Losing the spatial experience

In addition to reading The Art and Craft of the Machine and our other readings for this evening, I also read Jane Addams' The Humanizing Tendency of Industrial Education. The reading itself is very short and very insightful, and I reccomend it to anyone looking for still more reading to do :)

Confusing syntax and uncontrolled sentence run-on aside, the main point we can glean from FLWs writings on the interaction and evolution between the Artist and the Machine is that he expresses a wariness for the disconnect between the Artist and his craft. Interestingly enough FLW opens his essay by describing almost ver batim the psychoanalytical idea of the Archetype of the Self; the discovery of greater goals, which we work towards over the course of our lives without fully being aware of what our goals are. He goes on to discuss the importance of architecture in ancient cultures to communicate and immortalize stories, individuals and beliefs. FLW is entirely correct in his statement that printed matter has destroyed our reliance on the building to contain traces of our culture. He also posits, correctly in my opinion, that the tendency of the Machine to separate the artist or designer from the ability to work with his hands and truly understand the materiality of the work.

The second article, by Jane Addams, emphasizes how training artists and individuals not only the theoretical process, but the physical processes and techniques used to craft objects in the real. Addams proposes that such an 'industrial education' encourages thinking outside of the box, by "restoring a balance between the cultivation of his hand and brain." She is correct in that an entirely theoretical or conceptual education creates another disconnect between the formation of an idea and the actual production of the physical work.

We live in a modern society that has, for the larger part, abandonded tangibility for free-thinking theory; a culture that often prioritizes the theoretical over the practicable. This is where I draw a direct line between Addams and Wright; FLW laments the loss of architecture as a physical center of culture and communication to printed matter, which is far less permanent and, importantly, we cannot experience in nearly the same way. Standing in the nave of a grand cathedral, surrounded by giant paintings of biblical scenes and lit with the glow of thousands of hand-lit candles is FAR less evocative than reading the story of the bible on paper. By relying on written language we lose the numinosity of the architectural experience; its potential to awe us and grip our deep collective unconscious. We have no appreciation for the importance of the spaces we physically inhabit; it is more about what we think and how we communicate these thoughts.

-Christin