and transforming them into mere existence. The ugliness of this contagion is the degrading, the liquidation of all forms of representation. Not only does it consume meaning, it ruins whatever representation may be left. The face ceases to express, the exterior ceases to signify.

What is left is a mere mask. And a mask cannot cloak or contain existence. It no longer produces the effect of depth. If anything, it heralds its powerlessness to signify by becoming a masquerade. It is the cosmetic which always gives on to the horror spread by surgery, to the subcutaneous existence it no longer encases but rather underlines. Buildings which are given a face-lift of distracting detail may not be installing a mediation of representation, but proving that masks cannot signify.7 The ghost and the mask are two ways in which ugliness works to destroy the

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stability of the subject’s footing in space. Both work on different levels of lack.

The ghost wishes to signify but needs our existence in order to do so. The mask is the moment when the labour of representation has already succumbed to the thriving emptiness of existence. In each case the subject is threatened with the fate of becoming the ugly object. If the ghost haunts me, I will become a ghost.

I will lack the existence I need in order to signify, and I will become the trace of meaning without a life. If I live among masks I will abandon myself to the sensation of the existence that I can no longer express. These two ways of lacking involve becoming something which is not there and should be.

Ugliness in its radical and violent operations exposes the precariousness of the subject, especially the subject’s relations to objects in space. Whether objects are experienced as those which are there and should not be, or as objects which are not there and should be, the subject experiences the profound threat of facing an internal incoherence; Viewed in this light, we can imagine that while ugliness is not, as was insisted in antiquity, the negation of beauty, it is possible that we might read the canons of beauty as at least in part a defence against the precariousness of the subject if exposed to the ugly object. In terms of that precariousness, what else is the fundamental alliance between beauty and symmetry but the work of inducing the illusion of coherence and idealy into a subject who is in fact always close to the edge? Put bluntly, such doctrines and practices of ‘beauty’ and of idealization are a defence against precariousness, a narcissistic turning away from ugliness. Perhaps classical conceptions of ‘mere’ beauty mark the moment when this fact was partly recognized, that ‘prettiness’ has become a mask which actually draws attention so what has been repressed and so has not been repressed.

The question arises of what other relation the subject might take to ugliness, a relation which does not repeat our conventional responses. It has been argued that the subject usually reacts to the ugly object with all the symptomatic actions of defence. The subject tries to clean it away and, when the object refuses to go, the subject retreats to a repertoire of acts of turning away, of hiding and of vanishing.

In effect we block our eyes and we turn away. But what characterizes the defences is not so much that they are a certain kind of experience but that they suspend the experience of objects. Experience is neutralized in favour of indifference.

The subject hibernates from objects. Instead, we now have technologies of indifference, and possibly architectures of indifference, objects and spaces that assist in the defence which emerges as being nowhere with nothing. It is there ? nowhere ? that we hang about, killing time. The defences are the means whereby the subject avoids life and death, both at the same time. The mechanism of the defences has yet to be described but a start can be made through an investigation of boredom. The defences provide no means of establishing a productive relation

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to ugliness. And yet there must be other relations to ugliness which do not start from beauty and end in boredom. For the element which is indispensable to ugliness is also indispensable to productivity: it is that of vivacity. The question of the animation of the subject’s relation to the object is not one which has emerged within the discourse of aesthetics. Indeed, the traditional stress upon the disinterested character of aesthetic experience has blighted speculation about what is interesting. But before we can approach that question we will need to address, in another article, the renewed problem of what makes a building dead or alive.

Notes: 1. This article is a continuation of the article published in AA Files no. 28 (Autumn 1994)? PP- 61-6.

2. ibid. p. 63.

3. I use the term ‘narcissism’ here to indicate not a pathology, but the everyday illusion of a coherent world - indeed the illusion that there is a world which coherently presents itself for experience, which in turn is linked to the possibility of the subject maintaining a coherent body image. This register, which Lacanians nominate as the ‘Imaginary’, is presented in Lacan’s paper ‘Le Stade du miroir comme formateur de la fonction du Je’, reprinted in Merits (Paris, 1966).

4. See: Sigmund Freud, ‘Negation’, standard edition, vol. XIX (1925), pp. 235-6.

5. An early example of the intertwining of ideas of castration and of separation from the breast may be found in A. Starcke, ‘The Castration Complex’, International Journal of Psychoanalysis, vol. II (1921). In this article Starcke writes of the weaning of a child as a ‘primary castration’. Freud, by contrast, as is clear in the text ‘Inhibitions, Symptoms and Anxiety’, clearly dissociates himself from the conflation of castration and separation, while acknowledging their capacity to combine in experience.

6. I owe this point to Slavoj Zizek.

7. These formulations arose in discussions with Parveen Adams, to whom I am indebted. Her own view of the matter is contained in The Emptiness of the Image (London, 1995).

Source: ‘The Ugly’: Part ii in AA Files no. 29 (Summer 1995), pp. 3-6.

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If the argument in the previous two articles1 is entertained, then a number of consequences flow from it. The question of ugliness is reformulated and the aesthetic and ethical issues surrounding the relation of beauty and ugliness are transformed. For, while ugliness continues to be considered as merely the negative of beauty, the critical field will continue to be swamped with the traditional nostrums of an empty enthusiasm for art. Muses and schoolteachers will insist in much the same dull way that the aesthetic imperative is to avoid ugliness and to cultivate beauty. If it turns out that this is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know, then art faces a dim future. But in any case those sermons on beauty, which demand that we turn away from ugliness, are redundant, for that, as I have argued, is the spontaneous reflex of the subject. Ugliness in its positive dimension, in its force, provokes within the subject a turning away, a retreat. The subject retreats and hangs out in the space of the defences. The aesthetic attitude, far from animating the subject with desire, wilfully produces and even demands the nullity of experience which characterizes the defences. The aesthetic attitude and the economy of the subject together co-operate to promote a response to the ugly which seeks to obliterate the ugly through the cancellation of experience.

The real problem is not the ugliness of the object but the subject’s relation to the defences. Far from revealing the fastidiousness of the lover of beauty, it betrays the cowardice that lurks within many an aesthetic. This cowardice shows itself in a sudden reduction of interest in the object, in the lulling of sensation, in the blurring of perception, in the indifference to space. The subject hibernates in dead time, in the boredom of the defences. It is clear that the true antithesis here is not that between beauty and ugliness, but between vivacity and .. . what? For reasons I will suggest below, the term that might be used probably should not be ‘death’, although it is difficult to avoid. For the quality I am trying to suggest is that which characterizes the defences. It is not so much death, as playing dead.

In fact, death has a crucial role in vivacity; and, if anything, playing dead involves a certain conservative relation to life - it conserves itself, but only by suspending itself. ‘Vivacity’ and ‘playing dead’ as qualities of the subject’s relation to the object do not fit as a distinction between life and death. But, before these complexes of subjectivity can be unravelled, the question of the life and death of the object must be considered.

A famous answer to this question may be found in Victor Hugo’s novel NotreDame de Paris.1 One of the novel’s characters, the archdeacon Claude Frollo, declares, ‘This will kill that, the book will kill the building.’ (p. 192) Beneath the interpretations of this sentence which would entail the prediction that thought will escape from theological control, or that the printing press will destroy the Church as an institution, is the more radical idea that printing will kill architecture. Hugo’s account of architecture is that, up to the invention of movable type, architecture was ‘the great book of mankind’ (p. 194). It was the record and monument of

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collective existence. Indeed, architecture was a species of writing - each raised stone was a letter, each capital on a column bore a meaning, and the letters and words, spelt out of wood and stone, were records of the community.

Solomon’s Temple, for instance, was not simply the binding of the sacred book, it was the sacred book itself. On each of its concentric enclosures the priests could read the novel translated and made manifest to the eye, and could thus follow its transformations from sanctuary to sanctuary until in the final tabernacle they grouped it in its most concrete form, which was still architectural: the ark. Thus the word was enclosed in the building, but its image was on the envelope, like the human figure on a mummy’s coffin, (p. 194) In this sense, architecture was the dominant form of expression and the record, the ‘great script’, of the human race. Letter as monu? ment, monument as script.

Hugo’s description echoes Hegel in his Aesthetics. Architecture is a symbolic form of art, in so far as it manifests or embodies insights and thoughts, rather than being merely a useful art which provides cover and an environment for things already shaped in independent ways. The tower of Babylon is the example Hegel provides: ‘In the rich plains of the Euphrates an enormous work was erected; it was built in common, and the aim and the content of the work was at the same time the com? munity of those who constructed it.’3 The building is the people writing itself, reading itself. For Hugo, as for Hegel, this origin of architecture obeyed a logic of development which would ultimately destroy its own character. For, as successive forms of authority reuse the architectural forms of earlier authorities, a stimulus is given to stylistic change. Hugo interprets the Gothic succession to Roman? esque architecture as the projection of a power struggle in which the aristocracy challenged papal authority, and in which the artist secured a licence to innovate. ‘The book of architecture belonged no more to the priesthood, religion, Rome, but to imagination, poetry, the people.’ (p. 196) Architecture became a kind of free speech. ‘St Jacques-de-la-Boucherie was wholly an oppositional church.’ (p. 197) Since there was no other freedom of thought, it was a freedom inscribed in buildings. Hugo seriously contends that this is why so many Gothic cathedrals came into being: ‘Having no other way of declaring itself but in stone masonry, thought rushed to it from every direction.’ (p. 197) Hugo contends that up to the fifteenth century architecture was humanity’s record of itself to itself: ‘During that time no concept of any complexity appeared in the world which was not made into a building . . . the human race never had an important thought which it did not write down in stone.’ (p. 195) But why stone?

Why not in a manuscript? Since the life of an idea depends upon its durability; since, if a monument is to survive as a record, it must live, must survive, it will

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choose the durability of stone over the fragility of a manuscript. Stone is the medium with which to mark the future, with which to legislate on earth. But the appearance of the printing press utterly transforms this relation and kills the building. ‘Orpheus’ letters of stone were replaced by Gutenberg’s letters of lead.’ (p. 198) Printing sets up a new form of the indestructibility of thought. Thought is no longer embodied; it no longer takes the form of monumental objects which take possession of time and space. Thought can now reproduce itself with the minimum of labour and materials. It becomes ubiquitous - everywhere in general yet nowhere in particular. The durability of stone is replaced by the immortality of mechanical reproduction.

In Hugo’s account thought begins to withdraw from architecture. The Renaissance is regarded as decadent; what was alive and modern in the Gothic declines into the pseudo-antique. As the record of human thought, printing supersedes architecture. At the end of the chapter we are left with a changed authorial mood. Suddenly Hugo has the warm phantasy of printing creating its own vast, unfinished architecture, with people scurrying about the scaffolding of this second Tower of Babel, and the printing press below, churning like a cement mixer of human discourse. By this time we are some way from the original chilled exclamation of the Archdeacon Frollo, that ‘This will kill that.’ (p. 192) He says this while gesturing with his right hand towards a printed book, and with his left hand towards Notre-Dame, which, ‘with its twin towers standing out in silhouette against the starry sky, its stone ribs and monstrous crupper, looked like an enormous two-headed sphinx sitting there in the middle of the town.’ (p. 190) This death, the death of architecture, seems both grandiose and whimsical, an announcement in the mode of eschatological journalism bequeathed by Hegel to intellectuals so that they might tell fellow citizens that an epoch was at an end. It belongs to the long muddle of periodization. The death of architecture here is the supposed transition from one modality of expression to another. This ‘death’ belongs to a genre of births, deaths and revivals as recorded by philosophical histories.

But in Hugo’s novel the fate of Notre-Dame itself does more than obey the law of this historical development. Certainly the cathedral died in the fifteenth century, certainly its death is related to the ‘dead’ character of architecture in the modern period. But its death is complex and enigmatic; its death is equivocal, and raises the question, not of what caused its death, but of what kept it alive.

The initial account is one which describes Notre-Dame in the nineteenth century as a building which has been damaged. The flight of stairs which once raised the cathedral above the existing ground level, the lower series of statues which

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occupied the arches in the three doorways, and finally the upper series of the early kings of France have been removed from the facade. These are part of the countless degradations and mutilations which time and men have inflicted on the venerable monument. Time has chipped away at the building; political revolution has smashed its rose windows and statuary. But it is architecture which has attacked the building most successfully. . . . Mutilations, amputations, dislocations of its limbs, ‘restorations’ are the Greek, Roman and barbaric work of professors quoting Vitruvius and Vignolo. ... To the centuries and revolutions, which at least devastated impartially and on the grand scale, have been added the swarm of architects from the schools, licensed, sworn and accredited, degrading with all the discernment and choice of bad taste, substituting Louis XV chicory for Gothic lace to the greater glory of the Parthenon, (p. 123) The death of the building is laid at the door of time, of revolution, but chiefly of architects.

This is not just a question of an original, pure stylistic integrity being diluted by inappropriate additions and modifications. For it is of the essence of Notre-Dame, according to Hugo, that the cathedral was always a hybrid. ‘It is a transitional building. The Saxon architect was just completing the first pillars of the nave when the pointed arch arriving from the Crusades installed itself victoriously on those broad Romanesque capitals designed only for round arches. The pointed arch, dominant from then on, constructed the rest of the church.’ (p. 124) This hybrid form demonstrates ‘that architecture’s greatest productions are not so much the works of individuals as of societies; the fruit of whole peoples in labour rather than the inspiration of men of genius; the deposit left by a nation; the accumulation of centuries; the residue from successive evaporations of human society; in a word, types of formation.’ (p.

125) The life of a building, according to these effusions, lies in the organic character of its construction. Lacking the singular intention of a plan, the building breathes the life of an organism. ‘That is the way of beavers, that is the way of bees, that is the way of men. The great symbol of architecture, Babel, is a beehive.’ (p. 125) If this were the case, then the death of NotreDame dates from its ‘decline’ into being just a building, a building which is tended and mended by architecture. For once the additions come from architecture, that is, from trained architects, the cathedral loses its connection with the communal vitality which gave it life, and which it expressed. Building had, as it were, been unconscious. ‘It all takes place without trouble, without strain, without reaction, according to a tranquil law of nature. A graft occurs, sap circulates, vegetation occurs.’ (p. 125)

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In this account, then, the death of the cathedral comes from two causes: the printing press and the rise of the profession of architecture. They are two sides of the same coin - the severing of the relation between the building and the community, from the former’s role in representing the latter. But neither of these accounts provides more than typical nineteenth-century tropes for the death of Notre Dame. The organic character of the community, the communal character of art, the expressive character of social phenomena are all frequently used terms of historicist criticism. Yet there is another space in which the death of the Cathedral can be thought out - within the narrative itself, and in the secret which is contained within the narrative. In the first edition of the novel there is a note which explains that the author was prying about Notre-Dame he found on the wall of one of the towers the following word carved by hand: ‘ANAΓKH’. He wondered whose hand had incised these letters and what they signified. Since then the wall has been distempered or scraped and the inscription remains only in the author’s memory. The erasure of the word repeats the process of mutilation which has been visited upon Gothic buildings. The man who wrote the word is erased, the word is erased, perhaps the church itself may be erased.

This book was written about that word. (p. 12) The word ANAΓKH was written by Claude Frollo, the cathedral’s archdeacon whose spiritual ambitions and austerity have led to a passion for alchemy and for the gypsy girl Esmeralda. He inscribes the word in a despairing recognition of being caught up in a drama that will bring catastrophe upon everyone. Thus ANAΓKH is conceived as the irreversible malevolence of fate. In Frollo’s gloomy cell a fly seeking the March sun blunders into a spider’s web. It collides with the fatal ‘rose window’ of the web. Frollo reflects that in pursuing the object of his desire, knowledge, he had not recognized the web that destiny had stretched between him and the light, ‘that pane of glass beyond, that transparent obstacle . . . separating all philosophical systems from the truth.’ (p. 299) ANAΓKH is not only fate in its blind determination of the course of things; it is that which acts through the unconscious desires of humans. The pursuit of the object of desire secretly prepares the form of the subject’s nemesis. Blind to the conditions of desire, the subject unconsciously works to fulfil his own downfall. Turned towards the light, with his back to the dark - far from being the path towards the object of beauty, this is the way of passive co-operation with catastrophe. The beauty of knowledge and the beauty of Esmeralda will kill Frollo, for he cannot desire them except as an exceptional triumph, as the reward for a life of austerity and celibacy.

