Making as an Ecological~Intimacy : Trace~Drawing/Preservation and Movements in Media.

Outpost 230824

Human Thicket : Matter(s) of Composition~Connectivity~Decay

Life Outside the Circle of Architecture.

A Hut of One's Own.

Ann Cline.

The Importance of The Hut in Contemporary Society.  

For Ann Cline the ostensible subject of this inquiry is the primitive hut, a one room structure built of common or rustic materials. She gracefully weaves together two stories: one of primitive huts in times of cultural transition, and another of diminutive structures in our own times of architectural transition. From these narrative strands emerges a deeper inquiry: What are the limits of architecture? What ghosts inhabit its edges? What does it mean to dwell outside it?

Of Huts.

An ecological intimacy, a return to veering towards both humans and nonhumans.

When we study attunement, we study something that has always been there, ecological intimacy, which is to say intimacy between humans and nonhumans violently repressed with violent result.

Tuning, Timothy Moreton.

Architecture In Abjection.

Bodies, Spaces And Their Relations.

Zuzana Kovar.

The Raveningham Projects.

On the nature of crafting sheltering social spaces.

Site specific experiences on making/building/using.

A primitive attunement/dwelling, a return to the affective power between things.

A creative site specific study on 'dwelling, occupancy, and  hosting' through studying speculative architecture with its boundary conditions and formative structures. 

Simple 'undesigned' places valued for their timelessness and authenticity.

Philosophia/Socrates.

Philosophical love of wisdom rather than the possession of it.

A Philosophy of Solitude.

In Defence of Sensuality.

John Cowper Powys.

The Mythical City of Orion.

Storytelling through ceramics and explorative site markings, this sculptural intervention plays with archaeology, ceramic artefacts, and astronomy.

Sensing Self/Marking Realities.

Trace Drawing/Preservation and Movements in Media.

Territories/Borders/Boundaries.

Art-Workings.

Being able to work with and appreciate ambiguity.

An aesthetic timbre of the inter connective causal perceptual qualities of things.

You don't know why you should care about this, isn't that what we are all feeling when we experience something beautiful/wonderous.

Care/Love as an ambiguous spectral aesthetic around ethical decisions.

Being/All Art is Ecological, Timothy Morton

The Working Drawing.

Critical Body Contour/Outline.

The Fossil Line.

A primitive gestural drawing underpinning a Palaeolithic idea on an inter-connective, causal perceptual aesthetic force that invokes and engenders a phenomenological and hermeneutic philosophy.

Spectral Aesthetics, OOO. 

A line of energy flowing around the extremity of a formed space.

The reserve of a papers surface retains both its former presence and its continuing absence held captive simultaneously.

The Figurative/Experiential Flatness between seeing and sensing self.

The remembered, reconstituted spatial dimensions rendered attractively into volumetric flatness.  

• Russell Moreton
• visual art
• visual fine art
• spatial practice
• research creation
• ecology of experience

Ceramic Deconstructions of Hidden Architectural Interiors : Spaces/Surfaces/Interiors on Solitude/Sensuality

Sensing Architecture : Movements of  Human Bodies/Spatial Bodies.

Thinking/Making within gestures of drawing spatial speculation.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/russellmoreton/53757637955/in/dateposted-public/

Materials as Leaky Things/The Correspondences of Surfaces  : For Tim Ingold.

A Philosophy of Solitude.1933

In Defence of Sensuality.1935

John Cowper Powys

Exploring the space of solitude, to explore ideas and thoughts with a public. The hermit as a proto-performance artist displaying qualities of spirituality, intelligence, artistry and sensuality.

Anne Douglas.

The Hermit Project.

The Follies Journal. 2003

The House Fifteen Foot Square.

The proposed Hermitage at Cadland (drawing).

Interior Spaces.

The Alchemy of Imagination.

In the dead linen in cupboards I seek the supernatural.

Joseph Rouffange.

The wardrobe is filled with linen, there are even moonbeams which I can unfold.

Andre Breton. 1932

The Permanence of Childhood.

On Poetic Imagination and Reverie.

Gaston Bachelard.

