Out of This World in Two Parts

Agostino De Rosa

“Touch is among the most demystifying of the senses, while sight is the most magical.”

Roland Barthes, Mythologies, Paris 1957.

Part One: The Denigration of Vision

Two series of images come to mind when one con­sid­ers sight and the role of the observ­er in moder­ni­ty in a cen­tu­ry that has aban­doned us with­out any appar­ent her­itage. It par­tic­u­lar­ly, but not so pecu­liar­ly, deals with two scenes from two films: the first, tem­po­ral­ly more remote, is the short film enti­tled Un chien andalou (1928−1929)1 by Luis Buñuel, a type of sur­re­al­is­tic styl­is­tic exer­cise con­trived with the lux­u­ri­ous com­plic­i­ty of Sal­vador Dali as script writer. Accord­ing to Buñuel, the script derives from the inter­sec­tion of the dreams of its two respec­tive authors2. An alien­at­ing rela­tion­ship, obses­sive and mys­te­ri­ous, is estab­lished between the fic­ti­tious pic­to­r­i­al, cul­ti­vat­ed by both authors and pro­fess­ed­ly sur­re­al­is­tic – evi­dent in the con­tin­u­ous fig­u­ra­tive ref­er­ences made to Redon, Magritte e Mirò3 – , and the lit­er­al fil­mat­ic struc­ture. More pre­cise­ly, the final prod­uct results from the assem­blage of scenes, done sole­ly in the edit­ing phase, orga­nized accord­ing to dream-like and auto­mat­ic stim­uli, and altered by psy­chic text. In this way the con­struc­tion of visu­al and nar­ra­tive sequences returns to an ex-post time, and can be imag­ined as being cre­at­ed after the lens – mechan­i­cal sight of fil­mat­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion – set its gaze upon them. In this man­ner, the image lives a dou­ble life, uncon­scious and sub­lim­i­nal optics in the shoot­ing phase, vig­i­lant and ratio­nal­ly pro­jec­tive in the post-pro­duc­tion phase. 

Still from Un chien andalou (1928-1929),directed by Luis Buñuel
1

Still from Un chien andalou (1928-1929),
directed by Luis Buñuel

Still from Un chien andalou (1928-1929),directed by Luis Buñuel
2

Still from Un chien andalou (1928-1929),
directed by Luis Buñuel

Still from Un chien andalou (1928-1929),directed by Luis Buñuel
3

Still from Un chien andalou (1928-1929),
directed by Luis Buñuel

Still from Un chien andalou (1928-1929), directed by Luis Buñuel
4

Still from Un chien andalou (1928-1929),
directed by Luis Buñuel

The scene in the film which is indeli­bly imprint­ed in the observer’s mem­o­ry is, with­out a doubt, the one in which the protagonist’s, (actress Simon Mureil) left eye is lon­gi­tu­di­nal­ly dis­sect­ed with a razor. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] [ 3 ] [ 4 ]

Buñuel doesn’t con­tribute any eth­i­cal or crim­i­nal con­no­ta­tion to this action that takes place with a dis­qui­et­ing absence of reac­tion on the part of the vic­tim, who sweet­ly offers her­self up to the stu­pe­fied gaze of the spec­ta­tor in a sort of vesalian pose. The scene com­mu­ni­cates the inevitable­ness of the irra­tional ges­ture, but in the mean­time fore­tells the oper­a­tion that, mutatis mutan­dis, is about to allu­sive­ly tran­spire, has tran­spired, and will tran­spire in the twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry on the spec­ta­tor him­self. By now, the lat­ter is seduced by the scene to such an extent as to not to be able to refuse its oppres­sive and sadis­tic nature: ocu­lar vio­lence on the set, assumed by now as an ele­ment of scop­ic vio­lence on the pas­sive observ­er, in a cir­cu­lar fig­u­ra­tive trans­fert. Accord­ing to some crit­ics, the sur­gi­cal­ly per­formed – clean – inci­sion exe­cut­ed by Buñuel him­self seems to allude, alter­na­tive­ly to an image of sex­u­al cru­el­ty against women, to a sort of sym­bol for the male fear of cas­tra­tion, to child­birth, to an indi­ca­tion of homo­sex­u­al ambi­gu­i­ty, and to a com­plex lin­guis­tic game”,4 but is more cred­i­bly traced back to a vio­lent and arti­fi­cial poet­ic mise en scène of the dis­parag­ing act to which sight is the object. 

The post-mortem action can­not but draw to mind a sim­i­lar pre­ced­ing dis­sec­tion con­duct­ed by Renè Descartes (1596−1650), the most per­spec­tive and visu­al of French philoso­phers,5 on an oeil de boeuf when he intro­duces the metaphor of the cam­era oscu­ra (dark room) in his Diop­trique (1637). The philoso­pher con­sid­ered the cam­era oscu­ra an instru­ment of the objec­tive rep­re­sen­ta­tion of real­i­ty which dis­re­gards the sen­tient and the will of the indi­vid­ual observ­er, that even func­tions, with­out the pro­gres­sive degen­er­a­tion tied to the break­ing down of the tis­sues, in a sub­ject deprived of life. He uses the metaphor of the cam­era oscu­ra to fig­u­ra­tive­ly allude to his pre­cept of the releas­ing of the sens­es, basis for his Meto­do: now I will close my eyes, plug my ears, I will not mind my sens­es.” 6 This cat­a­stroph­ic reclu­sion of the observ­er with­in him­self, with respect to the world of eco­log­i­cal expe­ri­ence, rep­re­sents Descartes’ clear cog­ni­tion of the inad­e­qua­cies of phys­i­o­log­i­cal per­cep­tion in the restora­tion of a dark and silent world placed beyond touch and sight, beyond hear­ing and taste, com­plete­ly unknown to us if not for its ludi­crous acoustic, visu­al, tac­tile and gus­ta­tive pro­jec­tions, inex­is­tent, when all is said and done, with respect to phe­nom­e­nal real­i­ty that is and remains out­side of us, occu­py­ing anoth­er space and dimen­sion which are unrecog­nis­able in their completeness.

G. Hesius, Emblemata sacra de fide, spe, charitate, Antwerp 1636
5

G. Hesius, Emblemata sacra de fide, spe, charitate, Antwerp 1636

G. Hesius, Emblemata sacra de fide, spe, charitate, Antwerp 1636
6

G. Hesius, Emblemata sacra de fide, spe, charitate, Antwerp 1636

To imag­ine Descartes in the act of dis­sect­ing a human eye or that of a rather large ani­mal, such as an ox – cut­ting “.…the three envelop­ing mem­branes of the rear sec­tions so as to expose a large part of the liq­uid with­out spilling even a lit­tle” – to then sub­sti­tute it for the most clas­si­cal glass lens, and dis­play it in adhered to the pin­hole of a cam­era obscure [ 5 ][ 6 ], thus see­ing “…an image of all exter­nal objects rep­re­sent­ed in nat­ur­al per­spec­tive”,7 appear on the oppo­site wall, is a com­plex oper­a­tion. On the one hand it offers us an observ­er that is now dis­em­bod­ied, who has giv­en up his ties to the onlook­er that defined him as a human being, becom­ing a cyclo­pean mam­moth recep­tive organ;8 and on the oth­er hand it trag­i­cal­ly refers to con­tem­po­rary tele-cam­eras lying at ground lev­el, that con­tin­ue to film a war scene, one of the many con­flicts that dev­as­tate the plan­et, from an unnat­ur­al yet opti­cal­ly coher­ent posi­tion, even though the cam­era man has already been wound­ed if not killed.

Stills from, Film (1965, starring Buster Keaton) directed by Alan Schneider, screenplay by Samuel Beckett
7

Stills from, Film (1965, starring Buster Keaton) directed by Alan Schneider, screenplay by Samuel Beckett

Yet more fig­ures silent­ly strike our imag­i­nary vision. As before, they are tak­en from a film—Film (1965), direct­ed by Alan Schnei­der, adapt­ed from Samuel Beckett’s script—that is just as neglect­ed by mass cul­ture but is con­cise in its pro­vi­sion of inter­pre­ta­tion on the eclipse of observ­ing the sub­ject.9 Here, un unrecog­nis­able, pale Buster Keaton, no longer wear­ing his sad clown out­fit, is ini­tial­ly shown walk­ing the streets of a city in ruins (post atom­ic New York?), try­ing to avoid accus­ing or sim­ply ques­tion­ing glances of passers-by: the con­tin­u­ous rebound­ing between stan­dard shots and point-of-view-shots – in this case with a dirty and cataract lens – desta­bi­lizes the spectator’s expec­ta­tions, show­ing a char­ac­ter who is ter­ror­ized by the gaze of oth­ers. Keaton’s inter­mit­tent move­ments reveal a deep fear for all that an image could dis­close, per­haps an image par excel­lence, unknown by def­i­n­i­tion; the same blind­fold that cov­ers one eye leads us to imag­ine that the eras­ing of one of the two organs of sight could have been self inflict­ed to reduce the high lev­el of shock con­nect­ed to the act of observ­ing and espe­cial­ly to the act of see­ing one­self see’: it does not seem alto­geth­er for­tu­itous that the blind­fold­ed eye is actu­al­ly the left one, almost as if the dis­sec­tion of the organ of sight exe­cut­ed by Buñuel on the pas­sive and silent Simon Mareuil, had migrat­ed to Keaton’s body, via fil­mat­ic and con­cep­tu­al osmo­sis, to inflict the stig­ma­ta of the mod­ern eclipse of the anthrop­i­cal gaze upon him. The pro­tag­o­nist con­tin­u­ous­ly seeks refuge and lit­er­al­ly with­draws into him­self each time his gaze meets any dec­o­ra­tive ele­ment, in a des­o­late domes­tic inte­ri­or, that could reflect his like­ness or that could assume ani­mistic human forms. This sug­gests a dread­ful­ness con­nect­ed to sight. The pho­to­graph­ic repro­duc­tion of a sculpt­ed Sumer­ic face with dis­qui­et­ing eyes of absurd pro­por­tion and the only mir­ror in the room cov­ered by a black cloth as if in mourn­ing, induce a coag­u­lum of a mis­an­throp­ic and claus­tro­pho­bic sens­es in the devel­op­ment of the short film which mys­te­ri­ous­ly dis­solves at the end when, upon awak­en­ing from a light sleep, Keaton encoun­ters the gaze of his dopple­ganger [ 7 ]: real ter­ror erupts in rec­og­niz­ing our­selves, reflect­ed in an absurd cara­pace, as belong­ing to a world where noth­ing is known, all is imag­ined, even if made up of pre­tences. It is not by chance that the incipt of the film, com­plete­ly silent, is entrust­ed to the words of philoso­pher George Berke­ly, esse est per­cipi”, which is to say, being is equiv­a­lent to being per­ceived”.10

The undrap­ing of the cloth could then be tan­ta­mount to the lift­ing of Mâyâ’s veil, how­ev­er with­out that cathar­tic val­ue, more pre­cise­ly of emp­ty­ing out, that one rec­og­nizes in vedan­tic mys­ti­cism where it shows us how illu­so­ry real­i­ty is, how the only way to cog­ni­tion is that of entrance­ment. As Elemire Zol­la observes, it is in a psy­chic state defined as samând­hi that this unveil­ing takes place, when the mind “…is not dis­tract­ed by roam­ing eyes, by avid hear­ing, by a greedy tongue, by the ten­sion of the skin, and, descend­ing into the inti­mate, by inces­sant remind­ing, by rest­less imag­in­ing,”11 in an ante-lit­ter­am Carte­sian state. There is no one that sees like the mind, which, in this con­di­tion of mys­tic asce­sis, affirms I am”, dis­own­ing the more usu­al I am this”, I am that”, and emerges enriched from the phys­i­o­log­i­cal detach­ment of real­i­ty because it expands beyond every per­cep­tive lim­it: it no longer deals with a vig­i­lante organ, sus­tained by ethics – that will end up becom­ing aes­thet­ics – of ratio­nal­i­ty ele­vat­ed to scat­o­log­i­cal dig­ni­ty. In the West the mind, and espe­cial­ly sight, under­go the sen­sa­tions of the out­side world and attempt to estab­lish a doc­u­men­tal con­tact with it which is met­ric-pro­jec­tive in nature, ignor­ing the arche­typ­al aura. Unde­ni­ably, over the course of cen­turies, human sight, referred to as a mechan­i­cal expe­ri­ence of reg­is­ter­ing images, with Descartes (and pre­vi­ous­ly by Johannes von Kepler (1571−1630), and then by John Locke (1632−1704) and Got­tfried Wil­hem von Leib­niz (1646−1716)12, under­goes a pro­gres­sive deval­u­a­tion’. Ini­tial­ly this is because of the phys­i­o­log­i­cal inad­e­quate nature of the sen­so­ry sys­tem, but suc­ces­sive­ly because tech­nol­o­gy begins to pro­duce instru­ments that allow for the cre­ation of images in an inde­pen­dent way with respect to the human sub­ject: sight, already de-anthro­po­mor­phized by Kepler, will now become sub­or­di­nate to instru­ments that repro­duce forms, even mov­ing forms, through the appli­ca­tion of sim­ple phys­i­cal laws in a nat­ur­al way, so to speak. 

