Azaran on 15/3/2023 at 16:44
Reading (
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/making-dystopia-9780198820864?cc=ca&lang=en&) Making Dystopia: The Strange Rise and Survival of Architectural Barbarism.
It's a great, well researched analysis of the rise of Modernist architecture, and its radical break with the past.
Quote:
Deconstructivism and Parametricism, by rejecting all that went before and failing to provide clear values as replacements, can be seen as intentional aggression on human senses, abusing perceptive mechanisms in order to generate unease, dislocation, and discomfort.
Quote:
Early twentieth-century movements associated with totalitarianism (such as Futurism and Constructivism) sought answers in machinery, technology, and the expression of industrialized power, while the search for a ‘machine aesthetic' became at times an end in itself.27 To some (notably Le Corbusier), grain-silos, ocean-going liners of the Titanic vintage, motor-cars, and aeroplanes were paradigms of a desirable new aesthetic (see Figures 5.3, 6.1- 2),28 but others held that all art, all aesthetics, and all refinement were bourgeois affectations and therefore should be avoided. Aims of Modernism were radical, concerned with the suppression of all ornament and historical allusions, counterbalanced by the search for so-called Sachlichkeit (variously translated as functionalism, impartiality, objectivity, pertinence, practicality, realism, reality, relevance) and the wholesale adoption of industrialized methods of construction.
Quote:
Throughout the ages, humankind has embellished its creations with ornament. If one considers exemplars of the architecture of ancient Mesopotamia, of ancient Egypt, of China, of Japan, of India, of Hellenic and Hellenistic culture, of the Roman Empire, of Islam, of Carolingian and Romanesque Europe, of the Middle Ages, of the Renaissance, Baroque, and Neo-Classical periods, of nineteenth-century Historicism, of the Arts-and- Crafts Movement, and indeed of any period in human history, ornament has played no small part in them all. .... It became apparent that something very strange had occurred: an aberration, something alien to the history of humanity, something destructive aesthetically and spiritually, something ugly and unpleasant, something that was inhumane and abnormal, yet something that was almost universally accepted in architectural circles, like some fundamentalist quasi-religious cult that demanded total allegiance, obedience, and subservience. What is more, the Modern Movement claimed to abolish ‘style' by preventing any choice in the matter through the imposition of one single style (which it was at pains to claim was not a ‘style' at all: one of the apostles of Modernism, Walter Gropius, for example, insisted, not entirely ingenuously, that the object of his creation, the Bauhaus, ‘was not to propagate any “style”, system, or dogma, but simply to exert a revitalising influence on design')
demagogue on 15/3/2023 at 17:34
I ripped through
Klara and the Sun in two days this last week. Ishiguro knows how to juice emotion. His joke is that he's only been writing the same book with a slightly different setting, which you can see here. It's of a piece with Never Let Me Go.
If AI do start accurately projecting emotion, I can all too easily see them becoming part of the family. I'm not sure about the longterm track of where that story goes though. It's really going to depend on what kind of model people have of them in their minds, a pet, the help, a friend, a little brother or sister, a lover, or some new category we can just vaguely think of now. Well this book takes a deep dive into that question from the perspective of the AI herself. And to the critics saying that she too "flat" or reserved with her emotion, I think they don't understand how Ishiguro gets the effect he gets. That's always been one of the magic ingredients in his works. He's British FFS! (Although granted this novel seems to be set in the future US, but future Americans seem to have found their empathy and conscientiousness.)
-------
Aside from that, since the Time of Corona, I scrounged up a list of books to learn "The Big Truths", especially quantum mechanics, cognitive science, mysticism, and global political theory (especially from the perspective of East looking West, as I do these days). I'm about halfway through Uday Mehta's Liberalism and Empire, and finally getting to Edward Said's Orientalism. James Frankles's "Rectifying God's Name: Liu Zhi's Confucian Translation of Monotheism and Islamic Law" about Lui Zhi's synchronization of Confucianism and Islam in the 1600s, Miller & Smith's "The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel", Luiz Pessoa's "The Entangled Brain: How Perception, Cognition, and Emotion Are Woven Together", Andy Clark's "Surfing Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind", Dreher & Tremblay's "Decision Neuroscience: An Integrative Approach", Absher & Cloutier's "Neuroimaging Personality, Social Cognition, and Character", and I just finished off Harmon-Jones & Inzlicht's "Social Neuroscience: Biological Approaches to Social Psychology". And of course, of course Griffiths & Schroeter's "Introduction to Quantum Mechanics" for the course, of course.
I just have them all lined up as tabs in my pdf app, and read a section of one when I have a bit of time until I'm done. (I shouldn't list the ones I've already read since the list of current reads is already too long. And there are some I still left off like the two on international economics.)
