master essay version1

1 Introduc+on

2 Research theory: 2.1 Architecture as Forensic Archeology 2.1.1 Mo+on and trace (Nicodian Thinking of Space and Time) 2.1.2 Deep Mapping 2.2 Madness, Civiliza+on and Architecture 2.2.1 The Psychology Approach, Symbolism, Lacan and other 2.2.2 On Madness and Architecture

3 Design methodology: 3.1 Venus de Milo Missing Her Arm

3.2 War Trench BaRle

3.3 The Doomsday of Madness 3.3.1 The Replica+on of Freud’s Clinic Sofa 3.3.2 The Symbolism replica+on of the Vienna State Opera 3.3.3 Theatre of Madness

3.4 Conclusion

4 Bibliography

Madness, Civilization, and Architecture

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1 Introduction:

The delirious history of human civilization is a story about madness and insanity, where warfare continuously takes place, destructing the fabric of cities and bringing down the shelters, leaving behind the ruins as an untold story about conflicts and madness. In another way, architecture is at war with time and history, as it has been referred to as an aspect of materiality. The transformation of its components destroys and conceals the culture and memory.

This thesis discusses the architectural technology dealing with the lost history by certain rituals and performance, which is a narrative way of re-constructing a place rather than simply telling a story.

The research and design was conducted in three phases.

The first step is to investigate into a crime scene by way of forensic science. The motion and its traces were recorded in a time-space range, discussing the concept of “Différance” coined by Jacques Derrida. Metaphorical narrative method is applied to create a sculpture in the garden memorizing the “Venus de Miloʼs missing arm”. “Venus”, which is a symbol of the aesthetic standard of human civilization, is interpreted as a victim of a crime.


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Fig 01. Ship of Fools, Hieronymus BoschA ship of madness sailing without pilot.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jacques_Derrida




In phase two, archeology is used as an approach to investigate a ruined site in a way of architecture as forensic science. The ʻDeep-mappingʼ technique of Michael Shanks is adopted in this process to reconstruct upon fragments of information. Performance art and culture-related ritual is invited to reconstruct the spatial experience.

The third phase questions the relationship between madness, civilization and architecture in reference to M. Foucaultʼs work. This Critique is used with Shankʼs method of ʻdeep-mappingʼ to include relationships between Lacan and Freudʼs Psychoanalytical theories. The intention is to construct an overlapping of art and psychiatry as a form of architectural technology.


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2 Research theory:

2.1 Architecture as Forensic Archeology!

2.1.1 Motion and trace (Nicodian Thinking of Space and Time)

Forensic science involves investigating a post-crime scene, tracing back what happened at the commission of a crime. Investigators re-construct a spatial event of the missing objects from scenes of crime. The first question has been raised is, how do we reconstruct a missing object in space and time? The idea being that traces of architectural environments and objects are always in the body of the space and its reconstruction. The Venus De Milo is used as a method of narrating the design proposals.

We can look to the description of ʻdifféranceʼ by Derrida. ʻIn presenting itself it becomes effaced; in being sounded it dies awayʼ (Derrida, 1973, p.154). It is because of this effacement that the trace implies movement, a movement which necessarily exceeds presence, a movement that exceeds presence and takes the place of being somewhere. Thus, in order to discuss a missing ʻvictimʼ or ʻobjectʼ, traces has to enable the reconstruction of event.

According to Jean Nicodeʼs constructions of space and time, the motion occupies a certain period of time that can be described as a groups of position points, each point representing the unique position of a volume in a time. These points form a continuous curve, which describe the properties of a motion, such as direction and speed.


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Fig 02. Field of TracesRecording the boundary of a motion

2.1.2 Deep Mapping

Demolition and reconstruction contains an archaeology, as a trace of a form of the warfare against time. The archeological site is a landscape that interacts with geological transformation, human social political events, and climate conditions. On an archeological site, different inhabitants have been constantly modifying the landscape, covering the traces left by their previous occupants, leaving new traces.

To re-construct a series of ʻDifféranceʼ over time, to show trace of decay, transformation and motion, a strategy of ʻdeep mappingʼ is introduced.

The work of ʻdeep mappingʼ is made of three basic elements – a graphic work (large, horizontal or vertical), a time-based media component (film, video, performance), and a database or archival system that remains open and unfinished. This process remains open and unfinished as a re-constructed system, aiming to create a spatial experience, based on the information of debris, folklore, natural history and broken objects.

This landscape may be considered to be a simulacra of the warfare scene over time. The field of the physical transformation in a long time period in the site will be a visual conversation articulated embracing a range of different media or registers in a sophisticated and multilayered orchestration.

