T4T LAB Spring 2018 Taken Abjection

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

T4T LAB Spring 2018. Hotdog Machine

T4T LAB Spring 2018. Rough and Saturated

Invited Professor: Nate Hume

Team: Maria Fuentes, Sidney Farris, Ozzy Carrion and Ashley Fulcher.

Hotdog Machine

Although we approached this project as an issue of degree, the project developed into a way of observing tropes of kind within an architectural perception of the estranged and the familiar. This studio is mainly an exploration of the both/and; the rough and saturated. The studio focuses primarily on the rough and saturated; the both/and; the strangely familiar. The site is located North of Texas A&M’s West Campus, on university-owned agricultural land. The project introduces a new culture to the context, while using a familiar, banal program related to animal and food sciences, in our case, a new building for the entomology department. We were interested in the intersection of subject/object + nature/culture, by determining the relationships of objects that become familiarized through four tiers of exhaustion: movement, geometry, space, and texture. The mereology of the familiar canonizes the creation of categorical elements. Through our project, we’ve utilized postural catalysts such as embedding, imposition, and hovering. With these catalysts, we can use the four tiers of exhaustion to evaluate relationships according to degree.

We embed the ground hot dogs in the site, producing a second ground in which the ensemble is embedded. Through posturing the ground and the ensemble, they are exhausted of their original character. This occurs at the macro Level. At the micro level, these same figures, the hot dogs, can be seen as the smallest member of the categorization; becoming a successful field object that aids in creating inner-outer-inner moments.

In this composition, the hot dogs are the autopoietic machine which occupies the anchored, designed objects. This mereology relates to the other objects to produce more. The relationships of the hot dogs at the micro scale catalyze the autopoietic machine, as the program begins to be introduced as a new part of the machine, the entirety shifts to become allopoietic, necessary to be represented by the drawings, plans, and section.

The components of the ensemble are first interpreted through degree (size, color, shape) before being evaluated on the basis of kind. This is an onticological method of intuition. Through the use of bergsonist concept of duration, we use this technique as a filter to think about the question the ensemble proposes, not as an issue of degree, but an issue of kind.

The first tier of embedding began with the figures, then texture and color, finally program. Because of the onticology of the building, the progression to the final tier of exhaustion (the program) is the last phase in the series of shifts (phase) the building undergoes. The system is open, allowing in all objects until the program becomes an object that inhibits the acceptance of new members; specifically stemming from the central hot dog nucleus.

When the onticology of the building becomes apparent; it is then that the inhibition of the autopoietic machine begins. This begins to wane on the ensemble, leading to the machine becoming allopoietic. It creates not itself, but something other. We are interested in wanting to know the deeper understanding of the relationship between these objects within the threshold of subject/object & nature/culture areas.

T4T LAB Spring 2018 Undecidable Texture

T4T LAB Spring 2018. Rough and Saturated

Invited Professor: Nate Hume

Team: Sophia Kountakis, Kendall Slaughter, Sami Simmons, Kira Elkins

Undecidable Texture

This project argues against the strict binary oppositions of the alien and the familiar to explore strange while working in the realm of both/and. Value is found in the both/and by the alteration of formal normatives to establish a new allure through the agents of hybridized materiality, field and figure, and interior/exterior relationships. New materials are created by misreading the results of physical casting tests and translating them in to a hybridized texture map with recognizable forms of canonical architectural materiality. Texture’s ontology becomes a intermediary for estrangement and familiarity.

The project also diverges from traditional figure/ground or figure/figure relationships. Instead, the ensemble operates in terms of figure and field. Field behavior is not seen in a traditional sense such as some examples argued in Stan Allen “Field Conditions.” The fields do not follow a Cartesian grid; furthermore, the object does not simply insert itself into a field either. The interaction between field and figure is instead dependent on its undecidability between a static and kinetic relationship. In one instance, field objects depend on the geometry of the figures as a guide for its path. Other times, field directions completely disregard existing geometry as a boundary

The grounding, posture, and form of the major masses in the ensemble work with the various field objects in encapsulating and framing an exterior figural void space which we have termed “the three-dimensional courtyard.” Its presence exists not in a definite outside of the object but a moment of in-between capture a moment of this un-fixability. The space is not organized in the classic sense of objects surrounding a void, but instead establishes a new type of interior/exterior relationship.

