fields

Jordan Crandall (xaf@interport.net)
Fri, 13 Jun 1997 16:48:42 -0400 (EDT)

Keller's ideas of switches and fittings foreground the enormous
spatial effects of tactical interventions or adjustments. They lock
on to the particular and look at the consequences of its
mobilization (e.g. an elevator) and multiplication (repeated parts
and procedures in building processes). So by isolating particular
fittings and looking at their adjustments, entire architectures come
into view, as well as the societal constructs in which they function,
including the protocols under which they are organized and
articulated. But this is not uni-directional: there is a feedback
loop within which the fitting is situated, since it is informed--
informatted--and valorized within these larger contexts. So in the
construction or location of the fitting, there is an implied
understanding of its modalities and distributions in larger social and
architectural fields, as architectural articulation itself. It is a
cross-platform tectonics that doesn't need to resolve the
incommensurabilities. Keller sees it in terms of a rerouted
development format based in transaction, repetition, conversion,
and modes of regulation (she uses figures like "governor" and
"valve").

The fitting can be multiplied and/or it can operate as a switch.
Spaces, too, can operate as switch-sites. I understand the switch
as more analogic--it institutes and regulates a flow, a translation, a
conversion, rather than having a binary on/off function. So it is an
intervention--existing or strategically-placed--that opens or
regulates a channel or conduit, but in terms of a very specific
placement within the circuit.

Shifting back into perspective mode: Susan mentions "contortion,"
and if we are thinking about perspective in this landscape, then it
does absolutely apply: it's an extending, channelling, and warping
of vision and the visual field. We know that technologies extend
and rework the visual capacity from the body proper, compelling
a re-embodiment according to new terms. Where once there was
a fixed coupling there is now a pliable space, wherein body and
vision can be continually reconstituted according to emerging
demands. This is a relentlessly material and materializing process,
which is often overlooked (as in conceptions of "disembodiment").
Also, the visual plane, or representational field, no longer exists as
such in a reflective mode. Think of the hand-held electronic
gadget (the site of enormous struggles)--it has no "plane," but
operates through rhythmic, or frequencing, alignments. So if
perspective implies a viewpoint (a subject and a located capacity
for viewing), attached to a standpoint (an embodiment), looking
*through* a technologically-mediated signifying apparatus (code,
signal, etc.) into a constructed space, which may or may not have
"depth" in the conventional sense, then we could view perspective
as a convenient marker for this alignment circuit.