Unconsciously, the objects of desire are in fact the death of his life, just as his life has been the mortification of desire. The more he wishes, the more he becomes the messenger of death.

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The source of life in the novel is his adopted son, Quasimodo. The Quasimodo of the novel should not be confused with the charm and pathos of the baby/ man portrayed by Charles Laughton in the film The Hunchback of NotreDame. Above all, Quasimodo is ugly. His first appearance in the novel, in the contest for the Pope of Fools, with tha ... ‘... tetrahedral nose, that horseshoe mouth, that tiny left eye obscured by a shaggy red eyebrow, while the right eye lay completely hidden beneath an enormous wart. Those irregular teeth, with gaps here and there like the battlements of a fortress, that calloused lip, over which one of those teeth protruded like an elephant’s tusk, that cleft chin, and above all the facial expression extending over the whole, a mixture of malice, amazement and sadness,’ (p. 58) This description of Quasimodo reads like an inventory of the negation of beauty - his irregularity, his lack of recognizable form, the way in which people turn away from him. He was found outside Notre-Dame in 1467, on a bedstead where infants were abandoned to public charity. The four bonnes femmes bending over him recoil. He is both too much and too little, an attribute which suggests the name Quasimodo with which he is christened by Frollo, who adopts him.

The deformity of Quasimodo’s physical appearance is matched by a distorted internal life. This is not a frog waiting to be kissed into a prince, but a vivid, excessive and repulsive being. Yet Quasimodo finds his place - inside and all over Notre-Dame. As a consequence of his adoption by Frollo he inhabits the cathedral, becoming its bell-ringer; indeed, he is adopted by the building.

Although the question of sanctuary, in the narrative, turns on the person of Esmeralda, the relation between the building and Quasimodo is really one of sanctuary. Sanctuary can be thought of, here, not in terms of the spaces of competing jurisdictions, but of a spatial acceptance without conditions. The space of sanctuary is not the product of a social contract; it is not a space where I am placed in a web of rights and obligations. It is a space which accepts the subject unconditionally. Whatever crime the subject may have committed, however repulsive the subject, the sanctuary accepts the existence of whomsoever seeks refuge.

This relation meant for Quasimodo that Notre-Dame was ‘his egg, his nest, his home, his country, his universe’. Between the two there grew a relation ‘of mysterious pre-existent harmony’. Quasimodo came ‘to resemble it, to be encrusted on it. . . . His protruding angles fitted, if we may be allowed the

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comparison, the concave angles of the building, and he seemed to be not just its denizen but its natural contents.’ (p. 166) Sometimes the relation might seem like the relation between the maternal body and the infant: he crawls across every part of the cathedral. But in this relation it is the child who animates the mother: ‘It was as if he made the immense building breathe.’ (p. 169) Thus it is Quasimodo who keeps the building alive. Hugo at one point calls the building a ‘carapace’, as if the relation between them is not merely that between stone and flesh, but something between the two, a moment between expression and impression.

Quasimodo breathes life into the building, not in spite of his ugliness but because of it. The building, unlike the Parisians, does not turn away from what is there and should not be, but, rather, makes a space for the horror Quasimodo embodies.

This guarantees its strength and its presence, which is undefended and alive. Of course there can be no simple translation from the narrative to an architectural proposition, but the tale of Quasimodo’s relation to Notre-Dame suggests a parallel with the question of the use of ugliness - vivacity. The response to the hideousness of Quasimodo, who stands for all that the world abandons on the steps of the cathedral, assumes the form of sanctuary, a space which models the condition of being without defences, without turning away or without turning away the object. Indeed, this provides the non philosophical answer as to what killed Notre-Dame. Not the printing press, not the depredations of architects, but the death of Quasimodo. ‘So much so that for those who know Quasimodo once existed, Notre-Dame today is deserted, inanimate, dead. There is the feeling that something has gone. That immense body is empty; it is a skeleton; the spirit has left it.’ (p. 536) This poses the question of how the force which Quasimodo represents might be articulated in terms of architecture.

The place of the term ANAΓKH in Hugo’s novel produces a novel in which the narrative hurtles to its several catastrophes. The word, scratched on the wall of Notre Dame, signifies a recognition of the harsh dramas human beings are compelled to enact. ANAΓKH is the revenge destiny takes against the paltry efforts of human beings to achieve some autonomy in their affairs. Not content with crushing its subjects, destiny defeats its victims by signing a diabolical alliance with their unconscious wishes, so that they become the instruments of their own destruction. In the novel, all desires open on to the death of what is loved.

Desire turns upon its object with unintended fatality. The investment of a wish is destiny’s ruse to provoke disaster. To wish is to kill. To scratch ANAΓKH marks the entry into a secret, powerless knowledge of the malign game whose pawns we are. The only course open to desire is to seize and pillage what it may on its way to the gibbet. And so it may seem strange, then, that this secret word, ANAΓKH, was a favourite word of Freud.

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Indeed it was so treasured a word that Freud never pushed it out into the world as a concept, but kept it at home, as an emblem of what can never be fully avowed. It wanders through his writings as if a familiar; he bestows it upon friends in letters and conversations as the mark of that which is known by those who have recognized the need to befriend death. In his writings it flashes past in remarks which are scandalous in their simple disregard for the proprieties of public discourse.

Its bearing upon the question of ugliness is abrupt and radical. If ugliness describes a situation in which the subject feels overwhelmed or undone, in which the propositions and location of the subject seem on the verge of being swept away or swallowed up, then everywhere the experience of ugliness tends towards the fear of death as a subjective insistence. ‘I cannot be here; the object takes all.’ We have seen that the reflex of the subject is to scurry into the realm of the defences, into the quotidian suspension of experience - of turning away, closing my eyes, shutting my ears, being bored, killing time, being nowhere, waiting. In economic terms this describes a moment when all investment is withdrawn from the object and is now expended upon the affective and perceptual tasks of being without objects, through the consumption of things. But the defence is against, not death, but the fear of death, just as ugliness presages not the fact of death but the fear of death.

This is because, for Freud, death occupies an odd place. Unconsciously I know nothing of my death; I am invulnerable and only you can die. The fear of death arises, not from the unconscious, but from the super-ego, from the fear of punishment. This is why ugliness can take the form not only of what is there and should not be, but of what is not there and should be. Both describe a subjective formula in which I may be annihilated as a punishment. Both describe a subjective formula in which I retreat into the defences. But they also explain a further manifestation of the reflex from ugliness - the awakening of a wish to destroy the object. If I unconsciously know nothing of my death, I consciously experience it, none the less, as the approach of the punishment.

One resolution of this contradiction is to unleash a murderous ferocity, to kill.

Such a response may explain the violence with which the ugly object provokes the wish to abolish it. Language opens itself to this experience when murder is referred to as ‘cleansing, or ‘purification’.

Within the defences and within the mortal ferocity of the ego’s denial of its death, Freud proposes a conception of ANAΓKH which is quite different from Victor Hugo’s. In an essay of 1915, ‘Thoughts for the Times of War and Death’, Freud meditated upon the consequences of the First World War for subjective life.4 Despite its destructiveness the war had a positive feature. The

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reality of the possibility of one’s own death had transformed the psychic economy.

‘Life has indeed become interesting again; it has recovered its full content.’ The sheer proximity of death had initiated a changed relation between the defences and libidinous energy. In short, the acceptance of death, the inability to hide from it behind the defences, has the perhaps unexpected consequence of eroticising reality. Freud sums this up by insisting upon the task that the acceptance of one’s own death entails: ‘Si vis vitam, para mortem.’ (If you want life, prepare for death.)

What is at stake here is what we should call, not the life, but the vivacity of the subject. Far from vivacity and death being opposed to each other, I must accept the latter in order to accede to the former. Vivacity is the capacity of the subject to endure, indeed to enjoy, a reality which includes his own death, without retreating behind a defensive wall.

The ugly - be it in the form of something that is there and should not be, or in the form of something that isn’t there and should be - can be an artistic resource of great value, though it is a value which is quite detached from the beautiful. Initially it will take the form of offering to the undefended spectator or reader a situation which is fundamentally interesting. Not surprisingly, traditional aesthetics makes little use of the value of what is interesting, for it stresses the fact that the aesthetic attitude is itself disinterested. But an art which is interesting, which mobilizes libidinal energy without its being side-tracked into the defences, is one which is able to stage the dramas in which the subject will find itself caught, but in a zone of representation. This is not the place to discuss the uses of ugliness in art and architecture, but it is the justification for its use as a positive term in the artistic investigation of the possible modes of relations between a subject and an object.

Such production is in fact central to contemporary work, which has far exceeded the capacity of aesthetic analysis to comprehend and judge it.

Notes: 1. Mark Cousins, ‘The Ugly’: Part i in AA Files no. 28 (Autumn 1994), pp. 61-4; Part 2 in AA Files no. 29 (Summer 1995), pp. 3-6.

2. Victor Hugo, Notre-Dame de Paris (Oxford, 1993).

3. Hegel’s Aesthetics, translated by T. M. Knox, vol. II (Oxford, 1975), p. 638.

4. ‘Thoughts for the Times of War and Death’, Sigmund Freud, standard edition

Source: ‘The Ugly’: Part iii in AA Files no. 30 (Autumn 1995), pp. 65-68

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178

THE BOX Harry Houdini

Houdini, like many architects, spent his life designing his way out of a box.

Harry Houdini was born Erik Weisz (later spelled Ehrich Weiss) in Budapest, Hungary on March 24, 1874. His parents were Cecilia Steiner and Mayer Samuel Weiss, a rabbinical lawyer and sometimes soap maker. Ehrich was the fourth boy in a family that would ultimately total seven children (including one child from a previous marriage).

When Ehrich was four years old, the Weiss family immigrated to the United States, settling in the progressive small town of Appleton, Wisconsin, where Mayer Samuel had secured work as a rabbi on an earlier trip. Here Ehrich (whose name would evolve to “Ehrie,” then “Harry”) developed an interest in athletics and acrobatics. He performed circus feats in his backyard and called himself “Ehrich, Prince of the Air.” At age 8 he was impressed by a performance of the English conjurer, Dr. Lynn.

When Mayer Samuel lost his job at the Appleton Synagogue, the family moved to Milwaukee, where they lived in poverty. Ehrich, who was never educated past the third grade, worked shining shoes and as a messenger boy. At age 12 he ran away from home, possibly twice. Very little is known about these runaway days, except that he planned to go to Galveston, Texas and went by the name Harry White. He later re-joined his family in New York City.

In New York, the teenage Harry landed a job as a tie-cutter at H. Richter’s Sons.

His father also worked a sewing bench for a time. As a member of the Pastime Athletics Club and the Amateur Athletic Union, Harry competed in, and won, several foot races, boxing matches, bicycle races, and swim meets. At one point he tried out for the U.S. Olympic team.

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It was at this time that Harry read the autobiography of a famous French magician, The Memoirs of Robert-Houdin, and became fascinated with magic.

Adding an “i” to the name Houdin, he adopted the stage name Harry Houdini and formed an act with his friend and fellow tie-cutter Jacob Hyman called “The Brothers Houdini.” The high point of their act was a substitution trunk trick called Metamorphosis, which Houdini is said to have purchased for $25, and which he would perform throughout his entire career.

Houdini’s real brother, Theo, aka Dash, soon replaced Hyman in the act. (Hyman continued to perform as “Houdini” well into the 1900s.) The brothers performed on the midway at the Columbia Exposition of 1893 alongside another future great, Howard Thurston. The following year they were performing in Coney Island when Harry met Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahner, aka Bess, a showgirl in an act called The Floral Sisters. After only three weeks’ courtship, Harry and Bess were married -- much to the horror of Bess’s strict German Catholic mother, who refused to speak to her daughter or new son-in-law (whom she thought was the devil) for many years.

Renaming the act “The Houdinis,” Harry and Bess played beer halls and dime museums, and traveled with circuses and medicine shows throughout the U.S. and Canada. Sometimes they performed comedic playlets as “The Rahners: American’s Greatest Comedy Act.” To make ends meet, Harry also performed a solo magic act as the “King of Cards” or “Cardo,” and masqueraded as “Projea The Wild Man of Mexico” in a circus sideshow -- where his sleight of hand skills made it appear as if he ate cigarettes thrown into his cage. He later co-managed an ill-fated Burlesque show called The American Gaiety Girls.

Despite an engagement at Tony Pastor’s popular vaudeville theater in New York, the couple found little success with their magic act. Harry tried to sell his entire show, including his original “Handcuff Act” and Metamorphosis, in 1898. There were no buyers.

In 1899 Houdini received his big break when vaudeville impresario Martin Beck saw his act at the Palmgarden beer hall in St. Paul, Minnesota. Following the successful run, Beck booked Houdini for a tour of Europe.

Impressing the powerful manager of the Alhambra Theater, reportedly by escaping from handcuffs at Scotland Yard, Houdini was booked for a trial run. Houdini “The Handcuff King” became a sensation, breaking attendance records in every theater he played throughout England, Scotland, and Wales. In one theatre the doors had to be removed to accommodate the massive crowds. Houdini claimed

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in some cities patrons rioted for tickets. At the London Hippodrome in 1904, Houdini was challenged by the London Daily Mirror newspaper to escape a specially made handcuff that was said to have taken a Birmingham locksmith several years to construct. He freed himself from the Mirror Handcuff in a dramatic 90 minute ordeal. Exactly how he escaped is still hotly debated today.

Houdini’s success continued abroad, where he drew sold-out crowds in Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Russia. His escape from a Siberian Transport Cell and his defiance of German police in court became the stuff of legend.

Houdini also embraced the new medium of motion pictures. He filmed his outdoor stunts and played them as part of his vaudeville turn. Houdini, kept his origin of birth ambiguous. After his return to America he would forever claim to have been born in Appleton, Wisconsin on April 6. (His Hungarian birth would not be publically revealed until after his death.)

Houdini returned to the United States as “Europe’s Eclipsing Sensation.” Back in America, Houdini pushed the boundaries of his “challenge act.” Now it wasn’t just handcuffs that he could be challenged with; it was anything man could devise. He freed himself from government mail bags, a giant football, riveted boilers, packing crates, a convict ship, an iron maiden, and even from the belly of a gigantic washed-up “sea monster” in Boston. In New York he escaped from a packing crate after it was nailed shut and dropped into the river. He would later escape from a straitjacket while suspended by his ankles hundreds of feet in the air. All his outdoor escapes drew tens of thousands of spectators. Before long, Houdini was the highest paid entertainer in Vaudeville and one of the most famous men alive.

He also became fascinated with aviation. His aviation exploits culminated when he was recognized as the first man to fly a plane in Australia on March 18, 1910.

Ironically, Houdini believed it was for this feat that he would be most remembered.

Frustrated by how many imitators were copying his Milk Can escape, Houdini introduced his most famous stage escape in 1912, the Water Torture Cell (later called the Chinese Water Torture Cell). It would become the staple of his act for the next 14 years. The act was so daring that very few rivals attempted their own versions.

With the outbreak of World War I (and with the European market closed to him), Houdini threw himself into the war effort, selling war bonds and teaching American soldiers how to free themselves from German restraints. He also starred

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in a gala review at the New York Hippodrome called “Cheer Up.” It was here that he famously made an elephant disappear. At another review, “Everything,” he produced an Eagle named Abraham Lincoln from the folds of an American flag.

In 1922 Houdini vacationed in Atlantic City with Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Doyle was a passionate supporter of Spiritualism, which had experienced a resurgence following World War I, and was now being touted as a serious religion. Houdini was a skeptic.

The death of his mother had been, according to himself, the most devastating event in his life. People close to him found that it had changed him profoundly and his later life was marked by a morbid fascination with death. His mother was arguably the precursor to his feud with Doyle and spiritualism.

