Francesco di Giorgio Martini

Francesco di Giorgio Martini (baptized 23 September 1439 – 1502) was an Italian painter of the Sienese School and a sculptor, as well as being, in Nikolaus Pevsner's terms, "one of the most interesting later Quattrocento architects'"[1] and a visionary architectural theorist; as a military engineer he executed architectural designs and sculptural projects and built almost seventy fortifications for the Federico da Montefeltro, Count (later Duke) of Urbino, for whom he was working in the 1460s, building city walls as at Iesi and early examples of star-shaped fortifications. 


 Born in Siena, he apprenticed as a painter with Vecchietta. In panels painted for cassoni he departed from the traditional representations of joyful wedding processions in frieze-like formulas to express visions of ideal, symmetrical, vast and all but empty urban spaces rendered in perspective. 


 He composed an architectural treatise Trattato di architettura, ingegneria e arte militare, the third of the Quattrocento, after Leone Battista Alberti's and Filarete's; he worked on it for decades and finished sometime after 1482; it circulated in manuscript.[2] Its projects were well in advance of completed projects at the time, but innovations, for example in staircase planning, running in flights and landings round an open center, or dividing at a landing to return symmetrically on each wall, became part of architectural vocabulary in the following century.[3] The third book is preoccupied with the "ideal" city, constrained within star-shaped polygonal geometries reminiscent of the star fort, whose wedge-shaped bastions are said[4] to have been his innovation. 


 Francesco di Giorgio finished his career as architect in charge of the works at the Duomo di Siena, where his bronze angels are on the high altar and some marble floor mosaics are attributed to his designs.

Taccola

Mariano di Jacopo detto il Taccola (1382 – c. 1453), called Taccola ('Crow'), was an Italian administrator, artist and engineer of the early Renaissance. Taccola is known for his technological treatises De ingeneis and De machinis, which feature annotated drawings of a wide array of innovative machines and devices. Taccola’s work was widely studied and copied by later Renaissance engineers and artists, among them Francesco di Giorgio, and perhaps even Leonardo da Vinci.


Mariano Taccola was born in Siena in 1382. Practically nothing is known of his early years of training or apprenticeship.[2] As an adult, he pursued a varied career in Siena, working in such diverse jobs as notary, university secretary, sculptor, superintendent of roads and hydraulic engineer.[3] In the 1440s, Taccola retired from his official positions, receiving a pension from the state. He is known to have joined the fraternal order of San Jacomo by 1453 and presumably died around that date.Taccola left behind two treatises, the first being De ingeneis (Concerning engines), work on its four books starting as early as 1419.[5] Having been completed in 1433, Taccola continued to amend drawings and annotations to De ingeneis until about 1449. In the same year, Taccola published his second manuscript, De machinis(Concerning machines), in which he restated many of the devices from the long development process of his first treatise.


Drawn with black ink on paper and accompanied by hand-written annotations, Taccola depicts in his work a multitude of 'ingenious devices' in hydraulic engineering, milling, construction and war machinery. Taccola’s drawings show him to be a man of transition: While his subject matter is already that of later Renaissance artist-engineers, his method of representation still owns much to medieval manuscript illustration.[6] Notably, with perspective coming and going in his drawings, Taccola seemed to remain largely unaware of the ongoing revolution in perspective painting.[7] This is the more curious, since he is the only man known to have interviewed the 'father of linear perspectivity' himself, Filippo Brunelleschi.[4] Despite these graphic inconsistencies, Taccola’s style has been described as being forceful, authentic and usually to be relied upon to capture the essential.