While the child was dreaming in solitude, he experienced a limitless existence. His reverie was not merely an escape. It was a reverie of flight. Dreaming of childhood we go back to the den of reveries.

All the ideas that I want to put forth in this chapter tend to establish the persistence in the human soul of a nucleus of childhood. Of a motionless but enduring childhood outside of history, hidden from others disguised as history when it is narrated, but having real existence only in its moments of illumination which is to say in its moments of poetic existence.

Chamber Music/Reverberations.

Constructed Space/Ceramic Forms.

On Silences, Surfaces, Interiors and Depths.

Wardrobes with their shelves, desks with their drawers and chests with their false bottoms are veritable organs of the secret psychological life, indeed without these 'objects' and a few others in equally high favour, our intimate life would lack a model of intimacy.

They are hybrid objects, subject objects, like us, through us, and for us they have a quality of intimacy on the shelves of memory and in the temples of the wardrobe.

But the real wardrobe is not an everyday piece of furniture, it is not opened everyday and so like a heart that confides in no one, the key is not on the door. Many a time we dreamed of the mysteries lying dormant between its wooden flanks.

Rimbaud designates a perspective of hope, what good things are being kept in reserve in the locked wardrobe? This time it is filled with promise, it is something more than a family chronicle.

Exaggeration is always at the summit of any living image, and to add fantasy to linen is to draw a picture, by means of a volute of words off all the superabundant blessings that lie folded in piles between the flanks of an abandoned wardrobe.

Practices on Solitude/The Alchemy of Imagination/The Permanence of Childhood

Outpost 290524

Between The Lines.

Drawing as notation/mapping of an event/time/place recorded.

Sunlight Six Hours on Paper, Harleston 2022.

Sunlight on Wood.

1974. Starts making timed sun drawings in the time scale of one minute or one hour.

As many have for centuries I want to offer back into the world an affirmation of what is wonderful. I work on the surface but am aware that the spirit is often hidden within life a shadow in the darkness.

Roger Ackling

There is an aspect of Roger Ackling's work that might easily be forgotten in its assumed familiarity more usually performed onto something come across and minutely altered in the middle of a journey.

Simon Cutts.

The Work and Teaching of Roger Ackling.

A Philosophy of Solitude.1933

In Defence of Sensuality.1935

John Cowper Powys

Exploring the space of solitude, to explore ideas and thoughts with a public. The hermit as a proto-performance artist displaying qualities of spirituality, intelligence, artistry and sensuality.

Anne Douglas.

The Hermit Project.

The Follies Journal. 2003

The House Fifteen Foot Square.

The proposed Hermitage at Cadland (drawing).

Interior Spaces.

The Alchemy of Imagination.

In the dead linen in cupboards I seek the supernatural.

Joseph Rouffange.

The wardrobe is filled with linen, there are even moonbeams which I can unfold.

Andre Breton. 1932

The Permanence of Childhood.

On Poetic Imagination and Reverie.

Gaston Bachelard.

While the child was dreaming in solitude, he experienced a limitless existence. His reverie was not merely an escape. It was a reverie of flight. Dreaming of childhood we go back to the den of reveries.

All the ideas that I want to put forth in this chapter tend to establish the persistence in the human soul of a nucleus of childhood. Of a motionless but enduring childhood outside of history, hidden from others disguised as history when it is narrated, but having real existence only in its moments of illumination which is to say in its moments of poetic existence.

Chamber Music/Reverberations.

Constructed Space/Ceramic Forms.

On Silences, Surfaces, Interiors and Depths.

Wardrobes with their shelves, desks with their drawers and chests with their false bottoms are veritable organs of the secret psychological life, indeed without these 'objects' and a few others in equally high favour, our intimate life would lack a model of intimacy.

They are hybrid objects, subject objects, like us, through us, and for us they have a quality of intimacy on the shelves of memory and in the temples of the wardrobe.

But the real wardrobe is not an everyday piece of furniture, it is not opened everyday and so like a heart that confides in no one, the key is not on the door. Many a time we dreamed of the mysteries lying dormant between its wooden flanks.

