I submitted my design proposal brief thing- i will update on it later but basically i'm going to create a transsitional place where one goes to discover them selves so they know what beauty is. As in, my thesis will contain all the theories and history of beauty, and it will end with the idea that, i can't tell you what beauty is, but i can show you; thus i create an architecture where one can go to figure it out for themselves. A timeless place where one can realise who they are and what they desire because i feel that whatever makes something truly beautiful is something that you lack or desire as an individual. However this would set my work into two parts, 1) defining beauty and what causes it and 2) making a place that lets you 'cause' that feeling of beauty. this means that i will have to also research into how to make a space that allows you to discover yourself- which is an entire thesis topic on its own- using architecture to find the inner self.
So unless i use the findings and research of the thesis to build a design, i'd have to do a lot of extra work. I should be using my research to design something not using the final solution of the thesis as the content of something.
Or i could perhaps actually use the findings of the thesis, for example why cave paintings were 'beautiful' and actually dedicate a space to cave paintings and make it in such a way that it allows the person to realise...something?!
Saturday, April 9, 2011
Wednesday, April 6, 2011
Meeting 05 + Possible Museum design
Today's meeting focused on our designs. Richard said that there are many possible arrangments for my museum. It could be that it's spherical, that it has a rotating center where you stand in the middle and go into certain areas that surrounds. Or it could be a long corridoor that takes you through a confusing maze....and he said that perhaps the big idea in my design is that fighting for beauty is stupid, thus an architecture that conveys that emptiness through out it. He also asked about the form and the look of this building and he seemed happy with the idea that it takes no specific form, that it's different from every view, ambigious. However since that talk, i came up with another idea. Here is a part of my email to him:
AFter the research so far, i've discovered that beauty is constantly changing at the rate that we're changing, no matter if its artistic beauty, an act of human skill, natural, human figure beauty- it all depends on where the person or the human race is in time, it's usually whatever we lack, whatever we don't have, whatever that makes us curious, whatever makes us feel at peace- so it's all about contrast. [ the thesis writing would be to investigate this theory through the research on the types of beauty and the types of reasons for those beauty- so the design is like the solution rather than the 3D visualized version i previously said]
So Beauty is not visual, it's when something embodies a quality. THe visual is for taking in the formatted image, and to recognize it as beautiful means you are aware of yourself and what you need and who you are. [this is a good explaination for evolution's sexual selection 'theory' but also for things like why do we appreciate a well painted painting? If i know that i could also paint the exact same effect- would i still find it as beautiful?]
So i guess my point is that is that i need to create a place much like Weixin's isolated place- but instead of reconnecting to the sea, it's reconnecting to ourselves- for self awareness, to be taken away from this world into another where you are able to see all the images and challenge one's perception of who they may be- and only then will they be able to understand the reasons as to why they find certain things beautiful and understand what is beautiful.
So like i said today, i want to create a place where one could dwell imaginatively within another dimension or realm- a place one could go to feel a certain way about the world and to better understand it. So what if i found a site where the buildings and other things on it displays the different types of beauty [human skill, artistic, natural, human faces...] then pull these spaces underground and while keeping them in a way that the person can recognize their real self above ground but stil change them to create the space i desire? So it's like using existing and physical places of beauty rather than creating them within the museum. Im intereted in underground because it's like a placelessness realm that doesn't belong to the surface yet it is an image of the things above. A contrasting theme which seems to be running through my research at the moment.
So i would create a place which takes no exterior form- at least none that the observor could tell and it's thus all about the experience. It doesn't really take place in the real world, at least not in the day-to-day visual world. I will leave it as that for now and wait for his reply. In the meantime i need to do my brief and search up more ideas of the self? so lost
AFter the research so far, i've discovered that beauty is constantly changing at the rate that we're changing, no matter if its artistic beauty, an act of human skill, natural, human figure beauty- it all depends on where the person or the human race is in time, it's usually whatever we lack, whatever we don't have, whatever that makes us curious, whatever makes us feel at peace- so it's all about contrast. [ the thesis writing would be to investigate this theory through the research on the types of beauty and the types of reasons for those beauty- so the design is like the solution rather than the 3D visualized version i previously said]
So Beauty is not visual, it's when something embodies a quality. THe visual is for taking in the formatted image, and to recognize it as beautiful means you are aware of yourself and what you need and who you are. [this is a good explaination for evolution's sexual selection 'theory' but also for things like why do we appreciate a well painted painting? If i know that i could also paint the exact same effect- would i still find it as beautiful?]