Doyle and Houdini’s private debate turned public after Doyle gave him a séance in which he believed his wife had contacted Houdini’s mother. Their public debate turned ugly and ruined their friendship, but it opened the door to a new career for Houdini as an anti-Spiritualist crusader.

Houdini threw himself into the task of debunking fraudulent mediums with great energy. He attended séances in disguise (even amassed a team of agents)and broke them up at key points; wrote exposés for newspapers; denounced mediums from the stage and demonstrated how they performed their tricks. He offered $10,000 to any medium who could produce phenomena he could not explain, and also joined several committees of investigators, including a committee for Scientific American magazine. In 1926 he championed a bill before Congress to outlaw fortune telling in the District of Columbia (it didn’t pass). Houdini’s exposés brought him renewed fame, but drew the ire of Spiritualists who, by the time of his death, had mounted a total of $2 million worth of lawsuits against him.

Houdini’s most famous encounter was with Mina “Margery” Crandon, an attractive Boston socialite who performed séances in the nude and produced “ectoplasm” from her nether regions. Houdini exposed her methods, and even constructed a special box to contain her. Despite this, her supporters, including Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, continued to believe she was genuine. Margery’s foulmouthed “spirit guide” Walter predicted Houdini’s death within a year.

Having performed in Vaudeville for his entire career, Houdini fulfilled a dream in August 1925 when he mounted his own full evening roadshow. The show played on Broadway and toured with a great success.

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The following year, Houdini survived for 91 minutes in a coffin submerged in water and later re-enacted his buried alive act on stage in a sand box.

In October of 1926, while performing in Montreal, Canada, Houdini was punched in his dressing room by a 30-year-old McGill University student named J. Gordon Whitehead. Believing a boast that Houdini could withstand a blow to the stomach, Whitehead struck the magician several times before he was ready. Houdini ignored the pain and increasing fever and pushed on to his next engagement at the Garrick Theatre in Detroit. After struggling through a performance with a 104 degree temperature, Houdini gave into doctor’s orders and was rushed to Grace Hospital.

Houdini’s entire career and life was in defiance of bodily limitations. He curated his appearance and constantly outdoing his own performances to bewilder his audiences through meticulously controlled illusions. He arguably escaped death itself by creating such a persona so as to transcend his own passing. Thus making the very name of Houdini synonymous to escape art and magic. A man that had truly escaped every box.

Sources:: http://www.wildabouthoudini.com/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Houdini http://listverse.com/2014/11/02/10-secrets-to-harry-houdinis-greatest-illusions/ http://metro.co.uk/2014/11/16/how-did-houdini-do-his-deeds-legendary-illusionistssecrets-revealed-4937900/ http://secretstomagictricks.com/Articles/Harry%20Houdini.html

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EXTERIOR: SHAPING THE WORLD Michael Heizer’s Cities

Land Art popularised in the 1960s as a reactionary art to the NY art scene and an attack on galleries. Indeed many of the land artists considered their work to be bringing about the end of the gallery From the space missions of the 1960s to the first images of earth, earth itself became an object to be manipulated.

Technology • Information • History. “My new brush is the caterpillar” or indeed the earthquake says Walter De Maria. Land Art was to shape a new kind of religion whereby people will flock to the Nevada dessert much like pilgrims will make a journey to a church.

The 1969 “Earth Art” Show coined the term Since 1972, land artist Michael Heizer has been obsessively reshaping a patch of desert in Nevada’s Garden Valley into a truly monumental work of land art.

“City,” as the piece is titled, is 1 1/4 miles long and more than a quarter of a mile wide. In terms of size, it’s up there with Washington’s National Mall. In its proportions, it resembles an abstracted pre-Columbian pyramid complex.

Heizer owns the land on which he is building “City,” but the future of the land around it remains very much in question. And over the years, there’s been talk of developing it into a missile site, an oil-and-gas exploration site, and a location for a nuclear waste rail line.

Now a campaign called Protect Basin and Range aims to get the land around the piece some sort of environmental protection. Garden Valley, it turns out, isn’t just home to Heizer’s magnum opus. He’s been pushing that idea as part of an effort to protect more than 700,000 acres in the desert.

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The cost of City is being financed by several patrons, including the Dia Art Foundation and Lannan Foundation, with an estimated cost of well over twenty five million USD. Heizer is currently completing the work with a team of roughly a dozen and had, as of 2005, anticipated completion before 2010. As of Spring 2015 City is not yet open to the public City is one of the largest sculptures ever created. Using earth, rocks and concrete as building materials and assembled with heavy machinery, the work comprises five phases, each consisting of a number of structures referred to as complexes, with some of the structures reaching a height of eighty feet.

Complex One began in 1972-74. “The tools I used were the most modern available”. “Concrete had hardly been used by artists and I saw many possibilities there”.

Every element of the City will be placed at least 6 metres below ground level, and thus visible only to those entering it physically.

The artist’s intention in doing so, is to preclude all relationship between the work and the landscape. “I decided to make The city only visible from the inside. I also wanted to enforce the idea that it’s not landscape art”.

The eventual irony is Heizer’s long struggle with funding for his work drove him to re-enter gallery space with a 2012 retrospective at the Gagosian Gallery in New York. There some of his large installations were exhibited and auctioned raising around 2 million dollars. So much for Land Art’s romantic idea to bring an end to the gallery.

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INTERIOR: AEDICULAE Flattening Event Space

We construct worlds to tell stories. Architecture acts as the medium for staging events as well as a spatial mnemonic atlas. It’s spaces as well as it’s forms represent a story. If the world is seen as multifaceted surface with no interior can we only rely on the ‘skin’, the ‘surface’ to represent? What is an architecture that only describes an outside?

The framing of a ritual is manifest in the Latin word aedicula, referring to a small building particularly a temple or shrine framing an event.

The building as an interior of the world is ever more prominent in the glass modules of the crystal palaces; crystalline prisms that commodify everything on display – form the most banal to the most spectacular products of industry – into consumable spectacle.

The newsstand – appropriately edicola in contemporary Italian – acts as a media shrine with it’s own atlas of global information adorning it’s surfaces. With the advent of photography and film of course we have the flattening of the theatre stage. The event becomes a surface. In the continual reduction of container to surface spectacle becomes domestic. The collective experience of the moon landings finds the oval office superimposed over the celestial object, as president Nixon is shown at the corner of the screen live, over the larger feed of Neil Armstrong making mankind’s giant leap. Finally the inte`rface now allows anyone to be spectator as well as actor and the surface world can be superimposed over everything and at any moment.

Hence, with the screen as a site, the architecture of an event uses footage as a design material to create new volumes beyond the flattened interface.

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AEDICULA Latin for ‘small temple’: a vessel for containing and displaying a ritual/story

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CRYSTAL PALACE MODULE

Consumerism as internalised spectacle

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EDICOLA

Italian for ‘news stand’: displaying stories from around the world

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THE THEATRE

Collective viewing of stories on a surface

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TELE - VISION

‘tele-’ derived from Greek ‘from a distance’ - domestic viewing of stories

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THE TABLET / SMARTPHONE

the world’s stories for everyone, everywhere, anytime

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THE VATICAN OF SCREENS Conclusion

The disparity between footage generated by an event versus its actual scale and duration is increasing exponentially with the way we record and display our world.

It is a disparity that blurs the notions of inside and outside. The screen almost acts as a conceptual Deleuzean ‘fold’. Akin to the Baroque Cathedral it can almost be discussed in neo-baroque terms i.e. how in a very broad sense the exterior is utterly detached from the interior and reality dissolves into artifice and illusion.

In the Telescape surface is holistically celebrated. It is given a body; perhaps a nostalgic, even dated, celebration of ornamentation as a frame - ironically referring to the soon to be transcended bodies of our screens, which will be replaced by devices of virtual or augmented nature. Essentially, the complete liquidizing of surface into holograms or matrices of light.

The baroque theatricality conceptually lends its ornament as a body to the screens.

The frame itself is screaming for attention. In the Vatican of Screens surfaces become altars on which their content is venerated as spectacle. The world’s footage is minced into stories that constitute the material of the Telescape.

There is a splendour and a decadence in this Vatican. The architect’s need to spatialise by convention evidently opens the wider question: what indeed becomes of the architect’s role as spatial designer within this new landscape?

Where code, numeric values, binary commands and streams of data are fast becoming the incomprehensible (to the human eye at least) make-up of an invisible Telescapic landscape, how does an architetcure of a human-related spatial dimension manifest? More than ever, the Telescape provides a space for envisioning new volumes and spaces within the flatness of surface.

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CONCLUSION

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THE VATICAN OF SCREENS

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IF YOU WANT TO KNOW ALL ABOUT ANDY WARHOL, JUST LOOK AT THE SURFACE OF MY PAINTINGS AND FILMS AND ME, AND THERE I AM. THERE’S NOTHING BEHIND IT.

THE ONLY FORM OF FICTION IN WHICH REAL CHARACTERS DO NOT SEEM OUT OF PLACE IS HISTORY. FACTS ARE NOT MERELY FINDING A FOOTING-PLACE IN HISTORY BUT ARE USURPING THE DOMAIN OF FANCY AND HAVE INVADED THE KINGDOM OF ROMANCE. THEIR CHILLING TOUCH IS OVER EVERYTHING. THEY ARE VULGARIZING MANKIND. WHEN TRUTH BECOMES FACT IT LOSES ALL ITS INTELLECTUAL VALUE. THE FACT IS WE LOOK BACK ON THE AGES ENTIRELY THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF ART, AND ART, VERY FORTUNATELY, HAS NEVER ONCE TOLD US THE TRUTH. YOU FORGET THAT A THING IS NOT NECESSARILY TRUE BECAUSE A MAN DIES FOR IT. MAN IS LEAST HIMSELF WHEN HE IS HIS OWN PERSON. GIVE HIM A MASK AND HE WILL TELL YOU THE TRUTH. FOR WHAT IS TRUTH? IN MATTERS OF RELIGION, IT IS SIMPLY THE OPINION THAT HAS SURVIVED. IN MATTERS OF SCIENCE, IT IS THE ULTIMATE SENSATION. IN MATTER’S OF ART, IT IS ONE’S LAST MOOD. ALL ART IS AT ONCE SURFACE AND SYMBOL. THOSE WHO GO BENEATH THE SURFACE DO SO AT THEIR PERIL. THE FACT IS THAT THE PUBLIC HAS AN INSATIABLE CURIOSITY TO KNOW EVERYTHING EXCEPT WHAT IS WORTH KNOWING. RELIGIONS DIE WHEN THEY ARE PROVEN TO BE TRUE. SCIENCE IS THE RECORD OF DEAD RELIGIONS. THE THINGS ONE FEELS ABSOLUTELY CERTAIN ABOUT ARE NOT TRUE. THAT IS THE FATALITY OF FAITH, AND THE LESSON OF ROMANCE. I

WONDER

ANIMAL.

IT

WHO WAS

IT THE

WAS

DEFINED

MOST

MAN

PREMATURE

AS

A

RATIONAL

DEFINITION

EVER

GIVEN. MAN IS MANY THINGS, BUT HE IS NOT RATIONAL.

FILM SCORE

PROJECT SCROLL

AA Diploma 9 – THE DIAMOND AGE Welcome to the conceptual laboratory of Diploma 9 – the world in which students invent, manufacture and design their identities alongside their architectures. Unit Staff: Natasha Sandmeier, Manolis Stavrakakis

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TELESCAPE – Final Tables Posted on June 9, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

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Author Archives: Nicholas Zembashi

TELESCAPE – Final Tables Posted on June 9, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

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Tags: Animation > edit > fact > fiction > film > landscape > lies > mince > narrative > ornament > phones > renders > screen > screenscape > story > storytelling > techonlogy > telescape > television > true story > Truth > tv

Jury Q&A anticipation Posted on June 4, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

Potential Questions and Answers: Q: No clear Proposal?

A: A manifesto in favour of the screen as a site/landscape – part of the argument in the project is advocating media as an aesthetic of pleasure, spectacle and distorted time not a source for facts but for narratively packaged truth, enjoyed as stories.

Q: Conceptual space/design Telescape?

A: Granting the screen a body and discussing the issue of surface and flattening of the mode of representing place and events-happening – architecture having been the built container of worlds and what of it when the apparatus is the screen.

Q: Why? A: An increasing distance between our inside and our outside, a disparity that changes our perception of events – from Greek root of tele- meaning from a distance, we are beyond merely tele-vision but we tele-everything including event construction and spatial understanding of the world.

-An annoyance with the attitude towards fake news, media lying, conspiracies, posttruth etc. whereby I wanted to discuss the architectural/spatial role of surface in turning any curated media (from traditional ornaments in the past to digital texture today) into a cult of tele-spectacle where fact doesn’t matter over story-telling.

Q: Role as an architect?

A: The curator and designer of spectacle – my take on the Diamond Age as a brief is to look at footage as the material substance of our age – the site is the screen and their common spatial denominator: surface. Curator, editor – story-teller – time compressor/exploder.

Q: Time?

A: The explosion of it –exploitation of every singular moment to be stretched and expanded in the media – everything becomes spectacle – therefore is everything also beautiful or subject to aesthetic scrutiny like never before?

The image collapsing scale was what the Eames most successfully demonstrate in the powers of 10 – More currently it is TIME we are extrapolating to the powers of 10.

What is our role other than condensing in reverse through omission and curation our work at juries at the final table or at exhibition – every year at the AA tutors repeatedly in my experience I hear saying how horrendous we are at displaying our own work – because we go for maximum spectacle and no other means of representing the work itself in its depth but on its surface – visuals above content is the casualty of our discourse perhaps and the Telescape doesn’t necessary look at this negatively but celebrates it as the creed of our times and of the future.

Q: Why the Baroque ornament?

A: The fold inside/outside disparity – the theatricality conceptually works; the ornament as a frame to screens screaming for attention – Vatican of Screens – a celebration of the screen – the screen is put dead centre of the frame we venerate it.

Also early on in the year part of my writing and research delved into notions of the neo-baroque and looking into the construction of facts in Latourean terms as well as his argument of us never having been modern – and I particularly like the opening to the book itself where its very much like my scroll-edit transition where he introduces the crux of his argument by describing the headlines in a news article he’d been reading and how they sit amongst each other on the cover page not only in visual disparity but also content.

Tags: Jury > nested spaces > questions > renders > tables > video

Nested Spaces Posted on June 1, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

Below the two spaces we go through as part of the ‘nested-spaces’ sequence, ‘This Killed That’ Cathedral and The Newsroom, rendered out as 10 second clips each.

More to come along with the film edits we discussed last time as well.

Telescape @ Final Jury!!!

Posted on May 28, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

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Narration Draft Posted on May 22, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

On the screen in sequence sentences appear: This Is A True Story.

The events depicted in this film took place on the surface of a screen.

At the request of the survivors the names have been changed.

Out of respect for the dead the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.

20th century fox search lights, the roaring Lion of Metro Goldwyn Myer …the BBC, ERT, InfoWars, SKY, ITV, CNN etc. appear on screens all over – these are universally (or at least on national levels) collectively read as INTRO footage – the intro to any STORY – the news supposedly serving up the FACT and the production companies constructing a FICTIONS – recognisable themes from these intros echoe in the seemingly infinite telescape.

ACT I: Exploding Time Are We Shooting? – Cameras from Jackie next to Three Kings (quote from Jackie) CNN news report appears alongside a report from Live from Baghdad – Bush the younger next to him (either with us or the terrorists), Obama on drones, trump, Clinton, Hillary, Blare etc … appear gradually as tiles – some are SNL satire clips.

News coverage explodes events, making each recorded flake an avalanche – The First Gulf War lasted 800 hours – it generated over 20 000 hours of footage. What, when and where no longer adhere to a conventional perception of place.

As information in the form of imagery is constructed with exponentially increasing velocity, variety and volume, place becomes elusive – time is exploded. Is war happening? Is climate denial legitimate? Do facts or fictions even matter when both are as constructed as each other?

It boils down to belief – detached from fact and addicted to narrative delivery.

The incubator Story! – Testimony – War, Film, Debunking – evian babies WMDs! Trump Lies!

