Consciousness

Placing myself in a train going to a distant place – surrounded by many people yet alone – looking to frames through the window punch – seeing distant places not knowing their stories – suddenly i find myself reaching the station. The station to me is a time machine! Taking people to far away lands, unknown places and traces, such a gift of industrialization! It took more than two months for Columbus to reach America from Spain. Where as it took just a day for me from the other side of the world. In just 24 hours, warping my known world and teleporting me to a new horizon. Speed. In Schivelbusch’s writing speed is the medium that plays the magic in between space and time. Speed allows the traveler perceive the space as living entity in that time, what Bergson called “duree”. Perception, the very subjective, is achieved by the individual and subjected to vary. Thus perception of time, space and distance differs. How much a traveler will be able to see is being defined by the speed. Speed shortened the ability to see while on board, at the same time allows travelers to push the boundary(which was limited by speed before) to see more,most.The means of transportation transport particles (thought, human, goods etc) from one place to another. According to Benjamin, the occurrence destroying their aura as remote, hard to get, in abundance and in scarcity. In contrast What I believe is that it also offers the opportunity to experience aura to more people.

To my understanding, Kwinter’s writing is about a system of becoming. A system of acuteness. A system that thrives for wholeness. The key point of the system is novelty that keeps the wheel moving in the realm of time. The four requirements of novelty are object, time, movement and event. For example time is a tool in monastery, even in industry to regulate certain need, divine proportion to regulate aesthetics and so on. All the tools/medium will act together at one time to build up the system which is prime and singular consciousness.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. In this case, Schivelbush talks about how the implementation of the train travel allowed a stronger connection between distances, in essence, the hearth of cities became bigger, and the connection from cities to cities become more common and allowed people to travel much easier and quicker. This is really important because it [the invention of the train] started to decrease the size of the country, by cutting down the time it takes to get some where it can be said that the distance has diminished. the equal and opposite reaction to this is that by spending less time traveling, the people who would normally be around each other for long periods of time would bond, get to know one another and develop a kind of society amongst themselves. When that time, of travel, is decreased, people [spending less time among the fellow passengers] became less likely to interact with each other. It can be seen especially today on a train, bus, or plane, people don’t talk to each other, and everyone is in their own world and only concerned with themselves and getting to their destination. The experience of travel evolved into a glorified elevator ride, not around people long enough to care about them. So as the country, and world, became smaller and more connected on a global scale, the smaller scale, normal interactions between people diminished; we are the closest we have ever been yet the most distant at the same time. The advance in personal technology has only proliferated the distance we keep each other at in basic human contact situations. Instead of making some small talk with a live stranger standing next to you, people will instead play on their phones to alleviate the ‘awkward moment’ of being by a stranger.

It was not imaginable for me before having this experience. When you experience an intercontinental flight, despite its psychological impacts, you can experience some of the weirdest situations in which you are doubted whether you are asleep or awake. The experience of flight in 20^th and 21^st centuries is completely comparable with the train issue of 1800s. The narrow space which we can call the way becomes smaller and smaller, to little fractions of what it once was, and on the other hand, other spaces become greater each day. The map of world which is updated every minute on a big screen with new positioning can completely illustrate the image of this sudden change in aspects of the space. You pass cities like they are blocks of a town in each of which hundreds of thousands, if not millions, live. Through this journey the other factor is your local time which is changing constantly; if you are flying west you’ll experience a day less than 24 hours and if east, vice versa. After landing, even your axis of standing in a three dimensional xyz system is not the same as it was before takeoff. Imagine all this facts of a very sudden change and how they can rapidly change your perception of time, space and yourself.

This can be considered as an example for losing self-consciousness. You’ll need some time to redefine your relationship whit the new system of time-space. As a very personal experience it took a while for me to stop having dreams about my hometown when I was here. If we consider dreaming as a projection of sub consciousness we can conclude that my sub consciousness tried to resist against this rapid change.

