Underscore Vol.4 - Fictions

fic • tion /'fikSH(ǝ)n/ noun 1. literature in the form of prose, especially short stories and novels, that describes imaginary events and people synonyms: novels, stories, (creative writing, (prose) literature; informallit “the popularity of South American fiction.”

2. invention or fabrication as opposed to fact. plural noun: fictions “he dismissed the allegation as absolute fiction.”

antonyms: fact

fic· tions

synonyms: fabrication, invention, lies, fibs, untruth, falsehood, fantasy, nonsense “the president dismissed the allegation as absolute fiction.”

underscore A Collaborative Student Publication.

Vol. 4

05 Note From The Editors

06 On Fiction Julian Basurto

08 Cyclopes Natou Fall

12 Paradoxical System Jessie Helgesen

14 Grid & Box Nur Esin Karaosman

16 Darts & Pleats Maximillian Tavdi

20 Visual Factory Julia Arnold; Asmaa Abu Assaf; Alayna Davidson

24 A Good Night’s Sleep Rhett Heuer Rubalcava

26 Note To Self: Success Alex Stephan Bica

28 Uncanny Valley Jackson Lukas

33 Datascape Utopia Mariya Bandrivska; Mahyar Naghshvar

38 The Instability Richard Mapes

47 After Image Irvin Shaifa

58 Leters From Above Cole Daly

Senior Editors Alex Stephan Bica Rhett Heuer-Rubalcava Juan Villarreal Editing Team Saleh Al-barrak Lance Aravelo Natou Fall Richard Mapes Cole Masuno Lily Wang Corie Yaguchi Acknowledgements SCI-Arc Hernan Diaz-Alonso John Enright Erik Ghenoiu Ray Kappe Elena Manferdini Tom Wiscombe Paul Holliday Student Union Past Editors Timothy Caldwell Debbie Garcia Pat Geske Hawke Gihm Dan Hapton Graham Jordan Cody Minor Erik Valle Liz Van Dyke Abagael Warners Timothy White Adrian Wong Little Tattoo Mascot By Brandon Kintzer

Underscore Vol. 4

A Note from the Editors: Underscore is a relatively young publication in this school’s history; though our aspirations are great, we recognize and accept our fledgling status. We enjoy providing SCI Arc students a platform to display their unique and brilliant works, and we have every intention of becoming one of this great school’s standing traditions.

Underscore was founded years ago by students at SCI_Arc to be a platform for discourse by students. It is a student-led, student-edited, and student-funded publication. It is our ambition to continue to grow the journal so its presence is maintained and further developed through the generations. This may mean voices of different positions within the same publication, but the conversation is always welcome.

Regarding our theme - It has become clear truth is up for grabs.

Between the obvious political conflicts and the images projected onto the walls of the caves of our smart phones, like turning away from the sunset or going in reverse to win a race, the time to turn to fiction is upon us.

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On Fiction 1. Boulenger, Véronique.

“Interwoven Functionality of the Brain’s Action and Language Systems.” Words and Their Meaning: A Deep Delve from Surface Distribution Intounderlying Neural Representation The Mental Lexicon 5, no. 2 (2010): 231-54. doi:10.1075/ml.5.2.05bou.

2. Fiez, Julie. “Faculty of 1000 Evaluation for Metaphorically Feeling: Comprehending Textural Metaphors Activates Somatosensory Cortex.”

F1000 - Post-publication Peer Review of the Biomedical Literature, 2012. doi:10.3410 /f.717953186.793458808.

3. González, Julio, Alfonso Barros-Loscertales, Friedemann Pulvermüller, Vanessa Meseguer, Ana Sanjuán, Vicente Belloch, and César Ávila.

“Reading Cinnamon Activates Olfactory Brain Regions.” NeuroImage 32, no. 2 (2006): 906-12. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2006.03.037.

4. Leslie, A.M., Friedman, O. & German, T.P. Core mechanisms in “theory of mind”. Trends Cogn.

Sci. 8, 528–533 (2004) 5. Ludlam, Kerry. “Hearing Metaphors Activates Sensory Brain Regions.”

Hearing Metaphors Activates Sensory Brain Regions, February 7, 2012.

Accessed November 26, 2018. http://news.emory. edu/stories/2012/02/metaphor_brain_imaging/.

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Fiction is defined as a human creation, usually in the form of art or literature, that describes imaginary events and people. The discipline of fiction dates back to the beginning of human civilization when our ancestors created worlds separate from the matter-of-fact worlds around them. Mythological storytelling may function as one of the earliest forms of such a work of fiction. For centuries, we have read fictional story after fictional story from Harry Potter to Romeo and Juliet; still, we both can relate to them and escape into the world’s they construct. So one must ask, why do we as humans find such comfort and clarity in the reading and creating works of fiction?

Neuroscientific research in the effects of fiction on the brain may provide some of the answers to how and why we derive so much joy from partaking in fiction. Research into the impact of fiction on the brain has provided evidence that the element of word choice and metaphor present in fiction can elicit stronger reactions from the brain (2). In a 2006 study conducted in Spain, participants were asked to read words associated with strong odors, alongside neutral words to ascertain whether these differing descriptors elicited differing responses. fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) readings indicated that when subjects read Spanish words for “cinnamon,” “perfume,” and “coffee” their primary olfactory cortex was lit up, whereas when they saw the words “chair” and “key” this same area remained dark (3).

The use of fictional, descriptive language has been observed to elicit a stronger response in the brain. In a study from Emory University, participants were asked to read a metaphor involving texture, such as “The singer had a velvet voice” and “He had leathery hands.” These phrases aroused the sensory cortex as indicated in fMRI results whereas more anodyne alternative phrases like “The singer had a pleasing voice” and “He had strong hands” did not (5). Words describing motion have also been shown to activate areas of the brain not associated with language-processing. When participants of a study by the Laboratory of Language Dynamics in France read sentences such as “John grasped the object” and “Pablo kicked the ball” brain scans revealed activity in the motor cortex (1). Findings also displayed activity concentrated in one region of the motor cortex when the movement was arm-related and in another part when the movement concerned the leg. Bounlanger’s study found that when participants read fiction involving action the brain reacted in the same manner as if the events occurred in real life.

These studies bolster the conclusion that reading and appreciating art and literature produces an evocative simulation of reality. Fiction, specifically, offers a remarkably lush depiction of its own reality, with its vivid details, imaginative metaphors, and necessary descriptions of people and the worlds they live in. A good piece of fiction must provide apt and lifelike detail, to allow the reader to imagine the world presented on the page. In works of science fiction, the presented fictional world may not be at all similar to the world the reader lives in, but the piece must provide Julian Basurto

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the necessary content for the reader to imagine the presented world as real. This extra step of interpreting content as real differs greatly from work of nonfiction where the given content is not questioned as real or fake; this may provide evidence for the benefit of reading fiction in problem-solving (8).

An in-depth analysis of 86 fMRI studies, conducted by researcher Raymond Mar at York University in Canada, elucidated the substantial overlap in brain assemblies used to navigate social interactions with other people, as well as brain networks used to understand stories (7). These discoveries indicated this overlap specifically when individuals attempt to comprehend the thoughts and feelings of others. This ability for the brain to create a map of other’s intentions and worlds has been deemed the “Theory of Mind” (4). Theory of mind is defined as “the ability to attribute mental states [such as] beliefs, intents, desires, emotions, knowledge, etc. to oneself, and to others, and to understand that others have beliefs, desires…that are different for one’s own”(6). Perhaps the reason we delve into the exploration and creation of worlds not explicitly “real” is to hone our social and problem-solving skills as opposed to escaping from the reality we live in.

Fiction is often thought of as an escape from our reality.

