David BAIRD | , M.Arch, AIA, Artist
Director of the University of Nevada Las Vegas, School of Architecture david.baird@unlv.edu
Abstract
This paper examines three bodies of artwork or case studies: the Visual Journal, Your Turn and the Paper Trial. Each case study explores a different aspect of the creative process that is shared by both art and architecture: Iteration, User Participation and Narrative.
Visual Journal: Iteration
“Artists reproduce themselves or each other with wearisome iteration. But Criticism is always moving on, the critic is always developing.” Oscar Wilde (1891)
Iteration is most commonly associated with a design process of continual refinement that moves toward a specific goal or objective. I use iteration as an investigative tool to explore basic compositional issues as they relate to a limited set number of variables. My reliance on iteration is a response to the difficulty we have in this modern age critiquing composition or discussing beauty. This lack of structure, confidence and authority surrounding the evaluation of composition is due to an increasing reliance on relativism and subjectivity. When knowledge, truth, and readings of history are not absolute, evaluating compositions or searching for beauty becomes difficult, if not impossible. The notion of beauty and the attempt to define or quantify it has been replaced by discussions of appropriateness, performance and personal preferences.
Iteration offers an alternative by creating a field of reference that facilitates critical observations.
The Visual Journal is a quest to re-establish some compositional authority in this modern age.
The Visual Journal is a project I started more than 20 years ago that currently contains more than 15,000 works. The majority of the journal entries are non-objective abstract works, which offer an experience to the viewer. This is their intended meaning and purpose. The Visual Journal can be understood as a rigorous, ongoing exploration grounded in the notion that beauty is not created but, rather, discovered.
Technion, Israel Institute of Technology Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning
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This artistic journal is conceived of as a singular work of art that will never be viewed or perhaps understood in its entirety. Many of the individual entries have been sold to institutions and private collectors, which has fragmented and geographically dispersed the journal. In addition, my family members and I hold many pieces that will never be displayed publicly.
Every visual experience was explored in series—most involving well over 20 iterations. At first glance, the entries may look the same. However, they are variations on a theme, using the same colors, forms and technique, with subtle alterations. When displayed in groupings, these prints reveal the significant impact of these small changes and variations. Each series provides the viewer a context in which to critically evaluate his or her experience to exercise their visual muscles—to truly examine, experience and evaluate our visual world. Displaying the work this way can unburden the viewer by allowing them to make meaningful observations without in-depth knowledge of art and/or composition.
Many of the journal entries are two-dimensional mixed media paintings. However, the entries shown above are the latest three-dimensional investigations using Form Z software and a Makerbot 3-D printer. These particular entries, stripped of color, isolate the form, allowing one to observe both the impact of the relationships between the compositional elements and how those subtle variations impact the overall experience of a work. The pieces are always displayed in groupings of 6–24. This gives the observer a field within which to make critical observations.
Your Turn: User Participation
“When a place is lifeless or unreal, there is almost always a mastermind behind it. It is so filled with the will of its maker that there is no room for its own nature.” Christopher Alexander (1979)
Designing buildings and urban spaces have always been collaborative endeavors. Most understand the need for the lead designer or architect to work closely with the owner/client, a variety of engineers, local building code/planning officials, other specialized designers as well as the contractor to produce a building. Few consider the role the inhabitants play in the design of a building. Habraken (1972), in his seminal book Supports: An Alternative to Mass Housing, suggests
55 that the control given to the users of a particular space is largely defined by the architect—more specifically when the architect stops designing and provides meaningful opportunities for the inhabitants to control the space. He elaborates on these spheres of control in his book The Structure of the Ordinary. These humble ideas have proven powerful and are linked to the Structuralist and Open Building movements.
Less rigor has been applied to this participation dynamic in the art world, where the authorship of a work is most commonly considered the sole responsibility of the artist.
Participatory art is largely an affront to the “professional artist,” and the work that results from this process is rarely considered significant or noteworthy. Your Turn is an exploration in participation.
Your Turn is not solely concerned with form, composition or external appearances. Nor is this work simply willful self-expression or the result of a desire to create a definitive masterpiece.
Your Turn examines the process of making art and more specifically the distribution of control within that process: Who decides what and when? These works are purposefully open-ended to provide the viewer/collaborator a frame within which to maneuver and explore. The intent is for the art to become a device for exploration and enrichment—a tool for engagement.