Truthiness Colbert – Info Wars – Talk shows From footage into the news room

Truth has always been highly overrated – representation and reproduction inherently taint –The Story prevails – footage becomes nourishment for the eye; innumerable fragments of the world woven into digestible stories – The screen is their narrative yarn, weaving the polymyths into a monomyth and served up as news.

ACT II: Events as Spectacle / Phantasmagoria What chewing gum is for the mouth, are buildings for the body, and footage for the eye – always received in a state of distraction. The ceaseless stream of visual data becomes an aesthetic overlay (insert data how much we produce a day/year) – at

least 3 years of a any 20 year-old’s life will have been spent staring at a screen – for leisure time alone the goal, the tennis ball, the Arab spring, anchor man Book: War is beautiful! – Pieta versions of grief War is Everywhere (edit to mix and make it less about War) The stadium Billboards The aesthetic of media is a dichotomy – a phantasmagoria versus the tedium of the hyper-normalised – the Spectacular is Beautiful the Boring is Ugly. The masses at spectator sports, concerts or revolutions are always staring at and through the screen – reality craving cinematic steroids.

Attention-management is no longer the advertiser’s realm (evian bottle and babies) but everyone’s – humanity has become the curator of it’s own appearance it’s past, present and future – All is surface – the very reading of life: a scroll of headline feeds. How fast and for how long can you look.

Time – time metrics, analysis – SPEED- HEADLINE WORLD – Stream – SCROOOOOLL The screen grants a mydas touch (phone and thumb) turning world into an image of sheer and utter spectacle. …..

Nesting of Spaces – flattening of the Aedicula Out of the scroll over the desert A war took place somewhere The news room Once upon a time something happened; brought to you live The Church ‘This will kill that” said Frollo to Quasimodo as he realises how the printing press would kill the cathedral (echoes as we move through the church – bells of Notre Dame in the background) Netflix Living Room Screens watched within screens – spaces become nested – The screen has done away with volume – the world is pure surface. All else is boring.

SPEED-THROUGH SPACES: Inside and Outside collapse into the glassy plane, an undulating fold between exterior and interior. – we never touch, taste, smell the events on either side – we only see surface – and always from a distance.

ACT III: The Telescape – World of Surface Ocular tele-hedonism at it’s utmost – We tele-battle, tele-learn, tele-travel, tele-fuck – the Telescape is becoming the only site – If architecture has been a representational interface, the Telescape becomes the absolute interspace – be it a screen, virtual image or all-out augmentation, surface is the new creed; all else is a prop for displaying a polyhedral world without a z-axis.

Never has the world been seen in slower-motion, in more scrutinising detail, in higher definition – more space, more time more and more and more and more … It is oversaturated, eye-watering, honey-dripping beauty. Why would you ever want to leave?

The world is not your oyster – the Telescape is the oyster of your world.

TELESCAPE FACTory of the World

End Scene Posted on May 22, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

Some frames from the clip towards the end of the film as we (think) we pull out of the superstructure into the city reflected on it’s exterior …

Intro Scene – Enter Telescape Posted on May 20, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

Here are some stills from the intro scene I am currently rendering out: We enter a screen in the Lecture Hall …

20th century fox search lights, the roaring Lion of Metro Goldwyn Myer …the BBC, ERT, InfoWars, SKY, ITV, CNN etc. appear on screens all over – these are

universally (or at least on national levels) collectively read as INTRO footage – the intro to any STORY – the news supposedly serving up the FACT and the production companies constructing a FICTIONS – recognisable themes from these intros echoe in the seemingly infinite telescape.

We keep moving forwards deeper into the space while the camera subtly starts rising. Are we ever going to get out of the space? Is that a hole up right?

Oh it might be a way out? A dark opening in space …

First Screen Transition DONE Posted on May 19, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

Screens are Go! Posted on May 19, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

Tags: film > render > screens > telescape > test > transition

ScreensON + Infinity Posted on May 18, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

Render time by adding footage, even if only in the screens that are in view, has skyrocketed as expected… I’m trying to solve the issue. in the meantime here’s a still of a clip with the screens active and the footage selected to make associations as we pan over it.

Below is the model for the intro to the film with the camera panning over the seemingly infinite telescape – the footage I thought here could be of news channel opening titles, and of movie production company opening logos as we pan over and enter the media room for the war/post-truth Polyhedral Reality sequence.

Telescape Transition Posted on May 15, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

A refined transition render for a specific part of the film. Clips to be inserted to replace static. I have drawn up an almsot compelte narrative sequence for what is to be shown and what renders I’ll need for each part of the film. We can discuss the sequence in detail tomorrow.

Narrative Sequence – Camera Fly-over in Filmic Space:

Tags: clip > film > render > render test > telescape

Render Tests Posted on May 11, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

Have been conducting some render tests on the Vatican-of-Screens model – Testing fluid dynamics and (unsuccessfully for now) tried to map a film onto the fluid. In the second clip the screens are placed between the ornaments and given footage as we pan out and over the surfaces.

TELESCAPE: Pieta_Liquid_Test from Nicholas Zembashi

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Transition_Test01 from Nicholas Zembashi

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Tags: liquid > render > render test > screens > telescape > test

Telescape – A FACTory of Surfaces Posted on May 10, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

Working on the models for the scenes I’ve metioned yesterday.

Some points on yesterday: - I particularly liked the idea that the FACTory is granting the Screen a body : The Telescape is the screen given a body by surface.

- The galleries (the Wallace Colelction and Saatchi exhibit I plan to frame within my telescape surfaces as an introdicution to the film) - MORE footage MORE clips appearing for shorter times – exploit the viewers positon as the one making asscoiation but keeping it short enough – 5 secs max each clip – to pevrent each micro narrative from taking over (thanks Nathan!)

- Finally, the “Screen Vatican” to be way MORE COW BELL – explode it out of a room, bigger crowds and surface as an increasingly dominant medium in the urban context.

Intro_Surface Render Test

Tags: intro > Jury > render > render test > scene test > screen body > screens > Surface > telescape

Telescape – The Room + Story WIP Posted on May 6, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

above more of an atmospheric render test from cinema4d ACT I: A condensed version of what I read as an intro in studio where we are moving from spaces inside the screen to set up the argument [exhibit, billboards and the War 20 000 hrs / 800hrs]

Part Narration / part screenplay description: ACT II: The Built envirnment is all Surface we zoom out to see the whole telescape (part of the image above but with activated screens) The future of the architect is curator of the world – master story-teller.

In a hyper-mediated world public spaces are taken over by vast structures – Telescapes – An infrastructural framework that has no purpose other than powering architecture’s ultimate medium – surface.

The recorded world and it’s image fall-out are the material of the Information age feeding the surfaces of the Telescape. Space on either side of the gargantuan surfaces is irrelevant – a mere plinth for bodily existence to flow past – the surface is our only aesthetic nourishment – these aesthetics however defy every design convention in an age where time and scale are useless. The only rules are: the spectacle = beauty, the boring = ugly. From wars to cat videos, fact or fiction, the appeal of the visual content only matters in it’s delivery and it’s apparatus of display – the surface.

The volumes of the city lie in tedium – stacks of un-editable space, vessels of the population whose gaze is always beguiled by the Telescape.

ACT III: Fluid Surface – conclusion reinforcing the argument The spectators stare at the Telescape’s surfaces, twinkling stars of light glow amidst the gilded ornaments framing the spectacles. Clusters of people gather closer to where their reflections occupy a display. Few are physically there, awestruck by the shear scale of it all– others experience it from home – they watch the surfaces from another surface. (the neflix living room expirience) A girl walks up to the surface and reaches out, her hand suspended in space seemingly too far to actually reach the display – until the very air separating them ripples.

Skin, eyes, fabric, are slowly consumed by liquefied media – when the surface transcends the screen into an overly for just about every from.

Architecture no longer deals with volume – the outside is always shown on the inside and vice versa – The Telescape is fluid covering everything – interior is exterior is interior – all hail surface!

Tags: film > Media > narrative > screenplay > screens > screespace > script > telescape > tests > WIP

Sharpening the Argument Posted on May 4, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

WHAT // Surface World WHY // The FACTory of memory/history in Telescapes – The eradication of space by surface HOW // A film on the architecture of a surface universe We are far beyond other mediums usurping architecture as the prime conveyor of information. Architectural form as a representation of memory has radically shifted. What we are moving towards is the flattening of space altogether.

We constantly curate and perceive our world on screens. Six and a half hours per day is the average screen-time of 5 to 16 year olds (3 whole years by the time one is 20) – tv, game consoles, mobiles, computers or tablets. The atlases of the world.

The spectacular nature of media is a condition that turns the images (be it of distant war, of a Trump/a Putin/or Kardashian) into an aesthetic overlay – a spectacle that we receive in state of distraction – how Walter Benjamin referred to the state in which the masses perceive architecture. Or how Frank Lloyd Wright described the television as chewing gum for the eyes.

The discussion surrounding the Telescape is not to fetishize technology, to be technophobic or to consider devices as visual gimmicks within architectural discourse. It is about the SITE of surface itself becoming an increasingly dominant place via which our perception of the world is conducted and where memory and knowledge are formulated today.

The factual origins of stories become irrelevant in the screen. The relativistic argument that often fascinates and drives conceptual projects on what is real or not is done. It was the matrix, it was the 90s. Today the exercise is one of omitting visual information and condensing the fragments into a curated narrative of surfaces.

The aesthetic nature of fact-creation in the Telescape relates back to a scene in Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame, where Frolo realises how ‘This will kill that” when he refers to the printing press killing the cathedral, as a mnemonic device. If we parallel this to the Telescape it is a case of surface killing volume – a world minus the z-axis. …………………………..

I’m working on the film narrative structure and storyboard, the issue I am considering is how my rendition of a surface universe is to avoid my argument falling into something akin to the gimmicky add by LG below.

How LG's OLED displays will shape the future

What is Stopping Flexible Displays From Taking Over?

The future of Screens – 2020 Olympics in 8K

Surface Treatment Posted on May 1, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

I have been working on the surfaces of the larger telescape iteriors to express the formal/material argument of surface before I overlay the screens and the narratives they will display.

For tomorrow we can discuss the progress on the model together with the new script I’m writing for the next version of the film [to post later]

Some references to start bringing into the wider argument of fact/fiction, surface and nested screens:

The bizarre world of Netflix VR and the nesting of virtual screens within screens.

They Live (1988) which I mentioned before where the main character can ‘read’ the truth behind the media/advertisements we are exposed to – clip below:

They Live Sunglasses

Tags: interior > Media > room > Surface > surfaces > telescape > telescapes

Telescapes under constrcution Posted on April 27, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

HOLA Lil’ Seb photobombing my clip!

Back to the telescape, by constructing the new urban-scaled “room” that is all about surfaces. These surfaces (to be a series of 10? variations that we will travel across as the space and the film it is displaying merge as the film itslef progresses) The design of this surface and the way we view the contents it displays will tie into the next iteration of the film, taking on the feedback from previews.

These surfaces both as ornamental props merged with screens are part of the story as well as the story itself.

Currently working on the room itslef. A new narrative I am piecing together will be less about a specific topic (oil, war etc.) but interweaving several as “News topics” to set up the argument about media as aesthetic texture in a world of pure surface where facts and fictions sit alongside each other in a constructed ocean of ever growing information.

Telescapes Under Construction:

Create • Resist • Reveal Posted on March 20, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

From Container to Surface Posted on March 16, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

The Telescape of Oil from Nicholas Zembashi

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Once upon a time we used to be entitled to our own stories but never our own facts – In truth we have always been entitled to both – facts are just as constructed as fictions We construct worlds to tell stories. Architecture acts as the medium for staging events as well as a spatial mnemonic atlas. This is manifest in the latin word aedicule, referring to a small building particularly a temple or shrine framing an event.

From Container to Surface – The flattening of Architecture The building as an interior of the world is ever more prominent in the glass modules of the crystal palaces; crystalline prisms that commodify everything on display – form the most banal to the most spectacular products of industry – into consumable spectacle. The newsstand – appropriately edicola in in contemporary Italian – acts as a media shrine with it’s own atlas of global information adorning it’s surfaces. With the advent of photography and film of course we have the flattening of the theatre stage. The event becomes a surface.

In the continual reduction of container to surface spectacle becomes domestic. The collective experience of the moon landing finds the president and the oval office superimposed over the celestial object. Finally the interface now allows anyone to be spectator as well as actor and the surface world can be superimposed over everything and at any moment.

Hence, with the screen as a site, the architecture of an event uses footage as a design material.

The Telescape The TELESCAPE becomes a new landscape of Architectural flattening – An inter spatial region where an event is constructed from a distance – the site of contemporary memory and knowledge, fact and fiction.

“This killed That” The printing press killed the Cathedral, says Frollo in the Hunchback of Notre Dame. What has the screen done? Or what are the architectures of a purely surface world?

Banal objects become as spectacular as everything else – the telescope eradicates scale, explodes time, footage is in excess and association or editing becomes the story-teller’s apparatus. Surface visually articulates narratives by aesthetic association – scale and time are lost in flatness and content becomes wholly governed by its context.

Essentially if recordings of the recording and re-contextualising of stories is only ever experienced as a surface the world becomes akin to a multifaceted diamond that you can never enter; An architecture with only and outside. Or perhaps where the inside and the outside have become indistinguishable.

How can the experience of a room be flattened? What is the best way to articulate the condition of surface?

The Oil Age If the material of our age is petrolium then how could it’s use as a subject not only criticise a superficial world built on a finite resource but also discuss the nature of an absolute surface world today in architecture?

Tags: film > flattening > oil > previews > screens > Surface > telescape

Oily Domesticity Posted on March 13, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

The banal narratives of oil. The domestic reality of petrochemical dependency will be minced into the war narrative as the new iteration of the film.

The long section is an idea for a series of such images that we will be ‘scrolling’ over in the film alongside other footage. Here we have the evian freighter delivering globally.

The new approach Posted on March 12, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

Intro Room Posted on March 10, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

Fluid Tests Posted on March 9, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

I am currently working on a ‘trailer’ for the next film, situated in the first room of my storyboard, before entering the screen surface. Meanwhile I have been playing

around with a fluid simulation program.

New True Story – Script Posted on March 6, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

FACTory acta est petrolium, plaudite! (oil is over, applaud!)

Brief: Project Summary The world as we know it both conceptually and literally is reduced to an aesthetic surface, recorded in the form of footage (factual and fictional) and flattened as image on screen. These are the apparatuses.

The common denominator of the world is a single material defining our age, driving our collective global narrative – always prevalent beneath every surface, powering all physical and digital progress; but never in direct sight. Everything dependents on this elusive force, its extraction, its consumption, and its reshaping of all human experience on every scale.

Horrifyingly beautiful, here our story begins. The age of progress, of gleaming surfaces, of an interconnected humanity utterly dependant on a material seldom seen but always there. It’s story has been interweaving an entire planet’s collective narrative for the past 200 years. Our media build facts and fictions around its consequences never straying beyond the surface of what is reported. The illusion of objectivity. It is everywhere and it is running out.

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Narration & Storyboard Script

“I had a dream, which was not all a dream.

The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars Did wander darkling in the eternal space, Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air; Morn came and went—and came, and brought no day, And men forgot their passions in the dread Of this their desolation;” Introduction – The Surface of the World – Perspective: Darkness. A slither of light appears. The doors slowly creak open. As we move closer the light grows from a line to the dim interior of a room. An ominous object hovers over a marble plinth – a glowing puddle suspended in mid-air. Upon our approach the flat surface reveals itself to be a portal looking unto the rolling surface of the globe.

Into the puddle we descend beyond the glassy plane of the screen we land on the globe, thrusting forward, gliding over sandy dunes until the ascent over one of them reveals a vast landscape – pillars of thick black smoke stretching as far as the horizon, holding up an even darker surface; a veil over the sky.

As we shift our view the landscape slides away and we move from one surface to another. A short interval offers a glimpse of other screens, news footage and media events surrounding the thing itself are briefly seen and heard. Their interference fades as we enter the surface of objects.