Newspaper headlines we read describe horrors and catastrophes occurring in the “real” world we often wish we could change and escape from. However, despite the sweet escape we feel through placing ourselves into a work of fiction, studies indicate that reading and creation of fiction may have a practical benefit of providing us answers we wouldn’t otherwise acquire from a newspaper. The foreign elements of a fictional work ask us as the participant to both delve into the world we are presented with and understand how we would make choices similarly or differently from its characters. We somehow learn to navigate this new world and its people while learning something about ourselves we wouldn’t have acquired otherwise. Perhaps the response to the headlines we read is in the lines we discern as fictions.

Fictions

On Fiction

Julian Basurto

6. Mar, Raymond A., Keith Oatley, and Jordan B. Peterson. “Exploring the Link between Reading Fiction and Empathy: Ruling out Individual Differences and Examining Outcomes.”

Communications 34, no.

4 (2009). doi:10.1515/ comm.2009.025.

7. Mar, Raymond A. “The Neural Bases of Social Cognition and Story Comprehension.” Annual Review of Psychology 62, no. 1 (2011): 103-34. doi:10.1146/annurev-psych-120709 -145406.

8. Murphy Paul, Annie. “Your Brain on Fiction.” The New York Times, March 17, 2012.

Accessed November 26, 2018. https://www. nytimes.com/2012/03/18/ opinion/sunday/the-neuroscience-of-your-brainon-fiction.html.

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Cyclopes 1. Deleuze, Gilles, and Félix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Chapter 7, Year Zero:Faciality

Deleuze and Guattari describe the face as a “holey-surface” and “Facialization” as an “unconscious and machinic” process which “operates not by resemblances but by an order of reasons.”

Architects hear the word “face” and immediately think “facade,” but what is the ground if not a spherical holey-surface? Keeping in line with this issue’s theme of Fictions, Cyclopes is a study on the operation of Facialization. Each facial composition of the mythical creature falls somewhere between a figure-ground study and an impractical section.

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Paradoxical System

In Reinier de Graaf’s text “I Will Learn You Architecture,” he describes his postulation of the architect within the context of various examples the architect faces throughout education and practice, and how these experiences shape architectural theory.

De Graaf delineates the experiences of the architect beginning with the awakening from the idyllic and theoretical architectural educational system to the stodgy routine of architectural practice, where the architect is dependent on clients, engineering practicalities, and construction budgets.

The various examples De Graaf moves through in this text ultimately showcase the notion that architecture is a paradoxical system. When de Graaf’s commentary is paired with Robert Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction, it becomes apparent just how much architecture is in itself a practice of paradoxes; in the context of de Graaf, this paradox is one that stems from architectural education. De Graaf explains the abjuration of idealism when the young architect is in his first job. However, de Graaf manages to draw the reader back in with the sense that all is not lost when it comes to the idealism of the architect and the need for these contradictions, extrapolating how the practical and the ideal manage to come together in the built and non-built environment.

De Graaf’s begins his portrayal of architecture within the context of the “real world” in his description of his first job upon graduating architecture school. He describes his first job as one that in no way reflects the study of architecture; however, there are moments where one can see de Graaf’s tinge of idealism, aside from feeling “utterly useless” within the context of his projects at work. The sense of idealism is present when De Graaf describes the delight felt among the junior architects from the notion that the building’s interior may work its way up and somehow, “overtake the construction of the upper floors” (de Graaf); it is within this statement one could interpret hope, a possibility of revision and recalibration even when something is in the process of construction, that is felt among the young architects.

This demonstrates the extent to which the architect is able to continue to rethink and reshape what is already constructed, proving the idealism that is still present in them in what could be seen as an otherwise bleak predicament. In order to rethink a concept, there must be a sense of idealism; in this example, idealism exists in a space presented as banal.

However, for de Graaf and his cohort of junior architects, idealism is present and therefore serves as one example of the paradox of the ideal with the banal. Upon reading De Graaf’s article and discussing excerpts from Venturi’s Complexity and Contradiction, Venturi’s idea of architecture as a “difficult whole” can be pinpointed in de Graaf.

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Venturi manages to elaborate on embracing the contradictions and reorganizing the various paradoxes present in architecture. In Venturi, the whole can be interpreted as the sum of architecture’s parts and the challenge to unify the components that encompass an architectural form. However, finding a way to unify these parts is difficult and leads to another paradox of these parts as well as the need to see them as a cohesive unit; this notion can be paired with de Graaf’s representation of the contradictory examples within his piece. If architecture is seen as a reevaluation of the complexity of the parts, then consideration of how the complexity of these parts contradict one another must be examined. Architecture can then be understood as a means of accommodating this difficult architectural whole (Venturi).

In “I Will Learn You Architecture,” De Graaf states and restates ideas about architectural education, the practice of architecture, financial obligations, and the importance of an architect within the real world in various ways. De Graaf exclaims, “architecture offers a space for contradiction” (de Graaf) and goes on to mention his self contradiction. Each topic in de Graaf’s article demonstrates paradoxical understandings, and further manages to develop the notion of Venturi’s paradox within these examples.

Another instance of the architectural paradox can be interpreted when de Graaf explains the economic and the intellectual terms of architecture. The former is described as a response to pre-formulated needs, and the latter is a visionary domain claiming the future. However, both are necessary for architecture to continue, yet de Graaf contends this causes architects to possess an “utter dependency” in that both conditions are equally true.

Furthermore, the notion of the architect-client relationship is perhaps where the bridge of the paradoxical world of architecture infiltrates the outside world. De Graaf explains the significance of charisma as the “incongruence between architecture’s intellectual claims and its economic reality,” (de Graaf). It establishes a bridge from the paradoxical world of architecture as a translation tool used to communicate to the outside world of clients, contractors, engineers, etc. Rather than its traditional definition, charisma should be thought of as a translational tool between the architect and another person as a way to shift the authority back to the architect. It is also a way to represent the paradoxes in a palatable and understandable way for the listener, whilst allowing the architect to reorient their own limits of power, “to temporarily suspend the disbelief of his patrons and get the upper hand in the absence of real mandate,” (de Graaf).

Architecture begins with the paradox, and the notion of the paradox allows for the ceaseless questioning of the practice within itself to occur, allowing change and reinvention.

Architecture is the space for contradiction as it theorizes its own practice and reorganizes the processes and ideas which it joins in on. Architecture is a way to challenge the status quo through a series of questions stemming from these very paradoxes de Graaf explains in his article, which Venturi also explores.

This paradoxical system of architecture allows the architect to challenge the balance of power, beat the system, and remain an idealist in his or her own right.

Fictions

Paradoxical System

Jessie Helgesen

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Grid & Box Grid and Box; What happens if they start a fight? How do they relate? How do they define each other?

Two enemies: Grid and Box. Grid versus Box. They are fighting.

What are they? What do they do to each other?

Grid: Four edges. Mostly square. Like a box. No exact dimension.

Unclear limits. Limitless.

Box: Four edges from the front elevation. Depth is a third dimension. It has exact dimensions. It has limits, it is limited.

Grid and Box. Black and white. As Robert Venturi says, “I am for richness of meaning rather than clarity of meaning; for the implicit function. I prefer ‘both-and’ to ‘either-or,’ black and white, and sometimes gray, to black or white.”

“Grid versus Box”: Grid with the box. Or Box with the grid.

Grid with the box. “With” describes an object which describes a subject.

Grid is the winner of this fight.

Grid is the subject.

Grid is stable. Grid is still a grid, but the box is affected by Grid.

The box wants to show its depth, its third dimension.

But Grid is there. It doesn’t let the box be three dimensional.

We can change the game.

Box with the grid.

The grid describes Box. The grid is there for Box. Box is the winner.

The grid is stuck in Box. Box uses the grid. Box is still a box: Big or small, tall or short.

We can start to compare different boxes and different surfaces.

Now, the grid is there to scale.

