Erotics of experience

By dictionary definition erotics means 'something of, relating to, or tending to arouse sexual desire or excitement'. However, by theoretical approach it is slightly different, it is not in sexual terms but is the excitement or even something beyond, in our experience. Nevertheless, the erotics pertains to the theories of semiotics, phenomenology, aesthetics and hyperreality that we have learnt in our previous classes. It is said that erotics is 'the not the excess of pleasure but the pleasure of excess'. It is the delight in perceiving something that is overwhelming, infinite, to the point of intimidation or horror. It is the "sublime", the wow sensation, a satisfaction so much that you could die.

The film 'Fight Club' is an example of erotics in theoretical claims. It is a story of a guy who's bored of his own life so much that he faked at being cancer to join cancer consultations intending to experience true feelings of the near-death or the sublime. It was experience received second-handedly until he was involved in fight club, a club that people literally come to fight. They really get hurt and really get an adrenalin rush at the hint of almost dying. The film's catch phrase was "if you haven't fight, you haven't lived". The aesthetics of fight club was that no one else knows about fight club, people are attracted by this ambiguity. The rules of fight club is 'Do not talk about fight club'. It implies that the club only exist between the few members, a perception that they are breaking away from the aesthetics of normal people (outside of fight club), that they are different, so the main character had achieved his will in living a more exciting life. But eventually, fight club grew and the increase in its members caused it to lose its 'aesthetics' in being unique. To break away from the norm again, fight club started picking fight with other people instead. Thus, they have gone further in the 'sublime', an even more dangerous activity, at the verge of fatality.

From this example we can see clearly that erotics, as a theory of experience, is a mix of studies and understandings of different theories of perception.

Aesthetics and Ideology

When we talk about aesthetics we would normally think of it as something that is very flexible, malleable and that no two persons would have the same aesthetic preferences. However, from the study of the aesthetics I had to redefine my meaning of aesthetics. Aesthetics, in many ways, is very subjective but it if something that is constructed.

Aesthetics by dictionary meaning is a' set of principles governing the idea of beauty at a given time and place'.

The use of the words 'principles' and 'governing' implies a sense of control, meaning that the idea of aesthetics is forced or developed with certain boundaries or is unconsciously restricted. And the specification of 'time' and 'place' means that particular variables are involved in one's decision of what's beautiful and what's not, and is somewhat very political.

In the past, aesthetics might be generated in coercion but in the present days we live in hegemony, we are free of choice and are open to give ideas. But to say that it is completely personal isn't true. Humans are a race that lives in a pack, if you're the odd one out then you risk being kicked out. This causes the emergence of trends, generated by major group of people with similar aesthetic perceptions. This creates a standardized set of perceptions on beauty or ideology. The minor group then has follow that trend, because people are manipulated to think that the ideal is the better.

Designers also use this to an advantage and design according to trends. According to the Kritik of Judgement (1790), designs are preconditioned by what's going to sell (the ideal). This means there are only a number of types of products manufactured, restricting visions of aesthetic qualities and decreasing diversity in perceptions. A lot of trend setters are people who are commonly known. This also pertains to architectural influences, like Mies van der Rohe and his modern aesthetics that is also known as The International Style, suggesting it is a style that is accepted internationally. At the time, it was 'the' style and many modern buildings rose, overshadowing Frank Lloyd Wright, a genius we respect today, but was the black sheep of that era.

Playing with Architecture

Meaning is contingent. As well as our perception of things, it is impermanent. There is nothing that can actually be identified as 'forever'. Something that is sacred now, might become mundane tomorrow or in the next hundred years. These instances occurs a lot in art and architectural fields where artists and designers are always finding ways to surprise their audiences. Andy Warhol is one example of someone playing with this contingency with "profanity". His famous work, such as the Marilyn Monroe Pop Art was a sensation bringing someone who was a national star onto an ordinary canvas and exhibiting it so everyone, anyone, can have access to this celebrity. You will also have seen many of his works displaying very basic, mundane, and ordinary objects that you witness everyday. But because Warhol had established them as artworks it costs a lot more than what the real object sample originally cost and became a phenomenon with countless number of people crowded to have a look at a painting of what can be seen in the supermarket closest to your home, like campbell food cans. Another example is Jeff Koons' vacuum cleaners, again very banal objects placed inside a glass box, named a piece of art and the price of the vacuum cleaner rose to over ten million dollars. It is a sort of mockery in bringing people to pay attention on something that can even be seen in their houses or that they might use everyday. Both artists play with the meaning and perception of these common objects by embracing the absurdity of contemporary material art.

Profanity is even a more provocative issue in architecture, because of the cultural or religious values that a place or building possess, signs that evokes certain connections for people of that local area, for example a Wat or temple is a sign of sacredness for most Thais and Buddhists. Therefore, it is difficult to play with architecture without being offensive. A resort in Chiangmai that was designed and constructed with temple features and forms had raise an issue of appropriateness. Architecture can be 'played' with over its functions and meaning that exists over time. Most cases architects establish an unexpected or contradictory choice of design. The new Milstein Hall in Cornell has a contradictory function shift by putting the dome beneath its cantilevering structure. It is both a contrast and a blending of the new and old buildings. Dome is an architectural element placed at the highest point of the architecture it dwells on and is a visual prominence, that usually house sacred cultural and religious acts in the past, from Romans to Christians and the Byzantine period. Though situated underground and is understated than its usual signage quality, the dome is a sacred open space for critiques.

