During Wintersession, I decided I wanted to tie up a few projects which I felt could be very applicable to my thesis and thesis thinking. I returned to a project which was the subject of the October 29, 2008 post "BREAKTHROUGH." Adaptation of Fit has become a project which is starting to explain further my ideas about merging visual systems and chance operations. This was a writing experiment conducted with the chapter Goodness of Fit from Christopher Alexander’s Notes on the Synthesis of Form, a text which has heavily influenced my thinking.
The first step in this exercise was to extracted certain portions of the Alexander text which I felt were applicable and crucial to my thesis study. By editing in this way I was able to read the text in a new way and make assumptions and discoveries within the text which were not readily apparent during the first read. Compiling these passages provided the framework for the writing to follow.
These particular excerpts were extracted in their order of appearance in the work, but now have new meaning because of their placement in relation to each other. The read is now more suited to my study and allows for an interpretation of the text which is unique to my thesis thinking and study.
The next step in adapting the Alexander to text to reveal ideas about my thesis thinking, was to add my ideas about chance, system, fit, form and context. I began writing into the text. I wove my thoughts into the extracted paragraphs from the chapter. It was almost as though Alexander and I were writing about my study together.
When reading my voice and Alexander’s voice together, a new form of thinking began to reveal itself. I started to discover my ideas about method. I was clarifying a proposed method of working and finding new ideas. Now there was a re - thinking of my own idea. My ideas were starting to develop further and they were beginning to form into a cohesive train of thought.
It was now time to make the text completely my own. I extracted my voice from the combination of the Alexander text and my voice. I placed all of my additions to the text, in the order in which I inserted them into the Alexander text.
By doing this I was able to see if a cohesive narrative about my ideas of method were really beginning to form. Although the text was choppy and sometimes not completely coherent, the basic ideas were forming, and I had a base on which I could begin re - fitting the text to meet the needs of my study. The only line of text left of the Alexander essay was “the ultimate object of design is form.” This line speaks to the over-arching goal of my work, which is to find form from unlikely origins.
I then began again...
Starting again with the full chapter of The Goodness of Fit, from Christopher Alexander’s Notes on the Synthesis of Form, I performed a chance operation, in order to begin writing about chance, systems, fit, form and context.
Words which came before a comma were extracted from the chapter and placed into a continuous list. These words, taken from moments of pause, became the words used in new sentences about my thesis thinking. A selection of these words began a new form of writing which allowed for a narrative to come from chance. Using the words in the order in which I found them, in the chapter, gave me guidelines in the writing, but the passages which followed where serendipitous.
Through many drafts and reorganization of the writing, which developed from a chance operation, I was able to formulate thoughts and ideas which were informative to my thesis and thesis thinking. The ability to rework the text over and over again while using the Alexander text as a reference, allowed for a synthesis of ideas and a reneal of interest in my thesis subjects.
Using a set of words to develop a writing was a difficult process but it gave clarity and composure to the subject I have chosen to study. I was able to articulate ideas which I previously had confusion and gave a new perspective in regards to chance, systems, fit, form and context. Development of the text became a test of the methods I am proposing.
The final phase was finding the common ground between the two pieces of writing which were produced. Obviously they were going to be similar, but the way in which I came to the words was very different in both processes. By expanding the way I think about writing I was able to extract more ideas and gain a better sense of the questions I have about visual systems and chance operation.
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