(NATURAL) CHANCE AND (HUMAN) ORDER :
Forms made via 'nature' and those made by humans share certain aspects of their origination processes and experiential results. However the human forms originate somewhat differently, not so much from a continuous line of 'automatic' development, but as the products of an intelligence that observes as if from 'outside' (from a mental position) the resources of nature, and differentiates those that it judges to be useful as 'tools'. Instead of a continuous 'automatic' process of mutation and environmental-selection, humans (themselves a product of such a process) observe nature from a position that is necessarily separate from it: that is aware - at least to the extent of knowing that we see something that we have not made and seem to be not entirely joined with. This awareness (a state that is probably too narrow to merit the word 'consciousness') enables a degree of control over choices, this enables directed search, thinking, making, and subsequent testing of the product/tool against the conditions it is designed to engage with.
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FISH
- MACKEREL - NATURALLY EVOLVED VISUAL STRUCTURES Nature is in real-time, the objects it forms are continuous from the 'beginning' - each individual creature is a presentation of the present end-point of an immensely long sequence of connected transformations. Looking at this fish we see the now-form of a 540 million year process (in the future this form will have changed or vanished). The 'immediacy' of certain human-made objects is of a different order to this. Nature's alive forms are in a continuously present selection of adaptations or deselection of maladaptations to environmental pressures (the affective actions of the whole of what constitutes 'environment' for any given form); a process which - given the mechanism of change: random DNA mutations and subsequent statistical selection or destruction of any change, by enhanced survival to breed or enhanced probability of pre-breeding death (in the case of this fish, possibly by being a little less visible and catchable by predators) - usually means that achieving obviously different characteristics, via multiplication of survival affectiveness through generations, takes a long time. I'm speculating (check this if it matters !) that the silver underneath and stripy top is a disguise or distraction for predators. The silver perhaps flashing in the eyes of predators moving up from below, confusing the fast and twisting shape among the sunlight flashes and refractions in the upper portion of the sea, and the rhythm of its stripes merging with surface ripples. These colours, structural light-reflectors, and patterns must have accumulated - been reinforced and clarified through generations of breeding and statistical environmental selection. |
ELECTRIC
INCANDESCENT LIGHT
BULB (TUNGSTEN FILAMENT) This human made tool is an example of a very pure distillation/extraction of discrete functions and their associated materials and shapes from the relatively holistic natural 'background', via observation and distillation of its behaviors and properties. This object is the result of a process that, unlike natural evolution, is primarily directed by intention. Though such objects develop via a process of refining, analogous to nature's evolved productions, and are (like the fish) end points of 'pragmatically selected' developmental sequences, however their development is jerky and each 'generational object/'tool' has been modified via a selective pressure that is not simply an automatic result of breeding and subsequent 'natural selection' ... here genes are replaced by ideas, random genetic mutations by an intentional search for existing (but hidden - as yet unfocussed) conditions, breeding by manufacture via tools, and blind environmental selection by experiment and practical usage and testing as a commodity.
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ACCIDENTAL
SPILL - POOL OF BLACK RADIATOR FLUID ON PATTERNED LINO . |
THROW-AWAY
CRUMPLED-PAPER BALL (ON STUDIO FLOOR) Unconscious actions: crumpling and squeezing a sheet of paper and dropping it (on the floor) are not so purely 'physical' and 'content-less' as an accident ... eg: it could be emotionally expressive (an 'immediate drawing') - eg: an act of aggression against oneself, directed via the paper and/or its environment. .
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EMPTY
AD HOARDING - RAILTON RD., BRIXTON, LONDON, SE24 |
LONDON BRIDGE
