Visual Imagination 2011 at SCI-Arc

Visual Imagination

SCI-Arc summer2011

RoTo

Michael Rotondi

The Overview

Ways of Seeing

Ways of Knowing

Ways of Making

The format

Visual Thinking

Systems Thinking

Creative Dialogue

Cooperation

The Approach

Experience and Idea

Sense and Knowledge

Memory and Consciousness

Stories and Creativity

The Concept

to see the world at all scales - Cosmology

to see the world as if for the first time - Beginners Mind

to see the world with no expectations – Wonder

to see the world changing in all scales, simultaneously - Evolution

The Words

Process............................................. on becoming

Order on meaning

Unity on being

Visual Imagination is fundamental to the creative process. It is a creative process of seeing what was less than visible the moment before, by synthesizing images in the minds eye. We recombine parts or whole images from a vast bank we take in through direct experience and store in our embedded long-term memory. A focused view coupled with intentionality triggers certain parts of our seemingly infinite ‘visual data bank’ and begins a process of alignment and transformation contingent on context and purpose. In the infinite mental space of our 3^rd eye, (visual cortex), we aggregate parts into wholes, ‘conjugate opposites’, ‘hybridize extremes, and extemporize in spontaneous ways, then model them as they change size, shape, pattern, and texture. Various tools, hand held and media-based, enhance the natural processes of the mind-body complex. These new images hold the memory of past and present.

The course will twine around two primary conceptual structures: architecture and cosmology.

Cosmology is the spine of the course. It is the development of our ideas of matter, space and time, seen through special relations, into the stories that define the biggest ideas of all. It will be explored at three particular historical periods, and look at these three cosmologies and their relation to the built environment. The idea is to look at how the cosmos was explained, and then how that reflected back onto making. The thesis is that humans tend to project their social relations into the heavens, and then use that schema as a way to map things back onto the earth.

WAYS OF SEEING

Looking at the world with the curiosity and wonder of a child, with a beginners mind is like seeing things for the first time. Seeing things as they are rather than as you expect them to be, will make the world more transparent. You will see what it is, how it works and what it does without prejudice or preconception. This type of attention and focus allows you to see the true nature of what you are looking at. Meaning (and value) are inherent, not applied.

As David Bohm, the physicist often said, ‘meaning unfolds from within, it is in the being’.

WAYS OF KNOWING

The world that you see and interpret is the basis of all that we know. Ideas begin with direct experience of the world.

What is it? What does it do? How did it become that? What is its purpose (DNA)? What is its true nature? And eventually, What does it mean? This is what we are after – meaning.

Knowing exists in between what we sense at a particular moment and its interface with the memories of the prior similar experiences. Sensing can be direct (touch) and remote (sight). The body’s senses can be extended with tools and instruments – such as pliers, telescopes, microscopes, particle collider, mars rovers, and virtual technology.

Other ways to know, if not directly, is through the experience of others.

Memory and action and meaning are inextricably linked.

WAYS OF MAKING

The ultimate test of any idea is to construct it. This is where the rubber meets the road. We make things for utility, out of (biological) necessity, or (psychological) desire, or to see an imagined world that was conjured in our mind the moment before. The conversion of words-ideas into images-objects-spaces is necessary. This is how we evolve consciousness. This is where poetry begins. We make with matter and thought.

I. Visual Imagination

THEMES

UNITY

1) The first theme is about the interdependence of everything at all scales.

It is all one thing.

In the midst of a divided world, Thomas Merton, an American monk felt himself called to be an instrument of unity. “If I can understand something of myself and something of others, I can begin to share with them the work of building foundations of spiritual unity.” Though neither a professional ecumenist nor a specialist in inter-religious dialogue, Merton modeled a way of encounter and dialogue in his conversations and correspondence with Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, and Hindus. Deeply rooted in his own tradition, he was open and receptive to the wisdom of the world’s religions. Merton embodied the spirit that is essential to building unity: he was open to the experience and perspective of others and respectful of their beliefs and practice. He was also clear and firm in his own faith convictions. Searching for common ground, he knew well, does not mean discounting one’s own roots.