EMPTY FORMS

What is empty form? By empty, it means no specific function to that particular form. Therefore is an object of many functions, thus encourages translation of uses. It is an architecture of multiple functions, however not pre-determined. But we have learnt is that meaning is contingent, unstable, never the same for any two persons because the way we perceive things are different. Though architecture is a bit different, usually conveying a 'function', empty form is the contingency of architecture.

Empty forms could be created intentionally or otherwise, because I think every object is fundamentally an empty form. The functions that we associate with each specific form, shape or volume are merely our perception and conventional thoughts. For example, when you see a chair, you immediately think of the act of sitting down as a function that fits to that form, but if you never knew what a chair and its associated function is you might use it to perform a different function like putting things on it or using it to elevate yourself to change a light bulb. Likewise, there are probably many other objects that you have sat on that is not considered a chair. Though the designer have pre-determined it to be a chair - a sign of sitting - so the dimensions of the object are created in coherence to our body scale.

The "Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe" by Peter Eisenman is empty form. Its minimal, cubicle, rectangular form suggest no specific function, so it is used for fashion shoots, picnic, seats, etc.

I think a shophouse is another clear example of empty form, as there various utilization of a shophouse. Especially, after last semester that we have thoroughly study this form of architecture, and how the third year members were able to turn the same initial structural format of shophouse into over 70 different designs of different functional space of their own.

BORAT

The movie Borat is a demonstration of Simulation and Hyperreality, where the boundary between reality and fiction is fairly vague. Most of the time the two are blended together and it's hard to distinguish which is which. The only fictional characters in the movie are roles of Borat, Azamat Luenell and Pamela Anderson. Even though those invented personalities were very fictional, once put in a real or true context it suddenly becomes part of reality. As most scenes were unscripted, everything was spontaneous and intuitive, turning the movie into a real experiment of human reactions. Therefore, the movie is both real and unreal. The actor, Sacha Baron Cohen, was able to portray his fictional character very well that people believed he was real, that they were his true behaviours. This is where the stimulation or representation created the real. Then how do we distinguish the truth and what's not, and who's to say that what has been created is real? Moreover, the use of a Kazakh persona that is quite obscure and is not widely known made it more believable to the audience because they have no knowledge or expectancies of what a real Kazakh should be like. What made Borat funny was the questionable thought throughout the movie thinking is it real or unreal. The character of Borat still had a very old-fashioned set of mind, being surprised by gay traditions and women rights. The way the movie was filmed was also convincing because it seemed like a reality TV show, a real documentary and real interviews being conducted.

DE/SIGN

Everything is a "sign".

There is a parallel connection to what we see or heard and what we "think of", but they are usually two different things. This is because everything we perceive is a sign, representation, or reference of something: a pre-perception. Even the words that come out of our mouths are signs, a clear example being onomatopoeias like 'BANG!' or 'POW!' that give an automatic feedback of a gun or a punch being fired. One other good example from the lecture was were given this picture and were asked "what is it?"

A lot of people mentioned a house. But it is not actually a house, in front of our eyes is a "pentagon" and "is" nothing else. But because it has become an iconic association of a house, therefore we "think of" a house when we see this polygon. Artist, Rene Magritte has shown this understanding through "Ceci n'est pas une pipe (this is not a pipe)", where he denote that it is not a pipe but a painting of a pipe. This painting is "sign".

In a profession like designer we are "DE-signing". We are trying to generate a new sign, to be different to the pre-perception, to surprise clients (as said in my response to the Lethal Theory below). Though in architecture it's a little different because not everything necessarily communicate "meaning", they are made to "function". If you look at this stair design, it doesn't visualize the usual 'pre-perception' of a stair, it has been DEsigned so that it's still able to function as a stair, allowing one to ascend/descend with movements of stepping left and right like normal stairs does.

Staircase in Samitivej

This particular stair i found in Samitivej Hospital. With an additional design decoration, this stair has become a "sign" of fitness.

Phenomenology in Design

My design studio project is to make a proposal of a pavilion, to house a selection of sculptures from the Bangkok Sculpture Centre. I chose a sculpture called "Meditation" as my centre piece and my concept, the direction of my design process is developed from the essence and the meaning of the sculpture, which then leads me to designing an "experience" of "Meditation" that I want to convey to visitors of the pavilion. Because the sculpture is a study of a sequential progression of the body and mind during an act of meditation, the pavilion design will create space that will allow visitors to see the sculptures in a continuous sequence and has a form that tends to compel visitors to walk or progress forward.

The site for this project is at Parc Paragon but I specifically chose where there are steps to emphasize progression, not only making the visitors experience conceptually but physically as well, because "Meditation" is not achieved easily. In Buddhism, meditation is the train to nothingness, which is the ultimate achievement, where there is no suffering, therefore later on the pavilion will offer a phenomenon of nothingness. The emptiness is created the threshold and boundary of the form of the pavilion. The project offers this phenomenon of an experience to convey to visitors of Buddhism and that it is not something impossible and anyone can achieve, you just need the effort.