TUBE STATION RENOVATION - PASSAGE BETWEEN PLATFORMS Except by accident, there are limited ways of achieving a human-made object that shares certain characteristics with natural objects: that is genuinely spontaneous, has no design aesthetic, is not constrained by any cultural opinions re beauty, gracefulness, taste, fashion. An object that - because there was no considering what it 'should' look like - thus no hesitation introduced between the need it fulfills and the means at hand and acts of making it - has an immediate 'presentness'. Such forms are made at the 'speed of necessity', the act of making is not restrained and therefore its actions are still present - thus they can be experienced by a subsequent audience (as are the acts of a performer of music*) as happening 'now'. Further, such results display an untrammeled operation of human intelligence and mental/physical resourcefulness; a seamless event without cultural constraints that communicates no meanings extraneous to immediate need, and thus a type of beauty that is a human-made analog of natural happenings (with the proviso that, unlike nature's productions, such human acts are 'discontinuous' : constrained within the limits of prosthetic tools and manufactured means). The above example is a work of large and small responses: firstly to a sequence of large vertical features in the wall (panels, joins, channels[?]., a door[?]); secondly to small irregularities in the site, task, materials and their human usage: The large rhythm is 4 main vertical panels: 1: gray (stretched plastic, red-taped) / 2: dirty-whitish (with a splash like a bent figure amid 6 scattered patches) / 3: clean-white / 4: dirty-whitish (with 4 orderly patches). These all framed with coloured tape, sometimes calmly applied, sometimes as if frantically trapping a creature struggling to escape. NOTE: *The whole wall could serve as a music-score played by a small group of raucous and dulcet instruments, or translated into voice noises. . |
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A SUNNY DAY GATHERING
OF SMALL HUMAN GROUPS - TATE
MODERN NORTH LAWN - BANKSIDE,
LONDON, SE1 |
3
PEOPLES HANDS - CHELSEA
COLLEGE OF ARTS CAFE - 16
JOHN ISLIP ST., LONDON, SW1 |
A
ZEBRA CROSSING AND OTHER SIGNIFICATIONS - LONDON RD., ISLEWORTH, MDDLX. The
College gate's 'wrought-iron-twiddle' style fakes that of Baroque palaces - a style adopted
by the founder of Pears Soap who built his late-19C mansion here in leafy
Isleworth (now morphed into a technical college and supplemented with late 1970s 'box-modern' blocks (a confusion of snobbery with practicality - perhaps not
unwelcome to the 'authorities'). Unlike the zebra-stripes that provoke an action
by proffering its abstraction, these gates simply copy (albeit with some editing
of the difficult and expensive bits !) the familiar appearance of prestigious
originals, evoking a memory and its concomitant emotions of snobbery and envy
(kitsch). A
chance association of red objects bracket the gateway
- apparently meaningfully grouped at the instant of the photo (and not noticed
by the photographer !) - are actually a 'real-objective' event with no 'subjective' significance. A group of
three unconnected(?) people who all look to the left (at an emerging (red)
fire-engine(?)), are all clad in the same red, and - as if this coincidence is
insufficient - are symmetrically balanced on the right of the central gates by a
large same-red phone-box. Any thinking-being could be excused for mistaking this
'expression of chaos' for intention: street-theatre, ritual, or suchlike. NOTICES - CHELSEA-WESTMINSTER
HOSPITAL - FULHAM RD., LONDON LONDON BRIDGE
TUBE STATION RENOVATION - VARIOUS STORES, TEMPORARY NOTICES & ETC. .
LEWISHAM
HOSPITAL PHYSIOTHERAPY ENTRY & STAIR LANDING - NOTICES, PICTURE &
ETC. .
AN
INTENTIONALLY SIGNIFICANT BUT AESTHETICALLY KITSCH SCULPTURE - "FIRST
CHILD" (BY R. WATSON) - ST JOHN'S CRESCENT (& BRIXTON RD.),
LONDON, SW9 .
THE
SIGNIFICANT SCULPTURE WITH ITS UNINTENDED COMPANIONS - ST JOHN'S CRESCENT,
LONDON, SW9 "APPARITION"
- STRAND, (ALDWYCH), LONDON, WC2 "APPARITION"
- STRAND, (ALDWYCH), LONDON,
WC2 EXHIBIT
OF RICHARD ROGERS' ARTS-CENTRE PROJECT (PLUS POWER CABLE) - FESTIVAL HALL - SOUTH BANK, LONDON .
EXHIBIT
OF RICHARD ROGERS' ARTS-CENTRE PROJECT (POWER CABLE DETAIL) - FESTIVAL HALL -
SOUTH BANK, LONDON
FAKE
'HALF-TIMBERED' HOUSES - DULWICH VILLAGE, LONDON
.
'DEVELOPER'
APARTMENT-BLOCK CONVERSION - ST. GERMANS RD., LONDON, SE23
A feature that seems so pointless (and expensive)
as to
give an impression of fudging some mis-measured interior necessity (staircase?). LITTER
IN YARD BESIDE
COUNCIL FLATS - SHOREDITCH, LONDON . "PARK
REGIS" HOTEL HALLWAY - 160 BROAD ST., BIRMINGHAM "MAXX
MARKETING EUROPE LTD" (MARKETING AGENCY), 185 PARK ST., LONDON, SE1
.
BULB-SHADE - APARTMENT, AMSTERDAM .
