SWEEP

Invited Distinguished Professor:

Adam Fure.

 

Gabriel Esquivel,  Studio Professor

Stephen Caffey, Assistant Professor of Art and Architecture History and Theory Texas A&M University

 

Team: Ricardo González,  Abby Stock, Madison Green, Julia Peňa.

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The project evolved from investigating the origin of form and suggesting canonical architecture as a database of formal information. The object argues leveling of the figure, the paradox of developing complexity from exhausting a facile operation, fluctuating authorship, and the equivalence of the infinite figural sweep to a three dimensional brushstroke.

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The project derives figures from baroque poche and aluminum window profiles. The process of using a single operation like the sweep to manipulate the figures digitally diminishes their symbolic origin and flattens them onto the same plane of significance, homogenizing the notion of figure.

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The gesture of the orthographic filleted sweep serves as the catalyst for this reaction, inducing the ambiguity of the figure. The misuse and exhaustion of this one mundane operation creates a surface condition of paradoxical complexity and endlessness, with the figure in a state of constant motion. The object only becomes static when cut via plan and/or section to reveal an exact moment of the figure within the sweep.

The figuration becomes difficult to track outside of plan and section due to the recursive nature of the sweep that further equalizes the ontology of the baroque poche and aluminum window profiles the figures were derived from. This equalization and ambiguity of figure is also perceivable at the level of the object itself being composed of sweeps that embody figures in infinite flux.

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The process of creating sweeps digitally also forces the issue of transmission of authorship. The software’s inherent restrictions on generating sweeps transmit authorship from the user to the software, leaving only the path of the curve determined by the user. However through each generation of objects an intuitive expertise of sweep creation developed resulting in a slight regaining of authorship from the software, making the authorship of the objects fluctuate.

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The sweeps, because of their fluctuating authorship, begin to be read as three dimensional brush strokes with the object produced being an architectural painting of figures in flux while maintaining the fundamental properties of figure.  The object becomes an ungrounded diagrammatic architectural painting of figures composed of sweeps that liken fluctuating figures to a brushstroke with an infinite reproducibility.

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