Nano – Circuit board Surface – Plan: What might seem as a night shot of a city in plan slowly turns into a glowing circuit board. Highways of circuitry wrap around towering transistors and resistors of all shapes and sizes. ‘Daybreak’ reveals our circuit board. A surreal element invades as we continue to move over it; black beads – tar-like droplets – appear between our gridded runways and cavernous circuitry. The substance gradually multiplies, forming rivers of dark ooze flooding the board. However, long before this culminates into a black deluge that smothers the whole object (prophesising the city end scene), we find ourselves slipping out of the shiny surface of a phone screen.

Body – Skin Surface – Perspective: Behind the screen a mirror and a woman staring at herself. A closer shot of bare lips is animated by a hand moving a dark red lipstick over them. The trace behind the motion is highlighted by the dark ooze – subtly but evidently. Eyeliner, and lashing eyes sprinkle dark droplets into the air. She has worn her face. Bottled water perspiring with the black substance aids her swallow several pills. Harmless vitamins but their cabinet is also oozing with the fluid. Freshly painted nails start perspiring their own dark droplets as the perfume bottle sprinkles more onto her skin.

Food –Table Surface – Plan: In the kitchen the family gathers to consume off the table. Packaging of all sorts is gradually leaking its dark ooze on the table top. As food is prepared hobs are turned on and dark liquid in pans sizzles. The camera in plan view to the table top shoots each dish being laid before its eater. Smiling mouths bight into meat and vegetables indifferent to the ever increasing tar-like fluid trickling down their faces and staining their clothes and filling their plates. A hand lifts a spoon-full of fluid out of a small plate ready to feed the family’s infant. The scene ends with luscious raspberries in a bowl next to their packaging labelled New Zeeland produce – the shining bubbly red fruits are slowly drowned in the black fluid. The bowl overflows and the table is slowly covered as we zoom out in plan view, out of the screen to pan onto another.

Products –The Shelf Surface – Elevation: Our mother walks down an isle shopping as we follow her in elevation view of the shelving. As she moves forwards the shelves she leaves behind turn into cascading waterfalls of dark ooze. At the tills we have an elevation shot of the plastic bags piled and used for delivering purchases home.

Music/Culture? – Audio turns into concert – Zoom Out: Monuments to national identity and human history are only preserved from the fumes induced by the substance by deploying methods requiring conditioning that can only exist because of the substance. The fresco of the Last supper perspires black droplets as a heftier amount of fluid gushes out of the holy grail. The Sistine chapel (ceiling plan zoom) cracks as the sky rains down with fluid. Fluid drips down the marble surfaces of columns; marble and gold become stained with the fluid.

Guitar/cello/violin strings vibrate as an orchestra plays. Gradually an orchestra is revealed with the fluid splashed off the instruments’ strings onto the stage, flowing into the isles. From the entertainment/cultural stage we move to that of politics.

Politics –The premise for wars – footage: Symbols of government as well as officials themselves wallowing in oil as war horns sound and forces mobilised. The war machine leaking more and more fluid as it moves to deliver the political will unto other areas of the world. Kuwait, Iraq, Iran and the Middle East become the cesspool of military operations and resource extraction.

Vehicles and Infrastructure: The oil secured. A static shot of the horizon at sea is slowly blocked by the movement of an oil tanker that comes into view and covers the entire screen (like the Boeing 747 in Koyaanisqatsi). An isometric-like view of the sea reveals more and more tankers as we zoom out to a landscape full of ships.

The oil well – zoom out to landscape: An oil well in Kuwait is pouring oil out like a fountain. The camera moves swiftly over pipelines. A screen off the current screen is showing the earth gradually covered over by a black network of lines (the pipe routes) like veins pumping the fluid to fuel humanity.

Landscapes – plan view Food production – agricultural fields with machinery leaking the fluid all over the produce. Animals downing in it. Arctic ice caps are stained with dark blotches from beneath as oil begins leaking over the ice. The desert sand turns black. Greenery is covered by waves of darkness.

Aesthetics –All kinds of surfaces – ornate interiors, asphalt roads etc are slowly washed over with black waves– elevation/ plan Landscape shots are mixed with surface shots. We are panning over surfaces, plastic, synthetic furs, faux gold, real gold, ornaments, marbles, precious art pieces – as they are gradually stained or washed over by waves of black fluid. The cuts are transitioning into movements on and off screen surfaces, as we start perceiving the screens more as a faceted diamond rather than a flat surface over a plinth.

As the earth is close to turning into a complete black orb in space.

“The world was void, The populous and the powerful was a lump, Seasonless, herbless, treeless, manless, lifeless— A lump of death—a chaos of hard clay.”

Drowning City – end scene.

We stare at a static view of a cityscape as sounds of it’s bustling life are gradually extinguished by the rushing force of an unseen flood. Then we slowly see the dark substance rising in waves between the streets, buildings are perspiring it and gradually the entire city is drowned (just like the circuit board) in the very material that makes it’s existence possible.

Storyboarding each of the scenes above to be uploaded later as well!

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Working with a software called RealFlow to try and simulate fluid dynamics over models and in spaces. The opening to the Girl With the Dragon Tattoo used the same software for different reasons (create a nightmare of black ooze – I literally want the ooze to refer to the oil industry and make it more critical in the context of the project) Tags: film > narrative > script > story > true story

Storyboarding Intro Posted on March 2, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

All about mediating between surfaces, scales and objects. I’m putting together the narration/script that goes with the intro as I story board more.

The current idea is that our faceted world is introduced after the “death” or transition from the surface of a drawing (at the moment farnsworth house can change not sure to what) and the entry into the surface of one single screen.

The faceted diamond of screens will never appear only as we transition from surface to surface we start seeing the appearance of more screens subtly and gradually. The big diamond of all screens will then appear as the faceted cosmos/globe of screens at the very end where all surfaces construct a ‘world’ of the event/things we were looking at but with a hollow interior since there is nothing beyond the surfaces themselves.

Also introducing a ‘character’ I’m calling her Pandora for now (after all I have a few boxes from my diamonds from Mulholland Drive to Houdini) her role is to be further explored for now she is reduced to a beautiful body that the camera man uses to flatten against the oil covered birds wings in the foreground and compose the sculpture of victory on the other end. (a sort of reverse Godard situation I was trying there from her eyes to camera to the objects being filmed aligned)

Tags: faceted > film > intro > screens > storyboard > Surface > surface world > telescape > telescapes

Cosmology of Surfaces Posted on February 26, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

First test of rendering footage on simulated screens. Now to start being more narratively strategic about it as well as the placement of the screens and even their surroundings (room?) etc. … Couldn’t resist a bit of overly-dramatic music in the meantime.

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Tags: beauty > film > grotesque > screens > simulated > simulation > Spectacle > telescape > test > ugly > video

Faceted Footage Posted on February 26, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

Some screenshots of a short clip I’ve put together, to be uploaded soon when it’s done rendering. Just experimenting with laying out footage onto simulated screens and generally playing around with the ideas we discussed to construct a faceted diamond of screens.

Media Facets Posted on February 23, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

The World as a Surface of Media Facets

The object only exists on the surface. The ‘thing’ itself can only exist as its recorded self.

The Earth as a long exposure shot from the faceted International Space Station Window

Tags: Concept > Concept Model > diamonds > Facets > Media > model > Surface > world

World as Surface Posted on February 22, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

Looking at the world and its events only as an agglomeration of surfaces “Just look at the surface of my paintings and films and me and there I am. There’s nothing behind it. I’m all surface nothing else” Andy Warhol

“The skin disappoints … Clearly the only thing he possesses weighs upon him. It is superfluous since possession and being do not coincide. Possessing it is the cause of misunderstanding in human relations. I have an angels skin, but I am a jackal; a crocodile skin, but I am a puppy; I have black skin, but I am white; a woman’s skin, but I am a man. I never have the skin of what I really am. There is no exception to the rule, because I am never what I have.”

Eugenie Limone-Luccioni (‘La Robe’)

The condition of footage should be seen, not as a collection of fragments but in terms of a seamless skin/surface – the surface of the lie or the architecture of the fake.

In spatial terms how architectural forms are only attributed meaning through the event they host and the way we are guided as audience to read them (consume them as part of an edited spectacle) on screen.

The screen speaks of the ultimate surface illusion where any form is flattened into an endless stream of consistent spectacle.

The visual nature of form does little in addressing fact or fiction; it is always a fake or something trying to represent the idea of truth. Hence the fake should be seen in aesthetic terms.

When the most beautiful or purest forms often require huge methods/resources/structures to construct and maintain them then even our ideas about pure beautiful forms having some inherent reference to truth is a lie.

On Screen everything becomes an exterior It’s a project about surface/skin. Whether the object is on the scale of a landscape, a wall texture, a luscious fabric or a grotesque element the surface design and the subsequent editing of these spaces into a narrative on screen will begin creating associations and discuss the idea of adding ‘narrative meaning’ to architecture that arguably can never inherently exist as testimony to ideological ‘truth’ or ‘falsehood’.

What is the surface of architecture today?

What is today’s multifaceted diamond?

How is the new object recording the thing but never actually seeing the thing? … not quite the faceted diamond of screens I’m after but a crazy set-up nonetheless:

Britney Spears - Hold It Against Me

Beautiful and Grotesque Scenes

Posted on February 16, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

Everything below are screenshots from dozens of films and clips I’ve been compiling.

I am currently trying to formulate a narrative to begin mincing them into a new film.

Some are beautiful and some are grotesque beware.

In order to begin thinking of the 3 act narrative of the new film I draw from the book ‘The Myth Gap’ I have been reading to describe the acts as follows: Act 1: Facing a real Event – describing reality as it is Act 2: Dealing with the Event – help people face the reality (lamentations) Act 3: Prophecy – constructing hope for the future These are very general themes that can propose a new way media-scapes can construct news. Specificity in their content is still needed.

Cubescapes and “The Ugly” Posted on February 13, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

I have been reading the text on “The Ugly” and trying to reframe my entire argument around certain key aspects of it including ideas about excess and boredom or fear of death. Mark speaks of it in Freudian terms and also refers to escapism as playing dead when we use our conventional approach to beauty as a way by which to project our desires and escape the non-space of loss or meaninglessness that is the ugly.

I particularly like how the argument refers to the idea of surface, the masks of expression and how it elaborates spatially by bringing the debate around notions of the exterior and the interior and their representations of each other. This made me think of the model ideas of ‘footage event’ fragments I showed in this reference last time form a Unit 15 student at the Bartlett:

His project was about a Rubix Cube city which is totally different but the object above is quite inspiring for a potential next phase model to build into my film.

Rubix/Tardis Architectural Animation

Storyboarding Board Posted on February 9, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

The blank canvas of the film. Using my previous editing structure and the screen layouts over the duration of a 12 min. I am rethinking what new forms of footage to start selectively placing and what new spaces to create. Looking at films of beauty and reading into Mark’s text on ‘The Ugly’.

Been gathering atmospheric scenes from various films. An intro of zooming into earth as I proposed last time is also what I plan to have a draft of tomorrow.

An idea for a ‘mincer’ model of landscape construction is also something in the works and I plan to discuss the idea tomorrow.

FACTory – Composed thoughts Posted on February 6, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

FACTory: Where we build our worlds (below some renders I’ve been trying out in a landscape program Nathan recommended called vue)

We approach an archipelago of stories; a landscape of narrative islands: the Telescape.

An event occurs. It lasts for some time. It begins and it ends. It has a place. It has a scale. It’s drawable, modellable and even tells a story.

Horrific events like Wars happened. Three Kings, Live from Baghdad, The Night Manager, Lessons of Darkness, CNN Live or Jarhead also happened . They claim their own islands in the global historic landscape we have constructed for events.

Fact and fiction both aid the construction of the story.

An event broadcasts itself bigger than it is. An entire mythos is forever constructed around it; in our Telescapes this condition is maximised more than ever.

As we traverse 10 light years through time and space an entire broadcasting history leaves a weakened residue in places of which we can only see their past. The earth comes into view and our new digitised signals project silence. Our narrative landscapes are on exclusive bandwidths. More and more of us are looking inwards into the glassy planes of our screens.

We fall into a landscape, a building and a screen; Welcome to the FACTory. Inside the telescape we begin a mincing journey through narrative islands. The mash-up of fact and fiction could have never been so prolific and yet division reigns amidst the confusion of belief. Tribes of followers gather on each island preaching its dogmatic narrative. In the past ancients would pursue the sciences and worship the gods all at once; history and myth, facts and fiction had their islands but could coexist in the same archipelago.

We see glimpses of beauty as well as horror. One island prepares for the end of the world as an other celebrates peace and liberal freedom. News footage appears along side each island or is it footage from film? We find ourselves in and out of screens in domestic interiors of varying tribal beliefs. And then we travel to landscapes where the consequences of our constructed narrative archipelagos are felt – revolutions for freedom with exuberant auras enabled by the Telescape, while elsewhere wars and pollution scour the earth.

Above, recent Peru floods after a severe drought thought to have been influenced by global warming We find ourselves looking at all the stories compiled in a scroll, a finger swiping down the news feed almost endlessly.

Footage as Oracle – The new ACT I Posted on February 2, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

News Footage as an Oracle The Facts of tomorrow constructed for you today

Above is a potential opening (Act I) of my next film iteration. We are zooming not into Kuwait but the world from the point in space where our fist tele-communicated transition would have reached by now: 110 light years away (thus conceptually tying the zoom-in to the narrative of news footage and broadcasting stories). This will help me start thinking about what propositional news landscape we meet when we finally zoom into a screen on earth since everything in my films so far will have already been seen or heard as we zoom in (will edit them into the zoom clip) as we are approaching earth. Hence my project’s previous content will only make a cameo in ACT I of the next iteration.

The extent of human radio broadcasting so far (not the square, the blue dot!)

link: Our Signals In Space As we zoom out of earth to 110 light years away we can pick up weak signals of our tele-communications history. The scalar and time jump is still behaving like conventional historiography and new reporting; it is retrospective: only about what happened. By zooming into earth we are moving from past to present and then we land on our screens, where the telescape becomes a site for the future. As architects we always project with what we propose. How can news reporting shift to being speculative and projective – announcing possibilities and inventing myths to overcome the ambivalence of facts?

An oracle is found in the Telescape. The newsroom is dead. Journalism is open sourced and the classic construction of myth and history is rampant (people can accept things without being dogmatic – gods and heroes can exist alongside mortals and real world facts). The news fabricates tomorrows – forecasting is no longer restricted to the weather but a fact-based fiction. It is a about the construction of stories, communication and the mincing of information and narratives. The world seen as a gigantic tele-sphere of narratives – we see this world from the perspective of what is now shocking fake news but how can we constructively design fictions in news reporting to produce new outlooks? Is the site only inside the screen, in the flattening of time and scales or is that this site merely the beginning and the constructed narrative becomes self-fulfilling? (Preppers – prepping for the End of The World As We Know It i.e. TEOTWAWKI – it’s a thing – are only part of a selffulfilling nihilistic narrative where they accept imminent catastrophe and refuse to believe we can turn it around by only fuelling an apocalypse by preparing for it)

Mapping the previous film using Time and Distance to shift scales, with the camera/screen at the centre

been watching The big Short :)

Next Step: WHAT DO WE GET WHEN WE ENTER A TELESCAPE ON EARTH?

The Jury: Or How I should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love Fake News Posted on January 30, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

Thinking positive about Fake News

FACTory – A New World Order Or How We Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Fake News In the Diamond Age the Primer taught Nell through interactive story-telling.

This is a project about communication – story-telling moulding the world – viewed through the lens of the news (footage and the screen). The traits stem from ancient myth-making and myth-telling practices but their social consequences and political prominence has been revivified through technology and the cultural and economic frictions of globalization. We are still (even more so online) in a world of orators and followers (story-tellers and story-believers – the former of which compete for likes and prominence) What would the world look like if it was mapped by belief and story-telling? If the currency moves from monetary value to narrative value?

In a speculative scenario where democratised journalism IS the chief story-teller competing between the most absurd fictions to the most conventionally defined facts, how would both physical and digital (screen) sites impact behaviours? The argument is to start constructing a mesmerising, beautiful new world where the only form of recognition is via narrative spectacle. Where the shape of the physical world, including it’s communities, borders, wars and architectures shift by how individuals compete for prominence in story-telling.

