ATMOSPHERE 9
BEAUTY MEMORY ENTROPY
MAKING AND VISUALIZING
Atmospheric Wonder: Drawing-Out and Reflecting from Within
Manuel Baez, Carleton University
ABSTRACT
“. . . It is all too easy for us to forget our carnal inherence in a more-than-human matrix of sensations and sensibilities. Our bodies have formed themselves in a delicate reciprocity with the manifold textures, sounds, and shapes of an animate earth.”David Abram, ecologist and philosopher
This proposal will address the process of making and visualizing through an emphasis on the
nature of the “delicate reciprocity” between our embodied mind and the world of phenomena.
This has been an area of research through hands-on material based projects, offering a fertile
process that engages and co-responds with the inherent properties of materials and
phenomena. This intimate, embodied, and mindful process is a threshold through which one
enters the magical realm of creative thinking and making; encountering the in-formative and
trans-formative potential within our relationship with the environment. This inter-actively
encoded phenomenal and epiphenomenal engagement offers multiple possible ‘readings’
from the latent in-formation, revealing how it can be generated, modulated and appropriated.
Three interrelated projects from the Reflections on Antoni Gaudi series will be presented. The
Catalan architect was inspired by the natural world, considering it as the source of his
creativity. One of his seminal investigations consisted of the use of a “hanging model” to
explore the principle of the reversed catenary curve as a way of generating an optimal arch.
Gaudi was the first to extend this beyond a single arch into the realm of three-dimensional
structural and spatial experience. The three projects are inspired by a literal reflection on this
process. In each, equally-inflated helium balloons are secured to a two-dimensional
lightweight-cord grid at each intersection. The ‘self-organizing’ potential of this levitating
membrane is experienced as participants pull from different cords hanging from the grid,
easily becoming an immersive interactive space-forming, shape-shifting and structure generating
process. An interesting comparison is encountered when this is done indoors and out in the environment. The projects done outdoors also included an LED light in each balloon. This offered an immersive evocative experience with the unpredictable environment from dusk into the night. The robust and vibrant experiential floating membrane would slowly ‘dissolve’ as time went by and it would lose its highly orchestrated potential.
BIO
Associate Professor Manuel Báez, Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism, has also taught at The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art and the Rhode Island School of Design. His work as an architect, researcher and educator draws inspiration from the generative potential of the integrative systems within elemental natural processes. He has extensively exhibited and lectured in various international conferences and institutions. The eminent scholar Martin Kemp has featured Báez’s research in his 2016 book Structural Intuitions: Seeing Shapes in Art and Science. In 2010, Báez was a guest speaker at TEDxCarletonU and the inaugural speaker at the 2012 CreativeMornings Ottawa. In 2005, his work was honoured with a Research Achievement Award from Carleton University. Báez received his B. Arch. Degree from The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at The Cooper Union and his M. Arch. Degree from the Cranbrook Academy of Art. He is a licensed architect in New York State.