STORE - STRAND, (ALDWYCH), LONDON, WC2
"BUSKERS" - STRAND, (ALDWYCH),
LONDON, WC2
LITTER
DUMP & WIND - ENTRY TO "WINTERSLOW HOUSE", FLAXMAN RD (CNR OF
LILFORD RD), LONDON, SE5
"FLORAL
PLACE" LOGO PLUS GRAFFITI - LONGACRE, LONDON, WC2
(pic
1984)
NELSON
MANDELA COMMEMORATION - FESTIVAL HALL, SOUTH BANK, LONDON
(pic
early 1987)
. ESTATE
AGENT'S AD - ANARCHIST CENTER, 122 RAILTON RD, BRIXTON, LONDON
ST PANCRAS STATION HOTEL - PRE-RENOVATION
OPEN-DAY
(pic 09-1997)
TORN ADS - HOARDING - RAILTON RD., BRIXTON, LONDON,
SE24
LETTERS
& VISITOR - GRAAN-SILO SQUAT, ENTRY HALL - AMSTERDAM
(pic 09-1994)
BUILDING-SITE-ENTRY HOARDING WITH MIRROR - HANWAY ST., LONDON, W1
(her realness is eclipsed by the painted figure, its pointing finger
and the mirror)
LEWISHAM
HOSPITAL RADIOLOGY WAITING ROOM - PAINTING REPRODUCTIONS, INDICATORS, ETC
BUTCHER SHOP WINDOW & TATTOOED ARM - SURBITON, LONDON . LETTER-TRAY
- GRAAN-SILO SQUAT, ENTRY HALL - AMSTERDAM (pic 06-1994) . 'PHANTOM' -
PACKAGING-DUMP
- STAFFORD STREET, LONDON, W1 . 'PHANTOM' -
STACK OF LITTER (MOSTLY FOOD CONTAINERS) - WHITEHALL (S-END), LONDON, SW1 . 'PHANTOM' - SHADOW PLUS CHEWING-GUM - BOURNEMOUTH
RD., LONDON, SE15 OMELETTE (pic 08-08-2015) THE
REVERSED GRAVE - CAMBERWELL NEW CEMETERY,
HONOR OAK PARK, LONDON, SE23
MODES OF DESIGN-CHAOS :
...
in process
Instances
of unresolved conflicts of unrelated informations in the public environment are
common.
(pic c1987)
A confusion of signs: a muddle that
results not only from the independent
acts of unrelated agencies but also from the different 'levels of abstraction'
of the various signs:
Zebra Crossing
stripes are
almost-pure abstraction: their meaning needs to be learnt, but not to the degree
that completely arbitrary signs such as alphabet letters require; the stripes
illustrate the acts of stepping ... and
the yellow belisha-beacons the 'signal fire on the hill', but what about their striped
stems?: more stepping like the zebra?: climbing the poles?! ...
suddenly - because one assumes there is an 'information-scheme' here -
signification breaks down, loses constancy and instead of clear action, provokes
doubt and muddle (causing an excess of brain processing: that
perhaps should be done by a designer not by the user!). Seemingly included in, and thus compounding
the muddle of this apparent scheme, are striped gate posts -
an outdated architectural convention and a pure coincidence that here seems to intentionally
signal the crossing's goal (and its continuation skywards !).
These
and other significations confuse each other and us: a plot of chaos richly
planted with intentions.
.
(pic 29-09-1996)
Another, but more localised version. A
potentially even life-threatening muddle of signs, sign-locations and
sign-styles. No encompassing functionality has been identified by an
in-charge designer, consequently each sign is separate and (inevitably) competes
for space.
(pic 04-12-1998) ...
in process
The objects (and
their labels) are signs talking to
two different 'audiences': those who are working here and 'customers' who use
this transport system - at this stage of the renovation the latter usage (eg:
the platform indicators) is somewhat provisional
Not only are the placings of the
objects hardly considered, but an analogous and somewhat ludicrous lack of coherence is apparent in the attention of the person who (carefully) painted the
two platform direction signs.
(pic 2-01-2018)
...
in process
On one level, that of their separate conceptual
identities,
these objects are a chance agglomeration; however on a more inclusive level,
they may constitute a group of (possibly separate) initiatives related within a
concept of administering a sense of health and its practical needs. For
instance, perhaps the picture that faces one as one mounts to the entry-doors of
the Physiotherapy domain - which depicts an arch into an exquisite 'garden of promise',
with expectantly waiting chairs and table, rendered in a visual style that has
become a kitsch mnemonic for arcadian delight - is considered an anxiety-placebo,
a reward for the patient's therapeutic work, a place of earned rest! The
fact that this 'idyllic' picture surmounts an "exitMASTER EVACUATION
CHAIR" (a bagged couple of overpriced steel invalid-chair extension-handles
to assist an emergency evacuation via stairs) is almost certainly non-significant
expediency.
(pic 30-11-2018) ....in
process
#
(pic 30-11-2018) ....in
process
This 'Art Work' (dedicated by a bishop) is in a
direct positional relationship with 11 different types of official and
unofficial service-items and litter. An agglomeration of objects that absurdly, inevitably and
unintentionally relate to it, and that generate via these relations an
entertaining variety of fantasy stories that seem to confirm its pretensions and thus those of
its commissioners and dedicators:
The Sculpture vis-a-vis the
Recycled-Clothing Bin - The naked figures burst free from the 'recycling
bin' of their plinth. in
process
The
Sculpture on its box plinth vis-a-vis
the Supermarket Trolley with its shopping of
garbage the
sculpture is as if bursting up and out from its huge supermarket
container/plinth as if creativity has enabled an apotheosis of garbage into art.
in process
The metal//steel
Sculpture and the Bent Steel Frame
- a piece of junk that leans against the metal Recycling Bin as if
imploring someone to treat it as a sculpture and mount it on this big pink
plinth//posing as a sculpture
fallen from (or asking to be mounted on) its [huge pink] plinth.
in process
The black Sculpture and
the black Information-Junction Box
-
The black metal box is
as if a 'tidied-up' or recyclable compressed version of the black metal
sculpture//We know the black box is filled with (and is
hiding) re-routing-information-wires//conduits, and we can see the black sculpture as if
bursting out of its box, as if revealing and freezing as
a metal illustration a potential of the supposed information within its box-like plinth.
