The Gothic Body
The gothic body is a fractal body, extending to a certain point, then growing in perpendicular ways, then stopping only to then repeat. A body of splittings, extensions and continuous breaks.
Having a World Architecture class this semester, I found Spuybroek’s analogy of the digital gothic experiment to not only be apt and coincidental but also deeply beautiful and fitting for the contemporary artistic process I myself am facing.
I often times find myself in the state of the ‘quasi-stable‘, the ‘fake-it-till-you-make-it‘. Except when I find myself at the nodes of such states, I look back and think that I wasn’t faking it at all. That all the mutations in my artistic process was meant to be and that there was an order to the perceived chaos. I have found this state to be integral to the way I ideate and grow my ideas from tree stumps to full fledged trees – and even when they have bore fruit, I will continue to plant them into new, completely idiosyncratic saplings.
Motor Schemas + Craft
I found particular resonance with Spuybroek’s comment about motor schemas. He writes that drawing with one’s hand encapsulates a rhythm, a movement, instead of a specific form or image – an execution, activation of a schema –a guide for minute muscular forces involved. I often wonder about the distinction between the hand, the tool and the machine and I have found a perfect connection in Spuybroek’s writing. Previously, I had read David Pye’s The Nature of Art and Workmanship, and while Pye states that craft is evolving to a state of low-risk and higher certainty in execution, Spuybroek argues that even the most precise of machines have their own complex codes and flexibility (adaptable motor schema/code) that we too can learn to master and thus execute work similar to that of our hand. Both Pye and Spuybroek are implying that the essential idea of workmanship, experimentation and art is the same in carving wood as it is coding on the computer:
“There is much more to workmanship than not spoiling the job, just as there is much more to music than playing the right notes.” – David Pye
“A computer is not a machine that replaces hand drawing, but a conflation of design and work” – Lars Spuybroek
In the same way that our hand gives us an “infinite variety of expression”, we can learn to achieve that same chaos and experimentation with coding and machines.
Chaos and “Order”
The tension hence lies between our perception of artificial order and the natural order and the inherent similarities between the two. After reading Spuybroek, I realised that many of our invented systems are put in place to negate the discomfort of our perceived chaos and disorganisation of the natural world. We invented electric saws to remove tiresome ‘labor’ and human error, and made computers to automate everyday tasks or achieve greater precision. We have organised an artificial order to things around us. That is why, when we encounter ‘bugs’ in code, or experience the computer not following our instructions, we also encounter frustration and have an innate fear of the chaos creeping back into our organised lives; of robots gaining sentience and becoming more human-like, more innately chaotic again. Spuybroek suggests embracing this chaos, recognising that instead of striving for a sense of order, we should aim for an order of sensibility, a parameter of working that allows us to respond to a multitude of possibilities, to find constantly changing natural order to the chaos. And for that to happen, we should challenge the artificial order.
Why are websites not overgrown by neighbouring sites?
Dione Lee 