Mathias Dekock Publish Reconstructing Embodied Spaces

Mathias Dekock // matsdekock@gmail.
com
http://matsdekock.wix.com/home
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RECONSTRUCTING EMBODIED SPACES

tracing architectural environments through perception, persistence and memory
Mats Dekock is an architect and an artist based in Brussels, Belgium. In his

Transmedian work, he shifts the emphasis of his architectural discourse from
a designer point-of-view to that of a subject embedded within space. The
architectural toolbox and discourse remain his key instruments, but it is through
the articulation of subjectivity in the dialogue between subject and space, that
his architectural artwork arises.
This research dossier is submitted

to the department of Transmedia
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
MASTER of ARTS
in
TRANSMEDIA
Sint-Lukas Brussel
LUCA School of Arts
KU Leuven
2013
ABSTRACT
Experience of architectural environments is a subjective dialogue between the
self and space, shaped by both the physical, geometrical and objective realm
of architecture as well as the mental world of the observer. When subjects
are confronted with architectural environments, they dont merely take spatial
information in as an objective observation, but engage in a subjective dialogue
with the space in which they are embedded.
The subjective dialogue between the self and space is defined by spatial
embodiment, or the subjects interpretation and identification of space through
sensory experiences. But there seems to be a difference between what we take
in sensory, and what our mind mentally projects as an image of the world onto
the images that are taken in. What we perceive is shaped by what we know, and
what we know is shaped by what we perceive.
Space can thus be read as a projection of the subject, as a result of the
dialogue between the embodiment of spatial experiences, and the responses to
these stimuli. Architectural experiences condense into mental models that, in the
context of this research, will be defined as poetic images. They are a subjective
Weltinnenraum, in which the experience of architectural environments
defines the construction of the mental model that acts as a framework for
the identification and orientation of the subjective self within space. These
poetic images give rise to an imaginative reality, which allows for a projective
identification with space.
Poetic images tell about space. Not about the objective geometrical realm of
space, but about the subjective, interpretative representation of space.
The dialogue between space and subject, and the embodiment of poetic
images is bound by the perception and memory of architectural environments,
as well as the persistence of these spaces on the subjective mind. Tracing these
phenomena engaged with the embodiment of poetic images will offer a better
understanding in the way in which subjects appropriate spaces.
This research is written from an architectural point-of-view, but tends to shift
the emphasis of the experience of architectural environments from the realm of
objectivity to the realm of subjective representation and embodiment. It traces
perception,persistence and memory as a toolset to do so.
RECONSTRUCTING EMBODIED SPACES

tracing architectural environments through perception, persistence and memory
ABSTRACT
p.5
INTRODUCTION
p.8
Poetic images of architectural environments
p.10
p.10
p.11
p.11
p.12
p.12
p.14
Perception of architectural environments
p.14
p.14
p.15
p.17
p.19
Persistence of architectural environments
p.19
p.19
p.19
Memory of architectural environments
p.22
p.22
p.23
Mental imagery
The simulated image
The conscious image
The neurological image
The poetic image
Embodying architectural environments
Psycho-geographic topography
Phenomenological consciousness
Architectural imaginary
Cognitive mapping
Hieroglyphs of space
Subjective Projection
Tracing cognition
Cognitive enhancement
METHODOLOGY
p.24
p.24
p.24
p.27
p.27
p.29

Method of Loci
Screen memories
Mediatized memory
p.31
p.31
p.35
p.37
CASE STUDY RECONSTRUCING MARIENBAD
p.38
Embodied imagination
Space as a projection of the subject

Persistense of Vision
Cinema as embodied poetic image
p.38
Marienbad as an embodied poetic image
p.43
Case Study Project #1: Disembodied Narrative

Case Study Project #2: Cinematic Decoupage
Case Study Project #3: Regard-en-Abyme
Case Study Project #4: Marienbads Method of Loci
p.44
p.60
p.74
p.92
DISCUSSION
p.102
Last Year in Marienbad as an embodied poetic image

The Case Study Projects as embodied poetic image
The Case Study Projects and the introduced theoretical discourse
The Case Study Projects and the traced methodology
The Case Study Projects and the lecture of LAnne dernire a Marienbad
p.102
p.102
p.103
p.104
p.105
CONCLUSION
p.106
BIBLIOGRAPHY
p.107
INTRODUCTION
...silent rooms
where ones footsteps are absorbed
by carpets so thick, so heavy,
that no sound reaches ones ear,
as if the very ear
of him who walks on once again
along these corridors,
through these salons and galleries,
in this edifice of a bygone era,
this sprawling, sumptuous,
baroque, gloomy hotel,
where one endless corridor
follows another,
silent, empty corridors
heavy with cold, dark woodwork,
stucco, molded paneling,
marble, black mirrors,
dark-toned portraits, columns,
sculpted doorframes,
rows of doorways,
galleries, side corridors
that in turn lead to empty salons,
salons heavy
with ornamentation of a bygone era...
...as if the ground
were still sand or gravel
or flagstones
over which I walked once again
along these corridors,
through these salons and galleries,
in this edifice
of a bygone era,
this sprawling, sumptuous,
baroque, gloomy hotel,
where one endless corridor
follows another...
(Robbe-Grillet,1961)
The experience of architectural environments is a subjective dialogue between

the self and space. This dialogue isnt approached as a mere interrogation
of space in terms of its euclidian geometry and spatial syntax, where spatial
objectivity would be traced from the birds eye perspective of objective oversight.
In the context of this research, this dialogue between the self and space is
approached as a subjective interrogation of space, where space is seen as a
projection of the subject, in which personal memory and point-of-view defines
the persistence of space on the human mind. The methods and phenomena
engaged with, and the representations derived from this dialogue are the subject
of the research that follows. This dialogue is engaged through the sensory
interface between the subject and space. Through the perceptual act, and the
positioning of the subjective body within space.
In order to gain a better understanding of the structure of this research, its
title will be decomposed into its building blocks in order to clearify their role
and significance: Reconstructing Embodied Spaces: tracing architectural
environments through perception, persistence and memory.
EMBODIMENT: this notion orients the research of the subjective space-self
dialogue to an embodied spatial cognition in which sensory phenomena are
key in the understanding of the subjective situatedness. Embodiment argues
that all aspects of spatial cognition are shaped by bodily aspects, such as
the perceptual system. The relationship subjects have with their architectural
environments is not a mere objective lecture, but a bodily and sensory
experience. (Borghi, 2010) Embodiment is introduced due to its focus on the
subjectivity or personal embodiment of spatial experiences.
RECONSTRUCTING EMBODIED SPACES: As architectural environments are
embodied, the mind translates these sensory experiences into mental models.
They condense into mental representations that, in the context of this research,
will be introduced as poetic images. A close reading of the poetic image as
a condensation of embodied spaces is introduced due to its focus on the
representations and reconstructions of spatial experiences as a result of the
space-self dialogue.
PERCEPTION, PERSISTENCE AND MEMORY: The embodiment of sensory
experiences, and their mental representations in poetic images find their source
in the processing of the perception, persistence and memory of architectural
environments. As a combination of pure peripheral and sensory phenomena
with mental interpretations, they are the generative forces behind the formation
of poetic images through spatial embodiment.
This introduces the embodiment of spatial experiences as a subjective spaceself dialogue, the generation of poetic images as a result of these experiences,
and the perception, persistence and memory as generative phenomena in this
dialogue. This discourse is translated and structurized as follows:

INTRODUCTION: The phenomena of perception, persistence and memory will
be evaluated as building blocks for the embodiment of spatial experiences, and
the generation of poetic images.
METHODOLOGY: The building blocks of perception, persistence and memory
are translated into a generative toolset for the construction of poetic images as
a result of spatial embodiment.
CASE STUDY: The generative toolset is deployed in a case study, where a
dialogue is engaged with an architectural environment, in the form of the
reconstruction of a cultural artefact.
DISCUSSION: The deployed reconstruction will be evaluated against the study
on the embodiment of spatial experiences, as well as the theoretical foundation
for the generation of poetic images.
CONCLUSION: The case study as a focus on a specific cultural artefact is seen
in the broader context of everyday lifes subjective dialogues with architectural
environments.
Architecture, here, will thus act as a vehicle of memory and perception, and a
tool in the construction of persistent poetic images. By reconstructing subjectively
embodied spaces, this research shifts the focus of architecture from a designed
objectivity to an experienced subjectivity.
Poetic images of architectural environments

Mental imagery
Mental imagery is a crucial vehicle in the perception, persistence and memory
of architectural environments. It allows us to grasp the many faces and the
multiplicity of architectural environments, since it generates a continuum of
experience in time and space.
The most existentially and experientially rooted architectural experiences impact
our minds through images which are condensations of distinct architectural
essences. Lasting architectural experiences consist of lived and embodied
images which have become an inseparable part of our lives. (Pallasmaa, 2011)
These embodied images are the foundation of artistic expression of architectural
environments.
Architectural experiences condense in the representations of the mental imagery,
in which the complex multiplicity of space is summarized into an apprehensible
model. Metaphorically, this can be clarified through the reference to
archeologist, who combine the shards of a lost and found antique amphora into
the objective geometric model. But as shards are missing, he has to interpolate
over the missing parts in order to generate a wholeness in the reconstruction.
Shards as relicts of memory. Additions as interpolation for the reconstruction of

a wholeness of image. It is this duality between factual experienced memory (the
shard) and interpretative interpolation (the additions) that are combined in the
mental imagery.
Embodied are the subjective condensation of a sensory lived experience.
Embodied images simultaneously evoke an imaginative reality and become
part of our existential experience as well as our sense of selfhood. (Pallasmaa,
2011) As they are embodied, they are given a decisive role in our internal
mental world. Or, in Rainer Maria Rilkes notion; the Weltinnenraum.
The Weltinnenraum is the familiar, intimate and personal representation of
architectural environments with which one is capable to identify with.
The simulated image
Embodied images are, thus, not a mere representation of reality, but, since they
are embodied, become the source for the creation of their own subjective reality.
In this interplay between the objective real, and the subjective Weltinnenraum,
Baudrillard offers a further treatise to interrogate the relationship among reality
in Simulacra and Simulation. (Baudrillard, 1981) ...The simulacrum is never
that which conceals the truth- it is the truth which conceals that there is none.
The simulacrum is true. (Poster, 1988, p. 166) Baudrillard claims that our
experience of the architectural environments is always bound by simulation,
represented in simulacra. They are not a mediation of reality, or a plain
representation of reality, they simply hide that anything like reality is irrelevant to
our current understanding of our lives (Baudrillard, 1981)
He believes that simulacra saturate the human experience of architectural
environments to the extents that all meaning becomes meaningless by being
infinitely mutable.
Simulacra can be a copy of reality, or a reflection of a profound reality
(Baudrillard, 1981). Simulacra can be a perversion of reality, which masks and
denatures reality. Simulacra can mask the absence of a profound reality, and
can therefore be a representation without original. Simulacra can generate their
own reality, unattached to any representational source.
This study on the notion of the simulacra offers the insight that the image can
precede the very reality it is supposed to represent, and that even reality has
become a pale reflection of the image (Kearney, 1994) It is in this interplay
between the objective real and the subjective imagery that the embodied, or
poetic image plays its role.
The conscious image
The notion of IMAGE has many faces: picture, visual depiction, photograph...
image, imagery, imagination, imaginal...mental image, affective image. This

mixture of notions and meanings often render the definition of image and
imagination vague. Our weak grasp of sensory and mental phenomena in
general characterizes this blurring of definitions.(Pallasmaa, 2011) Traditionally,
the image is acknowledged in its perceptual, mimetic and mnemonic roles,
but less in its role in the creative exploration and artistic expression. Thus, the
embodied image has its role to play in the interplay between sensory percepts
and imaginative mental images.
The mental image thus orients the subject within an environment. Imagination
allows to fill the gaps in sensory percepts. Both the objective real and
the subjective imaginary influence consciousness towards architectural
environments.
The image and the percept are therefore not different objects of consciousness;
they are different ways of being conscious of objects. The image is the relation
of consciousness to the object; in other words, it means a certain manner in
which the objects make its appearance to consciousness, or if one prefers, a
certain manner in which consciousness presents an object to itself (Sartre,
1948, p8)
The neurological image
(Mental images) are not primarily abstract or alienated from lived experience;
it articulates, compresses, distils, and amalgamates live experience (Pallasmaa,
2011, p35)
Or, to state things a bit more poetic: Every definite image in the minds is
steeped and dyed in the free water that flows around it. With it goes the sense
of its relations, near and remote, the dying echo of whence it came to us, the
dawning sense of whither it is to lead. The significance, the value of the image
is all in this halo of penumbra that surrounds and escorts it. (James, 1890, pp
16-17)
The similarities between percepts and mental images are even enhanced
further in neurological studies that show that they both take place in the very
same areas of the brain. The neurological activity in the area of the visual
cortex related with images is similar to the activity of looking at real pictures
(Pallasmaa, 2011, p 37) Imagination, thus, creates a mental architectural
environment that is neurologically processed as real. This sense of reality, or
consciousness of architectural environments, is thus not just engaged with an
objectively given, collectively shared world. It is an irrepressible imagination on
the path of the unconscious, through the unpredictable ways of association.
The poetic image
Even though the image is commonly understood as an organizational visual
representation, in mental life it acts as a permanent mediation between the