These works are constantly moving, but you will never perceive the movement. The wires begin by projecting straight out of their stainless steel frames. It takes approximately 4–16 hours for the wires to droop down due to gravity. The role of the viewer/collaborator is to manage the piece by occasionally turning the work. The length of the wires, their proximity to one another and how the piece is managed will determine how the composition changes over time.
The collaboration requires a direct ongoing dialogue between a work and a willing participant and relies on a clear division of responsibilities. My role is to define the “deep structure” or “rules of play” and to surrender the status of independent artist. The viewer’s role, first and foremost, is to bring an earnestness to their engagement. In return they are granted substantial authority in the development of the work and its ever-changing composition.
Technion, Israel Institute of Technology Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning
56 Paper Trail: Narrative
“The universe is made of stories, not atoms.” Muriel Rukeyser (1992)
Bruner (1986) identified two ways people order their experiences. The first is paradigmatic, which refers to a scientific framework based on reason. The second is narrative, which structures information or experience through expressions using various media. Narrative is a compelling way to organize experiences and communicate understanding to others. Art and architecture have made ample use of both these approaches. However, narrative has been used in perhaps more varied ways.
Contemporary uses of narrative include Bachelard (1969), who revealed how our thoughts, memories and dreams are embedded in the spaces we inhabit; Frascari (2012), who explored the powerful narrative techniques that help introduce new designs, and strategies for conceiving buildings; and Mitchell (2000), who showed us that architecture can embrace digital information to generate interactive stories unique to each user group. In contrast, the sculptural works entitled Paper Trial maintain the centrality and importance of the text while scrutinizing its reading.
Paper Trail reflects my ongoing exploration of three-dimensional structural variations based on scriptural themes. The Tower of Babel, from Genesis 11:4, is one of the selected themes in this series. The scriptural text depicts the “vain imaginations” of people, attempting to create a one-world global order with a common temple and language:
Now the whole world had one language and a common speech. As people moved eastward, they found a plain in Shinar[b] and settled there. They said to each other,
“Come, let’s make bricks and bake them thoroughly.” They used brick instead of stone, and tar for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.” But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth (Genesis 11: 1-9, NIV).
The passage is brief and leaves much to the imagination, but these gaps in the narrative leave fertile ground for artistic exploration. The Biblical text clearly challenges a society focused on itself. Similarly, Paper Trail captures the paradox between human accomplishment and unbridled human ambition. The structures appear to be simultaneously constructed and deconstructed or
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“falling apart.” It is reminiscent of Robert Delauney’s work, especially his cubist-like painting of the Eiffel Tower. The pieces appear to have a set structure that is exploding. The strength and complexity of these works are juxtaposed against the disquieting, less than reassuring feeling they exude.
This can be compared to the Noah’s Ark piece entitled Sanctification. Noah’s blind faith obedience to God in building a boat according to God’s explicit “blueprint” is a timeless testimony to the great artist and architect of the universe. This piece forcefully depicts the struggles and difficulties that must have occurred but were left to the reader’s imagination. This redemptive story parallels and has an implicit connection to the contemporary narrative developed around global warming - the earths looming destruction if human behavior does not change.
The Paper Trail series combines realistic and abstract qualities, challenging any sanitized interpretations of these accounts. As a viewer you need to perceive these forms, to look “through”
instead of “at” the physical surfaces. After reading and studying the text, one can use this work as a starting point for a reflective journey.
Technion, Israel Institute of Technology Faculty of Architecture and Town Planning
58 Works Cited
Alexander, Christopher. The Timeless Way of Building. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1979.
Bachelard, Gaston. The Poetics of Space. Boston: Beacon Press, 1969.
Bruner, Jerome. Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986.
Frascari, Marco. “An Architecture Good-Life Can Be Built, Explained and Taught Only Through Storytelling.” Reading Architecture and Culture: Researching Buildings,
Spaces and Documents. Ed. Adam Sharr. New York: Routledge, 2012. 224–233.
Habraken, John. The Structure of the Ordinary. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1998.
---. Supports: An Alternative to Mass Housing. London: Architectural Press, 1972.
Mitchell, William J. E-Topia: “Urban Life, Jim-But Not As We Know It”.
Boston: MIT Press, 2000.
Rukeyser, Murriel. “The Speed of Darkness.” Out of Silence: Selected Poems.
Evanston: TriQuarterly Books, 1992.
Wilde, Oscar. Oscar Wilde: The Major Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989.
* All images have been provided by the author/artist.
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