Landscapes of Change: Boccioni’s “Stati d’animo” as a General Theory of Models by Sanford Kwinter

1. Sanford Kwinter says “Virtual forms are real ‘folds’ (not symbolic, not ideal) in real n-dimensional space that can give rise to indeterminate morphogenetic events in the n+1 space (the space one dimension higher up).” He later also says “Once time is introduced into this system, a form can gradually unfold on this surface as a historically specific flow of matter that actualizes (resolves, incarnates) the forces converging on the plane. These are the phenomenal forms that we conventionally associate with our lived world.” Does this mean that time is what actualizes form, and that there exists a virtual dimension of all possible forms but only what we see is what is being actualized in real space? I  can see some correlation between this theory and the idea of hyperrealism from last week’s reading Simulacra and Simulations, in the sense that hyperrealism describes something beyond reality whereas the virtual according to Kwinter also describes events beyond our perceived reality.

On Typology by Rafael Moneo

1. “The type can thus be thought of as the frame within which change operates, a necessary term to the continuing dialectic required by history.” I like the idea of a type being a “frame” around what is changing, in this case the Architecture, as time goes on. As Moneo talked about in the beginning of the passage, each architectural object can be thought of as independent, but represents an instance of change of the type or typology it belongs to, creating a more dynamic and non-linear perpetuation of the idea of typology, which is opposite to what most history teaches. Usually we think of typology as the big umbrella which encloses a set of architectural objects, but I think Moneo starts to speak of it as a more dynamic system in which the typology isn’t definitive and static but always changing according to specific instances or architectural objects that represent it.
2. Kwinter’s Catastrophe theory suggests that all forms are just materialized instances of change, while Moneo suggests that all architectural forms represent instances of change in their typologies, as “the design process is a way of bringing the elements of a typology – the idea of a formal structure – into the precise state that characterizes the single work.” Can architectural objects be thought of as actualized forms of Architectural ideas or typologies which are ever-changing and morphing through time? Does this mean that there is a virtual dimension in which all possible Architectural forms exist, and only the forms we see are produced due to specific instances of time?