physical and the mental, the perceptual and the imaginary, the factual and the
affected. Through embodiment of the image, is becomes part of our existential
environment, and offers a sense of selfhood. It structures percepts, and mediates
subjective narrative. (Pallasmaa, 2011)
Embodied spaces condense in poetic images, the imaginative representation
of spatial interpretation. Poetic images are mental frames that direct our
associations, emotions, Due to its contradictory and often illogical
ingredients, the poetic image escape rational, linear and exclusive reading and
exploration. It entices our senses, imagination and emotions...It occupies our
mind, conditions,...and gives rise to an imaginative reality (Pallasmaa, 2011,
p41)
Poetic images as are artistic artefacts that embody experiences. With the notion
of projective identification, Melanie Klein suggest that in the dialogue between
observer and the poetic image, the observer projects its own subjectivity onto
the poetic image, in order to identify with it. We share our sense of life with our
mental imagery. (Modell, 2006, p12)
Poetic images mediate the resonance of artistic discourse to the experience of
the observer. Poetic images are, in this interest, polyphonic. They are multiple,
superimposed lines of thought at once. This multitude confronts the subject
with a scatterred and diffused input, onto which the subject projects personal
narrative in order to identify with it. An image must hold together, it brings
together determinate elements, presentable elements, and these elements
always are found caught up in certain organization and in certain order.
(Modell, 2006, p209)
Poetic images incorporate both the real and the suggested, as well as the
perceived and the imagined. It is material and mental at the same time. On the
impact of poetic images on the mind of the observer, Colin St. John Wilson,
Architect of the British Library, writes: It is as if I am being manipulated by some
subliminal code, not to be translated into words, which acts directly on the
nervous system and imagination at the same time sturring imitations of meaning
with vivid spatial experience as though they were one thing. It is my belief that
the code acts so directly and vividly upon us because it is strangely familiar ....It
is which is now recalled to us throuh art (Wilson, 1989, pp 64-70)
Poetic images are artistic entities or artifact that engage with subjective
imagination in order to create a dialogue between subject and image, onto
which the subject projects the self in order to gain consciousness of the
architectural environments of the poetic image, thus allowing these architectural
environments to be perceived and remembered through embodiment.
Experience of poetic images is about internalizing and identifying an
image. Through this experience, the image turns into an imaginative reality.
(Pallasmaa, 2011, p94)
Embodying architectural environments
The Embodiment of architectural environments thus occurs through the
mediating faculty of the poetic image. Previous sections have defined the
poetic image through a multitude of viewpoints. Mental imagery serves as a
Weltinnenraum to generate an image one can identify or even familiarize
with. Simulates images make subjective representations. Poetic images engage
consciousness of architectural environments, and are therefore in the mind
of the beholder.But obtaining these poetic images requires sensory en mental
processing of perceived input data.
The mental interpretation of architecture experiences happens through a
multitude of processes: perception, persistence and memory of architectural
environments, whose working methods will be traced in order to gain a better
understanding of the genesis of poetic images.

Psycho-Geographic Topography
Not so many years ago, the word space had a strictly geometrical meaning:
the idea it evoked was simply that of an empty area...generally accompanied by
terms such as euclidean and infinite. The general feeling was that the concept
of space was ultimately a mathematical one. To spread subjective space would
have sounded strange. (Lefebvre, 1974)
The experience of architectural environments is bound by both the physical,
geometrical and objective realm of architecture as well as the mental world of
the observer.
Our experience of reality is a result of our individual, subjective perceptions.
Thus, spaces are not perceived as objective geometric realities, but as
subjectively loaded entities. In the perceptual dialogue with the architectural
environments, people are permanently confronted with an intertwining of
narrative structures between space and the self.
People are confronted with the spaces that surround them.
The German term Umwelt better defines the architectural environments as a
combination of Um (that what surrounds) and Welt (world), therefor defining
it as that what surrounds the subject, that in which a subject has to find its
place. In which the subject is being-in-the-world. Perception of architectural
environments is always a dialogue between subject and space.

Through ones attitudes, feelings, ideas, memories, personal values and choices
towards architectural environments, one grows an experiential understanding,
a place identity as a sort of self-identity consisting of a broadly conceived
cognition about the physical world that surround the subject.
Fritz Kahn, Maschine Mensch (1)
Robert Fudd Bewusstsein (2)
Phenomenological Consciousness
The permanent dialogue between space and subject relates to the positioning
of the subject within space. How he experiences it, how he is aware of it, how
he gains a sense of selfhood or place identity in it. In other words, how he is
conscious of it. Thus, a brief exploration of phenomenological consciousness
is required to gain a better understanding of how the space-subject dialogue
resonates into spatial cognition.
Phenomenology explores the way architectural environments are perceived and
memorized, and their affect on our consciousness. It explores how architectural
environments and their poetic images matter for our experience, cognition and
the shaping of mental images as representations of the lived spaces.
Consciousness itself, or the having of perceptions, thought and affects, is being
refined by Descartes as a duality between an immaterial domain of thought (res
cogitans) and a material domain of perception (res extensa). (Flanagan, 1984)
Thus, consciousness rises in the interplay between sensory inputs and mental
processing. (Lokhorst, 2011) This results in poetic images of subjective space, or
the way spaces appear to the subject.
The embodiment of poetic images gives rise to a subjective space. The notion
of this subjective space should, in the context of this discourse, be read as
a possibility for the conception of a certain cartography of the subject. This
mapping of the subject allows for a better understanding of the exploration of
how people experience and imagine space and time. (Lowenthal, 1961)
According to Lowenthal (1961), this experience needs to be split up into an
internal world of unconscious and personal manifestations, and an external
world of common sense. The embodied spaces are irrationally influenced by
personal distortions and enhanced with imagination. The externalized spaces
pertain to the shared world view, a sort of common sense.
What people perceive always pertains to the shared real world. Even the
(unconscious) landscapes of dreams come from actual scenes recently viewed
or recalled from memory, consciously or otherwise, however much they be
distorted.(Lowenthal,1961:249). He calls this distortion of perceived scenes
perceptual imagination, thus combining the sensory input with the mental,
cognitive processing.
In this approach to subjective space, cognition seems to be a central term.
Since it is through learning, imagination and memory that people form the
mental spaces of environments. The places we live in, we visit and travel
through, the places we read about and see in works of art, and the realms of
imagination and fantasy each contribute to our images of nature and man.
(Lowenthal,1961:260)
This previous outline allows for an understanding of the vague questioning of
man concerning architectural environments as a duality between the shared
rational, and conscious outer world and the irrational, unconscious inner world
of perceptual imagination.
The perceived environment is thus a psycho-analytic field in which phenomenal
facts are arranged into patterns and structures that acquire values in cultural
context. The perceived environment is thus valorized and learned. It is the site of
inter-mediation between overt behavioral responses and the stimulus-providing
world of phenomena.
This duality in outer versus inner, behaviour versus phenomenon, conscious
versus unconscious have been tackled by many philosophers. Sonnenfeld, for
example, calls for the introduction of extra layers that make the distinction
between:
-The Geographical world:

the geometrical, actual environment as presented to the subject.
-The Operational world:

the environment as encountered by the subject: reading environments
-The Perceptual world:

the environment aware to the subject: perceiving environments
-The Behavioural world:

the environment eliciting behavior: responding to environments
(Sonnenfeld,1972).
Porteus on the other hand focuses on the contextual environment that patches
the void between the individual and society: he distinguishes the contextual
environment of cultural beliefs and expectations as counterpart to the
phenomenal and personal environments:
-Phenomenal environment: reign of physical environments
-Personal environment: perceived images of the phenomenal environment
-Contextual environment: cultural beliefs and expectations (Porteus, 1977)
These different worlds of phenomenology and consciousness touch the very
essence of the positioning of the self within space: the rise of spatial awareness,
or consciousness. The role and importance of consciousness in the embodiment
of poetic images has previously been described, but the discourse of Edmund
Husserl offers an insight in the structure of Consciousness, which allows for an
understanding of the impact of consciousness on the embodiment. (Husserl,
1907)
Generally, consciousness isnt limited to the awareness of an external world
towards the self, but engages an active positioning, and awareness of this
positioning, of the self within space.
Husserl describes the structures of consciousness in term of the various ways in
which consciousness shapes the way various external phenomenons appear to
the human mind. Husserl introduces two important aspects of consciousness: the
noesis and the noema.
The noesis introduces the intentionality of consciousness. Perception, Persistence
and Memory of architectural environments anticipate the judgement of the
sensory experience. Perception of the now, Imagination of the future and
Reconstruction of the past supply the intentionality of consciousness with
judgement. Consciousness has, thus, a temporal structure.
The noema introduces the image of consciousness. The way the space is
represented to the subject. Its appearance as it is presented or represented.
Consciousness operates in a judgement state of expectation as well as an
imaginative condensation of appearance and representation.
Architectural Imaginary
The consciousness of the subject concerning the positioning of the self in
space is dependent on the anticipation of these environments through sensory
perception, memory reconstruction and persistent anticipation, as described

above. Subjects gain cognition of the architectural environments through mental
processing. In this dialogue, mental images have an important role to play.
Mental images, or subjective representations of reality offer a framework to have
an understand of the environments, as well as a projection of the subjective
interpretation. Mental images are representations, that offer identification and
affordance. (Gibson, 1977) Mental images are constructions of perceived
realities. Understanding architectural environments is bound by the deciphering
of their dream-like expressive images (Jameson, 1988)
Architectural environments thus persist in mental images. These images are both
a visual, perceptual construction as well as an architectural one. Places can
therefor be understood in their imaginability, or the quality of a physical space
that evokes an image in the eye of the observer.
Architectural mental images, thus, arent statically defined as an optically unified
vision, but evolve in representation, or Architectural Imaginary (Bruno, 2009)
Michael Borremans, left: (3) right: (4)
Architectural Imaginary is a term for these representations of architectural

environments in the mind of the observer. Architectural environments exist in the
mental representations that can be imaged and imagined.
But representing them becomes dialectic in the active relationship between
environment and subject: the environment can be carved in photography,
narrated in literature, portrayed in painting or sequenced in video.
As such, it allows for the emergence of a process that makes urban space visible
and perceivable. Representation, then, becomes source for permanent reevaluation of perception, generating endless changes and shifts in the image of
the architectural environment, thus completing the two-way dialogue.
Cognitive Mapping
Perception has been described as the engine that allows for the translation or
processing of information between the individual and its surrounding. Perception
is thus a vehicle in the cognitive structure that allows for the creating of mental
maps of reality, by visualizing the environment through internal cognitive
processes.
Thus, mental or cognitive maps of the environment are formed.
Cognitive mapping is a process composed of a series of physiological
transformations by which an individual acquires, codes, stores and recalls
information of phenomena in his spatial environment. (Downs&Stea,1973:9).
Cognitive mapping is a method of representing spaces in mental spaces. It is
important to note that this cognitive mapping can happen through multiple
methods. According to Lacan (1949), a distinction is to be made between
imaginary and symbolic spaces. The imaginary spaces focus on the realm
of images, and hence of knowledge, on signs and codes. This is a more
structuralist approach. Hence, the central assumption here is that human beings
respond to their environment as it is perceived and interpreted through previous
experience and knowledge.
Since a perception or our architectural environment is decided by a personal
cognition of the environment, it is subjectively skewed by personal preoccupations. Or, in other words: Veram Partem Corporis. Reality is a part of
the self, represented as topographic restitutions of mental images.
The awareness of a subject towards the spaces that surround him, which he
gains through the sensory experiences of perception, have been the focus of
this section. How subjects respond to this spatial awareness, and what they
phenomenologically cause in the mind of the subject will be the focus in the
section on the persistence of architectural environment.