Already, per­spec­tive rep­re­sent­ed a sort of visu­al reg­i­men­ta­tion, a geo­met­ric struc­ture, that allowed for the impo­si­tion of rules and lim­i­ta­tions on direct vision, trans­lat­ing the per­cep­ti­ble expe­ri­ence of per­cep­tion of space into an icon, in its one sanc­ti­mo­nious’ two dimen­sion­al pro­jec­tion: but the anthrop­ic fil­ter that char­ac­ter­ized its modal­i­ty of expres­sion – the being run by sen­tient capac­i­ties, of the artist’s choice and judge­ment – his­tor­i­cal­ly guar­an­teed it a sort of proud revenge with regard to all of human nature of its own mak­ing. It may appear para­dox­i­cal, but the very images that are pro­duced in a con­trolled man­ner in the inte­ri­or of a cam­era oscu­ra, although con­sid­ered con­ven­tion­al­ly more nat­ur­al’ or opti­cal­ly’ cor­rect, can turn out to be, in short, the most abstract­ed to per­cep­tion: see­ing that it is dif­fi­cult to gain access to such data, the blunt, harsh expo­sure of one’s own or some­one else’s reti­nal image, restored with extreme care using pic­to­r­i­al mea­sures, assumes patho­log­i­cal more than phys­i­o­log­i­cal char­ac­ter­is­tics, as the stud­ies on autis­tic per­cep­tion by Lor­na Selfe explain.13 That which is cru­cial for the cam­era oscu­ra is its rela­tion­ship between the observ­er and the indif­fer­ent, the unde­fined expan­sion of the out­side world, and how its appa­ra­tus sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly car­ries out a cut or delim­i­ta­tion of that field, mak­ing it vis­i­ble with­out sac­ri­fic­ing the vital­i­ty of its being. Yet move­ment and tem­po­ral­i­ty, so evi­dent in the cam­era oscu­ra, always pre­cede the act of rep­re­sen­ta­tion; time and move­ment could be seen and expe­ri­enced, but nev­er rep­re­sent­ed.”14 But on this occa­sion, the most inter­est­ing dialec­tic ele­ment that the cam­era oscu­ra intro­duces, tak­en on as the first instru­ment that gen­er­ates images that are observ­er-inde­pen­dent, is, above all, that of the dis­em­bod­i­ment of the observ­ing sub­ject, defin­i­tive­ly sep­a­rat­ing the act of see­ing from the body of the user. As Jonathan Crary per­cep­tive­ly points out, this divorce per­mits the def­i­n­i­tion of the fig­ure of “…an iso­lat­ed observ­er who is closed in and autonomous with­in its dark con­fines. In an effort to reg­u­late and to puri­fy its rela­tion­ship with the mul­ti­form con­tents of the world, by now exte­ri­or,’ the cam­era oscu­ra implies a sort of áske­sis, or removal from the world. In this way, it becomes insep­a­ra­ble from a cer­tain meta­physics of inner life estab­lish­ing a metaphor, either for an observ­er who is a nom­i­nal­ly free and sov­er­eign indi­vid­ual or for a pri­va­tised sub­ject con­fined in an almost domes­tic space, cut out from the exter­nal pub­lic world.”15 As Isaac Newton’s (Opticks, 1704) and John Locke’s (Essays on Human Under­stand­ing, 1690) stud­ies show, a para­dox­i­cal oper­a­tion is there­fore pos­si­ble through the use of the cam­era oscu­ra: that is to say, the pas­sage from phys­i­cal instru­ment used to exam­ine and reg­is­ter phe­nom­e­nal data to psy­chic metaphor used to under­stand and inter­pret an individual’s most hid­den thoughts. In this way it becomes John Locke’s “…stu­dio of every­thing devoid of light,”16 through which cog­ni­tion is expe­ri­enced. How­ev­er, it seems evi­dent that the role assumed by the observ­er in this device, in the gloomy room touched by a lumi­nous diaphanous umbra, proves to be ambigu­ous: even if in Fif­teenth cen­tu­ry per­spec­tive the observ­er was allowed a lim­it­ed space of mobil­i­ty, with respect to the noto­ri­ous punc­tum opti­mum fore­seen by con­tem­po­rary stud­ies, inside which the images main­tained their own pro­jec­tive coher­ence, “…the cam­era oscu­ra did not impose a restrict­ed place or an area with respect to which the image pre­sent­ed its full con­sis­ten­cy and coher­ence. On the one hand the observ­er is dis­con­nect­ed by the pure oper­a­tion of the instru­ment and is there as a dis­em­bod­ied wit­ness to a mechan­i­cal and tran­scen­dent re-pre­sen­ta­tion of the world’s objec­tiv­i­ty. Yet on the oth­er hand, his pres­ence in the room implies a spa­tial and tem­po­ral simul­tane­ity of the sub­jec­tive and objec­tive human appa­ra­tus. In this man­ner, the spec­ta­tor is a fluc­tu­at­ing dweller of the dark­ness, a mar­gin­al sup­ple­men­tary pres­ence inde­pen­dent of the mech­a­nism of rep­re­sen­ta­tion.”17 The dif­fer­ent ideas of rep­re­sen­ta­tion con­nect­ed to these inter­pre­ta­tive posi­tions of real­i­ty – perp­sec­ti­va ver­sus cam­era obscu­ra18 – can be well illus­trat­ed by two images: the first is a famous six­teenth cen­tu­ry bird’s eye view of Venice by Jacopo de’ Bar­bari19, that may be intend­ed as an expression”…of the pre-Coper­ni­cus city, syn­op­tic and all absorb­ing like a uni­fied enti­ty”,20 the sec­ond is that of any Venet­ian urban scene by Canalet­to (eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry), in which the author opti­cal­ly recon­structs the image of the city through a col­lec­tion of reg­is­tered views from a cam­era oscu­ra that scans the space, defined by Leib­niz as a sort of nomadic observ­er, who finds order in the irra­tional chaos of the world through his auro­ral and objec­tive vision: the most dyscra­sic and imper­fect binoc­u­lar per­cep­tion is sub­sti­tut­ed with the most asep­tic mono-focal appa­ra­tus guar­an­teed by the pres­ence of the pinhole. 

The idea of an observ­er pre­sup­pos­es the pres­ence of a sub­ject placed in front of or behind the observed object, with one sep­a­rat­ed by the oth­er by a phys­i­cal gap. This order of pawns on a chess­board, empha­sized by the mod­ern cul­ture of the image, has his­tor­i­cal­ly lead to a reduc­tion of the expe­ri­ence of sight to pure per­cep­tion, to “…a strange­ly self-inflict­ed mono-dimen­sion­al­i­ty and to a lim­it­ing aban­don­ment to a nat­ur­al order,”21 of which we are all more or less aware. Thus, vision, traced back to pure mechan­i­cal process, con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed by desire, by imag­i­na­tion and by neces­si­ty, pro­duces the illu­so­ry idea of an inno­cent eye’, which both Ernst Gom­brich and Nel­son Good­man brand as a blind eye’.

M. Tansey, The Innocent Eye Test, 1981, 
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
8

M. Tansey, The Innocent Eye Test, 1981,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

M. Tansey, The Source of the Loue, 1981,Sandra and Gerald Feinberg collection
9

M. Tansey, The Source of the Loue, 1981,
Sandra and Gerald Feinberg collection

But does an inno­cent eye exist?

The painter Mark Tansey22, attempts to respond to this ques­tion in his well-known study23 pos­tu­lat­ing the end (or ends) of the rep­re­sen­ta­tion. In order to do this he turns to the use of fig­u­ra­tive lan­guage. Tansey’s The Inno­cent Eye Test (1998; The Met­ro­pol­i­tan Muse­um of Art, New York) [ 8 ] shows a bovine intent on scrupu­lous­ly exam­in­ing an unframed Paulus Pot­ter24 paint­ing that is dis­played in a gallery. The ani­mal does so under the aus­tere gaze of his­to­ri­ans and sci­en­tists who are super­vis­ing the exper­i­ment. By reviv­ing the Carte­sian bovine, this time alive and not arti­fi­cial­ly reduced to a con­stituent ele­ment of a cam­era oscu­ra, Tansey brings back the utopic inno­cence of sight, to which both Denis Diderot (1713−1784) and George Berke­ley25 (1685−1753) often made ref­er­ence – per­haps sim­i­lar to that of the young four­teen year old, blind at birth, whose sight was restored in 1782 after a suc­cess­ful cataract surgery per­formed by Dr. William (1688−1752) – to a metaphor on the fruition of art, in which sci­en­tists ques­tion how and what we see. The futile erec­tion of walls – sym­bol­ic and lit­er­al – that inhib­it the false per­cep­tion of real­i­ty are assumed by Tansey as pic­to­r­i­al mate­r­i­al in The Source of the Loue (1990; San­dra and Ger­ald Fein­berg col­lec­tion)26 [ 9 ] where the Pla­ton­ic cav­ern in which the myth unfolds is defin­i­tive­ly sealed and its entrance is sur­round­ed by barbed wire: so clos­es a chap­ter on imag­i­nary vision that indi­vid­u­at­ed the fal­sa cred­i­ta in the shad­owy pro­jec­tions of sen­so­r­i­al cognition.