Rimbaud designates a perspective of hope, what good things are being kept in reserve in the locked wardrobe? This time it is filled with promise, it is something more than a family chronicle.

Exaggeration is always at the summit of any living image, and to add fantasy to linen is to draw a picture, by means of a volute of words off all the superabundant blessings that lie folded in piles between the flanks of an abandoned wardrobe.

Collage : Solar Pavilion/A Philosophy of Solitude/John Cowper Powys : The Hut as a projection of self/Ann Cline

As my dwelling took shape, it began to shape my life as well. And when I sat inside reading the recluse poets, the terse simplicity of their record framed my own perception, one I likened to a camera recording a world of pure experience.

Ann Cline

Architecture is not made with the brain. 

The labour of Alison and Peter Smithson.

Architectural Association 2005.

Smithson’s on modernity, not as a goal but as an established reality that needs to be interpreted.

Articulation of the volumes based on rigorous rules that derive from the ordering capacity of the necessities of daily life.

Holistic Practices.

The way person and work fit together so seamlessly.

Embedding building within a specific contemporary cultural context. (Krucker, 2005:85)

Transitions between spaces.

‘Building relationships to relate to what already exists.’ Herzog and de Meuron The Parallel of Art and Life

Aesthetics about Perception Poetics about Production

‘The approach leads from the static object of the mere picture to the dynamic process of imagining.’(Schregenberger,2005:82)

‘As found is a small affair, it is about being careful.’ (attentive awareness (anthropological) to people and place) Peter Smithson 2001 

‘The ‘as found’ attitude is anti-utopian; its form is specific, raw and immediate. It calls the will to question. It is a technique of reaction and a concern for that which exists.’ (Schregenberger,2005:81)

Complex Ordinariness Bruno Krucker

Urban Structuring.

Importance of urban planning, specific responses to the surroundings generated different shapes. Testing out spatial bound volumes and aligning them with the site or urban fabric/passages of use and existing features.

‘As Found, is a small affair: it is about being careful, the as found (is) where the art is in the picking up, turning over and putting with.’ (Smithson.)

‘The essence of ‘as found’ as a concept lies in accepting the value of the everyday. Any aspect of the built environment can be interpreted and employed as a trigger for architectural propositions. To consider ways in which the ‘ordinary’ can be harnessed through reinterpretation.’ (Sergison’2005:98)

The Everyday.

Life between buildings.

The necessities of daily life (the repetition of basic sequences) giving shape and layout to the architecture.

Heavy Prefabrication: Whole wall sections used to a homogeneous expression that emphasises their tactile qualities.

John Cowper Powys hopes to create a new level of discourse that will appeal to the common person, that person who desperately needs a philosophy of life, a means of comprehending the world around him or her, while at the same time being a person who is receptive and curious.

‘The Solar Pavilion, is both a lookout over the distant landscape on the north facade, sitting on top of the existing cottage wall, and a garden pavilion mediating between two types of controlled landscape. It aims to provide a minimal enclosure that allows as immediate a relationship between interior and exterior as possible.’

(Sergison’2005:97)

The hut addresses the core of ritual as a part of nature versus the supposed freedom of modernist thought and the architectural contrivances it pursues. The hut represents the convergence of ritual and naturalness, at the same time addressing cultural issues and practices.

To systematise transitions of both components and internal spatial orderings. The sizes of elements are determined by the inner spatial ordering in an almost organic, non-schematic way.’

We developed elements that embrace the entire thickness of the wall.’ (Krucker, 2005:85)

The search for directness while avoiding too much design, but still ensuring that our buildings look right in their surroundings.

Cultural Background.

Fitting in with the ordinariness of the environment, an ordinariness that only reveals its strength over time.

Embedding building within a specific contemporary cultural context. (Krucker, 2005:85)

The anonymous settings of settlements and agglomerations create documents/cinematic presences of familiarity within these architectural contexts. It is important to go beyond any superficial fascination with the ‘periphery’.

John Cowper Powys (1872-1963) created an attractive and congenial meditation in his best non-fiction book: A Philosophy of Solitude.

