Cinema and the City - Part 1

Introduction

Both photography and film, as media for representing the city, provide an opportunity for creating an urban image which is reflexively aware.(1) The gaze of the viewer is consciously directed by the photographer or filmmaker, bringing attention to specific phenomena and eliciting a response or interpretation from the viewer. This idea is increased exponentially by the moving film which allows the filmmaker to direct the gaze to a specific phenomena immediately followed by another, drawing attention to a connection or a juxtaposition; potentially contriving connections which have never before occurred to the viewer. Film, therefore, has great potential for an exercise in qualitative and reflexive mapping.(2)

Early Cinema

Fig.1 (top) Lumiere brothers’ ‘Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat’

Fig.2 (middle) Méliés’ technical marvel, ‘The Mermaid’

Fig.3 (bottom) Iconic landing scene from Méliés’ 

‘A Trip to the Moon’

Early experiments in cinema, such as those of the Lumiere brothers, were often single-shot, single-concept films revelling in the novelty of a new and unfathomable medium (see fig.1). They brought images of distant and unimaginable places to previously parochial audiences(3) and purposefully played with recognisable phenomena in order to provoke visceral reflexive reactions in their audience.(4) These ‘primitive’5 cinematic concepts were developed further by Georges Méliès, who began experimenting with jump-cuts and double exposed film to create the first cinematic ‘special-effects.’ 

Early experiments like ‘The Mermaid’ (see fig.2)(6) dealt specifically with the spectacle of the new medium and began to experiment with it’s possibilities. Méliès was one of the first film directors to implement these techniques to construct a narrative. The iconic ‘A Trip to the Moon’(7) seamlessly integrated the jump cuts and double exposure of previous experiments in combination with multiple shots and locations, innovative use of graphics and elaborate sets to recount a Jules Verne inspired space fantasy. The dazzling imagery still resonates with contemporary audiences, particularly the humorously grotesque image of the bullet-like space capsule embedded in the anthropomorphised face of the moon, an image which has become an iconic meme representing early cinema (see fig.3).

City Symphonies

Fig.4 (top) Opening shot of ‘Man with a Movie Camera’

Fig.5 (middle) Vertov’s monumental film-maker

Fig.6 (bottom) Taking risks for the perfect shot

The idea of the ‘City Symphony’ emerged as a concept in 1928 with Walter Ruttman’s ‘Berlin: Symphony of a Great City.’(8) While no doubt inspired by the Lumiere’s early single-shot experiments, ‘Berlin…’ collages and layers urban images while also using the technique of mounting the camera on train carriages and motor vehicles. While devoid of a conventional storyline, there is a definite narrative thread beginning with a train ride from the city’s rural outskirts, through industrial suburbs and into the inner city. We are then presented with the waxing and waning of daily activities, starting at dawn and ending at sunset. The film slows down and speeds up in relation to the time of day and it’s associated activities, and occasionally reaches a crescendo using a variety of effects including Ruttman’s ‘painting with light’ technique displayed so vividly in his more abstract ‘Lichtspiel: Opus’ series.(9) The comparison of the direction of the film and the conducting of a musical score as suggested by the film’s title is compelling, and the occasional wry observations and juxtaposition of imagery(10) is evidence of a certain self consciousness developing in the medium.

Dziga Vertov’s 1929 film ‘Man With A Movie Camera’(11) displayed even more self awareness. The framing device for the film is itself a cinema; beginning with a crowd entering, taking their seats and waiting in anticipation. The orchestra, poised with their instruments, burst into life as the projectionist sets the first reel in motion. The eponymous ‘man with a movie camera’ is the subject of the story, following him documenting elements of city life and, in doing so, occupying urban space in unique and inventive ways. There is an array of startling imagery, beginning with the fantastically double-exposed opening shot of the movie camera being mounted on top of a giant camera (see fig.4) and a similar but equally evocative shot of a monumentally sized filmmaker towering over the city as he sets up his camera (see fig.5). We see our ‘man…’ on the back of speeding trucks, lying across the tracks as a locomotive approaches (see fig.6), climbing the ironwork supports of suspension bridges, riding motorcycles one-handed; all while cranking the handle of his cumbersome movie camera.