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Darts & Pleats

Architecture and fashion both create dynamic, experiential spaces in which we live. Governed by the human need for comfort and self-expression, they are composed of complex systems merging to produce an insulated shell catering to human functions. Both fields share distinctive elements and use similar processes that take conceptual, flat designs from the world of 2D screen or patterns to the 3D material world, where they become volumetric and spatial. Fashion techniques like patternmaking and sewing seams can be translated to construction drawings and jointing in architecture. However, both fields share more than the expression of aesthetics and materiality. In a world where the environment is a primary concern of innovative design, the demand to maintain a human’s comfort level is an issue both fields explore.

In the world of fashion, a dichotomy exists between garments tight and loose on the shape of the human body.

Fashion designers challenge the status quo with their designs while also designing with respect to the body. For example, the work of Rick Owens, particularly in his Spring/Summer 2014 and Fall/Winter 2017 runway collections, engages with a variety of bodies by projecting non-constrictive shapes onto the models. Through a variety of draping techniques, Owen’s garments address the body’s comfort level while also remaining fashionable. Conversely, avant-garde architects may identify strongly with fashion designer Rei Kawakubo of Comme des Garçons; in many of her works, Kawakubo projects abstract shapes onto a model’s body not unlike the parametric architectural designs common today. In her Fall 2017 and Spring 2018 runway collections, Kawakubo uses structural techniques to create extravagant, form-driven designs following her avantgarde concepts while also creating non-constrictive and spacious interiors. The ambiguity of her designs erases evidence of the human body and implies a respect for the body, whatever shape it may be. These designers carefully consider the relationship between the body and garment, and by doing so, establish an integrity and care for the body’s comfort level without compromising their designs.

It is in the relationships between the skin of the body and the skin of a building where architects must express more awareness. If architecture is to create formal and functional spaces, then we must pay more attention to the relationship between the building and the human inside, namely the congruent nature of the garment and the skin of the building. Architects must grapple with the challenges of large-scale buildings where humans move freely within walls. However, there are still enough similarities between fashion and architecture that allow them to be studied in parallel. By looking at specific techniques fashion designers implement, we can begin to unravel the way in which architects can be mindful of the human body. Two common categories of fashion techniques are structural and draping.

Structural techniques include a variety of seams, ruching, interfacing, smocking, boning, quilting, and darts; 16

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techniques often require the garment to be altered in some way in order for it to fit as desired. In contrast, draping takes advantage of a fabric’s properties by simply allowing it lay across the body for a desired effect. Draping techniques include folds, tucks, gathering, and a variety of pleats.

Pleats and darts are fundamental techniques used in fashion. Pleats are a form of draping defined by the use of excess material to create more volume and thus a non-constricting garment. The pleat can be hand made or machine-pressed and range from tight accordion pleats to wider box pleats. Issey Miyake’s works exhibit the extent to which one can use pleats.

His projects distinctive shapes on the body create not only textural profiles, but also create more space and volume for the wearer; as a result, his clothes are both highly formal and functional. Conversely, darts, a structural technique, are defined by the removal or concealment of material in order to create more shape; this makes darts are more versatile than pleats. Where pleats can be used to create more volume, darts, in their removal of material, can create both constricting and non-constricting forms, depending on the shape of the human body and the desired effect. Thus, we see how the comfort of the human body is considered in the implementation of darts and pleats. How can these techniques be translated in architectural terms?

How can architects use the concept of a pleat in the controlled environment of a building? One example would be ARUP’s passive ventilation system used in the Eastgate Centre in Zimbabwe. Initially inspired by termite mounds, Arup “designed a forced ventilation system comprised of a filtered mechanical supply, tempered by the thermal mass of the building, with close control of the buildings internal and external heat sources. This conducts air through the structure, cooling the concrete. During the day, the system provides adequate ventilation while absorbing heat loads without causing excessive temperature rises.”1 The chimney running through the building gets pinched at the top, much in the same way a standard pleat is stitched and tucked to create a volume below. By comparing this ventilation technique to a pleat, we see the relationship between the shape of the compressed top and the volume below. On a smaller scale, we can see how pleating is similarly used in ventilated facades. Through the incorporation of a sloped air gap between the insulating panels and the external cladding, a building can be efficiently protected and cooled.2 A pleat in the façade of a building can be thought of as more than just an aesthetic feature but one with environmental implications. Both the macro and micro environment are addressed in the resultant use of less electricity for air conditioning. Pleats aid in fulfilling environmental requirements while also helping us solve volumetric relationships, which we are often reluctant to relinquish to our environmental engineers. Now if we look at darts which consist of the removal or concealment of material in order to create more shape, how can architects use these concepts in the controlled environment of a building? The act of removing material is already a more efficient way of designing, but the versatile aspect of the dart worth noting is the relationship between creating more space and flexibility by removing or concealing what exists. An example of the removal of redundant material would be in Kiel Moe’s experimentation with CLT construction panels. By removing redundant material within the panel and using it for a ventilated facade, we can Fictions

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create a more efficient ventilated façade than those often used by contemporary architects. It works through what Moe calls the “Choked Cavity”, which creates a convective transfer.3 Like a dart, the act of removing material creates a surplus of efficiently ventilated air and improves the shape and quality of comfort.

(Why is this like a dart) Another example of the way in which the concept of the dart is used is in SANAA’s Zollverein School of Management and Design in Essen, Germany. Located on the edge of the colliery industrial area, Kazuyo Sejima and Ryue Nishizawa use the mine shafts as a central role in the building’s thermal strategy. By tapping into the water supply, engineers were able to use wastewater as a free source of energy. Using heat exchangers in the pump stations, the heated water is pumped into the school and cycled through its thermally active surfaces.4 Using already existing mineshafts, the designers at SANAA were able to keep the thin walls central to their formal ambitions and avoid what would have been a triple-layer concrete wall, as though they used the mineshaft as a dart. The desired form was preserved by using existing material the same way existing fabric concealed in a dart can be used to alter a garment and get a desired form.

These kinds of innovative moves used in architecture stand out in the field for their resourcefulness and efficiency. The inhabitants’ comfort is addressed, efficiency is maximized, and the use of excess material is minimized; perhaps, the concept of the versatility of a dart could inspire future architectural works.

In comparison, the complex versatility of a dart surpasses the mundane use of a pleat. In fashion, a pleat provides volume, space, and more comfort but isn’t of further use. However, a dart allows the designer to manipulate the form of a garment to the shape of the body and if material is concealed rather than removed, alterations can be made. The form of the garment is preserved, and the comfort of the human body is addressed. If architects choose to design in meaningful and resourceful ways, then we must consider what materials we have at our disposal before we begin using an excess. Comfort levels can be addressed without the need for superfluous volume and material. The environment can be addressed without the need for waste. Architecture is a field that finds its home in between contradicting fields; however, because it is able to unify the arts and sciences, it stands strong. Let architecture learn from fashion, translate its techniques, and use more darts; after all, fashion and architecture both revolve around designing protective layers for people.

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Bibliography: 1. “Eastgate,” ARUP. https://www.arup.com/projects/eastgate.

2. “Ventilated Facades: Not All Technologies Are Equal” 06 Nov 2017. ArchDaily. https://www.archdaily.com/881143/ventilated-walls-not-all-technologies-are-equal/.

3. Moe, Kiel. “The Stackhouse: R-Values Are Not Our Values” 03 Apr 2017. UVA School of Architecture – The Building Lecture Series. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=DeoLSFUbPYA. 4. Moe, Kiel. Thermally Active Surfaces in Architecture. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010.

Annotated Bibliography: “Eastgate,” ARUP. https://www.arup.com/projects/eastgate.

ARUP’s website provides a short and concrete description of the work they performed on the Eastgate Centre in Zimbabwe. It is in that short summary of their work that I could define their use of ventilation systems to compare this specific example to a pleat.

Moe, Kiel. “The Stackhouse: R-Values Are Not Our Values” 03 Apr 2017. UVA School of Architecture – The Building Lecture Series. https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=DeoLSFUbPYA. In Kiel Moe’s lecture at UVA School of Architecture, he discusses his work on the Stackhouse and how the mathematical analysis he performed on certain systems allowed him to make informed decisions in his architecture. He also goes into depth on his experimentation with CLT panels that he used for another project. It is in his description of the removal of redundantmaterials in CLT panels and its improvement on convection heat transfers that I compare to darts.