Which however is the most flexible and viable information system? - if the
answer is the Black-Box, consider: does the
'black-box' not stimulate desire and need for fossilized
information-forms/informative-monuments?). in
process
The Sculpture and
the Traffic Instruction Signs - The
road-signs can be easily fantasized as plot labels
// The absurd
duplication of road-sign poles (reinforced by recycle-bin and rubbish-trolley)
stimulates a vision of a plot dedicated to ad hoc waste and stupidity
'#''#''######
The
Sculpture and the Bicycle-Hire Stands
that (except they are now empty!) proffer the
promise of a quick getaway from the atrocity that the sculptured figures are
fleeing from - a suggestion that degrades into a ludicrous comedy the dreadful
crime that the sculpture illustrates.
in process
.
(pic 16-01-2018)
...
in process
On our streets: a monument to chance
intervention.
A sudden and
temporary event: the apparition of an announcement. Because it is an intrusion
into an established place/order, a potential scatterer and disrupter of
normal habits, it needs limitation ... fencing-in to protect and signal that
it is a sudden and unexpected disruption into our otherwise ubiquitous and
submersive space.
.
(pic 16-01-2018)
...
in process
Facing the traffic flow its
primary purpose is revealed: this unforeseen ensemble warns of an unforeseen event.
(pic 09-1997)
Design conflict
resulting from interventions by two non-relating agencies. Here
the work of a suave architectural practice is trumped by someone in a totally different
mind-set - for whom a bit of crude improvisation is an apposite solution !
A small exhibition 'advertising' the
proposed (and alas subsequently dumped) Richard Rogers' South-Bank Arts Centre
scheme. An exquisitely economical presentation with a subtlety angled stand
displaying the (illuminated) site model ... at this point it becomes obvious that
something was missing in the exhibition's design ... the display stand is less-than-subtlety
tethered to the wall with a gaffa-taped power-cable with its over-long 'spare loop' stapled to the (heritage-listed 1950s)
skirting, socketed to an extension-lead that lies loose along the floor, until suddenly hitched up and stapled
to the (heritage-listed 1950s) ply-wood wall fascia as it nears a socket
.
(The
astonishing aesthetic and practical insouciance of many major British institutions still
persists, only somewhat modified by an awareness that 'smartness' connotes
'worth'.)
(pic 09-1997)
(pic 03-05-2007)
... in process
A narrow example of
'design-indeterminacy'. A structurally incomprehensible muddle of lines are
applied to the facade in positions that seem to attempt a solution to the
following absurd problem: 'Cover this non-symmetrical polygon
with a drawing of
straight lines which exhibit a minimum of visually-rational connections with
each other and their supporting shape'! [Ref:
real half-timbered houses]
(pic 21-08-2017)
A 'design' which displays a similar 'mind-set' to the
two following examples: indeterminacy.
Because our culture offers no basic rational/sensational training in how to
experience, invoke and satisfy levels of human need beyond physical necessities
and commercially endorsed products and 'styles',
'the aesthetic function' is associated with 'exclusive' products and almost completely isolated as a aspect of
'luxury'. For the
majority this leaves tradition and 'tried and tested' craft habits - for the designer/builder a distillate of easiest,
and in this regressive design-culture, most available methods and
solutions. Thus guided, the 'design process' is often reduced to simple
indecisiveness, and 'decisions' based on "its a toss-up" are as near to intention
as can be achieved. At every level of its materialisation such an object accumulates
provisionality and becomes more 'expensive' to
change.
Finally, defining
such a work as 'finished' consists of choosing among a list of manufactured (and thus mass-taste endorsed)
adornment details which, because they are applied to its external surfaces and thus suggest
'finishing touches' (the 'light in the eye' of the portrait) they serve to signal
the building's completion.
Instead of a design-summation there is a sideways substitute that this type of 'designer'
often resorts
to. To disguise and distract-from the incompleteness and visual
indeterminacy of their work; to project its 'style' onto the (mass-mnemonic) market, and to signal its detailed 'finish', childish ('dolls-house') value-signals (kitsch pretend 'quality-motifs'
that allude to 'better times' and wealthy taste) are applied to the relatively
unresolved carcass: eg
the ingratiating 'projecting-itself-towards-us' of the cutely tile-roofed
entry*; the 'quaint' scallop-edged leading of the
as if 'stuck-on' bay-window; the fanlights' stained-glass motifs; a classically styled
house-number; the inevitable 'coach-lamps' - one beside the entry door, the other (absurdly sub-practical) used to illuminate the 'techno-muddle' on the porch-side; all
these tickling the vaguely vacillating background stylings of the whole re-modelled building.