A particularly poignant sequence shows still images becoming animated as the film negative is examined in the cutting-room; each sequence is cut from the negative and stuck together as the pace of the film slowly builds. This idea reaches it’s delightfully absurdist zenith as the camera itself becomes animate, pulling itself out of it’s storage-box, fixing itself to the tripod and walking out of frame in a dazzling stop-motion sequence. ‘Man with…’ displays an unprecedented amount of self-consciousness and reflexive awareness for such an early stage in the medium of film.

Self-Conscious Manipulation

Fig.7 (top) Leni Riefenstahl on location in Nuremberg
while filming ‘Triumph of the Will’ 

Fig.8 (middle, bottom) ’The Great Dictator’dances with
the world

Where ‘Man with a Movie Camera’ declared openly it’s self-consciousness, less than a decade later this developed into more insidious manipulation, using the beguiling ability of film to direct the viewer’s gaze and lead them to a particular articulation of the phenomena in question; an interpretation that would not necessarily have been arrived at without that particular collaging of image and sound. Film was now viewed as a powerful tool for propaganda, that is the unbalanced dissemination of a fixed phenomenal interpretation, which, as opposed to pamphlets and posters, would be received passively by it’s audience in a way that would be harder to critique.(12)

Perhaps the best known ‘propaganda film’ was Leni Riefenstahl’s ‘Triumph of the Will’(13) documenting the Nazi party’s 1934 Nuremberg rally (see fig.7). The film begins with sweeping aerial shots of rolling clouds and the verdant German countryside. We see the shadow of the plane gliding over the picturesque town before it lands at an airfield where amassed crowds await to cheer Adolf Hitler as he emerges from the aircraft.

The imagery of the ‘great leader’ literally descending from the heavens to save Germany appears to be crassly obvious manipulation to contemporary audiences; to a desperate German citizen who had suffered immensely since the end of the war this imagery would have been magnificently potent, stirring and hopeful.  Simple cuts from shots of Hitler saluting the crowds to images of smiling children; from a monumental stone eagle draped in the swastika to the furiously gesticulating Hitler shot from a heroically low angle; a united and happy crowd to a pyre of burning books - carefully juxtaposed images subtly connecting previously disparate phenomena in the minds of the audience.

The German National Socialists, while certainly the most notoriously and arguably successful, were not the only regime using film in this way. Charlie Chaplin’s ‘The Great Dictator’,(14) while it positioned itself as a comedic and farcical satire of the Nazi regime, was an anti-Nazi propaganda film and (perhaps arguably) a piece of American propaganda. The closing scene in which Chaplin addresses a crowd at a rally borrows much of the imagery from Riefenstahl’s film and is every bit as emotionally manipulative as the Nazi leaders’ speeches in ‘Triumph,’(15) albeit directed at a different set of phenomena. Some of the suggestive imagery of ‘Dictator’ feels more subtle and ultimately more evocative than that of ‘Triumph’; particularly the globe scene (see fig.8), in which the maniacal dictator dances with an inflatable globe announcing ‘Emperor of the World!’ before the balloon bursts in his hands.

Intermission

The medium evolved exponentially in it’s first forty years; from simple tool of novelty and wonder to a complex device of dissemination and manipulation. Films are now considered an industry, but what exactly can this industry be said to produce? Is it’s produce the films themselves; is it ideas, concepts, political arguments; is it movie stars or merchandising opportunities? The simple answer is probably that it produces commodities, means of generating capital in all it’s forms.

In the next part we will be examining five contemporary ‘City Symphonies,’ looking at how the idea has evolved and warped in what could now be described as the remnants of the post-modern era.

----
(1) This idea refers to subliminal, instinctive reactions depending on reflexes. Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and research theorist Mats Alvesson suggest that, rather than challenging and suppressing these reflexes, the should be examined by sociology in order to expose elements of the human condition, particularly our often ignored subjective relationships.
(2) The word ‘Mapping’ here is used in a broad fashion. Where conventional maps could only be said to represent space, it is hoped to develop a map that represents place. Place, essentially, is space understood. Film, it is suggested, could therefore become a medium to explore how space becomes understood. Reflexive mapping attempts to access the underpinning motivations and unconscious reactions to a particular articulation of spatial phenomena.
(3) The Lumières toured the world, recording for the first time on film the cities of Paris, Madrid, New York, Liverpool, Rome; they even made a visit to Belfast in 1897.

