fascinating post Ronald.
>but deconstructing the movie theater is being/has been done, probably by
>you as well. and deconstructing architecture generally is a similar
>exercise. architecture is becoming (and perhaps always has been, more or
>less) as much a manifestation of existing power (political/economic as
>opposed to electrical/mechanical) as film.
definitely so. the point that i am attempting to make is that i believe
there is a break in the long continuity of building/architecture, that,
although one may be able to follow, say, theater performances onto the
electronic light of film, that there is still a paradigm of difference
to be overcome (or ignored) in the interpretation/criticism of the bldg.
that is why i take issue with Muschamp's bldg=building position. it is
a false comparison in architectural terms. i say this based on research
of electronic media, developed in my architecture of electricity thesis.
my position is that architectural concepts such as 'form', 'light',
'structure', 'materiality' - all these have changed their nature in
the 20th century. but architectural discourse has not yet realized it.
for example, i can understand how a comparison between a theater and
a movie theater could be made; better yet, for extremes, an archaic
cave with dwellers in comparision with our POMO electronic cave of
the movie theater. i think their similarity rests in both of these
architectural types to be similarly compared to Plato's cave.
it might be at the conceptual core of human imagination, this 'stage'
setting, deciding- determining- dreaming the realities of the world.
but in the archaic cave, there were rocks, plant dyes and pigments,
an ur-architect, saying: "Ugh, like this, see--..." and the audience
grunting and bobbing up heads, laughing, scared, angry, in love. and
the special ritual gathering may have tapped and ultimately helped to
evolve our understanding of ourselves and our place in the universe.
space-time, aesthetics, culture, the economic, social, and political
order of the stone age and homo habilus.
in the electronic cave of the movie theater, this same evolution or
experimention and representation of human (read American) culture
and civilization exist in this ancient event of consensual halluc-
ination and suspended disbelief. the superman auteur/architect does
their interpretive magic, the surreal storytelling of homo electrus.
but in this second cave, we have a different order. we've further
cracked the physical-material code of (our) nature. in the archaic
cave, we had rocks, reeds, wood, meat, and tons of vegetables.
today, we have gone levels deeper in our understanding of nature's
secrets. we are playing with molecular structures and designs and
having them do work for us. one amazing discovery, roughly 4000
years old in its unfolding development, is the mystery of electro-
magnetism. i argue in my (ae) thesis that this is a new order in
the world, in terms of architecture.
thus, in terms of the two caves, one stone and one electronic,
architectural terms like 'structure', 'form', 'material', 'light'
mean 2 different things for these two different events.
the structure, form, materiality, and light of one may be seen
as 'fire and stone', those cutting-edge technologies of our archaic
ancestors.
the structure, form, materiality, and light of the Movie theater,
on the otherhand, is based on the molecular effects of the electron,
as both material and energy.
so, although a light is shown which casts shadows of puppets upon
our caves walls, these are two different orders of enlightenment,
i propose. and i think, even up to this day, the same is true,
including the whole of Modern Architecture. in intellectual terms
the order of building being used is that of our Stone Age under-
standing. not of our (self-aware) new electronic order of things
[Foucault reference intended].
thus, Mies Barcelona Pavillion, i would argue, is much closer to
a cave than a movie theater in terms of architectural ordering.
and that is my disagreement with Muschamp's view that the 'form,
materiality, light, structure' are not up to snuff for granting
of the prestigious critic's definition of true "Architecture".
[it is at this conclusion that i do not know what to do with the
ideas, as it is hard to justify pure commercial architecture as
ideal or good in much of any ways.. but, at the same time, i do
think it may be my reaction to what i see as 'eyes of the old
order' trying to interpret/define the new order, without under-
standing that it is a new order. and it may have other guiding
principles. it may be Alvin Toffler's temporary architecture,
or architecture that rapidly develops, and changes, reappearing
with a new function within a decade, within a day...]
[pause/re-appear]
i went on a walk and was thinking about this post, and i came up
with the above comparsion between 2 caves. but what i ultimately
hoped to get at was more toward the issues found in dn's posting
about a conference on 'Cinema and the City' or 'Architecture and
Cinema'. my interest, i think, has to do with "seeing a building
apparition on a film's screen or through a cathode-ray tube."
that is, to continue the above comparision, to see a building made
of stone versus another bldg represented in electromagnetic light.
two different orders of architecture (light, materiality, form).
that was the 'key' comparision i had hoped to make in this post.
on all points i agree with your assessment. although above is
the point i was trying to make.