Sight rep­re­sents, in West­ern civ­i­liza­tion at least, the priv­i­leged chan­nel of access to the exter­nal world: if on the one hand it is con­sid­ered as the king of the sens­es – autonomous, inde­pen­dent and inno­cent – on the oth­er hand it is nec­es­sar­i­ly encrust­ed with world­li­ness, inevitabil­i­ty result­ing as exter­nal­ly direct­ed; there­fore it is pos­si­ble to dis­tin­guish between the idea of sight and idea as sight.27 The same ety­mol­o­gy of the term idea’ shows its root in the verb to see’28, remind­ing us that “…the way in which we think in West­ern cul­ture is dri­ven by the sight par­a­digm. See­ing, look­ing and know­ing have become dan­ger­ous­ly inter­change­able. Thus the way in which we have end­ed up under­stand­ing the con­cept of idea’ is close­ly linked to terms such as appear­ance’, fig­ure and image. As the first’ Lud­wig Wittgen­stein (1869−1951) decreed: An image is a fact’. And a’ log­i­cal image of facts is a thought.”29

The implic­it risk in this dichoto­mous accep­ta­tion of sight was already brand­ed by Michel Fou­cault (when indi­vid­u­at­ing the seeds of the mod­ern idea of the dis­par­age­ment of sight. This was done dur­ing scop­ic process­es of author­i­ta­tive obser­va­tion and hier­ar­chal doc­u­men­ta­tion of san­i­tary and crim­i­nal phe­nom­e­na. The med­ical clin­ic mod­el allowed the French soci­ol­o­gist and philoso­pher to cat­a­logue sin­gle indi­vid­u­als. More sig­nif­i­cant­ly it allowed him to extend the sur­veil­lance to the entire urban space mon­i­tor­ing the hygien­ic and cli­mat­ic qual­i­ty of the city, its dense habi­tat, and the migra­to­ry flows to which indi­vid­u­als were sub­ject­ed etc. Even more so, Fou­cault uses the Panop­ti­con as the most impor­tant instru­ment of scop­ic sur­veil­lance. 30 He rec­og­nizes its par­tic­u­lar fea­tures, not as much for the fact that invis­i­ble super­vi­sors or guards were present – that cen­tral­ly’ and rad­i­cal­ly con­trolled the activ­i­ties that took place in the cells or dwellings – , as for its spe­cif­ic archi­tec­ton­ic con­fig­u­ra­tion that induced a con­di­tion of per­ma­nent vis­i­bil­i­ty suf­fi­cient enough to assure, in an auto­mat­ic way, the suc­cess of the coer­cive action. Panop­ti­con can be con­sid­ered an exam­ple of inhu­man tech­nol­o­gy’, a type of trans­la­tion of the prin­ci­ples of oper­a­tion of the cam­era oscu­ra to a prison scale. This is because the pow­er of the super­vi­sor – or of the observ­er – is irrel­e­vant with respect to the oper­a­tion that the scop­ic mech­a­nism acti­vates. In addi­tion to these brief con­sid­er­a­tions, the con­trol of increas­ing­ly more vast areas, involves the use of tech­nolo­gies and there­fore of inhu­man’ meth­ods of envi­ron­men­tal sur­veil­lance – , accord­ing to Andrew Barry’s31 def­i­n­i­tion – such as con­tour recog­ni­tion. Thus one under­stands how the ques­tion of tech­no­log­i­cal sight that wit­ness­es events doc­u­ment­ed else­where are cen­tral to the dis­em­body­ing act which was referred to ear­li­er: the imper­son­al and mate­r­i­al char­ac­ter­is­tics implied by cog­ni­tion, infor­ma­tion and visu­al­iza­tion con­nect­ed to an act of remote doc­u­men­ta­tion, estab­lish mod­ern cri­te­ria accord­ing to which truth is close­ly asso­ci­at­ed with vision. It is true that that which can be seen is ren­dered vis­i­ble. But how can an obser­va­tion that occurs in anoth­er place be tak­en on as cer­tain grounds for an action?”32 Can the answer be found in the blind’ faith in the doc­u­men­ta­tive and objec­tive val­ue of the non-human or human tes­ti­mo­ny that tech­no­log­i­cal means of sur­veil­lance and pro­duc­tion of images produce? 

Why then, as Bruno Pedret­ti notes,33 is the so-called civ­i­liza­tion of the image relent­less­ly attract­ed by the blind­ness and by the metaphors con­nect­ed to it? Above all, why is con­tem­po­rary archi­tec­ture attract­ed to the same?

Philibert de l’Orme, Le premier tôme de l’Architecture, 1567, The Good Architect (f. 382); The Bad Architect (f. 331)
10

Philibert de l’Orme, Le premier tôme de l’Architecture, 1567, The Good Architect (f. 382); The Bad Architect (f. 331)

Philibert de l’Orme, Le premier tôme de l’Architecture, 1567, The Good Architect (f. 382); The Bad Architect (f. 331)
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Philibert de l’Orme, Le premier tôme de l’Architecture, 1567, The Good Architect (f. 382); The Bad Architect (f. 331)

Going back a few cen­turies one can recall how Philib­ert de l’Orme (1514−1570) sus­tained that in the rich sup­ply of sen­so­ry organs, espe­cial­ly those of sight, a sort of over­grown sub­li­ma­tion of vision, resided the dif­fer­ence between the good and the bad archi­tect: the two xylo­gra­phies, in anno­ta­tion to Le pre­mier tôme de l’Architecture (1567),34 show the bad archi­tect in one [ 10 ]. He is dressed in the deceiv­ing clothes of a sage and schol­ar, yet pro­ceeds with haste, get­ting caught between the bram­bles, in a land­scape that is punc­tu­at­ed with the pres­ence of bovine skulls – sym­bol­ic of obtuse­ness – , and with a late goth­ic cas­tle, indi­ca­tion of a style that has been sur­passed. The absence of his hands, nose and ears alludes to his pro­fes­sion­al impo­tence and to his inca­pac­i­ty for log­ic. But, the ele­ment that is worth not­ing here is the absence of his eyes, that ren­der him blind to the truth. In the sec­ond xylog­ra­phy [ 11 ], the good archi­tect is also wear­ing the clothes of a sage, but in a man­ner that shows aware­ness. He is endowed with three eyes: with the first he con­tem­plates God and his past works, with the sec­ond he reflects on the present in order to act with wis­dom and with the third he pre­dicts the future defend­ing him­self from pos­si­ble accu­sa­tions and calum­nies con­nect­ed to deal­ings with work. Here the set­ting is decid­ed­ly clas­sic as sym­bol­i­cal­ly tes­ti­fy by the ruins of a roman arch (the past source of learn­ing), the sol­id rus­tic build­ing (the fir­mi­tas vit­ru­viana), the prayer tem­ple (a place of nec­es­sary spir­i­tu­al refuge) and the domed tem­ple (per­fec­tion of the cen­tral plan), but also the source of wis­dom and Cornecopia, sym­met­ri­cal­ly placed at the bot­tom part of the xylog­ra­phy. Today it seems that archi­tec­tur­al pro­ce­dures have lost this sen­so­r­i­al trin­i­ty, over­come by total blind­ness where objects are con­cerned. Or per­haps the objects’ lack of trans­paren­cy has the same effect, not allow­ing human sight to pass through them, with sight being con­sid­ered always more vic­ar­i­ous with respect to tech­nolo­gies of rep­re­sen­ta­tion, mod­el­ling and pre-fig­u­ra­tion of real­i­ty: turn­ing two the words of Julia Trilling, 35 it seems that con­tem­po­rary intel­lec­tu­als, includ­ing archi­tects, “…can’t use their eyes to see the com­plex­i­ty of life,” often denounc­ing their role of priv­i­leged observ­er, dis­em­body­ing the act of see­ing and that of rep­re­sen­ta­tion. Is it there­fore by choice that a mon­u­men­tal sculp­ture by Claes Old­en­burg (1929) and Coos­je van Bruggen (1942−2009) show­ing a pair of binoc­u­lars with lens turned to the ground, was placed in the entrance of the Chiat/Day/Mojo build­ing,36 adver­tis­ing agency build­ing, designed by Frank O. Gehry (1929).

Can the com­plex­i­ty and mul­ti-strat­i­fi­ca­tion indi­cat­ed by Trilling lead to a shut­ting down of the con­tem­po­rary architect’s, or users of their works, chan­nels of per­cep­tion? Are these works so autis­tic in pro­vid­ing for the client’ and not the observ­er, in acknowl­edg­ing an eval­u­a­tion of the func­tion of archi­tec­tur­al struc­tures and of their super­fi­cial action rather than a look at more pro­found rea­sons for the way in which they were made?

Signs from archi­tec­ture and urban­ism explic­it­ly indi­cate that a uni­tary and cos­mogo­nic vision that can be incar­nat­ed and tec­ton­i­cal­ly trans­lat­ed into forms of build­ings and cities, no longer exists. Thus objects opaci­fy, in spite of waste­ful glass sur­faces and of bio-morph con­fig­u­ra­tions: if it is his­tor­i­cal­ly true that archi­tec­ture has always been drawn first and then con­struct­ed, as Pierre Francastel’s apho­ris­tic affir­ma­tion with rela­tion to the Renais­sance37 states, it fol­lows that even the actu­al urban and archi­tec­ton­ic sce­nario was first imag­ined and then real­ized, but accord­ing to the way in which human sight has a lim­it­ed space of sur­vival. In look­ing at some con­tem­po­rary archi­tec­ture it is impos­si­ble not to think back – with the eyes of the mind – to the build­ings that pop­u­late some of H.P. Lovecraft’s sto­ries.38 Accord­ing to the author they were con­struct­ed in a past of which man can­not and must not com­mit to mem­o­ry: their uncon­ceiv­able dimen­sions, the absurd incli­na­tions of their floors, the repul­sive expan­sive­ness of their open­ings, the non-func­tion­al fur­nish­ings, the mali­cious pro­ject­ing cor­ners, are all ele­ments that describe visu­al­ly intol­er­a­ble spaces. It is because they were designed and exe­cut­ed by phys­i­o­log­i­cal­ly abnor­mal and sen­so­ri­al­ly deformed pre-human beings. How­ev­er, with a few excep­tions, soft­en­ing the use of adjec­tives and with­out being so dra­mat­ic, the same def­i­n­i­tions could be used to describe some of the most pub­lished con­tem­po­rary archi­tec­ture. Past evi­dence – a form of dis­par­age­ment of sight on an adver­tis­ing scale – pro­vid­ed by archi­tec­tur­al mag­a­zines induce a sort of benev­o­lent nar­co­sis effect on the observ­er who con­sid­ers his/her free­dom of judge­ment ever more restrict­ed: yet how many of the illus­trat­ed archi­tec­tur­al struc­tures belong to the rare genre of places in which the observ­er is con­front­ed with the lim­its and of the poten­tial­i­ty of his sight? In which of those spaces can we find our­selves as see­ing one­self see’, reflect­ing on the phys­i­o­log­i­cal and inter­pre­ta­tive capa­bil­i­ties of our own sen­so­r­i­al organs?

“...It was a consistency.
I seemed to be able to reach out my hand and touch it.
It was so intense.
The darkness was so intense...”

Charles Duke Jr., Astronaut and member of the Apollo 16 space team.

Part Two: A Place in which One can see Oneself see”

If one search­es for an answer, I believe one can find it exact­ly in those expres­sive cir­cles in which art meets with sci­ence and archi­tec­tur­al expe­ri­ences: the most emblem­at­ic case is that of James Turrell’s39 work. His instal­la­tions and envi­ron­men­tal scale designs estab­lish intense co-action with the observ­er who, over­ex­posed to lumi­nous care­ful­ly stud­ied stim­uli, mod­i­fies his own per­cep­tion of space. The process of inter­ac­tion with the work push­es us to accept our own visu­al capa­bil­i­ties, to ask our­selves with greater insis­tence if that which we are per­ceiv­ing actu­al­ly coin­cides with phe­nom­e­nal real­i­ty: our eye still func­tions in a Carte­sian man­ner, but now an inter­pre­ta­tive effort is demand­ed of the sen­tient capa­bil­i­ties of the observ­er so as to under­stand that that which he is see­ing is his way of see­ing. It deals with an hermeneu­ti­cal approach to the sub­ject of vision and light – from which the for­mer is derived – , that can only briefly be fit into a well estab­lished styl­is­tic trend like that of Light-Envi­ron­ment Art, whose goal is to sub­merge the spec­ta­tor in the radi­ant and shady flow that is gen­er­at­ed by light: in this expres­sive con­text, the work, “…does not rep­re­sent nor cause the light, but is phys­i­cal­ly made of light”40.