Moe, Kiel. Thermally Active Surfaces in Architecture. New York, NY: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010.

In Kiel Moe’s book, Thermally Active Surfaces in Architecture, Moe discusses the efficient use and relevant implications of thermally active surfaces used in architecture. It is in his analysis of the SANAA’s School of Management and Design in Essen, Germany that I use this text. I compare SANAA’s resourcefulness in using the existing mineshafts filled with warm water to the use of concealed material in darts used in tailoring.

“Ventilated Facades: Not All Technologies Are Equal” 06 Nov 2017. ArchDaily. https://www.archdaily.com/881143/ventilated-walls-not-all-technologies-are-equal/.

In this ArchDaily article, the author defines what a ventilated façade is and discusses how traditional ventilated facades can vary. It is in their detailed definition of a ventilated façade that I compare the technique of a pleat to ventilated façade systems used in architecture.

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Visual Factory SCI-Arc Visual Studies Florencia Pita Fall 2018

Andy Warhol’s Factory (or Silver Factory) was covered in tin foil and silver paint; it was called a factory because of the idea of production, from films, paintings, prints, sculptures, etc. It was an assembly line style of art goods. Silkscreens were the most iconic mass-produced products coming out of the factory; they were repetitive and yet unique, standardized and customized at the same time. This class explores the idea of “The Factory” as it connects to mass-produced consumer tools; we used the assembly line machines available at SCI-Arc in unexpected ways, such as laser cut, CNC milling, powder 3D-printers, paper 3D-printers, vacuum form, etc. These machines convey objects, but this class focuses on the visual qualities of the commodities and how they can be more akin to drawings. The output of the class will be a cabinet-of-curiosities kind of room, which was a repository of wondrous and exotic objects. This class aims to extract the unexpected from our ubiquitous machines of architectural design production.

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A Good Night’s Sleep You may remember the caffeine-addled ramblings of yore from the then-newly-sober crack addict mentality living in the corner of my brain observing my life like a frustrated spectator in a bad horror movie. Well, he has a bit to say about the topic of Student Health.

So I’m sitting in what can only be characterized as a middle school assembly about mental health for architecture students, being preached at by -Lo!- not an architecture student about how to keep my architecture student feelings from stressing me out. And while the good doctor (PhD, not MD) tells me how to align my chakras and find the Lucky Charms at the end of the yellow brick road, the chief thought blinking in my mind like a neon motel sign is HUNGRY. Oh yeah. I forgot to eat. Again.

The irony of the unhealthy husk of a human that is me sitting in a student health lecture sends me into a maniacal giggle fit, and I hope to god this woman doesn’t make eye contact with me because if she does I will bust a metaphorical gut, and everyone will finally know just how truly mad I am.

You know what else is hilarious? It sometimes takes me a solid ten to fifteen seconds to remember what day it is.

Not the date, damned if I even know what that is anymore, just the day of the week. I associate the time of day with the general herds of students migrating every so often in the midst of their desk-worshipping marathons, bewildered expressions abound.

Another way of measuring time is the crippling, anxiety of deadlines, half of which matter, but the fun is not knowing which half that is Have you ever had so much to do, you found yourself unable to focus on anything? Have you ever lived your entire life that way? Have you ever thought of lunch as a luxury? Does six hours of sleep seem too lackadaisical to you? You may be suffering from Wuzdapoin; other symptoms may include fatigue, irregular sweating and chills, having more than three Netflix tabs open at the same time, and hearing your three gig files laugh at your feeble, vain attempts to move around your model two times in under twenty minutes. While there is no known cure, leading researchers believe the only known alleviation of these symptoms lies in a rare ceremony called “graduation.” Ask your doctor if graduation may be right for you.

Student Health? You want to sit there in the warm cloak of a nine-to-five and teach me about student health? I got an email the other day that told me the following two days would have a sixteen hour extracurricular commitment to be subtracted from my already dismal productivity, hours of sleep and necessary work now made unavailable. Why dismal you ask? Great question, I’m glad you asked because everybody dances and laughs unstably around this point without once stepping on it assuredly.

There is no semblance of healthy lifestyle here. There is no 24

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regular eating schedule, there is no regular sleep schedule, there are no readily available forms of exercise, and the best greenery we have are the dying plants lining the south windows of studio.

If you want any of the aforementioned niceties of a normal human life, you must carve it out for yourself, because as culture goes around here, they are foreign practices. I do not decry the good doctor for coming into our warehouse to shine a ray of light upon our weary faces, but in keeping with many medical professionals, it was just a fleeting treatment for a symptom, not a cure for the disease.

Perhaps the funniest thing of all is the comedic aneurysm forming in my rotting brain cavity every time I hear an instructor tell a student in a chipper manner, “You should really get some more sleep.” Fresh off their own eight hours. Maybe that’s why you then hear the student inevitably laugh nervously and say, “Yeah! I should!” which must be the beginning of the incomplete thought “I should seek a vocational practice that isn’t taking years off the back-end of my life like a blind, aggressive butcher.”

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A Good Night’s Sleep

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Note To Self: Success Set time for classwork and do it during that time.

Set an amount of time to complete task and do it then.

Be mature in saying what you can and can’t do and execute based on that.

Finish it daily.

Calculate how long a task will take. Decide on approach after this.

If you’ve never done it before, figure out exactly how and roughly how long it takes someone who has done it to do it.

Make everything at the quality of being able to go in a gallery.

Keep a trello account and to do list.

Set a time for emails.

Select a playlist in advance.

Maintain a calendar.

If you don’t hit every mark, track yourself and increase batting average incrementally.

Prioritize sleep, meditation, exercise, and a healthy diet.

SERIOUSLY. Schedule social outings in your calendar.

Listen to live music.

Play music. If you don’t know how, learn.

Say hello to those you admire.

Introduce yourself.

Engage with maintenance. They are your friends.

Maintain good presentation in physical appearance and wardrobe.

Have a good clean website and instagram. Don’t go on Instagram.

Present business cards at events.

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Go to all the lectures. (put them in your calendar before/as much as possible) Don’t smoke.

Drink a lot of water.

Stretch.

Ask questions.

If you are in a relationship spend at least 90 minutes a week talking about your relationship with your partner and two dates a week to maintain it.

Early to bed, early to rise.

Eat a salad for lunch everyday.

Don’t be dramatic about working long hours. Pearls don’t last on swine.

Remember, to be able to come in here on Thanksgiving and do this kind of work was a dream with questionable possibility at one point.

Call your Grandmother.

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Uncanny Valley

In 2017, CGI Computer Generated Imaging has all but conquered the uncanny valley, a place where images fabricated with technology look almost real. The general consensus in the field of CGI is software’s ability to make anything. In exhibits such as Bladerunner 2049 and other recent blockbusters, the various races to hyper-realistic computer graphics have been won, so where does CGI technology move forward from here? Now that we can make anything, what do we do?

As artist and filmmaker Alan Warburton points out in the short documentary Goodbye Uncanny Valley, the history of technological advancements in computer animation is young. Warburton suggests the genealogy of the technological advancements in CGI rendering and the production of digital images for massive scales only goes back to the mid 1990’s when animation studios like Pixar produced steadily better qualities of CG animation with each consecutive year’s blockbuster. A parallel rise increase in demand for computer-generated animation in films drives technicians at companies like Autodesk to invent new features and workflows to optimize software for CGI. For example, in A Bugs Life (1998), one of Pixar’s earliest releases, animators developed tools to animate and render vegetation. Monster’s Inc., (2001) also by Pixar, featured advanced fur simulation workflows, while releases like Tangled (2010) by Disney Animation Studios and Brave (2012), another Pixar film, indicated advancements in hair simulation and rendering. In 2017, animation studios producing special effects within live-action movies can simulate and realistically render virtually anything, to the degree the viewers don’t realize, or rather forget, they are looking at computer generated images. The phenomenon of a human not knowing an image is fake or computer generated designates the uncanny valley, the place where computer generated images appear real.