>hollywood 1999 = the church in
>1525. the movie theater as the place where people escape their mundane
>existence to experience another reality is exactly what the medieval
>church-going experience was in many ways. and hollywood is the vatican in
>many ways, though with not as "catholic" (read universal, or monolithic) a
>message to convey (though probably much moreso than we would like to
>think). i am sometimes shocked at the ways in which our lives are directed
>or manipulated (or attempted to be) by film, especially/specifically the
>hollywood blockbuster variety. i would love to see an analysis of the
>values or ethics or "life lessons" that are expounded by the top 100 movies
>of the last few years. sexual love is god, violence is celebrated as well,
>traditional morality and organized religion are vilified, an almost
>complete subversion of the "message" of or the values expounded by the
>equally manipulative medieval church.
i love this stuff, maybe because of being an ex-Catholic myself and
feeling the same structures at work with technologies (& within other
institutions such as architectural schools).
i think your analysis is much closer to addressing the central issues
of formal meaning than was mine. what i think you are doing is reading
the architectural 'signs' and seeing the Movie Theater is loaded with
meaning. i happen to be reading in TANAFA about semiotics and this is
tying in to what's in my brain cell patterns right about now. thanks!
i tried to address this aspect of a typical movie-music store in Part
2 of the De|Con-structing the Wherehouse essay at the following url:
http://www.architexturez.com/site/research/essays/decon/index.htm
>the movie theater as vessel for the transporter (like the church as vessel
>for a like-intentioned liturgy/performance) is not quite the analogy i
>would make, but it kind of works. i liken the medieval cathedral (as
>medium) to the modern day movie, in its message bearing function, its
>power wielding representation, its creation as the product of many
>craftsmen, artisans and a "master builder" (director/architect). i've
>always been fascinated by this comparison -- it's intersting to speculate
>on the relative weight of the film viewing/liturgy attendance to the
>building itself. the movie theater disappears for the film; the cathedral
>becomes background, but participates in the liturgy in a very important
>way. in watching a film, sight and sound are primary, perhaps even totally
>excluding the other senses, much more "virtual." In the cathedral, the
>body is more immediately engaged -- sight, sound, smell, taste, touch.
i think Paul Virilio is probably closest to this, both in terms of
architecture and religious undertones in technological enlightenment.
my recent take, as per the transporter, is that these e-technologies
of media are the equivalent of the mythical 'time machine' of lore.
what are we building, here, electronically, but an electronic record,
files, trillions of files a year, into the future. what happens when
the Internet grows old and matures... this text, no longer new, will
become a place of artifacts, old paths worn in the wires and hard-
disks of disappeared connections.. and the ideas of lists such as
Design-L, will become assemblages of space and time.. to be mined,
or, excavated in an act of information archaeology.. it may be that
ideas such as: what a piece of junk this movie theater architecture
is, will, in some day in the future be read with much more meaning,
more 'charged' say, than, the mundane tit-for-tat between critics
and dream designers who are building mausoleums for client egos.
an idea such as yours, Ronald, is an important artifact to develop,
i believe, because it will give people an alternative understanding
and show the way for deeper interpretations of the seemingly mundane.
i will argue in my work that we are living in what is equivalent to
the classical age of electricity. an age when "old technologies were
new". that is, in terms of long-term stories of humanity, it is a
tremendous time to be alive- to be using the first computers, the
first radios, phones, televisions... these are as architecturally
important as Corinthian capitals and columns are for the Roman Empire.
and that brings me to what i think is the import of your message
regarding the economic/political dimension of the movie/theater:
war is not the kiss, but the Hollywood Movie is the Pax Americana.
>and the regularized (sunday morning/saturday nite) ritualistic aspect adds
>to the analogy.
>
>and the extension of this idea to television and then computers is tenous,
>but can be made.
[early on in my research i categorized electronic media buildings as
the equivalent to "temple" architecture. i still have 3d models in my
head of making temples with wooden poles and a television set on the
order of the Temple of Venus or the Parthenon, but i haven't got around
to it just yet].
