Editor’s Fore­word

Paul O Robinson

Cor­re­spon­dences shape our per­cep­tion of expe­ri­ence through rec­i­p­ro­cal actions; they bridge dis­tances as whis­pers and echoes, as spon­ta­neous reac­tions and res­o­nant asso­ci­a­tions processed through the agency of time. One cor­re­sponds with one’s self. Archaical­ly, let­ters are writ­ten. We call, we send e‑mails, texts, and trun­cat­ed thoughts—tweets—delivered as dig­i­tal shouts while impa­tient­ly we wait for plethor­ic respons­es, con­nec­tiv­i­ty and agree­ment. Words and images entrop­i­cal­ly col­lapse upon each oth­er; expe­ri­ence is dis­tanced from real­i­ty by the archi­tec­ture of vir­tu­al trans­mu­ta­tions. Once cher­ished as a means for repose and reflec­tion, time is reduced to an intru­sive inter­lop­er, attack­ing the tech­nolo­gies of convenience.

A con­tem­po­ra­ne­ous action is val­u­at­ed by its per­ceived cor­re­spon­dence with ana­logues held with­in the inter­pre­tive frame of the past; a past action, event or arti­fact is val­u­at­ed through its cor­re­spon­dence with the irrev­o­ca­ble presence—the politic—of becoming. 

Entwined with­in the inter­course of human cor­re­spon­dences is the less overt inter­face between tem­po­ral dis­tances shaped by the arti­facts of cul­ture — things. Now, for bet­ter or for worse, the glob­al matrix of infor­ma­tion sup­port­ing once iden­ti­fi­able cul­tur­al signs upends tra­di­tion­al tax­onomies and hier­ar­chies. The cor­re­spon­dences between things—at times tac­it, anarchic—are res­o­nant doc­u­ments of life lived with­in the ever-mor­ph­ing world of our experiences.

Per­haps no one bet­ter fore­told the man­i­fest­ing schisms in clas­si­cal analogs—cor­re­spon­dences—than Charles Baude­laire. In the first chap­ter of his lumi­nous book, La Folie Baude­laire, Rober­to Calas­so inter­prets Baudelaire’s phrase the nat­ur­al obscu­ri­ty of things” as the most com­mon per­cep­tion, and to tack­le” the com­mon­est” one must embrace anal­o­gy as the means to access the knowl­edge which sheds a mag­i­cal and super­nat­ur­al light on the nat­ur­al obscu­ri­ty of things’.” Calas­so infers that for Baude­laire, anal­o­gy was a sci­ence, per­haps even, the supreme sci­ence, if the imag­i­na­tion is the queen of facil­i­ties’.” Quot­ing from a let­ter writ­ten by Baude­laire to Alphonse Tou­ssenel, he con­tin­ues “…the imag­i­na­tion is the most sci­en­tif­ic of the facil­i­ties, because it is the only one to under­stand the uni­ver­sal anal­o­gy, or that which a mys­ti­cal reli­gion calls cor­re­spon­dence.” Baude­laire refers to one’s cor­re­spon­dence with the world: “…every­thing, form, move­ment, num­ber, col­or, scent, be it in the spir­i­tu­al world or the nat­ur­al sphere, is mean­ing­ful, rec­i­p­ro­cal, con­vert­ed, and cor­re­spond­ing”; Calas­so con­cludes: This last is a reveal­ing word. Anal­o­gy and cor­re­spon­dences are, for Baude­laire, equiv­a­lent terms.”

Before Baude­laire, anal­o­gy was defined via the clas­si­cal canons”, where­in cor­re­spon­dences were lim­it­ed to reg­u­lat­ed sys­tems” of inter­pre­ta­tion. With Baude­laire these sys­tems were jet­ti­soned; the canon­ic rules were aban­doned in favor of more anar­chic, non-sys­tem­atized, modes of cor­re­spon­dence. Baudelaire’s prophet­ic verse has yet to set­tle; our cor­re­spon­dences with the world con­tin­ue to be shaped by the irre­press­ible pace of modernity. 

The edi­tors of AR/Architecture Research 2018 have sought writ­ings that engage the sci­ence of the imag­i­na­tion through a body of cor­re­spon­dences with­in the dis­ci­plines of archi­tec­ture and art. Con­tent ranges from neu­rophe­nom­e­nol­gy to the pol­i­tics of sight, to the trans­fer­ences between artist and archi­tect and the inevitable influ­ences of these entwine­ments with­in the acad­e­my. AR 2018’s con­cep­tu­al core is bound by the explo­ration, nature and diver­si­ty of con­tem­po­rary cor­re­spon­dences.