Empty form

When we look at a chair, we think that we can sit on it. That is the interpretation that we give to a chair. Since we interpret the object, we actually gives the meaning to it When we look at modern architecture which we actually claim that it is the most simple architectural style we ever created, are we sure? Modern architecture is very complex but not complicated. It is complex in terms of the meaning we give to it. The function that architect would try very hard to express it through the architecture that he or she created. Even that modernist tried to make this type of architecture to be as empty from the meaning as possible, they never succeed. Modern architecture is full of meaning in the term of function. You can't design function without a translation of a user. When interpretation occurs, that is when meanings exist in the design. Another way of explaining this is, function is a meaning. 

Empty form, Empty form is the concept of design that is flexible at zero degree. This means it could be anything as we want. For example, a room could be anything that we want it to be. It could be a bathroom, a kitchen, a stadium, a tower anything. I think this concept is very conceptual in architecture. It is impossible to create one cause it will never be flexible enough. However, post modernists try to achieve it by designing double functioning elements, fluid forms but still it is not flexible at zero degree. So I think we as architects (architectural student) , are running towards the idea. However, empty form actually exists in our society but not in architectural from. How? Money is an object that can be everything we wish it to be. How? By trading, money is the mutual object of trading. We could trade it for a car, a house, a bathroom, a building and ever other things. Money can buy objects. 

Hyperreality, Simulation and Reality plus why Borat is funny

Hyperreality is actually one of the theory I found out that it is amazing. It changes my perception towards the world as seeing what is real into what is not. A question that may come into your mind as you reading this is what is hyperreality. Hyperreality is beyond reality. It is a state which you can't really distinguish what is real and what is not. To achieve hyperreality can be done through the moment you can't tell what is reality or simulation. Simulation is not just you acting yet pretending and experience what you are pretending to be. One example we had in our reading is, to simulate your sickness is not just saying that you are sick but experiencing all the symptom of sickness that you are simulating. This is simulation. 

There is an artist playing with simulation and hyperreality- Nikki Lee. Nikki Lee is a korean performer artist based in New York city She has her theme what she wants to be and experience. In another term, what she wants to simulate her self as. For example, she simulates herself as an African American woman. She has to learn how to speak with African American accent. Dressing up like african american woman and live and think like them 24/7. She needs to have her own make up artist that can help her fake skin color. As you look at the picture below you will see no Korean woman anymore but an African American woman. 

Nikki S. Lee as African American Womanhttps://blogs.wellesley.edu/arthafr316sp13/

Once Nikki has a theme to be a strip dancer she has to lose her weight  to make her simulation to be as real as possible. So people can't really tell that she is simulating to be a strip dancer. When people can't tell whether she is feigning, that is when they achieve hyperrealism. 

Now we have to think more what reality is. Is our belief real? It is real in our conscience. (That's how we say to ourselves) But is it real or it is just something we make. Doesn't our perception actually form our belief to be real in our conscience? Everything we perceive and translate came from our background. If you think about Ghost, some of you might believe it or not. For those who believe it would think that Ghost is real. But how do you know that Ghost is real. For me, Ghost is mythical. You can't prove it if it does exist or not. Even some people say that Ghost can be prove with technology. Yes, we live in technology world. It is the world where things can be faked by technology. Maybe it would be best by not believe in anything as it is real. Reality is no longer tangible. 

Another thing we did in the class which is watching Borat. My instructor, Ajarn Taylor actually asked us why Borat is funny. So Borat is film call Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Borat came from Kazakhstan and was hired to act pretty much stupid like he doesn't know how to behave properly in America. What he was asked was to simulating that role. However, other people in the scene doesn't know that he is simulating. That is a funny part for us as a third party looking at it knowing everything. Seeing those people reaction toward Borat acting and they took it so serious. They can't identify that Borat is simulating. They are living in Hyperreality.(Well, those people don't know that he was acting) Borat can't be funny by himself without others' reactions towards him.

Sometimes, I wonder if things surround us is real or just another simulation. Or maybe there is no reality because everything we belief comes from our perception which it might be deceived. So what it real?