The same phenomenon exists in artificial intelligence, except for in this instance it designates a phenomenon where a human thinks they are interacting with another human but remains unaware they are interacting with an AI. The 1950’s Turing Test refers to the practice of testing an AI with a human to see if they can tell whether or not they are speaking with an AI. A classic example of spectacular uncanny valley is Russian world champion chess master Garry Kasparov’s loss to IBM’s chess computer Deep Blue in a 1997 tournament. At one moment in the match Deep Blue sacrificed a piece to throw off Kasparov’s concentration, and as he became fixated on the possibility that IBM was tampering with the computer to force it to make irrational moves, he suffered a psychological bind resulting in a loss.

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Another example of the Turing Test in action is Alex Garland’s 2014 film, Ex Machina in which a pathetic schlub travels to a remote laboratory to engage in the Turing Test with a beautiful female robot and later dies at the hands of merciless machine in this “Shakespeare-meets-Pygmalion” tragedy.

Looking to the uncanny valley in CGI, movies in the first and second decade of the 21st century, such as Ex Machina, generate novelty through technical advancements in specific areas of CG animation, such as light simulation, fur, hair, water, explosions, and skin, but as animation groups continue to conquer these territories, they must find new territories to conquer; they must advance the capabilities of CGI even further.

In Warburton’s words, “What was novel about CGI was seeing it advance with each new movie release.” As we conquer the uncanny valley, however, the film industry must find new ways to keep moviegoers dazzled.

Warburton argues for three categories in which cinematic CGI continues to move forward, as it ventures further into the uncanny valley; these categories are commerce (price of production), construction (referring to scale studios can achieve while maintaining resolution of hyper-real CGI), and consolidation (referring to how to streamline workflows). The question is no longer about the how, e.g. “how can we make this water look as real as possible…” “how can we make this hair simulation appear exactly like Princess Leia’s ear-muff hair from Star Wars: A New Hope…,” New questions revolve around how impressively massive and outrageous a scene can be, how fast it’s produced, and how few resources it can be accomplished with. There is no longer a technological race to the hyper-real; today we contemplate a contested economy of scale, meaning more manpower and technological innovations to achieve these incredible scales while maintaining resolution.

As artists and architects, we are interested in this because we often exploit software developed for the film industry.

Technological advancements for CGI have been left for us, much like scraps of food laying around the internet, so we can pick up these tidbits and make our work. The architecture student finds him or herself as an individual among other artists in an emerging field of post-cinematic digital art, designated by Warburton as “The Wilderness.”

Work in The Wilderness processes graphics in alternative ways far inferior to the realistic CGI appearances of major blockbusters. These rogue artists expose raw CGI flaws, less than accurate texture, material appearances, and constrained scale. Artists like Pussykrew, Cool 3d World, and Fvckrender exposed the imperfections that became embraced as part of their artistic language; sub-perfect CGI became part of their cinematic universe, and like the major animation houses with their proprietary render engines, material libraries, and endless stock assets, these fringe artists formed their own language through reuse and abuse of plug-and-play models. One primary reason such artists struggle to produce such realistic CGI could be because life-like computer simulation isn’t probable without the assets of a major animation house, namely a massive taskforce of faceless CGI technicians.

However, artists in The Wilderness could be exposing CGI flaws to intentionally reveal truths about digital imagery as a discipline. For instance, work by these artists tells viewers where Fictions

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labor gets invested in the animation industry. Warburton points out that, because of advancements in software, some visual effects need only one person to execute, while other effects like scene development require massive teams of people; this is because software has been optimized to perform well in certain tasks, like liquid and particle simulation, so much so one single animator can achieve impressively realistic imagery of water or dust with little effort. Wilderness artists lack a labor force, which can lead to jarring, imperfect camera rigging; the finer details of texturing and material shadings get overlooked. Objects intersect and normal orientations flip, revealing sloppy, erroneous geometries. These flaws demonstrate the complexity of software and display some evidence of the many tasks requiring dozens of animators to erase the trace of technology; this is precisely where fringe artists speak to the discipline. They embrace a sympathy for the finitude of their capabilities and push what they can do into new speculative grounds; they reveal to us humble viewers exactly how the technology relates between singular fringe artists and huge studios, namely how expensive resources are spent on manpower, as well as outsourcing work to Canada, China, India, etc. to cushion expenses.

The Wilderness is compelling; it’s extremely intelligent, self-referential, funny, and rich in appropriation. Fringe artists reference pop culture and art in their work. One could argue Dada, the turn of the century art movement, for all its randomness and absurdity, is parallel to fringe art. It attempts to undermine the seamlessness of the contemporary computer-generated images by exploiting the potential for errors in technology in the form of careless bending of geometries in unfamiliar, funny, or disturbing ways. Another is to disrupt logical continuity from scene to scene so one scene transitions randomly into another with no shared content, like a dream’s tendency to transition from one unrelated topic to the next, jumbling imagery in a random psychic clutter making no sense in retrospect but by some invisible thread of psyche, still somehow stays connected. This is how many fringe artists connect with Surrealism, the child of Dada. Through these methods, fringe artists make new Dada via random disconnected relations of impactful silliness or new digital surrealisms via dreamlike content.

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Dada could be seen as a reaction against the madness of World War I; could we look at the work of fringe artists as critiques to the seamlessly connected hyper-reality of big studio CGI? Both create cinematic universes, but where movies create temporal connections of events and emotions, which manifest as tropes like “plot” and “story,” artists in The Wilderness seek to unravel and jeopardize that continuity by distorting the same strategies used in storytelling.

The work accompanying this stance attempts to envelope the viewer in its own cinematic world; it’s a world of fantasy and dream, one dominated by nude figures and growths.

The work proposes a public park in Rosario, Argentina. The large inhabitable sculptures are secluded in a field of grass the user must walk through to reach the project. Material choices for the project were very important; I wanted to propose a material with the surface-scatter properties of skin yet seemingly melting in a constant stage of mutation and evolution and create a material we can only visualize through rendering.

The project surveys the nude, or the culture of nudity; it tries to appropriate the tradition of nude painting and sculpture as the quintessential study for these two respective disciplines, as first memorably proposed by Michelangelo who said the greatest subject for painting was the male nude. The park in particular takes several classical sculptures of Venus, a subject of many paintings from the Renaissance and the Baroque, to our current era, and mixes her with other nude figures for formal exploitation.

While creating the project, it was important to study nontraditional representations of the nude, and Duchamp’s work became extremely important, especially the painting The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even, circa 1923, an example of a more psychoanalytic representation of the nude; the bride and her aroma are represented by mechanical pieces and her “bachelors” by turn-of-the-century mannequins, now standing permanently installed in the Philadelphia Museum of Art along with Duchamp’s last known work Étant donnés. The project jousts with Duchamp and his representations of the nude, therefore the work employs the trope of the voyeur, as Duchamp did in Étant donnés and

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appropriated the sticks and leaves Duchamp used in his composition, along with the brooding overcast lighting and several illuminating pieces to reference the lantern held by Duchamp’s nude figure. The phenomenon of the user walking through the grass to approach the public park and catching a glimpse of the structures through the grass mimics the museum patron’s approach to Étant donnés and the sensation of only seeing the scene through two peepholes.

Despite notions fascination with technology will wane, the individual’s creative power will continue to increase as sophisticated software becomes more available to artists.

Furthermore, as new tools become available people will seek out ways of exercising whatever they want through these powerful mediums, as they always have. The relationship of the creator with their software will move in favor of the artist’s will as technology continues on its entropic course.

