Invisible Cities: - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Invisible Cities:

Concept City, Remote Cities, Nature and Music

• Italo Calvino & The Invisible Cities
• Your Views?
• Patterns of the Invisible Cities
• Other Kinds of Invisible Cities
• The Music Garden
• Conclusion?

• One of the world's foremost postmodern authors;
• Calvino is listed alongside Philip Johnson's AT&T building, Disneyland, Monthey Python, Max Headroom, and Donald Bartheleme as the most prominent 'icons' of postmodernism (Pilz)

Structure of Invisible Cities

• Cities and memory.
• Cities and desire.
• Cities and signs.
• Thin cities.
• Trading cities
• Cities and eyes.
• Cities and names.
• Cities and the dead
• Cities and the sky.
• Continuous cities.
• Hidden cities.

• Marco Polo’s talk to Kubla Khan

1.

• The invisible will not perish;
• Description of cities with gestures and language; the emperor’s responses

2.

• The past is always ahead of us; elsewhere is a negative mirror
• From gestures to words and back to gesture; the use of silence

3.

• Cities are made of desires and fears.

Your views?

1. Cities and memory. 1. –Diomira – past happiness;

Cities and memory. 2. – Isidora – past desire;

Cities and memory. 3. – Zaira – past connections;

Cities and memory. 4. – Zora – described point by point, unmoved till it disappears;

2. Cities and memory. 5. –Maurilla – a postcard city

1. Cities and desire. 1. –Dorothea – 2 ways of describing a city

Cities and desire. 2. – Anastasia –describing the city vs. full experience

Cities and desire. 3. – Despina -- 2 perception of a city

2. Cities and desire. 4.–Fedora -- with a mental city which turns into a museum;

1, Cities and signs. 1. – Tamara – arbitrary signs

Cities and signs. 2. – Zirma – The city is redundant, so is our memory, because they are repetitive.

2 Cities and signs. 3.–Zoe – a city which is a mixture of functions.

1. Thin cities. 1. – Isaura – a city of wells  two religions; (東石鄉; Venice?)

2. Thin cities. 2. –Zenobia – a city of platforms, balcony and ladders; not happy or unhappy, but one generating desires.

2. Trading cities. 1. – Euphemia – where merchants meet; to buy and sell, but also to tell stories.

• City, memory and the past
• Desires are memories. Cities contain our desires.
• Polo p. 28 – we know more about our past as we move ahead.
• A city’s past – pp. 10-11
• The Concept City vs. the Lived City –
• Dorothea: p. 9; Also city vs. desert
• Anastasia: p. 12 describing a city and desiring in it;
• City and Desires –
• Two perspectives. P.17 – Cities are formed by their opposites and desires.

• Human constructions
• Religion
• Buildings – Isidora p. 8;
• Human Languages
• Signs – arbitrary (Are there any which are not signs?)
• Gestures and Signs

• Diomira p. 1:  City and Memory: Byzantium underneath Istanbul
• Isidora  City and Arts: Carpentry at 古川 (a town in a mountain)
• Anastasia p. 12 City and Desire/Arts: Kite Festival at Lahore
• City and Signs/Postcards

• Basant, the festival that marks the start of spring;
• Kite with “string coated by hand in a doughy substance which is impregnated with pulverised glass” (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/2750193.stm )

• What do you think?
• General Design
• Efforts – Arts, Business and Politics
• Music, Nature and Urban Space

Suite#1 I – Prelude II – Allemande III -Courante, IV – Sarabande, V - Menuet I , VI - Gigue

Bk 5

• From Boston’s City Hall Plaza to Toronto’s Harbor Front

Response to the environment

Bk 3

Original plan:

Bk 7; adjusted in the new plan Bk 14

Bk 11

• the garden's centerpiece is a huge stone that acts as a stage for readings, and holds a small pool with water that reflects the sky.

Bk 13

• Gigue: Giant grass steps that dance you down to the outside world.

Bk 8; 12

• Different concerns of the Boston government: noise, money (to privatize the space to increase more economic interest), tourism, security
• To gain financial support: to ‘massage’ the corporate power.

Bks 10; 6

• Ma’s intention: to create a space for music without walls.  what about traffic? (e.g. Bk 16)

• Julie Messervy: To shape nature in simple forms (Bk 2)
• The film’s: Bk 9, 15

• Hand-crafted with ornamental steel, a circular pavilion is designed to shelter small musical ensembles or dance groups.

• or "jog" is an English dance, whose jaunty, rollicking music is interpreted here as a series of giant grass steps that offer views onto the harbor.

• A city can be variously defined, imagined, desired for, and connected to the past.
• Concept City does not just belong to the city planners. We also have our concepts in the use of signs, memories and through our desires and efforts in construction.

• Pilz, Kerstin.  ”Reconceptualising thought and space: labyrinths and cities in Calvino's fictions.”Italica, Summer 2003 v80 i2 p229(15)
• http://www.juliemoirmesservy.com/pro.htm
• Toronto Music Garden Photo Gallery---Inspired by Bach: Yo Yo Ma http://www.nakayoshi.org/musicgarden/
• Loraine Hunter http://www.garden-time.com/magazine/03september/article_gotw.php