Literary Tropes

Sometimes things are so obvious you can't see them. When I was told to mind my tendencies to figure out what I might be interested in for thesis and have the project naturally occur from there, I only looked at projects I worked or speculated on. One of the major decisions defining my coming years was the launching of an office and then of course naming it. 

Synecdoche (si-NEK-duh-kee), while possibly not the best name to have people pronounce or help spread the word, defines our work so well. A work of simultaneous understanding, in how we work and what we work on. So its seems I've always been a bit more drawn to the connection of literary and architectural practice than I thought.

6 Literary Tropes

Metonymy

Irony

Metaphor

Synecdoche

Antanclasis

Allegory

Shifting Scenes

Monumental shifts in traditional frameworks of thought and theory lead to the creation of new paradigms.  Operating across history, architectural periods, and text our work questions reality and fiction.  The scale moves from the most concrete reality of the existence of a site to the shift in the author’s role in (re)defining the site, to the representation of a fictional narrative through image or text.  Lines connect from the reality-fiction scale to methods of narrative and historical moments.  When these lines intersect a fictional text is generated which operates in the narrative method and time period being traced.  The map then sets up two types of operations, one revealing the placement of interests within the contexts of each other and multi disciplinary practice. The orbs reveal new possibilities through unexpected overlaps and new ways of thinking through a combination of practices.

Within the map, we have cited each of our own resources and how they tie to the overarching theme of the map. Each color notates each thesis within the over all map, red - Lisa Sauve and yellow - Jessica Mattson. This map was created by linking together arguments from two of the thesis. The tracing of history (Jessica) and the style of the narrative (Lisa). At these intersecting links a new mode of narrative is generated as an example how how the thesis might play out. A work in progress...

Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius : Encyclopedic Operations

Through the discussions of our first group Paradigm Map, the shift away from a static map towards a mode of operations began. Working with an Encyclopedia as an artifact of truth and fact, we begin to questions its validity through moves of additions and subtractions to the datum. Each of these moves question specific topics towards each of our thesis and begin to reference people, projects and texts with (in)/out of the discipline that strengthen each thesis polemic. 

Travelogues : Adding New Entries

A short story by Jorge Luis Borges called "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius" speaks of a bootlegged encyclopedia with an additional set of pages not referenced in the index. It contains the information for a country call Uqbar. The article in the encyclopedia references three books about the place, one which is discovered. Either this is an exceptional hoax with all the basis covered to back up the argument or a unique discovery that is usually missed. It begins to question the content, validity and truth of the author and book.

Perspective/Periodical : Layering Information 

Abandoned : Summarizing a Focused Definition

Classification : Showing Similarities and Differences

Japan : Removing Irrelevant Information

Postage, Postage Stamp : Adding Artifact

Other thesis in group project:
http://borderinglines.blogspot.com/
http://hypo-theses.blogspot.com/

A Narrative in Parallel Acts | Percy Beck Reveals “Nothing”

Percy Beck, caught beyond his own adventures and now permanently affixed to one place. While his network of people move about the world, he himself can only imagine through his lens these places and experiences. He could be called visually dyslexic.1
1. Percy was the name of my grandmothers cat whom I despised and this is my chance to keep that same rampant character tied down to one place. Beck was my great grandmothers maiden name in which I have only traces of links to her through stories, photographs and memorabilia.

Plead for something other than romantic postcards and lighthearted stories about the places and experiences these people exist within. He instead wants to feel the lifestyle of these places and the things walked by and forgotten. Begins to catalogue what is underneath the surface of these places. Through a new way of organization connects are revealed.2
2. My favorite postcard I ever sent was one that was only black, no imagery at all. On the back was a note printed on the top that read “black hills at night” and it made obvious both the humor and reality of the circumstance which I was relaying 700 miles away. This revealed more about the person and the place while leaving room for the imagination to fill in the rest

A cousin lives in Japan that is close to Percy’s age. His uncle is stationed there for two years in the Navy. Percy’s cousin has as much adventure as Percy did. When he hears of the request to grasp places under the surface he immediately knows a place to share.3
3. My cousin did indeed live in Japan for two years, he then moved to Hawaii with a 1970’s Volkswagen Bug with a driver shaft on the right side. He was known all over the island for this exact artifact from Japan. All I ever got from my Uncle was some artwork with my name in Japanese.

And on the story goes...4
4. An idea about the forming of a narrative.

Through tying together techniques of fiction, narrative, traces, and taxonomy the layers reveal nodes of inter-relations otherwise unable to unravel under the rational lens of architecture as the sole entity.
By overlaying what seem to be disparate parts from multiple sources through a technique not of notation, graphics or physical form but through the narrative that shapes them, the lens’ begin to obscure and reveal new connections that produce new ways of seeing what were once placed in solitude of their reigning characteristic. While things may have at once seemed irrelevant, now are emergent.

By bringing attention to the non-sites in the world of architecture it will reveal to the profession the broader context and discourse outside of itself. By acclimating ourselves with adjacent practices we are then able to handle new programs and social complexities that architecture has before been unable to deliver. These places situated for thesis are already once removed from architecture being cast out and neglected, this brings them back into the conversation not as a ruin but an active engagement to the ellipses of after the built form.

Through collecting information, stories, images, maps and histories about places and spaces that seem to have a blanket association with a single characteristic the less than apparent connections will begin to emerge to help understand new linking resources to aide in architectures approach towards the social, cultural and built world. The juxtaposition presented between sites, time, artifacts and stories can relay ideas of not one ideology but the synthesis of many.

The thesis may appear as a series of travelogues corresponded by the narrative of a character. The author does the work of the thesis while the travelogues aide in the background. A place where the author manipulates his stories and information to go not so far as fiction but adding and displacing facts to amplify the argument. These travelogues may be expressed in a series of photographs, artifacts (debris, remnants, materials), and texts that are then overlaid with the new approach to terrain, ruin, and traces /imprints of time and activity.