Writing in the early 1930's in his adopted United States, where he was living and working as a free-lance lecturer, a popularizer of intellectual themes barnstorming the country, Powys' book is prompted by his experiences, his insights, and his disappointments. He sees the United States as a slave of modem technology — of megalopolis, pandemonium, noise, of "the Gargantuan monstrosities and Dantesque horrors of our great modem cities."

The situation, he declares, is too far gone for the inspiration of American writers like Emerson, Thoreau, and Whitman, with their facile optimism and their confidence in the virtues of an American character now lost in the twentieth century.

The only thing that can really help us is a much more definite and drastic philosophy ... a real, hard, formidable, unrhetorical introspection ..."

And this is the philosophy of solitude that Powys sets out of construct.

To Powys, solitude is the necessary social, psychological, and intellectual state of the individual. It is social in pulling away from the life and tumult of the crowd (Powys lived for decades in New York City, finally moving to a small town in upper-state New York before returning to Wales a few short years after this book's publication).

It is psychological in the sense of identifying and pursuing a frame of mind for the personal pursuit of solitude. And it is intellectual in offering a philosophy calling upon a variety of classic thinkers and using the tools of plain everyman logic.

Powys sees this simplicity of mind and desire as a key to self-control and understanding. His elementalism is based on the solitude that is evoked by this self-knowledge, which allows a person to make and define a life for themselves based not upon the tempo and rhythms of the crowd and technology but on the unspoken wisdom that wells up from solitude itself.

The hut has a sense of immediacy that no room-filled house can achieve. The hut focuses its dweller on immediacy and meaningfulness. I had found the commodity of my dwelling through the poetry of its use.

Structural Thinking. Anti Object: Kengo Kuma.

Identity out of structure/layers of latticed structure.

Character-forming ability of structures, through the transitions of interior to exterior spaces. ‘Our approach was to act decisively at an urban and a spatial level and to create precise alignments that would strengthen existing elements. Within the structure, it becomes possible to give specific places an individual identity and to create an awareness of the relation between repetition and difference. Seen in this way , the facades are less a surface around a volume, and more the outer edges of the structure itself (importantly the structuring becomes independent of the programme, which can change over time).’ (Krucker, 2005:87)

The power of a building originates from its structuring (a character of a building that is not wholly subservient to its programme).

The book is an extended essay, not a history, but it does call for a close sense of identity with the subject and with those who have come before. The author dives into the subject of primitive huts, skimming the surface with Po-i and Shu-ch'i, the recluse archetype brothers of Chinese antiquity, with modems like Gaston Blanchard and Thomas Merton, classics like Lao-tzu and Heraclitus, plus the great Japanese hut-dwellers Kamo no Chomei and Hoshida Kenko. The hut, she notes, has always been a projection of the self. When Heraclitus was chided on why he lived in such a small and humble abode, he responded, "Even here, the gods reside."

Ground Notations, the need to find an existing physical structure, see ‘Shifting the Track’ (Smithson.)

‘The Smithsons’ search for a strong existing element that could be added to and adjusted, if necessary, ensures that a project is grounded in its place. Successful ground notations operate at varying scales, ranging from large pieces of infrastructure (roadways,etc) to natural, seasonal landscape infrastructure (trees and meadows). Once absorbed into an existing situation, new ground notations begin to refocus a place and act as the basis for subsequent actions’ (Sergison’2005:97)

Drawing on an existing topographic ground notation (earth-bunds) matrices of bundways that help irrigate the marshlands and define land ownership. 

‘New topographical features containing the infrastructure necessary for development, with roads on top and supply conduits inside them. Public buildings were located on top of swollen bunds, for visibility and orientation, while the spaces in between bunds became serviced fields for new settlement.’ (Sergison’2005:98)

Could it be that where a human settlement seems structureless, without purpose, we invent and build ‘ground-notations’ to offer an analogous power to that offered by strong natural landforms?

Neutrality and Character.

‘This kind of structural thinking supports the search for a more anonymous everyday architecture that can nevertheless develop a character of its own.