The com­pos­i­tive nature of James Turrell’s instal­la­tions restore that intan­gi­ble and unique char­ac­ter that is typ­i­cal of lumi­nous radi­a­tion: such works can­not be pur­chased, dis­played in one’s liv­ing room or, in the tra­di­tion­al sense, in a muse­um, they occur. They have the char­ac­ter­is­tics of a hap­pen­ing in which many artists often inter­act. They are respon­si­ble for the pro­duc­tion of sounds, nois­es, and smells that res­onate and per­cep­tive­ly envel­op the spec­ta­tor in a fruitive sequence whose goal is to sus­pend the aware­ness of self. This process estab­lish­es a rela­tion­ship between the artist’s quest and the envi­ron­ment that becomes the instru­ment with which to cre­ate the piece. This is no longer colour, the brush, the can­vas; but walls, spaces, light, open­ings that lead to the exte­ri­or as in the con­struc­tions of an archi­tect.”41

James Turrell’s works are high­light­ed in par­tic­u­lar for the use of light and shade as sen­so­r­i­al ter­ri­to­ries in which man can can­cel out his own phys­i­o­log­i­cal lim­its and explore his own inte­ri­or dimen­sion. Turell rec­og­nized the area of his work in the hazy con­fines between light and shad­ow right from his ear­li­est works: in par­tic­u­lar, the Cross Cor­ner Pro­jec­tion pieces begin a sub­tle game between the role of the envi­ron­ment and the reveal­ing, or even dis­ori­ent­ed action, of light. Some appro­pri­ate­ly per­fo­rat­ed metal­lic sheets, in slide for­mat, are pro­ject­ed accord­ing to pre­cise angu­la­tion, on cor­ners and immac­u­late walled sur­faces that are immersed in dark­ness. In one case, only one pro­jec­tion is revealed to deal with one sol­id lumi­nous area, with fad­ing edges; in the oth­er case, a win­dow or an unusu­al sky­light, appar­ent­ly inun­dat­ed with bril­liant light shows the impos­si­bil­i­ty to look out from it. And even though the def­i­n­i­tion of opti­cal illu­sions doesn’t enter into Turrell’s poet­ics, the con­ster­nat­ed effect that the appear­ance of these works pro­voked was extra­or­di­nary. With regard to them, Craig Adcock writes: The impact of all the Cross Cor­ner Pro­jec­tions is a func­tion of their inter­ac­tion with space. The bril­liant light seems to exert a non phys­i­cal pres­sure – even though per­cep­tive – on the dimen­sions and the form of the room in which it is pro­ject­ed”.42

Tur­rell cre­at­ed the first instal­la­tions of this series in some rooms of his stu­dio (the ex Hotel Men­do­ta, Ocean Park, Cal­i­for­nia). The rooms were trans­formed into pure box-shaped forms, with paint­ed white plas­tered walls and with acousti­cal­ly insu­lat­ed ceil­ings; any win­dows were walled up. A beam of light, cre­at­ed by a slide pro­jec­tor with quartz halo­gen bulbs,43 was direct­ed towards a cho­sen room, in a giv­en area, cre­at­ing the illu­sion of a form in relief, sus­pend­ed between the floor and the ceil­ing: in Afrum-Pro­to (1966) one per­ceives the image of a lumi­nous par­al­lelepiped anchored to the dihe­dral which is formed by two ver­ti­cal walls; the illu­sion that the float­ing lumi­nous form is real is accen­tu­at­ed by the fact that the observ­er, shift­ing with­in the room and plac­ing him­self at a cer­tain dis­tance from the pro­ject­ed light, per­ceives the alter­na­tion of the appar­ent con­tour of the par­al­lelepiped in a phys­i­o­log­i­cal­ly cor­rect, even though illu­so­ry, manner.

A dif­fer­ent focal­i­sa­tion of the light image can also cre­ate the illu­sion that a mass is either in the room or out­side of it. It can also alter the per­cep­tion of the exact col­lo­ca­tion of the cen­tre of the pro­jec­tion that, in gen­er­al, is placed along the direc­tion that is defined by the diag­o­nal of the space, pre­cise­ly in the oppo­site angel of the room. As men­tioned ear­li­er, the relief effect is obtained by chan­nelling the projector’s light through a metal­lic plate that was oppor­tune­ly per­fo­rat­ed: in the case of Afrum, the per­fo­ra­tion has the form of an irreg­u­lar hexa­gon that, if pro­ject­ed on a wall in its entire­ty, would appear as an enlarged image of its same shape. Instead, direct­ing the beam of light towards the cor­ner of the room 

“…will have the impres­sion of a mass that seems to behave accord­ing to the laws of lin­ear per­spec­tive. When the images are pro­ject­ed into the cor­ners, the ambi­ent light direct­ly reflect­ed from the illu­mi­nat­ed area, makes the inter­sec­tion of the walls that are above and below the images, seem like they are actu­al­ly placed behind the appar­ent mass.”44

Attract­ed by these forms, hypo­thet­i­cal­ly float­ing in space, by these non-Euclid­ean shapes,’ the observ­er sus­pends judge­ment, now hav­ing the illu­sion of three-dimen­sion­al forms, now rec­og­niz­ing their nature of flat images; for Tur­rell this flex­i­bil­i­ty of the work to sym­pa­thet­i­cal­ly react with those who observe it con­notes his work as a per­cep­tive­ly mal­leable’ art. That is, it is ready to rede­fine its own ter­ri­to­ries and those that are tra­di­tion­al­ly des­tined to the spec­ta­tor. This takes place since the same space that hosts the pro­jec­tion sen­si­bly mod­i­fies – or at least appears to mod­i­fy – its own spa­tial atti­tude once a cross-cor­ner pro­jec­tion appears. With this accep­ta­tion, it is pos­si­ble to find the only poten­tial con­nec­tion between the forms’ cre­at­ed by Turrell’s works and the vir­tu­al spaces por­trayed in tra­di­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tive art; both of these cre­ate the illu­sion of a three-dimen­sion­al space that does not coin­cide com­plete­ly with the phe­nom­e­nal space. This the­o­ret­i­cal­ly qui­et and serene inter­ac­tion between light, shad­ow, and space has been trans­lat­ed as a work of ambigu­ous deci­pher­ing on the part of its users. In 1980 the artist, along with the Whit­ney Muse­um of New York where the work was shown, were sued by numer­ous vis­i­tors who, hav­ing been vic­tims of the decep­tion, had report­ed lesions or frac­tures incurred due to attempts made to enter the City of Arhir­it, an instal­la­tion of fil­tered solar light that exploit­ed the Ganzfeld45 effect of a total field of vision. This process of iso­la­tion of light cut out from com­mon per­cep­tive expe­ri­ence induces a new – per­haps sub­dued – under­stand­ing of the cog­ni­tive process­es that are nor­mal­ly tak­en for grant­ed. For Tur­rell, this sen­so­r­i­al re-awak­en­ing, in some ways Gur­d­j­ef­fi­an, makes see­ing the act itself of see­ing’ pos­si­ble for the observ­er: in this way, he is on the edge between ratio­nal cog­ni­tion and intu­ition, between tan­gi­ble real­i­ty and imma­te­r­i­al dream, con­tin­u­ous­ly oblig­ed to eval­u­ate cul­tur­al trap­pings in order to be able to tran­scend them. Accord­ing to Tur­rell, it is also impor­tant to have access to the pre-cul­tur­al state of vision. When iso­lat­ed from its con­text, sight returns to its arche­typ­al and func­tion­al role, almost tac­tile, thanks to which, by observ­ing the blue side of the basin of a crater or by sit­ting in an almost total­ly dark space, either an aver­age per­son, an astro­naut or a physi­cist can expe­ri­ence some­thing sim­i­lar to that of the amaze­ment of an infant. The reveal­ing expe­ri­ence lies in the under­stand­ing of how our sens­es are react­ing, more than in that which we see. It is by choice that Tur­rell him­self reput­ed­ly affirmed that his goal is to con­tin­ue recon­struct­ing the Pla­ton­ic myth cav­ern, until its secret is con­tin­u­ous­ly unveiled.”46 For exam­ple, this tac­tile char­ac­ter­is­tic of sight is revived in Richard Bright’s descrip­tion of the expe­ri­ence under­gone in observ­ing the diur­nal sky of a sky­space47 enti­tled Air Mass cre­at­ed by Tur­rell at Hay­ward Gallery (Lon­don) in 1993: Its colour was so intense: I’d nev­er seen it so blue. I couldn’t touch it, at least not with my hands, but I could with my eyes. It had to do with an inter­nal dra­ma. I could sense its changes, while it became increas­ing­ly dark­er. But was that colour only a mem­o­ry, or per­haps a dream? Now it was black, a black that was so intense that it could make you crazy. I couldn’t see the stars when I looked through the open­ing, but I knew they were out there. But it wasn’t an emp­ty dark­ness: it was full of some­thing that came from the past and it had the poten­tial­i­ty of some­thing that had yet to take place.”48

In this way, the cam­era oscu­ra49 in Turrell’s work, metaphor for dis­em­bod­ied sight, becomes a place in which our sens­es are stim­u­lat­ed to the point of induc­ing a new visu­al and gnos­tic aware­ness in the observ­er: with respect to the pre­vail­ing fruitive mod­el – sec­ond­ed by mod­ern dig­i­tal sur­veil­lance tech­nolo­gies – with­in which the objects now per­ceive us”,50 here the min­er­al world of robo­t­ized vision is under­mined by ani­mal sight. As in the Home­r­ic tale, in which Ulysse’s dogs eyes are the only ones to rec­og­nize his own­er who appeared before the Pro­ci under false exam­in­ing, so in the Cal­i­forn­ian artist’s sub­ter­ranean rooms, is it the organ­ic human gaze that demon­strates the fal­la­cy of the Carte­sian mod­el of cog­ni­tion through evi­dence: in its most pure alchemic mean­ing, this time sight is so de-val­ued, that it is restored to the albe­do of its orig­i­nal nature.

Even though Turrell’s work is sim­i­lar to that of oth­er Amer­i­can min­i­mal­ist artists who use light as artis­tic medi­um – for exam­ple Dan Flavin (1933−1996), Bruce Nau­man (1941) etc. – , it demon­strates cer­tain aspects that are com­plete­ly orig­i­nal. Above all, the images have a strong aur­al char­ac­ter­is­tic. They seem to imply a found­ing rit­u­al of space, which is based on the rev­e­la­tion or on the removal of light. These works are also not­ed for the dif­fi­cul­ty of rep­re­sen­ta­tion in draw­ing as they are all based on the fad­ing out of the con­fines between real­i­ty and imag­i­na­tion and on the ambi­gu­i­ty of perception.

Roden Crater view from south-west, Arizona (© photo by Agostino De Rosa)
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Roden Crater view from south-west, Arizona (© photo by Agostino De Rosa)

In 1974, James Tur­rell chose the Roden Crater [ 12 ] as venue to express his cre­ativ­i­ty. From that time onwards it has been the premise for his most ambi­tious and fas­ci­nat­ing work. Roden Crater is an inac­tive vol­cano, which is locat­ed on the edge of the Paint­ed Desert, in Ari­zona. This Crater’s under­ground body’ was select­ed for the cre­ation of adjoin­ing and total­ly sub­ter­ranean rooms from which one could expe­ri­ence numer­ous celes­tial phe­nom­e­na and the alter­ation of visu­al and acoustic per­cep­tions. The inter­est shown by var­i­ous world­wide research orga­ni­za­tions (Nasa, in prim­is), in this almost com­plete archi­tec­tur­al com­plex, lies in the com­plex and strat­i­fied nature of the con­cepts of spa­tial con­fig­u­ra­tion and per­cep­tion that Turrell’s work involves, rein­forc­ing the inter­dis­ci­pli­nary nature of mak­ing archi­tec­ture, once again defin­able as a place where art and sci­ence can find mutu­al cor­re­spon­dences for exchange. 

