Save - 10/10/17

My drawing this week is of moths again, but I would mainly like to talk about visual form here rather than the subject (the only thing I will say about the subject for now is that it is probably related to the subaltern?). Last week you (Tony) mentioned Christopher Alexander's idea about "field of centers," which you described as how the implied center (center of interest) gives meaning to the rest of the work. I went to the College of Environmental Design Library to check out his book The Nature of Order (1988). The properties of visual form that Christopher Alexander lays out related to the ways that centers can intensify each other is interesting to me. In addition to drawing on examples from fine art, he also uses buildings, floor plans, and city plans to explain what he means by the properties that work together to create compelling visual form.

In addition to the field of centers concept, I also especially liked reading about "Roughness" and "Not Separateness" because I like working on things that are textured and soft:

• Roughness: "It does not seek to superimpose any arbitrary order over it, but instead lets the larger order be relaxed and modified, according to the demands and constraints which happen locally in different parts of the design." 
• Not Separateness: "Sometimes, the only thing which matters functionally is the unification of space -- the absence of divisions. A particular example, is the way that terraces and paths are connected to the earth. They work best, and are most wholesome, when the connection between the stones, the paving, and the soft earth itself is so gradual, so definite, that you can hardly feel it." 

It's useful for me to think about making drawings in terms of how they relate to certain visual properties because it helps demystify why I find certain things compelling and how I might arrive at that more quickly in my own drawings. It's also interesting to think about a possible connection between what I like to draw and what I find appealing about city planning in terms of how the form of cities can contribute to compelling, diverse, and vibrant places. On the one, hand, drawing mountains, flowers, birds, and moths, etc. seems completely unrelated to the built environment, but the process of trying to capture it for human visual consumption is an attempt to bring some type of order or systematization to "nature" which might be most coherent when adhering to the same or similar properties. A the same time I do want to make sure that I don't fall into the trap of environmental determinism (the idea that the physical environment completely dictates life outcomes). I probably need to think through this more but anyways I appreciated the introduction to Christopher Alexander.