The narrative re-construction is embedded in the documentation of trench warfare. The mapping of historic actions in the ground and the traces they leave behind as a memorial to madness and its civilization.

2.2 Madness, Civilization and Architecture

2.2.1 The Psycho-analysis Approach, Lacan and other

The third question reviews the city as a dynamic system of compositions delivered over time which incorporate bodies of actions outside of our experience. The traces of events that are


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embodiments we inhabit as preconscious conditions of virtual but actual spaces.

French Psychoanalyst Jacques Lacanʼs theory of mirror stage has been borrowed to explain how the process of destruction and reconstruction is fulfilled. Warfare and bombing destroy the peopleʼs physical lives and the places they inhabit, leaving behind massive damage and debris. The reconstruction of culture after the devastation of warfare is like a process of rebirth, a battered city begins to re-awakened afters its suffering and emotional distress caused during the period of war. The imagination of the city becomes aroused to the damage, suffering emotional insecurity and impossible tasks of imagining its own reconstruction from the debris. This re-objectification requires an immense act of will and determination. The traces of debris and destroyed architectural fragments left on what can be called an archaeological site becomes the platform for reconstruction. This re-formation of the city contains the reflection of his own life in the process of objectification, and this imagination contains the conflict between the process of construction and objectification that simultaneously embrace emotional experience.

Lacan discusses the three orders, the Imaginary order, the symbolic order and the real order. These are the three dynamic factors structuring our understanding of the world, constantly creating a new culture. These methods are used to discuss a history as its fragmentation and its contemporary reality. This is reviewed as a possible method for reconstruction.

During the first of these orders, 'Lacan regarded the ʻimagoʼ as the proper study of psychology and identification as the fundamental psychical process. The imaginary was then the dimension of images, conscious or unconscious, perceived or imagined.

The Symbolic is the domain of culture as opposed to the Imaginary order of nature. And the language of symbolism is not a matter of communication, but involves all the situations which are connected and created and constructed by symbols. The language of symbolism is a network of relationships and geometry.

My design is going to deal with the real order, which is a difficult part to understand in Lacanʼs theory. Lacanʼs real order in his three part theory is used in this essay as a psycho-analytical tool to fill the gap between the narrative and the architecture of space and time.


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2.2.2 On Madness and Architecture#

In the history of human civilization, the mad or the rational, there is no ultimate truth of a drastic distinction between them. Madness may be seen as in the middle ages, a disturbing power producing illusions and imaginations, often referenced in art works of the Middle Ages. Mad people themselves being isolation or confined in Madhouses. Madness could be said to be sailing in a ʻStultifera Navisʼ on the sea with the ultimate aim being to free or isolate it from the land of ʻcivilizationʼ.

Foucault quoted Dostoievskyʼs words, ʻIt is not by confining oneʼs neighbor that one is convinced of oneʼs own sanity.ʼ in the preface of ʻMadness and civilizationʼ.

If we consider ourselves to be rational and reasonable, we can then within this reason define madness. But if we could also by our this rationale be this madness and insanity, and thereby living in the illusions of a fabricated madness. The truth of warfare points in this direction.

In order to gain power, politicians launched warfare against another race, out of a rational strategic needs. At the very same time due to the engagement with violence and destruction, they are considered to be driven by the forces of madness.

On the edge of insanity and non-crazy groups, there exists a type of technology to separate them. War trenches are a type of space, built as a defensive architecture incorporating mobile war machines. The sailing ship for the fools, the ʻStultifera Navisʼ is the edge between madness and civilization, The Tower of Fools in Vienna is the edge between madness and rational. The mobility and confined, the insider and the outsider, the mad and the rational, if their edge breaks down, there will be no distinction between these definitions.

The surface between the inside and outside of architecture has been an analogy to discuss the edge of madness and civilization. The madness in architecture is discussed by re-reading the differences between mobile and static environments, between performers and their audiences, between our internal worlds and an external landscape that contains our fragmented history.


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3 Design methodology:

3.1 Venus de Milo missing her arm#

The idea of “Venus de Milo missing her arm” is used to reconstruct the idea of a fragment as a way of reconstructing the composition of objects. The arm of the De Milo was thought to be pointing at another figure in a composition of sculptures. The Venus was excavated from a site in Paris with an arm missing. The Venus is also a replica of the original which has never been found. Depicting Aphrodite (Venus to the Romans) the Greek goddess of love and beauty, Venus de Milo is a symbol of the aesthetic standard of human civilization.

In this programme, she has been interpreted as the victim of a crime.

