248 research outputs found
Robert Smithson\u27s unpublished writings
No full textConjunto de escritos de Robert Smithson redigidos entre 1966 e 1972 que, embora não tenha sido publicado pelo autor, é contemporâneo às formulações de conceitos-chave para a compreensão de sua obra, em especial o conceito de site.
Robert Smithson\u27s writings, created between 1966 e 1972. Although never published by the author, they are contemporary to central concepts of his works, in special the idea of site
L’imaginaire science-fictif de Robert Smithson
No full textSi le roman de Brian Aldiss est souvent cité comme la source du Land Art, en revanche on évoque moins régulièrement Cryptozoïque, autre roman de l’écrivain britannique, dont Smithson avait pourtant connaissance. Nous verrons les liens ténus entre l’auteur de science-fiction et le travail de Smithson, pour enfin nous interroger sur ce que cette comparaison peut apporter à la compréhension des mécanismes à l’œuvre chez le land artiste.If Brian Aldiss’s novel is often quoted as a reference for Land Art, on the other hand one evokes less often Cryptozoïc, an other novel by the British writer of which Smithson was nevertheless aware. We shall see the tenuous links between the science-fiction author and the work of Smithson, in order to ask what this comparison can bring to the understanding of the mechanisms of land artist’s works
'Her Irish Heritage' : Annie M.P Smithson and autobiography
No full textThis paper examines some aspects of the work of Annie M.P. Smithson, the author of 21 romance novels between 1917 and 1946. Her attitudes towards women, religion and politics are explored, and the importance of autobiography in her fiction discussed.Cet article analyse divers aspects de l'oeuvre d'Annie M.P. Smithson, l'auteur de vingt et un romans 'romanesques' publiés entre 1917 et 1946. Il étudie son attitude concernant les femmes, la religion, la politique, ainsi que le rôle de l'autobiographie dans sa fiction.Walsh Oonagh. 'Her Irish Heritage' : Annie M.P Smithson and autobiography. In: Études irlandaises, n°23-1, 1998. pp. 27-42
Jüri Okas’ ‘specific objects’: diverging discourses in Estonian Art in the 1970s.
No full textPreviously in the University eprints HAIRST pilot service at http://eprints.st-andrews.ac.uk/archive/00000367/Article 3 of 6 in issue devoted to the visual culture of the Scandinavian and Baltic region.This article will look at the early works of Estonian architect and artist Jüri Okas and will try to work between diverging languages and interpretations, reading works by Okas against the background of Anglo-american conceptualism and minimalism of the same period. The first part of the paper will analyse a print by Jüri Okas that paraphrases works by the American artist Donald Judd and will try to show how Okas’ concept of minimalism differed from the Western one and the reasons behind it. The second part of the paper will focus on a conceptual book by Jüri Okas, consisting of a series of photographs of everyday and banal architectural objects, and compare it to Rober Venturi’s book on Complexity and Contradiction in Architecture. Finally, a comparison will be made with works of Robert Smithson in the context of concepts of waste, excess and the remainders of industrial civilisationPostprin
ALISON AND PETER SMITHSON: THE TRANSIENT AND THE PERMANENT
No full text[EN] Exhibitions are a cornerstone of Alison and Peter Smithsons' multifaceted approach to their work. A powerful medium for conveying and materialising their ideas which provided them, throughout their career, with the opportunity to freely create experimental constructions to relay their thoughts.
The exhibitions they staged in the 1950s and 60s, such as 'Parallel of Life and Art', 'House of the Future', and 'Patio & Pavilion' were, and still are, at least as important to architectural critics as their few built works or many writings. However, from the 1970s onwards little is known about their prolific work in the realm of exhibitions.
In his lecture 'The Masque and the Exhibition: Stages Towards the Real' in 1980, Peter Smithson mentioned the importance of exhibitions in shaping the Smithsons' architecture as places of opportunity in which to experiment with reality. This comment makes it logical to think that if the exhibitions held before then had always been a powerful tool - a tool used, furthermore, by the Smithsons to create some of their most intense productions - then those staged after said lecture, which acknowledged and highlighted this aspect of their work might, despite being little known, be at least as intense as the previous exhibitions with greater media visibility. This idea, together with the expectations raised by the 'Christmas-Hogmanay' exhibition - not only because it was staged whilst said lecture was being drafted but also because of the ideas that sprang from the analysis of a related collage mentioned in the prelude to this doctoral thesis - channelled the research towards this final period of the Smithsons' exhibition architecture. The research herein focuses specifically on two groups of exhibitions that stand out amongst the Smithsons' wide range of documented exhibitions on account of their inherent intellectual cohesion enabling the concepts staged by Alison and Peter Smithson to be seen more clearly.
