Thursday, April 18, 2013

CREATION, COLLABORATION AND UNINTENTION


Creation, that is to say the act of creating, has always intrigued me. Specifically, where does the genesis of the Idea come from?  Often times, it is generated by the need to solve some posed problem or resolve some issue. The seed idea is created through the intentional actions that are born out of the need to resolve or respond to some dynamic force or action with a set of defined goals.  This is the process that enabled man to fly with the evolution of airplane, and a tiny little robot to land and explore the desolate grounds of Mars. But not all creation is generated with a specified goal in mind, or is a response to a problem that needs resolution.  Other acts of creation, be it the writing of a book, composing of song or creation of a sculpture. Most often, but not always, the idea is not generated with a specific goal in mind. It is born through random imaginings and organic exploration. The act of creating becomes a dynamic process where the end result is unknown and the possibilities endless. In many instances there is an accidental aspect to the process where something is simply discovered with absolutely no prejudice of thought or intent.  I have often thought that it is these products, regardless of what they may be, are the most intrinsically honest and the most intriguing specifically because of the absence of artistic prejudice and intent.
Below is a series of images that were created from the elevations of a house that I am designing. As anybody within the architectural industry knows, building elevations are simply a tool to convey information to the contractor on what to build. Elevations are simple diagrams that display heights, indicate material, and so forth. Obviously, as I am designing the house, artistic intent and aesthetic judgments are being infused into the design as it evolves, but not necessarily as a flat composition of elements that visually interact with each other. The other aspect of the images below that I find intriguing is that they are products of collaboration between man and machine.  The collaboration of a machine (Asus laptop and Revit software) interpreting and rendering, within its graphic limitations, an object that I designed. In other words, if I decided to specifically to render these elevations either by hand, or with some software program, the result would not have been the same. There are things the computer either couldn’t understand, and utilized its default settings, that I simply would not have thought of, even if I were trying to create a composition of 2dimensional elements with varying colors, rhythms and textures.  
Strip the elevational aspect away from the images below and they become something else, something that was discovered by accident, through a collaboration of man and machine. I find the results most intriguing and reinforce the notion that the idea, the very act of creation, the genesis of discovery and exploration, is often by mere chance…..





And yes, the overlap of the black border is also by accident, and only reinforces the notion of this post!
RBP
4.18.13

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