Well stated, although I will concede that at least I have been neglecting
and's point that the production/manufacture/etc. of 'the image' does not
necessarily need to be circumscribed within consumer and media cultures.
This is particularly my interest as an architect confronted with the
domination of my field by these practices (athough I've since discovered
that and and I have been primed by the same architectural indoctrination
program). Potentially this is my blinder. The manufactured image
directed at the consumer, as a blurring of the spatial and non-spatial,
is what I have been targeting in my posts. And while I certainly do not
take issue that the tactic of blurring is in general a necessary tactic
for critical investigation, at least within this one segment of
image-production even it has been commodified. In other words, and's
questions: "what are the differnt forms that the image takes today? what
are they made of? how do these forms differ in the way that they
engage/are engaged by a subject? what different affects do each of these
engagements produce?" are still unanswered in my mind.
Within the urbanimage, the apparent forms certainly seem to be bound up
within the practice of tourism promotion, and -- as usual -- the
subsequent making-safe-by-making-similar tactic of urban design.
Considering Jordan Geiger's point that architecture has been increasingly
enamoured with the urban these days, it would be interesting, for
example, to seriously analyze certain 'critical' urban projects for their
'imagist' value and to put these in the context of the more standard
attempts to construct an urban image. Take any recent Koolhaas urban
project and a 'warehouse district' redevelopment as a starting point. (As
an aside, what is he doing in his appointment as the planner for
Universal Studios/Universal City, anyway...I haven't seen anything come
out of this relationship.) Also, is it merely a cultural romanticism
that makes the cities the tourist spots and not the 'suburbs' in the US,
even though there is potentially more to do in most American suburbs,
etc.? These studies would seem to offer the potential to provide a more
potent understanding of an image production process which, while
concerned with consumer practices, is not circumscribed within their
culture and which may offer the opportunities for and's investigations.
brian lonsway
......................................................................
j erik jonsson distinguished visiting assistant professor.
rensselaer architecture.
lonsway@rpi.edu.
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