This doctoral thesis consists of four chapters. It begins with an introductory chapter which firstly analyses and contextualises architecture in the shape of exhibitions; then outlines the importance of exhibitions in Alison and Peter Smithson's work; and finally puts the specific period under study into context in terms of both their career and the discourse of architecture in general.
The two main chapters in this thesis are entitled 'Christmas Exhibitions' and 'Tecta Exhibitions', each organised in a similar fashion: a short introduction to the group of exhibitions followed by an in-depth analysis of each exhibition in the group based mainly on the unpublished documentation to which the author had access in the three main archives devoted to Alison and Peter Smithson: The Alison and Peter Smithson Archive in the Special Collections Department of the Frances Loeb Library at Harvard Design School (USA); the Alison and Peter Smithson Archive / Tecta Archive at Lauenförde (Germany); and the Smithson Family Archive in Stamford (United Kingdom). Finally, each chapter ends with an essay which analyses and links up the different concepts conveyed by each individual exhibition and the exhibitions in the group as a whole.
The last chapter is a short epilogue that gathers up all the concepts set out previously in relation to the Christmas and Tecta exhibitions, and shows how they all tie in together in the Smithsons' most experimental work: the Hexenhaus at Bad Karlshafen.[ES] Dentro del enfoque polifácetico del trabajo de Alison and Peter Smithson, las exposiciones son pieza fundamental. Un medio poderoso para comunicar y materializar sus ideas que les brindó a lo largo de toda su trayectoria la oportunidad de abordar con libertad la construcción experimental de su pensamiento.
Sus propuestas expositivas de la década de los cincuenta y sesenta, como Parallel of Life and Art, House of the Future, o Patio & Pavilion, han sido y son tanto o más relevantes para la crítica arquitectónica como sus escasas obras construidas o sus abundantes escritos. Sin embargo, a partir de la década de los setenta, poco se conoce de su prolífica producción expositiva.
Peter Smithson en la conferencia "The Masque and the Exhibition: Stages Towards the Real" en 1980 expresaba el importante significado que tenían las exposiciones para la conformación de su arquitectura como lugares de oportunidad para experimentar con la realidad. A partir de esta reflexión, parece lógico pensar que si hasta ese momento dichas instalaciones siempre fueron una herramienta con la que los Smithson han ofrecido algunos de sus momentos más intensos, las realizadas a partir de ese momento de reconocimiento consciente y puesta en valor de esta faceta de su trabajo, pese a su poca difusión, podrían entrañar una intensidad al menos similar a las que ya han destacado hasta el momento en los medios. Esta consideración, unida a las expectativas generadas en torno a la exposición Christmas-Hogmanay, tanto por ser simultánea a la elaboración de dicha conferencia, como por las ideas que se desprenden del análisis de un collage vinculado a la misma que aparece como preludio de esta tesis doctoral, ha dirigido la investigación hacia este último periodo de su arquitectura expositiva. En concreto, el estudio se centra en dos grupos que, dentro del amplio abanico de montajes expositivos realizados, destacan por poseer una cohesión intelectual propia que permitirá descubrir con mayor claridad las reflexiones que Alison y Peter Smithson ponen en escena.
La tesis doctoral se estructura en cuatro grandes apartados. Arranca con un capítulo de introducción dedicado a enmarcar el tema de estudio en el que primero se analiza y contextualiza la arquitectura hecha exposición; después, se presenta la relevancia que tiene la obra expositiva en el trabajo de Alison y Peter Smithson; y finalmente se contextualiza el periodo concreto en el que se centra el estudio atendiendo tanto a su propia trayectoria como al discurso arquitectónico general.
Los dos grandes apartados de la disertación son las exposiciones de Navidad y las realizadas junto a TECTA, estructurándose ambos de manera similar. Tras una breve introducción al grupo de exposiciones que se va a analizar, aparecen ampliamente documentadas cada una de las exposiciones que conforma el grupo a partir, principalmente, de la documentación inédita a la que se ha tenido acceso en los tres principales archivos dedicados a Alison and Peter Smithson: The Alison and Peter Smithson Archive en el Special Collections Department de la Frances Loeb Library de la Harvard Design School (Estados Unidos); The Alison and Peter Smithson Archiv / TECTA Archiv en Lauenförde (Alemania); y The Smithson Family Archive en Stamford (Inglaterra). Finalmente, cada capítulo se cierra con un ensayo en el que se analizan y relacionan las diferentes reflexiones que las exposiciones ofrecen, de manera individual y en su conjunto.
