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Fiction and Reality

September 7, 2011
Body Projects
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Abdomen (Nat Chard)

The body project drawings are made on Polaroid transfers using type 59 film, taken with a 5″ by 4″ view camera. The Cambo camera I use has just enough movement side to side to take a left and right eye shot without moving the tripod or camera’s monorail (when photographing the anatomical torso at the distances used in these shots). If you look at the first body projects in the second post there is no compensation for the position of the figure in the frame, while in the subsequent projects I used the horizontal shift in the film plane to locate both images in the same area of the frame. Despite this, the imprecise nature of making the transfers makes it hard to register the two images centrally on the stretched watercolour paper (I was using a heavy grade of Fabriano Five). When you see the frames lined up the pairs of images are noticeably irregular.

One day while I was working on the second body project (previous post) I was drawing on a pair of images in the morning. So as to protect the rest of the image I placed a paper mask (see the image above) that exposed only the area I was working on. I placed masking film over that area and cut out my masks for airbrushing with a Swann Moron scalpel. That afternoon I had an appointment at the hospital to examine a mole on my abdomen that was growing at a worrying rate. On seeing my mole, the doctors decided to remove it. As I sat there they gave me a local anaesthetic and then placed a paper mask around the area, mostly I believe for my modesty. Then they cut into my abdomen with exactly the same sort of scalpel I had been working with that morning. As they cut around the mole into the fatty layer under the skin to make sure they had captured everything. I was looking through a paper mask to the inside of my body just in the same way I had looked at a similar area of the body in the drawings.

Body Project Two

September 6, 2011
Body Projects
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Body project two, layer one (Nat Chard)

To dig out greater nourishment from the project I went through the performance and plumbing of the main body organs that were appropriate for the projects and set out a parallel synthetic system with feedback loops to the natural versions. All the flow rates and pressures for fluids, solids and air were calculated to work in sympathy with their natural counterparts. A sequence of drawings works from the deepest levels to the surface. THe first layer has the main mechanical pumps for air and blood.

The premise of the project remains similar to that outlined in the previous post.

Body project two, layer two (Nat Chard)

The second level shows the abdominal filters, some of the pieces most likely to protrude as bumps under the skin.

Body project two, layer three (Nat Chard)

The red and white element shown in layer three is the digestive element that converts carbs into electricity to run the synthetic organs. It is the least plausible of the synthetic organs. Most of the others have some basis in medical reality and after this project was made some of them were overtaken by medical technology – but more of that when we get to the third body project.

Body project two, layer four (Nat Chard)

Layer four has additional pieces inserted between the new and existing organs to help slippage when the body twists and turns.

Body project two, layer five (Nat Chard)

Layer five shows a heat shield. As with the previous body project, all the drawings are stereoscopic and made over polaroid transfers. The polaroid photographs were made from an anatomical torso borrowed from UCH in London.

Body project two, layer six (Nat Chard)

The heat shield is drawn as a transparent layer in the remaining drawings. Here in layer six the sensitive control unit sits outside the heat shield.

Body project two, layer seven (Nat Chard)

Layer seven shows the heat exchanger that works with the air handling vessels (see next layer)

Body project two, layer eight (Nat Chard)

The top layer includes the air handling vessel that works as a constant volume inverse of the natural lungs, and breathes through one of the abdominal filters. The drawings are airbrushed over the already unreliable polaroid transfers. Several of the layers are transparent so cannot be painted over if the work goes wrong. Working without an undo button can help one commit to something…

Body Project One

September 5, 2011
Body Projects
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Body Project One (Nat Chard)

One of the central questions in most of my architectural projects is how to nurture an indeterminate condition. In the body projects (also mentioned in post 2) the question is inverted – how is it possible to take possession of the city as it is given?  How can we take the city with all its prescriptions and certainties and open it up as a fresh and available territory? As touched on in the previous post, there are a number of sites where architecture and the city make great claims about their precise relationship with the body. By adjusting the organs in the body that touch those programmatic sites, if architecture and the city’s claims were true, you would therefore be able to adjust the city. By adjusting the performance of the new synthetic body parts in one way, you could change the city in one way while I could change it differently. This offers questions about the collective consciousness of the city that will be touched on in a later post.

