> = < (convergent – parallel – divergent): 110117

Jorinde Voigt's drawings deal with speed, volume, and movement. They relate performance to geometry and they are explicitly about variation in time. These drawings are not about fixing a form or image, but mapping transformations through time.

images via jorindevoigt.com

Clearly this is not the type of purely spatial data that normally comprises architectural drawings. To convey physically intangible information like speed and movement, Voigt has developed notational systems (look for close up views of these systems on her website). Notations can convey information about magnitude, relative position, duration, angle, etc. Sheet music is an example of a notational system.

Musical notations are a shared language that passes information among those who have learned to decode it. On the other hand, Voigt's notations are a unique invention. Looking at her drawings for the first time, one doesn't know all the details of how to read them. One needs to understand the conventions of the system before the drawing can be decoded. You will need to develop your own notational system in your braided river mapping. This notational system will be more along the lines of a Jorinde Voigt drawing (unique, yet systemically implemented) than sheet music.

Unique notational systems can be devised to map all kinds of systems:

map of privately owed public space in midtown manhattan –

dunja simunovic

map of a judo maneuver –

kristin koslowski

studio description......................

Jorge Luis Borges’ short story, The Garden of Forking Paths proposes a model for the world composed of multiple splitting strands. In the story, temporal strands form “a growing, dizzying web of divergent, convergent, and parallel times.” This notion of convergent, parallel, and divergent strands served as a model for spatial explorations in the studio. Work began along two parallel tracks: a modeling exercise based on cutting extruded wood molding profiles and re-assembling them into strands with variable curvature, and a mapping exercise studying the organization of a braided river. Together, these exercises led toward building a braided field of strands.

Once braided, strands produced a landscape of nascent surfaces and quasi-interiorities. When viewed in terms of site / intervention or landscape / inhabitant, these surfaces and interiorities were seen to have effective and affective potentials. As described by John Rajchman, effective potentials are grounding; constructed qualities of surface, enclosure, and atmosphere suggest a level of stability in the earth. Affective potentials are ungrounding; they suggest open-ended trajectories of bodies in space. As such, landscape and intervention operated in concert to produce effect and affect in strands of space and time. Final spatial propositions were not attempts to insert movements or narratives into a preformed framework, but sought to release figures from this type of prescription and allow them to navigate alternative paths.

> = < (convergent – parallel – divergent)

110117 - notations

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