Notes about wood

A reflection on material assembleges and affective atmospheres

Table of contents

Introduction

1. Method, materials, matter

2. Thing power?

3. Systems in micro and macro scale

4. Gendered materials

5. Feelings, emotions and affection

6. Can atmospherres be measured?

7. Local or Global

Bibliography

Introduction

This is my notebook, that exists of 7 post made on purpose of 7 readings. The first 4 concerns about material assemblag-es and the last 3 on affective atmospheres. The material, wood, has been my tool and reference to get to understand and reflect on the readings.

Wood looks raw on the bark of the outside. The inside has a warm color and the round grains tells a story about alive-ness and water. The smell makes me think about the forest and humid air. The touch is soft and warm. Wood creates an atmosphere, that makes me feel safe and protected.

Back in the days craftsmen were builders, who knew their material and the way to treat it. Today the person, who has computer skills can build. In many ways globalization and development of our daily life has opened up many possibilities, that can increase process and production, but this also creates restrictions, that are worth considering.

Materials matters. When entering a room, when sitting on a chair, when touching a soft carpet. In my process of devel-oping projects working with materials in model, drawing, collage is important as well. We live in close relationship with the surrounding materi-als. Therefore we need to pay attention to the use of ma-terials, and consider the relationship between humans and materials as the relationship between people. We get affected by each other.

Furthermore one could think about materials in relation to scale. As well as materials are build up by molecules, that work together, a bigger systems exists, where materials interact with other materials, with human beings and with the world.

Materials can create atmospheres that affect you. It variates from person to person, how we feel in certain atmospheres, de-pendent on our previous experiences and memories. Maybe the experience of atmosphere is most remarkable during a certain event, in the moment of change, in extreme surroundings. It is difficult to say, what is important to remember, is that atmo-sphere is prior and will always obtain. One last point to reflect on is that materials create atmospheres in connection to the time and place. On account of globalization materials from many parts of the world are available on the mar-ket. This forces the architect to consider the choices of mate-rials very well, both for the sake of environment and of creat-ing original atmospheres.

1. Materials, methods, matter

The text, “Material matters” discusses how materials matter in an architectural context. It refers to how architects develop their project, the methods, the orthographic drawing, manual or digital, and when and which influence the material has. “…on the other hand, the very method we use to develop architectural proposals – orthographic drawing – only describe form, and relegates material to the empty spaces between the lines” (Lloyd Thomas, Katie, p. 2, l.6)

In the text it is also noticed, that the traditional architectural drawing contents of only lines, which tells a lot about proportions and forms, but not really anything about atmosphere and sense.

This made me think about how I develop my project. I always enjoy and prefer to use the manual methods, like building models by hand, drawing, making collages and so on. The “real” material seems to inspire and give something back, which I seldom experience when looking into a grey computer screen. The analogue method seems to make me consider atmosphere, mood, sense, and idea.

With the enlarged focus on sustainability, it seems that the consideration of materials has become more important.Anyhow it seems that, like mentioned in the text; that materials are discussed at a later stage in the process. In that way material doesn’t have anything to do with atmosphere and sense. Instead materials are discussed in connection to the technical, constructional and practical

parts of the project, and that might be a shame, when materials actually are capable of deciding just how you feel, what you see, and how you experience the specific building. In addition to that my favorite material of the day we met, I choose wood. The appearance and the smell remind me of being in the forest. I some how feel safe and protected in the forest, of the warmth, and of being in the nature. Furthermore I like that the wood has a history, and if I should be more specific about my choice of material I really like the grains in the wood. I find it fascinating, that even though the wood is used as boards you still see its “life nerve”. And when you reuse the wood you sort of still have to “take care” and pay attention to the grains.

Reading:Katie Lloyd Thomas ed. ‘Introduction’, Material Matters: Architecture and Material Practice, London: Routledge, 2007.

2. Thing-power?

Jane Bennetts text “The force of things” seeks to clarify, what vibrant matter is. She looks into the active role of nonhuman materials in public life. I will through my post try to get an understanding of, what is meant by vibrant matter. I found it a bit confusing and fluent.

