09 MUYBRIDGE & MOVEMENT | the body in time and space

due to technical issues, Doan's questions were not posted.

... posting oh her behalf.

Allen differentiates between diagrams and notation, and describes “notational systems operate according to shared conventions of interpretations, while diagrams are by definition open to multiple interpretations”. What does this have to do with architectural drawings?

On page 50 & 51, Allen gives out multiple definitions of what a diagram can be. I think the most basic definition that best explains a diagram is "an explanatory device to communicate or clarify form, structure, or program" (50) or "a graphic assemblage that specifies relationships between activity and form" (51). Do you agree or disagree?

Do we read a city by reading its text: "from the language of its inhabitants to the space of the street" (56)? How do we read a city if it has changed so much?

09 MUYBRIDGE & MOVEMENT | the body in time and space

“Notations belong to time, diagrams to space and organization” (p. 49). On the following page, the author states that “notational systems operate according to shared conventions of interpretations, while diagrams are by definition open to multiple interpretations”. On page 64, however, “notations always describe a work… open to interpretation and change in the course of future performance. “ At first, these statements seem mutually exclusive. Are they really? If not, can you elaborate on why they might not be?

Recently, I have come to appreciate the value of diagram architecture, even though it does not "produce meaning" and tends to focus more on “immediacy, simple forms, direct accommodation of program, and the pleasures of the literal. “ (p.53) What do you think about it (diagram architecture)?

“The modern city… has gone out of control… it has lost the signifying potencies and structural coherence that it once seemed to possess… can no longer be read in any coherent or predictable manner.” (p.56)  We haven’t experienced that “once upon a time” period, but can taste its bittersweets character in relation to the urban insertions and modification imposed by the modern, “illegible city” and time. Personally, I see it (the “illegibility”) as a profound reorientation towards a changed world; a legible manifestation of a social, historical and political chaos that also resembles the inherent unpredictability of human nature and times that we are actually familiar with. What does it (the illegible city) mean to you?

Week 8- The form of data

1.     To better understand Sparklines take out one piece of paper and create a sparkline using datawords to describe the highs and lows of your educational experience in architecture as well as your social life. Have both lines begin at the same point. Use the font that best describes you or your personality. (5 minutes)
2.   How is parallelism different and similar to sparklines?
3.    Can parallelism and sparklines be shown together within architecture, or even in the same image, simultaneously to explain certain data?

Week_08-The Form of Data

1.  If sparklines are data lines with word-like graphics, how are only 3% - 5% of the graphics          published by major scientific journals considered sparklines? 
2. Would binary code, which is a representation of text and computer instruction, be considered a sparkline?
3.  "...sparkline graphics give us some chance to be approximately right rather than exactly wrong." (63) How can we be approximately right or exactly wrong if all the data needed is already there for us to read?
4. Would tree rings be considered sparklines? Or would the "resolution" be considered too small for consideration?

Week 08 - The Form of Data

1. To what extent can sparklines be understood as wordlike graphics if there are no words associated with the graphic?

2. What are some ways that this strongly statistical graphic might be used in the architecture field?

3. How might sparklines reinforce the ideas and graphic language read from the parallelism reading?

4. The Salyut 6 space flight used a cyclogram to layout their time in space, but initially failed due to its reminding of how much time they had left. How might you have fixed the graphic to look forward to the future and stay excited for their return to Earth?

5. How might architecture utilize ideas of parallelism without being directly related?

Week 08 - The Form of Data

1)      “Worldlike sparklines should often be embedded in text and tables, which provide a helpful context for interpreting otherwise free- floating sparklines” (49). Do sparklines need to be accompanied with text for understanding to be attained?

For instance, if one’s heartrate were to be monitored and captured graphically from before one’s beginning of life to after death, could that be understood visually without text?

2)      In the same instance of heart rate monitoring, can sparklines be understood auditorily? Can music be described as auditory sparklines?

3)      Moving away from visual and auditory perceptions, can sparklines be understood tactilely?