Hieroglyphs of space
In the dialogue between space and subject, mental images facilitate the
positioning of the subject within space. In the ensemble of architectural
environments, mental images allow to make an understandable representation
that makes the vast totality understandable and apprehensible.
Thus, reading the architectural environment depends on a human faculty
to identify, through perception and recognition, correspondences between
diverse visual stimuli and to interpret them. We create mental cognitive maps
to orient ourselves through the architectural environment by generating mental
representations.
One sees architectural environments only as one can. Perception is a central
mental activity. The visual system, thus, does not make mere objective
representations of the sensory information if receives from the eyes. The large
datastream it received is evaluated mentally in favor of view consistency instead
of mere objective reconstruction of the datastream.
To verify between view consistency, Change Blindness found in experiments of
our visual system proves that the actual perceived is bent by the presumed. The
mind stitches together the sensory stimuli based upon memory and anticipation.
(Simons, 2000)
Change blindness refers to the experiments conducted in order to trace the
human ability to notice differences in the visual sensory datastream. In general
terms, change blindness experiment stress the focus of the visual system on
the coherence and wholeness of perception in contrast to the objective mere
representational reproduction of the datastram.
Sensory perception, thus, isnt about generating a copy of the external physical
reality. It is a reaction to stimuli, and a mental interpolation that creates links
and coherence in the stream of stimuli.(Simons, 2000) Shifting and conflicting
perceptions are combined into a unified representation. Perception interprets
stimuli in correspondence with experiences from the personal,subjective past.
Subjective projection
The wholeness of perception through the visual system is thus created through
mental activity, not peripheral reconstruction. Subjective experiences and inner
projections are thus not limited to the sensory percepts and its processing, but
are bound by previous experiences, and thus by the subjective anticipation of
these percepts.
Space, thus, is a projection of the subject. And thus a harbinger and repository
of all neuroses and phobias of that subject. (Vidler, 2000). Agoraphobia,
claustrophobia, oicophobia, monophobia and antropophobia are all
psychological fears decided by the positioning of the subjective self in space.
This positioning is condensed in many social structures that can be visualized in
poetic images, or social structures in the architectural environment.
Kracauer uses the mental space of the hotel lobby. A space that acts as the
setting for narrative structures. A permanent in-transit space. A place where
people are just passing-by, permanently in-transit.
A human condition that is being described further in Rem Koolhaas Generic
City as a contemporary in-transit state-of mind in the contemporary metropolis.
Architectural environments are waiting to be given meaning by purposeful

narratives and activities, a site of surveillance with an anonymous population,
that thus generates alienation and a loss of self. (Kracauer, 1979)
Edward Hopper, left: Hotel Lobby (5) right Hotel Room (6)
Benjamin uses the mental space of the Arcades. Public spaces that are in-transit
zones where dwellers move through, and are swamped by a flood of visual and
social stimuli. The Arcades are perceived in a state of distraction, as a result of
introvert thought, habit and use.
We see Architecture, but dont look at it...it passes us by. It is thus by habit and
use that one determines the optical reception of architecture. The architectural
appropriation in metropolis thus happens through use and perception.
(Benjamin, 1979)Thus, ...an understanding of (architectural environments)
depends on the ability to descipher the dream-like images it generates, its
contradictions, contrasts, juxtapositions,...(Kracauer,1987)
Tschumi uses the mental space of Cinema, or the experience of space as a filmic
sequence composed of Events. In a merging of time and space, the camera
introduces us to unconscious optics as does psycho-analysis to unconscious
impulses.
So basically, the experiences gained and mental spaces conceived of the
Architectural environment can be seen as a sum of space (which allows for filmic
movement) and place (which demands a pause).
Bernard Tschumi, Screenplays (7)
This sum is the source for psycho-affective aspects as described by psychoanalysts, thus generating the mental spaces of representation. ...in our
representations of reality, a relationship is to be established between space,
movements and events...in order to gain the complete experience the succession
of one frame after another is necessary (Tschumi, 1994)
All these settings find their way into mental representation through the
subjectivity of the observer. In the mind of the subject, the mental representation
of architectural environments if permanently skewed and distorted. And the
way these mental representations are related to the subject, it is important to
trace how they are appropriated, how they are made part of the self. How the
subject identifies with space.
This section has described how spatial awareness evokes mental responses,
and bends the representations the subject generates of this architectural
environment. But these responses are embedded both in space and time. Thus,
the previous subjective experiences are the feeding ground for these responses.
Memory of architectural environments is the feeding ground for the positioning
of the self in space. This spatial memory is the content of the section that
follows.

Tracing Cognition
The mind gathers information about architectural environments, which is
processed to orient and navigate through it, and thus to understand it. In order
to do so, the mind generates a cognitive map of the environment as a spatial
memory device.(Magnussen,2009)
Spatial memory is a cognitive process that enables someone to remember
different places and remember spatial relationships between objects, of which
the implementations will be evaluated in Method of Loci.
In spatial memory, a distinction is to be made between a so called episodic
buffer and a visuo-spatial sketchpad (Magnussen, 2009)
The episodic buffer stores a memory as a story or movie sequence. It is often
a linear structure with chronological order. It only survives in the short term
memory, and experiences a rapid decay in its capacity to be recalled. The
content of memory is function of the rate of forgetting (Virilio,1994,p.52)
But the linear structure does not consistently represent a large number of visual
details to verify between consistency. The actual memorized is bent by the
presumed. The episodic memory, thus, experiences a sort of change blindness in
order to create a linear structure.

The visuo-spatial sketchpad has a visual cache, in which object properties
such as color and shape are stored, and a spatial cache, in which movement
sequences of the objects are described. So basically, it describes the when and
where of perceived objects. As an addition to the episodic buffer, it operates in
the short term memory to specify the perceived objects in the episodic sequence.
(Magnussen, 2009)
Together they function to generate a long term cognitive spatial map, in which
a general layout is supplemented by cue target locations, which function as
landmark orientation. In these mental maps of objects, clusters are formed in
hierarchic relationships, with landmarks for orientation.
This layout is a set of spatial relationships, more than an episodic sequence.
Landmarks and hierarchy are distilled from the what and where from the visuospatial information.
The mind, thus coordinates and combines by binding, shifting, selecting....
information from the short term memory into long term cognitive maps that
acquire,code,store,recall and decode information about relative locations,
attributes of phenomena in everyday life, and architectural environments.
Cognitive maps are a method we use to construct and accumulate spatial
knowledge, allowing the minds eye to visualize images in order to reduce
cognitive load, enhance recall and enhance the learning of information.
Condensations of representations of architectural environments as mental maps
are a central notion in future sections on the role of the poetic image for the
reconstruction of architectural environments.
Cognitive Enhancement
With the knowledge of the working methods of spatial memory, it is possible to
trace the influences of visual sensory stimuli on the spatial interpretation. Visual
perception is enhanced by memory that introduces recognition as a tool for
impressions or judgement.
There seems to be a duality between what we take in sensory, and what our
mind mentally projects as an image of the world onto the images that are taken
in. What we see is shaped by what we know, and what we know is shaped by
what we see.
Memory images serve to identify,interpret and supplement perception. No neat
borderline separates a purely perceptual image from one complemented by
memory or one not directly perceived at all, but supplied entirely from memory
residues. (Arnheim, 1972)
METHODOLOGY
The introduction has traced the positioning of the subjective self within
space, as a result of the perception, persistence and memory of architectural
environments.
It is stated that the space-self dialogue results in poetic images that cover the
wholeness of subjective interpretations of spatial impressions. But in order
to engage a dialogue between the spatial experiences and their subjective
impressions through poetic images, it is important to develop a toolset or
methodology that allows to translate this dialogue into artistic expression.
A development of a methodology that will allow for a reconstruction of
subjective poetic images will find its roots in the introduced theory, and make
a connection between the theoretical discourse and the projection of this
discourse onto a specific case study of a poetic image. All developed methods
will, thus, find their origin in the introduced discourse on perception, persistence
and memory of architectural environments, and act as a tangible application or
toolset for the reconstruction of poetic images.
This developped toolbox will find its roots in the introduced theoretical
discourse. Therefore, the toolset are embedded in their corresponding focus
core (i.e. perception, persistence and memory) and are thus listed in that
corresponding order.
After having traced methods for the construction of poetic images, these
methods will be deployed in the results section, where a case study of a
cinematic poetic image will be evaluated against the previous theoretical
discourse.
Perception of Architectural Environments

Embodied imagination
The condensation of imaginative representations of poetic images requires some
sort of format of method. In order to interpret, orient or represent architectural
environments, the human mind generates mental images. These architectural
mental images arent statically defined as an optically unified vision, but evolve
in representation, or Architectural Imaginary (Bruno, 2009)
Architectural Imaginary is a term for these representations of architectural
environments in the mind of the observer. Architectural environments exist in
the mental representations that can be imaged and imagined. But representing
them becomes dialectic in the active relationship between environment and

subject: the environment can be carved in photography, narrated in literature,
portrayed in painting or sequenced in video, and as such, it allows for the
emergence of a process that makes urban space visible and perceivable.
Representation, then, becomes source for permanent re-evaluation of
perception, generating endless changes and shifts in the image of the
architectural environment, thus completing the two-way dialogue.
One of the most intriguing examples of the use of the architectural imaginary
for the positioning of the subjective self toward space can be found in the work
of Michael Borremans. Through tactile painting, he questions this relationship in
which Architecture acts as a tool for expression.
The architectural imaginary contains all kinds of potentialities and projections,
which are creative forms of imagination in the perception of architectural
environments.
Michael Borremans, (8)
For Walter Benjamin (2002), they are also the product of cultural experience,
thus referring to the streets as a dwelling place place for the collective, where
experiences, learning, understandings and inventions condense into mental
representations. They are the product of social space, they map the vortexes of
urban experiences and forces of public agency. Architectural environments are
thus not only the product of their maker, but also of their user. (Benjamin, 2002)
This focus on subjective experience in urban lectures is translated clearly in
the projects of the French situationalist Guy Debord, who uses several notions
such as the derive to rediscover the city as a set of personal and subjective
references and identifications.
Guy Debord, The naked city (9)
Whereas Benjamins Flneur is all about social constructions, Georg Simmels

urban dweller is a subject partaking in a novel, confronted with intense sensory
and cognitive stimulation.
The psychological foundation, upon which the metropolitan individuality is
erected, is the intensification of emotional life due to the swift and continuous
shift of external and internal stimuli... the difference between present impressions
and those which have preceded... the rapid telescoping of changing images,
pronounced differences within what is grasped at a single glance, and the
unexpectedness of violent stimuli...
The architectural environment creates these psychological conditions -with every
crossing of the street, with the tempo and multiplicity of economic, occupational,
and social life- it creates... the sensory foundation for mental life.
(Simmel, 1903, p.324)
In the architectural environment, we feel the rhythm of perceptual and mental
processes and are immersed in the sensory ambiance of representational flow.
These narrative structures found in Simmels Novel dweller are redefined by

Bernard Tschumi in his Event-Cities. Tschumi, obviously influenced by cinematic
theory concepts, envisions the architectural experience as an accumulation
of sensations brought about through movement within an architectural
environment. (Tschumi, 1994)
Architectural settings become dynamic subjective flows of spatial events, thereby
breaking with the traditional interpretation of euclidian sites with architectural
objects. These flows of spatial events call for a fusion of space and time in our
understanding of a place. Architectural experience is thus becoming a cinematic
sequence.
All these concepts help understand the psycho-geographical topographic
meaning of architectural environments and their mental representations. Even
though architectural environments can be deciphered in euclidean terms, the
personal meaning of interpretation and the specific effects of architectural
environments on the emotions and behavior of individuals is hard to represent
without the architectural imaginary, a mental map, dependent of mnemonic
traces and energized by subjective experiences.
The Architectural Imagery is a primary vehicle in the reconstruction of poetic
images, since it uses the architectural toolset to concretize and accentuate its
visual appearance. What this means for the reconstruction of poetic images will
become clear in Case Study Projects #2 & #3 of this this research.
Persistent Architectural Environments