Issues in today’s nutrition problems stem from the defamiliarization of humans to nature, ie obesity, food scarcity, un-sanitary manufacturing/production practices. The program of Food Science in this project is seen as a transitive object in an autopoietic machine that contains both nature and cultural objects without strictly centering the human. This autopoietic machine challenges the traditional notion of pastoral agriculture and maintains a constant state transformation due to multiple agents; the courtyard, as well as the ground condition that suggests an ungrounding from object to landscape, and the transformation of raw materials into something new through research. This transformation is represented through an aesthetic regime inspired by El Bulli and its initiative in exploring food as an object that is subverts formal function. Food is no longer produced for human convenience and commodity, but is now able to explore an unmarked territory of aesthetics.

T4T LAB Spring 2018 Medium Rare

T4T LAB Spring 2018. Rough and Saturated

Invited Professor: Nate Hume

Team: Julia Pena, Michael Villareal, Francisco Rivera and Mitzi Belen.

Medium Rare

Introduction

In the process of deciphering these forms of tracing, it is important to identify the

characteristics of representation and human perception through the understanding of reality

from one's own mind. The objects presented are a representation from a digital distortion of

primitives through figure and tracing. In the drawings you can trace the outline and assume their

primitive and see where the moments of distortion are formed. Some of the figures are

exhausted in form, they are from a third generation, through a process of creation through trace.

This transition from 2D to 3D prevents the objects from becoming fully cooked, its existence

relies on the 2 dimension qualities in drawings to assume the raw. By creating new object from

an outline, the trace of the primitive becomes strange. The primitives assumed by trace of the

2D drawing are the familiar and what we are defining as raw a starting point in form, where the

cooked is the over processed generation, removed from the familiar. Each object holds their

own definition, but the ensemble holds a place of medium rare. The moments where you can

still assume the primitive is layered with offsets, a shell of exterior form acting as a veneer of

processing or “cooking” without affecting the actual object. Moments of the object that are

cooking are affected by external forms, from either peeling away or impressions from “digital

drips”.

Horticulture

Using modern techniques in Horticultural Gardening, a programmatic structure such as

horticulture can be feed nutrition through the uses of a hydroponic system. These systems are

being practiced in closed environments which allow for climate, nutrition, and protection of the

vegetation. To add in the process of the removal of the “human” in the typical human centered

practice of architecture, the adoption of Dual Spectrum lighting is used to maximize vegetation

development. The system utilizes a series of blue spectrum metal halide lamps and a red

spectrum of high-pressure sodium. This in combination creates a pink spectrum of lighting that

distorts human perception of vegetation since what we normal perceive vegetation as green,

due to the fact that green spectrum of lighting is not absorb by plants but rather reflects off into

our retinas; we now have no sense of identification with the color with the lack of presence of

greens and yellows.

Arrangement / Creation

Imagination plays a role in our view of reality. Relationships between mind, reality, and

the unreal. Thus developing a system of Analysis that begins to break down an order of parts to

whole to identify the aspects of the real and unreal. The organization of the objects were made

in plan with transitions and scaling of gaps in sections to provide differential qualities and

relationships. Merging of the objects with pipes help produce an ensemble that is connected in

drawing. This formal relationships connects with the ground as well, implying a structural and

visual connection to the environment. It is through the characteristics of the arrangement that

questions begin to develop in the distinction between the “real” and “unreal”.

Interior

The interior spaces that are created from the inside of these objects are gaps in the

form, their special qualities do not allow for the occupied to clearly trace what is shown in the

exterior. The pipes that connect the forms are one of the only references to where you occupy

the object. Thus distorting one's own location while in the objects and providing a sense of reval

when traveling from one object to another. (Program now separates areas and give notions to

location)

Texture

The arrangement of panels along with their materiality provide a sense of realness to the

massings, vegetation such as grass and trees provide a common environment perceived as

reality. While the scale and cantilever leave the viewer unsettled in their ability to understand its

structure. The vegetation and garden itself provides a sense of materiality to the massing. The

weaving of branches and vines adds definition to the structure and operates on scales not

normally interpreted by the viewer. It in itself provides the viewer with a portal out of reality, thus

offering a revel. The collection of floral vegetation identified by species and climates zones

along with the maturity to blosum in sync is not conceivable in reality itself. In All this revel to the

viewer is a portal to another reality, one that is not common but yet familiar producing other

realities. Developing gaps through a certain sense of reality.

The brain will use a process of informed guess work to understand environments and

situations. It is through this process that Fictional Realities comes into play, developing a

system using prior beliefs and expectation with things. Perception is rather a controlled

hallucination, reality as a agreed upon state of hallucination.