The work is styl­is­ti­cal­ly locat­ed in the so-called Cal­i­forn­ian Min­i­mal­ist milieu. How­ev­er, unlike works by artists such as De Lap, Mac Crack­er and Gray, that cre­at­ed pieces with rigid mate­ri­als – whose per­cep­tive com­plex­i­ty was derived from cast shad­ows and from reflec­tions gen­er­at­ed by phys­i­cal forms – , Turrell’s works, right from their begin­nings, are char­ac­ter­ized by images of light that cre­ate float­ing forms com­posed of intan­gi­ble mate­ri­als par excel­lence, that is light. Turrell’s intent is that of mate­ri­al­iz­ing light, to use it as a phys­i­cal ele­ment and to take advan­tage of visu­al per­cep­tion as a means to under­stand his art. The inte­gral part of this work is the trans­for­ma­tion of the crater into a large-scale work that will be relat­ed, by means of light, to the sur­round­ing envi­ron­ment. For the actu­al pro­jec­tion Tur­rell turns to the col­lab­o­ra­tion of archi­tects and engi­neers51, while, for that of car­di­nal and astral ori­en­ta­tion of the indi­vid­ual spaces, to the help of archeo-astronomers. Even though it is mon­u­men­tal in dimen­sion and con­cep­tu­al­ly unprece­dent­ed, the Roden Crater project was not con­ceived to com­mem­o­rate events of his­tor­i­cal recur­rences, but wants to be a type of place in which human per­cep­tion is cel­e­brat­ed. For Tur­rell, it is the syn­the­sis of years of intense work: actu­al­ly, here, the artist’s goal is to take advan­tage of stud­ies and ideas that inspired his pre­ced­ing instal­la­tions and to use them in this mas­ter­piece in such a way as to be able to ben­e­fit from the visu­al qual­i­ty asso­cia­ble with nat­ur­al day and night time light. Light, the cor­ner­stone of the entire project, pen­e­trates the entire inte­ri­or crater body through open­ings and tun­nels that are almost invis­i­ble from the exte­ri­or: the var­i­ous stairs func­tion as bel­lows of light, the bod­ies of sub­ter­ranean pools act as lens­es and the tun­nels as opti­cal ducts that exalt the images of the Sun and Moon. The form of the spaces, that rep­re­sent the entire project, is not deter­mined by aes­thet­ic prin­ci­ples, but rather by the space’s prin­ci­ple func­tion: that of cap­tur­ing, direct­ing and con­serv­ing light.

The struc­ture was entire­ly thought out in rein­forced con­crete even if the use of local nat­ur­al mate­ri­als like sand­stone, basalt, and vol­canic ash is fore­seen for the art spaces and path­ways. As men­tioned pre­vi­ous­ly, the Roden Crater is a nat­ur­al inac­tive vol­cano – which last erupt­ed between 1864 and 1865 – locat­ed about fifty miles north east of Flagstaff, Ari­zona. It is sure­ly the youngest moun­tain of a vast vol­canic region that is still quite active; at one time it belonged to a rich tycoon, own­er of the entire estate that, after years of con­stant nego­ti­a­tions, decid­ed to sell it to the artist. A pre-estab­lished route will not exist with­in the crater. Noth­ing will be imposed as each space will present extra­or­di­nary phe­nom­e­na at every moment of the day and night.

Arrival to the site is an inte­gral part of the project. There are var­i­ous ways to reach the crater: one can get there from the West, by cross­ing the flat expans­es of the Paint­ed Desert, on a road that leads to a gorge sit­u­at­ed on the north-east­ern side. From there one pro­ceeds on a path that fol­lows the ridge of the fuma­role, sit­u­at­ed at a height of about sev­en­ty-five meters with respect to the desert. From here there is a route that goes up to the slopes of the crater where one can enjoy a pro­gres­sive sen­sa­tion of expan­sion of spa­tial vision. An alter­na­tive and more effi­cient way to reach the crater would be to get to the Sun­set Crater Nation­al Muse­um by car from the North, more pre­cise­ly from Flagstaff, and head east to the site from there. Dur­ing this jour­ney, one can observe many moun­tain­ous peaks that are part of the San Fran­cis­co vol­canic park. From the base of Sun­set Crater, Roden looks like an incli­na­tion that grad­u­al­ly descends towards the Paint­ed Desert. Twen­ty miles still sep­a­rate Roden Crater from Sun­set Crater. Dur­ing the cross­ing one will come upon sev­er­al nat­ur­al parks before arriv­ing at a depres­sion where one is con­strict­ed to aban­don ones method of trans­port and pro­ceed on foot. The com­plex­i­ty of these itin­er­aries is impor­tant as it pro­vides an artic­u­lat­ed tem­po­ral and visu­al sce­nario that will remain imprint­ed in one’s mind for a long peri­od of time.

The cre­ation of an avi­a­tion field for the land­ing and tak­ing off of small planes has been fore­seen. This will pro­vide anoth­er way in which to arrive at the site. It will be a way to observe the entire com­plex in its ensem­ble from the sky. 

Interior view of Alpha tunnel (© photo by Agostino De Rosa)
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Interior view of Alpha tunnel (© photo by Agostino De Rosa)

View of Alpha Space (or East Portal) from the Alpha Tunnel (© photo by Agostino De Rosa)
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View of Alpha Space (or East Portal) from the Alpha Tunnel (© photo by Agostino De Rosa)

View from the Crater bowl of the Alpha Space, Roden Crater, Arizona (© photo by Agostino De Rosa)
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View from the Crater bowl of the Alpha Space, Roden Crater, Arizona (© photo by Agostino De Rosa)

Interior view of Crater’s Eye, Roden Crater, Arizona (© photo by Agostino De Rosa)
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Interior view of Crater’s Eye, Roden Crater, Arizona (© photo by Agostino De Rosa)

Alpha Space (or East Portal), Roden Crater, Arizona (© photo by Agostino De Rosa)
Alpha Space (or East Portal), Roden Crater, Arizona (© photo by Agostino De Rosa)
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Alpha Space (or East Portal), Roden Crater, Arizona (© photo by Agostino De Rosa)

This grandiose project has not been com­plet­ed in its entire­ty [ 13 ] [ 14 ] [ 15 ] [ 16 ] [ 17 ]. The removal of desert land and of impos­ing lava obstruc­tions – nec­es­sary oper­a­tions for the con­struc­tion of the sub­ter­ranean rooms – demand con­sid­er­able eco­nom­ic invest­ments, which Tur­rell meets through the sale of his works. Above all costs are met thanks to gen­er­ous financ­ing by col­lec­tors or by pri­vate foun­da­tions. The ascer­tain­ment of the long peri­od of time that it will take to com­plete the Roden Crater Project gave birth to the idea of cre­at­ing an inter­ac­tive dig­i­tal mod­el of the entire com­plex. This idea came about as the result of sci­en­tif­ic co ordi­na­tion on the part of IUAV Uni­ver­si­ty of Venice and myself. Crit­i­cal and doc­u­men­tal descrip­tions – whether from the fig­u­ra­tive or tech­no-sci­en­tif­ic point of view – of the role that light, shad­ow and the read­ing of celes­tial phe­nom­e­na plays in the def­i­n­i­tion of James Turrell’s archi­tec­ton­ic spaces will be a result of this com­bined effort. The out­come of this research, con­duct­ed by close con­tact between the Venet­ian team52 and the Cal­i­forn­ian artist, has been avail­able for view­ing in the spring of 2006 in an exhib­it at Gal­le­ria Gino Valle, Venezia; in a expo­si­tion at Vil­la Pan­za, Biu­mo Supe­ri­ore, in 2008; and expe­cial­ly in the amaz­ing expo­si­tion held in Paler­mo, at Gal­le­ria Nazionale di Arte Mod­er­na, in 2009. Above all, in addi­tion to dig­i­tal recon­struc­tions of each one of the indi­vid­ual instal­la­tions, the unprece­dent­ed com­bined meth­ods of so many find­ings that were involved in Turrell’s work will also be shown. This will define the roles that the project and its geo­met­ric rep­re­sen­ta­tions play in the inte­ri­or of a con­struct­ed space that is sit­u­at­ed between archi­tec­ture tout-court, envi­ron­men­tal-land­scape and archaeo-astronomy.

Roden Crater project, overall plan
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Roden Crater project, overall plan

The pre­sen­ta­tions have showed exec­u­tive draw­ings, rel­a­tive to each indi­vid­ual space, on pan­els where the var­i­ous rel­a­tive sci­en­tif­ic – astro­nom­i­cal impli­ca­tions will be high­light­ed in clear and rig­or­ous lan­guage. Beyond this, it will offer the spec­ta­tor the pos­si­bil­i­ty to under­stand real spa­tial func­tion­ing in rela­tion to car­di­nal and astro­nom­ic ori­en­ta­tion. Thanks to three-dimen­sion­al phys­i­cal mod­els cre­at­ed in nylon pow­ders, but above all through the use of high lev­el Info-graph­ic dig­i­tal ani­ma­tion, it has actu­al­ly been pos­si­ble to vir­tu­al­ly move about through the rooms of the Roden Crater project, and in an alter­na­tion of day and night time sim­u­la­tions, to dis­cov­er which con­stel­la­tions or celes­tial and lumin­is­tic phe­nom­e­na to be expe­ri­ence in them. The exhibits also showed a series of doc­u­ments rel­a­tive to those that can be defined as his­tor­i­cal antecedents of the project. Tur­rell him­self rec­og­nizes them as Inspi­ra­tional sources for his work: the large khmer set­tle­ment of Angor Wat (Cam­bo­dia) the Eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry obser­va­to­ry planned by mahara­ja Jai Singh in Jaipur (India). Both are shown here in an unprece­dent­ed dig­i­tal and mul­ti­me­dia guise, thanks to which the vis­i­tor can ide­al­ly move’ with­in the inte­ri­or of the archi­tec­tur­al struc­ture that define its spaces. The expos­i­tive and acoustic set­ting53 – express­ly planned – aimed to immerse the user in a unique spa­tial and sonorous con­tin­u­um, capa­ble of focus­ing his atten­tion on par­tic­u­lar per­cep­tive expe­ri­ences altered by light and shad­ow, in har­mo­ny with James Turrell’s work. In par­tic­u­lar, the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the rooms [ 18 ] from which dig­i­tal clones were recon­struct­ed are:

North Space is a space that is locat­ed in a com­plex part of the crater: direct­ly con­nect­ed with the West Space, in the west, and with the East Space, in the east. It con­sists of three prin­ci­ple under­ground ele­ments. The first cor­re­sponds to a cube shaped room in which a large square sky­space is locat­ed. It is sim­i­lar to the one that Tur­rell planned for the Ital­ian instal­la­tions locat­ed in vil­la Lit­ta near Biu­mo Supe­ri­ore (Pan­za and Biu­mo Col­lec­tion, Varese); the sec­ond con­sists of a piaz­za from which a large stair­way leads to the base of the moun­tain. Also, from this inter­me­di­ary place, a curvi­lin­ear path under an open sky leads to spaces to which the North Space is con­nect­ed. The third ele­ment, cer­tain­ly more inter­est­ing, is rep­re­sent­ed by a cir­cu­lar room that func­tions as a cam­era oscu­ra: a bicon­vex lens that cap­tures the light of the stars and the plan­ets was insert­ed in its cov­er. It is pos­si­ble to observe the pro­jec­tion of the sur­round­ing celes­tial space in the inte­ri­or of a cir­cu­lar area placed on the ground dur­ing the pro­gres­sion of the day. Instead, some sub­tle lights that come from the Moon, from Mars and from Jupiter, the most lumi­nous plan­ets at the Paint­ed Desert’s lat­i­tu­di­nal lines, are pro­ject­ed dur­ing win­ter nights. North Space also hosts an Instal­la­tion that recalls pre­ced­ing works by Tur­rell, belong­ing to the Dark Spaces series,54 works that direct­ly affect the res­o­lu­tion capac­i­ty of a sight organ that has been Immersed In dark­ness. A large stair­way leads the vis­i­tor from this last space to the exte­ri­or of the crater: its incline is at about a 45° angle and faces the North Star. North Space was planned express­ly in rela­tion to this, to indi­cate the star’s appar­ent and pro­gres­sive change of posi­tion due to the oscil­la­tion of the Earth’s axis.

West Space occu­pies a dia­met­ri­cal­ly oppo­site posi­tion with respect to the East Space and is sole­ly and direct­ly con­nect­ed with the North Space: it was planned for observ­ing the sun­set, in con­tra­po­si­tion with the East Space that involves the sun­rise. This space is com­posed of three prin­ci­ple rooms: the first is a cylin­dri­cal antecham­ber in which a cir­cu­lar shaped sky­space is placed, and serves to cap­ture nat­ur­al light. One descends towards the sec­ond room through a tun­nel. It is enti­tled Veil-Shal­low space, while next to it is the third and last room, Sun­set Space, which has a dis­tinc­tive oval plani­met­ric form. In the West Space, the sun pro­gres­sive­ly fades until its almost total dis­ap­pear­ance from the first to the third space.