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Datascape Utopia Libraries, museums, and archives have three fundamental missions in history: the creation, preservation, and dissemination of knowledge. However, with the development of the Internet and rise of the digital age, it is vital to find new ways to organize information. Datascape Utopia will lead to future stages of digitization of these collections and make these materials available to all audiences. This utopic concept recovers the true identity of information opposed to the bombardment of media.

Château de Chambord has a unique history of preserving knowledge; shortly before the outbreak of World War II, art collections from the Louvre and Compiegne museum were stored at the chateau; iconic works, such as the Mona Lisa and Venus de Milo, were preserved within these walls, imbuing a different layer of historical tapestry into this culturally rich space.

Datascape Utopia is the paragon example of how an institution digitizes, archives, and catalogs data to make a multidimensional record of events academics, scholars, researchers and the general public can parse through to generate a more prismatic recollection of history. Château de Chambord becomes part institution and part operative data center, one public and one private. The double helix staircase becomes the central organizer allowing the two programs to run opposite each other simultaneously and unimpeded, allowing visitors to observe the archiving process as they ascend through different levels.

This center is a beacon for tourists and knowledge seekers of all variants from all walks of life, serving as the quintessential link between past and future. Datascape Utopia is the manifestation of the will to encapsulate all times and all forms in one place; the collections are physically bound by walls, but the knowledge produced within is no longer bound by limits.

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Mariya Bandrivska; Mahyar Naghshvar

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The Instability Synopsis:

The technology was developed by the Quantus Imaging Group for the purpose of gathering data on urban environments by overlaying two realities in a singular physical space. An unnamed group came into possession of the technology by questionable means, and removed the collapsed field destabilization script, which allows the two realities to return to their respective space-time frames following a momentary overlay.

Deploying the technology in downtown Los Angeles, the physical environment is permanently transformed - emergency brake lines cut to a runaway experiment. Static geology is animated by its physical elements rearranging themselves in an effort to satisfy the space-time constraints of dueling realities, and the resulting emptying of adjacent blocks results in non-engagement among local governments and an opportunity for a ‘bio-cultural’ black market.

Obscured “That part of the city is closed. Shut. Permanently,” a city official barked as he leaned forward in his chair, shoulders pulled tight into his chest, feet planted squarely on the ground in front of him.

“You’ve said that already. And no one maintains those five blocks?” The official’s gaze lifted over Katherine’s right shoulder, out the window behind her. The interview was over.

If Katherine was a more transparent person, she would have told the city official that she was relieved. The clock was running faster today, keeping time with her anxiety-driven heartbeat, and she had just over a mile to walk to her next rendezvous.

Katherine avoided calling a car. As she jay walked across Spring Street, she hoped no one would call out and insist that she didn’t walk toward Broadway. The flock of uber drivers outside city hall watched their phones in anticipation of a call as she walked past them, unseen. Another relief. Most days, people giving their unwanted critique of her travel patterns didn’t bother her, but today she needed to travel the hidden streets.

Turning a corner, Katherine felt as though she was finally out of sight of City Hall’s security guards and ducked between a gated storefront and an empty, mildew wrecked bus stop billboard. Quickly, she pulled a black scarf out of her tote bag that her correspondent mailed to her last week. The hand written letter attached called attention to the discreet seam in the middle of the scarf.

“When you’ve crossed 5th street, turn the scarf inside out to reveal the image refracting textile. Don’t reveal the textile when your bag is checked by security at city hall; it’s contraband.

You will find a small hose sewn between the exterior layers of fabric. Blow into it until the scarf is fully inflated. The shape will dictate how you wear the article. If you are more than 60 seconds 38

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late, I move on without you.”

The letter ended abruptly there. Katherine couldn’t be sure if he meant she was being watched while she installed the article, or if he was referring to their rendezvous point. Not wanting to miss her appointment, Katherine counted to herself. It took her about 58 seconds to invert and inflate the scarf; it took another 23 to position it on her body.

“I swear, if he leaves because it took me too long to put on this hideous scarf…”

Katherine’s attention was pulled away from her own thoughts as she noticed an approaching data collection unit; she stopped in place. The camera on the top of the autonomous vehicle swept past her. Sometimes there was a glitch in the system. Katherine wasn’t always noticed by data collection units, because either the data collection agencies didn’t teach their AI how to identify the nuances of transgender bodies, or they simply didn’t care to collect that data. This was, oddly, a layer of safety in the eyes of her correspondent. Should the image refracting texture of the scarf fail, there was still a chance she would not be recognized.

Picking up motion in the curb, the camera tracked a rat as it rummaged through garbage on the street. In less than 30 seconds, a city service attendant would arrive to take care of the pest. Supposedly, the only rats ever seen in LA escape from their breeding grounds, the walled-in blocks at the center of the Old Downtown. Should one venture outside the walls, it was quickly handled as both a matter of public health and to also quell the fears that the Instability contained inside the walls would somehow escape, riding on the backs of rats.

Katherine started walking quickly toward 6th street. She couldn’t be seen with the contraband scarf by the city attendant; human eyes were harder to fool.

Subsurfaced City services were patchy around 8th street. Street lights flickered on and off every few minutes based on available power. The street lights around the base of the downtown wall, known to locals as the envelope, were deactivated altogether from lack of use. The few people wandering the streets were police and the remaining residents in Old Downtown. They remained with their sidewalk facing stores open for a few hours each day, and when the shadows migrated to their hosts on the other side of the street, the shop owners closed their gates over their displays of sun bleached quinceañera dresses, plastic meals, and pawned furniture. Katherine remembered purchasing a dining set ditched by its previous family when they left the envelope. The advertisement the pawn shop posted on Craigslist read “good deal - already assembled Ikea set.” Katherine had to disassemble the table to fit it in her car; the chairs fit ok.

The street lights kept flickering in a cascade down the street toward the envelope. Joaquin appeared in a flicker at the end of the block. Standing half in the light, he gestured to Katherine to hurry.

“It’s like catching a bus when no schedule is posted. You wait, eyes fixed down the street. When the bus turns the corner, you rise, still staring at the driver, to signal that you’re meant for the bus. Remember that.” Joaquin didn’t greet Katherine with a Fictions

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timid, cautious hug as he had in the past. He grabbed her hand softly and nudged her forward. He was trembling, his palms clammy.

“If we see anyone else waiting for the bus, we have to move on; that’s the rule. No two strangers per bus. It’s like our security system, well, security for us and for you. You can’t get stuck in the bus door because they don’t open again in this case.”

“We’re taking a bus somewhere?”

Joaquin turned abruptly down a narrow corridor.

Katherine thought it was an alley at first, until she noticed the living room. Katherine had heard stories from the subjects of her interviews about buildings here that had been historic sites. In the haste of walling in the Instability, the city granted rights to contractors to demolish portions of the buildings, as long as a certain percentage and key elements of the facade was preserved.

Not too long after, builders turned their attention away from the periphery of the Envelope. They used tax credits earned from the wall downtown to benefit projects being done elsewhere in the city, and city officials turned a blind eye to the unfinished housing propped up against the irreverent, concrete box. Historic buildings scheduled to be renovated sat mostly empty with living spaces exposed to the elements.

Katherine gazed up through the shoring between the half demolished apartment block and the new concrete walls at the orange glow of the city lights on the night mist overhead.

She thought about a painting she had seen in her youth, a monochromatic painting of a New Year’s’ Eve celebration. The smoke from the fireworks make the atmosphere in the painting dense, like fog, and it glowed warm from the lights on the street.

Sulphur and celebration. She remembered hearing the painting as she watched at it. She thought of the amalgam of information spread between the hemispheres of the brain creating an organic and fluid infrastructure for memory. Of course the painting didn’t generate a sound; Katherine did.

“This is where we wait.”

They stopped abruptly at the end of the corridor, Joaquin staring at the smooth precast concrete wall. Katherine watched Joaquin’s eyes dance around the texture of the concrete surface. The wood floors creaked under Katherine’s feet as she shifted her weight to one leg so she could peer over her shoulder toward the street. They both stood there, watching for movement a long while.