Space as a projection of the subject
Optical perception as a peripheral (i.e. sensory) phenomenon relies on the
direct contact with the visual stimuli: we see what is out there, but is valorized
by cognition and assimilation and thus learned from previous experiences: we
see what we process.
Before tracing the methods that orient and anticipate perception in sections to
come, it is important to trace the optical and peripheral foundation of visual
perception in the realm of the optical, sensory processing of information.
In 400 B.C., Extramission was the dominant theory. Extramission relied on the
conviction of light rays leaving the eye, thus being reflected by objects, and
returning to the retina, onto which perception occurs. This idea of the eye
functioning as a projector was questioned by Arab physicist Ibn al-Hamthay
in 1021 in his influential Book of Optics. He inverses the conviction of
extramission to intromission, or light rays being emitted by objects themselves,
and intercepted by the retina. The eyes thus became a sensor, not a projector.
It is only since Ibn al-Haytham that the light reflection theory with the sun as light
source got onto the foreground. His research projects using a pinhole into the
wall of a dark environment, he would notice that reality would be represented
inside the darkness.
Due to perspectival principles, the represented images were upside down.
al-Haytham figured out that as the pinholes became smaller, representations
became sharper, but once they became too small, the images became blurry
due to optical refraction, thus actually pioneering the entire development of
registration/projection devices in painting, photography and cinema.
The metaphorical reference of the similarities in inherent properties between
perception and projection offer a valuable insight in the approach of
cinematic spaces. The case study that follows in the results section will cover a
reconstruction of a cinematic poetic image.
Cinema, or the art of the projected image, represents reality. From a technical
point of view, this projected image refers back to the perceived reality which it
tends to represent.
Emission of the image, or Extramission of the image, and intromission of
perception. In thay way, the metaphorical dialogue between projected reality
and perceived reality in the light of al-Haythams study on optics triggers the use
of the projected image in the reconstruction of the poetic image of the cinematic
piece. What this duality between the projected image, and its perceived reality
means for the factual reconstruction will become clear in project four of the case
studies of this research.
After the description of optics as a phenomenon of light reflection, and Ren
Descartes Dioptrique, in which he anatomically analyses the retina functioning
of an eye, the contemporary conviction is to see perception as a central (mental)
phenomenon, in contrast with the peripheral (sensory) phenomenon it was long
thought to be.
There seems to be a duality between what we take in sensory, and what our
mind mentally projects as an image of the world onto the images that are taken
in. What we see is shaped by what we know, and what we know is shaped by
what we see.
Platos Allegory of the Cave
Ibn al-Haythams Camera Obscura
(350 BC)
(120 A.D.)
What is reality?
What is illusion?
What is representation?
What is projection?
Pinhole camera as a research device

on the functioning of optics and
perception
Giovanni Fontanas Magic Lantern

(1420 A.D.)
Magic Lanters are the very first illusiunary

projectors used in theatres to create the illusion
of magical appearance, often ghostly, named
Phantasmagorias.
Emile Reymbauds Theatre Optique, Visualization: Mathias Dekock
Persistence of Vision
Persistence of Vision is the phenomenon in which an afterimage is thought
to persist for about 1/25th of a second on the Retina. Afterimages play an
important role in our visual perception, since they keep our vision form turning
black every time we blink our eyes. These afterimages, or a superimposition
of frames that pile up on the Retina, are combined in what is known as Flicker
Fusion. (Ludy, 2000)
This interpretation of the persistence of vision gave rise to the development of
early cinema devices, by using superimposed images in sequences, that would
optically merge into apparent and continuous movement.
Phenakistoscope
//
Zoetrope
//
Zoetrope
//
Praxinoscope
//
Praxinoscope
The Zoetrope, Praxinoscope, Phenakistoscope, Zoopraxinoscope,

Electrotachyscope and the Thaumatrope are all examples of 19th century
inventions that rely on this phenomenon to develop early cinema devices with
astonishing machinery.
Afterimages piling up on the retina and forming motion is a peripheral
approach to perception. It places perception in the realm of peripheral
phenomena. But as stated before, perception is a mental and cognitive process,
in which visual stimuli are evaluated and linked with assumptions and memory.
A viewer isnt a passive observer, but an active meaning seeking being.
Perception is a central phenomenon, or a mental activity. It happens in the
mind of the observer. Not on his retina. Psychologists explain the perception
of motion, or as such the flow of stimuli to the observer, as a combination
of different visual stimuli, such as changes, combined with expectations and
anticipations.(Gibson, 1977)
It is thus not a question of total frame superimposition, or retinal persistence of
vision.
Even though afterimages play an important role in the perception of apparent
movement, they arent a very accurate method for the human perception of
motion. The myth of the miracle of motion picture is found to be inadequate
due to its belief in a passive viewer. Afterimages piling up on the retina and
forming motion is a peripheral approach to perception. It places perception in
the realm of peripheral phenomena.
Eadweard Muybridge, Locomotion 462 (10)
But as stated before, perception is a cognitive process, in which visual stimuli

are evaluated and linked with assumptions and memory. A viewer isnt a passive
observer, but an active meaning seeking being.
It is a matter of seeing differences and directions, a central phenomenon in
which the mind completes, or fills in the perception gaps. Different stimuli are
perceived at different locations at different times. The mind fills the gap actively.
Thus, visual perception calls for an enlightened understanding of how active
viewers engage with the architectural environment that surrounds them. Human
beings are meaning seeking creatures: we sample the world and see what does
and does not change.
We focus and see the broader picture and we seek information about what
interests us. We seek greater clarity of vision and understanding of our
architectural environment.
Afterimages, or the persistence of vision as an subjective phenomenon is
the founding principle for the reconstruction of the poetic image that will be
researched as a case study in this research. As a mere optical phenomenon, it
is the generative tool behind Case Study Projects #1 and #2 of this Research.
Memory of Architectural Environments

Method of Loci
Remembering isnt a re-excitation of fixed, lifeless and fragmentary traces. It is
an imaginative reconstruction or construction, built of the relationship of our
attitude towards a whole active mass of organized past reactions of experience.
(Bartlett, 1955)
These mental constructs, or mental spaces, are phenomenologically entangled
in past, present and future. Memory is the ability to recall things (past),
embrace things (present) and contemplate things through anticipation of things
to come(future). Thus, the mimetic faculty of the human mind relies on the
perceived architectural spaces, and the persistence of cinematic sequences
confronted with the self. This is the human ability to identify correspondences
and analogies between diverse impressions and to interpret them.
This mimetic faculty, or the continuation of the past in the present, has been
widely elaborated in Frances Yates Art of Memory (1966), in which she
describes the tradition of the creation of memory palaces, that allow for the
positioning of events in the filmic sequences of spaces.
When ancient rhetoricians had to give elaborate speeches, they created mental
architectural environment, which they used to structurize all that has to be
remembered. These architectural environments consist of a cinematic sequence
of discrete rooms filled with specific objects in a place in the room.
It is by following the sequence, of doing the promenade architectural, that the
storyboard is unravelled, with storylines found in the objects that are structurized
in the rooms.When we return to a place after a considerable absence, we not

merely recognize the space itself, but we remember things we did there. (Bruno,
2002, p. 221))
As mnemonic devices, they rely on memorized spatial relationships to establish,
order and recollect memorial content (Yates,1966) As imaging techniques, they
use visualization to organize and recall information. This method of devices and
techniques is known as the method of loci. The subject memorizes the layout of
a sequence of spaces, some sort of building, which is composed of discrete loci.
In order to recall a sequence of information, the subject literally makes a mental
walk through these loci, and reads the different images or discrete information
elements he has attached to different spots within these loci. Retrieving of these
images is achieved by walking through the loci.
Thus, the method of loci is based on a series of LOCI (places) and IMAGINES
(events). Loci are the places grasped by memory, for mnemonic purposes usually
deserted solitary places, and many different unalike loci, constructed of the right
size: when too big, the narrator will lose oversight, when too small, the narrator
will lack oversight. Imagines are the forms, marks or simulacra of which we
wish to remember. They are placed within a specific location in Loci, in order to
obtain memory. The plot of sequences of loci is then filled with imagines.
LOCI = Frames = Places.
IMAGINES = Events = Images.
For a better understanding of of the actual representations of memory palaces,
a closer look at some examples is necessary: the memory theatres of Giulio
Camillo, Giordano Bruno and Robert Fludd.
Giulio Camillo, Memory Theatre (11)
Camillos memory theatre is a distortion of the plan of a traditional Victorian

theatre, composed of 7 gangways,or imaginary gates, from higher wisdom to
the mere human wisdom (remember, its constructed during the renaissance).
The function of the theatre is inverted, since the spectator here stands where one
should expect a stage, thus allowing for an overview of the entire knowledge.
Giordano Bruno, Memory Wheel, reconstructed by Frances Yates (12)
Giordano Brunos memory wheel, in which the central position of the perceiver
allows for rings of orientation in order to gain mnemonic recall. It is composed
of different seals: the field, or earthly ample folds of which are to be worked
upon by the method of loci (objects=imagines), the heaven, or the order and
series of images that may be engraved (sequence=loci), and finally the chain,
or the association or analogy of ideas.
Robert Fludd, Memory Theatre (13)
Robert Fludds memory theatre is a place in which all actions of words,

sentences, of particularities of a speech or of subjects are shown, as in public
theatre in which comedies and tragedies are acted, and therefore a memory
place system. All of these techniques are mental models to make cognitive
mappings of memory, on a conscious level.
They ask for the construction of mental spaces that deliver the ability to pass
through a series of rooms, with IMAGINES in specific LOCI in a scenographic
sequence, where architecture acts as a topos for events, or a frame for memory.
But these mnemonic techniques can provide an insight for another issue of
spatial memory and the conception of mental spaces: tracing and mapping
memory of spatial environments.
These techniques question how they can be used for the interrogation of spaces
as the primary vehicle for tracing memories, and to recover them into spatial
representations.
The method loci has a very strong architectural approach to spatial experience
and memory. It uses architecture as the primary tool for memory.
Therefore, it serves as an important tool in the reconstruction of poetic images.
The method of Loci as a vehicle in the reconstructive toolset is deployed in the
case study in the case studies section. The reconstruction of a memory palace
will happen in project 3 of the case studies of this research. In fact, the entire
poetic image of the case study is a memory palace, which is open for subjective
appropriation.
Screen memories
Psychological spatial pathologies accentuate the highly subjective relationship
between the subject and space. Reconstructing or tracing the architectural
environments that are embodied, as this research attempts to, can be done
consciously, on the geometric spaces and its sequences and events. But it also
has the capability to trace repressed memories, and to recall them into spatial
representations or mental spaces. Thus allowing for a complex reproduction of
the repressed memory syndrome.
Our childhood memories show us our early years not as they were but as they
appeared at the later periods when the memories were revived. (Freud, 1899)
Perhaps one of the most intriguing implementations of the method of loci for
tracing repressed memories can be found in Mike Kelleys Educational complex,
in which the artist traces his memories of the educational environment he grew
up in.
Architecture here is the vehicle for the tracing of memory. When he traces
fragments of his memory, he tries to create spaces with them. Thus generating
the loci for the memorized events. In a way, he thus attempts to escape the
dominance of time by a retrieval of spaces.
This is basically the inverted method of Freuds Screen Memories, in which
memory acts as a function of time and in which the recognition of temporality is
a narrative that gives sense to life.
Kelley inverts this by escaping the dominance of time through a retrieval of
space. Where Freud is concerned with the evolution of memories of events in
time, Kelley focuses on the conception of containers and environments for these
events. Screen memories are a compromise between repressed elements and
the defense mechanisms against them.
We mentally refer to something familiar, in order to give the unfamiliar, or
unrecognizable, a place in our memory. This phenomenon is known as
displacement (Freud, 1899).
Screen memories are thus substitutes that offer a re-framing of spatial memory,
in order to compensate for the blocked.
Thus, Kelleys exploration touches the dualities between the hidden and the
revealed, the homely and the unhomely, the familiar and the unfamiliar. What
has been forgotten was perhaps more than simply unregistered, but rather
represents a transformation of something once heimlich and now rendered,
by repression disquietingly familiar, or merely Unheimlich. Here, architecture
introduces us to unconscious memory, as does psycho-analysis to unconscious
impulses, through a precise model of memory.
Mike Kelley, Educational complex onwards: 1995-2008 (14)
Mike Kelley, Educational complex onwards: 1995-2008 (14)
These mental spaces will thus become spaces of introjection, mirroring the
space of projection characterized of our first experiences of our architectural
environment, and will thus become an imaginary exploration of space itself,
Since the tracing of our repressed memories will generate shards of spaces and
events.
Much like archeologists trace shards of cultures long gone, and through
reconstruction of a representation can be conceived. In the conception of
representational mental spaces of repressed memory, our mind will have to
interpolate over these shards, in the tradition of the heritage, to generate
representations.
Mediatized memory
A perceptual act is thus never isolated, it is a mapping of perceptual input onto
existing knowledge structures that guide and constrain perceptual selection.
Remembering is thus not a re-excitation of solid, lifeless and fragmentary traces.
It is an imaginative reconstruction, built of the relation of previous perceptive
impulses, stored as a cognitive map in the subjective mind.
Memory as a central activity relies on cognitive maps as a source for the mental
processing. But with the rise of visual technology such as photography and
video, and storage devices such as prints, spools and hard discs, as well as
online media representations, the storage medium for feeding memory is
more and more externalized. They outsource human memory, and mediate it,
thus creating a powerful external way of influencing internal (often episodic)
memories.
This mediatized memory outside the human mind asks for an understanding of
the representational competences required for a dynamic use of these external
memories. Research on the use of the diffused network of the internet by digital
natives shows their mental switch in the mental processing of the visual data
provided by the internet. Their external memories, in personal photostreams,
weblogs and videodatabases, all have intrinsic properties that are embodied for
a collaboration with the internal memory.
In terms of representational competence, digital natives are found to be highly
capable of reading flat images as (representations of) three-dimensional spaces,
and to incorporate multi-dimensional visual-spatial skills that offer the possibility
to create mental maps. In short, all externalized memory finds its way in the
mental processing in order to become incorporated.
But the intrinsic properties often have conflicting issues with the very nature of
memory. Photographs are stills in high detail, much like Flashbulb Memories
are. Snapshots, frozen in time and space. Video is a linear structure, with a
beginning and an end. Memory, in contrast, is a cognitive structure, that knows

