woensdag 13 februari 2008

zondag 10 februari 2008

Invisible cities 2

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aZLrpZ78_tI

08 02 04 / 05

Skin
Body, bones

rhythm

Inside our mind
our body

our virtual state of mind

contact architecture

moment in its self

act and assume

The skin of the earth constists of layers with properties: constant flux, unpredictable behaviour, inexhaustible diversity, and incessant rise of new features. The skin of the earth is where we live. The world is a various body with a thin crust; this crust forms the physical ground in our lives. We live in it, on it, and are rarely far away from it. We create a second skin, a partly indicative, partly mimetic expression of our relationships with the earth and the mental models we make of that relationship. The form of this expression ranges from that of a surgical operation upon the skin to a substitution for this skin.

(A+U, no. 263, August 1992)

Invisible cities

Cities & the Eyes - Motivation letter

The ancient built Valdrada on the shores of a lake, with houses
all verandas one above the other, and high streets whose railed
parapets look out over the water. Thus the traveler, arriving, sees
two cities: one erect above the lake, and the other reflected,
upside down. Nothing exists or happen in the one Valdrada that
the other Valdrada does not repeat, because the city was so
constructed that its every point would be reflected in its mirror,
and the Valdrada down in the water contains not only all the
flutings and juttings of the facades that rise above the lake, but
also the rooms’ interiors with ceilings and floors, the perspective
of the hall, the mirrors of the wardrobes.
Valdrada’s inhabitants know that each of their actions is, at once,
that action and its mirror-image, which possesses the special
dignity of images , and this awareness prevents them from
succumbing for a single moment to chance and forgetfulness.
Even when lovers twist their naked bodies, skin against skin,
seeking the position that will give one the most pleasure in the
other, even when murderers plunge the knife into the back veins
of the neck and more clotted blood pours out the tendons, it is not
so much their copulating or murdering that matters as the copulating
or murdering of the images, limpid and cold in the mirror.
At times the mirror increases a thing’s value, at times denies it.
Not everything that seems valuable above the mirror maintains its
force when mirrored. The twin cities are not equal, because noting
that exist or happens in Valdrada is symmetrical: every face and
gesture inverted, point by point. The two Valdrada’s live for each
other, their eyes interlocked; but there is no love between them.

Invisible cities, Italo Calvino


I can everybody recommend to read this book, it really stimulates your state of mind about the actual invisibility!