>but i digress.
please digress more often..
bc
>but deconstructing the movie theater is being/has been done, probably by
>you as well. and deconstructing architecture generally is a similar
>exercise. architecture is becoming (and perhaps always has been, more or
>less) as much a manifestation of existing power (political/economic as
>opposed to electrical/mechanical) as film.
definitely so. the point that i am attempting to make is that i believe
there is a break in the long continuity of building/architecture, that,
although one may be able to follow, say, theater performances onto the
electronic light of film, that there is still a paradigm of difference
to be overcome (or ignored) in the interpretation/criticism of the bldg.
that is why i take issue with Muschamp's bldg=building position. it is
a false comparison in architectural terms. i say this based on research
of electronic media, developed in my architecture of electricity thesis.
my position is that architectural concepts such as 'form', 'light',
'structure', 'materiality' - all these have changed their nature in
the 20th century. but architectural discourse has not yet realized it.
for example, i can understand how a comparison between a theater and
a movie theater could be made; better yet, for extremes, an archaic
cave with dwellers in comparision with our POMO electronic cave of
the movie theater. i think their similarity rests in both of these
architectural types to be similarly compared to Plato's cave.
it might be at the conceptual core of human imagination, this 'stage'
setting, deciding- determining- dreaming the realities of the world.
but in the archaic cave, there were rocks, plant dyes and pigments,
an ur-architect, saying: "Ugh, like this, see--..." and the audience
grunting and bobbing up heads, laughing, scared, angry, in love. and
the special ritual gathering may have tapped and ultimately helped to
evolve our understanding of ourselves and our place in the universe.
space-time, aesthetics, culture, the economic, social, and political
order of the stone age and homo habilus.
in the electronic cave of the movie theater, this same evolution or
experimention and representation of human (read American) culture
and civilization exist in this ancient event of consensual halluc-
ination and suspended disbelief. the superman auteur/architect does
their interpretive magic, the surreal storytelling of homo electrus.
but in this second cave, we have a different order. we've further
cracked the physical-material code of (our) nature. in the archaic
cave, we had rocks, reeds, wood, meat, and tons of vegetables.
today, we have gone levels deeper in our understanding of nature's
secrets. we are playing with molecular structures and designs and
having them do work for us. one amazing discovery, roughly 4000
years old in its unfolding development, is the mystery of electro-
magnetism. i argue in my (ae) thesis that this is a new order in
the world, in terms of architecture.
thus, in terms of the two caves, one stone and one electronic,
architectural terms like 'structure', 'form', 'material', 'light'
mean 2 different things for these two different events.
the structure, form, materiality, and light of one may be seen
as 'fire and stone', those cutting-edge technologies of our archaic
ancestors.
the structure, form, materiality, and light of the Movie theater,
on the otherhand, is based on the molecular effects of the electron,
as both material and energy.
so, although a light is shown which casts shadows of puppets upon
our caves walls, these are two different orders of enlightenment,
i propose. and i think, even up to this day, the same is true,
including the whole of Modern Architecture. in intellectual terms
the order of building being used is that of our Stone Age under-
standing. not of our (self-aware) new electronic order of things
[Foucault reference intended].
thus, Mies Barcelona Pavillion, i would argue, is much closer to
a cave than a movie theater in terms of architectural ordering.
and that is my disagreement with Muschamp's view that the 'form,
materiality, light, structure' are not up to snuff for granting
of the prestigious critic's definition of true "Architecture".
[it is at this conclusion that i do not know what to do with the
ideas, as it is hard to justify pure commercial architecture as
ideal or good in much of any ways.. but, at the same time, i do
think it may be my reaction to what i see as 'eyes of the old
order' trying to interpret/define the new order, without under-
standing that it is a new order. and it may have other guiding
principles. it may be Alvin Toffler's temporary architecture,
or architecture that rapidly develops, and changes, reappearing
with a new function within a decade, within a day...]
[pause/re-appear]
i went on a walk and was thinking about this post, and i came up
with the above comparsion between 2 caves. but what i ultimately
hoped to get at was more toward the issues found in dn's posting
about a conference on 'Cinema and the City' or 'Architecture and
Cinema'. my interest, i think, has to do with "seeing a building
apparition on a film's screen or through a cathode-ray tube."
that is, to continue the above comparision, to see a building made
of stone versus another bldg represented in electromagnetic light.
two different orders of architecture (light, materiality, form).
that was the 'key' comparision i had hoped to make in this post.
on all points i agree with your assessment. although above is
the point i was trying to make.