We already are one.

But we imagine that we are not

And what we have to recover is our original unity.

What we have to be is what we are.

Thomas Merton

A Call to Unity

Change and Repeatability

2.) The second theme is the opposition and identity of process and order.

It will guide the course, and be implemented through readings, discussions and the creative work you do. Process describes interactivity and order defines the interrelationships.

A living system, organic or artificial, will need to be in a state dynamic stability, self-correcting back to a state of equilibrium, or it will be vulnerable.

The eternal return occurs at all scales in all dimensions.

Speed and Sustainability

3.) The third theme is a reflection on time, its structures and impacts.

Time is both progressive and cyclical. We experience it moving at variable speeds with different cycles and rhythms, and it is characterized by continuities, rates, and scales.

Its two extremes are: fast and slow

fast innovates slow stabilizes

fast proposes slow disposes

fast learns slow remembers

A Story

As children, we were told a story about a turtle and a rabbit.

They challenged each other to a race.

This seemed odd since the turtle moved slowly and the rabbit moved fast.

How could they race?

The turtle moved deliberately in a straight line with consistency and a steady pace and constant focus. The ground below him was rich with detail and pattern. He almost saw into the earth, it seemed with the description he gave.

The rabbit on the other hand moved fast in many directions, without particular focus, stopping and restarting multiple times. He moved across a wider territory and saw so much - but without detail or depth.

To our surprise, they both finished the race at the same moment.

We always felt like both of them, and wondered if they ever shared their different experiences and what the benefits might have been. Could both be ONE?

Is it possible to go fast in slow motion?

Is it possible to go deep and wide simultaneously?

We wondered.

Milan Kundera asks, “Why has the pleasure of slowness disappeared?” Speed is the form of ecstasy the technical revolution has bestowed on man. As opposed to a motorcyclist, the runner is always present in his body. When he runs, he feels his weight and his age, more conscious of his body and his time in life. This all changes when man delegates the faculty of speed to a machine: from then on his own body is outside the process, and he gives over to a speed that is non-corporeal, non-material, pure speed, speed itself, ecstasy speed.

We need both slow and fast in equal measure

WORLD VIEW

4.) The fourth theme is about worldview.

It refers to the framework of ideas and beliefs through which an individual interprets the world and interacts in it.

It describes a consistent and integral sense of being and provides a framework for seeing and knowing the world. It is also a framework for generating, sustaining, and applying knowledge. As unique as your own worldview is, it is a variation of the one you inherited. It is the basis for making strategic decisions.

What is your worldview and where does it come from and how have you transformed the one you inherited?

CREATIVITY

5.) The fifth theme is about creativity, a mental and social process that is generative, expressed in word and image. For us it is both with a bias towards the latter. It is believed that creativity is autonomous occurring inside the heads of special people. It doe not happen this way but in the interaction between a person’s thoughts and a socio-cultural context. It is a systemic rather than an individual phenomenon.

The first step towards a more creative life is the cultivation of curiosity and interest, the allocation of attention to things for their own sake, and to look at unfamiliar things. We are most curious when we are children. Limited prior experience and seeing most things for the first time is surprising, triggering curiosity, creating wonder. What is it and why is it like that? Why, is a great question. Children ask why after each answer. The more whys, the closer to first principles one gets, the deeper you go.

Exploration, is moving forward, across unfamiliar territory, with a direction, no destination and no itinerary, proceeding with an open mind and being attentive to what ever might be revealed, without expectation or pre-determination. Creative individuals are remarkable for their ability to adapt to any situation and to make do with whatever is at hand. They ‘play it as it lays’. Each of us is born with two sets of instructions: a conservative tendency made up of instincts for self-preservation, and an expansive tendency made up of instincts for exploring.