So i guess my point is that is that i need to create a place much like Weixin's isolated place- but instead of reconnecting to the sea, it's reconnecting to ourselves- for self awareness, to be taken away from this world into another where you are able to see all the images and challenge one's perception of who they may be- and only then will they be able to understand the reasons as to why they find certain things beautiful and understand what is beautiful.
So like i said today, i want to create a place where one could dwell imaginatively within another dimension or realm- a place one could go to feel a certain way about the world and to better understand it. So what if i found a site where the buildings and other things on it displays the different types of beauty [human skill, artistic, natural, human faces...] then pull these spaces underground and while keeping them in a way that the person can recognize their real self above ground but stil change them to create the space i desire? So it's like using existing and physical places of beauty rather than creating them within the museum. Im intereted in underground because it's like a placelessness realm that doesn't belong to the surface yet it is an image of the things above. A contrasting theme which seems to be running through my research at the moment.
So i would create a place which takes no exterior form- at least none that the observor could tell and it's thus all about the experience. It doesn't really take place in the real world, at least not in the day-to-day visual world. I will leave it as that for now and wait for his reply. In the meantime i need to do my brief and search up more ideas of the self? so lost
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Charles Darwinian theory of Beauty
Today i watched the Ted video about the idea of beauty being engraved into our minds. Denis Dutton argues that: beauty is not in the culturally conditioned eye of the beholder, it's deep in our minds. His ideas are that we must reverse engineer the Darwinian theories in order to understand the idea of beauty. He uses natural selection and sexual selection to describe it.
he gave some interesting examples, such as that from 1.5 million years ago the homo erectus and the homo...sar..? turned their generic weapon tool into an art object. Acheulian hand axes
This axe was made for pure artisitic reasons and it helped the evolution in the sense that, who ever that could craft such beautifully symmetrical pieces had qualities that others did not- such as higher level of intelligence, skill, patience, fine motor control, planning abilities and so on, thus this resulted in higher reproduction chances than the less skilled- such as the nature of natural and sexual selection.
Denis Dutton's speech is not without holes, while he sufficiently provided examples of the hard-wired ideas of beauty and evidentially disregarded the cultural conditioning influences, he did not take into consideration of the natural human traits, emotions and thus personalities. For example he argues that what we find beautiful is something that is skillfully and well done- this is true to some degree however it is also vague. When we find the Mona Lisa beautiful, it is indeed that we appreciate the virtuoso skill needed to create such a marvelous painting, however, beauty does not exist without contrast. If we were all able to paint the way mona lisa is painted, we would thus no longer find the original beautiful or anything special. This is because the Mona Lisa shows us nothing that we do not already have, however in reality, very little people can paint like that. When one finds the Mona LIsa beautiful, we are admiring a skill that we lack- we admire what the Mona Lisa embodies. Thus this goes back to my last week's reading of beauty being something we need to resemble. This is further supported by Dutton's example of the reproductivity of the skilled homo erectus craftsman. The women were attracted to him because he demonstrated a skill that others do not have- their natural instinct is to possess his abilities and thus she mates with him. [I'm just spitting this out of my head randomly so it's not without problems] My point is that it follows exactly what my last week's research argued for.
Dutton's example of the generic Suvanna Forest Landscape, he says that it is hardwired into out brains and thus people from all countries can appreciate and find it beautiful- even people who come from countries who do not actually have such landscapes natively finds this image beautiful- he may be right that this image is hardwired into our brains- though as with a lot of evolution-related theories like that, it's difficult to prove without substantial research. Anyway, the reason why we find these landscape beautiful may be because we've completely lost nature in our selves, we want the life that those landscapes my embody. If i lived in the place of these images, i surely would not celebrate it by putting it on my wall, i may put images of new york city streets on the wall. However, if i were to be taken away from such place, i would surely linger for it, wish for it and dream about it- such is the nature of being human.
i'm not trying to disregard his work or trying to say that my way is the way to look at the perception of beauty but that he didn't not counter everything- this is usually how we go about in our research, we forget multi-disciplinary!
