Field Conditions

Form of the field

I found the concept of defining the field quite interesting because of its definition tied to the spaces in between its parts. “Form matters, but not so much as the form of things as the forms between things.” The space between these parts create the relationships that comprise the field.  It brought to mind the idea that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  To have form defined needs contrasting elements to give context within space.

The beauty of the Mosque at Cordoba Spain.  

The individual elements that made the mosque each followed geometric rules that governed their organization.  The mosque was this indeterminate whole becoming great with the repetition of grouped units.  The groupings varied and so did the scale of repetition, but this accretive process allowed for the mosque’s ethos to remain throughout the many centuries of its construction.  This building off of the past while remaining respectful of it reminded me of how mandala’s are created.

Contingency and chance

I was particularly thrilled to read about the post-minimalist embrace of contingency and chance within their works of art.  In undergrad, a focus of my thesis work contrasted this sense of uncontrolled chaos with the desire for controlled order.  The distributions of Barry Le Va gave up controlling the outcome and allowed chaos to play within a series of rules.  The final product was a “record of the process of its making in the field.”

Boids

This was an interesting term for the autonomous birdlike agents that follow mutually accepted rules based on what’s happening within each individual’s vicinity.  I immediately thought of schools of fish, flocks of birds, and herds of mammals and how the group not only had a visual unity but also mental unity with regard to movement. I also found the juxtaposition of the boid next to the crowd interesting because the crowd is a human grouping but due to the individual mind of people, the sense of unity had a lacking sense of prediction to it.

Circulation patterns

“An architecture that leaves space for the uncertainty of the real” caught my eye because of how it works with other structures and the patterns of circulation as a point of departure to make new forms.  The field conditions shaped the decisions for the next design.