Longitudinal cross-section of the South Space: in evidence, the alignment between the telescope and the North Celestial pole
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Longitudinal cross-section of the South Space: in evidence, the alignment between the telescope and the North Celestial pole

Interiors (during the daytime) of the South Space
a, b – View of hollow cap form the entrance of access’ tunnel
c – View of passageway toward the naked-eye telescope
d – View of rim’s cap, at twilight, seeing toward celestial vault’s zenith
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Interiors (during the daytime) of the South Space

a, b – View of hollow cap form the entrance of access’ tunnel

c – View of passageway toward the naked-eye telescope

d – View of rim’s cap, at twilight, seeing toward celestial vault’s zenith

South Space [ 19 ] [ 20 ] is con­sid­ered a nat­ur­al astro­nom­i­cal obser­va­to­ry from which it is pos­si­ble to see numer­ous celes­tial phe­nom­e­na with the naked eye. Saros, for exam­ple, is a tem­po­ral cycle ascribed to the moto of the motion of the moon Moon. It was dis­cov­ered in ancient Baby­lo­nia and com­pletes itself every 6585,32 days (18 years, 11.33 days) and that is the result of a for­tu­itous and com­plex rela­tion­ship between the Sun, the Earth and the Moon. The con­fig­u­ra­tion of this space per­mits the pre­dic­tion of both lunar and solar eclipses suf­fi­cient pre­ci­sion. As it is known, we have eclipses when the Sun, the Earth and the Moon are all aligned and the Moon is at such a dis­tance with respect to the Earth that it’s appar­ent diam­e­ter results as slight­ly larg­er than that of the Sun. When the three celes­tial bod­ies find them­selves in this posi­tion, a small part of the Earth’s sur­face enters the Moon’s umbra. It is only from this area that it is pos­si­ble to see the par­tial eclipse. Dur­ing the solar eclipses the Moon projects its shad­ow on the Earth, while dur­ing the lunar eclipse, the exact oppo­site takes place. The eclipses occur when the three bod­ies lie on the same plane, that is when they are aligned along the so called line of nodes’, char­ac­ter­ized by the eclip­tic inter­sec­tion – the plane on the Earth’s orbit – with the plane of that of the moon. Only in this case can the umbra of the Moon can hit the Earth’s sur­face giv­ing way either to an eclipse of the Sun or to a eclipse of the Moon. A min­i­mum of four to a max­i­mum of sev­en eclipses can occur each year. It is pos­si­ble to fore­see them with close approx­i­ma­tion, keep­ing in con­sid­er­a­tion that the line of nodes’ does not remain fixed but com­pletes its rota­tion In 18 years, 11 days and 8 hours on the plane of the Earth’s orbit. After this peri­od, the Sun, Earth and Moon return to their orig­i­nal posi­tions and, in con­se­quence, the same sequence of eclipses will be repeat­ed. This recur­rence is called the Saros Cycle and includes sev­en­ty-one eclipses: forty-three solar and twen­ty-eight lunar. Two eclipses, alter­nat­ed with a Saros cycle, will be vis­i­ble in dif­fer­ent regions of the earth’s sur­face since this doesn’t cor­re­spond to a whole num­ber of days. The excess of eight hours cor­re­sponds to a rota­tion of the earth of around 120° mea­sured in the lon­gi­tu­di­nal sense. South Space is made up of a cir­cu­lar shaped cen­tral room in which a sky­space of the same shape is locat­ed. It is so large that it can frame the zenith, the point of the celes­tial sphere that is found to be per­pen­dic­u­lar to the earth’s sur­face in rela­tion to the observ­er. Dur­ing the more clear days, the por­tion of the sun that is vis­i­ble from this open­ing will assume an intense blue colour. This space is also enclosed by a heli­coidal ramp that opens up on the land­scape at var­i­ous levels. 

Overall plan and south elevation of the Fumarole Space
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Overall plan and south elevation of the Fumarole Space

Middle ground plan, cross and longitudinal sections of the Fumarole Space: in evidence, the heliostatic chamber and the skybath
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Middle ground plan, cross and longitudinal sections of the Fumarole Space: in evidence, the heliostatic chamber and the skybath

East Space [ 21 ] [ 22 ] is direct­ly con­nect­ed to the North Space, with the Fuma­role Space to the west and with South Space to the south. This space faces the Paint­ed Desert and con­sists of a com­plex group of rooms that fol­low one anoth­er in lin­ear suc­ces­sion. The first space that one encoun­ters is slight­ly cuneiform. From here, stairs lead to a supe­ri­or lev­el, to a space with a square lay­out on which a cubic sky­scape is devel­oped. This space opens out onto the east through a large open­ing that cov­ers a visu­al angle of about 60° and is com­plet­ed by a hypostyle body of water, placed at its cen­tre. From a pre­de­ter­mined posi­tion on the stairs, the observer’s eye will be at the same lev­el as the water’s sur­face. In doing so, it seems to coin­cide with the hori­zon line. If one looks towards the exter­nal pas­sage from this leonardesque posi­tion dur­ing the first hours of morn­ing, one can observe the light of dawn grad­u­al­ly inten­si­fy. The rays of the ris­ing sun and their reflec­tion in the hypostyle pool will give life to a Wedge­work.55 The cuneiform room and skay­space were planned to observe the move­ment of the sun from the day of the win­ter sol­stice to that of the sum­mer sol­stice. At dawn sun­light can pass through a but­ton­hole made in the space’s most tapered part of the wall and be pro­ject­ed on the curvi­lin­ear wall placed in front of it. 

Dur­ing the win­ter sol­stice (22nd of Decem­ber), light is only able to pen­e­trate the cube shaped room, while on the day of the sum­mer sol­stice (21st of June), it can reach and infil­trate any space by means of the var­i­ous routes and be pro­ject­ed on the wall placed just behind the main stairs. This phe­nom­e­non ampli­fies and mod­i­fies the spa­tial qual­i­ty of the entire envi­ron­ment. When the sun cross­es the East open­ing, its rays, which are reflect­ed in the water, project chang­ing and rever­ber­at­ing images on the rear wall. The water slight­ly rip­ples due to air cur­rents, pro­duc­ing some strange lumin­is­tic and chro­mat­ic effects, even in sur­round­ing spaces. In the mean time, the tri­an­gu­lar shaped space dark­ens due to the pro­gres­sion of the day, and con­se­quent­ly, at sun­set, the light will appear like a thin ray of pink and blue: this lat­er phe­nom­e­non rep­re­sents one of the most beau­ti­ful open sky spec­ta­cles observ­able from Roden Crater. The two open­ings also func­tion in such a way that arti­fi­cial and nat­ur­al light meet along planes of Inter­sec­tion now made perceptible. 

Fuma­role Space is direct­ly con­nect­ed to the East Space and is aligned with the Sun and Moon Space. Sit­u­at­ed at ground lev­el, it occu­pies an inter­me­di­ate posi­tion between the two spaces. The archi­tec­ton­ic char­ac­ter­is­tics of this space recall eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry astro­nom­i­cal con­struc­tions of Jai Singh in India, espe­cial­ly the great Sam­rat Yantra. It is com­posed of five prin­ci­ple spaces: the first con­sti­tutes a large ramp that trans­forms into a stair­way, fol­low­ing the course of the ter­rain, and that is ori­ent­ed towards the sum­mer sol­stice posi­tion – phe­nom­e­non that takes place every year on the 23rd of June and rep­re­sents the moment in which the sun tran­sits in the most north­ern point of it’s appar­ent annu­al course. The par­tic­u­lar form of this ramp, and espe­cial­ly its cur­va­ture, was stud­ied in such a way as to per­mit vis­i­tors to observe the posi­tion of the sun dur­ing the sum­mer sol­stice along the south wall, and the point in which the moon appears along the north wall. The sec­ond space con­sti­tutes a cylin­dri­cal room placed just on the inside of the con­struc­tion: it acts as a lens, pro­ject­ing through the tun­nels, the image of the sun on the large mono­lite stone of the Sun and Moon spaces. It was also con­ceived to cap­ture that arch of solar light that hap­pens at sun­set whose vis­i­bil­i­ty lasts only for a few min­utes, but that inun­dates the room with an ethe­re­al blue and pink colour. The third and fourth spaces were planned to house some Dark Pieces. With this in mind their walls were cov­ered by sand and plas­ter. Final­ly, the fifth space was planned to be par­tic­u­lar­ly sen­si­tive to light: a pool is fore­seen for it whose goal will be to cap­ture light, but it is also sur­round­ed by a Fara­day cage whose func­tion is to fil­ter the sounds that come from the exte­ri­or. The Fara­day cage is an instru­ment used in physics to demon­strate the dis­tri­b­u­tion of elec­tric­i­ty on the sur­face of bod­ies, and is gen­er­al­ly made up of two com­po­nents: a met­al cage to which strips of paper are attached, both inter­nal­ly and exter­nal­ly, half way up and an elec­tro­scope that con­nects to the inter­nal sur­face of the cage through a met­al coil. The goal of this sim­ple elec­tro­sta­t­ic object is to detect the pres­ence of elec­tric charges. Envi­ron­men­tal sounds can only pass through the high­er open­ing of the cage and the space acts as a lit­tle tele­scop­ic radio. This envi­ron­ment is there­fore con­ceived not only to receive the nat­ur­al light of the sun, the moon and the stars but also to cap­ture radio waves that are trans­mit­ted with­in the pool: while the water receives this type of wave from the acoustic space, the prin­ci­ple room cap­tures the exter­nal envi­ron­men­tal sounds. For exam­ple, in cer­tain favourable envi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions, one can hear the Great Falls of the Col­orado Riv­er at about four miles east of the Crater. Tur­rell was inspired by sev­er­al earth­ly works like the high rever­ber­a­tion cis­terns in Mas­sa­da and Qum­ran for the plan­ning of this environment.

The two tun­nels, sit­u­at­ed on the major axis of the crater, were designed as links but they also func­tion as opti­cal chan­nels that cap­ture and project nat­ur­al light. The East Tun­nel, that con­nects the East Space with Crater’s Eye, has an incli­na­tion of about 15° and is rotat­ed towards the east at about 61° with respect to the north: It seems to point to the north-east, in the direc­tion of the ris­ing of the sun and towards the sum­mer sol­stice. Instead, the west tun­nel, that con­nects the Crater’s Eye with the Amphithe­atre, is prac­ti­cal­ly spec­u­lar and faces the south­west in the direc­tion of the point in which the sun sets, towards the win­ter solstice.

No mat­ter which route one takes with­in the Crater, Alpha Space is the last space that one encoun­ters before enter­ing the Crater’s Eye. Actu­al­ly two spec­u­lar Alpha Spaces exist with respect to the eye of the crater and they are posi­tioned at the end of the two tun­nels. It con­sists of a cylin­dri­cal room with ellip­tic lay­out, in mea­sured dimen­sions in which a sky­space, that is to say a large open­ing in the cov­er, of the same form is to be placed. The walls are com­plete­ly white and reflect dif­fer­ent noc­tur­nal and day­time lights; a steep stair­way that leads to the ridge is placed in the cen­tre of the room and per­mits one to take in the pro­gres­sive change of per­spec­tive with respect to the celes­tial vault and to the hori­zon. If one directs one’s gaze towards the sky­space from the inte­ri­or of the tun­nel that leads to the Sun & Moon space, con­struct­ed with a unique key-hole’ sec­tion, one can enjoy the par­tic­u­lar sen­sa­tion that makes the sky to appear to adhere to the hole in the floor slab cov­er­ing. As one con­tin­ues up the stairs, exit­ing this space, this sky mem­brane’ seems to expand and trans­form into a huge vault above the crater.