Due to this 'designer's' unconsciously expressed and monotonously
ordinary ignorance, the working norm is one of 'muddling along' and (beyond basic practical
needs) chance is not resolved but held in approximate check by craft-methods
and habits
that "usually work well enough". The shabby results of this are so prevalent
in this culture as to
almost constitute a 'style', which may even seem 'comforting', typically 'British', cozily undemanding, 'non-snobby'.
* NOTE:
.
(paste-up 2-pics 30-01-2011)
Human-originated chaos:
the uniquely discomfortable chaos of human litter and intentionless
'arrangement'. Each object is
placed on a separate occasion and any intention to use it is either in the past or not envisaged at
the moment of placing, they therefore display an 'arrangement' of
meaningless-separation [refer to next pic]. There is no coherence imposed by practical
use or need for storage, except to place them near the wall to
maintain access (this is seemingly an unclaimed piece of yard).
They are consigned to the margin of noticability, 'dumped' but not thrown-away (ie: victims of 'too-lazy-to-dispose-of'
and 'may-use-sometime').
Is it possible that in this case it is simple
vacillation - there is no 'position' (in time or space) indicated by their
location or by the class of intentions that positions them. Because the items have nothing
in common except a present-disuse they are placed at a non-meaningful distance
from each other - a 'vacillation-distance' - a vacillating compromise between intentions:
present, potential, evoked [1].
NOTE :
1: Tools and materials in use for practical tasks
are automatically placed in a visible pattern that is as nearly as possible determined by the brain-body's
performed and envisaged movements, the disposition of its in-process work,
the accommodation of its location's other uses - the whole situation's necessary
ergonomics.
Such an ordered pattern of tools and materials will be as nearly 'natural'
as human-originated tools, materials, needs
can allow [eg: Silo - Bart's
music studio].
(pic 19-08-2017)
The degree of
inconsequence/the latitude of 'chance' in the assembling of this line-up of
objects is somewhat less than the last example because their presence is at
least driven by a desire to illustrate a meaning - however, the
similar underlying
sense of positional vacillation results from insufficient definition of this
desired meaning.
The objects are chosen to signify care, generous provision, luxury, however they just as readily convey
indecisiveness, uselessness, sterility, waste ... this is because the person who invented this object-
charade and the person who placed them there had no real guiding sense of a particular and
substantial need for them - of objects and positions that would invite and evoke actual usage.
Because the mix of 'leisure' and 'waiting' was never substantially
defined, the person
whose job was to position these physical (and thus inherently
positionally-absolute objects), had to place and group them with
a spurious definiteness - affording the display a
scenery-like irreality of
practical significations. Because they arranged them 'from the
outside' like an 'illustration' of a meaning, not 'from the inside' from a visualisation of personally using them,
they convey the apparently strict order, yet in fact vacillating
indecision, of a 'list without
a unity of subject'.
..Ref:
Half-timbered-houses
(pic 25-07-2017) ....in
process
A human-originated chaos which was
presumably intended to appear 'thoughtfully designed' - however incompetence rules
and the actual result is clueless, petty and coy ... indeed It has an ironic air
as
if its initiator secretly suspected this was its effect, and resorted to
"well its better than nothing!".
IMPROVISATION & COULDN'T-CARE-LESS DESIGN EVOKES UNFORESEEN BEAUTY & UN-THEMED DRAMA :
...
in process
#
(pic summer-1988)
An 'instant' improvisation provoked by irritation at the glare of a naked bulb
hung in the room's corner. To hand was an A4 envelope which was taped to the
bulb-holder. That the envelope's translucence would reveal its structure and
that this would gratuitously and so aptly relate to
the concealed bulb-holder's graceful complex of shadows, and all of this to the
shape of the corner itself, was completely unpredicted.
(pic 20-01-2018)
On our streets: at once a monument to chance and the
beauty of pragmatic (dis)order.
Their beauty issues from the conjunctions
of types of objects whose combined forms are sufficiently unusual to leave the field of imagination open.
Our visionary mental forming is not
contradicted or 'improved' by the (usually trite) subject-ideas of intentional designers/sculptors.
The considerations of their makers are merely immediate practical
requirements: economy of temporary-space-use, access, stacking, etc.. There is no attempt here to achieve a
'presence';
an eye-catching spectacle, subject significance, aesthetic satisfaction, admirable
craft - they are made without awareness of these effusions of 'Art' - practicality initiates their being and their formations,
and in regard to such 'artistic' qualities they display nothing but
perfection.
Consequently for us - the street wanderers - the innate excitement of the unfamiliar;
the combination of incisive decision yet inattention manifested via the arranging of these unexpected and for us
absurdly meaningful assemblages, are available freely - without any expense of our interpretation and admiration
... profound (limitless in depth) free-gifts among the ads and destinations that incite social/cultural desires and obligations.
.
(pic 16-01-2018)
A complex little pavement
chance
drama:
By its membership of
this dramatic medley of meaning-mangled objects, the kitsch lamp-post
(intended to impressively posture) discards its pompous presence and becomes
simply another street-actor as it joins the bent and warning-spangled
telephone-box in a 'dance of decor'. The carefully placed dumped-chairs
(coincidentally flashing the red of a passing bus)
exude 'intention', perhaps advertising that the two 'silly' principal performers
(their compatibility
confirmed by tidily-dumped rubbish shared between them) are
inviting humans to participate in their charade.