The term “thing-power” seems to be important to understand;It appeared to me that even when you think about a certain thing, it can provoke your thoughts, words, feelings and images in your mind that makes the thing alive. When us-ing the term “thing-power” instead of object, the nonhuman world gets vital and “responsible” in a way.

The philosopher Spizona says that all things are animate in different degrees. The falling stone is vibrant or alive. He believes that everything is made of the same material, because everything is God’s work, everything is alive.

The texts tells small short stories about the dead rat, a plastic cap, a spool of thread that appears to be alive. For example he talks about trash – how you never can through something out, because its activity always will continue forever. The story looks at where human being and thing hood overlap, and concludes that human beings also are nonhuman and that things in our surroundings somehow also are “vital players”.

The political moral might be that we can do more to sort of activate our surroundings, the nonhuman world. Laws can make people act different, and take more care of the world. One should think of the relationship between humans and ma-terialities,the nonhuman, our surrounding as a relationship between people. Both will get affected by what “the other” does.

My image is soap bobbles. Soap bobbles are in a way vi-tal, and gets easily affected by its surroundings. They float around in routes that are difficult to define.You might break it if you touch it. You can look through it, and it has no color. Suddenly it breaks and disappears.

Wood seems to be alive in connection to its grains. They tell a story about water and nourishment, and if you count the grains you will know for how long the tree has been in nature. I like that even when the tree is turned into furniture, you will still see its grains. Its reference to its origin place will always live.

Reading:Jane Bennett, ‘Preface’; and ‘The force of things’, in Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010.

3. Systems in micro and macro scale

“Genes are molecular, yet control cells, tissues, organs and even entire organisms and species; words are also mo-lecular, but they work operate at the level of persons, in-stitutional organizations or entire government hierarchies” (p. 165, l. 30 Deleuze and Guatti 1987(referent))

When you look around, everything is a part of a system, and that system is part of a bigger system, and that is part of an even bigger system. This seems to be true in poli-tics, in economics, in socialism, idealism, ecology etc. When solutions are made, the small scale, the small system, the local is to be considered as well as the bigger, over-all-system. Some solutions can be good in one scale, but have negative effects on a smaller scale.

Furthermore this also refers to architecture; where one house might be build in connection to the tradition in the country, the terrain, the landscape, the city, the cul-ture and so on. And the house in connection to its clos-er surroundings, is it nature? a city? or a highway that surrounds it?. Inside the house are different regions with different functions, which fit the people who live there. In-side the regions there are different rooms, and inside the rooms there are regions as well, places where you eat, cor-ners where you sit and so on. If you go even further to the “raw materials” they should fit the functions of the rooms, and down to the molecules (like hydrogen, nitrogen carbon) they also must match each other in certain ways (referring to Deluze and Guattari- “first articulation”). All smaller systems are connected and need to work in both the local as well as the global system.In Manuel Delandas text “Deluze, Materialism and Politics” he discusses materialism, society and Politics. He uses the

Philosophers Michel Focaoult and Gilles Deluze and Felix Guattari.Deluze and Guattari talk about a concept of “double artic-ulation”. The first articulation refers to the materiality of stratum; “raw materials out of this it will be synthe-sised(carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen…)”.The second articulation refers to “the expressivity of a stratum; color, sound, texture, movement and the geometri-cal form and other…”Later in the text they put it in an even simpler way; dou-ble articulation is, “the process of joining parts to yield a whole with properties of its own. Since the most compo-nent parts are smaller than the whole they compose, the part-to-whole relation is a relation between small and large scales”.

In connection to my chosen material, wood, or the grains of wood, a tree is as well in an eco-”system”. It is very de-pended by its surroundings, the ground, the air, the weath-er, and has special conditions to exist. The grains show how the tree grows, and how it makes itself more and more stable during its growing. A system exists inside the wood as well as outside. Outside it is part of the ecosystem and gets water and minerals from the ground and light from the sun, which makes it grow. The leaves will then produce oxy-gen and dextrose and by that the tree becomes a part of the even bigger system.

Reading: Manuel DeLanda, ‘Deleuze, Materialism and Politics ’, in Ian Buchanan and N. Thoburn, eds, Deleuze and Politics, Ed-inburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008.