Lumière, Auguste, and Louis Lumière. 1897. Belfast, Castle Place. Short.

Lumière, Auguste, and Louis Lumière. 1897. Belfast, Queen’s Bridge. Short.

(4)  Lumière, Auguste, and Louis Lumière. 1896. Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat. Documentary, Short.

There is a popular cinematic myth that the famous ‘Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat’ caused terror in it’s initial audience that they ran to the back of the room in order to get out of the way of the train as it approached, see fig.1

(5)  This term is used hesitantly as a reference to the Bfi’s excellent DVD collection of pre-1910 cinema. I by no means wish to suggest that these cinematic experiments were anything less than astonishing, but as I build the argument throughout this chapter you will hopefully see how their phenomenological effects are basic by comparison.

Porter, Edwin S., George Mèliés, and G. A. Smith. 2005. Early Cinema - Primitives and Pioneers. DVD. Bfi.

(6) Méliès, Georges. 1904. The Mermaid. Short, Fantasy.
(7) Méliès, Georges. 1902. A Trip to the Moon. Short, Adventure, Fantasy.
(8) Ruttmann, Walter. 1928. Berlin: Symphony of a Great City. Documentary.
(9) Ruttmann, Walter. 1921. Opus I. Animation, Short.
(10) For example, we see an immense crowd working class men entering the gates of a factory, followed by the image of a herd of cattle being directed through the gates of a slaughterhouse.
(11) Vertov, Dziga. 1929. Man with a Movie Camera. Documentary.
(12) An idea explored by Walter Benjamin as a direct reaction to ‘Trimuph of the Will.’

Benjamin, Walter. 2008. The work of art in the age of mechanical reproduction. London: Penguin.

(13) Riefenstahl, Leni. 1935. Triumph of the Will. Documentary, War.
(14) Chaplin, Charles. 1941. The Great Dictator. Comedy, Drama, War.
(15) Perhaps because ‘Triumph of the Will’ has been more vigorously dissected in the public consciousness than ‘The Great Dictator’ due to the actions of the Nazi regime during the war, actions which now appear inevitable given the rhetoric expressed in ‘Triumph’ but which the producers of ‘Dictator’ were not aware of at the time. Indeed, Chaplin stated that he would not have made the film had he been aware of the concentration camps.

The City As An Idea - a reflection on what I'm doing

As the end of the year approaches and I plan and contemplate the body of work ahead I've been, understandably, thinking about what I've done and how it should proceed. I now think I can explain my map and my films in a way I could not have done before, even when I was producing them.

For the first time in a while I listened to the song 'Going to your Funeral' by The Eels, the reprise of which I used in my first film 'To Belfast.'

There is a line in the original song which goes 'Look at all the people with the flowers in their hands. They put the flowers on the box that's holding all the sand that was once you.' It struck me that this has a significance to the last film I made, 'Tomb.' 

The film concludes by suggesting that the attitude that Belfast is in some way dead, or even profoundly damaged, is a total misnomer. Belfast is not a living organism and cannot be dead or even injured. We can use the metaphor to describe our opinions in a poetic and engaging way, but when it comes to honestly trying to get the city working we need to remember they are only metaphorical and ultimately not true. So when E quite unromantically remarks that whatever resides in the box at the funeral is indeed not his loved one but rather a pile of 'sand,' this applies even more readily to a city.

A city is what John Searle would call a social construct (in particular an institutional social construct); if it were not for us grouping the set of phenomena relating to this specific space on earth into a subset which we label Belfast, then Belfast would simply not be. Belfast is a set of ideas, be it the approach to the sandbank ford, the strategic gateway to the Ards, the residence of the Chichester family, the incorporated market town, 'boomtown' of Imperial Victoriana, modernist hub of industry and commerce, religious warzone or 21st century tourism and shopping destination. 