.
(pic 13-04-2014) ... in process
A dump with one component moving - the
dump changes shape as wind unpredictably kicks and rotates its
kite-like open box
.
CHANCE PROVOKES INTERPRETATIVE WIT
&/OR
INVOKES PHANTASMAGORIC MEANINGS:
....
in process
Chance
conjunctions invoke new meanings
or extend/endorse existing ones.
Intentional design seeks to minimise unintended affects, even so, in this external world of
continual changes, conjunctions and relatings that may espouse chance significations, there is potential for a
brain wired to deduce meanings and identities
and to discriminate and identify familiar objects (processing via language mediated
perceptions),
to be so challenged as to collapse into phantasmagoric paranoid hysteria or flip sideways into its store of social/moral judgments.
Pragmatic improvisation, intent only on solving a presently experienced need at smallest possible 'expense' and
thus exploiting the immediacy and economy of reusing discards, enables its results to participate in the world's
connectedness, thus tending to espouse an emergence of subsequently noticed meanings and unforeseen but seemingly relevant events.
An image completed by (skillfully
manipulated) 'natural-chance'.
This
boringly 'restrained-by-modern-good-taste' logo has been exquisitely
complexified and completed by a talented graffitist (at this time St Martins
School of Art Graphic-Design was just up this road (?)). The delicately flung
dribbles add the natural action of gravity and a balancing act of flower stems,
which vitally connect the 'designer paint-gesture' (dead shapes and arrangement) flowers to the
real pavement - the uneven-ended marks even suggesting the receding space of a
meadow. They complete the hoarding-space and give a pictorial role to the
fourth colour: the black of the title.
'Natural-chance'
(donated by vandals) adds
meanings.
It was rumoured at the time that Young Tories had vandalised the Festival
Hall's Mandela monument. Aside from politics, the effect was magnificent. Like
the previous example - but via an act opposite in intention: done to damage not
to complete - it released essential meanings.
The rather powerful and expressive
bust is mounted on a plinth that is meanly proportioned and boorishly 'Traditional':
in 'expensive' glossy black plus gilded letters in a clumsy 'Roman' font. However,
too these disjunctive objects a third (and 'reconciling') element has been added
(ironically) via vandalism, whose hurled paint evokes a
'blue waterfall of bloody tears' that falls from the centre of the chest (the
'heart'), partly obscures the banal text and spreads out beyond the limitations
of the statue's designated space of ground - a complete and perfect form that
displays the beauty of a natural flow obeying the universal field of gravity,
and which physically and aesthetically opposes the kitsch ugliness and pompous
intentions of the designer(s) of plinth and text, the absurd limitations of a
truncated bust, and even the petty spatial isolation of the monument
itself.
It seems exquisitely ironic that the monument's absurdity
- that the arrogance
of a colonial power (this 'Roman' scripted plinth) supports the memory of a
person honored for his opposition to such - should be so precisely emphasised by politically motivated vandalism which, in a seemingly
intentionally-meaningful act, 'attacks' it with an image that in itself is without
manipulative significance, whose undesigned beauty and natural freedom clearly
signify the opposition (springing from the heart) of Mandela to the strictures of those who
'represent the people' yet have no vital symbols to represent their power - who reveal the
poverty of their sense of reality in their use of such defunct (Roman !) signs
to bestow 'honor' !
(pic 1985)
A chance convergence.
What an absurd conjunction: an
.
Chance or design-ambiguity evokes mass-mnemonics:
On
the analogy of a zoo or diorama, the notice - which in fact faced the public
stair-landing - appears to designate and label the taped-off
space it (apparently) fronts, as if advising that, for instance, the guard was a captive offender on
show to the stream of visitors, like an inmate of an 19th century prison or
madhouse.
(Is
it possible that the posture of the rather frustrated looking guard showed he
sensed his participation in a tableau ?)
.
(pic 1988)
This
hoarding was injudiciously erected opposite the Anarchist office in Railton Road
- it provided a canvas for their pictorial experiments.
This
example is very close to simple chaos, however it's probable that the 'destructive' tearing off of layers of overpasted ads was intentionally stopped when wit
revealed a funny and shocking new image. The
shock of this unexpected apparition is not only due to the contrast of its parts
but also the immediacy of the acts that revealed it.
.
A chance accumulation of
'letters': 'C': the front-restraining bar of the push-chair; W: a real
letter (perhaps intentionally displayed as a chance-trophy); 'O': a
life-belt (the quay is outside); a sort of 'K': a visitor, just entered from
the dark quay, sees me photoing and poses.
An arch of 'letters', its
form and spacing most likely formed by chance, or at least subconsciously.
.
(pic 24-03-2014)
...
in process
A game with users of the
alley: a random-person trap - be caught and judged as to how unreal you are!
