The Real and the Imaginary

The work is to discuss the space between the real and the imaginary, the transaction between the projected house and the object. It is an interpretation of a space between the actual object and the idea of the space that the object carries with it.

Bits of the objects in the (manor) house (table lag, skirting board, etc. the REAL) are extracted, recomposed, and projected, forming the shadow house (the IMAGINARY). The drawing constructed as a series of pieces connected as stoppage, talks about the idea of reflected space. Every element of every piece discusses a memory or a trace of something in the system. They are made to move in a way to create these pieces and they are the pieces between the imaginary and the real. They are projecting pieces to create the idea on the wall of a series of architectural spaces which have been constructed by the shadows, projected from the movement of the systems.

Memory Suitcase

The suitcases (supposed to be three, the finishing of the cases is different, Dickens’ is the most worn one because it has been passed down form generations to generations.) are containers for the journeys of each character (Three writers: Pope, Hawthorne and Dickens).

The idea of having parts of the ornaments or objects in each place that the character has “been” to, and put them in a suitcase divided into 9, is to form a journey image/memory theater of the characters, a way for them to tell the space of the manor house in their perceptions.

This idea comes from Frances A. Yates’ book The Art of Memory. he discusses how people use “places” for memory to embed in:

In order to form a series of places in memory, he says, a building is to be remembered, as spacious and varied a one as possible, the forecourt, the living room, bedrooms, and parlours, not omitting statues and other ornaments with which the rooms are decorated.

The suitcase is a method to deal with the architectural space in literature and memory. It works like a recorder to form the space out of text, to remind the writer of his experience of the past, and to illustrate that experience to the reader, an image source for the reader to create his imaginary experience of the space.

Some notes on the book "The Poetics of Space"

Inquiry:

How can architectural space be evoked by the reader/ different people, to have the similar space quality, despite the barriers of generations and geometry boundary, distinct personal experience?

The power of literature:

The function of literature: poetry/imagination puts literature in a state of emergence, in which life becomes alive/the reader’s own through its vivid description.
Through reading, one has the feeling of being at the spot (emerging). That he has transcended the time to live the life of the writer’s.

Project idea:

It (part of my project) talks about the reader’s translation of the writing and making it his own version of understanding the space being described. And that could be so “real” that deep within his mind forming his memory of the virtual experienced world.
(Three suitcases is to be designed.) The suitcase is a memory theater where loci are remembered with detail ornaments. It is carrier of a journey that they (the three characters) want to hold and suspend the time of being. Therefore, the suit case can be seen as a space for compressed time and events.