no strict top-down hierarchic logic, as described previously. But as external
memory, all these media influence the way memory is mentally represented, and
have the capability to condense the memory spaces into singular entities, as will
be described in future sections on the poetic image.
Perception as a central phenomenon, sometimes enhances by externalized
mediation, thus incorporates the past, the present, and the future by its
embedding in the working methods of visual and spatial memory.
In our perception and cognition of mental maps of architectural environments,
mnemonic narratives condense in space, and their material residue seep into
the imaginative construction of places and spaces.
The density of perceptive mnemonic interaction build up the architectural
imaginary of architectural environments. This mental map is reminiscent of
mnemonic traces and energized by subjective experiences, an inner projection
that shifts as it is affected.
The use of mediatized and screen memories are influential and guiding in
the conception of Case Study Project #4 of the case studies of this research,
where a reconstruction of the projected poetic images is traced through the
implementation of screen memories as a generative metaphor.
CASE STUDY
RECONTRUCTING MARIENBAD
Cinema as embodied poetic image
All cultural artefacts engage poetic images. Whether it is in sculpture, music,
literature, painting, cinema... they all engage the perceived and memorized to
embody the experience through subjective embodiment.
In painting, for instance, the architectural imagery in poetic image has the
capability to structure human relations, engage a mental state of mind, act
as framework for narrative and by doing so, to touch upon the very soul of
architecture. The constructions and representations of cinematic architectural
environments engage the mental ground of architecture.
Georges Perec, La vie mode demploi (15)
Saul Steinberg, untitled (16)
In sculpture, the architectural imagery in poetic images can frame view,

perspective and approaches of the architectural environment. They can
strengthen our existential sense and sensitize the boundaries between the
subjective self and its environment.
Through the embodiment of poetic images, imagination is emancipated in order
to create the wholeness of the embodied experience. Imagination, in this regard,
is not just the mere image forming faculty of the mind, as previously defined.
Gaston Bachelard describes imagination more as a deformation of the
perceived and memorized. That what alters and changes perception and
memory. That what frees the embodiment of poetic images from its objective
feeding ground. (Bachelard, 1988) So poetic images become an artistic
condensation of numerous experiences, percepts and ideas.
On this regard, Rainer Maria Rilke states: For (poetic images) are not, as
people imagine, simply feelings...they are experiences. For the sake of a single
verse, one must see many cities,men and things. One must know the animals,
one must feel how the birds fly and know the gesture with which the little flowers
open up in the morning...and still it is not enough to have memories. One
must be able to forget them when they are many and one must have the great
patience to wait until they come again. For it is not yet the memories themselves.
Not till they have turned to blood within us, to glance and gesture, nameless
and no longer to be distinguished from ourselves not till then can it happen
that in a most rare hour the first word of a verse arises in their midst and goes
forth from them.
Poetic images introduce the subject to an environment of association and affect.
They define the subjects existential sense and question the boundaries between
space and the self.

In cinema, the architectural imagery has a very close relationship with the
architectural discourse as such. Both cinema and architecture articulate lived
space. They create and mediate images of the subjective selfhood. They both
express the human existential experience, or lived space. Cinema touches the
mental ground of Architecture. Therefor, this research on the embodiment of
perceived, remembered and imagined poetic images will focus on cinema as
the feeding ground for poetic images.
The relationship between cinema and architecture can be traces in terms of
the representation of architectural environment, the suspension of cinematic
architecture between reality and dream, and the representation of threedimensional spaces onto a two-dimensional image. But is can also be
traced in term of a montage of separate experiential fragments that produce
an impression of continuous environments that utilize the properties and
deficiencies of the human perceptual mechanisms. The interaction of cinema
and architecture ha many faces.
Cinematic expression has inherent architectural properties. Architectural
experiences have cinematic essences. Cinema exists, like architecture, in
both time and movement. The subject conceives and read an architectural
environment in terms of sequences To erect a building is to predict and seek
effects of contrast and linkage through which one passes...In the continuous
shot/sequence that a building is, the architect works with units and edits,
framings and openings...I like to work with a depth of field, reading space
in terms of thickness, hence the superimposition of different screens, planes
legible from obligatory joint of passage which are to be found in all buildings
(Tauttenbury, 1994, p33)
Diller & Scofidio, Slow House (17)
Cinema, thus, generates mental spaces that reflect the ephemeral architecture
of the mind. These mental spaces structure our being-in-the-world , or the
dialogue between subject and space. Through architectural environments,
the experience of outsideness or estrangement is transformed into a feeling of
domicile one can identify with. This consciousness of architectural environments
occurs through embodiment of the framing of human existence found in poetic
images. These internal projections of poetic images can be seen as lived
spaces.
Lived spaces go beyond euclidian rules of geometry. They structure meaningless
space by inserting existential, subjective meaning.
Lived spaces resemble the structures of dream and unconscious, and are
organized independently of the definitions of physical time and space.
Lived space combine external spaces with mental environments.
Lives spaces incorporate fears,dream,values,meaning that are projected onto
the experienced percepts.
Lived spaces intertwine the material and the mental world,the remembered and
the experienced and the imagined, the past and the present and the future.
The modes of experiencing cinema and architecture become identical in these
lived spaces. Mental images are transferred from the experiential realm of the
architect/director to the mental world of the observer, in which the building/film
is a mere mediating object. Cinema and architecture frame life and narrative of
subjectivity, thus generating a horizon for the understand of selfhood.
Walter Benjamin traces even more elaborate connections between cinema and
architecture. He suggests that they are both fundamentally tactile arts. Their
embodiment happens primarily through the tactile realm, in opposition with,
for instance, painting. Even though the situation of viewing a film turns the
viewer into a bodyless observer, the illusory cinematic space gives the viewer
back his/her body, as the experiential haptic and motor space provides powerful
kinesthetic experiences. A film is viewed with the muscles and skin as much as by
the eye. (Pallasmaa, 2007, p18)
Architecture and cinema suggest a kinaesthetic approach to the experience of
space. The embodiment of poetic images happens, thus, through haptic image
as well as retinal pictures.
Cinema creates architecture by triggering the observer to construct mental
spaces as a framework for the cinematic narrative, much like the ancient orators
did when using the previously described method of loci. Directors generate
places for events, Loci for Imagine. The loci are the architectural environments
that define the mental setup for narrative. The imagines are nor mere pictorial
images, but experiences of embodied and lived space. Just like the the method
of loci, this cinematic architectural method requires imagination to fill the gaps
in the reconstruction of these mental spaces.
As previously described, both imagination and perception are equally true in

terms of mental consciousness. Thus mental images and encountered images
our equally true. Cinematic imagery reflects mental images.
It obtains its psychological content through existential experiences within
narrative. It is then enhanced by imagination to allow for identification and
understanding. Thus, we encounter ourselves as well as our own being-in-theworld in an intensified manner.
Place and event, space and mind, are not outside of each other. Mutually
defining each other, they fuse unavoidably into a singular experience; the mind
is in the world, and the world exists through the mind. Experiencing a space is a
dialogue, a kind of exchange I place myself in the space and the space settles
in me.
This dialogue between cinema and the subject is condensed in poetic images.
Its impact on the identification of the subject, through embodiment, is made
clear in Rainer Maria Rilkes description of the fragmentary impressions of a
childhood house:
Afterwards I never saw that remarkable house, which at my grandfathers
death passed into strange hands. A I recover it in recalling my child-wrought
memories, it is no complete building; it is all broken up inside me; here a room,
there a room, and here a piece of hallway that doe not connect these two
rooms but is preserved, as a fragment, by itself.
In this way it is all dispersed within me the rooms, the stairways that descended
with such ceremonious deliberation, and other narrow, spiral stairs in the
obscurity of which one moved as blood does in the veins; the tower rooms, the
high-hung balconies, the unexpected galleries onto which one was thrust out
through a little door all that is still in me and will never cease to be in me. It is
a though the picture of this house had fallen into me from an infinite height and
had shattered against my very ground. (Rilke, 1992, pp 30-31)
The cinematic narrative is intertwined with the subjective reality. Mental and
objective reality are intertwined. I can no longer think what I want to think, my
thoughts have been replaced by moving images. (Duhamel, 1968, p238)
This result section has now described the phenomena engaged in the cinematic
poetic image. In order to evaluate the cinematic poetic image against the
discourse on the embodiment of poetic images through the implementation
of the toolset of the perception, persistence and memory of architectural
environments, this research will now focus on a specific case study, in which the
developed toolset will be implemented for the reconstruction of a specific poetic
image.
Marienbad as an embodied poetic image

Subjective experiences of architectural environments through perception,
persistence and memory have been the introduced discourse. An array of
deployable methods have been evaluated as a spin-off of this discourse. Now
this discourse will be evaluated through a focus on a specific case study.
Last year in Marienbad condenses all the aspects touched in the introduction
into a cinematic poetic image. It introduces the spectator to the subjectivity of
reality by generating a construct of perspective, persistence and memory. It is
an evocation of a dream-like construction in which imagination is called for
in order to gain an active reconstruction of the subjective narrative inside the
cinematic poetic image.
Therefore, this cinematic construction is traced in the spotlight of all aspects
previously introduced. With the insights this mapping and tracing will offer, it will
become possible to generate a physical and visual reconstruction of the mental
subjective environment generated in the cinematic poetic image.
Last year in Marienbad is a French 1960s cinematic masterpiece of both
Alain Robbe-Grillet and Alain Resnais. Robbe-Grillet wrote the screenplay as
a cine-roman, in which he accentuates the strict formal composition of the
cinematic construction. Resnais directed the cinematic piece in the same formal
way, which gives the atmosphere of the cinematography an unheimiche or
unearthly atmosphere. This collaboration has led to the dream-like expression
of a constructed memory, as it was intended to be.
The plot basically follows the conviction troubles a man referred to as X has
convincing a woman reffered to as A has, that they has met in the same
baroque chateau last year.
As they wander aimlessly through the vast baroque chateau, as they walk
through endless corridors, the memory of a dream unfolds, but doesnt become
any brighter. It is a permanent questioning of the self, and the self within space.
What is memory? What is dream? What is real of the spaces perceived?
Architecture here acts as the primary vehicle X uses to convince A. Here, she was
there and he was here. She said this out there. He in return walked there. Here
and there. Situations embedded within space. As flashbulb memories covering
the spatial memory.
As the plot develops, actors act as actors. There is no natural feel to it, all is
formally constructed. Voice-overs loop the same sayings over and over. The
same corridors follow the same empty corridors.
What is real and what is dreamed? What is memory and what is imagination?
CASE STUDY PROJECT # 1: Disembodied Narrative