The prefabricated parts generate complex volumetric forms that remain only partly visible after assembly. The effect is similar to that of Japanese timber construction, in which the simplicity and clarity of appearance belie the complexity of the joining techniques involved.’ (Krucker, 2005:89)

‘The Smithson’s embraced an architecture that was not purely driven by formal intensions but by questions regarding content. This is an architecture that results from an attitude of openness towards the world (of worlds) and an acute awareness of the impact of the architect’s actions. Such an architecture insists on addressing the nature of real conditions and how they fit into the fabric of a larger context.’ (Krucker, 2005:90)

Lessons Learnt from Alison and Peter Smithson 

With an agility larger structures can never match, huts bring together the physical environment with such disparate aspects of culture as necessity, fantasy, faith, and "life-style." The hut, then, may be humankind's supreme experiment.

‘I remember finding the work awkward, even ugly in its removal from architectural conventions. ’

Research Contexts/Materials

The Shift/Italian Thoughts, both became pivotal in the understanding of the intensions behind their work.

What does it mean to be an English architect? The lessons presented as six themes.

Strategy and Detail, as a design concept and method.

A manual for negotiating our way through the development of a project. 

‘All our projects begin with an interpretation of the specifics of the programme and a response to the place we are adding to, either as a series of sketches or a model exploring a building form. A dialogue then begins about the ‘feeling’ of the project, its material presence and its language of construction; this provides a framework in which to take decisions and a structure that can be referred to.’(Sergison’2005:92) Trying it out, testing its placement in place, its on-site feelings.

A detailing of open brick perpends (a breathing building envelope) that is overlaid on all three elevations, giving a quiet expression to the building’s tectonics.

Conglomerate Ordering, as an overall interconnected building solution. 

‘A bold simple form adjusted by the forces of the site, thereby containing an equivalence, an overall tonality through the concrete frame as a structural solution and the block infill and their aluminium dressings. The building form and plan arrangement were adjusted according to the particularities of the site and to rhyme with the geometries of the neighbouring industrial buildings.’ (Sergison’2005:94)

Ways, (a spine providing a variety of spatial experiences coupled with the means by which circulation is distributed) sometimes Ways are employed in a manner that is latent and discreet; in other instances they are the most public part of a project. 

‘The concept of Ways as a means of organising circulation and supporting activity.’ (Sergison’2005:94)

A simple organising circulation element that can be read, at one level, as a street or lane running the length of the plan, linking the apartments. This space is given a strong material intensity, entirely timber-clad on floor, walls and soffit. At selected moments views of the city are framed or the sky is revealed.

Janus Face, origins in Italian Thoughts, teaches us to understand how mediation is possible between inside and outside, or between one side of a building and another; as all faces are equally engaged with what lies before them.

By focusing attention on the enclosing envelope and how the building should engage with the conditions around it.

The opposing forces of a site and its relationships to the different faces of the building can become multifaceted, through scale, the choice of material or even the layering of its construction; a discreet link is sought which connects rather than confronts.

Outpost 021222 Thinking Forms/Haptic Collisions

 Outpost 021222

https://www.flickr.com/photos/russellmoreton/

Lo-Fi

Alternative Construction.

Contemporary Natural Building Methods.

Lynne Elizabeth, Cassandra Adams.

Earthbag.

Experimental earthbag structures at Cal-Earth.

Nader Khalili.

The beauty of the earthbag technology lies not just in its low cost, but in its freedom of form.

The use of soil-filled sacks (earthbags) for construction has received growing interest as a natural alternative building technique. Earthbags are textile or plastic casings packed with soil, and sometimes sand or gravel, used to construct foundations, walls, and domes. The technique is essentially a flexible form variation of rammed earth construction.

Earthbag construction is one of the most inexpensive building methods on the planet. It uses locally available site soil and common sacks. The technique requires few skills, is significantly faster than earth building methods such as adobe or cob, and unlike equipement-intensive modern rammed earth, requires few tools other than a shovel.

Working Cyanotypes/Vectors/Clusters of Movements.

Spatial Verbs/Durations.

Drawing on a light mediated surface.

Abstracted notations on the verge of visibility.

Traces on the canvas.

