From Ocularcentrism To Hyperreality

Reply to Wani's comment and questions on 'Our Narcissistic Eyes and The Architecture of Visual Images'
French rationalist Rene Descartes's theory of vision as the model of knowledge marked the start of ocularcentrism in architecture. His scepticism in the legitimacy of all our acquired knowledge further strenghten the role of senses in that particular task - especially the role of the eyes.

Well, Malaysian academics hold very practisionerally-minded elementary stands on theory. Most of them are market-driven architects cum market-driven-academics, that is why clash of ideologies and subsequent theoretical argument are mostly driven by discourse about primary everyday subjects like sustainability, symbol, cultural-ethnic assertion and other 'first-grade' level theories, serve as counter cultural resisting tool to morally tease their competitors in the industry. This is reasonable because it is a young underdeveloped country, time, money and getting mega contracts are the priorities, no one would care about those structuralistics of phenomena and architecture. Pallasmaa is probably the most 'poetic' critic I've ever read, never had a diehard anthropologist nor a genuine structuralist approach, mere straight-forward.

Well, I think the development of ocularcentrism can be divided in to 3 phases, being the foundation-laying Platonic classical idea - the 'first science' period, next, its proliferation in architecture started by the influence of Renaissance Alberti's writing, lastly the late revival or the total explosion during the post-industrial time. What I meant was the comeback and the more aggressive form of occularcentrism that has marched into a fatal Hyperreality in the post-industrial phase.

It started with Plato's structure of the mind-body binary concept, distinction between the abstract and materiality, first ever. Since then the mind has slowly manipulating the physical body, like a parasite, like an all-seing ruler that commands the body. Its main tool is the eyes. (I am not sure the employment of eye has anything to do with the eyes location relative to the brain). Knowing is directly associated with finding the correct manner of observing. But this has yet to cross the discipline of architecture then, building was still considered a lower form Knowledge, it is material, physical, born out of utility, endeavour of the lower classes.

Alberti and Brunelleschi are those who elevate architecture as a formal Knowledge, that require visual examination, architecture since then is ocularly quantified. The biggest influence probably belonged to Alberti's On Painting and On the Art of Building. With the invention of the Cartesian perspective,(tribute to Descartes) architecture in this visual form serve a strong commanding role, the image suggest a worldly center, viewer stare and examine, signified by a new portray of world view, and seemingly detached from just emotional sensation. The eyes are still the slave of the dictator-like mind. The power of image started.
'On The Art of Building' started the first frameworked theoretical discourse of architecture in history.

The correspondence between the sign of image and its referent still exist in pre-industrial time. Image in architecture in that time was still a part of the representational system, existed only as a hegemony and overpowering the other senses, but has yet to entirely codify reality. The situation change in post-industrial time. The 'simulacrum' as Baudrillard putted, has replaced reality. The contemporary mass media is the cause. It is the simulation without controlled depth or substances. Sign and referent no longer share bonding. In this state of Hyperreality, reality, illusion and appearance could never be identified and distinguished. The seeing eye is ever so passive but became more passive like an America in front of the TV under the state of Hyperreality. The Hyperreality further disorienting the eye towards an all-accepting mechanism of knowing and awareness.
Psychologist Edward Berneys' offspring - the American Ads that manipulate the subconscious desire to penetrate targeted market victim. The 'message' in this image is clear: Heroine like Amelia Earhart smokes. Ladies out there, you should do so too and you can become as independent as the aviation pioneer!

I think this hyperreality has much to do with the history of consumerism in the U.S. The culture of superficiality like watching TV ads was designed by pioneering European psychologists, employed by the US government during the post-war 20-th century, when the capitalist economy truimphed. It was to design a system of superficial adverts images that can submerge and answer deep into our subconscious desire by manipulating the vulnerable human eyes. One of the father of cousumerism I can remember is Edward Bernays.

Well, living in a world of superficiality, of hyperreality, of ocularcentrism, scale does not involve the participation of our already-numb non-visual senses. Living in blindness is interesting, it frees the eyes from succumbing to the disillusioning of the dictating mind and allow other senses to flourish. Joseph Grange I think is never an architecture scholar, the 'structure' of posture, orientation, feel and comprehension as quoted are unresolved and contradicting examples, each has immense inconsistency...Posture as body language, could be considered free from the rules of eye; orientation is largely dependent on the positioning from the eye; comprehension is Knowing, undoubtedly influenced by eye. Except for the structure of posture, I could not see any concrete reasonning that can detach 'founding' a building scale from the absolute tyrany of the eye today.

Of the Iraqian artist, she deserves merit on diminishing the boundaries between the artist herself, the art expression and the viewer (as opposed to user) in the field of visual art. The fundamental outcome of her strategy is to make the viewer living in the world of both herself (her worldview) and the expression of her visual image brought through the tyrant eye. This should be distinguished from being affirmed as architecture because what is intrinsic to architecture is not object-status but a rational cognitive concepts and open-ended explorative process, expressive, but expressiveness that is tightly suggestive of a larger social and biological system. That is why I've always in doubt over female's rationality.

Client who employ starchitect today mostly are from the third world. Neither that they have a set of commanding programmatic brief for their new show nor that they have any formal knowledge on architecture and its history. Architecture here is no more than a brainless tool of propaganda and space-wasting fooliness. Besides, most of those country today already have some budding taste on the capitalist consumer culture - with its 'motto' of 'knowing by seeing, owning by seeing, being by seeing'. Sealing the architecture design contract operate exactly the way like the how American ads flocks people into shops and stores. The most visually appealing and 'satisfying' images of artificial visuals... sales. It is a beauty contest.