To: design-l
Subject: re: dead languages
Date: 2002.06.19 13:00
Somewhat related to this thread, but more something I though of/about last
night and wanted to post today--'dead languages' seems to be the same
wavelength.
If you read a lot of architecture theory books or essays, every so often you
come across an analysis/explanation of something Victor Hugo wrote about
architecture and books. Here's an example from www.leuf.net/zhurnal/zw
?BuildingBookWeb : [I just did a web search 'victor hugo architecture book'
and the following was the third link.]
In Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame Book V Chapter 2 is titled "This
Will Kill That". Hugo tells how human history, pre-Gutenberg, was written in
its buildings: huts and temples, pyramids and pagodas, tombs and towers. Now
(as of the Fifteenth Century) he argues that the printing press and its
products have taken over the rôle of recording knowledge. Faster, cheaper,
more democratic --- and, with widespread proliferation of books, far more
imperishable than architecture. Hugo says, "The invention of printing is the
greatest event of history." True? Chapter 2 concludes with a summary of his
thesis:
"Thus, to put it shortly, mankind has two books, two registers, two
testaments: Architecture and Printing; the Bible of stone and the Bible of
paper. Doubtless, in contemplating these two Bibles, spread open wide
through the centuries, one is fain to regret the visible majesty of the
granite writing, those gigantic alphabets in the shape of colonnades,
porches, and obelisks; these mountains, as it were, the work of man's hand
spread over the whole world and filling the past, from the pyramid to the
steeple, from Cheops to Strassburg. The past should be read in these marble
pages; the books written by architecture can be read and reread, with
never-diminishing interest; but one cannot deny the grandeur of the edifice
which printing has raised in its turn.
"That edifice is colossal. I do not know what statistician it was who
calculated that by piling one upon another all the volumes issued from the
press since Gutenberg, you would bridge the space between the earth and the
moon --- but it is not to that kind of greatness we allude. Nevertheless, if
we try to form a collective picture of the combined results of printing down
to our own times, does it not appear as a huge structure, having the whole
world for foundation, and the whole human race for its ceaselessly active
workmen, and whose pinnacles tower up into the impenetrable mist of the
future? It is the swarming ant-hill of intellectual forces; the hive to
which all the golden-winged messengers of the imagination return, laden with
honey. This prodigious edifice has a thousand storeys, and remains forever
incomplete. The press, that giant engine, incessantly absorbing all the
intellectual forces of society, disgorges, as incessantly, new materials for
its work. The entire human race is on the scaffolding; every mind is a
mason. Even the humblest can fill up a gap, or lay another brick. Each day
another layer is put on. Independently of the individual contribution, there
are certain collective donations. The eighteenth century presents the
Encyclopædia, the Revolution the Moniteur. Undoubtedly this, too, is a
structure, growing and piling itself up in endless spiral lines; here, too,
there is confusion of tongues, incessant activity, indefatigable labour, a
furious contest between the whole of mankind, an ark of refuge for the
intelligence against another deluge, against another influx of barbarism.
"It is the second Tower of Babel."
Interestingly, the paragraph that follows the above addresses pretty much
the same idea that I thought of last night:
"So does that put the Web into a better context? Is what we're now
experiencing just a step or two more along the road that Victor Hugo
identified in the move from the building to the book? And is the noise of
the 'Net only an increment (though perhaps an order-of-magnitude worse) to
the pandemonium that the printing press has already brought us?"
Actually, what I was thinking last night is more an inversion of the prior
paragraph--last night I thought to entitle my post 'virtual [architecture]
inversion'.
My thoughts where about Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) as now 'virtually'
killing the book. Moreover, I was thinking how HTML manifests the
'structure' of virtual architecture, thus bringing back [re-enacting?] an
"architecture as delivery of content." Right now the entire internet is a
virtual place constructed via HTLM that delivers content, content, content.
Robert Venturi in his latest theory regarding electronics and iconography
upon a generic architecture is almost saying the same thing as far as
architecture again being a delivery of content, but, for me at least,
Venturi's theory becomes flawed when he admits to not knowing what the
content should be. More than anything, what he so far fails to acknowledge
is that iconography on buildings today, be it either electronic or not, is
almost always advertising, advertising, advertising--essentially a very
limited, narrowly focused delivery of content. Since 1999 when I did a large
number of webpages utilizing the HTML 'marquee' tag, I've wondered if HTML
might not be a better 'programmer' for the 'screens' that are now on
buildings (as in Tokyo and NY's Times Square, etc. For example, if I were
commissioned to design content for some real (generic) building whose 'skin'
was an electronic screen, I'd propose a vast series of 'webpages' that act
as a museum of architecture, thereby making the building, at least on the
surface, a 'virtual museum of architecture.' I wouldn't necessarily be
advertising Quondam, rather I'd be cloaking real generic architecture with
many architectures. It wouldn't really matter what goes on inside the
building because that will probably change from year to year, and the 'bulk'
of the building's real architecture will be literally superficial and
ironically really virtual.
Steve Lauf
ps
I could go on and on, like pondering what kind of content I would propose
for a hospital that had screen facades, or electronic/iconographic houses
that change decorations by seasons or holidays, or even imagining the
imaging of a house of ill-repute.