The creative system, as MC lays it out, has three interdependent layers. First, the domain, consisting of symbolic rules and procedures. Secondly, the Field (architecture), which includes all disciplinary practitioners. Thirdly is the individual person. A creation is a unique synthesis of ideas or matter, which emerges from within a greater continuum of ideas or matter. It takes form and exists within the parameters established by a deep code. Although the (trans)formation process is limited by the internal logic of the system (code) it must respond effectively and inventively to the ever-changing variables of its environmental context. The more open-ended, flexible and complex the system is, the broader its range of response. There is a co-relation between complexity, coherence and endurance. Creativity may be the legacy of the evolutionary process, which allowed humans to adapt to rapidly changing environments.

COSMOLOGY

6.) The sixth theme is cosmology. The subject matter of cosmology is everything that exists and the aim is to place all known physical phenomena within a single coherent framework.

It will be explored at three particular historical periods, and look at these three cosmologies and their relation to the built environment. The idea is to look at how the cosmos was explained, and then how that reflected back onto making. The thesis is that humans tend to project their social relations into the heavens, and then use that

Schema as a way to map things back onto the earth.

A. The first period is of early man up to CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY- Greeks. These cultures saw the heavens as embodying people and animals and their stories as mapped in the Positions and relations of the heavenly bodies. The stories about people were projected onto the heavens, where the constellations were used as sightlines inscribed on the surface of the earth. These projections then formed pathways for journeys and diagrams of urban and architectural forms. In this way, social relations were transformed into cities and buildings and even states — the personal becomes the built.

B. The second period covers the RENAISANCE - ENLIGHTENMENT during which the newly discovered rational relations among the heavenly bodies are projected back to earth as the demand for rational relations among people and their institutions. It resulted in a duality: demanding rationality of the state (which results in totalitarianism) and rationality on the part of the individual (which implies personal responsibility and the ownership of the self, thus personal freedom).

C. The third period is our own MODERN times, from the middle of the 19^th century until the present. The concept that is projected into the cosmos is that of the abstract materiality of space. Instead of being seen as a container or place where things happen, space becomes the “substance” of particles and forces. Everything that is—energy, space, time, forces, materiality, ourselves are seen as abstract conditions of space itself. Reality has become a completely abstract substance. The re-projection of that back to our planet is consciousness, the means whereby we apprehend all these ideas.

CHAPTERS

These subjects, themes, topics, concepts, and words will be central to my presentations and to our dialogues. They may not appear in the order that they are listed and they may be defined more broadly for the sake of storytelling.

‘Never let the facts get in the way of your imagination’.