El último capítulo es un breve epílogo que reúne y entrelaza todo lo anteriormente expuesto, a través de las exposiciones de Navidad y TECTA, en su obra más experimental, la Hexenhaus en Bad Karlshafen.[CA] Dins de l'enfocament polifacètic del treball d'Alison i Peter Smithson, les exposicions en són una peça fonamental. Un mitjà poderós per a comunicar i materialitzar les idees que, al llarg de tota la seua trajectòria, els van brindar l'oportunitat d'abordar amb llibertat la construcció experimental del seu pensament.
Les seues propostes expositives de la dècada dels cinquanta i seixanta, com ara Parallel of Life and Art, House of the Future, o Patio & Pavilion, han sigut i són tant o més rellevants per a la crítica arquitectònica com les seues escasses obres construïdes o els seus abundants escrits. No obstant això, a partir de la dècada dels setanta, poc es coneix de la seua prolífica producció expositiva.
Peter Smithson, en la conferència "The Masque and the Exhibition: Stages Towards the Real" al 1980, expressava l'important significat que tenien les exposicions per a la conformació de la seua arquitectura com a llocs d'oportunitat per a experimentar amb la realitat. A partir d'aquesta reflexió, sembla lògic pensar que, si fins a eixe moment les dites instal·lacions sempre van ser una eina amb la qual els Smithson han ofert alguns dels seus moments més intensos, les que van realitzar a partir d'aquest moment de reconeixement conscient i posada en valor d'aquesta faceta del seu treball, tot i la poca difusió, podrien contenir una intensitat com a mínim similar a la d'aquelles que ja han destacat fins al moment en els mitjans. Aquesta consideració, unida a les expectatives generades entorn a l'exposició Christmas-Hogmanay, tant per ser simultània a l'elaboració de la dita conferència, com per les idees que es desprenen de l'anàlisi d'un collage vinculat a la mateixa que apareix com a preludi d'aquesta tesi doctoral, ha dirigit la investigació cap a aquest últim període de la seua arquitectura expositiva. En concret, l'estudi se centra en dos grups que, dins de l'ampli ventall de muntatges expositius realitzats, destaquen per posseir una cohesió intel·lectual pròpia que permetrà descobrir amb una major claredat les reflexions que Alison i Peter Smithson posen en escena.
La tesi doctoral s'estructura en quatre grans capítols. Arrenca amb un apartat d'introducció dedicat a emmarcar el tema d'estudi, en què primer s'analitza i contextualitza l'arquitectura feta exposició; després, es presenta la rellevància que té l'obra expositiva en el treball d'Alison i Peter Smithson; i finalment es contextualitza el període concret en què se centra l'estudi, atenent tant a la seua pròpia trajectòria com al discurs arquitectònic general.
Els dos grans capítols de la dissertació són les exposicions de Nadal i les realitzades junt amb TECTA, i s'estructuren tots dos de manera similar. Després d'una breu introducció al grup d'exposicions que s'analitzarà, apareixen amplament documentades cadascuna de les exposicions que conforma el grup, a partir principalment de la documentació inèdita a la qual s'ha tingut accés en els tres principals arxius dedicats a Alison i Peter Smithson: The Alison and Peter Smithson Archive a l'Special Collections Department de la Frances Loeb Library de la Harvard Design School (Estats Units d'Amèrica); The Alison and Peter Smithson Archiv / TECTA Archiv a Lauenförde (Alemanya); i The Smithson Family Archive a Stamford (Anglaterra). Finalment, cada capítol es tanca amb un assaig en què s'analitzen i relacionen les diferents reflexions que les exposicions ofereixen, de manera individual i en conjunt.
L'últim capítol és un breu epíleg que reuneix i entrellaça tot allò exposat anteriorment, a través de les exposicions de Nadal i TECTA, en la seua obra més experimental, la Hexenhausen Bad Karlshafen.Ábalos Ramos, A. (2016). ALISON AND PETER SMITHSON: THE TRANSIENT AND THE PERMANENT [Tesis doctoral]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/62223TESI
The retinal mosaic, eye movements and colour vision
No full textHuman colour vision is trichromatic: it is underpinned by the comparison of signals from three different classes of cone photoreceptor, those maximally sensitive to long (L), middle (M) and short (S) wavelengths. It can therefore be represented in a three-dimensional colour space in which the three axes represent the signals or combinations of signals from the three cone classes. Physiological data showing how these cone signals are combined and compared has motivated the creation of several important colour spaces, notably MacLeod-Boynton colour space, in which one axis of the space represents midget ganglion cells’ comparison of L and M signals (Lee, Kremers & Yeh, 1998), while the other represents the small bistratified cells’ comparison of S signals with summed L and M signals (Dacey & Lee, 1994). This space, along with other two- and three-dimensional colour spaces, have shaped the way researchers have imagined and investigated colour vision.