After 18^th century, when architecture was still human’s “will to order”, architects tried to impress people’s perception of time which has a key role to understanding events; it needed a higher technology, if not a couple of thousand dollars flight ticket. This change has fundamentally changed our concepts of architecture itself. After that architecture was always willing to employ techniques to impress our sense of continuity with the surrounding world. This is like how we develop clocks to impress our time perception.

Now after centuries of trials the question is if 21^st century architecture with all possible techniques can impress us in a way it never did before or maybe architect’s will to novelty will lead architecture to actualize what we saw in science –fictions.

On The Railway Journey, Wolfgang Shivelbusch analyses the relationships between space and time. he mainly focuses on the relationship between distance and time; taking as the main example the use of train lines and train stations.
train stations, on his eyes have become portals that connect two different places that have been until that point traditionally very far apart. it is through the shortening of the time of travel that distances perceptually become shorter and “the country shrinks” bringing locations otherwise remote to ones doorstep.

Schilvelbusch, however, thinks that because of this new found conveniences, locations and as an extension products have lost their Aura. Similar to what Walter Benjamin proposed, the mechanization in this case of travel steals the authentic remoteness and therefore the appeal of a distant location.

On “The Architectures of Time”, Sanford Kwinter establishes a definition between realization and creation. he first of all differentiates between Actualization (Something that occurs in time and with time say…the constrution of a building with blocks and bolts) and Realization (a conceptual idea…programming, a massing layout).

Technological developments and modernization have an active roll in society and therefore in the way we think about architecture. some examples of main developments are:

The Benedictine Order, regarded as the first people to use “clocks” harnessed the idea of separating time in order to better serve their monastical rituals. after that, the idea of separating time in order to regulate production and therefore the economy became common.  From the Monastery to the Factory.

The Panopticon, invented by Foucault, stands as a symbol of tyranny and surveillance. first intended to be used as a prison where a minimal security crew could control and observe a large inmate population, now is directly related to the idea of constant surveillance and the Big Brother.

Finally, the loudspeaker, a tool that allowed fascist regimes to rally the masses on their support in huge amphitheaters.

Architecture, for Kwinter, is trully a machine. a machine that directly modified and permanently changed by the programs and activities that happen within even more than by its original physical shape or form. In this senses, architecture is not something like art that is frozen in time but always changing / mutating in response to the user.

The notion that the railroad makes space disappear was a hard concept for me to grasp at first. All I could think in the back of my head was “With faster transportation new places that were further away become more accessible” It took me a few reads to understand what was actually meant by it but I truly agree with and understand what is being said here. I have a long history of long periods of car travel with my parents and unlike a train which only stops at stations our car could have stopped anywhere (We didn’t). I believe that the interstates and expressways of today’s society could make a great comparison to the railroads as Schivelbusch has brought them up. Today’s highways (railroads) have specific exits (stations) where people get on and off, all the time they are on it they are missing different areas that they are rushing by. My parents and I from as early as I could remember would drive down to South Carolina and Florida to visit relatives and go on vacation but the places in between were just connectors to the final destination so they really are like they are destroyed. A huge example of this is route 66 from Chicago, IL to Santa Monica, CA was constructed and went winding through some amazing areas in this nation. But it was a two lane highway and did not hold large amounts of traffic, there for straight expressways and interstates were constructed to move people with more volume and speed. The saddest part is that most of the smaller towns and some of the coolest views in the area are now missed by travelers as they race down the super highways.

I think the original idea was the annihilation of space By the time. Invention of a perspective of real time which annihilates spatial distances is one of the most revolutionary transformations. Many of the transportation and communication technologies such as railways or media advances by capitalization have had the effect of shrinking the space. Technology allows you to contact anyone anytime within seconds. Some guy in India fixing your computer while you are at Buffalo in real-time; this is the annihilation of space. I think it makes situation complicated because the railway makes two cities which distant about a hundred miles will be so closed that its inhabitants are neighbors but a settlement twenty miles distant across the unclear country is unknown, unvisited or probably unheard of by the women and children,”

As distance has been overcome, time becomes compressed. The best-known instance of this is “jet lag” when we travel too rapidly across time zones.