The future of news and its mediation through screens (annihilation of the traditional newsroom all together) becomes a window through which we can access some areas of this speculative world where footage is manipulated in many ways to deliver stories.

The aim is to break from a moral attitude towards fake news since to date I have, through my research and thesis already made the statement (and argued) that fact and fiction have become one and the same in the way that they are constructed. Now we need to stop worrying (obsessively) about the demise of facts and find ways to design a world where story-telling through footage and our tech (screens) shapes worlds of beauty as well as horror.Where facts can still reassert themselves and their authority but by shifting how they are communicated and constructed.

Additional Thoughts: The Rochdale Herald satirical website set up to look like real news. Often it is taken as real news if some of its articles end up on someones facebook feed: The Rochdale Herald – Real News Satire This morning on the BBC there was a special debate on the Victoria Darbyshire program about Fake News. Sky News has a short video on how to identify Fake News. MPs are to debate the issue in Parliament. It is clearly a current, troubling issue but nonetheless not a new one and perhaps by being shocked and afraid of the ambiguities it attributes to facts may be inhibiting a response. We should find new methods of challenging thew condition by embracing its vices and virtues.

Alternative facts are as true as facts, relative to their context. We should stop bickering about them and question whether an extreme obsession with authenticity and verifiable facts is part of the issue fueling those prepared to exploit the situation for their own agendas. There is nothing shocking about opportunism, corruption and news editing for manipulation. Even conspiracies don’t shock anymore, there have been too many. It has however reached a new, perilous zenith on the political stage.

Why the world does not exist | Markus Gabriel | TEDxMünchen

FACTory Jury Posters

Two books I am looking into:

FACTory – an AA real news report Posted on January 26, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

Good morning Nation!

Once upon a time people used to be entitled to their own opinions but never to their own facts. Fear not, for now you can be entitled to both. Yes to your own facts as well.

This special report brings to you a project that is not about truth but rather about narrative production. The site of said project is the Telescape. Particularly with the past weekend, our screens have been riddled with footage pointing to the demise of fact or it’s indistinguishability from fiction. With the consolidation of a post-truth era (hashtag: word of the year 2016), government officials are justifying evidence as alternative fact, in what BBC press night compared to Orwellian doublethink.

However, as much as we’d like to blame the escalation on very recent events it has been on-going conundrum since the dawn of the telescape, revolving around such events as the first Gulf War and particularly their construction on the screen.

Fragments of reality in the form of media news footage meet screens to tell us stories. Let us enter the landscape of these stories where we shall start from the desert, a crate blanche for the story-teller.

Let us witness spectacle/news (same thing) FILM [reduced from 16 to 12 mins] Conclusion: Evidence Table – please feel free to interact with the pile We sell a war, we deliver the war and we report the war on screen we even tele-battle – but these alt-factual events have very real consequences which are often underreported due to lack of newsworthiness, narrative spectacle or viewer boredom (beginning of quote – this story is so done waste of my fucking time .. poor fucking birds end quote). Like a lot of architecture outside of our discourse, facts are aesthetically scrutinised under the eyes of the world – if it looks spectacular, or horrifically raw, if it’s istagramable, prime-time worthy and awe-inspiring then it deserves attention. To narrate is necessary for we are our stories and stories must be told, but at what cost? Let us discuss the telescape with our panelists.

Staged Truths Posted on January 25, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

another two posters to come with a shortened re-edited version of my film

Poster Progress Posted on January 23, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

FACTory Posted on January 22, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

Jury draft text below (an edited version of my last film will be shown in between with some images I am also working on): Truth is aesthetic.

Something is only true if it is spectacular; in equal measures either mesmerizingly staged or horrifically raw.

The truth is, this is not a project about truth, but about the space of narrative production and consumption. These spaces are no longer found in conventional architectural forms but increasingly exist within the framework of the screen with footage as their material. Truth is virtualised in a site we can refer to as the Telescape. If there is no footage then there is no story; no architecture.

The media gives birth to a reason for war, a war happens and the media writes about the war more. The self-fulfilling nature of belief drives the rate at which we construct, destroy, or make sense of the world.

History, like fact is constructed and post-rational. All experience is fragmented and everything sits within its own ‘Area51′, its own conspiratorial ‘Hangar 18′ somewhere in a desert. The newsroom is the screen. The architectures generated by it correlate with a very tangible physical fallout.

The screen initiates a story and we find ourselves trying to catch up with its consequences in a world of confusion facing its very tangible aftereffects. Google’s most popular search term after the EU referendum was in fact ‘what is Brexit’.

Abstracted worlds of ideas are lending themselves to the world of facts within our screens. The world is flattened in both scale and time within the site of the Telescape. Facts are increasingly indistinguishable from fictions. Can architecture respond to the condition? Can fact/fiction-spaces be reconciled? Or should be just lend ourselves to designing spectacles alone?

Tags: fact > factory > fiction > narrative > Poster > screenshot > streaming > telescape > truthiness

Televolution – Fact Factories Posted on January 19, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

Here are some spreads for my TS course of Mass-customization. In them I am also trying to brainstorm on ways of further exploring the potential of spatial flattening through the screen, as one of the project aspects we discussed during the last tutorial.

Also … how’s ‘Fact Factory’ as a current title? Too literal?

In terms of the project and the Jury what I’m focusing now is to build on my previous film narratives and construct a new story as a news report that can produce its own factual/fictional objects and spaces.

The ‘film posters’ or ‘news headlines’ could be a good initial starting point to capture/frame key ideas and discuss tomorrow.

Links to last term’s films: Phantasmagoria: (film at very bottom of post) http://dip9.aaschool.ac.uk/the-film/ Telescapes: https://vimeo.com/195713417 Live screen overlay: https://vimeo.com/195735021

Staging Spectacle + other references Posted on January 16, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

I am currently putting together a story arc summary for each of my past films (Film01_Phantasmagoria pictured above) to see where to take them for the next jury and discuss tomorrow.

After a somewhat ‘procrasti-weekend’ I’ve been looking into the ‘newsroom’ as a space for launching spectacles on screen. Great reference from Natasha below is Philip Johnson’s Crystal Cathedral which was commissioned by Robert H. Schuller, one of the msot prominent televangelists of his time. The Cathedral was to act as both stage and television set for the Hour of Power show (from 70s to 90s) that was broadcast from the church.

The Crystal Cathedral – A News Report on ‘the End of an Era’

hmmm Johnson took a little bit of inspiration from Mies it seems … just a little…

After the Schuller family’s viewers began to dwindle and amid rising costs the cathedral was sold to the catholic archdioceses of orange county which has stripped the interior almost bare and reconfigured it to meet their congregation standards.

Looking more into newsrooms and how new ever more compacted designs are being used by media companies for their headquarters, I came across the new Al Jazeera HQ on the 16th floor of the Shard by Veech x Veech (http://veechxveech.com/? work=overview) who seem to specialize in designing media spaces. It’s interesting for deviating from the typical ‘big black box’ of other media HQs (BBC broadcasting house) by being in a low ceiling, small office floor, in a tower and using the view as part of the newsroom backdrop as well. Other than the bare minimum of a greenscreen as a set piece, the Al Jazeera newsroom at the Shard is one of the most recent examples of what I guess is deemed as state of the art newsroom.

Finally what is to be the most expensive (or at least so far has amassed the most private donations) as a presidential inauguration ceremony is the upcoming US inauguration of Donald Trump with the traditional temporary VIP stage erection in fornt of the Capitol underway for this Friday’s event.

Some other references that I found interesting for Maxime and Emma. Emma if you haven’t seen this below it’s a screen in Beijing for showing the sunrise live during smoggy days for the people who otherwise cannot see it (the outside has become an

interior because of the smog). Maxime, a cathedral in a former mine in Poland that was carved out of the rock.

Also for Emma: A war film chronicles Yugoslavian history, in which protagonists organised themselves to live underground from WW2 to the civil war of the 90s (been a while since I’ve seen it)

Nested Spaces Posted on January 12, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

In the process of trying to model scenes from each screen. Still questioning whether to model only what is in view or beyond it since I’m unpacking the 2D views on the

screen.

Eventually, I aim to compile these as perspective or isometric drawings/renders in the form of self-contained spaces that are minced between them through the interface of the screen. The footage unpacked into a inter-spatial collection of exteriors/interiors.

Drawing from the discussion we had by our two guests I’m interested in critiquing the usefulness of truthiness (the obsession to uncover conspiracy after conspiracy or ‘take down the system’). When I referred to the term ‘aedicula’ (definition below) to characterize the spatial aspects of scale, time and narrative it is with the aim of using the self-contained models of footage as spaces nested within spaces and exaggerated by some being very mundane/domestic against others that are of global current affairs (newsworthy vs. not newsworthy footage/space). By doing so to start questioning this seemingly ‘absolute’ strife for a-hierarchical, free and completely transparent (factual?) world. aedicula: The Latin word for a building is aedes; the word for a little building is aedicula and this word was applied in classical times more particularly to little buildings whose function was symbolic–ceremonial.

It was applied to a shrine placed at the far end, from the entrance, of a temple to receive the statue of a deity–a sort of architectural canopy in the form of a rudimentary temple, complete with gable–or, to use the classical word, pediment. It was also used for the shrines–again miniature temples -in which the lares or titular deities of a house or street were preserved. Now, the aedicule, from a remote period, has been used as a subjunctive means of architectural expression. That is to say, it has been used to harmonize architecture of strictly human scale with architecture of a diminutive scale, so that a building may at the same time serve the purposes of men and of a race of imaginary beings smaller than men. It has also been used to preserve the human scale in a building deliberately enlarged to express the superhuman character of a god. Perhaps this should be put another way: the aedicule has been enlarged to human scale and then beyond, to an heroic scale, losing its attribute of smallness and ‘cosiness’ but retaining and affirming its attribute of ceremoniousness.

Also, very fresh news, below extract from the leaked buzzfeed document, that alleges Trump defiled the same bed the Obamas slept in at the Ritz Carlton in Moscow, using sex workers. Whether it is a narrative that manifests in my mincing and nesting of spaces I am yet to see. The uproar surrounding intelligence, reliability, fact, etc at his press conference yesterday (2 weeks before he’s inaugurated) was stupendous.

Quantity of Footage Posted on January 12, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

Just came across this in the news and though it was quite interesting. Rob Pruitt, an artist, produced one painting a day for each day of Obama’s presidency, amassing around 3000 by the end of it. Here is the full article: The Obama Paintings: using art to examine a presidential legacy

Cloud_3.0 Posted on January 9, 2017 by Nicholas Zembashi

A revised thought cloud I have been working on forming the basis of my white book contents and a platform from which to launch the next phase of the project.

Some images over the break, on a trip to Salzburg:

Telescape: A “Live” Mince

Posted on December 14, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

A live mince of footage:

161213_Live-Mince from Nicholas Zembashi

16:39

A pre-edited mince of footage: Telescape – Discerning Fact from Fiction

The film ‘poster’ containing fragments of what or where appears in the ‘telescape’ of the film, scattered across the narrative landscape of the desert.

The Live set-up, streaming from a distant room.

In terms of jury feedback and what next the construction of my own fiction and even the production of drawings/objects and pieces that can feature within it was quite interesting. Thinking of ways of developing this further than just “it’s a fictional story made to seem real/factual”

Tags: editing > fact > fact construction > fiction > film > footage > Gulf War > Mincing > telescape > TIME

Screen Recording Tests Posted on December 11, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

Started to place new narrative screens on the main screen and testing practical arrangements of the set-up.

The Film as a Landscape_WIP Posted on December 11, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

A first draft of what the shift in scales and views may look like if the idea of the image is a hyper-realistic landscape depicting places/objects/plots of the film

Screens on Screens Posted on December 10, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

‘TELESCAPE’ … is the current project title after having been spectacle-related as ‘PHANTASMAGORIA’ in the previous jury. Now the spatial implications of the screen, through the use of footage, are more of the focus.

Part of my trials for the jury is a set up of screens-on-screens to physically mince footage, time and space. The main badrop will be a re-edited version of my previous film and new narratives will be placed over it using other screens. I’m currently in the re-editing process and choreographing the placement of the additional screens and what they shall be showing. At the moment, Weapons of Mass Destruction and a leak on Brexit plans through the photographing of a government aide’s notepad, will be the ‘infill’ narratives.

New Forms of Footage Posted on December 8, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

Have been thinking of different kinds of footage to add to the screens that I will be overlaying over my past jury’s film. Thanks to a great reference Sebastian sent of CNN 360 videos, some quite compelling ones from the battle of Mosul could come into the narrative and allude to interactivity and a different kind of spatial flattening.

Here is a link below but for the 360 to work it needs to be in a chrome browser.

Facebook 360 hashtag – Scroll Down for ISIS Mosul videos CNN 360 – which may not available on some devices Finally, fine tuning the script and for the next steps planning to test the layering of screens over screens physically.

Here’s another crazy story of fiction turning into fact with dire consequences incase you haven’t heard of PIZZAGATE:

Pizzagate Is An Alt-Right Fever Dream

Drawing the Film Posted on December 5, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

As discussed last time I’m trying to put together a drawing which spatial the content of my first film into a landscape here is a sketch below. The aim is to create visible non-linearity between spaces of fact and spaces of fiction at different scales. A linear story can only be traced if you try to associate each area with the film (film screenshots below).

The main definitions I’ve posted previously to help focus the thesis: Footage / A recorded fragment of reality – collected for journalistic purposes Telescape / An interspatial region facilitating an event seen from a distance (from Greek τελε-). The site of contemporary knowledge and memory Screen / An apparatus on which telescapes exist and where footage acquires narrative purpose Mince / An action of editing footage and to reveal by degrees rather than directly (to deceive) Stir / An action of re-arranging footage and constructing the narrative in a different order Fact / Constructed by mincing and stirring footage Fiction / Constructed by mincing and stirring footage Truthiness / The quality of a constructed fact Spectacle / The goal for narrative success and reinforcer of truthiness Time / Exploded by the quantity of footage and compressed by mincing

Some definitions Posted on December 4, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

Footage / A recorded fragment of reality – collected for journalistic purposes Telescape / An interspatial region facilitating an event seen from a distance (from Greek τελε-). The site of contemporary knowledge and memory Screen / An apparatus on which telescapes exist and where footage acquires narrative purpose Mince / An action of editing footage and to reveal by degrees rather than directly (to deceive) Stir / An action of re-arranging footage and constructing the narrative in a different order Fact / Constructed by mincing and stirring footage Fiction / Constructed by mincing and stirring footage Truthiness / The quality of a constructed fact Spectacle / The goal for narrative success and reinforcer of truthiness Time / Exploded by the quantity of footage and compressed by mincing Tags: fact > fiction > footage > mince > screen > Spectacle > stir > telescape > TIME > truthiness

Narrative Poster & Narrative Landscape Posted on December 1, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

“Some truths are better kept behind a screen, Especially when they would look like lies” Lord Byron, Don Juan

Above is a diagram in sequence of the narrative through the screens. We maintain a split screen set-up for the background with several screens moving over as we construct the story. One screen begins the first video call session then within that we have other calls to other screens until we loop through 3 different sites back to our split screen set-up.

Some thought-sketches developing a story that could feature both the “notes” that caused a stir on the news which we discussed yesterday (see link below) as well as some of my diamonds. We also see the locations that the screens will take us through. Essentially the screens become an apparatus for constructing a drawing.

I am developing the set up for the screens to accomodate the story but the idea is that this time as the screens set up the narrative we are having the “narrative poster” appear in parts as the story is constructed.

Minister dismisses ‘have cake and eat it’ Brexit notes

Tags: Drawing > fact mincing > narrative > notes > plan > scandal > sketch > story

Mincing Facts in Screens _ 3.0 Posted on November 28, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

A Film of the set-up For the third test I linked more than two video call sessions and the location we are transported to, before we loop back to the altar of truth (Trump), is a bit more exoctic this time (think Palomar).

