Warm-Up Exercise
RECEIVE AND RESEARCH
Gravity, Orientation, & Spatial Tales of
Origin
First Offering:
Seed and
Text
Pistachio
& Chili Seeds
Enigma
of Arrival, Naipaul
The
Volcano Lover, Sontag
Process: This process will guide all your analytical
work this semester. For all the
assignments each student will complete a two-part exploration. The first part
is a series of diagrams of structure and space. The second part is a written
text of varying specified lengths that expand on the diagrammatic markings.
On 4x6
note/index/post cards we will diagram the structural and spatial qualities of
objects and places that define our location in the World. One idea, one set of
marks for each card.
This
first Warm-Up Exercise will have no assigned limits of the quantity of cards
except those assigned intentionally by you.
Each set of card responses is to use one side only to be pinned up in
the class discussion session. All
students must start their production by marking the first card with one point
and one line. The second pass must include two points and two lines, onto four
points/four lines, sixteen points/sixteen lines finally 256 points/256 lines.
This suggests five (digital) iterations of a progressing idea. Each part of
questions A-D below should have its own set of five (1/2/4/16/256) postcards.
This suggests a series of perhaps five responses to each part of A-D. The
intent is that you force a CONNECTION between these fundamentally distinct
spatial issues. You will be acting as a designer of sorts, an architect who
envisions the connection where only others can understand the parts.
IN
ADDITION to these diagrammatic postcards you are to type only one page
(8-1/2" x11") of text to accompany the four part questions. Think of
five sentences perhaps for each part of the questions, perhaps four paragraphs
each with an internal recurrent duality. This is curiously a design exercise
pretending to be a response to an analytical methodology of the familiar and
the commonplace. Enjoy the myriad of intuitive possibilities initially but be
strategic and educate yourself by the challenge.
FOUR
QUESTIONS:
A.
Where do
you come from?
Where do you now find yourself?
Begin
the process of articulation and connection.
B. What
is the nature of a pistachio seed?
What
is the nature of a hot pepper seed?
Continue the process of articulation
and connection.
How would you then strategically
connect A to B?
C. Enigma
of Arrival is the story of a stranger relocated to an ancient and mythic
land.
The Volcano Lover is the
story of strange things given value or rejected by diverse cultural responses.
How are these brief texts related
structurally to A + B?
In other words how would you design a
place where A + B = C?
D. The
Bible, The Aeneid, and The First House are all Spatial Tales
of Origin.
How are recurrent themes, recurrent dualities of
individual journeys and urban foundations connected to A + B + C?