The sculpture and musical installation names as the “Venus de Milo missing her arm” is made and located in a garden. It is designed to leave traces on a skin, it plays a noise as it moves in the air driven by the environment it performs the space of the object, reconstructing a theatre of traces of a reenactment of a crime, an active archive of the missing arm.

Step 1. Reconstruction of a Murder Scene


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Fig 03. The Boundary of Murderer’s Motion

The play of the ʻMurdering Venus de Miloʼ was conducted in a room where two cameras are positioned perpendicular to each other at the same level. I, myself, playing as the role of the murderer, thrusted the knife toward the victim. Meanwhile, seeing the threatening of the knife, the victim waved her arm to resist the attack. The motion of the offensive arm and the resisting arm formed a system, which was the result of the violent action of the murderer and the following fearful reaction of the victim. The distance between the two arms at a certain point of time shows the emotional tension between the victim and the murderer. And the boundary between the two traces turns out to be an interactive system of spaces. To notate the control points on the arm (the motion object), both the murderer and the victim wore a pair of patterned gloves. The control points were marked and drew the two motions in 3D (shown as curves connecting the joints of arm) . (Also in a film ”the dreamer” the actress was wearing a black glove to perform as the Venus de Milo)

According to the data from the two cameras the points are recorded in three dimensional. And with these points positioned on arm , both the arm and its rotation are recorded.

Step 2. Motion Trace

In the system which is reconstructed in the last step, there are objects moving at different speeds and rotating, creating a multi directional landscape.

The Murdererʼs arm was set as the origin of the coordinate(just like standing on the Murderer's arm, creating a ʻFacsimileʼ of the victimʼs boundary with the system)

Then the Venusʼs arm was constructed as the origin of the coordinate(just like standing on Venus's arm, watching the murder's arm approaching)

The event is the motion trace which articulates of both objects, as they reveal reactive boundaries.

Step 3. A Forensic System

The sculpture of the murder scene creates a system which deals with the sound and wind in a garden. The traces of the motions in the murder scene were attached to a skin to make a musical instrument. As the wind blows in the garden, the flow of the air will make the skin vibrate. A “key” is attached on the trace of the sculpture. As it is moving along the trace, the position of the “key” indicates the position


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Fig. 04 The Reconstruction of a Murder ScenePoints are recorded in the two positioned cameras

Fig. 05 The Motion TraceThe curves of the motion trace connect the 3D points recorded in the scene.


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Fig. 06&07 The Relativity of MotionChanging the origin point of the coordinate of the system, creating ‘Facsimile’ of the ‘de Milo’s boundary of the system.

Fig. 08 The Forensic Sculpture in the memorial Garden

of the murderʼs arm in a certain time during the murder action.

This whole sculpture is seen as a pataphysical system for the replication of the murder scene.

There would be a series of sculptures in the garden, the sculpture for the victim, and the murderer.

3.2 War Trench Battle#

A series of research drawings focuses on warfare and destruction. The following landscapes are cultivated from actual sites from the second world war trench emplacements in France.

3.2.1 Battle-grounds in Europe during 19th century.

Warfare and irrational human destruction is one of the most significant aspects of the 20th century. The development of nuclear warfare taking it to its limits.

This series of drawings shows the areas where warfare took place.

As it has been shown in the images, the traces of the trenches have a resemblance to cracks in a parchment, renaming and relocating in the materials of time.

3.2.2 War-trench geometry.

Trench warfare is a form of occupied boundary siege. Both sides construct elaborate trenches and dugout systems opposing each other along a front, protected from assault by barbed wire. The area between opposing trench lines (known as "no manʼs land") was fully exposed to artillery fire from both sides. War-trench is a landscape full of tension, motion, destruction.

3.2.3 Void spaces

Void spaces is a metaphorical way in narrative to describe places where warfare took place and where it is no longer suitable for


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Fig. 09 Battle-Grounds in Europe During 19th Century

Fig. 12 Void SpacesDiagram of the spaces destroyed in war fare

Fig. 11 War Trench GeometryFig. 10 Trench Systemsource: http://techcenter.davidson.k12.nc.us/group9/trenchwar.htm

http://techcenter.davidson.k12.nc.us/group9/trenchwar.htm




human living. The sites is war memorials with blood soaked ground. In the drawing, the void space is interpreted as fabrics inside a solid piece of impenetrable wood, where no light get into the space and it is no longer tangible.

3.3 The Doomsday of Madness

“We have now got in the habit of perceiving in madness a fall into a determinism where all forms of liberty are gradually suppressed; madness shows us nothing more than the natural constants of a determinism, with the sequences of its causes, and the discursive movement of its forms; for madness threatens modern man only with that return to the bleak world of beats and things, to their fettered freedom.”