1. OVERVIEW

1. Stories – a creative activity

2. process, order, unity

3. what we see is, who we are

4. conversion - thought, idea, form

5. ways of seeing, ways of knowing, ways of making

6. Why is the world appear to be the way is does?

7. Reading with x-ray vision – solid and void.

2. ITS ALL ONE THING : UNITY

1. part to whole

2. it’s a sum zero universe -

3. conjunction, coherence,

4. purpose and meaning

3. WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA : COSMOLOGY

1. the universe and our place in it - meaning

2. variations on a theme : multiple interpretations of the big story

3. the ascent of man and ides, discontinuity and progress

4. WHY IS THE SKY BLUE?

1. curiosity and motivation

2. introduction to the physical world

3. phenomena

4. physics of light to meaning

5. THINGS CHANGE

1. evolution

2. continuity and change

3. trans-formation

4. predictability, probability, pattern

6. NO BODY FAT

1. economy of means

2. endurance and the limits of minimums

3. just enough and nothing more

7. WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND : EQUILIBRIUM

1. Biology – osmosis

2. Physiology – homeostasis

3. Physics - reciprocal action / 3^rd law of motion

4. Spirit - Karma

8. WHERE DO YOU SIT AT THE TABLE : CONTEXT

1. context and creativity

2. social hierarchies and conventions

3. epi-genetics and morpho-genetics

4. conventions, traditions, values

5. tradition and invention

6. conservation and change

9. NATURE LIKE TO HIDE : ORDER

1. rules, regulation, relationships

2. metabolism and DNA

3. golden ratio : proportion and growth

4. language, order, cities

5. patterns

6. concepts of order

11. HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT

1. invisibility

2. inevitability

3. similarity and difference

4. looking twice

5. transparency and power

12. WHAT TIME IS IT : TIME-SPACE

1. scaling – spatial / temporal

2. progressive and cyclical

3. continuity and coherence

4. endurance

5. conservation and change

6. intercepting light

13. ITS LIKE RIDING A BIKE : EMBODIED MEMORY

1. embodied memory - long term

2. holographic memory - distributed

3. matter - energy - information

4. flow - resistance

5. invention and risk

6. storage and retrieval

14. HYBRID OF EXTREMES : COMPLEX : COHERENT FORM

1. aggregation, conjugation, nesting, distillation

2. balance equilibrium

3. centerline of gravity

4. distillation – simplicity on the other side of complexity

5. still point

6. zero

15. IN BETWEEN EARTH AND SKY : PRACTICAL : PROFOUND

1. archeo-astronomy

2. mirror worlds

3. practical and profound

4. scale shifts

16. BODY : SPACE

1. sequential, processional, continuous, discreet

2. centering, expansiveness, embedded, immersive

3. degrees and types of enclosure

4. static, dynamic, steady state

5. emotive (insight), evocative (awareness), provocative (knowledge)

6. physical, virtual, social

18. ONE THING LEADS TO ANOTHER

1. networks

2. information theory

3. systemic thinking

4. singularity

5. global brain

19. JUST ENOUGH AND NOTHING MORE

1. natures removes excess from within

2. economy of means

3. no body fat

4. generic

5. silence

20. COOPERATION AND SOCIAL CONTRACT

1. cooperation is biological necessity

2. rights : responsibilities

3. individualism : altruism

4. solitude : community

5. barn raising : reciprocity

Conceptual Framework

PROCESS

Things change_____________________________________________________________________ impermanence

on becoming

energy interface

information interaction

aggregation

emergence

grow

shape shift

transformation

steady state

dynamic

decay

adaptability

innovation

metabolism

endurance

ORDER

Things self organize__________________________________________________________________interrelationships

on meaning

Context

patterns coherence

geometries

network broadcast omni-matrix

natural inherent branching

dendritic

abstract extrapolate grid

matrix

mythological constructed nested

enfolding

DNA emergence unfolding

UNITY

Things come together____________________________________________________________________interdependence

on being

wholeness convergence

entrainment

ORDER

D. Bohm, a theoretical physicist, said that reality means something existing independently of being known through conventional absorption and measurement. He sought to develop a theory of reality that would be inclusive and whole. Wholeness is a coherent view in which everything at all sizes and scales are inter-connected and inter-dependent.

He conceived a hidden order at work beneath the seeming chaos and lack of continuity of worlds within worlds. This hidden dimension is Bohm’s ‘IMPLICATE ORDER,’ which has infinite depth and is the source of all the visible of the ‘EXPLICATE MATTER’ universe (4-D world of objects, space-time).

Developing the capacity to ‘see’ and ‘know’ these realities are contingent on looking without pre-conditioning, pre-conception, or pre-determination. Bare attention, it is often called - this is the foundation of discovery. It required observing things as they are without expectations.

HYBRID OF EXTREMES

All living systems have an imprint to conserve energy for the purpose of longer endurance. The ideal state is balance. Considering the constant transformation of matter into energy and energy into movement, the point of balance is a dynamic state of equilibrium. In any state of being, a systems imprint, vis-a-vis, conservation of energy, is to return to a state of rest. Within this constant movement is a center line of gravity, a recurring subject throughout the course.

Binaries are diametric extremes. They can be the flipside of each other; two aspects of one thing.

Each is the context for the other. The midpoint of these extremes is a point of balance, this is the middle way.

where one meets the other

where one becomes the other

where one is the other

where two become one

part whole

molecule organism

small big

micro macro

simple complex

in out

inhale exhale

implosion explosion

contraction expansion

convergent divergent

here there

up down

night day

dark light

void solid

slow fast

EQUILIBRIUM

BALANCE

Phrases for Visual Thinking

visualize these phrases in your own terms. And match with images

What do you see?

What do you think they mean?