“There, get ready to jump.” Katherine whirled around.

Joaquin was still staring at the face of the concrete wall. In the dim light, Katherine’s eye caught an ant crawling across the concrete. It’s movement was odd, linear, and far more rhythmic than the movement of typical ants. Another appeared, crawling perpendicularly to the first. They collided and began to grow, like two very distant binary stars dying in an explosion. A dark image appeared on the wall in the place of the ants like a mirror, but not reflecting the bodies of Joaquin and Katherine. Ticking sounds grew out of the surface, and Katherine jumped back when the wall’s reinforcement surfaced and slithered across the face of the wall. In the mirror, planks of wood materialized and faded in all different dimensions. Some appeared to be rotten, others left the smell of fresh cut lumber on a construction site; saw dust fell to the ground around Katherine’s feet.

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continued to crawl, slither, tear, fade, dissolve, and fold. When the mirror was large enough to see one’s own figure, Katherine noticed a man at the end of the corridor peering back at her. She peered over her shoulder to see no one.

Joaquin lurched Katherine forward while she was still looking over her shoulder. A second later, the mirror was behind her, and the crawling surface began to calm. The steel receded and the ants scattered. Turning forward again, she was greeted by the figure in the mirror. They were in the same building, but on the other side of the Envelope’s enclosure; the figure walked toward them.

Enveloped “No one saw you?”

“No.” Joaquin began walking as he spoke. “How’s the Instability today?”

“Quiet. It’s a good hour for trade.” The man spoke to Katherine. “You the student?”

“Yes. I need--”

“We know. Walk quickly.” The man turned the corner at the end of the corridor. Following him, Katherine struggled to make out obstacles in the dark. There was rubble and forgotten construction equipment heaped in piles in the street. All the heaps were laid out in a line, like a barricade, except for the last one at the end of the block. It sat atop a low building, sandwiched between two towers. It moved like the wall had.

The tall walls blocked the direct light from the city outside the walls. Only the light orange glow reflecting off the bottoms of clouds overhead lit the street. From several blocks away, Katherine could only make out a mass of line segments building on each other and subsequently receding. With each recession, the shifting structure calved large areas of sticks, which crashed to the ground and dematerialized before they could bounce twice. The crashed like wind chimes with no reverberation or echo.

One block away from the object, Katherine was able to discern a second object inside the field of sticks. There was a creature seemingly made of porcelain; it was also stirring but not on its own. It seemed to respond to the cage-like structure surrounding it. When the object calved its sticks, the second creature froze above it, seemingly stunned by the sudden lack of support below. When the matrix rose to meet it again, the second creature relaxed and began to explore its environment again, growing and receding in turn.

This was the reason for the wall.

The Quantus Imaging Group had hailed their invention as the next step in humanity’s great destiny of conquering the unknown. The CEO of the company presented a machine which collapsed two distinct realities into one moment in time for the sake of gathering data about our own reality, as well as the realities existing “directly adjacent” to our own. With two sets of data from two scenarios, the builders of our world would be able to perfect strategies, maximize profits, and direct the flow of urban life toward progress.

For reasons unknown, the technology was poached, altered and deployed on a rooftop downtown. Quantus technicians attempted to deactivate the device to no avail. The

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field destabilization script, which allowed two realities to return to their respective space-time frames, had been removed. Several weeks passed in which technicians worked furiously to separate the two worlds, but when the overlay began to move and reorder itself, the evacuation of the immediate area was ordered. The autonomous object became known as the Instability.

“When they built the wall, they didn’t realize the smaller swirls of colliding realities migrating intermittently through the streets,” Joaquin explained. “One swirl appears in the same location, and follows the face of the wall. That’s our bus. It’s schedule is never perfect, but we know that it appears more or less once every three hours. Sometimes it can be as much as 30 minutes late, or 30 minutes early but no more or less.”

The man ushering Katherine and Joaquin through the streets shot a furtive glance back at them. He didn’t care for much conversation on the street, or any conversation at all.

As they approached the foot of the Instability, the guide stopped and turned toward Joaquin.

“This is where you wait.”

Katherine looked at Joaquin.

“The salesman doesn’t like to meet with more than one person at a time. Another security measure I guess. I don’t know why it matters though. He never looks the same twice.”

The guide opened the door to the market, the building directly below the Instability, and motioned for Katherine to step inside.

The interior space was only slightly more illuminated than the glowing cloud lit street. Cramped stalls with junk scattered across their desks lined either side of the long and narrow room. Some stalls had desk lamps most likely powered by car batteries were smuggled into the envelope by the shop attendants. It’s risky to carry car batteries back and forth from the envelope every day, but standard electrical grids don’t stay stable enough under the Instability. But then neither do radio signals, radar readings, pixels in photographs, or audio recordings. This is the perfect place for the Black Market of Bio-Culture.

The Instability above occasionally infected the structure of the roof. In those moments, water trapped on the roof from the intermittent winter storms would pour into the market. Each kiosk had a tarp overhead to protect their wares, and the room smelled like a damp basement and dead mold, concealed just under the painted and bubbling surface of the thin gypsum wallboard.

Some of the wares on the desks were opened, mid surgery. The wires and chip boards shimmered in the light as they moved like the Instability above. There were cameras, toy cars, and body implants at one stall. A small film was playing on a tablet behind the stall, no doubt an innovation of the shop owner using the Instability to invent a monitoring technology for the envelope. It was kept in a steel cage with a padlock. Another small camera was positioned at the cage with no visible video output.

The cage itself was shackled to a steel column in the wall that had been crudely exposed with the backside of a hammer left hanging from the bottom rim of the opening.

The next stall had jars of plants and critters suspended in fluid. A cage under the table rattled; a meow came from said cage, but it changed mid articulation. It was still a cat, probably, but it suddenly sounded older and bigger than it had when it started speaking.

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“Don’t get too close. Some of the creatures this creeper keeps don’t like cages,” muttered the guide, his pace unbroken.

“The Salesman lets almost anything in here.”

A potted flower was overtaken by Katherine’s shadow as she passed by. When she passed out of the dim light overhead, the shadow on the flower remained, dark and deep.

The Salesman had his own room. Arriving at the back of the space, the guide opened a door, stepped aside, and turned to Katherine. The door was framed with an different awning than the other stalls’ shoddy tarps. This had steel columns, painted red, on either side of the door, and the tarp appeared to be regularly cleaned. There was impeccably clean tile on the floor under the awning.

The guide said nothing; Katherine paused for a moment.

She was unsure if she would be alone from then on. He read her insecurity. He rolled his eyes unsympathetically and nodded his head to the side toward the open door.

“Go. Down the stairs and to the left, end of the hall.”

Katherine stepped inside. The guide closed the door and strode away.

The stairs were too steep to be referred to as such.

Katherine awkwardly started down the steps face first, but turned around mid way for fear of falling forward. Her hands and feet navigated from step to step, one at a time. Her last step down the stairs felt more solid than the old wood treads, but she extended her leg back to make sure she had truly found the floor. Turning and rising at the same time, the light from under the door at the end of the hall lit the floor just enough to make out the uneven surface of the cracked concrete floor, and the dust bunnies danced as Katherine moved past them.

Before she reached the door she heard the Salesman speak.

“Don’t bother knocking. Just come in.”

Interrogated The door dragged against the floor and stopped when it was half way open. Side stepping into the room, Katherine noticed the lines of batteries against the wall. This was the brightest room Katherine had seen in the Envelope. LED bulbs hung from their wires around the perimeter of the room. Most were very dim, indicating they had to be several decades old, probably on their last leg. They were most likely traded for other items, case of LED bulbs for an image refracting scarf, a coil of copper wire for color changing shoes, a new ergonomic swivel armchair for an old vinyl record that contains every song ever recorded by Fleetwood Mac, live recordings and studio sessions.