4. Gendered materials

The philosopher Gianni Vattimo claims, that the poststruc-turalism has reduced all materiality to linguistic stuff, that is contemporary. In his opinion this does not fulfill what matter is, and he introduces the idea of “lost mat-ter”.

Matter has on the other hand a long history. Through our memories, cultural norms and further experiences, we, as human beings have a quit precise idea of different materials - what they do and what how they react. We associate differ-ent materials with different situations, sex, cultures. Fur-thermore the media has had an increasing influence in creat-ing role models and ideas about man and woman. It therefore can seem a bit difficult to change our familiarized under-standing of what matter is.

“We may seek to return to matter as a prior discourse to ground our claims about sexual difference only to discover that matter is fully sedimented with discourses on sex and sexuality that prefigure and contain the uses to which that term can be put”. (Butler, Judith, p. 29 l. 23)

“In Greek, hyle is the wood or timber out if which various cultural constructions are made, but also a principle of origin, development and teleology which is at once causal and explanatory.”(Butler, Judith p. 31 l. 19)

Wood is in this connection not a blank blank surface on one definite thing, but something that can transform, and appear different situations.But is wood a rather masculine/male material than feminine? Why do we find more men as cabinetmakers or joiners than women? Is it true that “women are set to contribute the matter, men the form”(Aristolte(referent)p. 31. l. 32)?

Reading:Judith Butler, ‘Bodies that Matter’, in Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex, London: Routledge, 1993.

5. Feelings, emotions and affections

In Erik Shouse text “Feeling, Emotion, Affect” he discusses three therms; feelings, emotions and affection. He describes feelings as personal and biographical, that depends on only your thought and your previous experinc-es and memories. Emotions are social, according to when we get effected by each other. Emotions depends on expectation, and that might be different from culture to culture. I once watched a television program, where they did investigations with people drinking alcoholic drinks in a surviellan room. A few of them did not have alcohol in their drinks, al-though they thought so. All acted in the same drunk way.

To Erik Shouse affect is prior, and furthermore;

“a non - conscious experience of intensity it is a moment of unformed and instructed potential”. “Affect is the bodies way of preparing itself for action in a given circumstance by adding quantitative dimension of intensity to the quali-ty of an experience”. (Shouse, Erik, p. 1. l. 26)

As well as music can create affects, materials and propor-tions in architecture can create affects. I chose the mate-rial wood, because I get “affected” by the wood. It creates an atmosphere, where I feel safe and protected. The warmth of the wood makes you calm, takes away noise and creates a quiet zone. The touch of wood is warm and soft, oppo-site concrete, stone, bricks. By being very conscious about choices of materials and proportions in a room you can af-fect people and create different atmospheres. The human body needs a certain temperature, fits into certain proportions and feels comfortable surrounded by certain materials. in certain atmospheres.

Think about how the darkness and coldness affects many peo-ple during winter time. When reading this text I was sitting in the library, at the reading section, and a lot of people were focused on their computers, their readings, their math and whatever. Sudden-ly some very thin lines of music were played outside, and everyone stopped their work and looked up. A different atmo-sphere was for a moment spread in the room.

Reading: Eric Shouse, ‘Feeling, Emotion, Affect’, in Melissa Gregg, ed. ‘Affect.’ M/C Journal 8.6 (2005). 25 Nov. 2011. http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/03-shouse.php

Measuring Atmospheric Pressure

6. Can atmosphere be measured?

The 14th of April, 1856 Karl Marx did a speech concern-ing 'revolutionary atmosphere' of crisis, danger and hope. Marx didn't think that the audience "felt it". The at-mosphere that obtains in revolutions, wars, natural di-sasters are quit affective, and people might remember the exact atmosphere many years after.

Think about daily life, when it suddenly starts raining, the minutes before an important match, the day where the snow is falling, when your whole family are gathered for Chirstmas, when the first flowers come into bloom and the birds start singing in the spring and so on. Moments of change, the experience of contrast, is perhaps where we notice and gets affected by atmosphere the most.