However, while physiological measurements as far as the early cortex are consistent with linear combinations of cone inputs (Derrington, Krauskopf & Lennie, 1984; Solomon & Lennie, 2007; Sun, Smithson, Zaidi & Lee 2006), psychophysics has revealed a number of important effects that cannot be captured in any Euclidean colour space. Chapter 2 focuses on hue (the subjective quality of appearing, for example, blue, bluish-green or green) and saturation (the subjective counterpart of colorimetric purity, where a saturated colour can be desaturated to a pastel shade by adding white). The ‘super-importance of hue’ is a nonlinearity of colour vision in which a smaller physical stimulus change is required to detect a change in hue than to detect a change in saturation (Judd, 1968). Chapter 2 presents the first explicit test of Kuehni’s 2003 claim that hue super-importance is the result of separate neural channels for hue and saturation, a claim which was ultimately not supported by the data.
Further irregularities arise from individual differences in the cone mosaic that forms the gateway to the visual system. The cones of the three classes are not equal in number, and between individuals the ratio of L and M cones varies widely. Such differences are exacerbated locally when cones of the same class ‘clump’ together, which generally occurs to the degree that would be expected in a truly randomly distributed retina (Hofer, Carroll, Neitz, Neitz & Williams, 2005; Roorda, Metha, Lennie & 3 Williams, 2001). This should cause differences in spatiochromatic resolution within and between observers, but to date this has only been demonstrated in the fovea in a single observer with an extremely imbalanced L:M cone ratio (Miyahara, Pokorny, Smith, Baron & Baron, 1998) and in the parafovea (Danilova, Chan & Mollon, 2013). Chapter 3 reports the first evidence for an effect of L:M ratio on foveal spatiochromatic thresholds within and between observers who have more moderate L:M ratios.
Until recently, information about the human cone mosaic could only come from histology, but the introduction of adaptive optics (AO) technology to retinal imaging has revolutionised our ability to investigate living, seeing human retinae at high resolution. This technology allows eye movements to be measured on an unprecedentedly fine scale referenced to the photoreceptor mosaic (Young, Hauperich, Morris, Saunter & Smithson, 2017), as described in Chapter 4. Chapter 5 describes how this capacity has been used to investigate a possible functional role for eye movements in chromatic vision. Due to the unequal numbers of cones of different classes and local clumping, fine chromatic detail that can be detected easily by one part of the retina may not be detected by another. Therefore, the hypothesis was tested that eye movements may help observers to overcome the irregularity of the retinal mosaic by translating the image across the retina and ensuring that the image is sampled by all three classes of cone. While visual inspection of certain trends was promising, no significant associations were found between particular amounts of eye movement and spatiochromatic performance, between eye movement and L:M ratio, or between eye movement and scene content.
AO has more generally been used to extract important statistics about areas of retina, such as cone density, cone spacing and anisotropy in cone packing. However, the high volume of data generated requires automated methods of extraction, and such methods tend not to be readily generalisable between the images obtained from different labs’ equipment. Chapter 6 describes the key prerequisites to improve the accuracy and automation of the Oxford Perception Lab’s cone identification algorithm, comparing its outputs to carefully controlled manual cone counts.
In summary, this thesis probes irregularities in the story of trichromatic colour vision: the possibility of separable neural channels that underlie specific nonlinearities of colour space, and the consequences and a possible mediator of the imbalanced numbers of L and M cones in the human retina. It additionally advances the development and assessment of processing methods for a technology, AO retinal imaging, that shows great promise for the study of colour vision in humans in vivo
Robert Smithson in Space: Science Fiction in the Gallery and Beyond
No full textIn the mid to late 1960’s and throughout the 1970’s many contemporary American artists mounted critical attacks on the art world, shaking up long-held beliefs and inciting heated conversations still being addressed today. The arguments offered during this time questioned the relevance of modernist criticism and modernist institutions such as the gallery and the museum. Important artistic personalities interested in finding and creating new pathways out of modernist frameworks arose as a result of these discussions and contributed to the wide diversification of artistic practice prevalent during this time.