Revelations at tutorials tomorrow. In the meantime … lunch on me to whoever works out the set-up

Tags: baroque analogies > fact construction > footage > landscapes > loop > Mincing > screenscape

Mincing Facts in Screens _ 2.0 Posted on November 28, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

An intro image: The Politics of a video call … how Erdogan topples a coup thanks to Face Time!

So following on the mind-bender of last week here’s another image to reconstruct the interiors/exteriors and the final fact of the story. If you can’t work it out visually a brief explanation follows beneath the images.

A film of the set-up So the incubator babies of the first Gulf War is the fact/lie in this test but I am inclined to weave contemporary one in the next iterations. This test instead of just two linked locations is going through three. Still between two countries (Uk and Cyprus) but from my location, to a room in Cyprus and then inside a metal shipping container (turned tool shed). The narratives are yet to become location-specific in the way that the first fact/lie is transmitted through them but that is the next phase.

Working on another test today to try the location idea again and diagram the ‘construction of fact; more specifically to start building a narrative with actions/dialogues at each screen location. The outcome is brief and fairly direct but the set-up logistics need working on. Any feedback is welcome.

Some fun Baroque plans (since we refered to Bernini and Borromini last time)

Inside? Outside? This cross design of a city at the sea (Ancona) by Bernardo Antonio Vittone, an Italian architect of the Rococo period, won the first price in the Concorso Clementino in 1732. The fountain in the middle was a copy of Bernini’s ‘Four Rivers’ fountain on the Piazza Navona in Rome.

Tags: baroque analogies > fact construction > footage > Gulf War > landscapes > Lie > loop > Mincing > screenscape > Truth

Wonderbook!

Posted on November 26, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

A crazy book with loads of information on constructing narratives of all sorts.

Wonderbook_Website Tags: book > narrative > reference > story > Wonderbook

Enter Tele-scape + Word_Cloud_2.0 Posted on November 24, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

What you see is a true lie. Footage from three landscapes are all mincided by the screenscape into one narrative.

A loop from my room back to my room and to my laptop screen. Above is the set up and below images of the views. Through 9 screens we are looking back at my laptop screen from the Uk through Cyprus and back again. On my laptop screen we are inside the Philip Glass Koyaanisqatsi. (They become 11 screens if we add the unrelated content of the other two large monitors behind my laptop screen).

Word Cloud 2.0! Within the big cloud of Phantasmagoria the clouds of journalism v. narrative, room, landscape, and footage are being minced:

Also a very interesting look into the Narrative Index – Facts alone are completely irrelevant the delivery of a strong narrative matters more:

The BUT Candidate Vs the AND Candidate

And to finish off a funny article on the meaning of “Mincing” from a journalistic perspective especially Mincing as in to “tell by degrees, instead of directly and frankly; to clip, as words or expressions; to utter half and keep back half.”: The Meaning of Mincing Tags: footage > Journalism > Mincing > Narrative Index > phantasmagoria > Thoughts > Word Cloud

Thought Clouds Posted on November 21, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

Have been adding to a thought cloud, compiling key words, ideas and links between them, a more formal version is on its way.

The image above of the pyramid in the sky made up of artillery is from the music video below towards the end vehicles pile up to form the ominous object in the sky.

Thirty Seconds To Mars - This Is War

Finally was reading into studies on media and amateur footage a book I am looking into has quite a few interesting pieces ont he topic shown below. On the right is another book to be launched on Thursday; is something I am looking forward to!

War the Theatre of all Culture Posted on November 17, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

From the Jury discussion there were several topics I found extremely interesting and I am currently organizing thoughts into a new potential direction.

Through a series of pieces the next stage of the project could be described; The pieces are to include highly specific films each accompanied by an illustration/drawing, an object and text/poem/article. A balance between visual ambiguity and clarity could describe a narrative through each piece and altogether would form the story.

The proposal for now aims at focusing on ‘War’ as an apparatus for discussing new architectural aesthetics (purely War at its most beautiful and spectacular forms in contemporary media) and instead of the output being a narrative about warfare its phantasmagorical effects are used as a proxy for new narratives.

1. The Forever War

In this way war phantasmagorias are to act as a framework for both commentary and design proposal within the context of a state of perpetual war and arguably one in which war or the military industrial complex are mothers/fathers of culture itslef.

2. It Is beautiful!

War Is Beautiful – by David Shields David Shields analyzed over a decade s worth of front-page war photographs from The New York Times and came to a shocking conclusion: the photo-editing process of the paper of record, by way of pretty, heroic, and lavishly aesthetic image selection, pulls the wool over the eyes of its readers; Shields forces us to face not only the the media’s complicity in dubious and catastrophic military campaigns but our own as well. The mighty Times, far from being a check on governmental power, is in reality a massive amplifier for its dark forces by virtue of the way it aestheticizes warfare.

3. Brecht’s Primer in 3 steps With Brecht’s work, re-readings by Walter Benjamin as well as subsequent reproductions of his War Primer, I aim to identify characteristics of theatricality/phantasmagoria (baroque effects) that are prevalent today and can become the crux to a language of aesthetics.

Book by Adam Broomberg and Oliver Chanarin Above Jospeh Goebbles is shown with a caption as he appeared in Brecht’s original War Primer but Bloomberg and Chanarin add a new dimension by overlaying a munch discussed photoshoped image of Iranian missiles over the Nazi chief of propaganda’s face

09:06

Oliver Laric ‘Versions’ – at 2:10 the missiles image shown collaged above Goebbles face is discussed.

4. War as Culture – Objects and Iconography

The famous spectacle of the ‘Fly-By’ during major events over London is predominantly a parade of aerial military technologies where even commercial objects (concorde and later A380) become nationalist icons and int he case of the concorde produced as competition during a climate of war (Cold War) 5. ‘Punk’ as the Counter-culture to War: Through music, fashion and the arts the counter-culture to political establishments is seen.

Punk aesthetics of the 70s and 80s are already dated, what would 21st Century Punk look like or Punk architecture?

Evolution of war iconography, Robert Overweg 2011, Greenspon, Oliver Stone / Willem Dafoe, Call of duty black ops.

The photo on the left taken by Greenspon during the Vietnam war features a soldier in an iconic and archetypical posture. It displays pain agony, possibly a call to god* all things the American public could relate to during the ongoing vietnam war, the assassination of Martin Luther King jr. and Robert Kennedy. This same posture was used as an inspiration for another iconic image. Oliver Stone featured Willem Dafoe on the cover and posters for the movie Platoon with the same iconic hands in the air, agony and a call to god can also be found in this posture. Oliver Stone adds a new cultural meaning to the image of Greenspon. The same posture and reference is yet again used but now in the game call of duty: black ops. During the first quarter of 2011 this was the best selling game of all-time in dollars on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. The iconic posture once introduced to our popular culture by Greenspon went from subjective registration to critical movie icon to be used in a commercial computer game.

Post-jury jubilation …

Tony Blair and the famous Selfie montage which ended up in an exhibition at the Imperial War Museum.

Below the short film produced for the Jury:

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Updates on overall direction and new ideas to come Tags: exploding time > ExplodingMoment > film > footage > GeneratingFootage > GulfWar > phantasmagoria > Spectacle > TIME

Act Two – Fire Posted on November 14, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

Here are some snapshots from the second act. The screen climaxes gradually to a filled up state. Act Three, the resolution, or more comic/self-aware making-of and argument wrap-up is on its way

Act One – The Approach Posted on November 14, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

Here is a rough preview of the first act to build up the approach to the fire and topic.

Fire footage is ready and is currently being edited into Act Two. Act one is subject to further editing and fine tuning as everything is brought together.

Stay tuned for the next two Acts

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Tags: acts > ExplodingMoment > footage > GulfWar > phantasmagoria > Preview > TIME

Animated Flames Posted on November 13, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

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just a few minutes of animated fire Tags: Animation > Fire > GulfWar > infinite landscape

A Fire – In Three Acts Posted on November 12, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

A progress update on the narrative further organised by notes, thoughts and script into my three acts. Below is a preliminary idea for a title, followed by the 3 pages of script, but for now I’ll continue working on the film editing and edit the script accordingly as the film progresses since it may change with the visuals. The base though is below feel free to comment although I know that’s quite a bit of text to get through (1001 words).

Phantasmagoria brought to you by the Agency of Perception Management

Tags: acts > film > narrative > script > story

On Fire … briefly Posted on November 10, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

A quick fire test proved quite mesmerizing for the briefest of moments during which the object could hold itself upright, before going all-out ‘Hindenburg’ to the ground.

Tags: Fire > GulfWar > Spectacle > TIME

Ready for the Blaze Posted on November 10, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

5 hours = 15 seconds of stop-motion from 3 camera positions; . . . now off to burn it all!

Below are some images of the final set-up from the well-head to the plumes spewing out of it. The next phase is the burning. The stop-motion process and construction of the model and well-head have all been footage generators (have been recorded as ‘making-of’).

Finally architecture as DISTRACTION, could perhaps form a refreshed way of describing the ideas encompassing all my apparatuses – of screen, footage, time, baroque special effects/phantasmagoria, or indeed the war – came to mind after our last tutorial with Natasha and Manolis when referring to ‘Wag the Dog’. Since we discussed how the detailed construction or re-framing of information/footage could be seen in relation to actual events and their theatrical dramatisation as ‘distractions’ or indeed ‘confusers’ of reality – Perception thusly Managed!

Tags: Distraction > footage > GulfWar > phantasmagoria > screen > TIME > war

Tutorial Teaser Posted on November 8, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

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Infinite Landscape and a Teaser Posted on November 7, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

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The Fargo “This is a true story” text is apparently justified to the left in the 90s movie, the recent series is a bit more playful with how the each part appears.

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Teaser of the Video I’m working on based on an 8 – 32 square grid which I expand or contract within its framework to make the grid less visually rigid and more of a guide.

Below Is the set-up for the infinite Landscape in an hexagonal configuration:

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Time-lapse of testing the mirror and landscape set-up (shot from behind the TwoWay mirror)

Tags: footage > Grid > GulfWar > set up > teaser > tests > TIME

Remember Remember Fire in November Posted on November 6, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

Today I tested my plans for a spectacular flame fountain simulating the oil well burst. Spectacular it was (eventually); however I found myself in quite a Guy Fawkesy conundrum. In the sense that my gunpowder plot may not work out as intended. But first, the results of my little experiments: 1. Lighting diesel on fire:

Observations: – Quite hard to ignite, petrol is more flammable but significantly more risky and ‘explosive’ to handle so I personally wanted to avoid that.

– Needs a powerful, constant and direct flame in order to ignite. I used my caramelising torch gun. This presents an issue with the model because I won’t be able to light it up directly like this. I tried with a small flame on a stick/bud next to the spray nozzle but the diesel just burns it out instantly.

– The nozzle of the spraying device cannot be adjusted to fit the model. With a metallic tube to extend it through the model the diesel won’t ‘spray’ out in particles like in the video but as a concentrated stream, hence it won’t ignite at all.

– Finally all tests were lateral. I wanted my model to be vertically spraying the flame which i tried in the test for a brief second to realise how dangerous it got and that the diesel does fall downwards. The model could be placed side-ways and faked through the shots to seem level but then we still have the issue of having that constant flame next to the nozzle and fitting that nozzle in the sand pit, all without noticing it and getting it seamless. These challenges make the negatives outweight the positives of the method for the effort required and especially the risk.

– Sideways or upright, the spraying diesel could very possible go all over the mirrors and completely ruin the effect of the landscape. (we did get it everywhere in my tests, hands, devices etc. which added danger to handling fire so close and having diesel all over you) - The only effective solution for this method is to have a hidden wider hole in the sand pit’s centre the model placed sideways (but from the footage seem upright) and we see no oil well head but just the landscape and the flame appears constant from the sand igniting the spray (still though would have to magically keep the sand from sliding off once sideways so this solution might also not be ideal)

2. WD40 Spray (I tried it out for kicks BUT this won’t be allowed for H&S reasons)

Note: Incase you are wondering those aren’t my hands I had a friend who has handled fire in this fashion before generously donate his back yard for the tests and (much to his own enjoyment) be filmed trying my tests out.

What’s next: Still assessing the results but it became pretty clear that it’s particularly challenging and risky using any ‘spray’ method or trying to literally achieve this effect at least (of the oil well stream on fire by igniting a flammable fluid) for my video. It is with sadness that I say that because the effect would have been awesome to film in the infinite mirror landscape. And to be completely honest I have pushed the tests to a point where I myself see the fire in the form of a flammable liquid too risky to handle and would rather (as much as I wanted to) not attempt this at school.

I am however considering going back to burning an object perhaps something placed right above the model oil well nozzle to look like some kind of (paper) version of the oil erupting but obviously static. Once on fire I hope it will provide enough of a spectacle for the footage to be useful in a similar way.

After all my overarching ‘why?’ isn’t ‘because oil well fire’ but ‘because of spectacle out of footage’.

I will focus to have a draft of some footage put together to discuss the film itself further next and rethink the model in the meantime.

Would appreciate any ideas/comments from anyone perhaps there is some way I am not seeing from being caught within the ‘bubble’ of the process.

Tags: experiment > Fire > Flamethrower > test

The Story Posted on November 3, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

George H W Bush Announces War Against Iraq (January 16 1991)

When Bush senior took the US to Kuwait. At 7:37 A New World Order is introduced for the first time here.

Below is my narrative set up, a first draft of the overall script. It will be reworked while I start putting the footage into place.

Gogglebox – reaction as spectacle – We become the story

The overarching ‘Why?’ Disproportionality of footage versus events turns anything into spectacle; We become the story and the content of the story no longer matters. We stare back at ourselves.

A neo-baroque spectacle: What interests me socio-politically with the introduction of the term “neo-baroque” is to use it as an umbrella terminology to weave an argument referring to the relationship between footage and counterrational dramatization of moments that are exploded within it. I have been compiling readings and references to sharpen this argument and its specific relationship to contemporary media and time (a lot of the terminology and philosophy spins it back to imploding or expanding of time through spectacle) It could, down the line provide characteristics of further “effects” that might be achieved with my proposal/footage/project structure.

What I allude to with Baroque and Neo-Baroque Spectacle (parts of the narration will start defining characteristics to open this discussion): ‘baroque’’ implied an art or music of extravagance, impetuousness, and virtuosity, all of which were concerned with stirring the affections and senses of the individual.

The baroque was believed to lack the reason and discipline that came to be associated with neoclassicism and the era of the Enlightenment. More importantly how it was embraced by the Catholic church as tool of political power in the counterreformation era very much how the media corporations today online or on various

news feeds embrace our proliferated footage to generate meaning, often deliberately confusing and thusly managing perception of what is shown.

As a result of technological, industrial, and economic transformations, contemporary entertainment media reflect a dominant neo-baroque logic. The neo-baroque shares a baroque delight in spectacle and sensory experiences. Neo-baroque entertainments, however—which are the product of conglomerate entertainment industries, multi- media interests, and spectacle that is often reliant upon computer technology—present contemporary audiences with new baroque forms of expression that are aligned with late-twentieth- and early-twenty-first-century concerns. The neo-baroque combines the visual, the auditory, and the textual in ways that parallel the dynamism of seventeenth-century baroque form, but that dynamism is expressed in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries in technologically and culturally different ways. Importantly, underlying the emergence of the neo-baroque are transformed economic and social factors.

To conclude I don’t wish at this early stage for the terminology to distract but to frame a wider argument of the “Why” and it might help focus the next steps not only the ‘making-of’ ideas but also how to cement the footage-spectacle relationship.

Tags: footage > GeneratingFootage > GulfWar > narrative > Neo-Baroque > New World Order > script > Spectacle > story > TIME

Logistics Posted on November 3, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

Here’s the Humvee and toy soldier guarding my mirror pieces for size reference.

The past two days have mostly been focused on managing logistics of my physical model set up. Pending replies from Joel and Jillian on footage advice and health and safety respectively.

In other news, have 5 60x60cm mirros and picking my two-way spy mirror up tomorrow afternoon. Advice from Tris has really helped advance the flaming side of things: Pressure weed sprayer I’m getting tomorrow as well will be filled with fuel and the nozzle will shoot the fuel out past a cotton bud laced with WD40 that will ignite it (the sprayer device and this overal set up IS apparently as safe as I can make this for distancing fuel source from ignition point and getting the desired effect).