As Alan Moore suggested in 'V for Vendetta,' ideas don't die. Ideas ebb and flow, they contradict and adjust. They defy three dimensional space and fly in the face of logic and rationality. Cities, like ideas, are not things or objects, but are dynamic lived processes which refute absolutism and universality. Any perception we have of an idea dying or not being there is just that; a perception. A perception of the passing of a way-of-being we held dear, or at worst reified. As long as we bear in mind that they are simply ideas which suggest a way of living then their departure should not worry us so much.

Cry onwards to the next 'Belfast!'

The Model To Date - Part 2 of 2

What about other people?

We are social beings and most of what we do, and particularly architecture, is for and with other people. Therefore, formulating a model of an individual’s experience in the world must take into account the interface with fellow sentient beings.

My own particular route into this topic is through Karl Marx, and in particular the opening section of Capital Volume 1. Here, Marx explains his concept of commodities which are key to Capital as expounded in it’s opening sentence. “The wealth of societies in which a capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an ‘immense collection of commodities." He goes on to describe them as “an external object, a thing which through it’s qualities satisfies human needs of whatever kind.”

While Marx explains this term purely as a way of explaining how money and capitalist society operates there is a broader philosophical application, and I believe it is key to understanding how these internal phenomena become communicated to fellow human beings. Commodities, as Marx describes them, are comprised of three main properties. These are value, use-value and exchange value. Value suggests that all commodities are the products of human labour; use-values suggests that commodities satisfy a human need or want (which relates to Damasio’s homeostatic tree); exchange values place the commodity in a relationship with other commodities in a similar way to the relational properties of phenomena in Heidegger’s model of ‘Dwelling.’ An object which is the product of human labour and a use-value (which Heidegger would refer to as a thing) is not automatically a commodity. A commodity is rendered a social ‘thing’ by it’s exchange value, that is a “use-value for others, social use-values.”

While Marx was discussing exclusively the physical products of human labour, it is here that we can observe the commodification of the internal phenomena discussed by Heidegger and Damasio, although we need to redefine some of Marx’s terms. Value, defined by Marx as the products of human labour, can be redefined as the product of human physiological homeostasis. Use-value can be defined as the interpretation of action required to satisfy the value. Value plus use-value therefore equals a phenomena. Our ability to relate this phenomena to another human being in a way that they can relate to one of their own internal phenomena allows the phenomena to become commodified.

For example, a delicate chemical change in my blood triggers a series of related reactions throughout my body which is in turn translated as the need for sustenance. I then am able to tell my friend ‘I am hungry,’ and my friend understands this as she has experienced a chemical change within her body at one time which she has also translated as ‘the-need-for-sustenance.’ The internal phenomenon may feel entirely different for my friend, but I can never know as I cannot experience things from her perspective. The only thing I can understand is the agreed word for a phenomenon translated as ‘the-need-for-sustenance,’ that is ‘hunger.’

...and everybody else?

In this introduction to his seminal work ‘Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature,’ Richard Rorty describes culture as “an assemblage of claims to knowledge.” It appears to me this has a strong link to Marx’s opening sentence of Capital where he describes the wealth of societies consisting of “an immense collection of commodities.” We can equate the commodity-as-socialised-phenomena as a claim-to-knowledge, that is an understanding of what a phenomena means for us and the agreed socially accepted reaction or interpretation thereof.

This brings us to the work of Pierre Bourdieu, a sociologist heavily influenced by Marx. Bourdieu describes different social groups as ‘fields,’ which is another name for these assemblages of commodified claims to knowledge. Fields are fluid things, with individuals being able to take part in them, or not, as they wish. Each individual will partake of a host of fields at any one time. It is important to to note that, in a given context, it may be expected or ‘socially necessary’ (to borrow another of Marx’s terms) for an individual to partake in a particular field.

The commodified claims to knowledge within a field organise themselves into relational projects, much like Heidegger’s notion of dwelling. These projects, however, are Platonic. They do not exist in lived experience like Heidegger’s projects, but exist as a social script for how-things-should-be-done in a given context. Bourdieu refers to this collection of Platonic, commodified projects as the ‘Habitus.’