>hollywood 1999 = the church in
>1525. the movie theater as the place where people escape their mundane
>existence to experience another reality is exactly what the medieval
>church-going experience was in many ways. and hollywood is the vatican in
>many ways, though with not as "catholic" (read universal, or monolithic) a
>message to convey (though probably much moreso than we would like to
>think). i am sometimes shocked at the ways in which our lives are directed
>or manipulated (or attempted to be) by film, especially/specifically the
>hollywood blockbuster variety. i would love to see an analysis of the
>values or ethics or "life lessons" that are expounded by the top 100 movies
>of the last few years. sexual love is god, violence is celebrated as well,
>traditional morality and organized religion are vilified, an almost
>complete subversion of the "message" of or the values expounded by the
>equally manipulative medieval church.
i love this stuff, maybe because of being an ex-Catholic myself and
feeling the same structures at work with technologies (& within other
institutions such as architectural schools).
i think your analysis is much closer to addressing the central issues
of formal meaning than was mine. what i think you are doing is reading
the architectural 'signs' and seeing the Movie Theater is loaded with
meaning. i happen to be reading in TANAFA about semiotics and this is
tying in to what's in my brain cell patterns right about now. thanks!
i tried to address this aspect of a typical movie-music store in Part
2 of the De|Con-structing the Wherehouse essay at the following url:
http://www.architexturez.com/site/research/essays/decon/index.htm
>the movie theater as vessel for the transporter (like the church as vessel
>for a like-intentioned liturgy/performance) is not quite the analogy i
>would make, but it kind of works. i liken the medieval cathedral (as
>medium) to the modern day movie, in its message bearing function, its
>power wielding representation, its creation as the product of many
>craftsmen, artisans and a "master builder" (director/architect). i've
>always been fascinated by this comparison -- it's intersting to speculate
>on the relative weight of the film viewing/liturgy attendance to the
>building itself. the movie theater disappears for the film; the cathedral
>becomes background, but participates in the liturgy in a very important
>way. in watching a film, sight and sound are primary, perhaps even totally
>excluding the other senses, much more "virtual." In the cathedral, the
>body is more immediately engaged -- sight, sound, smell, taste, touch.
i think Paul Virilio is probably closest to this, both in terms of
architecture and religious undertones in technological enlightenment.
my recent take, as per the transporter, is that these e-technologies
of media are the equivalent of the mythical 'time machine' of lore.
what are we building, here, electronically, but an electronic record,
files, trillions of files a year, into the future. what happens when
the Internet grows old and matures... this text, no longer new, will
become a place of artifacts, old paths worn in the wires and hard-
disks of disappeared connections.. and the ideas of lists such as
Design-L, will become assemblages of space and time.. to be mined,
or, excavated in an act of information archaeology.. it may be that
ideas such as: what a piece of junk this movie theater architecture
is, will, in some day in the future be read with much more meaning,
more 'charged' say, than, the mundane tit-for-tat between critics
and dream designers who are building mausoleums for client egos.
an idea such as yours, Ronald, is an important artifact to develop,
i believe, because it will give people an alternative understanding
and show the way for deeper interpretations of the seemingly mundane.
i will argue in my work that we are living in what is equivalent to
the classical age of electricity. an age when "old technologies were
new". that is, in terms of long-term stories of humanity, it is a
tremendous time to be alive- to be using the first computers, the
first radios, phones, televisions... these are as architecturally
important as Corinthian capitals and columns are for the Roman Empire.
and that brings me to what i think is the import of your message
regarding the economic/political dimension of the movie/theater:
war is not the kiss, but the Hollywood Movie is the Pax Americana.
>and the regularized (sunday morning/saturday nite) ritualistic aspect adds
>to the analogy.
>
>and the extension of this idea to television and then computers is tenous,
>but can be made.
[early on in my research i categorized electronic media buildings as
the equivalent to "temple" architecture. i still have 3d models in my
head of making temples with wooden poles and a television set on the
order of the Temple of Venus or the Parthenon, but i haven't got around
to it just yet].
>but i digress.
please digress more often..
bc