Which one is more real
? Because he is 'on the outside' - on my side,
the man in builder-uniform seems more in my world, more 'real' than the woman inside
the mirror
(not as it were ' behind
glass')
(pic 2-01-2018)
...
in process
This
is part of the end-wall of a chair filled Radiology waiting room.
The categories of objects clustered on and against this wall
have almost no orderly (visual/practical) relationship
with each other, they thus inevitably
and vicariously embody//constitute alternative//unintended 'chance-selected'
significations, which are latent in the muddle of types, functions, positions. The
ensemble constitutes about a dozen separate things with about a half-dozen separate
functions, of these functions two seemed to me - sitting there waiting, my
fantasy machine idly playing the game of relational-meanings -
especially
meaningfully related. The objects in the room most alien to its primary
purpose (waiting for a diagnostic x-ray) seemed to me to be the
repro-paintings (offered as palliatives
to fear and boredom, as assurances of a culturally
rich life beyond the paucity of the present, and as a type of
'relic'/'fetish':
a promise
of expressive freedom garnered
from the outside social world ... all set against the experience of
bodily confinement
and fear of technological subjection). Their layout suggested a competition
(perhaps for popularity) between the two paintings: a 15thC Jan Van Eyck portrait and a 20thC Rothko,
hung each side (a matter of simple convenience not meaning) of a vertical-separator: a cable-run that powers and informs the two
appointment-indicators above. In my fantasy these indicators referred to the pictures, seeming to show an
'audience-approval-score' indicating that the Van Eyck is at least x10 more popular than the Rothko (I'm guessing this chance ratio is feasible and if
so, at this time, these indicators could indeed denote two completely unrelated
meanings!
This is the entrance to a dream).
[Ref: the paintings: Van
Eyck + Rothko]
.hosp-wall
(pic 11-1981)
A pure accident :
A disconcerting conjunction of cuts of meat (that include a
severed bone) and a repulsively similar bony wrist and hand ... its
vulnerability shockingly emphasised as the butcher reached forward to grasp
the meat and his sleeve unsheathed an elaborately tattooed blade pointing at his
naked wrist (as if to instruct "cut here"!).
An improvised object that is a marvelously complex amalgam of pragmatism, chance,
and (possibly intentional) wit.
Was
this head-like letter-rack intended to play a phantasmagoric visual game ... is
it a somewhat sinister and intentional joke; was its maker guided by
subliminally observed coincidences; or is it simply a lucky conjunction of
chances. Was its location chosen to include the nail-hole
‘skull-eyes’ peering through it from the wall behind - forming a phantom hollow head,
cued and 'confirmed' by the
head-like rack itself (with its fluffy cat-rug hat), which - with its protruding
peg-like 'eyes' and its tray-label 'mouth' - pushes forward its 3-dimensional embodiment.
(pic 27-07-2015)
An early evening (4:16pm) office clear-out awaiting a recycling collection.
A monumental pile that, for me, acts as a
'low-intensity' phantasmagoric-inducer (probably triggered by an image of some
huge enthroned man/statue/alien/etal in a movie) thus presumably its phantasm
is both weak in precision and a minority experience. The
intensity of this mind><thing junction is not so experientially
overwhelming as the next example - it left lots of room for 'common-sense'.
(pic 07-08-2015)
Walking at night, distracted among the tourists near Parliament Square, we saw this 'figure', sitting
and possibly begging. The location and an approximate shape induced the shock of an
'out-of-a-corner-of-the-eye' phantom. Such a shock correlates with an instant of contradiction:
simultaneously a
rubbish pile and a person, and as a person it's a very unusual and therefore a scarily indefinable
and thus unpredictable one, it's also sensed as personally connected to oneself and
(like a phantom in a dream) it seems familiar with us (and as a fantasy in one's own
brain, indeed it is!). An atavistic terror surfaces at that moment and only very slowly
dissipates.
(pic 07-06-2014)
The simplest/silliest chance conjunctions - here a
wing-mirror shadow and two spots of (probably) squashed chewing-gum - can
(especially if they resemble eyes in a head) momentarily induce the shiver of 'a-confrontation-especially-meant-for-me'. Though the source-image provoked here
is most likely a childrens book/film
.
An obvious example of the intro statement above is making oneself a quick practical meal. In this particular case the phantasmagoric
consequences were rather shocking !
Angela cut a big tomato in halves and put them in the frying-pan, she then poured
in the whipped eggs (neither were placed or poured with positional
intention) - she was shocked when the egg flowed around the tomatoes and the
slightly convex pan centre, and a big face was laughing up at her!
Of course, for our inherited brain, wherever there
is visual chaos there is potential for seeing a face. Also, in this case
there was a reinforcement - this sudden apparition of an 'idiot-prankster' seemed
an appropriate finale(?) for a previous sequence of unusual/notable events
[ref these here].
.