1. Moving fast and thinking deeply

2. Inevitability and beauty

3. Transparent Medium

4. Neutral with Presence

5. Hiding in plain sight

6. Looking twice

7. Entrainment

8. Simplicity on the other side of complexity

9. Distillation

10. One and many

11. Solitude and community

12. Part to whole

13. Scale shifts

14. Time structures

15. Cycles and rhythms

16. Pattern recognition

17. Continuity

18. Coherence

19. Centering

20. Equilibrium

21. Flow

22. Metaphor

Phrases and Definitions

STORYTELLING

It has existed as long as humanity has had language. Stories are a means of entertainment but more significantly they have been central to the preservation of culture as a fundamental form of teaching. Traditionally, oral stories were passed from generation to generation, and survived solely by memory. In the oral tradition, storytelling is an improvisational art form with a hidden structure of connected events, ideas, and images that are transformed with each recollection. Generally a storyteller does not memorize a set text. Instead he has a framework of facts or events that direct a narrative arc that guides the teller as he visualizes the characters and the settings while improvising the words. The same story is usually told differently, each time. Improvisational storytelling is an act of creativity.

many truths, one event

‘everyone is correct from their own point of view’

parables

a truth is embedded within ambiguity and resides in the middle. Analogue is the format.

FINITE AND INFINITE GAMES

There are at least two kinds of games. One can be called finite , the other infinite.

A finite game is played for the purpose of winning. An infinite game is for the purpose of continuing the play. The creative process is, at best, an infinite game.

CONTINUITY AND CHANGE

There are two principles inherent in the very nature of things- change and conservation.

There can be nothing real without both.

Memory and adaptive innovation.

Alfred north whitehead.

OBSERVATION

to live, for Darwin, meant

looking and examining, and then……………… seeing

writing down what is seen…………………….. storing

analyze it and finally…………………………... knowing

trying to make sense of it………………………. meaning

Most of what he observed was for the first time, unique to the place, this gave him the advantage of seeing for the first time, with great wonder. He had a beginners mind, seeing without preconditioned interpretation.

EXPERIENCE AND IDEAS

Making and thinking

They enhance each other

Language began with uttering of sounds to express the sensuous experience.

Shape, texture, weight, color, scent,

We learned how to make things prior to knowing why.

CONTEXT

No man is an island.

We were told this as children, many times. There was never an explanation to help us understand what this meant beyond our obvious interpretations, so we invented grand stories. our teachers in advertently triggered our minds into wandering. our imagination grow.

In the university, studying architecture, we built cubicles to work in and were encouraged to enclose our area for more privacy and to secure our ‘original thinking’, shield our ‘ideas’ from our friends who were now competitors. Cooperation was subsumed. Total nonsense.

SCI-Arc was founded on the belief that both cooperation and competition were symbiotic.

We cooperated with each other as we competed against a standard. Was this possible. Absolutely.

We exist in and are defined by our context. it is a co-creative interaction.

The following is my context ; physical, social, psychological, and intellectual.

They scripted me, deeply embedding memories that are the essential record of all of

my prior experiences.

My context is my lens when looking and interpreting the world as we move through and interact.

It informs and colors the way I see. Sometimes it is difficult to see anything other than what I expect to see, thus limiting my capacity to learn.

Memory is essential to our survival, it contextualizes present experience.

Innovation is essential to our survival. It negotiates non-recurring events.

The better you know your context, the better you know yourself.

Los Angeles – is in its sixth growth. I have been witness to a city in a constant state of transformation, culturally and physically. I have always lived I Los Angeles near the center and within a 7 mile radius there are 120 languages spoken. This part of the city is a hybrid environment, a place where one can see evidence of unity and diversity.

Family – is about tradition(memory) and invention(action). Our neighborhood was internationally, ethnically and culturally diverse. Within the house the cultural system was simple and clear. Outside we had to innovate

SCI-Arc – is my extended family. It began as an idea and evolved into an institution. It was our teacher as we watched it self organize over the first 25 years. It is ‘Lord of the Flies” with a good ending.

Desert – is a place of subtlety and extreme. Joshua Tree and Death Valley National Monuments are unique environments where you can experience The first thing you learn is the nature of paradox.