Last year in Marienbad is primarily a construct in the subjective mind of the
observer. It questions the objectivity of reality.
Enigmatic Narrative
It has an enigmatic narrative structure, in which truth and fiction are difficult to
distinguish. When confronted with the cinematic narrative, it is hard to generate
a consistent logic of the information offered to the active spectator, who is
invited to participate in the formation of the social and spatial structure of the
narrative. The methods used to achieve this playful game, and to engage the
spectator into an active mental participation, will be traced in sections to come.
Its enigmatic structure for sure creates uncertainty in the mind of the spectator.
It is enigmatic because of its open structure of the temporal and spatial
relationships. Ambiguous flashbacks, flashforward, shifts of time and location,
both space and time become disorienting.
Conversations and spaces are repeated almost infinitely, sometimes modified by
slight changes which contribute to the confusion. This concept of the enigmatic
narrative is the subject of this case study project. The active observer is offered
a number of threads that allow for identification and mental reflection, in its
fragmentary and enigmatic narrative structure.
One of the most intriguing enigmatic aspects is the confrontation between
spoken narrative and experienced architectural environment. There seems to
be an ambiguity between the narrative of the voice-over and the architectural
environments envisioned.
Disembodied Narrative
Observers listen attentively to the ongoing narration of the eary voice-over, and
try to assemble the shards of information. The puzzle unfolds, the observer tries
to make sense of what is spoken.
...silent rooms, where ones footsteps are absorbed by carpets so thick, so
heavy, that no sound reaches no ear, as if the very ear of him who walks again
along these corridors, through these salons and galleries, in this edifice of
a bygone era. Simultaneously, the camera pans aimlessly and directionless
through the excesses of heavily ornamented baroque interior rooms and
hallways, though vast and empty interior spaces.
Architecture and narrative on seperate tracks, but both equally important in the
screenplay for active observation. The narrative conducts the observer through
a past, engages a memory and asks for imagination to fill the gaps in the
construction. Though a calm, eery and emotionless voice, the narrator becomes
a disembodied entity.
One who is detached from a body, who becomes non-human. Just like the
architectural environment is displayed as a construction. A mental architecture.
A state of mind. A true poetic image a a condensation of a true and objective
architectural environment.
It seems as if the narrator, who has become non-human, thus also becomes
objectified. ...no sound reaches no ear, as if ones ear were far away...
Who is this one? Who is the narrator? Who is the spectator? The wandering
movement of the camera through the empty interiors enhances this question.
It seems to be a non-human world, where subjects are objectified. Both narrator
and architecture objectify both environment and subjects. Therefor, it goes back
to the true essence of cinema: representing the architectural and subjective
environment as objects to be experienced. It only reveals a fragment or facet of
an object or subject that can be seen or experienced in reality.
This disembodied architecture and narrator both question reality. What do we
remember about specific events experienced? And how does a poetic image
such as a cinematic construct become an index for memory?
How can a cinematic construct become a locus for the incorporation of the
method of loci as a tool in the embodiment of the poetic image confronted to
the subject. Marienbad traces the elliptical conversations, shifting recollections
and fictional narrative for an emergence of a subjective memory palace of
relationships and events. Marienbad engages a postulate of memory and
perspective, and thus becomes an enigmatic composition of perception,
consciousness and memory.
This lecture of Marienbad as an enigmatic and disembodied narrative structure
is translated into a multimedia installation that focusses on the content of the
introductory voice-over, which has previously been described.
This narration is circular, repetitive and infinite. The voice dies out and returns.
It is crisp and clear and noise at different instants. It is conjuring and confusing,
thus questioning the position of the subject engaged with the cinematic
construct. This project uses exactly these properties, by deconstructing the actual
narrative into abstract components, which will only become clear and readable
under the right conditions.
The narrative is firstly decomposed into horizontal and vertical elements,
thus creating an abstract graphic representation of these words. This abstract
composition is mapped onto a large disc. Rotating this disc at a specific
speed under the right lighting frequency will put the persistence of vision as a
phenomenon into work, so that the abstract figures will merge into readable
text. This is achieved by relying on a stroboscopic light source, which refers
back to the early cinema devices in which a multitude of still frames merge into
apparent movement through retinal persistence.
The persistence of vision has been described as a generative tool in the
methodology of this research. It relies on afterimages which are retained by the
eyes retina to create a wholeness of perception.
It is only at the right frequency that the abstract composition merges into
readable text, and at different frequencies, different textual compositions
emerge, thus reflecting the circular monologue and the fading narrative. Like
in the approach of a subject with space, it is the personal point-of-view (or
personal frequency) that determines what is perceived and what persists.
Persistence of Vision, the generative tool behind this installation, can be
considered a metaphor for our understanding of architectural environments.
Subjects merge several sensory tracks into one continuum of subjective
interpretation. Spatial persistence is, thus, not a mere optical and peripheral
phenomenon, but a subjective merging of sensory streams, in which the
persistence reflects the condensations of these percepts into embodied images.
In the reconstruction of Marienbad, this project focusses on the repetitive
character of the disembodied narrative. As a circular monologue, the abstract
intrductory speech of the unknown voice-over reverberates throughout the
narrative of the cinematic construction.
Alain Resnais, still fromLAnne dernire a Marienbad (18)
Case Study Project # 2: Cinematic Decoupage

Last year in Marienbad does not aim to describe a unique objective reality, or
a human and rational world. It is a subjective construct, that does not engage
a sense of realism, but is more of a formal construction that aimes for
subjective interpretation and imagination.
This goal of a pure formal construction is achieved through the cuts and editing
of the cinematic sequences by confronting every rule of realism in film editing
frontally.In realistic film editing, space were to be broken up according to logic
and narrative of the storyline.
Therefor, it would be experienced as integral and real space. Using several
key components in the narrative as focus to cut around would follow the line of
interest of the audience.
Thus, the cinematic sequence would follow the perceptual process of the active
observer as much as the narrative construction would evolve and emerge
unnoticed, since the observer make sense of the relationship between events,
not on the intrinsic values of these events.
Subjective reality
Realistic decoupage simplifies the complexity of reality into a logical and
coherent construction, that is uniformly to all objective observers. It reflects
reality in an obvious manner, so that it is easily perceived by all. It forms a
continuous homogenous reality, in which the audience is presented a carefully
constructed narrative, which it has to follow, and in which the observer is
undergoing the selected stimuli of the cinematic sequence, which should evoke
scripted interpretations.
Last year in Marienbad, on the other hand, isnt engaged in an objective true
reality. It embraces falseness as generative aspect to trigger the active observer
to generate its own subjective reality of the poetic image. It underlines and
accentuates its own falseness. Its structure refuses any objective cutting, so that it
doesnt guide the observer in any predefined direction, but triggers the observer
to create its own subjective reality, and to define its own position towards the
poetic image presented.
What is the relationship between the observer and the poetic image? What is
the relationship between the narrator and the architectural environment? What
is the role of the actor within this environmen? The poetic image opens with a
slow panning movement through the emptiness of the architectural environment.
An architectural sequence is complemented with a disembodied narrator.
Alain Resnais, still from LAnne dernire a Marienbad (18)
He repeats, and repeats, and repeats his eery description of the excesses of
ornament. We pan through empty hallways until we finally arrive in the salon.
Where we see actors watching a play. What we have heared is a play.
We were, just like the actors in the salon, all watching theatre. And the actors
obviously play. There is no natural acting. Not even when the theatre has ended.
Seamlessly, the actors maintain the same method: acting.
The cinematic poetic image doesnt present a natural representation. It is a pure
construct questioning the positioning of the self towards the poetic image. It
alters the subjects perception of space and time, and facilitates the permanent
shift in narrative viewpoint in the film.
As a poetic image, it questions the essence of spatial experience: what is
objectively true, and what is a subjective construct? What do we believe to
understand, and how do we make representations of it? How does it affect
our emotional being? Does it evoke a sense of unease, through a strangely
familiar sentiment when embodying the experienced? How reliable are our
senses, and how do we process what they offer to us?
The poetic image leaves threads open for interpretation and exploration.
Imagination is called for, in order to generate a mental model of the experience
provided. Speculation, subjective deciphering, fragment puzzling are all
necessary ingedrients in this representation.
Spatial continuity
The poetic image can not be traced in units of spatial continuity, since there is
no logical coherent construction.
Successive shots in any sequence can be distributed over an infinite number of

spaces, of which it is uncertain to tell whether they are real of imaginary.
The lack of logical consistency is not only a matter of a problematic
reconstruction the spatial layout of the experienced architectural environment.
It is also a mental issue. There isnt only a mere spatial discontinuity, there
is also a discontinuity in the positioning of the subject within the architectural
environment.
In the gardens of the chateau, geometrical and symmetrical elements are layed
out in an abstract manner. The architectural elements appear a 2D setup, with a
perspective line fading in the distance, accentuating the infinity of the setting.
The subjects within this abstract figure are roughly scattered throughout the
pictoral frame. The result is a setting, or a mise-en-scene with a highly strange
appearance. The scattered subjects cast long, dark shadows, whereas the scene
remains abstract and figurative. There seems to be a discontinuity between
subject and the architectural environment.
Time continuity
As spatial continuity is questioned in terms of logical cohesion and interplay

between the real and the imaginary, as such are these questions valid for the
continuity of time. Multiple chronological strata seem to coexist, incorporating
contradictory times.
Time is effaced in Last year in Marienbad in many ways. It is never made
clear in what period the narrative is actually happening. Possible flashbacks
and flashforwards are never explicited, thus becoming open for interpretation.
Various discrete locations seem to shift location. Times are often contradictory,
since several events seem to be taking place simultaneously. All events
seem to collide in a single and same present, therefor confusing a quest for
chronologisation. Multiple time collide, and in the very cut of this eternal
present.
The ambiguity of time creates uncertainty in the mind of the active observer, who
is confused about the causal relationship between several events. This confusion
is achieved in the decoupage by merging incompatible data in consecutive
shots, or by impossible juxtapositions within one shot, or by repetition of events
with slight variations.
This merging of multiple times creates a condition of intertemporality. The

infinite is captured in the instant. The cinematic construction is a timeless instant.
Event spaces
The intertemporality of the cinematic construction is expressed through the
concept of the event. An event is a point in space at a moment in time.
A construction of space and time. An event is an occurence or situation,
sometimes even a rupture in the order of time.
When an event happens, it arises as a construction in space an time, and
questions the choice in the mental generation of a continuous construction of
experience and perception.
The mind tries to merge multiple mental tracks, offered in the cinematic
construction, into a continuous model. An event forces the subject to make
choices in the processing of these cinematic experience.
An event vanished the very moment it arises. It is an eternal present. It captures

the infinite in the present. It is neither past nor future. Therefore, an event,
as a construction in space and time, can be seen as a condensation of the
positioning of the subject in space, and thus the source for poetic images.
Capturing the infinite in the present, or creating a timeless instant is the intention
of the multimedia installation derived by this lecture of Marienbad. Once
again, the persistence of vision is used as a generative tool to create a infinitely
sculptural animation. Marienbad itself is a formal cinematic construction,
n which the subject conronted with the cinematography is left alone in his
interpretation of the content and meaning.
Architectural environments here play the role of mental framework. The vague
emtpiness of hallways determines the emotional setup of the cinematography. It
is through the slow panning through the empty hallways that the mental setup is
generated.
In this project, the empty hallways are the central focus point. One important
scene in the cinematic construction pans through an endless corridor, which
is overexposed with light and becomes highly disorienting. The hallway is
experienced through the eye of the camera, which pans slowly.
This project creates a timeless instant by animating a repetitive sequence of the
very same empty corridor. The use of the persistence of vision as a generative
tool for the installation refers back to the notions of spatial and time continuity.
The animated sculpture is at once a moving and dynamic installation. But on the
other hand, it freezes a frame into a jittery percept. The result isnt an animation,
but isnt a still either. It questions what is shown. It freezes the instant by creating
the movement. Thus, it incorporates both spatial and time continuity.
The project is thus a decoupage of reality. It tends to create a wholeness of
time and space continuity. By using a formal technique like the persistence
of vision, this projects joins the idea of the cinematic piece as a formal
construction. The project tend to be honest in its working methods. It is by being
clear in how it works, that questions regarding what is means are evoked.
Just like Marienbad itself questions what is shown. Not by focussing on
the illusion of the acting, but by stressing the formal construction of the
cinematography.
CASE STUDY PROJECT #3: Regard-en-Abyme