-- Michael Foucault, Madness and Civilization

Vienna, at the turn of the 20th century was one of Europe's leading centres for modernism. This was a tumultuous period of transition in which the arts, literature, architecture and philosophy blossomed. A time when Sigmund Freud, among others, pioneered new ideas about the self and psychiatry.

Vienna a century ago was a city obsessed with the mind. Political unrest had left the Viennese with an overwhelming sense that they were living in 'nervous times'. Anxieties about mental health were allied to fears about the modern city; this context helped to foster progress in psychiatric care and innovation.

Vienna was also severely bombed during the World War I. This city used to be full of madness, darkness, and ruins. Not only the city occupies wounded soldiers and delirious mind, but also the city itself is a wounded soldier.

The final design proposal is located in Vienna. Less than a century ago this city was full of madness as a result of warfare. In response to this desperate human condition, Caul Jung rased money for the building of psychiatric units.

3.3.1 The Replication of Freudʼs Clinic Sofa


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Fig. 13 The replication of Freudʼs Clinic Sofa

Fig. 14 The Symbolism Opera House

The Imaginary order is one of a triptych of terms in the psychoanalytic theory of Jacques Lacan, along with the symbolic and the real. Each of the trio of terms emerged gradually over time, and underwent an evolution during the development of Lacan's thought. 'Of these three terms, the "imaginary" was the first to appear.

Freud's clinic sofa is a real thing in his time and an imagined spatial experience in this design. It has created a presence on stage between mind and visual experience. Psycho-analysis is a mediation between the recognition of the world in mind and the physical world.

This is a corner of the room where a sofa, a lamp and several photos and sculptures located. Freud used to show the ancient sculptures to the patient to remind them of the past. I used the method of “zoom in”, and “montage” in film making, to create landscape of the fragments of the objects and different connections between objects in this scene. This is the reconstruction of the trace of history.

This drawing is about one of Freudʼs patients soldier had a dream in his work shop. His dream is about the wounded soldiers on the battle, distorted body, rivers and mountains in his hometown. The sofa was the place where the event occurred, and also the object that according to which a series of memories are raised and dreams are formed.

“The unconscious is structured like a language.” In this design the dream is a reflection of unconsciousness and the language becomes an interpretation of the spatial experience of the Freudʼs sofa. The components are structured using a technique of “zooming in” and “collaging/montaging”. In this discussion on the psycho-analysis, is the use of collaboration between objects and spaces that exchange parts of their scales and conditions. This becomes a tactic for design intervention. The interpretation of these boundary shifts becomes a tool for the imagination reflecting the work on the sofa as the interpretation of dreams.

3.3.2. Symbolism replication of the Vienna State Opera


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The next piece was to construct a symbolic method as a system for cutting into the State Opera House in Vienna.

The idea is that significant symbols imply geometric relationships between bodies, objects and the universe. They are the production of culture and history embedded in Consciousness. The city Vienna is the wounded soldier of war, in which these productions take place.

To discuss the history and culture relevance of this chosen site, a system of masonic symbols is cut into the existing opera house. These become a substitute for the stage. Pieces of architecture decorations, sculptures and stairways are adapted according to the geometric relationship of a group of masonic symbols. The structure of the stage is adapted and the stage stretched out and extended to replace the structure of the hall. The symbolism of a new system is embedded in the original building. The new opera house is designed as a type of psychiatry, as a type of geometry orders. The connection of the existing and reconstructed will be the symbolizing psychiatry of the city. So this opera house becomes a pata-physical theatre of Madness.

3.3.3 Theatre of madness

The body of an Opera singer is used as an analogy to explore the relationship between the outside and the inside of the environment , the relationship of figure and ground and their relative motion. The opera is a type of performance acting tragedy out. Here the body is used as an analogy to discuss the confined and the exiled.the inside and the outside. the relationship between figure and the ground.

The system is a perspective container. The analogy is about the chest of the opera singer being the interior of a theater. In this situation, the geometrical order is twisting and turning while the singer is performing. The walls of the hall is moving and shifting . There is no difference between vertical and horizontal. And the light through the outside environment is constantly changing intensity and direction. When seated in this motion machine, in this theater of madness and violence, the perspective is constantly distorted according to the movement of the body. Can we figure out whether it is the audience who are mad, or the world outside the theater is going mad?


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Fig. 15 Soft Immortality (2008), Tobias KleinSource: http://www.horhizon.com/works/soft-immortality/This image shows the intense relationship of the surfaces inside body. The inside is the space between organs, blood vessels and muscles. The surfaces of these spaces fold and create new motions while the body as a whole is performing. These spaces are continuos and changing all the time.