The Inclusion of Absences.

Mapping surfaces, from transparency to occlusion.

Abstract Circulation Diagrams.

Diffractive Intermediaries in Architecture.

Alternative Photographic Processes.

Subjectivity in forsaken spaces.

Resistivity/Photographic Decay : Inclusions in the order of time.

Theory, Placemaking, Trigg

Francesca Woodman, Deborah Turbeville.

Photographic Collages.

Place Studies.

Locating practice/inquiry.

In the darkroom with the flesh of the film.

Building on the impossibility of the specific. 

Everyday correlations, living with making place.

The recording apparatuses spatial practice.

Learning with phenomena, presentia the light in its moment. 

Spatial cyanotype drawings and exposures. 

Daylight weather observed and recorded.

Red Gas Kiln, external dimensions, 1.2m x 1.2m x 1.0m, plus stand 0.5m.

Joseph Beuys, clay accumulator and table, Tate Modern.

Joseph Albers.

Karen Barad.

Intra-Activity, Performativity, Bodies.

Colour Intermediaries, induce spatial relations between objects and processes, they create, set in motion diffractive phenomena.

The Mind's Eye.

Bridget Riley.

SPAB, Working Parties.

What Remains.

To preserve something from the continuum of time.

Materials bounded by contact and context.

Plastic Architecture/Lime and Flintwork.

Linking built surfaces to the aesthetic experience of place.

Asperity, in materials science, is defined as unevenness of surface, roughness, ruggedness, that can create frictional interactions between the relationships of materials. 

Site is a temporal undoing of place.

Architecture taken back into the domain of  building. 

Scaffolds for learning, access, practices and preservation. 

On Reading.

Cell-Court-Domain.

Apokatustasis.

Jim Jarmusch

Jozef Van Wissem

John Cowper Powys.

A Philosophy Of Solitude.

Reading Powys one finds no belief, no system of dogmas or doctrines, just an insight gathered from experience.

He  is a walking philosopher, who develops his thoughts on the character of solitude, the walker formulates his words out of an inner heuristic development. A preparation in order to be able to relate to other people. 

A Field Guide to Getting Lost.

Rebecca Solnit.

The wonderlust of learning for profound and complex inquiry.

The creative, hopeful philosophy of emotions that colour, illuminate our worlds.

In Defence of Sensuality : John Cowper Powys 1930.

Foreword.

The author feels that perhaps some explanation is due to the reader for the rather unusual employment of the word "Sensuality" which serves as the title of this work. The advantage given to the author by the use of this particular expression is that it enables him to proceed from rock-bottom upwards as far as he likes. A more refined title would have cut him off, in his method of developing his idea, from the physical roots of existence; for while it is easy to indicate the overtones and undertones of Sensuality it would be hard to bring a gentle, vague word, like the word "sensuousness" down to the bare, stark, stoically-stripped Life-Sensation which is the subject of this book.

J.C.P.

Dedicated to the memory of that great

and much-abused man

Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"In the water" : Pinhole Photography/ Floating Camera

Fake Fish : Hidden Curriculum (Life-Sensation)

In Defence of Sensuality :  John Cowper Powys 1930.

               
                  Foreword.


The author feels that perhaps some explanation is due to the reader for the rather unusual employment of the word "Sensuality" which serves as the title of this work. The advantage given to the author by the use of this particular expression is that it enables him to proceed from rock-bottom upwards as far as he likes. A more refined title would have cut him off, in his method of developing his idea, from the physical roots of existence; for while it is easy to indicate the overtones and undertones of Sensuality it would be hard to bring a gentle, vague word, like the word "sensuousness" down to the bare, stark, stoically-stripped Life-Sensation which is the subject of this book.


                                                            J.C.P.

                 Dedicated to the memory of that great
                  and much-abused man

                Jean-Jacques Rousseau


Tim Ingold

MAKING 2013
Anthropology, Archaeology, Art and Architecture.

Practical Geometry

The Architect and The Carpenter

The Cathedral and The Laboratory

Templates and Geometry

The Return to Alchemy

Points of Precision - a set on Flickr

via flickr.com