Technology of speed promises to deliver us to a better place; Speed of movement not only signals our capacity for overcoming the geographical distance, it also has come to suggest that the possibility for increased efficiency and productivity.

The crucial question is that what should we do to make something virtual become actual? Is it science? Art?

Thinking about the tools that make other people read our mind is an obsession for us and the way we influence people. We do not expect people to mix in our imaginations instead we as artists want to create mental structure capability for everyone to understand ultimate reality. There should be a resemblance between the patterns in physical reality and the patterns which are perceived by everyone. I mean that even the purest philosophical theory is nevertheless incapable of grasping the true existence and reality of it in full measure.

It may be a little strange, however I want to begin with a very traditional story about a couple of blind men and an elephant (the story is common through several religions and ancient nations).

Once upon a time, six blind men encounter an elephant. The first touches its trunk and says that an elephant is like a snake, another touches its side and says that an elephant is like a rough wall. Another feels its tail and says that an elephant is like a piece of rope. Each comes into contact with a different part of the elephant and is convinced that the reality is what they touched.

In fact, when I was a kid I was told this story to understand none of them realizes that they are all experiencing just one part of the same elephant and that none of their explanations are complete. However, now I am to explore that each of the blind man could just realize the virtuality (here the elephant which at first was an imaginary amorphous phenomena) according to their previous life experiences. They just could compare the new introduced phenomena (elephant) with a group of abstractions which they realized before or it would be better to say, with their actual examples in mind to complete and form an image from their own consciousness. That’s why in Persian version of this very traditional story, the first blind man says that the trunk is like a snake while in some tropical countries, the story tells that the trunk is like a palm tree. It is obvious that people in Iran could not imagine what a palm tree is because their land was not located in a tropical district which palm trees usually grow up.

Kwinter pinpointed that after changing several fundamental definitions of world-like nonlinearity of time and curvature of space or space not as a background of event but as a determinative part of it-the meaning of the reality started to be different from the old-fashioned point of view. For me this astonishing observation was strongly interesting.

Thought the Railway Journey tend to admire the role of mechanization in exploring new opportunities and impossibilities which can even change the aforementioned “actual examples in mind” which I know them as means of making a reality out of a virtuality and means of making our consciousness, the mechanism of realizing should not be considered like the pre modernistic one. I mean our archive of abstractions or realities which we hold in our minds is growing up every second by any means (especially by any kind of media as strong resources of our consciousness), and I hold the opinion that after the revolutionary changes in fundamental definition of world; like time and space, even our mechanism of making something to be realized have changed. In other world, unlike the pre modern time, we the people do not use our previous realized abstractions (them “actual examples in mind”) to create new realities based on them and finally to create our consciousness.

The reading that struck me the most this week was Schivelbusch’s The Railway Journey.  I think we take for granted our ability to travel such far distances in such short amounts of time.  I thought it interesting just how much of a mind-blowing experience this must have been back when the railway was first put into use.  This completely revolutionized how people perceived time and space.  In the Schivelbusch reading, I took away the main ideas that this new form of travel created a brand new space-time and altered people preconceived notions of time.  It was felt as though the actual space in between locations was reduced and that the outer lying regions of a main city were flooding into the city center, beginning to create the idea of an ever extending metropolitan area.

This concept of of an extending city and the reduction of time required to travel places reminded me of the idea of the Global Village that we discussed in class.  This really was the beginning of an interconnected world.  One that allowed you to work and live in different areas and commute unimaginable distances in a short period of time.  I agree with part of Brett’s earlier post where he talks about how this is likened to the invention of the internet.  The internet was the next step in creating a more unified world, whereby the railway was just the first step.

Furthermore, I really found the idea of aura being introduced into this topic interesting.  The idea of how location and specific time makes things unique and valuable is completely relevant in this discussion.  SchivelBusch talks about how the train only services the departure and destination points and any inbetween stops.  The villages not hit by the train are totally devalued and forgotten.  However, the tourist attraction to the idea of a remote, quaint village actually destroys the aura of the village to begin with.  What makes it special is its initial remoteness and distance away from everything else.  By allowing people to get there without a long journey it removes what is special about that place.