Being named as the 'Sienese Archimedes', Taccola’s work stands at the beginning of the tradition of Italian Renaissance artist-engineers, with a growing interest in technological matters of all kinds. Taccola’s drawings were copied and served as source of inspiration by such as Buonacorso Ghiberti, Francesco di Giorgio, and perhaps even Leonardo da Vinci.[4] Special historical importance hold his drawings of the ingenious lifting devices and reversible-gear systems which Brunelleschi devised for the construction of the dome of the Florence cathedral,[9] at the time the second widest in the world.Taccola is also known for pioneering the keel breaker, a lever-based device designed to tear holes in the hull (keel) of a ship using its fork or spike.[10] Primarily used against pirates, though supposedly used by Mediterranean navies.[citation needed]Interest in Taccola’s work, however, practically ceased some time after his death until quite recently,[2] one reason perhaps being that his treatises only ever circulated as handcopied books, with at least three of them remaining extant today.[11] Taccola’s original manuscripts, whose style turned out to be more sophisticated than those of its copies, were rediscovered and identified in the state libraries of Munich and Florence only in the 1960s, giving impetus for the first printed editions of both De ingeneis and De machinis in subsequent years.

江湖 JIANG HU

SHOT ON Millennium Bridge by Leon

Salon: Public Occasion Agency Nov.03,2011

Villard de Honnecourt

Villard de Honnecourt (Wilars dehonecort, fol. 1v; Vilars de Honecourt, fol. 15v) was a 13th-century artist from Picardy in northern France. He is known to history only through a surviving portfolio of 33 sheets of parchment containing about 250 drawings dating from the 1220s/1240s, now in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris (MS Fr 19093). The great variety of subjects (religious and secular figures suitable for sculpture, and architectural plans, elevations and details, ecclesiastical objects andmechanical devices, some with annotations), makes it difficult to determine its purpose. Other subjects such as animals and human figures also appear. 

 The traditional view, since the discovery of the portfolio in the mid-19th century, is that Villard was an itinerant architect/mason/builder, but there is no evidence of him ever working as an architect or in any other identifiable profession. None the less, it is clear from his drawings that he was interested in architecture and that he traveled to some of the major ecclesiastical building sites of his day to record details of these buildings. His drawing of one of the west facade towers of Laon Cathedral and those of radiating chapels and a main vessel bay, interior and exterior, of Reims Cathedral are of particular interest. 

 Villard tells us, with pride, that he had been in many lands (Jai este en m[u]lt de tieres) and that he made a trip to Hungary where he remained many days (maint ior), but he does not say why he went there or who sent him. It has recently been proposed that he may have been a lay agent or representative of the cathedral chapter ofCambrai Cathedral to obtain a relic of St. Elizabeth of Hungary who had made a donation to the cathedral chapter and to whom the chapter dedicated one of the radiating chapels in their new cathedral chevet. 

 Among the mechanical devices Villard sketched are a perpetual-motion machine, a water-driven saw, a number of automata, lifting devices, war engines (a trebuchet) as well as a number of anatomical and geometric sketches for portraiture and architecture. The claim that he drew a simple escapement mechanism, the first known in the West, is now questioned. 

 Villard's vast diversity in his sketchbook has caused him to be compared to such great minds as Leonardo Da Vinci, who also specialized in many different categories of art and science.

Jacques de Vaucanson

At just 18 years of age, Vaucanson was given his own workshop in Lyon, and a grant from a nobleman to construct a set of machines. In that same year of 1727, there was a visit from one of the governing heads of Les Minimes. Vaucanson decided to make some androids. The automatons would serve dinner and clear the tables for the visiting politicians. However one government official declared that he thought Vaucanson's tendencies "profane", and ordered that his workshop be destroyed.[2] 

In 1737, Vaucanson built The Flute Player, a life-size figure of a shepherd that played the tabor and the pipe and had a repertoire of twelve songs. The figure's fingers were not pliable enough to play the flute correctly, so Vaucanson had to glove the creation in skin. The following year, in early 1738, he presented his creation to the Académie des Sciences.[3] At the time, mechanical creatures were somewhat a fad inEurope, but most could be classified as toys, and de Vaucanson's creations were recognized as being revolutionary in their mechanical life-like sophistication.

 Later that year, he created two additional automatons, The Tambourine Player and The Digesting Duck, which is considered his masterpiece. The duck had over 400 moving parts in each wing alone, and could flap its wings, drink water, digest grain, and defecate.[4] Although Vaucanson's duck supposedly demonstrated digestion accurately, his duck actually contained a hidden compartment of "digested food", so that what the duck defecated was not the same as what it ate. Although such "frauds" were sometimes controversial, they were common enough because such scientific demonstrations needed to entertain the wealthy and powerful to attract their patronage. Vaucanson is credited as having invented the world's first flexible rubber tube while in the process of building the duck's intestines. Despite the revolutionary nature of his automatons, he is said to have tired quickly of his creations and sold them in 1743. 