This pantheon of Platonic projects provides a ‘best practice’ which often gets caught up in moral and ethical judgements. The ‘best way’ becomes the ‘right way,’ and anybody who does it otherwise is viewed in a negative light. Performing in the ‘correct way’ within a Habitus bestows the actor with cultural or social capital, which, much like Marx’s description of capitalism, all subscribers of the Habitus are striving to achieve for both themselves and their Habitual construct. Different Habitual constructs will ascribe different values to particular cultural practices.

As we always fall back on the enlightenment model described earlier, the subscribers of a Habitus assume that their Habitual construct provides the objectively correct way to be. They will therefore promote and defend it with any alternative Habitus quite often being viewed as a threat or an affront. This is when political discourse comes into play, resulting  in either compromise or conflict.

What can also happen in this instance is that one Habitus can exert power over another Habitus, much like Marx’s description of class struggle, ensuring that the cultural values of the dominating Habitus are assumed, or have a direct effect on, the dominated Habitus. This does not remove the cultural values of the dominated Habitus, but ensures that their notion of cultural-capital is widely seen as inferior to the dominating cultural-capital.

In Summary

Value can be attributed to anything which stimulates the human senses; a product of human homeostasis.

Use-value can be attributed to anything that directs our action on the world; an awareness of a human want or need.

Phenomena possesses both value and use-value.

Projects comprise of linked together phenomena and are aimed toward the satisfaction of the identified want or need.

Exchange-value is a communicable use-value; something which identifies the want or need of more than one person.

Commodities possess value, use-vale and exchange-value. They are socialised phenomena.

Habitus is comprised of commodified sets of projects, the Platonic way-of-being of a collection of people achieved through an agreement reached using social discourse.

Cultural-capital is achieved by subscribers to a Habitus who perform or act within the Habitual guidelines in an exemplary fashion.

Political discourse occurs when two or more Habitual constructs occupy the same space enabling more than one way-of-being to exist simultaneously utilising conflict or compromise.

The Model To Date - Part 1 of 2

The following was written before my 100 day viva in order to clarify things for myself. It is basically a more long-winded and detailed version of my viva presentation.

The problem with the Enlightenment...

Ever since the enlightenment our understanding of how we exist and act within the world has remained much the same. Cartesian coordinates, Newtonian physics and the mind-body dichotomy have defined the ‘commonsense’ paradigm amongst rational and logical human beings.

Post enlightenment thinking describes us being in the world much like any other object, with the exception that we possess that ‘something else’ that bestows us with sentience, that is a mind with the ability to perceive the world around us and allowing us to act appropriately. This ‘something else’ has been described in many ways including the religious concept of the soul, the ‘ghost in the machine,’ or Descartes’ notion of the pineal gland, ‘angel in the head’ or ‘animal spirits.’ When explaining his famous ‘I think therefore I am’ Descartes defined us a ‘thing which thinks.’ By this he does not mean that our body thinks but rather that the mind/soul/knowledge/understanding exists as a substance that lives within but is also separable from the substance of body.

This idea, referred to as Cartesian Dualism, has dominated science and philosophy ever since it was conceived in the 17th Century to the point where it seems intuitively true. The ‘stuff’ of the mind appears to be extremely different from the content of the world. Yet, on deeper examination this idea appears incomplete, relying on the pineal gland to process the input from our senses and produce this mind-substance, or on an ‘angel in the head’ to whisper to us the knowledge and meaning of the content of our senses. 

Enter Neuroscience

Neurologist Antonio Damasio attempted to refute this assumption in his book ‘Descartes’ Error’ (1994). Here, Damasio outlines his alternative take on the mind-body problem, using a series of examples of people with brain injuries or diseases to show how feelings and emotions are entirely dependent on body-state. 

Damasio’s model consists of three major points.

1. The brain and the body consist of an indissociable organism, integrated by means of biochemical and neural circuits.
2. The organism interacts with it’s environment as a whole, neither the body nor the brain has sole responsibility for this
3. The mind is a process which occurs inside the organism, mental phenomena can only be understood in the context of the organism’s interaction with an environment.