For my thesis, i'm here to sow together all these ideas that emerge from all disciplines- and hope to come to the best possible conclusion.
he gave some interesting examples, such as that from 1.5 million years ago the homo erectus and the homo...sar..? turned their generic weapon tool into an art object. Acheulian hand axes
This axe was made for pure artisitic reasons and it helped the evolution in the sense that, who ever that could craft such beautifully symmetrical pieces had qualities that others did not- such as higher level of intelligence, skill, patience, fine motor control, planning abilities and so on, thus this resulted in higher reproduction chances than the less skilled- such as the nature of natural and sexual selection.
Denis Dutton's speech is not without holes, while he sufficiently provided examples of the hard-wired ideas of beauty and evidentially disregarded the cultural conditioning influences, he did not take into consideration of the natural human traits, emotions and thus personalities. For example he argues that what we find beautiful is something that is skillfully and well done- this is true to some degree however it is also vague. When we find the Mona Lisa beautiful, it is indeed that we appreciate the virtuoso skill needed to create such a marvelous painting, however, beauty does not exist without contrast. If we were all able to paint the way mona lisa is painted, we would thus no longer find the original beautiful or anything special. This is because the Mona Lisa shows us nothing that we do not already have, however in reality, very little people can paint like that. When one finds the Mona LIsa beautiful, we are admiring a skill that we lack- we admire what the Mona Lisa embodies. Thus this goes back to my last week's reading of beauty being something we need to resemble. This is further supported by Dutton's example of the reproductivity of the skilled homo erectus craftsman. The women were attracted to him because he demonstrated a skill that others do not have- their natural instinct is to possess his abilities and thus she mates with him. [I'm just spitting this out of my head randomly so it's not without problems] My point is that it follows exactly what my last week's research argued for.
Dutton's example of the generic Suvanna Forest Landscape, he says that it is hardwired into out brains and thus people from all countries can appreciate and find it beautiful- even people who come from countries who do not actually have such landscapes natively finds this image beautiful- he may be right that this image is hardwired into our brains- though as with a lot of evolution-related theories like that, it's difficult to prove without substantial research. Anyway, the reason why we find these landscape beautiful may be because we've completely lost nature in our selves, we want the life that those landscapes my embody. If i lived in the place of these images, i surely would not celebrate it by putting it on my wall, i may put images of new york city streets on the wall. However, if i were to be taken away from such place, i would surely linger for it, wish for it and dream about it- such is the nature of being human.
i'm not trying to disregard his work or trying to say that my way is the way to look at the perception of beauty but that he didn't not counter everything- this is usually how we go about in our research, we forget multi-disciplinary!
For my thesis, i'm here to sow together all these ideas that emerge from all disciplines- and hope to come to the best possible conclusion.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Meeting 04 Richard Goldie + Design proposal
I Did not meet with him last week, that's why there's no Meeting 03.
In this weeks meeting, i elaborated on the subjectivity of beauty, what it means for people when they see beautiful houses and so on. [the idea of wanting to be something, to resemble or to claim something that one lacks] Richard was very pleased with my research, he said that i'm really on top of it and i hope to keep us this elvel of work and research.
He suggests that i now need to look at the science and history of it all [which i sort of already have] and tie it together to my current research.
The problem now is that next week i have to have my design brief. That's not even plausible. I don't know what to do, Richard is keen on the idea of a museum that exhibits beauty. BUt that sounds incredibly lame to me. What i wanted was a place that represents the ideal beauty for me- after doing small designs of ideal beauty for certain audience etc. ARGH!
Nevertheless, keywords for this weeks research derived from meeting:
- Science of perception
-Christopher Alexander
-Museum and beauty
-'Body memory architecture'
also
research why the golden ratio is no real- so that i can disregard it in my research.
In this weeks meeting, i elaborated on the subjectivity of beauty, what it means for people when they see beautiful houses and so on. [the idea of wanting to be something, to resemble or to claim something that one lacks] Richard was very pleased with my research, he said that i'm really on top of it and i hope to keep us this elvel of work and research.
He suggests that i now need to look at the science and history of it all [which i sort of already have] and tie it together to my current research.
The problem now is that next week i have to have my design brief. That's not even plausible. I don't know what to do, Richard is keen on the idea of a museum that exhibits beauty. BUt that sounds incredibly lame to me. What i wanted was a place that represents the ideal beauty for me- after doing small designs of ideal beauty for certain audience etc. ARGH!
Nevertheless, keywords for this weeks research derived from meeting:
- Science of perception
-Christopher Alexander
-Museum and beauty
-'Body memory architecture'
also
research why the golden ratio is no real- so that i can disregard it in my research.
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