Just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your travelogue. I think I enjoyed 'your' enjoyment of it - what an atmospheric flight of fancy, and its clear from its length and your level of detail that you were 'in' Merveille like a proper explorer. I don't in anyway want to diminish your enthusiasm, but I do have a couple of observations to make which might encourage you to recalibrate your conception of Merveille a little.
Okay, so right now, you're sort of building a word 'out of' Cornell's existing stuff, as opposed to think 'like' Cornwell, who is designing a city - do you see the difference? It's subtle, but the first one is like a Lego project, where you're taking existing things and clicking them together, whereas the second approach is like making your own building blocks yourself.
We know that Cornell recycles and re-purposes found objects in order to create his boxes, so if Cornell was designing a building, he'd probably create it from fragments of other kinds of buildings; he'd bring components together to create something. At the moment, you're just upscaling all of his stuff so it's building sized, but that's not what Cornell would do; his preoccupations and interests and themes would instead be brought to bear upon the concept of architecture. To help you think like Cornell, maybe look at recycled architecture as a category of creativity:
There is a specific sort of building that Cornell refers to in his work - Hotels - he names a series of his boxes after them and the works evoke the souvenirs and stories of travellers. I did like the idea of your Cornell city being on island, and maybe it's an island crowded with grand old hotels in the Cornell-style. It does seem, if Cornell was allowed to build a world, he might populate it with these places where people come and go, but never stay for long.
So, the important thing is to 'think' like Cornell as you think about designing his city, and work in the way he works; so, in terms of thumbnailing his 'found object' buildings, maybe could consider actually photocopying lots of pictures of old fashioned grand Hotels or whatever, and then physically cutting and sticking them together to create lots of different versions - you could then take these collaged thumbnails into Photoshop and work with them there?
I think one the lovely things about your writing is the dreamlike quality of your place, the sense of it being a bit sad and empty too - all good Cornell-like stuff - I just want you to think a bit more about how a man who brought lots of things together might do so in an architectural sense, so as to give you a bit more creative freedom than just upscaling his existing stuff.
Make a word list of all his preoccupations (i.e. the motifs he uses again and again) and then see how they might relate to you/Cornell thinking about building-sized structures and spaces.
Thank you for your feedback, I think I understand what is being asked of me in terms of how I'm collaborating with Cornell but would like to talk to you about it just to double check my understanding.
OGR 05/11/2016
ReplyDeleteHey Paris,
Just wanted to say how much I enjoyed your travelogue. I think I enjoyed 'your' enjoyment of it - what an atmospheric flight of fancy, and its clear from its length and your level of detail that you were 'in' Merveille like a proper explorer. I don't in anyway want to diminish your enthusiasm, but I do have a couple of observations to make which might encourage you to recalibrate your conception of Merveille a little.
Okay, so right now, you're sort of building a word 'out of' Cornell's existing stuff, as opposed to think 'like' Cornwell, who is designing a city - do you see the difference? It's subtle, but the first one is like a Lego project, where you're taking existing things and clicking them together, whereas the second approach is like making your own building blocks yourself.
We know that Cornell recycles and re-purposes found objects in order to create his boxes, so if Cornell was designing a building, he'd probably create it from fragments of other kinds of buildings; he'd bring components together to create something. At the moment, you're just upscaling all of his stuff so it's building sized, but that's not what Cornell would do; his preoccupations and interests and themes would instead be brought to bear upon the concept of architecture. To help you think like Cornell, maybe look at recycled architecture as a category of creativity:
http://www.igreenspot.com/the-rake-showroom-is-another-green-architecture-design-made-from-recycled-materials/
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/originals/87/83/f7/8783f709333e3baaa2a5c4b66d734963.jpg
http://popupcity.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/1000-Doors-2.jpg
There is a specific sort of building that Cornell refers to in his work - Hotels - he names a series of his boxes after them and the works evoke the souvenirs and stories of travellers. I did like the idea of your Cornell city being on island, and maybe it's an island crowded with grand old hotels in the Cornell-style. It does seem, if Cornell was allowed to build a world, he might populate it with these places where people come and go, but never stay for long.
So, the important thing is to 'think' like Cornell as you think about designing his city, and work in the way he works; so, in terms of thumbnailing his 'found object' buildings, maybe could consider actually photocopying lots of pictures of old fashioned grand Hotels or whatever, and then physically cutting and sticking them together to create lots of different versions - you could then take these collaged thumbnails into Photoshop and work with them there?
I think one the lovely things about your writing is the dreamlike quality of your place, the sense of it being a bit sad and empty too - all good Cornell-like stuff - I just want you to think a bit more about how a man who brought lots of things together might do so in an architectural sense, so as to give you a bit more creative freedom than just upscaling his existing stuff.
Make a word list of all his preoccupations (i.e. the motifs he uses again and again) and then see how they might relate to you/Cornell thinking about building-sized structures and spaces.
Thank you for your feedback, I think I understand what is being asked of me in terms of how I'm collaborating with Cornell but would like to talk to you about it just to double check my understanding.
Deletethat's fine - come and find me :)
ReplyDelete