on architecture

There is a little problem I’ve had for sometime to solve in my head, and that is that I think architecture is taking a bit too long to becoming like what good art should be, generative and always assuming an emotive role. We don’t seem to be able to connect to our buildings as easily as we do with music or art, or simply things we adore, like our children or our books.

huatlim

simon reilly

Generative art is best appreciated through Simon Reilly’s Still Life, and the disturbingly beautiful Mind’s Eye videos. Played through between 6 to 10 minutes, these images are slowly replayed in compression modes or stretched to fill a certain space within one’s minds. Gordon’s work is not dissimilar, and decides to show a western played over a period of over 5 years, this can seen at the Telenor Centre, Oslo.

huatlim

generative art

I have for some years been very interested to research how generative artists’ work will eventually have an influence on how architectural methodology can borrow from it, and be subsequently developed using this process. Action painting and drip painting of Pollock, how this has evolved to influence chance or generative art as in the work of Brian Eno, the transitional work using compression techniques of Douglas Gordon’s videos and Simon Reilly’s time warp installations are all clues to how architecture can be engaged in similar philosophical framework.

huatlim

douglas gordon

I first experienced Douglas Gordon’s work at the Telenor Centre, Norway many years ago, it was a take on Simon Reilly’s Still Life, a six-minute video installation. Gordon’s generative art is not unlike Brian Eno’s 77millionpaintings, an installation that defies prediction or expectation, yet the chaos and chance element of it is structured and organised. Pollock’s work can be compared in the methodology of this art, although with video the work is more extensible and runs into infinity, sometimes disturbing, as with Pollock’s drip paintings or Reilly’s Mind’s Eye.

www.zlgdesign.com

brian eno

Brian Eno work comes close to being a modern day Pollock drip painting, a branch of automatism. He is British, and perhaps better known as an ambient music pioneer and as a founding member of Roxy Music from many years ago. Eno has pursued several artistic ventures parallel to his music career, including visual art installations, the most recent one being the 77 million paintings project, a virtually impermanent work that presents itself over a period of time, to be experienced upon chance viewing of the the random projections emanating from a computer, programmed to compose the work.

www.zlgdesign.com