Notes on Design Translation

Notes from Hegel

Ghei Chhand Makarand / Translation

Film: Katyar Kaljyat Ghusli

Composition: Shankar Mahadevan

Singers: Shankar Mahadevan, Rahul Deshpande

घेई छंद मकरंद, प्रिय हा मिलिंद
मधुसेवनानंद स्वच्छंद, हा धुंद
मिटता कमलदल होई बंदी हा भृंग;
परि सोडिना ध्यास, गुंजनात दंग


Translation:

Takes pleasure of the nectar, lovingly, the honeybee

Savouring unworriedly the sweetness, immersed

as it still suckles, the flower petals fold in the bee

Yet unfettered in its trapping, its hum-buzz persists

What is a "concept"?

Sometimes, when certain words are overused, one tends to blind to its meaning altogether. The currency for the word "concept" or "conceptual" in academia can have such an effect. When is something not conceptual, or when does something become conceptual? What can something be called conceptual, and how do we formulate concepts? Can the act of conceptualisation be taught? What are its pedagogical processes? Are we always aware when formulating new concepts? Are we not always suspended in some existing concepts? Is it possible to live a life without conceptual thinking? Or do we just occupy concepts that exist for us? Is a new conceptualization possible only through the interrogation of an earlier concept? Are concepts then merely interrogations? Are concepts mental, or are they material processes? Do new concepts necessarily change our everyday material conditions, or do they simply create new frames of reference? Are concepts instruments of the mind? Could then, existing environments simply be read conceptually afresh? Would one need to change anything material within them for them to gain a new conceptual charge? Or are they already suspended in multiple concepts and call for a reorientation of our encounter with them? Where does the concept lie then - in the reader or the material?

There can be further stream of questions that one can keep asking about this term "concept / conceptual". But what precisely is a concept? In order to have some clarity for my own self, I began looking at its definitions and etymological origins. Quite simply, "concept" is a conceived imagination. but then, such a root does not help our purpose. Hence I started looking at more elaborations, because often, the inter-related words "concept", "thought", "imagination", "idea", "theory" get mixed up in academic conversations which produces a conundrum in meaning formation. Dictionaries rely on each of these words for explaining the other. And therefore, the notion of "concept" gets further confusing. What is however important to use a word which is closest to the meaning that we want to convey, even if the meaning could be swerved for context. Rather than using the confusion (or the creation of it thereof) as escape to evade contingent parts of a conversation, it is worthwhile to build redirections of meaning consciously.

Having read and meditated on some amount of definitions and discussions, I have come to deduce that it is best to consider a "concept" as a "form of experience" - that it is an experiential space. In / for architecture, we could think of it as taking someone in a space of a particular / new experiential register. To "reconceptualize" thus would merely mean to rethink the experiential coordinates of an existing phenomenon or space (in architecture). For example, to rethink the hospital as a garden would give it an altogether new conceptual charge. However, here, "garden" is a notion that can itself be opened up in many ways, through many interpretations. But it shifts the idea of a hospital from an institutionalised medical facility that is situated in the seriousness of treating the ailing body, into its imagination as a landscape of strolling bodies which may be located in a more open environment. Such a restructuring of environmental imagination could have a material translation, or even remain as a textual reading.

Professors of higher education from the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, USA, Anfara and Mertz (2006) mention that "Concepts are words assigned to experience. Concepts combine to form a "construct". Constructs form propositions. Relationships among propositions form a "theory"." What I understand from such a description is that particular forms of experience set the coordinates for the perception of an environment. The manner in which we come to inhabit this environment is the only way to thus live a concept. The particular feelings it produces, the values and modes of thinking it triggers are all embedded in such an environment. When a series of such experiences settle in our lives, they produce a trusted model for living-thinking. This model is an understanding retained in the mind where reason gets associated with it, and aids its solidification. (This reason is not necessarily same as the scientific notion of reason, rather it is a cultural mode in which the mind reconciles with several unknowns towards living a practical life. For example, the notion of 'respecting elders' is a conceptual idea that is not rationalised empirically, but culturally - for it may be believed that those who may have lived a longer life must have greater life experience, and therefore greater wisdom to act upon the eventualities one is faced with in life). This is perhaps why, concepts can be so hard to challenge, because it would mean the interrogation of very associations of acts through which one reason one's life for practical purposes. 

