Automontage 1.b
Winning Proposal for the ‘Secret Life of Buildings’ Symposium
Austin, Texas, 2016
. An object.
. 444 monolithic extruded sections, ranging in size from 1” x 3½” to 13½” x 27½”, each ¼” wide x 1/16” thick. These extrusions are cast in 654 cubic inches of Rockite, a non-metallic hydraulic expansion cement typically used for structural anchoring and patching, that sets to a compressive strength of 4500 psi within one hour. The 31 lb unit is meant to be mounted by a reinforced extruded flange at its base.
. The natural progression of a line of research begun during my graduate studies, in which I use photo editing software to randomly generate visual summaries of entire buildings as single images.
. The physical construction of various disparate perspectives as a series of ‘Adumbrations’ and ‘Conduits,’ which from one vantage point recede perspectivally into one another, from another appear distorted, and from yet another appear orthographically projected.
. The transformation of fictional, non-euclidean, one-sided geometry into a multi-dimensional unit, exposing its hidden reverse-face, creating an autonomous object via the revelation of this once-collapsed dimension.
. The inverse of several segmented molds made of laser cut chipboard and plexiglass, which are removed piece-by-piece after setting, revealing individual stereotomic segments that are then grouted together.
. A unified intentional object existing beyond the realm of its referent, but completely reliant upon its means of generation. While the complex processes of flattening, duplicating, offsetting, distorting, sectioning, and reconstructing, effectively fission Automontage 1.B from its generating image, making it not an abstraction or reproduction, but rather an at-scale self contained spatiality, it also links it inextricably to its own generation, as such an object is the result of automation and methodology, rather than intention.
. Constituent of the interactions of infinite units, such as compounds, molecules, atoms, quarks, strings, economic flows, personal obsessions, etc., as well as a constituent of infinite units, such as this competition, the room in which it will sit, the academic environment in which it will be critiqued, its eventual disposal and decomposition, etc., but neither reducible to its components nor entangled with its macro-objects. It is itself.
. A reification of a synthesis of 8 distinct spatial ontographs.
. A construction of adumbrations (visual outlines, caricatures, or simplifications) of an pseudo-extant space, resulting in a new object that can itself be adumbrated.
. An attempt to sensualize the real qualities of an object. The revelation of the space’s reverse face (not its exterior, but literally its opposite side) exposes and makes tangible its withdrawn nature through caricature. Essentially, the eidetic nature (tension between a sensual object and its rel qualities) of one object is transformed into the temporal nature (tension between a sensual object and its sensual qualities) of a new object.
. Vertical, horizontal, and diagonal surfaces, regenerated as object, surface, and space.
. A machine that replicates the unit operations of space as a single-sided object. Although it is itself a creation based on caricatures, its phenomenological operation is nonetheless an attempt to understand the unknowable experiences of dimensionality.
