Volumetric Poetry: Narrative Architecture, Inspiration to Theory, A Polymathic Bear meets Isaac Asimov and Art Tatum on a Musical Bridge to a Spherical Singularity

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A polymathic bear meets Isaac Asimov and Art Tatum on a musical bridge to a spherical singularity.

In grad school I was influenced by the book 5 Architects. I had originally thought of combining Eisenman, Graves, and Hejduk but stayed with the first two.

As it turned out the only way I could successfully do it was to add the third.

I used a linguistics model of syntax(Eisenman) semantics(Graves) and poetics(Hejduk).

Architecture (syntax, space,) art (semantics, form) and psychology (poetics, geometry of the spaces)

It worked because it became a complete language.

I, Robot was a series of short stories that extrapolated an idea according to a defined set of rules. This idea became the model for my series work. In addition the rejection of the Frankenstein Complex informed my decision to use positive psychology.

 

Art Tatum invented a technique of a universal musical bridge. I used it not as a literal translation of the technique but the idea evolved to logically generate geometric forms.

Axonometric Xanadu and deep focus idealism:

Axonometric drawings became the natural choice to express idealized representations of concepts of positive psychology. 

This came from the deep focus photography of Orson Wells. Wells used it because he said he sees everything in focus. Axonometric drawings do not have a vanishing point and do not diminish in size anywhere on a field.

Proportional gestalt Rosetta Stone of 3 overlapping stories of narrative architecture:

In combining architecture, art, and psychology each element contains architecture, art, and psychology in a different proportion and can be read as a Rosetta Stone of 3 narratives.

Architecture: Emphasizes space

Psychology: Emphasizes the emotional and psychological implications of the geometry of the spaces.

Art: Emphasizes the forms

The Theory of robot musical chairs:

The initial narrative was one of movement of thick, thin, continuous, discontinuous lines. The key was the inscribed rotation rather than a circumscribed rotation. The inscribed rotation made all the generated forms of a proportion the same relative size.

Part of the reason I was able to think of this is that it was done  pre-computer. If I had a computer software program that could generate circumscribed forms it would been another dead end idea.

There are 7 forms: cube, rectangular prism, pyramid, cone, cylinder, sphere, quarter pyramid.

The narrative arc is from the symbolic references of the forms: a mountain is vertical, a house contains, a world is a landscape. The house (a pyramid on a cube) rises up and pulls elements together. It contains landscapes of an inner world: trees, river, clouds, waterfalls etc. that were implied by the symbolism of the forms.

A spatial chiaroscuro of volumetric density:

Forms were drawn in axonometric in 4 different directions, cut out, airbrushed, and assembled using random densities to determine how close to locate the forms to one another. Forms of greater density are closer than those of lesser density sequenced along the generated metaphors that were implied by the symbolism of the forms.

This was further refined by making the 7 forms of different sizes defined  digitally by points, lines, planes, and volumes.

I did this in SketchUp. If I took an empty drawing and loaded all of the forms defined by points then imported a design of all volumes it would automatically change them all to points.

This worked for points, lines, planes, and forms. I could then make a spatial chiaroscuro using points, lines, planes, and volumes instead of varying densities.

The first series had 23 variations. I decided after that I would do series of 10+/-.

Malcolm X and the Pearl in Prell shampoo:

Being autistic and not naturally gifted verbally I knew that I would need to be able to explain the work as simply and coherently as possible in addition to it being made of an ethereal material like space.

Malcolm X memorized the dictionary in order to express and defend himself. 

The makers of Prell wanted to market their product as luxurious. A factorial analysis revealed that a fur coat is the most related to luxury. The second most is a pearl necklace.  A fur coat wasn't going to work with shampoo so a pearl was used.

I assembled 10 or 11 dictionaries, thesauruses, books on etymology, made a list of the symbols and metaphors.

Then I did a type of factorial analysis on degrees of abstraction.

The goal was to provide each artwork with a 25+/- word explanation in as simple a language as possible. This evolved into the Rosetta Stone three explanation idea.

A polymathic bear walking through an historical propositional landscape:

The first group of series developed the language as form, space, emotion, and behavior.

The next group of series used concepts of positive psychology: empathy, altruism, tolerance, humility, equality combined with techniques of different types of artistic expression: line drawing, painting, sketches, sculpture, and collage.

For example a random series of connected, diagonal, opaque cubes as a translation of an erasure on a sketch which could be a private roof garden.

Symphonic Pangaea:

Narratives from the initial intuition at the pizza joint.

Pollack: Cityscapes

Rothko: Woodlands

Pizza joint: Metropolitan Suite

Psychology: Metropolitan Suite is a musical historical drama. I changed it to It's promise not it's reality.

Architecture: Cityscapes is the subjective expression of walking through a city changed to walking through an imaginary world.

Art: Woodlands is a musical landscape of different kinds of trees that I changed to landscape metaphors.

The narrative architecture aquifer of metaphorical water:

Space is like a fluid:

Empathy as metaphorical water

The overarching metaphor is various combinations and permutations of a spatial equivalent of empathy (interlocking (shared) spaces).

I based  my work on empathy(interlocking spaces) as the generative narrative predicate.

All of the work is of a piece and can be collapsed to the singularity of an 8 ft sphere orbiting around themes of empathy, peace, dreams, and love.

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