More on Shadows

In his essay In Praise of Shadows Japanese novelist Tanizaki writes about the conflict between western and eastern aesthetics in the modern world. He says that Japanese 'find beauty not in the thing itself but in the patterns of shadows, the light and the darkness, that one thing against another creates.' He emphasizes beauty in subtlety and that which cannot be seen too clearly, leaving some of the experience to our imagination. Pallasmaa talks of something similar when he emphasizes the importance and intimacy of darkness.

BlogAditi KulkarniAugust 19, 2011aesthetics, Art, culture, media, notes, research, shadow, theoryComment

Post-Traumatic Urbanism

Cities like Mumbai and Beirut have developed in unstable uncertainty and in many ways are resilient survivors. They have adapted with 'redundant networks' and 'diversity and distribution' rather than 'centralized efficiency' which makes them flexible in the face of shocks to infrastructure (Lahoud, 2010).

BlogAditi KulkarniAugust 18, 2011architecture, book, city, mumbai, notes, philosophy, research, theory, urbanismComment

Collaboration: The Third Hand

Through collaboration the singular voice of the artist is muted or dispersed, it is a break away from a singular artistic identity. The author introduces the idea of a 'third hand,' or ghost artist which is an elusive other or combined identity created in collaborative works. This third independent existence is in itself 'uncanny' because such a constructed ghost identity 'blurs the distinction between the real and phantasmic.'

BlogAditi KulkarniAugust 5, 2011Art, book, collaboration, notes, research, theoryComment

Site-Specific Art

In his book Eyes of the Skin, Pallasmaa talks at great length about the beauty of human perception and how the senses interact with each other to form experience. He emphasizes the importance of a sense experience as a whole. He says there is a bias to the eye in the architectural practice because people are focussed on how a building looks rather than how a body can move within it or how it feels. When it comes to the perception of places he discusses the importance of emotion, memory, imagination and fantasy.

BlogAditi KulkarniAugust 3, 2011architecture, Art, book, city, phenomenology, place, research, site, theoryComment

Research Methods: Phase 1

A detailed look at the theoretical framework and research methods behind my practice in Phase 1. Key issues discussed are practice as research, the post-digital age, heterotopia, qualitative research methods, and limitations of these methods.

BlogAditi KulkarniJanuary 17, 2011Art, framework, method, practice, research, theoryComment