The third point is the most important and the most profound. To use Damasio’s language ‘The physiological operations that we call mind are derived from the structural and functional ensemble.’ Damasio clarifies this in his third book ‘Looking For Spinoza’ (2003) where he outlines his ‘nesting principle' which relies on the analogy of the ‘homeostatic tree.’ At the trunk of the tree are basic metabolic processes and immune responses, things which rely on subtle chemical differences within our bodies such as digesting food or fighting off the cold. This then separates into branches containing basic pain and pleasure behaviours, or the reactions of approach and withdrawal from a situation or environment. Further up we get drives and motivations also referred to as appetites such as hunger, thirst, sex, etc. In the upper branches we get emotions, which Damasio separates into background emotions, primary emotions and finally social emotions.

As you can see, as we go up the tree the processes get more complex and nuanced. The simpler processes are nested within the more complex ones and all are dependent and affective on the others. Phenomena which occur within the environment have an affect on cells within the body (which can be separated out into our senses, although it is important to note that these are part of a linguistic game, more on this later) which cause a change in body state in the same way subtle chemical processes within the body have an affect on  body state. The components of the homeostatic tree create a map our body state letting us know how we’re getting on in the world. In this model the idea of separating the mind from the body becomes an absurdity.

Perceiving Reality

Cartesian Dualism, seen as the commonsense model, tells us that there are two clear worlds; external objective reality and internal subjective consciousness. The objective world of stuff exists outside us in the three dimensions of Cartesian coordinates and our internal consciousness perceives this through our senses and internalises it so we can make judgements about how to act in the world. Despite the myriad of possible responses of consciousness there exists a definitively objective and universal externality from which everyone’s subjectivity must derive. Reason and logic always refer to this externality whereas emotions and feelings reside within, inspired by our perception of objective reality.

Damasio fundamentally challenges this idea in ‘Descartes’ Error,’ suggesting that without emotion reason cannot come about, and in fact emotion is evolutionarily prior to reason. This is supported by the work of psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist in his book ‘The Master and his Emissary.’

Here, again using a large body of research conducted on people with brain disorders, McGilchrist resurrects the idea of the divided brain; a popularised way of describing modes of thinking as either logical or emotional, left-brain and right-brain thinking. Despite being widely exaggerated and seized by management training pseudo-science, the lateralisation of brain function reveals much about our interface with reality.

McGilchrist uses a range of language to describe the differences between these two modes of thinking, belying a complexity much greater than ‘reason versus emotion.’ The key part of McGilchrist’s model, at least for my own thesis, is that of the understanding of the whole against the understanding of the part, or abstraction against metaphor. Abstraction removes things from their context and examines them as a discrete and autonomous objects. Metaphor refers to contextualisation, looking at the whole picture of reality in a relational and interconnected fashion. 

McGilchrist describes two modes of thinking, “[One allows] things to be present to us in all their embodied particularity, with all their changeability and impermanence...as part of a whole which is forever in flux... The other was to step outside the flow of experience and ‘experience’ our experience in a special way: to re-present the world in a form that is less truthful, but apparently clearer, and therefore cast in a form which is more useful for manipulation of the world...explicit, abstracted, compartmentalised, static, lifeless.”

Relating back to Damasio’s statement that emotion precedes reason, McGilchrist proffers that metaphor precedes abstraction. Art, so often seen as a frivolous and expendable endeavor, is vital for our understanding and knowledge of the world around us. Reason and logic simply augments this feeling of the world, as McGilchrist suggests creating a re-presentation of the world, affording us a perceived ontological security that our feelings and emotions are correct or letting us know that they’re not and they need to be altered. From here we can therefore suggest that what we consider ‘objective reality’ is in fact a construct we create to shore up our own subjective understanding of the world, a fine-tuning device for our body-state map.

While the mind/body distinction remains useful linguistically, if we are to proceed with any kind of profound psychological or sociological model, we must abandon it as an analogy.

So if it doesn’t work like that, how does it work?

When describing Damasio’s model I suggested that things occur to us as affects on cells within the body, through what we refer to as the senses, which alter our map of our body state. Philosophy refers to these affects as phenomena, and indeed an entire branch of the field has flourished around this idea, the field of phenomenology.