One such artist heavily involved in the shaping of 1960s and 1970s art discourse was Robert Smithson whose critical views of the art world led him towards an investigation of perception itself. In doing so Smithson came to perform some of the most effective critiques on vision, time, and location in regards to art and its viewers. This author wishes to highlight the artist’s use of science-fiction type imagery, as gleaned from contemporary film and literature, and its employment within the artist’s larger cultural critiques against capitalist trends and habits within the art world. Smithson’s attraction toward science fiction stems from a need for a conceptual system able to incorporate such disparate themes and subjects as geologic time, abstraction, alternate dimensions, and barren landscapes. Through his adoption of science-fiction imagery, Smithson constructed a critical framework aimed at the dissolution of Greenbergian modernism and what he saw as institutionally endorsed trends within the art world. While much has been and continues to be written on Smithson’s relevance, I wish to argue for the importance of the science-fiction trope and its essentialness to any understanding of Smithson’s larger body of work
Robert Smithson in Space: Science Fiction in the Gallery and Beyond
No full textIn the mid to late 1960’s and throughout the 1970’s many contemporary American artists mounted critical attacks on the art world, shaking up long-held beliefs and inciting heated conversations still being addressed today. The arguments offered during this time questioned the relevance of modernist criticism and modernist institutions such as the gallery and the museum. Important artistic personalities interested in finding and creating new pathways out of modernist frameworks arose as a result of these discussions and contributed to the wide diversification of artistic practice prevalent during this time.
One such artist heavily involved in the shaping of 1960s and 1970s art discourse was Robert Smithson whose critical views of the art world led him towards an investigation of perception itself. In doing so Smithson came to perform some of the most effective critiques on vision, time, and location in regards to art and its viewers. This author wishes to highlight the artist’s use of science-fiction type imagery, as gleaned from contemporary film and literature, and its employment within the artist’s larger cultural critiques against capitalist trends and habits within the art world. Smithson’s attraction toward science fiction stems from a need for a conceptual system able to incorporate such disparate themes and subjects as geologic time, abstraction, alternate dimensions, and barren landscapes. Through his adoption of science-fiction imagery, Smithson constructed a critical framework aimed at the dissolution of Greenbergian modernism and what he saw as institutionally endorsed trends within the art world. While much has been and continues to be written on Smithson’s relevance, I wish to argue for the importance of the science-fiction trope and its essentialness to any understanding of Smithson’s larger body of work
Between brutalists: The Banham hypothesis and the Smithson way of life
No full textThis essay revisits the debates on the New Brutalism as it emerged in Great Britain in the early 1950s. The shifting positions of its main propagators, Alison and Peter Smithson and Reyner Banham, are scrutinised through a re-reading of the polemics of the period and its aftermath. Conventionally, Banham's ground-breaking essay of 1955 ‘The New Brutalism’ is used as a starting-point for a unified history of New Brutalism. However, as it turns out, the Smithsons and Banham held very different opinions about the direction of the New Brutalist project. Whereas Banham advocated an integration between architecture and the latest technologies, the Smithsons sought to combine modern architecture with a multiplicity of tendencies within British culture, reaching back to Arts and Crafts concepts, among others. To open up the discourse and to measure the various shifts, the essay discusses the concept of ‘Image’, identified by Banham as one of the key concepts of New Brutalism, in relation to the various statements made by the Smithsons. In contrast to Banham, the Smithsons defined New Brutalism by laying emphasis on the material qualities of architecture and the aspects of process and making in architectural construction. This was related to their ambition to redesign the system of relationships between the everyday, domesticity, labour and the larger society. In short, it was a different ‘way of life’ that was behind the Smithsons' project for New Brutalism.Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository ‘You share, we take care!’ – Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-care Otherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.OLD Woningbou
PLANNING FOR THE END OF THE CONSTRUCTION BOOM AND TRANSITION TO A NORMAL ECONOMY IN ACEH AND NIAS
No full textThere is a very real danger that the transition from the Construction Boom in 2009 to a rapidly growing sustainable normal economy in Aceh will not happen unless both preventive and effective constructive measures are implemented during the coming two years. Instead what could easily happen is a collapse into a deep recession caused by the economy of Aceh being uncompetitive relative to the rest of Indonesia because of its high costs and because in anticipation of this high cost economy situation insufficient investments were made by the private sector in 2006 and the coming two years.
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