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Eye examination to detect signs of Microvascular Cranial Nerve Palsy. The eye socket is one of few locations on the human body where skins (eye-lid and eye-ball) intersect.


It's been a while since I posted anything regarding thesis. The last few weeks have been all over with family visiting, a trip to Vegas to PAY HOMAGE to the Sigfreid and Roy monument, and a flurry of reading, writing and formatting into a few tidy little booklets. Following the lead of Monsieur Mau, I've been trying to generate a method of cataloguing the document according to the evolving topic (if you recall, the various editions of SMLXL have different font tones on the cover & spine). The main diagram at present is a figure/ground gradient fading from black to white, with grey as the operative zone for research. Therefore, version one, presented on 10/29, was all white; version two, presented on 11/14 was light grey. Subsequent versions will complete the gradient. It's a corny idea. and I have no idea why I've spent time thinking about it. But so it is.

In signing off for the night, I thought I might share a little play-by-play from the informal midterm last week. As well as I can remember, this is how it went:


Mark: You talk about surface continuity, which makes me wonder how a condition of surface continuity stops?

Inge: I am also interested in knowing a little more about your case studies, specifically what they are doing in service of your thesis. For example, you might consider overlapping them with this networked timeline, showing how they follow one another in the development of the issue of The Fold. I am also curious about why you are bringing into the discussion the issue of part-to-whole. I had you all the way up until that point and I’m not so sure why it’s there.

Josh: I’m not exactly sure what you mean.

Inge: Well, for example, you show this diagram of particles disturbed by a force, and I’m concerned that this is perhaps too literal a reading of part-to-whole relationships. You might try thinking of Greg Lynn’s Embryological Houses as a different reading of the part-to-whole issue.

Josh: Do you mean in the way particles are identical, whereas the different elements of the Embryological House are not, and yet they still interact as parts of a larger whole system?

Inge: Perhaps. More what I meant was the issue of the Houses’ versioning and how the multiples of houses are parts of a greater whole system. So you might think of backtracking from the whole particle discussion and looking at the entire form as one component in a series.

Kiduck: What is your position on grey?

Josh: That’s a good question and it’s very difficult to say. I mean, much of this research is a reaction to the type of thinking that everything can be grey, so I feel that that isn’t the case.

Inge: But you’ve already stated your position. I mean, the title right now is Grey Matters, so you say it’s important.

Josh: Yes, but –

Mark: And Josh, can you entirely forget about the importance of hard edges? Architecture needs certain conditions of black-and-white, strict thresholds and the like.

Josh: Of course, and I agree with that. So, perhaps what I’m arguing is that we need both conditions. Hard edges because they make sense, and we know how to build them. Soft edges because, in a way, they also make sense and because we’re now more capable of building them. There’s something in Collage City about this that I think can really help me here, something to do with the confusion of solids and voids in the figure/ground diagram. I can’t remember it exactly but I’ll get back to you on it.

Mark: Josh, going back to the issue of The Fold, however…I wonder if, as you’re developing your ideas about this and the figure/ground, if there is anything you could present as new from it all. Sort of a like a feedback to the original text after all this time?

Josh: That’s asking a lot. It’s a pretty tapped out source. But for you Mark, anything.

* I think Jo made a comment about the booklets, but that was all.