Martin Heidegger makes a key distinction between ‘objects’ and ‘things,’ the key difference being that objects become things when we can ascribe particular phenomena to them and thus we understand them, or have knowledge of them, through their use. The idea that objects are known by way of their utilisation also entails that they can only be known through their relationship with other objects and phenomena, which in turn are connected to further objects and phenomena. A hammer relates to a nail which relates to a wall which relates to a picture frame which relates to an image which relates to a place which relates to happiness etc, etc. Sets of relationships are described as projects in that they contain projections of desired phenomena which will satisfy a want or need.

Our world, according to Heidegger, is therefore comprised of projects pointing toward a desired way of being. The deployment of these projects and the positioning of the objects contained therein is referred to as building. Building is not just the construction of a physical structure, but the positioning of objects to allow a mode of living directed at producing a specific pattern of phenomena, which Heidegger refers to as dwelling.

Here we can see McGilchrist’s model at work. We can break a project down into it’s discrete chunks and consider, for example, a hammer on it’s own. But behind this consideration lies an understanding of what a hammer is used for which invokes thoughts and memories of other discrete objects, for example nails, walls and picture frames. But in lived experience a hammer could just as easily be deployed for different projects. It could be used as a paperweight, doorstop or a weapon. The object itself does not define ‘thingness,’ but rather lived experience and utilisation.

100 Day Presentation

This is my first attempt at Video Blogging. I thought some of the concepts and diagrams would benefit from genuine human intonation, as opposed to dry text. It's also an attempt for me to get over the hatred of my own voice.

This is the presentation I prepared for my 100 day viva, held on 11 Jan 2013, thankfully I passed. Feedback welcome!

A Research Proposal

I'm sure some of you have wondered what the hell most of what I discuss has to do with architecture or, or indeed how I can reconcile the architectural thinking with this nonsense. Well...here we go...

The following is a report on what I hope to accomplish. More in depth material to follow.

Introduction - Context

The question ‘What is Architecture’ has never really been adequately answered, at least not in the contemporary era. The answer ‘Architecture is a social art’ comes pretty close in my opinion. This phrase, however, raises yet more questions, asking us to delve into what the word ‘social’ really means. It was this line of thinking which lead me to write ‘The Destruction of Architecture’ as my MArch dissertation, bringing me into contact with the work of Martin Heidegger and the new field of Social Neuroscience.

This gathering of ideas has allowed me to interrogate my own feelings and intentions as a designer. Being able to interrogate the sociology of the client or prospective users of the design enables the production of a more precise design brief. Additionally, having an awareness of my  own attitudes towards a client or possible user allows me to adjust these feelings should they be unbalanced. 

It is my intention to develop these ideas into a cohesive multi-disciplinary model which can be used to critique acts-of-design. As it has enabled me to become more aware of my motivations and prejudices (latent or otherwise) I believe it could be used to investigate the motivations and prejudices of other designers. In short, I would like to develop a model of ‘reflexive design.’

When I began to expand the model I realised that the smaller the piece of deign the more nuanced it’s social properties. On the other hand, the larger the piece of design, and the more diverse social groups who use/interact with it, the more explicit the social effects should become. It was this, along with a pre-existing interest, which lead me to a critique of urban planning in the city of Belfast. 

As a city which can be perceived as divided, conciliated, ripe for regeneration, or a cultural battleground, Belfast is a city of multiple spatial interpretations and should therefore provide a fascinating testing ground for this new sociological model.

Methodology (Aims and Objectives)

Develop Model

The model is still in a relatively basic form. In order to develop it further I propose an extensive lit. review and interpretation of ideas. There is a significant amount of literature on sociology and philosophy and it’s application to architecture/urbanism, not to mention the emerging field of Social Neuroscience which few design theorists have considered.

Apply Model - Belfast’s Planning ‘Habitus’

Once the model has been further developed I then propose to investigate planning in Belfast. These issues have interested me for several years now, first being brought to my attention when taking part in the first Forum for Alternative Belfast summer school. It became clear to me then that Belfast’s urban and social problems haven’t all been caused by ‘The Troubles.’

The model could be used to interrogate the intentions of Belfast’s planners, both past and present. I propose a literature review on Belfast's planning history which could then be developed into a speculative ‘Reflexive history.’ I then propose to carry out a series of interviews and critiques of planning maps to delve into Belfast’s ‘Planning Habitus.’