(pic 26-12-2017)
Along the cemetery's west boundary the
graves sometimes have 'memorial' benches in the only left-over space available:
behind their head-stones. The placing of the benches: facing the blank-backs of the
graves' memorial stones, seem to be - according to conventional expectations
- in a position of 'minimal-involvement-with-the-dead-loved-ones'.
In the above picture I am sitting on one such bench looking beyond the edges of its black marble slab at the rest of the cemetery.
However the slab hinders my view, and suddenly it affords a surprising experience:
I find myself facing my own reflection, dimly glimpsed - the exposed flesh-parts, hands
and face, more reflective and thus visible in a dark cave-like space inside the black stone, as if an unreachable 'passed-over'
image of myself, a premonition that at least part of oneself has already joined the
dead. On this monument's unacknowledged, out-of-common-sight, 'subjective'
rear face, is a far and away more evocative and living image of the factuality
yet unreachability of the dead than the clichéd presentations on its front 'external' 'public'
face. What chance of discovering a meaning so
apposite that it seems as though designed!
How ironic that the cemetery is unable to present any experience pertaining
to death/personal-disappearance more objective than clichés, except via a chance
insertion (of a bench) that facilitated a behaviour that, in this kitsch environmental context, spontaneously
mediated a real un-preconceived conceptual ('poetic') experience pertaining to death (and
that the means of this discovered experience has been threatened with removal
by the Council via an irrational bureaucratic fiat!).
.
STRUGGLE
AGAINST CHAOS - ADDING ORDER AGAINST ADVANCING CHAOS - MEANING & AMBIGUITY
- PINNING DOWN CHANCE/DOUBT
: ...
in process
|
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LETRASET CATALOGUE PAGE :
HELVETICA / ARROWS / WC FEMALE + MALE
|
...
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CAFE WC
FEMALE + MALE
- CAFE BASEMENT, BRIGHTON
|
GRAPHIC-DESIGN STUDENT'S SKETCH FOR A "HOVERSPEED"
AD |
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BODY-ASH
'SPRINKLING' - HITHER GREEN CREMATORIUM LAWN, VERDANT LANE, LONDON, SE6
1: maybe the above case was vaguely primrose-queued? and the one in the
next pic helped by daffodils? |
BODY-ASH
'DRAWING' - HITHER GREEN
CREMATORIUM LAWN, VERDANT LANE, LONDON, SE6 |
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YARD FENCE & HOUSE NUMBERS - LONDON, SE23 |
YARD FENCE WRECKED - LONDON, SE23 |
CHANCE - INCOMPETENCE - ART - SKILL :
... in process
Ultimate skill (eg in making ceramic objects) is demonstrated in an act of 'Craft' that
transcends practiced control and achieves an unexpected original object that is 'Art'.
The only result that resembles this is a formation that results from 'Chance'.
The mode of craft that is closest to chance is uncompetence, the least amount of
skill commensurate with making an object that minimally denotes a recognisable
function.
Chance
'objects', uncompetent objects, and art objects have a similar immediacy of being
and sensational affect. However only art
objects (ie experientially resolved originals) solve the problem of a 'boundary'
- worked on until discovered as a complete and present (thus unprecedented)
experience
- such an object has an existence that is independent
of its surroundings.
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PORCELAIN BOWL WITH INCISED LOTUS DECORATION IN IVORY WHITE GLAZE - DING WARE, MID
NORTH
SONG, 11th C. FLAGSTAFF HOUSE TEA MUSEUM, HONG KONG PARK |
VESSEL - INCRIBED: "YVONNE
6-05-94" - BOUGHT IN CHARITY SHOP, LONDON |
|
|
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MICHELE
DE LUCCHI - "KRISTALL" (1981) - laminate, lacquered wood, enameled steel
- w 61cm x d 54.6cm x h 63.5cm |
MICHELE
DE LUCCHI - "KRISTALL" (1981) - laminate, lacquered wood, enameled steel
- w 61cm x d 54.6cm x h 63.5cm |
IMPROVISED ARCHITECTURE IN AMSTERDAM INDUSTRIAL SQUATS & COLLECTIVES
IMPROVISED VILLAGES: (WANDSWORTH & KEW BRIDGE 'ECO VILLAGES')
ALLOTMENT IMPROVISATIONS - PUBLIC, LEGAL, SOCIALLY INDORSED
IMPROVISED OPEN-SITE: ("THE NOMADIC COMMUNITY GARDEN")
TEMPORARY-ARCHITECTURE: ("FRANK'S CAFE" & "SOUTHWARK LIDO")
VERNACULAR - PRAGMATISM & STYLE: (BERDUN VILLAGE BARNS & HOUSES)
"HOME"
- MY LOCATION VIA MASS-PRODUCTS & TASTE - LIV-RM
"HOME" - MY LOCATION VIA MASS-PRODUCTS &
TASTE - HOUSE
"HOME" - MY LOCATION VIA PERSONAL CHOICES
ART - GOTHIC INTO RENAISSANCE INTO EARLY 20thC
ART
- 20thC COLLAGE INTO MASS-MEDIA
GRAFFITI INTO STREET-ART
KITSCH
CHANCE & DESIGN