On the series, Temporal Architecture

The work included in this ongoing series, Temporal Architecture, represents over eleven years of research and experiments on paper with various modes of diagrammatic thinking and associated systems of representation. These hybridizations of systems aim to evolve a discursive domain of dynamic, rather than the typical static and reductive perceptions of physical structures in diagrammatic thinking and representation.

The processes that produced these outcomes are meant to challenge assumptions of physical and temporal simulacra using various combinations of diagrammatic languages as a generative means to assess what emerges- what invisible relationships can be made visible -and new directions such emergence may suggest.

The constraint of two-dimensionality in this series explores how a flat diagram can synthesize pictorial and linguistic attributes of space and time. Space is implied in the relationships of different methods of measurement and time is implied as comparative modes of sequence.

My use of the term “architecture” in the series title refers to both the defined spaces of various human-scale constructions, as well as folded/unfolded smaller scale containers in various forms and stages of transition- most of which are revealed in plan and elevation, but never with perspective projection. The term "architecture" is also meant to encompass a wide range of systems and hybrids including- biological, linguistic, auditory, and graphic notation of choreographed motion (such as dance notation) in transition- hence the reference to temporality. These domains appear in various representations and recombination spread amongst the series.

Some of the works include a collaboration with one or two robot vacuum cleaners modified with attachments for making marks. These markings comprise alternating layers where the devices responded to my images, my constructed physical labyrinths, interactions with each other, or to recorded or ambient sound. The responses of the machines to these stimuli and/or physical constraints were randomized interventions affecting their 4 random factory programmed self-selected travel patterns as vacuum appliances. At times, I viewed my “dialog” with these machines as related to the Surrealist game of Exquisite Corpse in the unforeseen outcomes that would emerge- sometimes incorporated, but sometimes not.

Several summary conditions common to all drawings in the series:

· The drawings superimpose schematic images of folding and unfolding spaces.

· Many spatial forms can stack or nest upon or into each other.

· Spatial scales are inconsistent- human-scale architecture nests inside the imagined space of a packing   carton. Conversely, small boxes become proposals for scale of human habitation.

· These imagined hybrids of different scale spatial forms are not explorations for design applications, but exercises in the capacity to visualize virtual hybrid spaces and objects in a dynamic context.

· Time is implicit in all the drawings with the intention that the imagery provokes the act of an optical and mental cycle of spatial expansion and contraction between two and three dimensions - their manipulation extending to inversion and often, eversion.

· The work with robot collaboration presents the robot’s own graphic records as response to external stimuli