"Atmospheres are perpetually forming and deforming , ap-pearing and disappearing, as bodies enter into relation with one another. They are never finished, static or at a rest”(Anderson, Ben, p. 79, l. 23)

Some extent of atmosphere may exist in every situation, but if you are living in it and used to it, you might not pay attention to it. If a man of another nationality moved into your situation, he would "feel it" - the (different) atmosphere.

In Scandinavia we have an old tradition for building in wood. To me wood reminds me of many situations and atmo-spheres and I somehow feel a connection to the material.

A girl from Kenya might, as mentioned before experience one of my “wood experiences” very differently. But still, if the atmosphere is existing she might get some of the same im-pression as me.But how do we create these atmospheres? And is it even pos-sible to define, compare and measure atmospheres? Which atmo-spheres affect you?

Reading:Ben Anderson, ‘Affective Atmospheres’, in Emotion, Space and Society 2, 2009, pp. 77-81.

7. Local or Global

Today we live together, in a way. You email your friend in Paris, you watch the election in US, you call your col-leges in Japan. Furthermore materials, food, things, are imported and exported all over the world, and you happi-ly eat your african banana. In this way we help each other to make business, jobs, and interact between cultures, but spreading materials around the world might not be the best solution in the long term.

One could say, that the globalization is a result of de-mocracy, which is known from the greeks in Athen.

"The greek city was a greenhouse for people who agreed to be uprooted from modus vivendi of living in separation and instead be planted in the disarming modus of living to-gether". (Sloterdijk, Peter, p. 946, l. 27)

The bath is especially known as this social meeting place, where the greeks toke showers, studied, trained their bod-ies, ate and socialized.

Aristotele said; "humans are, he suggested, by no means urbanites by na-ture but have to be turned into such;they cannot simply be posited as city-dwellers(…) So there must logically be a third term that comes between nature and such an assumed act of will, one that would be strong enough to neutralize the powers people have to repel one another and to over-come their aversion to involuntary neighborhoods"

Democracy can be turned in to tyranny or a "one-way-commu-nication", for example when on man is addressing an au-

dience, when we don't get to choose, if we want the little chines girl to sew our clothes or when we pick food in the supermarket. Although it seems easy and good in a way to share, and make use of different countries qualities and characteristics, it might be more expensive in a broader perspective. A palm won't grow in the snow in Sweeden, and the solution might not be to transpose the climatic conditions along with it. Maybe we need to make a greater use and appreciation of our local "ingredients". At last this also might make more "original" atmospheres. When everything is mixed together the different characters of one culture seems to disappear in the mess. The the wooden house might stand more beautiful and long in its origin climate and culture.

Reading: Peter Sloterdijk, ‘Atmospheres of Democracy’, in Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, eds, Making Things Public: Atmo-spheres of Democracy, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2005.

Bibliography

References are odered in connection to the readings and my posts

Material assembleges;

1.Katie Lloyd Thomas ed. ‘Introduction’, Material Matters: Architecture and Material Practice, London: Routledge, 2007.

Diana Coole and Samantha Frost, ‘Introducing the New Ma-terialism’, in Diana Coole and Samantha Frost, eds, New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010.

2.Jane Bennett, ‘Preface’; and ‘The force of things’, in Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of Things, Durham and London: Duke University Press, 2010.

3.Manuel DeLanda, ‘Deleuze, Materialism and Politics ’, in Ian Buchanan and N. Thoburn, eds, Deleuze and Politics, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2008.

Manuel DeLanda, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History, New York: Swerve, 2000. Excerpt.

4.Judith Butler, ‘Bodies that Matter’, in Bodies that Mat-ter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex, London: Routledge, 1993.

Affective atmospheres;

5.Eric Shouse, ‘Feeling, Emotion, Affect’, in Melissa Gregg, ed. ‘Affect.’ M/C Journal 8.6 (2005). 25 Nov. 2011. http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/03-shouse.php

6.Ben Anderson, ‘Affective Atmospheres’, in Emotion, Space and Society 2, 2009, pp. 77-81.

7.Peter Sloterdijk, ‘Atmospheres of Democracy’, in Bruno Latour and Peter Weibel, eds, Making Things Public: Atmo-spheres of Democracy, Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2005.

Others:Juhani Pallasmaa, ‘Hapticity and time’, Notes on Fragile Ar-chitecture(2000), p. 321-333