Renee's Genius Loci

Renee Hulshoff in collaboration with Kaweh and Yerry

The documentation of the research group can be viewed here.

De verademing

Kaweh Modiri's document can be found here.

Acousmatic Genius Loci project

The documentation of the research group of Thijs, Louis, Alwin can be viewed here.

Forest Project

The documentation of the research group
Hadas, Gilad, Shiri and Iris can be viewed here.

Maarten's Loci

My documentation is online! it can be viewed here!

Song can be downloaded here.



thank you all for the wonderfull last day, i saw/heard alot of nice things from everybody!

Maarten.

message

Dear genius researchers,

Tomorrow we will have a common meeting at 2 pm in the image and sound
room with Horst and me (i will be in from 1100).

The documentation of your research is important in order to understand your
process and development as an artist. Applying criticism to your work will help
you to formulate the abstract.

I give you some basic questions to answer:

Why does this particular landscape or environmental setting move you and
what is it that attaches you to those places?

In which genius loci can you find yourself?

What is the essence of the special place you chose? Give a short history of
the place.

What did you perceive on that place?
Explain step by step your perception about this place: describe the dialogues
with the space with all the senses, reflect like a mirror on the space and try
to recreate the innerlandscape of your mind.

Are you searching for the truth?

Are you using principles of mathematics or geometry in your project?

Which kind of effort are you making in order to understand the underlying
reality of the manifest world that appears to our senses?

Are you in the "borderline" (between pure ideas and physical world)
in your work?

If your work is inspired by the acousmatics, explain which are the connections.

Which kind of scale you are using to explain your imagination?
Musical scale, micro- and macroscopic scale, observation of nature...

ciao,

Michela

Acousmatic experiments

Art and Science

see the lectures link on the right

Sterrewacht Leiden (Observatory)

Elvira Wersche in Geometric pattners

3 April work shop

Christine Gruwez

2 April lecture:

"Pythagoras bridge builder
between mythos and logos ".





see the lectures link on the right size

Genius Loci and Art History

Genius Loci

There is an opposition between space and place.

A space is a field of possibilities.
A place is the part of the space where the space has a different meaning.

We organize our world according special places we know from our memory.
We can find places with the same function on every level or scale:

Some examples

The secret place
The forbidden place
The chaotic place
The dangerous place
The safe place
Meeting point

In nature there are different places:

the well
the lake
the open place in the wood
the top of a mountain
the cave
sacred wood
coast

In culture

The marketplace
Grave yard
temple
square
ruin
garden
railway station

modern places

the parking lot
factory
border of the city

A special place has three elements:

The place itself
form, material, borders, colors,

The myth of a place,
the stories which are told about a place, because of what happened there or
what could happen there

The scenario
The design of what can happen in the future and the changes in the place to
make that possible.

Antiquity
Genius Loci:
Walking through the landscape of Greece, Turkey or Italy I can recognise the
special places, guarded by the different gods, ghosts or nymphs. It is the
world of the stories by Ovidius. Gods are everywhere.

Middle Ages
Inside/ outside
The closed church. Inside it is a holy place and safe, outside is evil
Inside the walls of te city it is safe
The closed garden, ³Hortus Conclusus², as a symbol of the soul.
³Paradise² means ³closed garden².
God is inside; outside there is the devil.

Renaissance/Baroque perspective:
Every point is part of a geometric construction. It means that every point is equal. There is only space, no places. The space is constructed geometrically and filled with architecture from
Antiquity: Doric, Jonic and Corinthian order. Man is everywhere. He is able to make a controlled space.

Eighteenth century
Beginning of the Romantic era
People do not believe in the geometric space anymore: Love for ruins. The English garden is a Romantic copy of nature, not geometric anymore. At last we see the empty void of a huge landscape with only one lonely traveller. The landscape is rough and dangerous. Man loves nature but looses control.

Nineteenth century
People try to fill the empty space of the new landscape as quickly as
possible with cities, buildings and things. Urbanism is developing. The age
of the metropole. Man tries to get control by making a completely artificial space: The modern
city.

Twentieth century
Till 19th century every place or town had a different time. From 1908 in the Netherlands a legal time. (Same moment as the theory of relativity of Einstein) new concept of space: Space-time. The space seen while we are in movement. We do not see a building anymore, standing in front of it. We move along and get a vague impression. The city becomes a Cubist collage. Culture, artificial space becomes the new nature for mankind, the new wilderness.

Christian Norberg-Schulz, Genius Loci, towards a phenomenology of
architecture, New York, 1980
Important book

Geoffrey and Susan Jellicoe, The landscape of man, London 1987
Much illustrations

Martin Warnke, Political Landscape, London 1994

Simon Schama, Landscape and memory, London 1995
Beautifull book, especially the first chapter about the wood.

David Seamon en Robert Mugerauer (ed.), Dwelling, Place and Environment, New
York, 1985
Herein there is: R. Murray Schafer, about the sound of a place. Murray
Schafer is the inventor of the concept of 'soundscape'.

More ideas you can get on the website of the HKU. (Academy of Utrecht)

The concept art geography as they use it in Utrecht and I explained in my lesson is more or less my invention. I worked at the HKU for ten years. But afterwards it turned out to be a concept which was used also in politics and art history of Germany before the second world war, and used in Nazi ideology, which we did not know. That was the reason people wanted to forget
it and did not want to use it. Norberg Schultz is important because he re-invented the concept genius loci after the war.
Not knowing anything about that history we started to use the term 'artgeography' in the eighties in Utrecht, influenced by my professor Van de Waal from Leiden. He declared art geography as a theoretical possibility, but never developed it.

The addres of the HKU site is:

http://kunstgeografie.hku.nl/lessen.html

Michael

Acousmatic's experiments

Pythagorean tuning

Music of the Spheres

Meaning of Numbers

Sacred Tetractys

Pentagram

Pythagorean proportions


...using a Monochord to produce musical intervals based on the proportions:

1:1 = unison

2:1 = octave

3:2 = fifth

4:3 = fourth

changing the spirit of the place

first feeling...

Research Groups

Genius Loci

genius-loci@interfaculty.nl

Particular places in nature have inspired people to create works of art or to react to them spiritually in rituals with characteristics related to the spirit of the place, the so-called genius loci. In the course of time art became independent of these places, with special buildings like theaters, churches, concert halls and museums built to execute the rituals of art. Following this, the relationship between the artwork and the place where it is made was further weakened by the technological possibilities of reproduction and mass dissemination.

The present, virtual environment as a product of digital media has lost any connection to the spatial environment, resulting in products that only react to each other. In this way the virtual environment creates its own context, a process that is underscored by the fact that the traditional stages and museum environments have not been able to transform themselves into venues where technological art forms can find a place. What criteria should be developed for spaces designed to attract audiences for these art forms? To achieve this, the concept of environment will have to be further developed outside of the walls of the museum and into the public space. Artists can help to reconstruct these spaces for this aim by creating temporary or permanent studios and laboratories where the work in progress can find a place.

Dates: March, 26, 27, 29, April 2, 3, 5, 10, 12, 16, 17, 19, 23, 24, 26

Objective: how to use the characteristics of a space in the creation of works of art?

Location: t.b.a.

Examination: small research assignments, attendance

Important note: The research group Genius Loci is open to students in the 2nd year BA and higher.