Regard
Once more I make my way forward, once more, through these corridors,
through these salons, these galleries, in this building from another century, this
immense, luxurious, baroque, lugubrious hotel, where interminable corridors
succeed other corridors that are silent, deserted, burdened with a cold and
sombre dcor of wood, stucco, moulden marble panels, dark mirrors, darkhued paintings, columns, heavy drapings... (Robbe-Grillet 1961: 22-23)
Discontinuous tracking
The cinematic constructions opens up with a confrontation of two simultaneous
narrative tracks. The visual track slowly pans through endless corridors and
hallways, drifts though labyrinthine rooms, passes by mirrors and mirrored
spaces.
The enigmatic structure of the editing cut confuses the viewer, to whom the
identification of the specific location, as well as the overall relativity of the
discrete locations, is questioned.
The auditory track, of which the opening sequence is quoted above, describes
the experienced architectural environmentt in an almost conjurning manner. A
circular monologue that is caught up in an interminable passing.
This auditory construction often fades away mid-sentence, and than picks up at
the beginning of the script again. It is a repetition that is caught in an infitinite
loop, sometimes with slight variations that trigger the questioning of the role of
the voice-over in the narrative of the cinematic construction.
Together, the visual and the auditory question the objectivity of reality, by
positioning the cinematic contruction in an eternal present, through the use of
infinite loops. These loops fade in and fade out. They come and go. They are
crisp and clear, and blurry and vague later on. But no matter what, they keep on
reappearing.
This results in an enigmatic narrative structure, in which truth and fiction become
intertwined to the degree that they become impossible to distinguish. The
dream-like cinematic construction is therefor an existential exposition on the
malleability of reality and spatial experience and memory.
The methods used to achieve this existential exposition, the disjunctions of time,
consciousness and perspective, can be divided into two generative metaphors:
the infinite movement and the mise-en-abyme.
Infinite Movement
Marienbad seems to capture the infinite in the instant. This timeless aspect is
enhanced by the construction of movement withing the cinematic construction.
Movement is at the same time incessant and directionless. The camera pans
through endless corridors, drifts through labyrinthine rooms, and introduces the
subject to an enigmatic composition of architectural environments.
It is never clear whether the camera drifts aimlessly or pointedly, whether the
cinematic shots serve a specific purpose, or whether they are just a mere formal
construction that triggers confusion.
Just like the camera wanders through these environments, also the actors
within the construction seem to wander incessantly and aimlessly through the
spaces. Movement often seems aimless. Just like with the repetition of several
monologues and spatial framings, the movement itself is repeted infinitely. This
eternal movement thus becomes reflexive of the true nature of the cinematic
construction itself.
Mise-en-abyme
Infinite repetition is key in the understanding of the mental construction of
Marienbad. Repetition of events, of architectural environment, of conjuring
voice-overs. In order to achieve this construction, endless corridors and
labyrinthine rooms are deployed.
Mirroring spaces enhance the reflective character of the mental role of
the cinematic construction. Reflection and repetition are the credo in this
construction, and are better described in its condensed version of the mise-enabyme.
A mise-en-abyme is a construction in which an entity is repeated and reflected
within a single contruction. A reflection within a reflection. A layer of reality
within another layer. The repetition and the reflection are not seperate
conjecutive tracks, but can co-exist within a single poetic image.
In the opening sequence, the camera pans aimlessly through a seemingly
enchanted crowd of actors. The voice-over isnt a natural escort to the cinematic
narrative, but appears, just like the enchanted crowd, a formal construction
that lacks all notion of reality. Actors seem like they are acting. The formal
construction is never experienced as natural. The camera pans further through
the crowd, while it becomes clear that the spectator of Marienbad looks at
spectators of a play in a theater within Marienbad. Spectators are looking at
spectators.
People watching people.
The voice-over comes from the actor within the play. This play within a play
continues, as the voice-over is repeated whilst the play within Marienbad
already has come to an end.
The formal acting method as perceived within the plat continues within the
narrative of Marienbad. There is no distinction between the play and the plot.
They are endlessly repeated en reflected within the continuing narrative.
They question the expextations of the spectator in the anticipation of the
narrative and architectural environment with which they are confronted.
Thus becoming a mise-en-abyme that questions reality and objectivity of the
experienced cinematic construction.
Reflection of mirrored spaces traces these architectural environments, but
question its objectivity. Mirrored spaces are distorted, the layers of reality difficult
to distinguish.
Reality becomes a subjective projection of mental anticipation. The sensory
experiences offered within the cinematic construction trigger the spectator to
generate a mental model of their architectural evironment.
Architecture is the framework for the mental atmosphere of the cinematic
construction. Infinite hallways pass by. One corridor follows another. One
endless corridor follows another.
This projects reconstructs the many different hallways that form the backbone of
the cinematic narrative. This reconstruction results into a sequence of spaces,
one after another. This refers to the previously described method of loci, in
which discrete locations are used as the framework onto which the content of
narrative is mapped. This method allowed ancient rhetoricians to memorize
speeches, by making the walk through their self-generated memory palaces.
Reconstructing the infinite sequence of spaces that are walked through by the
camera will result into a memory palace of Marienbad, in which the subject
confronted with this cinematic construction has to find its way.
This project focusses on the camera point-of-view, which perceives the strong
one-point-perspective as a central subject within space. Reconstructing this
point-of-view results into a skewed sculpture, which vanishes into a single point
in space. Thus, the beholder of this sculptural interior space is confronted with a
forced perspective, which immerses the beholder into the interior environment.
This project also focusses on the infinite repetition of the infinite hallways. Vast,
empty corridors follow other corridors... By reconstructing the corridors into
forced perspective sculptures, the discrete locations can be mapped circularly
into a complete disc of discrete spaces. Rotating the mapped sculptural spaces
will result into an installation in which the different hallways will pass the
beholder by. Since its slow rotation, the spaces will follow one another infinitely,
thus refering back to the linear aspect of making the walk through the personal
memory palace.
As a reference to the honesty of the formal construction that is the cinematic
piece, this installation will project the captured images of the panned hallways
as a livestream next to the sculpture itself. This links the sculpture to the
projection. Or the honesty in technical execution which allows to question reality
as it is perceived, just like the cinematic piece iself does.
CASE STUDY PROJECT #4: Marienbads method of Loci

Faux raccords
The cinematic construct of Marienbad explores the uncertainty in the narrative
connections and the concealed associations between social relationships and
architectural environments. It does so through the construction of an enigmatic
composition on the relationship between experience, consciousness and reality.
Thus, it becomes a study on the workings of memory as a whole: How do
subjects perceive and embody architectural environments? How do subject gain
consciousnes of their position within architectural environments? And how do
poetic images become a condensation for the experience and embodiment of
a memorized architectural environment? Marienbad is a postulate of subjective
memory and perspective.
Method of Loci
The postulate of memory in Marienbad concentrates on the arrangement of
subject and spaces in a way that refers to the ancient Method of Loci, as
previously described. The spatial arrangement of events in specific discrete
architectural environments follow the use of the method of loci as a generative
tool.
These discrete locations are then composed into a labyrinthine construction,
an environment given to the subject interpreting it, and playing with it, in order
to give meaning to the maze. Marienbad adds jump cuts to the mental walk
through the memory palaces created in the method of loci.
These jump cuts alter the contunuity of thought and interpretation of the discrete
locations, and thus introduce confusion in the mind of the meaning-seeking
subject. This confusion questions the perception and memory of architectural
environments, or, to put it more generally, question objective reality as a whole
in favor of subjective reality.
Imaginative reality
Jump cuts, variations in repetition, reflection of impossible environments,
subjects that cast shadows and environments that do not...marienbad is a
mental construction. The discrete elements of the cinematic constructions are
combined into a continuous narrative require a huge amount of imagination in
order to complete the whole of the construct. Impossible and unlogical elements
are merged together into a continuous percept, thus calling for imagination to
fill the gaps.
The sequences in the cinematic construction thus do not only rely on the
reconstruction of memory, but also a mere imaginative completion of incoherent
discrete elements.
Whether or not these sequences are recalled from memory, or rely on

imaginative completion, they all rely on the mental recontruction of these
environments. As previously decribed, the mental activities that process memory
and imagination are similar in terms of neural activity, and thus equally true in
terms of acceptancy as real.
In the reconstruction of past events, some details remain concealed,are
obscured or become blurred. Other details become prominent and emerge
highlighted. Reconstruction of a memory is thus a reconstruction of a past
spatio-temporal setting in the present. As is the subjective mind recreates the
entire scene as is were right in front. This reconstruction requires imagination
to create a sense of wholeness in the construct, and to fill the gaps in the
obscured.
The relationship between imagination and memory has a double meaning in
Marienbad.
First of all, Marienbad is a cinematic construction. A poetic image. A
condensation in an artwork. This construction is subjectively embodied. The
spectator subjectively tries to make sense of the contruction offered. This
requires imagination to embody the experience. Imagination in the sense of
subjective interpretation, with appropriation of the narrative as a result.
Secondly, Marienbad is a feeding ground for mental appropriation. Imagination
and memory go side by side, and within the cinematic construction, objective
reality is questioned as being real. A subjective sense of reality introduces the
spectator to uncertainty in the approach of the narrative.
What is true and what is false? And how do distortions and convolutions create
doubt and uncertainty in the objective reality, and the subjective reconstruction
of memory through imagination?
In this sense, Marienbad refers to the memory of architectural environments
as a whole, within the framework of the memory everyday architectural
environments. What is objectively real, and what is subjective imagination in
the reconstruction of architectural environments from our own memory?
The intertwining of reality and falsehood is, thus, not only tangible in works
of art, but the same tendencies can be traced within the experience of reality.
An example that makes this clear can be found in the psychological tests on
police study reports. In an experiment, subjects waiting for the experiment are
confronted with unexpected events. After this unforeseen event, eyewitness
accounts are collected and compared.
Their reports show a myriad of responses to the objective reality. Objective
reconstruction of eyewitness reports are always subjective representations.
Subjects always interpret the objective reality. In order to gain an understanding

of the objective reality, subject appropriate reality by embodying it, by
interpreting and identifying with it.
Since the psychological experiment asks subjects to testify on objective events,
and dont manage to objectively reconstruct the events, the same subjects will
obviously subjectively distort the experienced events of in the personal sphere.
Basically, imagination fills the gaps of sensory perception.
Marienbad is more than a cinematic construction. It also serves as metaphor for
the dialogue between subject and space in reality. Marienbad reflects reality, as
well as the subjective approach towards reality.
Subjects embody reality, through active imagination and appropriation.
Subjects are involved with an active questioning of reality, instead of a passive
acceptancy of a predefined projection of reality. What is objectively real, what is
subjectively real, what is subjectively imagined?
Memory impressions of the architectural environment of Marienbad come back
and fade out. Flashbacks, Flashforwards are combined in order to questioning
time and space in Marienbad.
Memory reappears to the eye of the beholder at a sudden instant, before
slowly starting to fade out into the flatness of the now. The episodic buffer of
the human mind stores a memory as a movie sequence. It is often a linear
structure with chronological order. It only survives in the short term memory, and
experiences a rapid decay in its capacity to be recalled. The content of memory
is function of the rate of forgetting (Virilio, 1994,p.52) As time passes by, the
once so clear setup of memory into a clear instant, a clear image, start fading
out.
Perception appears to the eye of the beholder at a sudden instant, resulting in
the impression of the percept onto the retina, which persists as an afterimage
for a while, which allows for the creating of a wholeness of perception as a
continuum of space and time at the blink of an eye. Retinal persistence and
memory recollection are combined in this project, in which the content focusses
on the recollection and reconstruction of the previously described and analysed
architectural environments that form the framework for the narrative within the
cinematic construction.
This project acts as a memory screen, onto which the impressions of the
architectural environments are shot through the use of a developped flash
projector. The projector is a hacked dia projector which literally shots
decomposed impressions of the slow movements of the camera through the
vast, empty corridors of Marienbad.
DISCUSSION
Last Year in Marienbad as an embodied poetic image.
Last Year in Marienbad, the cinematic case study, is a poetic image, since
it condenses a cinematic construct into a formal representation that is offered
to the subjective viewer to interpret. It drags the subject confronted with the
poetic image into the rabbit hole of the architectural environment that is the
constructed baroque chateau.
Within the inner spaces of the chateau, or the Weltinnenraum of the chateau
(Rilke, 1992) the subjective spectator finds himself questioning the proposed
formal construction, as does the woman A when she desperately tries to
reconstruct her architectural memory of the chateau. The poetic image questions
wheather the space is real or imagined, simulated or objective.
The poetic image of Marienbad can thus be seen as a form of architectural
imagery, in which the representation of the mental interior space occurs in the
mind of the beholder (ie the woman A or the spectator confronted with the
poetic image) The subjects confronted with this representation can only see
the represented architectural environment as they subjectively can: by stitching
together the formal shards into a wholeness of perception, thus reconstructing
the totatilty of the architectural environment.
Because of its questioning of spatial memory, it refers back to the subjectivity
of spatial awareness and representation. Because of its questioning of the
truthfulness of the representation of the chateau (is it all a dream, or actual
memory, or mere fantasy?) it refers back to the questioning of the position of
the self in space, and thus refers to the lecture of space as a projection of the
subject.
Since the poetic image of Marienbad focusses on the recall of architectural
memory, it engages a dialogue with the reconstructive faculties of the human
mind on the spatial layout. These mimetic faculties have been the focus of
CASE STUDY PROJECT #4: Marienbads method of loci, in which an
led screen is wired as both a sensory and a projective screen, thus being a
metaphor for the sensory embodiment of spatial impressions.
Wheather it is the spectator trying to make sense of the memory screen,
wheather it is A who tries desperately to remember where she was, and what
she had done, or wheather it is the spectator who is confronted with an infinite
loop of information and sequences, in which he is left to stitch these datastreams
together in a coherent mental map of the architectural environment, they all