RECIPROCITY

It is common to every culture. It is a way of defining peoples informal exchange of goods and labor, that is people’s economic systems. It is the basis of non market economies. This is common to every culture. Giving to another without any expectation of anything in return. The satisfaction and the reward is in the act itself.

Claude levi – strauss , a cultural anthropologist, told a story from his experiences traveling with his father. One day they sat for lunch, in a French country inn, directly across from a stranger. When they were served his father and the stranger both poured their small carafe of wine into the other’s glass; an equal exchange, nothing lost but much gained, symbolically. Trust and social closeness. Levi-strauss would eventually write that RECIPROCITY was a fundamental centerpiece of society. It was an expression of altruism which is essential.

In social psychology reciprocity refers to responding to an action with another action (refer also to the third law of motion – action : reaction ). This can be either positive or negative.

THE EVOLUTION OF COOPERATION

Nature rewards cooperation.

Cooperation is biological necessity.

Human ecosystems are complex cybernetic systems that integrates multiple factors as socio-political organization, natural physical environment, economics, and technology.

Central to the concept of an ecosystem is the idea that all of the parts are continually engaged in a set of relationships with every other element co existing in the environment, which we now know is not merely local, it is ‘non-local’ (global). All of these relationships exist within nested hierarchies of context and meaning, feedback, emergent phenomena and self-organization, and include the transfer of information, constantly. Movement and exchange of information is another recurring subject. Humans and human societies are learning organisms.

BOWLING ALONE

American society has become less civic minded, increasingly disconnected from family, friends, neighbors, and democratic structures, it is often stated. Is that so?

social networks are vital to a healthy society.

a strong democracy requires, active civic engagement, materially and virtually

a strong society requires communal life.

a communal life requires generous individuals

NETWORKS.

systems and information

This topic will be our gateway into visualizing the dynamic processes of systems and information.

Everything, at all sizes and scales, in all dimensions, are simultaneously interconnected and interdependent.

We think of networks as a product the computer age, the Internet is it’s common name. The fact is that digital networks are a phase in the ongoing evolution of a networked global brain, which has existed for more than 3 billion years. It is a product of evolution and biology. The global brain is a web between all species.

In Costa Rica as tuna hunt for their prey, seabirds watch their movement waiting for the leftovers. Fishermen searching for the tuna watch the birds, leading them to their catch. This is a network.

REFERENCE - Quotes

On organisms

Edward O Wilson

The Insect Societies, 1971

Why do we study these insects? Because, together with man, hummingbirds, and the bristlecone pine, they are among the great achievements of organic evolution. Their social organization –far less than man’s because of the feeble intellect and absence of culture, of course, but far greater in respect to cohesion, caste specialization, and individual altruism– is nonpareil. The biologist is invited to consider insect societies because they best exemplify the full sweep of ascending levels of organization, from molecule to society. Among the tens of thousands of species of wasps, ants, bees, and termites, we witness the employment of social design to solve ecological problems ordinarily dealt with by single organisms. The insect colony is often called a super-organism because it displays so many social phenomena that are analogous to the physiological properties of organs and tissues. Yet the holistic properties of the super-organism stem in a straightforward behavioral way from the relatively crude repertories of individual colony members, and they can be dissected and understood much more easily than the molecular basis for physiology.

on Time

The Clock of The Long Now

Stewart Brand

Fast-Slow

In civilizations with long now, says Brian Eno “you feel a very strong but flexible structure…built to absorb shocks in fact incorporate them.” One can imagine how such a process evolves: All civilizations suffer shocks, yet only those that absorb the shocks survive. This still does not explain the mechanism, however.