Neatly organized boxes sat behind the LED bulbs on the wall opposite the batteries. They were labeled as either “hold, A through Z” or “trade, A through Z.” Some had been opened more often than others, and one had been removed from a stack, indicated by the only shift in the otherwise neat tower of boxes half way up from the ground.

The Salesman sat facing the door, his hands moving independently over an opening in his desk.

“So what did you do?” Katherine was confused. She stared back blankly. The salesman closed the opening in his desk and reached to the floor beside him. He lifted a box labeled “Trade, K,” and slid it onto the desk.

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“The only people who want the bio-refractor are criminals, people who want to disappear. People who want to be lost, forgotten, glossed over in the vast data repository of our simplified human existence. Why do you want to disappear?”

“I’d like to make our transaction and be on my way.”

“Here in the underworld, sweetness, we conduct business how we want. Transactions here are paid in part by secrets cameras, and GPS located devices can’t capture.”

“I have a hundred others.”

The salesman furrowed his brow, crossed his arms, and leaned forward to rest his elbows on the table. His stare pierced Katherine, she thought of leaving. Instead she croaked, “I don’t want to disappear.”

“You will if your face is different every day. You effectively will not exist other than by your birth certificate… or is it the name change documentation you submitted at city hall? You will be an unrecognizable face week to week. Not even your family will be able to recognize you on the street. They will look right through you.”

“No!” Katherine snapped, startling herself. She shrank from a warrior to a mouse in an instant. Her eyes dropped to the floor. The salesman moved to speak, when Katherine interrupted, this time softly.

“They will see me, not my body. If I have to shift bodies every day, then I will. I’ll shift a thousand times to be one whole person in the immediate present. I don’t care which woman I am, when I’m her, or when I’m someone else. I’ll transition again and again and again. I’ll keep a thousand houses to make one a home for a night. I’ll leave behind the pictures of the multiple me’s, taken on first dates, selfies snapped in front of tourist attractions, and video footage of my interviews on the ground behind me as I go.

I’ll scatter them along the pavement. I’ll refuse to collect them.

And the only record of my being will be those scattered images which will have to be stacked by someone else, studied and sequenced in order to find me.

“And when I see other familiar, static faces, I’ll offer a smile and a nod as we meet for the first time again and again and again. I’ll pass the same people on the street during my commute from my personal workspace to my home every day. They’ll come to expect to see a smiling face in the morning on their commute and that will be enough. Maybe some days they’ll smile back, and that will be heaven. When my body is not enough for anyone else, when it never has been, it becomes a tack board for other people’s deafening thoughts. I have to carry them around with me every day. I’m a walking lesson for other people, an exposure to something that sheltered lives have not yet encountered, which quickly ferments in the minds of my spectators into a foil of a life well lived, but if I can be a different person day to day, I can shed the notes pasted to my body. That’s who they’ll see: my reclaimed self, myself, in the faces of a hundred different people.”

The salesman sat back in his chair. His face drew long and he fixated on this hands, his fingers massaging his knuckles.

“Your friends? They’ll miss you.”

“Perhaps.”

“What do you mean to them?”

“I don’t follow.”

“You’re a lesson?”

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under the desk and swept his hand horizontally as an invitation to sit, so she sat.

“Moreover, what is your lesson? What is the subject of your lesson? Someone else’s body? A standard body?”

“A normal body.”

“Is rarity not better, more valuable than the average?”

“Human beings can be different, not rare.”

“Is that so? Who tells you this?”

“No one has to say it. They act it. They look it. The communicate with their order of things. They propagate with their priorities. They materialize their desires, desires for someone other than me.”

“And what do your loved ones…” The Salesman paused for a moment. “...the ones that love you materialise? How do they prioritize? Do they not build understanding? Doesn’t empathy emerge among them?”

“They’ll never have my body. They may have sympathy for it, but empathy? It’s bullshit.”

“Bullshit. My my. Must love be empathetic?”

Katherine shifted uncomfortably in her chair and looked at the room full of technologies stuffed into boxes. Each box was full of files and items that were designed from the Instability specifically to obscure objects, bodies. She imagined being in the crowd in the painting of New Years Eve. She shared an embrace as the fireballs popped overhead, the crowd began to sing, and the chilly air was forgotten by everyone for that moment of unabashed optimism. She turned to see a man, drunk with happiness. She pulled him close to deliver a New Year’s kiss. They moved toward each other smoothly, vexed with each other. With no hesitation or pause they pressed their lips together. A moment later they separated slightly and lingered for a while as the world streams past them. Joaquin smiled, and Katherine turned away, disappearing into the hazey silhouettes.

“I want what is authentic.”

After a pause, the Salesman nodded. He opened the box and directed Katherine to remove the scarf she still wore. He stood and moved behind her, pulling her carefully draped hair away from her hidden shoulders and attached a device to the ceiling above her.

The Salesman stared down at Katherine. She looked up with a stern face, unmoving and unmoved, resolute. He studied her brow, her eyes, her nose, her brown hair. She was young, but the stress in her face was visible. None of these details mattered, as they never had each time the Salesman studied his clients pursuing the bio-refractor. He studied them anyway. Intensely. He looked for a bit of organizing logic in their face he might recognize again on the street someday. If not a physical feature, he strained to find an expression. A facial fingerprint couldn’t be erased day after day. Each morning, when he saw himself for the first time in the mirror, he believed he could see that expression.

Lately, however, he began to lose focus on his daily recognition of this quality. He was becoming more interested in seeing that identity in others. If he could find a way to identify his clients again on the street, he believed the entire world of the envelope would suddenly change, and a new world could emerge. For now, his clients were scattered about the outside world, invisible but present, disorganized agents. He turned away as he initiated the bio-refractor, and dwelled on her image with his eyes closed.

Fictions

The Instability

Richard Mapes

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Unscribed It was a sunny morning on the lively street of a neighborhood parade and kiosks were erected on the bounding streets of a dense apartment building. The building’s street level store fronts were filled with people drinking tea and watching the parade volunteers hollered down the street about AV equipment issues, battery drained power tools, and misplaced signage.

Commuters paused for a moment to survey the installation of the cultural spectacle. Some even snapped a few pictures of performers practicing in the street. They would be instagram heroes for a few minutes today, the photographers that is. The performers didn’t have names.

“A perfect day for that sundress,” a girl thought “but where are her sunglasses?” The woman is not bothered by the sun. She smiled at the girl as she passed.

“Were her eyes blue or hazel?”

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Afterimage In The Republic, Plato’s Theory of Form specifies objects as imitations of a more pure idea. This hierarchical relationship places what we perceive as reality to be secondary to its perfect form. If we can produce the interpretation of that mass, a chair in this case, then the idea of a chair is its true reality. The creation of what we make is fictional, merely an image of what truly exists.

Plato views art as an image of an image. When the image lingers in the same dimension as its parent, an afterimage is produced.

In this instance, these drawings are afterimages of forms produced in my sketchbook during architecture school. Every time a sketchbook is completed, the hand drawings and lecture notes are digitally scanned and organized to create an afterthought. This reflection strips away the subject of the sketchbook and focuses on the image. Form is stripped down to line and surface. Volume is considered consciousness.

The dimension shares the two dimensional with the original sketchbooks.

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Letters From Above “iPhone Left In Laser Room” If you left your black iPhone 8 (?) in the Laser Room last night, you may pick it up at the Receptionist’s Desk at the north end of the Building.

“Robot House” The Robot House will be closed tonight (October 2) through tomorrow (October 3).

“Metalshop Training” We are pleased to announce additional Metalshop Training. This training is required.

“FOAM SALES TODAY” Foam sales will take place today in the parking lot near the sheds.

“Please Help Us” THE SHOP AND SCI-ARC ARE WORKING WITH THE CITY TO HELP “Spray Booth Aids” Use these hooks to suspend objects for painting in the spray booths (3 in each booth).

Bendable wire available at the SUPPLY STORE. “Attention Students!”

Underscore is proudly embarking on our fourth year of student-made, student-written, and student-made publication.

We are accepting submissions.

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