Here’s a super low-res reference for visual (not many people build flamethrowers for more serious applications it seems other than ‘fun’):

Homemade Flamethrower using Weed Killer Sprayer

I show this one specifically because they use exactly the tools I am gathering for mine.

I am currently working on the narrative as the vehicle to frame my wider argument; my ‘why’ side of the project. I have some clearer idea and this is what I plan to focus on discussing tomorrow at tutorials since set-up wise with the physical model I just need to start putting the elements together and running some tests with that flame thrower over the weekend.

Stay tuned for the narrative …

Brought to you by The Agency of Perception Management Footage as an apparatus for neo-baroque spectacle!

Tags: Fire > Flamethrower > GulfWar > logistics > model > set up > TIME

Speaking of Nightmares Posted on October 31, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

Happy Halloween Emma and all! Also happy International Magic Day! ( trivia: Houdini died at 1:26pm on October 31st, 1926 and since magicians celebrated Houdini Day which later became International Magic Day coupled with the Halloween celebrations) Here’s a reference I was told of over the weekend; polish artist Zdzisław Beksinski if anyone ever came across his eerie work.

Essentially he seems to be a ‘colourful C.G.Giger’. His works of fantastic realism feature surreal apocalyptic landscapes.

This Is A True Story Posted on October 27, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

Lessons of Darkness is a documentary on the Gulf War by Werner Herzog, beautifully shot with great aerial footage of the oil catastrophe

Following the overall topic of interest in ‘Exploding Moments’ and discussing the construction of an idea/event within the expanded ‘site’ of prolific footage, I am using the screen as a space to reverse-engineer the narrative of an event (the Gulf War). When I say ‘reverse-engineer’ it is understood from a non-linear narrative perspective.

The screen will provide the space for formatting the footage. The structure I have laid out for now is within divisions of a factor of 3. Vertically the groups are distinguish by ‘scale’ of footage; horizontally they are grouped by ‘perception’ or ‘view point’.

I am compiling footage (an ongoing process) from primary sources reporting the event, to films based on it or footage with unrelated subject matter but useful shots.

For now the key elements I am bringing together include: 1. Out-sourced footage 2. Physical Model of object and landscape (oil valve, desert and infinite landscape effect) 3. Digital model (a landscape piece of the desert with elements from the event/footage e.g. oil wells, ruins of large satellite dishes, oil lakes) 4. The Script and Storyboard (I am compiling pieces of text and audio files to go hand in hand with the narrative)

More importantly I am revisiting my Mulholland Drive Diamond to use the relationship between a dreamscape and factual realm of information as a non-linear narrative structure for my own footage. The aim is to refine the analysis and adapt the structure to my own storyboard.

Below is the beginning of story boarding of the opening: a sequence to introduce the ‘dreamscape’ as one of multiple footage screens observed by the an ‘agent’ and subsequently zooming into one to begin the narrative of the Gulf War.

Opening Scene: “The events depicted in this film took place in Kuwait during the First Gulf War in 1991.At the request of the survivors the names have been changed.

Out of respect for the dead the rest has been told exactly as it occurred.”

The next steps are to continue the storyboard set up with select shots from the footage I’m gathering. Also plan the physical model to be constructed and start putting together a digital model of the landscape.

A reference useful to anyone interested in infinite mirror effects in general and twoway mirrors: Guillaume Lachapelle: Infinite Mirrors

Tags: agents > anticipation > deception > ExplodingMoment > footage > GeneratingFootage > Non-linearNarrative > perception > perception management > perspective > screen > ScreenFormat > story > TIME > true > true story

The Agents of Perception Management Posted on October 24, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

Time and Scale are formatted within the 16:9 world of our screens making them an apparatus for exploding moments and managing their perception.

I began arranging screenshots and images to develop a story board and open a discussion focused on the techniques deployed: from the physical model as a simulation, a rendered model, drawings/mappings and the methods of recording different scales. The technique is something I plan to illustrate in the next video test I conduct. Also through the technique I start identifying agents and scales (whether from a soldier, ground texture, satellite views or drones etc) who all contribute to the explosion of the moment and the management of its subsequent perception.

Sharpening the argument: What is also important to clarify is my position in terms of the overall direction.

Although still at an infant stage, the project I find rests more on how proliferated information explodes a moment in time and scale. The way the information is later “managed” or “perceived” according to how “agents” weave into a narrative becomes an added area of interest.

What the overarching question should avoid is a discussion on the fake versus the real or simulations etc. Deception is to me different to something fake or indeed a simulation.

Hence the focus is on this idea of “managing perception” as an apparatus for building up anticipation that will then begin to be subverted shattering the linear relationships that the different pieces of footage might establish between each other and the viewer. It is also important to note that I decided to eliminate the frame between the footage to allow for “spillage” and moments of confusion to develop as the narrative breaks down.

The content, for now, remains within the Gulf War.

Working with the 16:9 frame and shaping a flexible footage space

Identifying the Agents: An Agent – the “actor” within the narrative and the one responsible for exploding the moment (be it from recording footage, managing its construction, or viewing it) 1. Informants/Footage Collectors 2. Footage Processors – Perception Managers 3. Receptors – Display The next step is to continue refining the story board and start bringing in physical and digital versions of the event and incorporate them as footage within the narrative.

References:

Fargo - Splitting the Screen from Zackery Ramos-Taylor

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Above, Fargo Season 2, used the split-screen as a technique to relate events and build up to moments. Sometimes it becomes interesting where there is an overlap or bleed between the screens.

SLAYER - Eyes of The Insane (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO)

The emmy winning music video by Slayer titled “Eyes of the Insane” relates to the second Gulf War as a topic. What I find interesting is the shooting choice of using a soldiers pupil to reflect imagery he perceives but more importantly how some of those events escalate and we experience a gradual effect on the surroundings of the eye (some more expected than others like when an explosion occurs).

Tags: agents > anticipation > deception > ExplodingMoment > footage > GeneratingFootage > Non-linearNarrative > perception > perception management > perspective > screen > ScreenFormat > TIME

The Agency of Perception Management Posted on October 23, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

Belief, anticipation and narrative interruptions – focusing on the technique of constructing a scenario using the screen space and the relationships between the different images/pieces of footage shown. The aim is to further develop this process and construct the technique (for now populating it with the Gulf War scenario).

The Agency of Perception Management

“Perception Management” was pioneered in the 1980’s under the Reagan administration in order to avoid the public opposition to future wars that was seen during the Vietnam War. The United States Department of Defense defines perception management as: Actions to convey and/or deny selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, and objective reasoning as well as to intelligence systems and leaders at all to influence official estimates, ultimately resulting in foreign behaviors and official actions favorable to the originator’s objectives. In various ways, perception management combines truth projection, operations, security, cover and deception, and psychological operations.

Tags: anticipation > ExplodingMoment > footage > GeneratingFootage > NonlinearNarrative > perception > perception management > perspective > screen > ScreenFormat > TIME

Exploding Moment: Narrative perspectives Posted on October 20, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

“… artistic gratification of a sense of perception altered by technology.

This is evidently the consumption of l’art pour l’art. Humankind, which once in Homer, was an object of contemplation for the Olympian gods, has now become one for itself. Its self alienation has reached the point where it can experience its own annihilation as a supreme aesthetic pleasure. Such is the aestheticising of politics” Walter Benjamin, Kunstwerk essay, 1936

The quote alludes to perhaps a further progression into a project and development of my position on expanding moments. With the amount of information and the technology through which it is experienced, all these narratives and their interaction with the viewers are increasingly non-linear both in terms of time and space. It is also interesting how Benjamin makes a parallel between the homeric apparatus of “Olympian God-view” that Manolis also referenced as a device in the Illiad has transformed, through our technological experience of events, into an aesthetic experience for everyone.

In essence from the body and it’s prosthetic footage receivers (phones etc), the home and the city we are all simultaneously in a mount Olympus space.

As a work in progress, the overall setup for my second test is ready to burn! Stay tuned for the video that is to come out of it.

I am in the process of conducting the second test, exploring the idea of exploding a moment through its staging, the way the footage is captured and later to be formated for viewing. This set up is larger in scale but more importantly the views are set up to represent potential “characters” or narrative perspectives that I intend to use to start exploring different narrative effects when the footage is composed together.

For instance, below are the views from an iPad and iphone setup. The former is an almost aerial view of the “fields” or landscape within the Kuwait oil fire scenario. The latter view is a bottom-up ground view, capturing the “ground troop/journalist” effect. The case study of the War and the fires are at the moment a prop for me to explore the techniques I am using and the way I want to set up a narrative and design around the overall ideas of proliferated footage and the way we access/view a project through it.

A fish-eyed view will record the burning from a drone-like position while a God-eye of the entire process will record me coordinating the simulated oil field fires.

Following what was discussed last time, below are methods of formating footage I am currently looking into as well as some general references of how the project can progress beyond the specific scenario of the Gulf War as a case study.

Hierarchy and formating:

An app called mosaic.io (that sadly was pulled from the app store) would allow multiple ios devices to be tiled together. In this example the screen size and position becomes a narrative device/apparatus for exploding the moment. It also plays with the surface of the table since the viewing is predominantly done by laying the screens out flat.

Visual Hierarchy:

In the Eames IBM pavilion the interesting aspect of the formating is that it becomes more hierarchical in visual terms with the screen positions, angles and dimensions as well as the sound used as methods of driving the narrative.

Audio Hierarchy:

In the film Timecode (which I got half way through with a lot of patience and concentration; alas it became too overbearing to finish in one go) The narrative

hierarchy was established through sound, as the means by which to focus on corresponding grid areas.

Dividing Screens:

François Macré - Thriller (Multitrack A cappella Cover)

Finally the acappella youtube videos Natasha referenced are something I find interesting as a starting point, mazes that can turn into labyrinth depending with the narrative progression. In the video above the focus is shifted by the grids activated and deactivated according to whether it’s bass, lead vocals etc. but the overall composition seams to lack hierarchy because of the consistent grid. A potential break could be to overlap or expand events in some grids to adjacent ones etc. Below another similar video has a central focus on the lead vocals.

You Rock My World - Michael Jackson - A Cappella Multitrack Cover - JB Cr…

Spatial Speculation on the narrative effects of footage manifesting architecturally:

The American Interiors series of 1968 by Erró Domestic space does not have to be the focus at the moment but this is an example that came to mind of how certain spaces (here the vietnam war) are brought into others (the american home) by the media and the tv set. Today the process is much more complex with the invasive nature of footage not as straight forward as a simple ‘media to viewer’ relationship; and also the spaces are expanded way beyond the home, as televisions have been replaced by increasingly more mobile sources of footage.

Tags: ExplodingMoment > footage > GeneratingFootage > Non-linearNarrative > perception > perspective > screen > ScreenFormat > TIME

Exploding Moment Posted on October 18, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

Kuwait oil well model fire tests – process video (embedded below)

MomentExploded_FilmTest

Above is a short film I put together recording the process of exploding this moment from several vantage points and through the medium of film and photography.

The oil well burning isn’t as spectacular as anticipated but the technique of using filmic space and time to create relationships between the footage gathered and the way this information is displayed (formated) on screen is to be further refined.

The aim is to develop a process for a project narrative to evolve through and to start building an argument on the proliferation of recorded material that explodes events (spatially and in time) and questions values of memory, history and mythography in current affairs/architecture.

Tags: explodedmoment > GulfWar > TIME

Expand/Contract Time Posted on October 17, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

Here’s a video on The Phantom Time Hypothesis (whereby historian alleges we aren’t in the 21st but in fact 18th century at the moment)

The Phantom Time Hypothesis

And with regards to the obsessive recording of concerts someone who made use of it below. this guy, Olivier Gondry directed a music video for a track from Daft Punk’s 2007 Alive tour that features footage shot by 250 audience members put together and, of course, sound edited so hearing it is not as dizzying as watching it! There’s a free app now called yangle which friends can create event-related groups for gathering their recordings (for longer footage than what you similarly can do on snapchat events)

Daft Punk "Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger" (Alive 2007)

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harrylarry

Tags: concert > conspiracy > expandingmoment > recording > TIME

Exploding a Moment Posted on October 17, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

So I set fire to my own field of oil wells Gulf-War-1.0 style. A few hours of footage including prepping and recording generated from an almost 5 minute burning.

Following our discussion on Friday I focused on using time and points of view/perception as means for generating footage and expanding a moment. In a test I carried out below I recorded the burning of a model oil well by setting up several devices to capture the moment (including iPad, iPhone, GoPro, SLR camera and a webcam recording myself and the other cameras recording the moment). Prior to that I recorded myself in the process of putting together the model oil well. The set up wasn’t limited to expanding the moment in time but also expanding it spatially with a simple mirror set up to create an infinite field of moments.

Below are some sample images from the test:

Tags: expanding > expandingmoment > footage > GulfWar > recording > TIME > viewpoint

Fake WWI Paris Posted on October 12, 2016 by Nicholas Zembashi

For looking at copies/fakes and deception Link to Fake Paris video Tags: copy > deception > fake

AA Diploma 9 – THE DIAMOND AGE

BIBLIOGRAPHY

BOOKS Byron, L., The Selected Poems of Lord Byron, (London, United Kingdom, Wordsworth Editions, 1994) Marquard, O., Philosophie des Stattdessen, (Stuttgart, Reclam, 2000) Funk, W., Gross, F. and Huber, I.(eds.), The Aesthetics of Authenticity: Medial Constructions of the Real, (Bielefeld, Transcript Verlag, 2012) Benjamin, W. and Underwood, J.A., The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, (London, Penguin Books, 2008) Žižek, S., Slavoj and Žižek, S., Less than Nothing: Hegel and the Shadow of Dialectical Materialism, (London, Verso Books., 2013) Latour, B., Woolgar, S., Laboratory life: The Social Construction of Scientific Facts, (2nd edn., United States, Sage Publications., 1979) Andén-Papadopoulos, K., Amateur Images and Global news, Edited by Kari / Anden-Papadopoulos and Mervi Pantti, (Bristol, UK, University of Chicago Press, 2011) Barkan, L., Unearthing the Past: Archaeology and Aesthetics in the Making of Renaissance Culture, (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2001), Graddol, D., ‘The Visual Accoplishment of Facaulty’, in D. Graddol and O. Lloyd-Barrett (eds), Media Texts: Authors and Readers, (Clevedon, Multilingual Matters, 1994) Claudia Wedepohl, Ideengeographie. Ein Versuch zu Aby Warburgs ‘Wanderstraßen der Kultur’, Mitterbauer, H., Scherke, K., (eds.), Ent-grenzte Räume. Kulturelle Transfers um 1900 und in der Gegenwart, (Wien, Studien zur Moderne, 2005) Lahiji, N., The Adventures with the Theory of the Baroque and French Philosophy: Deleuze, Lacan and Badiou, (London, United Kingdom, Bloomsbury Academic, 2016) Buck-Morss, The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project, (8th edn.

Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1991) Benjamin, W., ‘Capitalism and Religion’, in Walter Benjamin, Selective Writings, Volume I, 1913-1926, ed. Bullock, M., Jenbnings, M. W., (Cambridge, MA, The Balknap Press of Harvard University Pres, 1996), p.41 Latour, B. and Porter, C., We Have Never Been Modern, (3rd edn. Cambridge, MA, Prentice Hall / Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1993)

JOURNALS

Weigel, Sigrid, Epistemology of Wandering, Tree and Taxonomy, Images Re-vues [Online], (Horssérie 4, document 15, 2013), Accessed on October 2nd 2016: URL : http:// imagesrevues.revues. org/2934

IMAGES

IBM’s definition of Big Data, See: https://www-01.ibm.com/software/data/bigdata/what-is-bigdata.html, accessed December 1st 2016 The Atlas of Harun Farocki’s Filmography, 2015, [Online]: https://www.google.com/ culturalinstitute/beta/asset/atlas-of-harun-farocki’s-filmography/8wGD6OfEo3J5tg , Accessed December 2nd 2016

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