the question is:

to what degree does linear text (html) describe an interactive experience (a website)? does 1d thread turn into volumetric fabric, fashion? how do you render a spatial narrative in a flat, static image? etc.

and right now my question is: in the absence of a current project, what do I do? what do I want? what do I want from this building? more exactly, how do I feel about what I am letting myself want? I want a form, and an aesthetic, and a concept, and I want them to be justified, whatever that means, "to be justified". as if I desire the solidity of a concrete floor stamped on, !, !. there, it's solid. to the question: why?

maybe it's because a freeform form directly and literally reified as structure is easy, or arbitrary. parametric/algorithmic fun (and really, sincerely, fun) slingshot across a manifold generating: valleys, peaks, landscapes, peninsulas, holes, ruptures, breakages, membranes, fleshes. of course, 'easy' or 'arbitrary' doesn't mean that the project is not 'resolved' (which is an architectural term for internal coherence and consistency, an a-priori way of grasping a criterion of judgment in an arena where judgment is hard anyways), or 'successful', or interesting. but it's when I can be convincing, I think, when I myself convince myself into believing that 'this' is right, that this works, that this makes sense, that a project really shines -- the solidity of dense finished-ness combined with the spark of a strong core concept..

questions: why is this, why is this justified, why do I hold myself to seeking justification? it's like, really, there is this discontinuity here, two different segments of architecture, the square root of ( x - 5 ) when x < 5, or dividing by zero, a little blip/slice/fragment/discontinuity/rupture here: before building, and after building. reified, anything is fascinating. the details live, because the wonder lies in the specific phenomenological experience, and the sense of scale you feel to a piece, I think, so the small gestures don't matter as much, because you perceive a space spatially, not optically. like the minimalists would have wanted you to, or at least how robert morris wanted you to, to encounter a sculptural form with such an immediate gestalt that you perceive it instantly and encounter it as a bodily presence.

but for the smaller thing, the image, maybe it reads optically by default. the challenge is twofold: to represent it as a space, to be sucked into reading it as a space despite its flat presence, and at the same time to take this interplay of images and messages on the planar surface and with it to engage in the dialogue of imagery, aesthetics, history, technicality, diagramming, representation, modification, mediation, and so on.

=

so? what do I want? I should just make. sometimes, there is a productivity to be found in mindless creation, not because I don't put any thought into it, or because it comes out of an unconscious (and thus has some heightened sur-real meaning to it, ala automatic drawing) -- but because the power of distance is so great, critical distance, a distance of awareness, of desire, of coherence...