Ba-Rock

Invited Distinguished Professor:

Gilles Retsin.

 

Gabriel Esquivel,  Studio Professor

Stephen Caffey, Assistant Professor of Art and Architecture History and Theory

Texas A&M University

 

Team: Jeff Lemley, Austen Kernodle, Aaron Rosas, Chris Thackery

 

The word baroque refers to a “rough or imperfect pearl.”Baroque as a condition of ancestrality, not simply as a term to describe a period of architecture. We are not only arguing the surface affective  characteristics of baroque pertaining to ornamentation, but a deeper meaning from where baroque derives its infinity: the process of FOLDING, which has always been present in nature. We can discuss the Baroque as a machine, the folds and pleats of matter we are arguing have always naturally occurred, for example in rock formations.

The fold is the process by which our project, which we called “Ba-Rock”, generates its folds and its high fidelity. Our BaRock machine is folded with a porous crust that retains the identity and chemistry of the object within any scale, this is relative to the discussion of its monadic structure. This is to say, as we look at the images of the chunk, we notice that they are mereological parts of the whole, and as you dive deeper into the folds we would notice the same organization every time. That is because no matter how deep one goes in an attempt to communicate with the objects, the monads do not change.

 

Ba-Rock is only bound by its form, but always folding into space. This is defined by the outlines of the original base mass on the flow diagram. Within this space Ba-Rock has 2 infinities: our coils of piping and the folds themselves. BaRock folds are always open ended and in exhaustive, where there is always space to grow despite its parameters. The object is in a constant state of action, beyond what we can denote as movement. While some coils move and fold at lighting speed, others act as a fluid solid, the way older panes of glass “melt” within their frame.  The coils and the fold are excessive and unlimited. Every layer of piping is creative, generative, and an ongoing process, which allows for alternative actualizations of the piping. These actualizations act to enhance the depth and fluidity of the folds. What brings out the fold is the flux between exteriority and interiority. In the interior, the folds produce an atmosphere where our desire for inhabitation connotes stairs and floor plates, this is not a particular operation of the object machine. According to Deleuze affect is not dependent upon the perception of man and can change at any moment as the object continues its folding, producing new affects.

 

Because Ba-Rock grows as it folds we can understand the object as we see it. Although we do not need a section to gain more understanding of the object, through section we see the active porous poche as it is enfolding. We see the fluidity of waves as the smaller poche pushes out and compress in. As it meets its surface it forms a porous crust that further helps blend exterior and interior. This crust also helps create the boundaries we associate as a surface, furthering our understanding as exterior and interior. What we see before us is an ancestral baroque peristaltic machine.