Lecture 10/09/2013

10/9/13.. with Hugh Davies..

For next three weeks we focus on SPACE.. so a different direction to where we have been going. Someone presenting to you, their creative practice and then go in to tutorials and then more discussion and look at the readings, digital programs to create sounds, things take a turn here, we don’t have digital programs that create SPACE..let us look at it differently, it is a media we perceive and receive in a completely different way. We can make images and sound but we can only really shape SPACE. We are not images or sound, but we are in the realm of space, we are like fish in water, we don’t perceive SPACE as we are immersed in it. This lecture is an introduction and Hugh’s perspective is that SPACE is media, you can do various things in space, you can record in space, fundamental to media, you can replay SPACE. Go in to a childhood space and remember the feeling and then it replays memories and emotions so it is like an electronic media, with playback, it goes back to the digital realm again when we look at game spaces, space has a possibility of being playable as well, not just in game realm, space and out transit through it are so important, when we move through space, we mostly do as human beings, we are structured to do, we walk through space, it is a play speed, so walking or riding a bike but then you can fast forward through space, you do not experience it in the same way, you can fast forward through SPACE but you don’t then, experience that in the same way. The thing with space too and why it is such an important MEDIA souce is our sensory experience of it is so immediate, with images we see them with our eyes, with sounds our ears, with space, not only all our sensory capabilities but with capabilities we have mapped. Perhaps it is a case of I like this space, so feel these things about images and sounds, space is so evocative of this sixth sense, our soul sensation of space.. For this reason, SPACE is the most powerful of all the media as it is so pervasive, we are fully immersed in it. Media not recordable but at its fundamental level, so that which is in between  between us all now is SPACE.. For next series of lectures we investigate, according to The Poetics of Space book. Space is a sensory location, not simply something in which we find ourselves, but something which has a poetics to it. It is not hard to read like a lot of books, it picks up lexicon jargon, easy to read and a familiar text written to introduce an appreciation of space ascetically. He introduces new idea, at fundamental level, the idea of the home, the idea it is the first fundamental space we are familiar with, the home. He divides house in to house, cellar, chest, wardrobe, chairs and this he considers different aspects of space and then extends ideas further in to idea of cities, parks, nests, shells and the universe. In doing all of this he takes a phenomenologicalapproach, phenomenology is something you are probably familiar with, phenomena is things, appearances, things we perceive and phenomenology, ology is the study ofand bio is study of environment.. living things and phenomenology is the study of things we perceiveand it is across different areas such as, philosophy, ethics, architecture and experiential design. Through him, it is embedded in architecture, phenomenology, experience different spaces that we perceive. When we go in to spaces, and feel them, we change them as well, a weird quantum mechanicsso space we don’t know and place we have an empathy with.. ie the homeSPACE, PHENOMENOLOGY AND PLACE.. ARE YOU GETTING IT, touchstone ideas Hugh said, will be occurring through the next three to four weeks. Space is atmosphere and in atmosphere see how space is shaped through other media we will be looking at.. so vocabularies we will be looking at. We will look at ideas creatively, explore through creative arts, next week think of the home, so over last couple of weeks, Hugh talked about the uncanny or the unfamiliar or unhomely. Find some parts you are not familiar with and in doing so, Hugh said explore a space that you feel you know very well, so this is this week’s assignment. Pull up some carpet or look behind a fridge, if you moved home recently, this might not be so difficult, there are possible spaces you may not have checked out. Movement through space,is something we fundamentally do all the time. We will take up these ideas, space as an urban area, this week, space as home and moving home. This idea of moving house, something uncanny about moving home, Hugh would have moved home 2030 times, every time he moves, it feels uncanny, not until he gets in there, say putting up. The narrowest house in Denmark was about as wide as a desk Hugh pointed to in the Agora theatre, so Hugh made remote homes and drove around the city.. It was an old house, a cute house.. Uncle Tom’s house,.