Thus, such a model of reason produces a construct. Since they are "trusted" now, they can be depended upon (they get solidified), and even proposed to someone else to achieve the respective mental / physical state. Thus, they can now be proposed as accepted modes of living. According to Anfara and Mertz, relationships between these modes of living, or propositions, form a "theory". This is something I will need to consider with more attention. I say this because I am trying to figure in my head the difference between "conceptual thinking" and "theoretical thinking". At this point, both of them almost feel the same. However, theory is understood as a framework to study a structure / phenomena. (framework is another word one must open up). It could be a model to even predict certain things. If theory too, is a model, how is it different from conceptual apparatus? Theory is also defined as "a set of principles on which the practice of an activity is based." Another definition says  that theory is "a supposition or a system of ideas intended to explain something, especially one based on general principles independent of the thing to be explained." Further, idea is "an explanation to describe something about the world that is not necessarily proven". This likens idea to a "hypothesis" - an informed guess, which may be disproven later by some formal investigation. 

Someone has straightforwardly said that a theory in its strictest sense is an underlying explanation of how something works. In this line of thought, theory is not integrally linked to experience, but a process. Either understanding processes helps us to troubleshoot a particular outcome, or it can be a way in which ideas or things may be "mobilised". To be sure, theory is based on empirical research, and got popular in the late 16th century as a mental scheme of something to be done. Theory may also thus be associated with the certain development of scientific thinking. While theory is a mode of contemplation or speculation, concept is closer to thought and imagination. Thus, theoretical thinking is processual, whereas conceptual thinking is imaginative and creative. The ontologies of both these modes may be quite different. For instance, while theoretical thinking may simply chart out a process of approaching the future without necessarily a "clear" picture of the future, conceptual thinking may conceive of an imagination of the future and attempt to reach it. While in the theoretical approach, method drives the act; in conceptual approach, act drives the method. Thus, in the first case, one arrives at the image of future, whereas, in the other, one departs from the image of the future.

more thoughts later.

Architectural Diagrams - 2

 

Architectural Diagrams - 1

 

Thoughts on the Archive

 'Archival remembering can never be separated from forgetting'

Do we archive to remember or forget? Do we write to remember or forget? There are things we write to remember, and there are things we write to forget. But what about the permanence of writing or the archive? What do we read off permanence? Does permanence tell us whether it means to remember or forget itself?

The escape / release of a trapped thought contained within the mind is no longer a part of the body once it is archived. The archive thus is a way of forgetting, created only in order for a provisional remembering when the body wishes to reoccupy that old time-space. A certain time can be reinvigorated back through the archive, or its consumption.

The archive simultaneously reveals and buries certain pasts.

'Art archives do not just construct, they also bury colonial pasts'

For everything archived, there is so much that is overlooked. The archive blinds us to many things behind its face.

Word Cloud

Patronizing

adjective

(used of behavior or attitude) characteristic of those who treat others with condescension
Synonyms: arch, condescending, patronising

Sentence:

No country in the world today shows any but patronizing regard for the weak.

adjective 

कृपा करते हुए विनीत

Patriarchal

adjective
characteristic of a form of social organization in which the male is the family head and title is traced through the male line
relating to or characteristic of a man who is older or higher in rank

Patriarchy is a social system in which men hold primary power and predominate in roles of political leadership, moral authority, social privilege and control of property. Some patriarchal societies are also patrilineal, meaning that property and title are inherited by the male lineage.

adjective

पितृसत्तात्मक
पुरुष-प्रधान
कुलपति का
आदरणीय वृद्ध पुरुष का

Feudal

adjective 

Feudalism was a combination of the legal, economic, military, and cultural customs that flourished in Medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships that were derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labor. Although it is derived from the Latin word feodum or feudum (fief), which was used during the Medieval period, the term feudalism and the system which it describes were not conceived of as a formal political system by the people who lived during the Middle Ages. The classic definition, by François-Louis Ganshof (1944), describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations which existed among the warrior nobility and revolved around the three key concepts of lords, vassals and fiefs.

adjective
सामंती
सामन्तवादी
सामन्ती
जागीर संबंधी

SOURCE:

https://www.shabdkosh.com/

The Dancing Spider

This morning as I chose to listen Shivranjani over Bhoop,
I saw a tiny spider dancing in front of my eyes
First I thought it was flying
But as I transfixed my gaze upon the floating creature
I realized it was holding on to a strand of invisible web
perhaps one that he himself spit
under the fan, as I looked up to him
his body appeared and disappeared to the blades in the background
only as I got closer to being anxious if he would fall 

on me
I decided to trust him

that he will reach where he wants to

Thus redirecting my gaze

Into the screen
I began to write
this poem, 

which I meant to be prose
changed tone just like with the shift of a single key

the sharp 'ga' of milan into the flat 'ga of virah

bhoop transformed into shivranjani

and that was the music I decided to play.

Times, Lines, 1989s

Exhibition at Khoj International Artists Association. Delhi
February 2020