seminar on the circuits/circus of architecture

A group of interested scholars will conduct regular zoom meetings to discuss topics of mutual interest. Regular meetings (zooms) will be locally structured by questions and previous correspondence; the aim of the seminar is to use writing as a means of provoking inquiry and the means of convivial sharing by creating “provocations” and the circulation of work.

upcoming events

First meeting, Wednesday, January 24, 17:30 US east-coast time.

table of contentious contents

writer’s manifest-0 (Iraj Ghoochani)

• manifesto (ig)
• commentary by dk
• the zero degree of writing (circulated separately on request)

provocations

The aim of the provocation will be to serve as the central art-form of the seminar. Provocations may be on any topic, of any length, for any motive. Ideally, a provocation should be short enough to provoke effective responses from seminar members. Effectivity is based on three principles: (1) it is the result of a project or action that leads somewhere, as a part of personal work; (2) it makes sense to others, and is translatable into other’s work; and (3) it provokes discussion that leads to more provocations. If this format is OK (title, preamble, body, with or without footnotes, bibliography) use it; otherwise there are no limits. Drawings, music samples, and experiments would also be productive.

1.1 The multiple facets of George Spencer-Brown’s Laws of Form 

In the work of George Spencer-Brown (Laws of Form), there is an interesting parallel between his central contention, that a distinction is coincident with an indication and the more general phenomenon of concentricity, and what in literature and story-telling is the device of the story in the story. A brief unpacking of these ideas, and some background on George Spencer-Brown is necessary. Footnotes and bibliography included. Note that the point of studying Laws of Form is not to become an expert in pre-Boolean logic but, rather, to understand “perspectival experience” in relation to a second parallax, an internal and structural parallax. We know this second parallax exists on a neurological as well as a psychoanalytical and cultural level because of the stereogram and Ames Window (and similar illusions). This parallax justifies a theoretics about anamorphosis as a general principle of perception, the unconscious, and subjectivity rather than a trick of distorted images invented in the 16c.

The Second (“internal”) Parallax enables us to connect writing as a agent provocateur to everyday (cultural, ethnological) experiences with a stable vocabulary that allows for corroboration, detection of errors, and correction — in other words, the necessity of writing to be both personal and scientific. This parallax goes beyond Kant’s transcendental æsthetic and is topological in its ability to account for non-orientation and self-intersection as a double circuit whose primary concern is the conservation of energy.

outlines

Plans of study will be presented (usually) in outline form, including reading lists or bibliographies if these are not included elsewhere (a collective reading list will be maintained). Every study requires a plan that, specifically, makes error possible and distinguishable from non-error. In the idea of the Ersatz Method, error data is more valuable because it requires a re-structuring of the problem and adjustment/rejection of the paradigm in force, often unconsciously.

• kunze’s outline

documents

Writing dealing with Laws of Form (for background only):