Sit­u­at­ed pre­cise­ly at the crater’s cen­tre, just above a cis­tern of under­ground water, the Crater’s Eye is sure­ly one of the most Inter­est­ing spaces of the entire Tur­rel­lian project. Con­ceived as a reverse con­cave hemi­sphere, it func­tions like a naked eye’ astro­nom­ic obser­va­to­ry. The archi­tec­ton­ic char­ac­ter­is­tics recall those of the obser­va­to­ries built by Jai Singh at Jaipur in India. Tur­rell him­self affirms to be inspired by the famous Mahara­jah, in the forms of his archi­tec­ture: archi­tec­ture made for view­ing celes­tial events. Indeed, as in Jai Prakas Yantra, here as well, one enters from the low­est part of the instal­la­tion, to then climb and observe the exte­ri­or through spher­i­cal embra­sures in the struc­ture of the basin. The form, com­pa­ra­ble to a con­cave merid­i­an, was designed to per­mit the obser­va­tion of sev­er­al celes­tial events that involve the sun, the plan­ets and the moon, and the view­ing of the eclipse, the appar­ent course of the sun that seems to change posi­tion from low to high. One can posi­tion one­self on any of the sev­er­al plat­forms that have been planned, depend­ing on the events that one wish­es to observe: the low­est ones are for view­ing the sum­mer eclipse, the high­est for view­ing the spring equinox (March 21) and the autumn equinox (Sep­tem­ber 23), that meet the moment in which the celes­tial lon­gi­tude of the cen­tre of the sun is equal to 0° or to 180°, that is to those days in which day­light hours are equal to those of darkness.

The Sun & Moon space is con­nect­ed in the east with the Fuma­role Space and in the west with the Alpha Space. It is a cir­cu­lar space in which the visu­al axis of the two entrances run per­pen­dic­u­lar­ly to the sur­faces of a sheet of rock, of mono­lith­ic form, posi­tioned exact­ly in the cen­tre of the room. There­fore, the space func­tions like a cam­era oscu­ra, in which the two access tun­nels serve to project the images of the sun and moon, from the East and West respec­tive­ly. Both images remain sharp for only about two min­utes: for the remain­der of the time Sun & Moon will be inun­dat­ed with a light that gen­er­ates a Ganz­field, uni­form and with­out a focal point. Every 18.61 years, when the Moon reach­es its most souther­ly dec­li­na­tion, its image – includ­ing its large craters – will be clear­ly vis­i­ble with­in the room, while one would be able to view the pro­jec­tions of the sun two times a year, at the solstices.

Sit­u­at­ed at the south­west­ern base of the Crater, the Amphithe­atre is direct­ly con­nect­ed to the sec­ond Alpha Space and is a mul­ti­func­tion­al plat­form. When there are no pro­grammed rep­re­sen­ta­tions, it also func­tions as a sim­ple space of light. 

As this brief descrip­tion demon­strates, the artis­tic research of James Tur­rell in the Roden Crater project involves mul­ti­ple dis­ci­plines and inter­ests (astron­o­my, archeo-astron­o­my, bud­dism, Zen med­i­ta­tion, ecol­o­gy, the study of prim­i­tive cul­tures, sci­ence, archi­tec­ture, sci-fi, and the artist’s pas­sion for fly­ing), but each of these revolves around an immo­bile cen­tre, con­stant and omnipresent: per­cep­tion, above all visu­al. It has a way of struc­tur­ing and de-struc­tur­ing itself through the con­trolled use of arti­fi­cial and nat­ur­al light. As not­ed by Theodore Wolff, James Turrell’s work allows for sev­er­al exeget­i­cal lev­els: “….as moti­vat­ed on the aes­thet­ic lev­el; as an accu­rate­ly cal­cu­lat­ed demon­stra­tion of cer­tain laws applic­a­ble to per­cep­tion and to human cog­ni­tion; as a demys­ti­fy­ing process that strives to aug­ment knowl­edge of how the rela­tion­ship between man and his envi­ron­ment func­tions; as an instru­ment used to inves­ti­gate sub­tle tran­scen­den­tal or meta­phys­i­cal men­tal states”.56 Even though Tur­rell doesn’t seem to attribute any mys­tic-reli­gious sig­nif­i­cance to his artis­tic cre­ations, the light arche­type trace­able to its Quak­er roots is strong­ly con­nect­ed to them – as the names giv­en to the two renowned sky­spaces, Meet­ing and Sec­ond Meet­ing, by the artist recall – , and to the cor­re­lat­ed prac­tis­es of silence and of the gath­er­ing of light. 

Light is an instru­ment intend­ed to expand the con­fines of per­cep­tion and to imple­ment knowl­edge of the phe­nom­e­nal world. For Tur­rell, it is not a vehi­cle of infor­ma­tion, see­ing that it is infor­ma­tion in and of itself. There­fore, the ques­tion aris­es; in the case of sim­i­lar works, is it per­mis­si­ble to use tra­di­tion­al meth­ods of geo­met­ric rep­re­sen­ta­tion and shad­ow the­o­ries (even through the most sophis­ti­cat­ed soft­ware for dig­i­tal ren­der­ing) to recon­struct the chang­ing bor­ders of their appearances?

The response should be neg­a­tive; Turrell’s works are un-rep­re­sentable and point out the inad­e­qua­cy of the idea of a rec­ti­lin­ear prop­a­ga­tion of light, and there­fore of shad­ow. Instead they allude to the quan­tum mod­el that is preva­lent today that, non-the-less, has not yet found a coher­ent trans­la­tion in graph­ic terms. Above all those works stim­u­late the obser­va­tion of shad­owy phe­nom­e­na all togeth­er anal­o­gous with that which Is pro­voked by lumi­nous phe­nom­e­na, thus sug­gest­ing to us, in some man­ner, to rede­fine the laws of sight. Per­haps our inter­nal eye, able to read sec­u­lar strat­i­fi­ca­tions – both phys­i­cal and meta­phys­i­cal – of a sym­bol that Is as nat­u­ral­ly icono­graph­ic as shad­ow, has been blind­ed by a Manichean con­cept of rep­re­sen­ta­tion that, illu­mi­nat­ing every cor­ner of it’s the­o­ret­i­cal frame­work, has answered to ratio­nal needs, to a tec­ton­ic or mechan­i­cal end. In this way we have most like­ly lost one of the val­ues asso­ci­at­ed to draw­ing, that with the pre­cise descrip­tion of shad­ow, in a fit of hubris, tends to fix the eter­nal chang­ing motion of the sun on paper or on a dig­i­tal screen.

  1. 1

    See R. Grisoil­ia, Le meta­mor­fosi del­lo sguar­do. Cin­e­ma e pit­tura nei film di Luis Buñuel, Rome 2002; P. Bertet­to, L’enigma del deside­rio. Buñuel, Un chien andalou’ and L’Âge d’or’, Rome 2001; J. Bax­ter, Luis Buñuel, Lon­don 1994; A. Sanchez Vidal, Luis Buñuel, Madrid 1991.

  2. 2

    The gen­e­sis of the script for Un chien andalou’ is recon­struct­ed by Dalì in an alter­na­tive way: accord­ing to the Span­ish painter a para­noic’ cri­te­ri­on of script com­po­si­tion would have been adopt­ed, only way to guar­an­tee the palin­dromis effect of the mul­ti­ple fig­u­ra­tion” of the images. See S. Dalì, L’asino putre­fat­to, in Id., Yes. The para­noic-cri­tique rev­o­lu­tion. Sci­en­tif­ic archange­lism”, Milano 1980, pp. 170–171.

  3. 3

    First, the fig­u­ra­tive sub­ject of the eye is a con­stant in sym­bol­ist paint­ing, then in sur­re­al­ism. See as in J. Siegel’s, The image of the eye in sur­re­al­ist art and its psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic sources, Part I: The myth­ic eye, in Arts Mag­a­zine”, 56, 6, 1982, and Id., Part II: Magritte, in Arts Mag­a­zine”, 56, 7, 1982. On pic­to­r­i­al impli­ca­tions and on opti­cal-fig­u­ra­tive descrip­tions of L. Buñuel’s work, see: E. Guigon, Gozos de la mira­da. Mues­trario, in Los parén­te­sis de la mira­da. Un hom­e­na­je à Luis Buñuel”, exhi­bi­tion cat­a­logue, Teru­el 1993; but also more recent­ly, R. Griso­lia, Le meta­mor­fosi del­lo sguar­do. Cin­e­ma e pit­tura nei film di Luis Buñuel, cit.

  4. 4

    M. Jay, Down­cast Eyes. The den­i­gra­tion of vision in twen­ti­eth-cen­tu­ry french thought, Berke­ley, Los Ange­les and Lon­don 1993, p. 258.

  5. 5

    See as in J.-J. Goux, Descartes et la per­spec­tive, in L’Esprit Créa­teur”, 25, I, spring 1985.

  6. 6

    R. Descartes, The Philo­soph­i­cal Writ­ings of Descartes, 2 vol., tran. J. Cot­ting­ham, R. Stoothoff and D. Mur­doch, Cam­bridge 1984, vol. 2, p. 21.

  7. 7

    Ivi, p. 166.

  8. 8

    See S. Kof­man, Cam­era obscu­ra de l’idéologie, Paris 1973.

  9. 9

    See. S. Beck­ett, Film, com­plete sce­nario, illus­tra­tions, pro­duc­tion shots, New York 1969.

  10. 10

    See George Berke­ley, Teo­ria del­la visione, edit­ed by P. Spinic­ci, Milano1995.

  11. 11

    E. Zol­la, Arche­tipi, Venice, 1990, p. 8.

  12. 12

    See J. Crary, Tech­niques of observ­er. On vision and moder­ni­ty in the nine­teenth cen­tu­ry, Cam­bridge (Mass.) and Lon­don, 1995.

  13. 13

    See L. Selfe, Nadia. A case of extra­or­di­nary draw­ing abil­i­ty in an autis­tic child, Lon­don 1977.

  14. 14

    Ivi, p. 34.

  15. 15

    Ivi, p. 39.

  16. 16

    J. Locke, Essays on Human Under­stand­ing, edit­ed by A. Camp­bell Fras­er, New York 1959, I, ii, 17.

  17. 17

    J. Crary, Tech­niques of observ­er, cit., p. 41.

  18. 18

    Rep­re­sen­ta­tive dichoto­my is tak­en from Leib­niz (in Id., Mon­adol­o­gy and Oth­er Philo­soph­i­cal Essays, tran., P. Schreck­er, Indi­anapo­lis 1965, pp. 157 fol.), when the philoso­pher to the dif­fer­ent per­cep­tions of the body on God’s behalf and on man’s behalf: in the first case, one has access to a rep­re­sen­ta­tion defined by the author as scaenographia (per­spec­tive), in the sec­ond to ichno­graphia (that is seen from above, and from a bird’s eye view stand­point). See L. Marin, Por­trait of the King, tran. M. Houle, Min­neapo­lis 1988, pp. 169–179.

  19. 19

    See AA.VV., A volo d’uccello’. Jacopo de’ Bar­bari e le rap­p­re­sen­tazioni di cit­tà nell’Europa del Rinasci­men­to, Venice 1999; also J. Schulz, Jacopo de’ Barbari’s View of Venice: Map Mak­ing, City Vews, and Mor­al­ized Geog­ra­phy Before the Year 1500, in Art Bul­letin” #60, 1978, pp. 425–474.

  20. 20

    J. Crary, op. cit., p. 52.

  21. 21

    C. Jenks, The cen­tral­i­ty of the eye in west­ern cul­ture, in Id., edit­ed by, Visu­al Cul­ture”, Lon­don and New York 1995, p. 4.

  22. 22

    See A. Robbe-Gril­let, M. Tansey, M. Tansey, San Fran­cis­co 1993.

  23. 23

    See M.C. Tay­lor, M. Tansey, The Pic­ture in Ques­tion: Mark Tansey and the Ends of Rep­re­sen­ta­tion, Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press 1999.

  24. 24

    1625, Enkhuizen; 1654, Amsterdam.

  25. 25

    See D. Diderot, Let­tres sur les aveu­gles, p. 319; and G. Berke­ley, The­o­ry of vision vin­di­cat­ed, sec. 71 (tran. it, Teo­ria del­la visione, edit­ed by P. Spinic­ci, Milan 1995, pp. 110 fol.).

