T4T LAB Spring 2018. Rough and Saturated
Invited Professor: Nate Hume
Team: Tung Dinh, Kate Gesing, Stefy Del Salto, Andrew Lane
This project is a research and development center for the the
Animal Science department at Texas A&M, which deals with reproductive
physiology, animal breeding and genetics, dairy and meat sciences as well as
animal nutrition. Our center would focus on genetic research of goats and
sheep, particularly innovative methods of reproduction such as cloning.
While the project resides in College Station, it is an autonomous
ensemble which represents its own qualities and exists outside of the local
vernacular. The form of the ensemble is composed of a select number of profiles
that are layered around each other to envelop space, and act as an inhabitable
poche. Each piece has a thickness which creates volume. The organization of the
pieces creates an onion like effect in which a subject can be in the exterior
of the ensemble, the interior of the enveloped space, or the interior of the
volumes. The use of nesting and layering of parts helps to create an allure
about what’s around the corner, or what other qualities can be uncovered.
One cannot fully understand all the qualities of the onticology,
however, with this project we began to look into the idea of parallel realities
in which one seemingly masks the features of the other. Within Baudrillard’s
explanation of a hyperreality, he states that phase two of the sign is when
reality exists but is distorted in representation. Our project exists in a
pristine, romanticized reality that begins to hide a parallel darker world of
abjection. Neither of these realites is in conflict with the other, but coexist
in the same way the worlds of day and night occur in David Lynch’s Blue Velvet.
There is a “cute” aesthetic that begins to mislead the subject about the dirty
or grimy qualities associated with raising animals such as the copious amounts
of excrement or the smell, in addition to the more grotesque aspects of animal
experimentation.
Culturally, there is a tendency to present the best versions of
oneself or of a project and to consume the first image seen as the totality of
the situation.Umberto Eco expands on Baudrillard’s notion of hyperreality by
implying when one desires a reality, a false version of that reality is
fabricated to be consumed as real. Here, we can see that within the pop-like
profiles, glimpses of the abject can be seen, but not in their entirety as the
pristine, or the mask, becomes the more sought after reality.
We put forward the notion that it doesn’t matter
so much in the traditional sense that the drawings are “correct” or consistent,
but rather that the most important discussion to have is of how we view things.
As a result, we have coined the term “immanent drawings”. These appropriate the
idea that there is manifested, yet unused