His inventions brought him to the attention of Frederick II of Prussia, who sought to bring him to his court. Vaucanson refused, however, wishing to serve his own country.

Athanasius Kircher

Athanasius Kircher (1601 or 1602 – 1680) (sometimes erroneously spelled Kirchner) was a 17th century German Jesuit scholar who published around 40 works, most notably in the fields of oriental studies, geology, and medicine. Kircher has been compared to fellow Jesuit Roger Boscovich and to Leonardo da Vinci for his enormous range of interests, and has been honoured with the title "master of a hundred arts".[2]

Kircher was the most famous "decipherer" of hieroglyphs of his day, although most of his assumptions and "translations" in this field have since been disproved as nonsensical. However, he did make an early study of Egyptian hieroglyphs, correctly establishing the link between the ancient Egyptian language and the Coptic language, for which he has been considered the founder of Egyptology. He was also fascinated with Sinology, and wrote an encyclopedia of China, in which he noted the early presence of Nestorian Christians but also attempted to establish more tenuous links with Egypt and Christianity. 

Kircher's work with geology included studies of volcanos and fossils. One of the first people to observe microbes through a microscope, he was thus ahead of his time in proposing that the plague was caused by an infectious microorganism and in suggesting effective measures to prevent the spread of the disease. Kircher also displayed a keen interest in technology and mechanical inventions, and inventions attributed to him include a magnetic clock, various automatons and the firstmegaphone. The invention of the magic lantern is often misattributed to Kircher, although he did conduct a study of the principles involved in his Ars Magna Lucis et Umbrae. 

A scientific star in his day, towards the end of his life he was eclipsed by the rationalism of René Descartes and others. In the late 20th century, however, the aestheticqualities of his work again began to be appreciated. One modern scholar, Alan Cutler, described Kircher as "a giant among seventeenth-century scholars", and "one of the last thinkers who could rightfully claim all knowledge as his domain".[3] Another scholar, Edward W. Schmidt, referred to Kircher as "the last Renaissance man".

BARTLETT GAD SHOW 2011

Gregory Crewdson

http://www.aperture.org/crewdson/

Gregory Crewdson received a B.A. from the State University of New York at Purchase in 1985 and an M.F.A. in photography from Yale in 1988. He has exhibited widely in the United States and Europe and is represented by Gagosian Gallery in New York City. He is Professor Adjunct in Graduate Photography at the Yale University School of Art. Crewdson's work has been included in many public collections, most notably the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Los Angeles County Museum and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. A retrospective of his work, spanning his career, from 1985-2005, was shown as a traveling exhibition from 2005-2008, at major museums around Europe. Another traveling exhibition of his work is scheduled to open at the Kulturhuset Museum, Stockholm, in February 2011, followed by Sorte Diamant, Copenhagen and c/o Berlin, Berlin, among others. Crewdson has received numerous awards including the Skowhegan Medal for Photography, the National Endowment for the Arts Visual Artists Fellowship and the Aaron Siskind Fellowship. Crewdson has published several books of his photographs including Hover with ArtSpace Books, Dream of Life with the University of Salamanca, Spain, Twilight and Beneath the Roseswith Abrams and a Retrospective book of his work, entitledGregory Crewdson from 1985 to 2005, published by Hatje Cantz. Crewdson’s newest body of work, Sanctuary, premiered at Gagosian Gallery in New York in 2010, it then traveled to White Cube in London and Gagosian Gallery in Rome. Abrams published a book featuring this new work also in 2010.

Marc Silva is a Revisionist Historian

On occasion, I feel the need to take the various themes that I am developing in my paintings and weave them neatly together under a single all-encompassing rubric. However, I was not having much success with my latest attempts at a "Grand Unification Artist's Statement" and was even considering the possibility of adopting an additional personality to take credit -- or perhaps defend -- those stubborn dangling tangents that refused to fit neatly into the "nutshell" I was attempting to craft.