4)      Christopher Wilmarth’s “Gift of the Bridge” (84) describes the degradation of his birthday card. In architecture, we can see not only the effects of erosion and the changing climate but also material degradation as an indexing of environmental change through time. How/Should can design be done to capture this effectively?

5)      In the cyclogram narrative of the Salyut 6 space flight, we see various amounts of information captured as once. Does presenting this vast amount of information at once mitigate the understanding of critical events as opposed to seeing more detailed day or week by week events shown separately? (See World Map)

07 The Narrative Armature

1. On page 29, McCloud talks about how when we simplify a face it still registers as being just as "real" as a a direct copy of a face.  Why is that without all the details it still seems real to us?

2.  Icon and symbol are often used interchangeably but are they actually separate things?  McCloud classified icon as meaning any image used to represent a person, place, thing, or idea.  Would you agree with this?

3. "The storyboard determines the sequence of shots to be taken for a film."  Do you think that architects do something similar to this during the design process?

4. Davids talks about montage.  He says that "montage is characterized by the unusual: a collage of seemingly unrelated shots run in sequence for dramatic effect."  Do you think that something like this can be used in architecture and benefit a presentation or would it be harmful to the presentation?

07_Representation

1. What is your favorite comic? Why?  Has it changed since you read McCloud's and David's readings?

2. Do you get distracted by the details of a comic if it is complex? Does a detailed comic make it hard to follow the story line?


3. McCloud mentions on page 31 how film critics "sometimes describe a live-action film as a 'cartoon' to acknowledge the stripped-down intensity of a simple story or visual style." Translating that to the architecture world, do you think that is how architectural critics think?  When presenting your work, do you allow your critics to simplify your project on their own or do you help them through this process?  Is that the point of creating diagrams, tracings, and mappings?

3. McCloud said that "we assign identities and emotions (to things) where none exist." Why do you think we do this?

4. David mentions in his reading the importance of scale figures in drawings.  He gives the example of  Le Corbusier's drawings of jardin suspendu, where the scale figures in the drawings are interacting in the space and moving within it.  With this example in mind, how does thinking about the placement and activity of the scale figures in your drawings make you think about space? As opposed to just dropping them in?

07 THE NARRATIVE ARMATURE

1. What are some advantages of depicting characters as more abstract and cartoon than realistic? Could this be applied to architecture? (McCloud)

2. Why do some artists employ the strategy of utilizing detailed and realistic backgrounds in combination with characters drawn as cartoons? In what ways, if any, could this technique be beneficial for communicating architecture? Would it be better in reverse? (McCloud p 42)

3. McCloud discusses the ranges of pictures and words within the scale of received to perceived, how can we use this idea to think about how we communicate architecture? (McCloud p 49)

4. Storyboards in film are a preliminary design tool, in what ways could they be a design tool for architecture? (Davids)


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Tyler's Questions

1. McCloud notes, "When two people interract, they usually look directly at one another, seeing their partner's features in vivid detail. Each one also sustains a constant awareness of his or her own face, but this mind-picture is not nearly so vivid; just a sketchy arrangement... a sense of shape... a sense of general placement."
   1. Spend one minute drawing your neighbor to the right and one minute drawing yourself. Is the class able to match the drawings to the correct people? Is there a higher success rate with one over the other? More detail? 
2. McCloud discusses the abstraction of faces to their simplest forms. He also claims that we are better at connecting with abstracted figures rather than highly detailed ones (p. 36). Is this accurate? Is this why architects use objects to abstract inspiration from rather than making "duck" buildings. Does this empower the observer?
3. Storyboards. Architects regularly use storyboards to express their projects. Perspective renders are typically a key component but growing trends outsource these images to other companies. Is there an inherent value in developing the content of the storyboard or does the value exist solely in the final product? Is the same true for physical models?
4. How can architecture express time? Why is this important? 
5. Davids says, "The shift away from illustrating the human figure in architectural space is a shift away from architectural form as a setting for life in favor of architecture as a form of personal expression." Why do you agree or disagree? Why do we tend to use entourage in renderings but photograph buildings without people?