Astoria Park Diving Pool

© NYTimes

 Astoria's, at 330 feet long, 165 feet wide and a rather disappointing 4 feet deep, is the largest.1.3 million gallons.The decrepit, three-tiered diving platform, which has been unused since the 1980's, would also be replaced. Construction of the whole center would take three years, Mr. Kriegel said, and would cost $22 million. Next to the mega swimming pool, sits an abandoned high dive, with diving platforms at 5, 10, and 15 meters above the surface of the (hypothetical) water.The 74-year-old high dive has been closed since 1980 (the age of litigation), and IMHO will likely never re-open to the public. Now sits the question of what to do with the gaping concrete crater that many consider an eye-sore.Life-long Astoria resident and City Council Member, Peter Vallone (D), has teamed up with Queens Borough President, Helen Marshall to raise over $5MM to be used to repair/repurpose the high-dive and surrounding swimming plaza.The Olympic-size pool in Astoria Park is said to have been among the crowning achievements in legendary city planner, Robert Moses’ career. The pool, NYC’s largest and oldest was opened on July 4, 1936, and subsequently used in two U.S. Olympic qualifying swimming, diving, and water polo trials (1936 and 1964).

© IrishNYC

http://www.nycgovparks.org/parks/AstoriaPark/highlights/8892
http://www.wirednewyork.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5091

Where am I?

In the spring of 2009 I traveled to New Orleans to document the natural disaster of Hurricane Katrina and its outcome four and a half years later. The context of the investigation was about the idea of a "natural disaster" and what it can actually mean to a city. Other than the brute force of the storm and the physical destruction that happened in the moments of its impact, the long term ramifications are as much a disaster and have been charged in the realms of social, political and cultural disrepair. Is nature then more than the earth, wind and sea? Human nature can then trace back to natural disasters of cultural and social unease just as much as the way hurricanes, tornadoes, avalanches, and earthquakes can disrupt our world.

This then led to the question of the aesthetics and outcomes of a disaster and the city. The freeways that split the black bottom neighborhood as well as the riots began to tear Detroit apart with just as much force as a category 5 hurricane. The outcome looks much the same. Of these four photographs, two are from New Orleans while the others from Detroit. The worn outcome of both cities with two very different starting trajectories leads me to wonder what are the tipping points of other sites that too end up with the same characteristics? When do the stories divert and when do they converge? So when both places end up looking so much the same, sometimes I wonder... where am I?

Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird

Wallace Stevens

"Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird"

The mood | Traced in the shadow | An indecipherable cause. 

I
Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.
II
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
III
The blackbird whirled in the autumn winds.
It was a small part of the pantomime.
IV
A man and a woman
Are one.
A man and a woman and a blackbird
Are one.
V
I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendoes,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.
VI
Icicles filled the long window
With barbaric glass.
The shadow of the blackbird
Crossed it, to and fro.
The mood
Traced in the shadow
An indecipherable cause.
VII
O thin men of Haddam,
Why do you imagine golden birds?
Do you not see how the blackbird
Walks around the feet
Of the women about you?
VIII
I know noble accents
And lucid, inescapable rhythms;
But I know, too,
That the blackbird is involved
In what I know.
IX
When the blackbird flew out of sight,
It marked the edge
Of one of many circles.
X
At the sight of blackbirds
Flying in a green light,
Even the bawds of euphony
Would cry out sharply.
XI
He rode over Connecticut
In a glass coach.
Once, a fear pierced him,
In that he mistook
The shadow of his equipage
For blackbirds.
XII
The river is moving.
The blackbird must be flying.
XIII
It was evening all afternoon.
It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

 I'm lingering on this right now. I'll hold it in my back pocket, it could come in handy.

A Con and the Mark

Site as Thesis

In the expanded field of concern for STORMFRONT, site is not merely a simple and static geographical coordinate. Instead, its definition must be expanded to define and frame the situation at hand. Using description, capture, discussion, searching, revealing, observation, and the like, s ite is opened to further scales, times, paces, locations, situations, and understandings.

Context 

1. text surrounding word or passage: the words, phrases, or passages that come before and after a particular word or passage in a speech or piece of writing and help to explain its full meaning

2. surrounding conditions: the circumstances or events that form the environment within which something exists or takes place Con 1. Short for "confidence trick" a fraudulent scheme by gaining ones confidence.  2. Against a proposition, pro's and con's 3. Prefix to apply notion of similarity Text 1. main body of work mainly in words that have been written down, typed, or printed

While situating thesis within the context of relevant systems, characteristics revealed themselves in multiple sites. Utilizing the play on words that has thread itself throughout the process, context rather than site has expressed bits of site otherwise unseen. 


In the practice of a confidence trick, commonly known as a "con" the character of the con man exploits characteristics of the "mark" for an outcome that would not have evolved from either individually. The ability to navigate weak points and divert them into productive outcomes is in the hands of the artist. While each artist may have a style to the craft, part of the skill is the camouflage of the practice as to not get caught. The film Catch Me If You Can showcases the life of Frank Abagnale Jr. and his endeavors as a con artist playing the art of impersonation. Although the character and place may change in each situation Frank is still himself, abiding by his own set of rigor to carry out these fraudulent acts. 


In Site as Thesis the goal is much the same. Finding a layer of rigor that may be camouflaged in an outer layer that may begin to relate to each context. While the first two sites proposed might be considered context and their characteristics are the marks onto which to carry my con artist style. I may then find myself flying from place to place (Abagnale flew over 1,000,000 miles) impersonating a thesis that produces an outcome that neither artist nor mark could create alone.