In recent years a few scientists (such as R. V. O’Neill and C.S. Holling) have been probing a similar issue in ecological systems: How do they manage to change, and how do they absorb and incorporate shocks? The answer appears to lie in the relationship between components in a system that have different change rates and different scales of size. Instead of breaking under stress like something brittle these systems yield as if they were malleable. Some parts respond quickly to the shock, allowing slower parts to ignore the shock and maintain their steady duties of system continuity. The combination of fast and slow components makes the system resilient, along with the way the differently paced parts affect each other. Fast learns, slow remembers. Fast proposes, slow disposes. Fast is discontinuous, slow is continuous. Fast and small instructs slow and big by accrued innovation and occasional revolution. Slow and big controls small and fast by constraint and constancy. Fast gets all our attention, slow has all the power. All durable dynamic systems have this sort of structure; it is what makes them adaptable and robust.

on Scale

Freeman Dyson

The destiny of our species is shaped by the imperatives of survival on six distinct time scales. To survive means to compete successfully on all six time scales. But the unit of survival is different at each of the six time scales. On a time scale of decades, the unit is the family. On a time scale of centuries, the unit is the tribe or nation. On a time scale of millennia, the unit is the culture. On a time scale of tens of millennia, the unit is the species. On a time scale of eons, the unit is the whole web of life on our planet. Every human being is the product of adaptation to the demands of all six time scales. That is why conflicting loyalties are deep in our nature. In order to survive, we have needed to be loyal to ourselves, to our families, to our tribes, to our cultures, to our species, to our planet. If our psychological impulses are complicated, it is because they were shaped by complicated and conflicting demands.

on Wonder

Shunryu Suzuki

Beginner’s Mind

‘The mind of the beginner is needed throughout Zen practice. It is the open mind, the attitude that included both doubt and possibility. The ability to see things always fresh and new.

In the beginner’s mind, there are many possibilities, but in the experts mind there are few.

Formats

Lectures

Images

Discussion

Dialogue

Modeling

each class will be 3 hours.

a. discussing your reflections on the prior weeks presentation.

b. image rich presentation on a subject and ‘creative dialogue’.

c. intuitive constructions in 5 minutes and 30 second presentation based on a word-concept

The success of each undertaking will be in proportion to risk.

Your ongoing homework will a virtual creative dialogue with me via the syllabus.

read the syllabus and write whatever is conjured in your mind.

intertwining yours into the original text.

Hand them in each week.

End for now.

Begin again _may26

Addendum 1.

Fri.27 / wk.

Ways of ‘Seeing’ (outer light) and Knowing (inner light)

Listen to what is being talked about in the class, and then visualize the words, then take a photo

A. map what you see, how you see it, and its’ conceptual structure, through your lens. (refer to Calvino)

Subject matter is up to you

Themes : Nature and Man-made

Listen to the weeks dialogue, list words that resonated with you

Today we will begin by talking again , about creative dialogue, information, context, pattern,

Visualizing the dynamic Shape and patterns of Symphonic (music) sounds

Brahms (rhythmic sounds) incremental time and Gorecki – (woven sounds) continuous time with offsets a sensuous experience visualized

‘I can see what I hear’ sound into space,

‘I can see what I touch’ matter into vision

‘I can see what I measure’ space into time

‘I can see what I know’ memory into form

Visualizing the city , your neighborhood, and the things in it that capture attention

Based on a word-concept and wonder “how did it become that”

Submit photos, 8 total in categories with captions and source.

Information

Systems -(relationships, networks, infrastructures)

Pattern -(index of matter energy and form over time) internal logic meets external forces

Scale -(worlds within and beyond) ideas are scaleable not objects.

Structure -(gravity and growth)

Process -(describes change)

Order -(encode purpose, rules, and time)

Unity -(defines wholeness)

Visual Imagination 2011 at SCI-Arc

Friday, July 29, 2011

Syllabus Responses - Week 11

Syllabus Responses - Week 10

Syllabus Responses - Week 9

Syllabus Responses - Week 8

Syllabus Responses - Week 7

Syllabus Responses - Week 6

Syllabus Responses - Week 6

Friday, July 1, 2011

Syllabus Responses - Week 5

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Discovery of an Architectural Equivalent

Friday, June 17, 2011

Syllabus Responses - Week 5

Syllabus Responses - Week 2

Syllabus Responses - Week 3

Syllabus Responses - Week 4

Thursday, June 16, 2011

General System Theory

Monday, May 30, 2011

Roto's Notes: Review, think about, and discuss

Saturday, May 28, 2011

Syllabus