Fig. 16 Francis BaconDetail of Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion c.1944These image from Francis Bacon show the relationship of the outside surface and the environment. Bacon is fascinated in extreme body distortion and facial expression to describe the suffering and madness of human being. The body of a figure is distorted and rotated to create a dynamic shift in space. The boundary of the body and environment thus become an opera performance.

http://www.horhizon.com/works/soft-immortality/

http://www.horhizon.com/works/soft-immortality/

The body of the opera singer is an instrument during performance . the folding of the inner side of the body is constantly changing while they sing the different note. Operatic voices need enough volume to compete with the overwhelming volume of the orchestra. In times without electronic devices nor microphones that could amplify them they needed special techniques to make sure the people in the end rows of the theatre could enjoy them as much as the front rows did. Therefore a singing technique was developed to make sure they could stand out in the bombast of the orchestra, without the musicians having to compromise in volume.

Technology is used here as a combination of deep mapping and psycho-analysis to reconstruct the landscape of madness on the debris of a destroyed Opera House.

The drawings are based on a series of MRI Scan images of a real human body. Sections in different directions are used to depict the folding and the continuous spaces inside the body. According to those foldings of the surfaces of the organs and the space in-between the organs, the organs are crushed against each other, the boundaries of the spaces emitting and creating other motions. Micro-landscapes taking place in these fissures and gaps. These become the site of the imaginary and symbolism landscape.

Another method has been explored according to the performance of body. As we consider violence and damage and murder action against a body is a time-based event, and its results in the decomposition and dislocation of the body part, so the distorted body is the record of a time-based violence murder action. The last drawing is just an attempt to break the body and re-organize them. As in a crime scene, a body is distorted or divided into several parts. So the distorted form of body is a record of the motion during a period of time when the crime is executed. So the body landscape is a translation of the idea of murder violence, time and event.

3.4 Conclusion

By the end of last century, the ʻrationalʼ computer technology and industrialized system had affected more aspects of the society, and the world came to view delirium, poverty and madness diseases not as inevitable features of society, but as conditions which could be controlled and solved by technology. However as the pace of


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technological change accelerated in the late twentieth century, the force of new technology became difficult to control, while the madness cause more severe destruction to the society and people. As the development of nuclear weapons and other war technologies has proved that during the last decades of the century. We still have to rely on architectural technology to repair and reconstruct.

The city Vienna has his own history of art and madness. It has a history of psychoanalysis which was funded by the collaboration of Jung and Freud. There is also a suffering time after the World War, and a tradition of opera singing. This proposal hopes to combine these features, and the three orders in psychoanalytical theory, to make a system，which will fill the gap between the narration of tradition and culture, and the architecture of space and time.


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Fig. 17 Body Spaces in MotionThis is a inside section of an opera singer’s chest, showing the muscles and the folding spaces in the human body.

Fig. 18 Inside Landscape of BodyThis image shows a body turning from the front the the side while the inside space is changing.

Fig. 19 Body Theatre of the Opera Singer

4 Bibliography!Baudrillard, J., (1996). The perfect crime. New York: translated by Chris Turner.

Bombing of Vienna in World War II

Derrida, J. (1973). Speech and Phenomena. Northwestern University Press

Henderson,L.D., 1998. Duchamp in in Context: Science and Technology in the Large Glass and Related Works. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.

Foucault, M., (1989). Madness and civilization: a history of insanity in the age of reason. London: translated from the French by Richard Howard.

Foucault, M., (1976). Society must be defended: lectures at the Collège de France. Translated by David Macey. London: Penguin.

Lacan, J., (1989). The mirror stage as formative of the function of the I as revealed in psychoanalytic experience /

Nietzsche, F. W., (1995). Thus spoke Zarathustra: a book for all and none. New York: translated and with a preface by Walter Kaufmann.

Shanks, M., (2004). Three rooms: Archaeology and performance. Journal of Social Archaeology.

Shanks, M., (2001). Theatre/Archaeology: the (re) articulation of fragments of the past as real-time event. Available at: http://archaeography.stanford.edu/michaelshanks/64

Shanks, M., The archaeological imaginationAvailable at: http://documents.stanford.edu/MichaelShanks/57

Wellcome Collection, (01 April - 28 June 2009). Madness & Modernity, Mental illness and the visual arts in Vienna 1900. [Exhibition]


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http://archaeography.stanford.edu/michaelshanks/64




master essay version1

Documents

theatre of madness

bibliography madness

doomsday of madness

way of architecture

way of forensic science

forensic archeology

timespace range

deep mapping