engage embodiment of spatial impressions.
Last Year in Marienbad is thus a case study on the embodiment of poetic images
because it evokes the very phenomena described on this notion.
The Case Study Projects as embodied poetic images.
The Case Study Projects, the reconstruction of the case study of this research,
has been an effort in engaging a dialogue between the subjective self and the
architectural environment experienced in the poetic image of the cinematic
piece. The result of this research has been a lecture of a poetic image (ie the
case study on Marienbad) in the light of the subjective dialogue between the self
and space.
Reconstructing Marienbad has used all methods described in the methodology
in order to create a coherent wholeness in the artists impression of the poetic
image of Marienbad, the baroque chateau. It tends to be a reconstruction
by an architect of an architectural environment. But not a reconstruction of a
geometric objective reality, but of a subjective interpreter who questions his
position within the architectural environment of the cinematic construct.
How this reconstruction reverberates in the discourse of theory and
methodology, and its implications on the finding of the case study, are the focus
of the sections that follow.
The Case Study Projects and the introduced theoretical discourse.
Reconstructing the interior mental environment of the baroque chateau happens
solely through the information provided by the cameras point-of-view. This gives
the subject confronted with the architectural environment a very limited range
of information to form a representation of the totality of the spatial layout. He is
left with shards of information, which he has to stitch together into a coherence
of interpretation. This requires architectural imagery and imagination to create
a wholeness of perception. Thus, in order to create the Weltinnenraum, or the
representation of the architectural environment with which the subject can relate
, the experienced environment is enhanced with architectural imagination.
Case Study Project #2 achieves this goal by relying on the duality of a moving
animation and a visual appearance as a frozen frame. This literally stitches
together information into a single view, into a single entity.
Case Study Project #3 in turn shifts the emphasis on this single condensation
of perception towards a circular repetitive memory palace. The wholeness
of perception here is achieved through the repetition of the interior spaces,
infinitely perceived from a one-point-perspective, as the camera pans through a
vast array of empty hallways.

The Case Study Projects thus stitch together the shards of information offered by
camera into a wholeness of representation, or spatial simulation. The artworks
thus try to reconstruct the architectural environments as a subjective simulation
or reality. Subjective because it takes into consideration the subjects point-ofview and the personal perspective in the reconstruction of the spaces instead of
a cartesian orthogonal reconstruction of the objective real. Simulation because
it uses the architectural model as representation of reality instead of registering
the experienced architectural environment.
The Case Study Projects thus refers back to its ontological base of questioning
the subjective self-space dialogue. This happens both in the positioning within
the cinematic construction, but also in the position of the beholder confronted
with the artwork. This questions the positioning of the self toward the poetic
image, but also the positioning of the beholder towards the artwork. It is exactly
this point-of-view that refers back to the lecture of space as a projection of the
subject.
The Case Study Projects and the traced methodology.
The Case Study Projects feed on the traced methodology, since they incorporate
the methods both on a theoretical and metaphorical as well as a practical
generative way.
The persistence of vision is a visual phenomenon engaged with the way visual
impressions are embodied, as it has been described in the methodology. As a
generative tool, the persistence of vision is the driving force behind Case Study
Projects #1 and #2. They use the optical properties of the persistence of vision
in such a way that boundaries in frequency at which the human mind is able to
distinguish and embody changes in visual stimuli are traced. By differentiating
in the frequency at this boundary, the beholder is confronted with a questioning
of the perceptual experienced offered to him. At the border of fused perception
and blurry impression.
The persistence of vision thus refers to the individual approach to the perception
of reality: what is the frequency at which subjects can clearly read and
understand the architectural environments they are confronted with? When do
blurry impressions become clear percepts. When does it all come together into
a clear understanding? These are the questions the reconstruction of Marienbad
raises in response to the use of the persistence of vision as a generative
methodology.
The method of Loci is a rhetoric method that uses architecture as the vehicle
for memory. Therefor, it is used both as a method and metaphor for the
reconstruction of Marienbad. In the method of Loci, rhetoricians use the
sequences of spaces in a walk-through. By walking through several discrete

locations, they map discrete elements onto the locations where they belong.
Objects embedded within space. And by making the mental walk through
the constructed memory palace, their rhetoric speech unfolds. Just like the
camera of the cinematic piece wanders endlessly through the memory palace
of Marienbad. With one endless corridor following another. With one empty
space following another. With X trying to convince A that they were here
before. She was there. He was here. She did this. He did that. Here and there.
Again and again. The memory palace of Marienbad is reconstructed in Case
Study Project #3, in which the linear narrative structure of a memory palace is
translated into a repetitive circular pattern. One corridor after another. In an
infinite loop. The memory palace as a sequence of discrete locations unfolds.
Thus a reconstruction of Marienbad as a memory palace is achieved in Case
Study Project #3.
Screen memories revive repressed memories at a sudden instant. Flashes of
memory reappear suddenly to the mind of the beholder. Sudden instants,
placed in time. But also: The content of memory is function of the rate of
forgetting(Virilio,1994,p.52) . So memory is a time-based phenomenon.
Project four incorporates this time-based aspect of memory. Flashing snapshots
of memory at a memory screen refers to the snapshots of screen memories. The
time-based decay of the generated impression refers to Virilios interpretation of
time and memory.
Mediatized memory traces memory of architectural environments as enhanced
outside the human mind. Memory is mediatized. In Case Study Project #4,
memory is electrified as memory in the capacitors. Memory can be situated
outside the human brain, thus engaging a permanent dialogue between the
internal memory and the references external memory evoke for their subjective
interpretations.
The Case Study Projects and the lecture of LAnne dernire Marienbad
The Case Study Projects do with its beholder what Marienbad did as a cinematic
piece to its audience. As a cinematic artwork, it is a formal construction which
is offered to its audience to be given meaning. No natural acting is involved.
No natural voice-over is introduced. All is a construction that questions
what is beeing seen. This is all intended as a questioning of the status of the
scenography. Is it a dream? Is it a memory? Is it a perceptual experience?
As a reconstructed artwork, the reconstruction of the mental interior spaces
of the memory palace does the same with the beholder of the arworks. The
artworks interact with the presence of the spectator in order to find the right
frequency and the right point-of-view for the experiences.
Where does the spectator stands towards the artworks influences what he sees,
as he approaches the artworks. As these reconstructed models are presented

interactively to the spectator, they are offered to be given meaning and to be
discovered.
Where does the subject stand towards the spaces perceived, the images
embodied? Two main aspects of the both the cinematic piece and the
reconstructed artworks have resulted into the achieving of the goal of engaging
a dialogue between subject and space, between subject and artwork.
and confusion. Be it through vague shots of empty spaces, through uncanny
voice-overs and highly detailed ornaments, through vague impressions and
highly detailed ornaments. Thus, the case study tends to engage a dialogue
between the subjective self and the architectural environment it is confronted
with.
CONCLUSION
In the reconstruction of a poetic image, the phenomena involved with the
mental cognition of architectural environments are being deployed to gain a
better understanding of the subjective dialogue between the self and space.
In the context of this research, this understanding has been traced in terms of
the reconstruction of a cultural artefact. Last year in Marienbad intrinsically
condenses all the aspects of spatial perception, persistence and memory into a
single poetic image. So as a case study it has shown how all of these aspects o
the subject-space dialogue reverberate into a single artwork.
Reconstructing Marienbad on the other hand has been an attempt to translate
this flattened cinematographic projected poetic image back onto a spatial
topography, and subjectively interpreting the artwork. A remix of an artwork as a
method to engage a dialogue with the source artwork as well as the confronted
beholders of the reconstructed artwork.
But this dialogue has offered insights that go beyond the artwork it focusses on.
By being specific, this research has been able to trace the phenomena that are
equally true in the first world architectural environments that surround subjects in
everyday life.
How we perceive the architecturel environment when we approach it in everyday
life. How we see space as a projection of our own subject. How architectural
setups persist on the human mind, and how we make representations of it. How
we memorize places weve been to. How we orient ourselves within them. How
we respond to spaces when were right in the middle of then.
Reconstructing Marienbad refers back to the understanding of everyday

architectural environments, through the use of the very same methods engaged.
Reconstructing Marienbad is about reconstructing everyday architectural
environments.
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RECONSTRUCTING EMBODIED SPACES

Mats Dekock is an architect and an artist based in Brussels, Belgium. In his

This research dossier is submitted

RECONSTRUCTING EMBODIED SPACES

Poetic images of architectural environments

Perception of architectural environments

Persistence of architectural environments

Memory of architectural environments

Perception of architectural environments

Persistence of architectural environments

Memory of architectural environments

CASE STUDY RECONSTRUCING MARIENBAD

Space as a projection of the subject

Cinema as embodied poetic image

Marienbad as an embodied poetic image

Case Study Project #1: Disembodied Narrative

Last Year in Marienbad as an embodied poetic image

The experience of architectural environments is a subjective dialogue between

dialogue. This discourse is translated and structurized as follows:

Poetic images of architectural environments

Shards as relicts of memory. Additions as interpolation for the reconstruction of

image, imagery, imagination, imaginal...mental image, affective image. This

representation, in mental life it acts as a permanent mediation between the

Perception of architectural environments

environments is always a dialogue between subject and space.

Fritz Kahn, Maschine Mensch (1)

Robert Fudd Bewusstsein (2)

-The Perceptual world:

perception, memory reconstruction and persistent anticipation, as described

Michael Borremans, left: (3) right: (4)

Architectural Imaginary is a term for these representations of architectural

Persistence of architectural environments

Architectural environments are waiting to be given meaning by purposeful

Bernard Tschumi, Screenplays (7)

Memory of architectural environments

order to create a linear structure.

Perception of Architectural Environments

them becomes dialectic in the active relationship between environment and

Michael Borremans, (8)

Guy Debord, The naked city (9)

Whereas Benjamins Flneur is all about social constructions, Georg Simmels

These narrative structures found in Simmels Novel dweller are redefined by

Persistent Architectural Environments

Platos Allegory of the Cave

Ibn al-Haythams Camera Obscura

Pinhole camera as a research device

Giovanni Fontanas Magic Lantern

Magic Lanters are the very first illusiunary

Emile Reymbauds Theatre Optique, Visualization: Mathias Dekock

The Zoetrope, Praxinoscope, Phenakistoscope, Zoopraxinoscope,

Eadweard Muybridge, Locomotion 462 (10)

But as stated before, perception is a cognitive process, in which visual stimuli

Memory of Architectural Environments

in the rooms.When we return to a place after a considerable absence, we not

Giulio Camillo, Memory Theatre (11)

Camillos memory theatre is a distortion of the plan of a traditional Victorian

Giordano Bruno, Memory Wheel, reconstructed by Frances Yates (12)

Robert Fludd, Memory Theatre (13)

Robert Fludds memory theatre is a place in which all actions of words,

Mike Kelley, Educational complex onwards: 1995-2008 (14)

Mike Kelley, Educational complex onwards: 1995-2008 (14)

beginning and an end. Memory, in contrast, is a cognitive structure, that knows