  26. 26

    The title refers to var­i­ous paint­ings by Gus­tave Courbert, depict­ing the Louen riv­er val­ley, at Ornans (France).

  27. 27

    See W.T. Mitchell, Iconol­o­gy: Image, text and ide­ol­o­gy, Chica­go 1986.

  28. 28

    ιδεα, exte­ri­or point of view, point of view, per­spec­tive, fig­ure, form”. See L. Roc­ci, Vocabo­lario Gre­co Ital­iano, Rome 1935, p. 905.

  29. 29

    C. Jenks, The cen­tral­i­ty of the eye in west­ern cul­ture, cit., p. 1.

  30. 30

    See M. Fou­cault, Nasci­ta del­la clin­i­ca. Una arche­olo­gia del­lo sguar­do medico, Tori­no 1998; Id., Sorveg­liare e punire. Nasci­ta del­la pri­gione, Tori­no 1993. See also R. Evans, The fab­ri­ca­tion of virtue: eng­lish prison archi­tec­ture, 1750–1840, Cam­bridge 1982.

  31. 31

    See A. Bar­ry, Report­ing and visu­al­is­ing, in C. Jenks, edit­ed by, Visu­al Cul­ture”, Lon­don and New York 1995.

  32. 32

    Ivi, p. 54.

  33. 33

    See B. Pedret­ti, Lunario dell’architettura 5: l’immagine cieca, in Casabel­la”, n° 593, set­tem­bre 1992.

  34. 34

    Actu­al­ly in 1657 edi­tion of Le pre­mier tôme…, the two xylo­gra­phies were placed at the end of the ninth book, and only in the suc­ces­sive edi­tions they were placed below the text, at the end of the eleventh chapt. See A Blunt, Philib­ert de l’Orme, edit­ed by M. Mor­re­si, Milan 1997; P. Potié, Philib­ert de l’Orm. Fig­ures de la pen­sée con­struc­tive, Mar­seille 1996.

  35. 35

    See J. Trilling, crit­i­cal review R. Sen­nett, The con­science of the eye: the design and social life of cities”, (New York 1990), in Design Book Review”, n° 23, win­ter 1991.

  36. 36

    The build­ing is sit­u­at­ed on Main Street in Venice, California.

  37. 37

    See P. Fran­cas­tel, Lo spazio fig­u­ra­ti­vo dal Rinasci­men­to al Cubis­mo, Tori­no 1957.

  38. 38

    In par­tic­u­lar, see sto­ries Le Mon­tagne del­la Fol­lia” (1936) and L’ombra cala­ta dal tem­po” (1936) in H.P. Love­craft, Tut­ti i rac­con­ti 1931–1936, Milan 1992.

  39. 39

    James Tur­rell was born in Los Ange­les, on May 6, 1943, son of an aero­nau­ti­cal engi­neer of French ori­gin who immi­grat­ed to Cal­i­for­nia in the 20’s, and of a Quak­er woman, from whom he inher­it­ed a pro­found reli­gious belief. In 1965 he obtained a diplo­ma in the psy­chol­o­gy of per­cep­tion’ at Pomona Col­lege. At the same time he devel­oped a strong Inter­est for math­e­mat­ics, astron­o­my and geol­o­gy, as well as for paint­ing, sculp­ture and the his­to­ry of art. For many years his pas­sion for air­planes and pho­tog­ra­phy, passed on from his father, con­sti­tut­ed his only source of Income for sur­vival and to fund his Instal­la­tions. James Turrell’s mature work dates to around 1966, when the artist rent­ed the Men­do­ta Hotel, Ocean Park. He used it as his liv­ing quar­ters and stu­dio, trans­form­ing its inte­ri­or into an ide­al con­tain­er for his first instal­la­tions. In 1968, along with Robert Irwin, he was asked to par­tic­i­pate, in the Art & Tech­nol­o­gy pro­mot­ed by the Los Ange­les Muse­um of Art and con­ceived by Mau­rice Tuch­man: it was then Tur­rell became in con­tact with Dr. Edward Wortz, a the­o­ret­ic physi­cist affer­ent at the Gar­rett Aere­o­space Cor­po­ra­tion, with whom he devel­oped the study of sev­er­al sen­so­r­i­al depri­va­tion techniques. 

  40. 40

    F. Fröh­lich, The loca­tion of light in art: from Rem­brandt to Op-Art and Light Envi­ron­ment, in British Jour­nal of Aes­thetich”, vol. XI, Lon­don 1971, p. 60.

  41. 41

    G. Pan­za di Biu­mo, Natu­ra, land art, ambi­ente, in Lotus”, n°89, Milan Sep­tem­ber 1995, p. 91.

  42. 42

    C. Adcock, James Tur­rell. The Art of Light and Space, Berke­ly 1990, p. 8.

  43. 43

    Most of the time, the pro­jec­tor is found on a small plat­form, sus­pend­ed from the ceil­ing by met­al chains; in sev­er­al instal­la­tions the images are pro­ject­ed through a hole made in the ceil­ing. Tur­rell also used slide-pro­jec­tors with xenon bulbs that draw the behav­iour of a punc­ti­form source near with greater pre­ci­sion con­se­quent­ly guar­an­tee­ing a more clear and ample projection. 

  44. 44

    C. Adcock, James Tur­rell. The Art of Light and Space, cit., p. 12.

  45. 45

    The Ganzfeld is a total per­cep­tive field that pro­duces sen­so­ry alter­ations, that can some­times even be found while look­ing at the sky: indeed, when there are objects in the sky – clouds, aero­planes, tele­phone poles, stars – , it seems trans­par­ent, but when it is emp­ty and illu­mi­nat­ed by sun­light, it is pre­sent­ed as an essen­tial­ly undif­fer­en­ti­at­ed field of blue whose dis­tance and posi­tion is dif­fi­cult to esti­mate. ”. See C. Adcock, op. cit., p. 137. The Ganzfeld can also be inter­pret­ed as a noth­ing field’, that can appear to be of infi­nite depth to some observers, or capa­ble to induce an inter­nal’ hal­lu­ci­na­tion, an image with­out space or content.

  46. 46

    F. Berg­amo, Un altro oriz­zonte: il prog­et­to dell’Irish Sky Gar­den di James Tur­rell, degree the­sis (unpub­lished), Venice 2005, p. 3.

  47. 47

    Sky­space is usu­al­ly made up of a room of a vari­able plani­met­ric shape, with an open sky­light in the intra­dos of the floor slab that puts the room in direct con­tact with the exte­ri­or. The view­er, sit­ting on the bench which perime­ters the inter­nal space, is unable to make out the ceiling’s thick­ness. This is thanks to the par­tic­u­lar cre­ation of the skylight’s bor­der. This effect of total per­cep­tive field (ganzfeld) gives the view­er the impres­sion that the sky rests direct­ly on the floor slab. See C. Adcock, James Tur­rell. The art of light and space, Berke­ley, Los Ange­les, Oxford 1990; AA.VV., James Tur­rell. The oth­er hori­zon, Vien­na 1999.

  48. 48

    R. Bright, When light is lost, life is lost, in Id., edit­ed by, James Tur­rell Eclipse”, Lon­dra 1999, p. 10.

  49. 49

    As is known, it deals with a space of vari­able dimen­sions, total­ly imper­vi­ous to light. A small hole is made (stenope) in one of its ver­ti­cal walls. Its exact func­tion is to cap­ture exter­nal light and to project objects that are found out­side of the room itself onto the oppo­site wall to which it is placed. Above all, the cam­era oscu­ra seems to be an instru­ment that favors obser­va­tion, that facil­i­tates draw­ing, allow­ing for a more pre­cise repro­duc­tion of real­i­ty: in a few words, to become a mechan­i­cal sur­ro­gate of the phys­i­o­log­i­cal process of vision.

  50. 50

    Paul Klee as quot­ed in, P. Vir­il­lo, Sight with­out eye­sight, in AA. VV., James Tur­rell. The oth­er hori­zon”, cit., p. 218.

  51. 51

    New York stu­dio Skid­more, Owings and Mer­rill present­ly deals with the cre­ation of the Roden Crater project execu­to­ry drawings.

  52. 52

    The team, coor­di­nat­ed by Agosti­no De Rosa, and is com­posed of archi­tects Francesco Berg­amo, Giuseppe D’Acunto, Isabel­la Friso, Gabriel­la Liva, Cosi­mo Mon­teleone, Alber­to Sdeg­no. Dig­i­tal elab­o­ra­tions of the Roden Crater Project were car­ried out in the Depart­ment of Archi­tec­ton­ic Pro­jec­tion, Dipar­timene­to di Prog­et­tazione Architet­ton­i­ca (dPA) and the The Dig­i­tal Archi­tec­ture Lab­o­ra­to­ry, Lab­o­ra­to­rio di Architet­tura Dig­i­tale (LAR) at the IUAV Uni­ver­si­ty, Venice, between the years 2003–2006. For more details about the Roden Crater project, please see: A. De Rosa, James Tur­rell. Roden Crater Project. Geome­trie di Luce, Milan 2006; U. Sin­nre­ich, edit­ed by, James Tur­rell: Geom­e­try of Light, Berlin 2009.

  53. 53

    Sound com­posed by Maria Pia de Vito (voice, live elec­tron­ics) and Michele Rab­bia (per­cus­sion, live electronics).

  54. 54

    Dark Spaces are spaces that are com­plete­ly dark, usu­al­ly sound­less and almost ane­choic. They are accessed through a fil­ter-route to then pro­ceed to take a place in a posi­tion from which one observes mov­ing pro­jec­tions that are of very low lumi­nos­i­ty. The required dura­tion is of at least fif­teen min­utes. For the first ten min­utes the inter­nal visu­al sit­u­a­tion is con­di­tioned by the images of the exter­nal envi­ron­ment that were pre­vi­ous­ly mem­o­rized by the reti­na: it deals with an expe­ri­ence to which one usu­al­ly pays lit­tle atten­tion because we gen­er­al­ly imme­di­ate­ly sub­sti­tute a strong’ image with anoth­er one. As they van­ish, the visu­al expe­ri­ence becomes soft­er and the fad­ed pro­ject­ed images begin to become con­fused with the idioreti­nal ones until they become pro­gres­sive­ly defined. These works also serve as instru­ments to explore the con­fines between that which one imag­ines see­ing or that which one sees with one’s imag­i­na­tion (even in so called lucid dreams’ that most­ly involve the periph­er­al area of the reti­na) and that which one sees phys­i­cal­ly’”. See F. Berg­amo, Un altro oriz­zonte…, cit., p. 8.

  55. 55

    The Wedge­works series is devel­oped begin­ning with Lodi in 1969, still at the Men­do­ta Hotel, and can be inter­pret­ed as a three-dimen­sion­al” vari­ant of the Shal­low Space Con­struc­tions, imag­in­ing the shift­ing (usu­al­ly rotat­ing the wall by 90°) and by short­en­ing the par­ti­tion wall that is present in them. Lamps are posi­tioned behind the cor­ner of the sec­ondary wall and are care­ful­ly set. The light that is giv­en off by them cre­ates the clear image of a semi-trans­par­ent veil which extends between the cor­ner of this wall and the cor­ner of the prin­ci­ple wall, which is fur­ther away and on the oppo­site side. Such a screen, oblique­ly extend­ed’ seems to have the con­sis­ten­cy of mat­ter, almost like a colour film that sep­a­rates two dif­fer­ent spaces (on occa­sion the rear cuneiform appears illu­so­ri­ly illu­mi­nat­ed in white), while in real­i­ty it deals with only one char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly uni­form space, or at least that is the way one would per­ceive it if one were to exclude the coloured lumi­nous sources.” F. Berg­amo, op. cit., p. 6.

  56. 56

    T. Wolff, Intro­duc­tion, in Occlud­ed Front, James Tur­rell”, edit­ed by Julia Brown, Los Ange­les 1985, cit­ed in C. Adcock, James Tur­rell: The Art of Light and Space, Berke­ley 1990.