Monday, February 1, 2010

The Shape of Memory

Our body has its own memory of pattern and design.

This morning, a woman at the YWCA told me she's housesitting in the neighborhood she grew up in.

"When the sun comes in the house at a certain angle, I'm nine years old again," she said.

This is what my project on the starship and the museum is about:
the light and the shadows, the angles and the curves--in physical 3- and 4-D, as well as in the imagination--of my life and my culture.

Because that is such a wide-open search, I'm casting my net wide. Today I e-mailed a couple designers I know from my days at the art college.
Both agreed to meet with me.

One recommended I read An Introduction to Design and Culture, by Penny Sparke.
I just put in an interlibrary loan request.

Sparke also wrote The Plastics Age (left).
I had a moment of panic thinking people have already answered all my questions and there's no point in my asking them all over again.
Then I thought, the point is that I am asking them from where I stand, here in this––my––body.

6 comments:

Marz said...

I think this subject has the potential to be mind-blowing. That, and now I'm just plain curious: why DOES the Enterprise look like the museum? Answer that question and you answer many questions, I suspect.

Fresca said...

Thanks, Margaret!
Nice to see you back.

And you know what? I'm curious too! That's the best fuel for doing research.
I really don't know, and I want to.

Anonymous said...

Hell, Yeah! And, I'm just sayin': whatever the hellya write, I'm gonna read it and I know whoever else reads whatever you write will have their hearts/minds/souls expanded, enlightened, whatever..Whateverer and everer!

Love and excitement and whatever! Oh -- and check yr email tonight!

Stefalala

ArtSparker said...

I'm thinking of Brancusi's "Bird in Space", which is not shaped at all like a starship. But there's something similar in a sort of flight to abstraction that was typical of a certain period of time, as if escape velocity from mortality was possible....something like that, I could be taking it too far.

momo said...

exactly. From where you stand, and through your eyes and words. It's a conversation you are having and that you will share with us.

Fresca said...

STEF: Thanks for your enthusiastic support!

ARTS: "As if escape velocity from mortality was possible"--what a nice phrase.
Maybe that's part of the desire to fly--to escape these earthly bonds? As well as just the sheer fun of jumping off the garage roof with a sheet tied around our necks..

MOMO: A conversation with myself--yes. That's all it is--a comforting way to put it.