I will explain the workings of the body architecture further when talking about the second body project. At the stage of these preliminary studies I imagined that they would be made possible by the range of bio and nano technologies emerging at the time. As these provided no practical resistance, almost anything was possible and as a consequence the poetic possibilities felt limited. The subsequent projects were much more practical.

Study for Body Project One (Nat Chard)

The drawings are stereoscopic (the first image in the post has a stereoscopic pair to the left showing the new organs opened up and then in normal position in a single image to the right). They are made by taking Polaroid photographs (Type 59 film) and peeling the film apart ten seconds after pulling it through the rollers. The negative is then rolled on a pre prepared piece of paper with a sort rubber roller. All the marks and distortions around the image come from the negative and its chemicals. The process is unreliable, providing a level of thrill when working with it. Unfortunately the film stock is no longer available. When the images are dry they are drawn over, each side adjusted relative to the other for parallax to provide a three dimensional view. If you have the image quite small on the screen and go cross eyed, you should be able to resolve a stereoscopic image (or you can use stereo lorgnettes).

The figure to make these drawings was cast in a mould for an écorchémodel that i adapted with an abdominal and chest void and added organs from a plastic model. For the next generation body project I borrowed an anatomical torso from University College Hospital (I was teaching at the Bartlett, UCL, at the time) and for for the third project I bought my own anatomical torso. When I took this headless, legless, armless body through Stanstead Airport the human torso appeared on the X-ray screen at large luggage security but the guard did not flinch, presumably looking for certain colours rather than the figure.

Body Project One -detail (Nat Chard)

This image is the stereoscopic pair of drawings from the picture at the top of this post.

When viewing the stereoscopic drawings, go cross-eyed so that the most distinct features sit over each other (for instance the head in these drawings). Try to hold it and relax as much as possible, and the two images will resolve into one, appearing as a strange construction between two and three dimensions.

Drawing Instrument One

September 4, 2011
Drawing instruments
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Drawing Instrument One (Nat Chard)

The first drawing instrument was made to test some speculations on the potential of a folding picture plane as a critical agent in making drawings. Since Leonardo artists have manipulated the picture plane to make images appear to be more true, so it seemed a good place to start when thinking about how to bring an image into question.

This instrument discusses how another project (see later – body projects one two and three) might adapt our perception and consciousness of the city. The body projects make adaptations to those organs in our bodies that are connected to the programmatic sites in architecture (and the city) that claim to have the tightest relationship with our bodies – such as heating and cooling, hygiene, digestion and disposal, air handling and so on.

The maps below (of Copenhagen) are folded. When viewed from certain positions the foreshortening caused by the viewpoint and occlusions established by the folds can assemble previously remote figures (the grey blobs or rectangular figures in this case) into a coherent whole, as if re-assembling the city.

Normal view

Foreshortened view

In the drawing instrument the map is replaced by a folding surface with a fixed figure of slots that are backlit with coloured lights, setting out more of the character of the city rather than its geometric figures.

Drawing Instrument One (Nat Chard)

Drawing instrument One (Nat Chard)

The drawings are made by taking a series of photographs of the folding surface that make the most of the folds to discuss a certain occupation of the city by someone who has the body project architecture inside them. One of the drawings is below – it has a folded drawing plane to allow the observer to take possession of the content in the same way.

Instrument One drawing (Nat Chard)

Welcome

September 3, 2011
Drawing instruments
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Drawing Instruments (Nat Chard)

Welcome to my blog. I have been nourished by a number of blogs, and thought I should make a contribution. Also, when people ask where to find my work, it is dispersed in a diverse range of publications, so this in an opportunity to find it all in one location. More selfishly, it provides the possibility of a wider conversation with others on the margins of architecture despite my living in a remote and disconnected place.

I will start off by posting my own work, a mixture of things in progress and back catalogue, as well as things I come across. At some stage I will post work by friends and colleagues whose work I admire. I will try to post two or three times a week, so please drop by every now and then.