Subject: re: dead languages
Date: 2002.06.19 13:00
Somewhat related to this thread, but more something I though of/about last
night and wanted to post today--'dead languages' seems to be the same
wavelength.
If you read a lot of architecture theory books or essays, every so often you
come across an analysis/explanation of something Victor Hugo wrote about
architecture and books. Here's an example from www.leuf.net/zhurnal/zw
?BuildingBookWeb : [I just did a web search 'victor hugo architecture book'
and the following was the third link.]
In Victor Hugo's Hunchback of Notre Dame Book V Chapter 2 is titled "This
Will Kill That". Hugo tells how human history, pre-Gutenberg, was written in
its buildings: huts and temples, pyramids and pagodas, tombs and towers. Now
(as of the Fifteenth Century) he argues that the printing press and its
products have taken over the rôle of recording knowledge. Faster, cheaper,
more democratic --- and, with widespread proliferation of books, far more
imperishable than architecture. Hugo says, "The invention of printing is the
greatest event of history." True? Chapter 2 concludes with a summary of his
thesis:
"Thus, to put it shortly, mankind has two books, two registers, two
testaments: Architecture and Printing; the Bible of stone and the Bible of
paper. Doubtless, in contemplating these two Bibles, spread open wide
through the centuries, one is fain to regret the visible majesty of the
granite writing, those gigantic alphabets in the shape of colonnades,
porches, and obelisks; these mountains, as it were, the work of man's hand
spread over the whole world and filling the past, from the pyramid to the
steeple, from Cheops to Strassburg. The past should be read in these marble
pages; the books written by architecture can be read and reread, with
never-diminishing interest; but one cannot deny the grandeur of the edifice
which printing has raised in its turn.
"That edifice is colossal. I do not know what statistician it was who
calculated that by piling one upon another all the volumes issued from the
press since Gutenberg, you would bridge the space between the earth and the
moon --- but it is not to that kind of greatness we allude. Nevertheless, if
we try to form a collective picture of the combined results of printing down
to our own times, does it not appear as a huge structure, having the whole
world for foundation, and the whole human race for its ceaselessly active
workmen, and whose pinnacles tower up into the impenetrable mist of the
future? It is the swarming ant-hill of intellectual forces; the hive to
which all the golden-winged messengers of the imagination return, laden with
honey. This prodigious edifice has a thousand storeys, and remains forever
incomplete. The press, that giant engine, incessantly absorbing all the
intellectual forces of society, disgorges, as incessantly, new materials for
its work. The entire human race is on the scaffolding; every mind is a
mason. Even the humblest can fill up a gap, or lay another brick. Each day
another layer is put on. Independently of the individual contribution, there
are certain collective donations. The eighteenth century presents the
Encyclopædia, the Revolution the Moniteur. Undoubtedly this, too, is a
structure, growing and piling itself up in endless spiral lines; here, too,
there is confusion of tongues, incessant activity, indefatigable labour, a
furious contest between the whole of mankind, an ark of refuge for the
intelligence against another deluge, against another influx of barbarism.
"It is the second Tower of Babel."
Interestingly, the paragraph that follows the above addresses pretty much
the same idea that I thought of last night:
"So does that put the Web into a better context? Is what we're now
experiencing just a step or two more along the road that Victor Hugo
identified in the move from the building to the book? And is the noise of
the 'Net only an increment (though perhaps an order-of-magnitude worse) to
the pandemonium that the printing press has already brought us?"
Actually, what I was thinking last night is more an inversion of the prior
paragraph--last night I thought to entitle my post 'virtual [architecture]
inversion'.
My thoughts where about Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) as now 'virtually'
killing the book. Moreover, I was thinking how HTML manifests the
'structure' of virtual architecture, thus bringing back [re-enacting?] an
"architecture as delivery of content." Right now the entire internet is a
virtual place constructed via HTLM that delivers content, content, content.
Robert Venturi in his latest theory regarding electronics and iconography
upon a generic architecture is almost saying the same thing as far as
architecture again being a delivery of content, but, for me at least,
Venturi's theory becomes flawed when he admits to not knowing what the
content should be. More than anything, what he so far fails to acknowledge
is that iconography on buildings today, be it either electronic or not, is
almost always advertising, advertising, advertising--essentially a very
limited, narrowly focused delivery of content. Since 1999 when I did a large
number of webpages utilizing the HTML 'marquee' tag, I've wondered if HTML
might not be a better 'programmer' for the 'screens' that are now on
buildings (as in Tokyo and NY's Times Square, etc. For example, if I were
commissioned to design content for some real (generic) building whose 'skin'
was an electronic screen, I'd propose a vast series of 'webpages' that act
as a museum of architecture, thereby making the building, at least on the
surface, a 'virtual museum of architecture.' I wouldn't necessarily be
advertising Quondam, rather I'd be cloaking real generic architecture with
many architectures. It wouldn't really matter what goes on inside the
building because that will probably change from year to year, and the 'bulk'
of the building's real architecture will be literally superficial and
ironically really virtual.
Steve Lauf
ps
I could go on and on, like pondering what kind of content I would propose
for a hospital that had screen facades, or electronic/iconographic houses
that change decorations by seasons or holidays, or even imagining the
imaging of a house of ill-repute.