Test Model - Belfast Urban Analysis

I should now be able to define a series of study areas based on planning decisions and intentions past and present. Once defined I can  select an ‘Alternative Habitus’ within these areas, one which is embedded in the lived experience of the area.

A methodology for interrogating this Habitus will need to be developed based upon the context of the Habitus itself. This mapping of the ‘Alternative Habitus’ can then be compared with the ‘Planning Habitus’ and conclusions can be drawn. I will then return to the theoretical model and appraise it based on these conclusions.

The Model So Far

This model is based upon the rejection of post-enlightenment metaphysics and the idea that the subjectivity of the mind conforms to the objectivity of reality. It suggests that we can never be said to know objective reality, but that we conform to a socialised interpretation of it. The following terms are key to the model.

Value can be attributed to anything which stimulates the human senses; a product of human homeostasis.

Use-value can be attributed to anything that directs our action on the world; an awareness of a human want or need.

Phenomena possesses both value and use-value.

Projects comprise of linked together phenomena and are aimed toward the satisfaction of the identified want or need.

Exchange-value is a communicable use-value; something which identifies the want or need of more than one person.

Commodities possess value, use-vale and exchange-value. They are socialised phenomena.

Habitus is comprised of commodified sets of projects, the Platonic way-of-being of a collection of people achieved through an agreement reached using social discourse.

Cultural-capital is achieved by subscribers to a Habitus who perform or act within the Habitual guidelines in an exemplary fashion.

Political discourse occurs when two or more Habitual constructs occupy the same space enabling more than one way-of-being to exist simultaneously utilising conflict or compromise.

Mapping

Recent research into the philosophical underpinnings of mapping reinforces the reflexive model outlined above. Long regarded as the objective representation of space, the underlying philosophy and sociology of cartography has been challenged by the interdisciplinary field of social geography over the past decade and mapping is now acknowledged as being closely related to the metaphysical conception of space and territoriality.

Maps, in the traditional Cartesian view, are accurate representations of objective reality. To use Heidegger’s description of the enlightenment model, if our relationship with the world is similar to that of water being inside the glass then mapping attempts to describe the glass which contains us. However, using our reflexive model we can now describe the production of a map as the commodification of a spatial understanding. In the introduction to the volume ‘Mappings,’ Denis Cosgrove describes this as the move from an objective view of mapping to “an opaque view...which takes account of the selections, omissions, additions and inescapable contextual influences which shape the outcome of such transfers.”

Maps, then, can be described as a representation of the spatiality of the Habitus to which the cartographer acts as agent.

Mapping and Territory

One of the primary reasons for maps appears to be demarcation of territory, often achieved through an agreement resulting from political discourse between two or more Habitual constructs. Demarcation of territory also manifests as a dominant Habitus exerting power over another Habitus and enforcing a particular conception of spatiality. The mystification of mapping as an objective representation of space has meant that most of the time this enforcement goes unchallenged.

This territoriality, agreed or enforced, is then represented on the map. In the lived experience of the space, however, territoriality appears more fluid. Boundaries are often arranged around commodified elements of landscape which have a use-value and exchange-value related to material or strategic resources. These social and political values are rarely manifested in physical space. We may be able to perceive a hill, river or vein of precious metal, but unless we are privy to specific social, political or economic languages we cannot relate the physical world to the social construct of the boundary, and different Habitual constructs will imbue these elements with different values.

Mapping only refers to the politicisation of territory. This negotiation is carried out on a daily basis within the city as people, as agents of a given Habitus, build and dwell in the Heideggerian sense. Belfast, as a conflicted city, forces this more nuanced social discourse into political discourse manifesting itself in tribal symbolism to signify territories not represented on any official map of the city. This language of symbols can be viewed as a sort of 1:1 mapping of the city, a representation of the city overlaid onto the city itself.

This sectarian manifestation of territoriality is an extreme example, however. The city is awash with Habitual symbols and indicators. No one person is voiced in them all, but the languages are writ-large in the city fabric for those who can read them.

Mapping allows us to re-present (as opposed to represent) the city, but as active agents within the space of the city we are constantly doing this ourselves as we build and dwell as part of Habitual groups. The re-presentation of the city has as much an effect on the space as the space has on it.