The shrinking of space is an interesting topic and a concept that is known to man as time moves forward. The invention of the railroad set this idea into many individuals’ heads as the network of tracks increased and covered more real estate than ever before. The perception of time really began to make people curious. In his Railway Economy Lardner says, “Distances practically diminish in the exact ratio of the speed of personal locomotion.” Lardner is referring to the physics behind speed. Speed is calculated by dividing the distance and the time. Thus we can calculate the time by dividing the distance and the speed. These three things are all proportional to each other, therefore, changing one will affect the other two. Trains are said to have been able to travel the same distance as traditional methods of transportation in one-third the time.

In the article an interesting point has been bought to attention. It explains that the shrinking of the amount of time it takes to travel from place to place has a direct correlation with the perception of the distance between those places. Now that the railroad decreases the amount of time it takes to travel from place to place people are able live further from the city center. The further out of the city center people live the closer they get to the adjacent city. Meanwhile the adjacent city is utilizing the railroad in the same manner. There is only so much distance between the two cities and as a result of the train, two cities that once had their own identity have now been combined into one city. Therefore, the space between the cities can be seen as growing smaller even though the actual distance has not changed. This concept is reinforced in the text by stating, “…the railroad opens up new spaces that were not as easily accessible before; on the other, it does so by destroying space, namely, the space between points.”

The railroad not only connected cities that were once hours away by traditional methods of transportation but society also gained something else from it, time synchronization. Now that the railroad was in place the cities had to cooperate with each other on the time in which the train was leaving or arriving at each station. It’s interesting to think something like transportation set up the modern time standards. At first each railroad company had their own time standards. Then in 1884 at the international conference in Washington D.C. on time standards, a consensus was reached that set up the time zones around the world. The railroad relates directly to architecture in the fact that architecture can be analyzed as evidence of the transition to modern times just like the railroad. The railroad and glass buildings are direct expressions of such a transition.

The Railway Journey is an interesting title for such an article. It is purposely named this due to the fact that a journey insinuates time. The interesting thing is that the beginning of the railroad marks the beginning of changing times around the world. People could move faster than ever before which was speeding up the process of production and launching societies into the industrial revolution. The railroad changed the world forever and intellectuals have pondered the question, was the world changed for the better? or for the worse?

There’s one thing I find incredibly interesting around Schivelbusch’s reading; the fact that this has all played out to a larger and perhaps counter intuitive extent after his time of writing. Clearly with the internet, now we don’t even have to take time to travel to a place, rather we can extend ourselves through it to get to a there; in a way. So we’re back to lacking perception of space, time and travel as was Schivelbusch’s sort of ray of light in automobile transportation. That being said though, my focus will be on the reurbanization of cities. Sprawl and suburban life have played themselves out. We did do everything Schivelbusch said; we moved away from our jobs while still being able to get to them as if we lived right down the street, but yet, the trend is still reurbanization!

It’s counter intuitive, but maybe worth a look; perhaps the internet drove this. Everything became available to us at our fingertips. Everything was a far less than a second away. We don’t want to get in the car to get a slice of pizza anymore. We want to take a five minute walk down the road and grab a slice. Now I’m cognizant there are many other factors as to why we want to do this and that play into this, but hear me out. The generation of speed doesn’t want to waste time in a car as much as they don’t want to wait for dial up internet to connect. We want to be actively doing something at every second. Counter intuitively then, the walk to the pizza shop is an active process, rather than a passive drive.

I propose we have extended ourselves so far spatially, that we no longer even want to be far from things that are actually spatial. That the generation of speed has counter intuitively created a generation of people who want to be close to everything for speed. So though we can reach out to the Great Pyramids at Giza (and do!), we want the same convenience in our habitat; something the car centered suburb very clearly doesn’t offer. Because of this speed, though we could be far, we chose the active, urban option because of the very quickness of extending ourselves so far. This farness has again brought us close.