Then recently I had an epiphany, triggered by a very unexpected source. This source, a voice I usually associate with mangled syntax and fugitive meaning, managed to lift my prolonged mind fog with just two words:"revisionist history." And yes, while thrilled that I have finally discovered a unifying principle to integrate my seemingly disparate interests, I do find the circumstances leading to my breakthrough a bit embarrassing. I mean, should I credit the master of this voice for bringing order to my world, this man who, along with his entourage, seems exceedingly gifted at mucking things up? (Perhaps they are like the trickster gods of mythology, slapping us all repeatedly in the face until we wake up…or die from severe head trauma). 

The exciting part is that this breakthrough requires me to adopt a new identity, one that may be more relevant than that of painter. So please allow me to introduce myself:my name is Marc Silva, and I am a Revisionist Historian. Welcome to my web home. And visit often, because things, you know, change.

By Marc Silva

http://www.marcsilva.com/index.html

BODY AS ARCHITECTURE CONTENT

1. INTRODUCTION


1.1 Body and Environment


1.2 The Tactics


2. Research and Theory


2.1 Utility and body sculpting


2.2 Unfolding Technology of dancing


2.3 Gaps between people and artifices


2.3.1 Dance, space and choreography


2.3.2 The Artifice


3. Design Project


3.1 The projective cast of shoes


3.1.1 Second artifice of Shoes


3.1.2 The Floating space:


3.2 Air protocell


3.2.1 body and Air


3.2.2 Emissive space


3.3 Dancing Venus


3.3.1 Light Sculpting


3.3.2 light Restroration


Conclusion  

Yaohua Wang

http://foralblog.blogbus.com/

Mill Touch 'Behind the Scenes' by The Mill Visual Effects Studio

Vibration Device Test

Dan Slavinsky

http://findingslav.blogspot.com/

Royal RE-formation by Paul Nicholls

Stateless-Ariel by FIELD

Dancing Gaps

Motion in Motion

Solar Sinter Project by Markus Kayser

Robots of Brixton by Kibwe Tavares

Leave Me by Ryan Dunlap

About Greenwich UNIT 19 and Bartlett Unit 19

NEIL SPILLER/PHIL WATSON 

Innumerable Eccentricities

“Louis Aragon, the poet, in talking about Collage art, had said that it is a method more akin to magical operations than to painting. The Collage piece, which is an object in its own right, is put into a larger context, which contains other pieces that are unrelated to the first and to one another. The result is that the pieces are transformed by chance association. An electric bulb by itself is an electric bulb but when put in a picture it has entered into a new context and may become for the artist a young girl.” (1)

Now is an exciting time to be an architect. Technology is allowing architects to mix and augment the actual with the virtual, question the inertness of materials and vicariously architecture, link and network all manner of spaces and phenomena, create reflexive spatial relationships, blend the organic and the inorganic and be non-luddite about ecology and sustainability. Simultaneously the aged doctrines of Modernism are being questioned, decoration and baroque distortion is respectable again. The “everyday” has proved a fecund breeding ground for new ideas. Manufacturing processes are being liberated from manual calculation and time-consuming fabrication protocols; digital craft is having its genesis. Collaborative working practices are dissolving previously jealously defended distinct disciplinary boundaries. Narrative is also finding its way into architectural work. The whole issue of what might constitute architecture is up for grabs.

Unit 19’s first, swift move to inaugurate the cascade of architectural ideas will be to investigate the magical operations of collage and blend these operations with the Innumerable eccentricities of Cartography. Further it will re-use and redefine  the “list of stimulants”  described in the Excursus of Colin Rowe and Fred Koetter’s “Collage City” ie: nostalgia producing instruments, stabilizers, set pieces, gardens and ambiguous and composite buildings in  a search for a twenty-first century architecture.

(1)     Gauss, Charles, E, “The Aesthetic Theories of French Artists”, The John Hopkins Press, 1949,p.85

A brief review of Unit 19 (no longer running in Bartlett)

http://blogs.gre.ac.uk/architecture/diploma/unit19/

http://slamshed.co.uk/