Relationship between Design and Translation

What is design? This is a one of the toughest question for me as a design student. To know the mean of this term, one thing you need to know is what sign is. Semiotic actually play a lot of roles in our society. It is just everywhere we go. For example, the symbols on in front of the ladies’ rooms show us that it is a room for ladies. We perceive the message right away that it is bathroom for ladies not for gentlemen. Sign is something that sends message or invitation out to people. Everything we perceive is “SIGN”.

So what is design? As we break down the term DESIGN as DE and SIGN, Design would mean to break down the sign, to destroy the sign. In another term, it is the action to break down everything we perceive everyday and differentiate them. But how can we make things different from what is already exist? And how can people design things with the same function has the out comes are different? It is because people perceive things differently that make the process of translation becomes different.

As it is stated in the last paragraph that people perceive things differently, it is because they all have different background, knowledge and experiences. For example, if you look back in to the Renaissance time, people would look at the ladies that is kind of chubby as beautiful. However, people in our era don’t think that way anymore. We perceive that body as fat. The perception of beauty changes overtime. Or western people might act differently from Thai people in the same situation. For instance, an old lady is sitting on a chair and there is a girl that needs to walk pass, western girl would just walk normally like nothing is happening. On the other hand, Thai girl would crawl on the ground until she crawl passes that older lady. Culture and value also make us perceive things differently.

Once people see things differently, they translate those things differently as well. Then they would design differently. Now, most of everything can’t be called creating the sign in twenty-first century instead they call it designing because almost everything is created. So they can’t really come up with original things but derive from the existing. But how those things will be derived it’s all depends on translation. For example, staircases have been existed for a long time. However, people keep designing it differently. From a staircase with risers and treads, they took away risers and stick the tread to wall. This makes the staircase look floatable. Another example is toothbrush that existed for a long time. What we can do with it is to make it more convenient to clean your teeth. So people have to find the bad part of the earlier model and ameliorate it, make it into the better model. Or they might add more features to a regular toothbrush. This is how design relates to translation in one way. Translation makes design different.

Another way of how design and translation relates is design effects the way people translate thing. Once the new invention is launched and it hits the public. Many people would have that image as a standard of the good object. For example, when mobile phone is first launched. It is a great object, a phone that is mobility. Then you can reach people wherever they are. But since smartphone is launched. People stop caring about the regular cell phone that can only text and call. They see smartphone as revolution or something that changes the world. Perspective of people on that object has changed. It create the different translation.

Phenomenology

This whole entry is about how phenomenology relates to my own studio work. Phenomenology is the study of your consciousness, how things appear by considering other ways of thought besides logic and scientific. This is the definition of phenomenology in philosophy.  Phenomenology in architecture is based upon the one’s experience of building form. It is a study of how you perceive the space and the environment around it.  

My studio project is to create the sculpture pavilion that contains eight Thai sculptures, which we get to have a site at Parc Paragon. The whole pavilion is ephemeral which its duration of exhibiting is three months. So started up with making a survey on how people think of Thai sculptures. It turns out to be that people think of it as something very archaic and traditional.  However, those sculptures that will be exhibiting are not traditional at all.  So it can conclude that people has visions in Thai sculpture. They have expectation of how Thai sculpture looks like. Nevertheless, their expectation isn’t always what things are.

So I decided to design a pavilion under the concept of unexpected. I design the façade of my pavilion to be as banal as possible. It is simply a black cube. However, when people get inside my building, they will see the white fluid form in paper waffle structure. People would feel that it is very unexpected. It is the sublime that people would experience by the unexpected of the form. It is also and unexpected by the structure and materials as well. Natural lighting comes from the ceiling that is full of squares as you look up above because on the top of the waffle structure, the roof that would protect the paper waffle structure from weather is made out of poly carbonate which allows natural light to come into the space but not too much. I also play with the idea of expectation in size. Inside my pavilion there are many thresholds that seeing from the outside they look all they same. However, the inside that there are different sizes in volume that you can’t guess or see it from out side. These are phenomena of my pavilion.