Then on top of all that I'm reading a ton of things on Afghanistan to make a new class on, you guessed it, Afghanistan, especially the sociology and practice of violations that occurred throughout all the wars its had since the Soviet invasion. That's part of my day job so I get to call that "work" and do it during my work hours. (Also a report on Japan's tuna markets for that matter, but I've already gotten through most of the reading for that now.) Like, re: Afghanistan, one thing we in the West never hear about, but to me seems like a really key piece, is that the Pashtun establishment doesn't recognize the Afghan-Pakistan border. All of these Western commentators asking what's the deal with Pakistan? Literally every single war since the 1970s was staged there--not seeming to realize that from the Afghan establishment's perspective that's still "inside Afghanistan" as they recognize it.
And I'm still reading everything about the Victorio Campaign in the Apache Wars for that project. I'm realizing that to do it justice, I need to add the Mexican side of the story, which is all about the Terrazas family in the late 1870s. You can sum up Luis Terrazas with his quip, when asked at a party if he was from Chihuahua, he famously answered "I'm not
from Chihuahua. Chihuahua is mine." He's almost a cartoon villain, so he's irresistible to have as part of this project. But aside from that, his cousin Joaquin Terrazas was the central piece in the Victorio campaign, so he has to be part of this story, and if Joaquin is part of the story, Luis has to be a part of it as well. The thing is that almost every source about it is in Spanish, which isn't too bad now because Google translate works so well. But it's still a challenge actually finding the sources.
Now I see why I don't usually volunteer to tell people what I'm currently reading. :p
------
Edit:
Very interesting. A lot of y'all may know I use Andre Breton as my avatar on a lot of other forums. He was one of the founding fathers in the cultural upheaval of Interwar Europe, moving from Dadaism and the enshrinement of outright incoherence into Freudianism and the idea that tapping into the pure structure of experience, pure id unfettered by the mores of so-called civilization, could somehow liberate us from our romantic fantasies. In the visual arts that led to surrealism, exposing the wiring and plumbing of consciousness, so to speak, by automatic speech and dream imagery, whereas in architecture it was quite literally exposing the wiring and plumbing and other structural elements of buildings as such.
The coolest take on it I had in college was a class on Carnap (& Heidegger). Carnap wrote "Logischer Aufbau der Welt", the logical structure of the world, which incidentally went on to become good old fashioned AI. It was in the air. WWI had completely obliterated romanticism to ashes, and the hot topic of the day was what was the actual structure underlying reality, since it clearly wasn't the Hegelian castles in the sky that had just led the western world to utter ruin. I always found it cool how art, theatre, architecture, law, politics, physics, and philosophy, etc., all seemed to be grasping after the same few ideas to try to answer that question in that period.
heywood on 16/3/2023 at 22:56
I think it's a prime example of the reactionary movement that's sweeping the world right now. A growing percentage of the first & second world are now actively trying to wind the clock back on civilization by about 100 years, and the growing hate for modern architecture is symbolic of a very dangerous trend.
Azaran on 17/3/2023 at 14:45
Quote Posted by heywood
I think it's a prime example of the reactionary movement that's sweeping the world right now. A growing percentage of the first & second world are now actively trying to wind the clock back on civilization by about 100 years, and the growing hate for modern architecture is symbolic of a very dangerous trend.
(
https://www.dezeen.com/2009/10/16/people-prefer-traditionally-designed-buildings-yougov/) Oh no, 77% of the population are reactionaries!
Most of us who hate modern architecture do so for pretty obvious reasons, it goes against what most people cherish - ornament, symmetry, natural/sustainable materials, etc. Many of the eminent modernist architects take malicious pleasure in defiling older buildings (e.g. Libeskind), and one whose name escapes me openly said architecture shouldn't make people feel good, it should make them uncomfortable.
Most importantly, trying to politicize architecture by associating its modernist form with progressive values (and tarring all others as reactionary) is a ridiculous fallacy. Moreover, considering that modernist architects are a supreme majority, control most architectural schools and university departments, and actively push against anything smacking of classicism (including failing students for projects that are too symmetrical, have hints of ornament, or are not provocative enough), they have no business trying to paint themselves as some kind of endangered or persecuted class.
When (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Frankfurt_Old_Town) Frankfurt's Old Town was rebuilt in medieval style (and is now a popular tourist destination), modern architects threw a rage fit, and went as far as invoking the Holocaust. That tells me everything I need to know about their idiocy.
Had it been up to Corbusier (the pioneer of modernist architecture), (
https://www.messynessychic.com/2022/02/18/the-paris-of-tomorrow-that-thankfully-never-was/) historic Paris would have been razed, and replaced with a brutalist complex.
Quote:
"Ornament and function go together. There is no structure in nature that can be classified as pure ornament without function. In traditional architecture, which was more tied to nature, such a separation never existed. The breakdown of the human adaptation of architecture can be traced to the forced conceptual separation of ornament from function, a relatively recent occurrence in human history. [...] Even less known outside scientific circles is the existence of a large number of cortical neurons inside the brain that are triggered only by ornamental elements. These include specific responses to crosses, stars, concentric circles, crosses with an outline, and other concentrically-organized symmetrical figures with some complexity. These patterns are therefore built into our cognitive neural structure. Since those neurons are there for a reason, we should be stimulating them."
(
https://patterns.architexturez.net/doc/az-cf-172522)
heywood on 5/4/2023 at 17:15
Sorry, I forgot to reply to this.
Libeskind is a postmodern architect, often labeled a deconstructivist. Like Gehry, his approach is the opposite of modernism.
Modern architecture has been dead for a half century. And Le Corbusier's ideas fell out of favor in the 30s when modern architecture was just getting going. So why are so many critics coming out of the woodwork now with passion and vitriol? It's like people ranting about communism like it's still a big threat. Folks are digging up old horses to beat them again.
I think it's another symptom of the current reactionary trend, which is almost everywhere you look now. It's not just the neo-fascists. You can find people rejecting modern medicine, modern farming, abandoning science and rigor in favor of mysticism, turning away from professional journalism, turning away from public education, rejecting internationalism and multiculturalism, homesteading and living off the grid, talking about population control and de-industrialization, blaming tech for their problems, etc. There seems to be more and more people embracing the idea that truth is a social construct, looking to censor opposing views, and becoming obsessed with categorizing people i.e. labels and races. Etc. Etc.
Tocky on 8/4/2023 at 19:18
I'm reading Frankenstien. The language is archaic and flowery but not so thick as to block imparting the meaning and feeling of Shelly and side with her view. I'm surprised more movie adaptations have not started as she did and drawn out the introduction as it is there where the hooks of her story begin to draw one in. No need to start with lightening when a distant rumble of thunder is more ominous.
Also I don't think you can throw in the kitchen sink when speaking of architecture, heywood. Don't censor the opposing view that some of that is lazy and uninspired. I consider it dependent upon the imagination of the architect. Rand may have favored it and Picasso but different and simple in not always better or more inspired. In many instances it is different just to be different and forgets entirely that form follows function and does so most beautifully when that is included.
mxleader on 8/6/2023 at 04:49
I just finished a great book called Indestructible: One Man's Rescue Mission That Changed the Course of WWII. I normally read a lot of books about WWII aviation and Naval type stuff and this one fit neatly into both. It was especially interesting because my grandfather was an Army Air Corp pilot in WWII, Korea and part of Vietnam and was in one of the squadrons covered in the book. It's 500 pages and is a pretty quick read. There were only a few instances where the author inserted modern colloquialisms that didn't fit, and occasionally used long rarely used words that all but stops you because you have to break out the dictionary. Other than that it's a great book and I found it at a thrift store for under $4 USD.
demagogue on 8/6/2023 at 15:06
I get obsessed by that kind of stuff too, and fly warbirds in sims all the time. There are a couple of DCS campaigns that are based on books, and I'll always get the book to read when I do them. The WWII one I like the most follows the Battle of Britain over the Channel and is based on the book "The Big Show" by Pierre Clostermann, a free French ace flying the Spitty with the Brits, about his experience. You read it and then you get to fly the missions, which is amazing. The other awesome one is Navel One about an F18 pilot in the Persian Gulf when basically a war breaks out with Iran. I mean amazing & awesome in terms of the stories being natural thrillers and scenarios you play in a video game. Actual war is terrible of course.
But speaking of which, just before the Myanmar coup, we were working in Myitkyina, Kachin state, way up at the top starting into the foothills already of the Himalayas, and there were a lot of memorials and information about the Burma Road and Japanese occupation. One of the American units that became POWs & impressed into work in Burma, and which suffered the most abysmal treatment, was from my home state of Texas, about which there's also a good book, Hell under the Rising Sun. So I had some idea about the history from that. It's was really interesting for me to see the memorials and make contact with the area's history like that, not least in being an American working for a Japanese organization there. All of my co-workers are mortified by Japan's behavior in the war, though, like I am about the US's bad behavior in Iraq and Afghanistan for that matter; so there's not any cognitive dissonance there.
mxleader on 19/8/2023 at 04:12
Besides making my way through Dispatches by Michael Kerr I'm reading a Rolling Stones magazine collectors addition featuring Pink Floyd. I'm also reading a HAM radio Technician class book so I can test for my first HAM radio license. I also have the 26 volume Peanuts comic strip set to read through. I'm on the second volume so I have a ways to go. I know that comic strips may not fit in here that well but when read historically in large chunks you learn a lot about the strip, the characters and social things that were relevant at the time the strips were created by Schulz.