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ENTROPY: Everything put together,
sooner or later falls apart. —Anon.
It's one thing to philosophize on the nature, attributes, functions, meanings and consequences of the PLASTIC ARTS, and quite another thing to successfully conceptualize, design, implement, and be paid for actually constructing something concrete. Or plastic. Or wood. Or whatever. Anyway, handy-dandy guides and manuals are necessary if you're to accomplish anything. And a steady supply of stimulant drugs really speeds your work along.
But I digress. As you labor on your masterpiece of n-dimensional engineering, keeping in mind all the spiritual, ideological, aesthetic, ephemeral, confrontational, and financial aspects of your creativity, don't forget the basic rule of the carpenter: measure twice, cut once. Measure all your designs carefully, then cut them in half, preferably with a cavalry sabre. Have fun.
HOLY ARCHITECTURE: How To Design A Temple Without Suffering Divine Torment
"CHURCH: A place in which gentlemen who have never been to heaven brag about it to persons who will never get there." —H.L. Mencken
The highest calling of the architect is to fashion a place where worshippers of paranormal entities such as (gods, demons, aliens, bankers, athletes, etc) may gather for their social and ritual purposes. Great care must be taken in such work; mistakes may be damning. Here are some guidelines:
If whatever it is that your clients will worship:
- Has secrets: enclose the structure
- Has no secrets: don't enclose the structure
- Looks down from above: don't include a roof
- Looks up from below: don't include a floor
- Looks in from the sides: don't include walls
- Encourages greed: include vaults
- Encourages theft: include locks
- Encourages love: include mattresses
- Encourages nudity: include closets
- Encourages obedience: include cells
- Requires sacrifices: include an altar
- Encourages obesity: include a kitchen
- Encourages reading: include couches
- Is full of magic: include shielding
- Is full of shit: include plumbing
- Is natural: use a grove of trees, maze of shrubs, rock garden, or other vegetal / outdoors setting; eschew worshiping inside a building / structure or other such unnatural place
Holy architecture is concerned with the qualitative (above), the quantitative (below), and the transcendent (which is beyond me). Oh yeah, there's the aesthetic stuff too (further below). And primarily, you had damn well better please both the worshippers and the worshipped. But "the Devil is in the details", and you'd better calculate those details carefully, like this:
Calculating the design features:
- SIDES: The number of sides of the structure should equal four times the number of major entities your clients worship, or three plus the number of such entities, whichever works best.
- DOORS: The number of doors in the structure should equal one plus the number of minor entities your clients worship, or any such number as the major entities shall dictate.
- WINDOWS: The number of windows in the structure should equal the number of major myths that need to be illuminated for the worshippers when no power for lights is available.
- DIMENSIONS: The height of the structure should equal the depth of bullshit of the theology. The width and length should be 2/3 and 4/3 times the height of the structure, respectively.
- OCCUPANCY: The seating and standing capacity of the structure should equal two times the number of nipples on worshippers at the time of construction. Allocate 20% of the area for musicians, camera crews, security guards, official inspectors, and writhing possessed souls.
- DRAINAGE: The capacity of the drains in each sacrificial altar shall be sufficient to siphon off the bodily fluids of the sacrifices in not more than 10 seconds (under standard gravity and air pressure conditions). Suction pumps may be used if theologically acceptable.
- TRAPDOORS: Trapdoors placed uniformly around each sacrificial altar should be twice the size of the largest worshipper or priest, and separated from the altar and from each other by one-tenth of that dimension.
- NICHES: The number of visible niches in the structure should be one-half the number of secrets to be revealed. The number of hidden niches should be two times the number of secrets to be concealed. The number of virtual niches should equal the number of secrets that can be conceived of.
You may wish to further compute your design by studying all you can about SACRED GEOMETRY (TOPOLOGY) (ARITHMETIC) and other forms of SACRED MATHEMATICS, and SACRED CARTOGRAPHY (TOPOGRAPHY) (MAPPING) and other forms of SACRED SPACE, and shit like that. I mean, it couldn't hurt, right?
Sure, you've got to deal with the aesthetic stuff: rhythm, scale, light, texture, color, ornament, acoustics, site, space, and weight and mass. It can all get pretty non-trivial, especially since a dishonored or displeased deity may blast you into eternal torment. So consult with the clerics closely as you wield your creativity and expertise, and blame them for all the design shortcomings. Consider the following:
Controlling the aesthetics:
- Rhythm: The numbers and spacing of architectural details can program specific messages into the brains of worshippers and observers, allowing the priests to induce any effects from mindless obedience to holy fury to epileptic seizures.
- Scale: The size of the structure and its features can create environments ranging from sensual intimacy to workaday efficiency to overwhelming intimidation to utter chaos. Artificial, natural and spirit lights are all effective.
- Light: The lighting of the interior can range from ominous concealing shadows to a warm comfortable glow to a harsh accusatory glare. Specific details and features can be hidden or revealed or imposed. Patterns can be burnt onto retinas.
- Texture: Various surfaces may be soft, hard, abrasive, hirsute, jelly-like, smooth, rough, sticky, electrically-charged, silky, moist, muddy, acidic, whatever, all to emphasize specific doctrinal features and ritual elements.
- Color: Colors may distinguish areas of the structure. Colors and patterns may induce excitement, calming, fear, euphoria, depression, anxiety, nausea, hysteria, obedience. Colored path marking may direct worshippers to desired goals.
- Ornament: Ornament may highlight or distract from features of the structure; may entertain, instruct, indoctrinate and program the worshippers; may shelter parasites and aliens who feed upon worshippers, observers, priests and guards.
- Acoustics: The structure may be designed to clarify or muddy or amplify or soften the words and music directed at occupants. Acoustics may also highlight or conceal ambient sounds of the temple site. Complex programming is possible.
- Site: The structure may be designed and sited to blend (subservience) or clash (dominance) with its locale. It may be aggressive or defensive, overwhelming or seductive, exemplifying the doctrinal needs of worshippers and worshipped.
- Space: The space of the structure may be positive (a block) or negative (a void), convex or concave, enclosed or open or fractured or porous. The space can be readily modified by adroit use of projections, holograms and other illusions.
- Weight and Mass: Chunky blocks oppress the spirits, tall sweeping spires uplift them, shapes upon stilts or webs appear weightless, vibrant spirals induce hypnosis, and lack of external detail collapses the structure directly into Flatland.
In Brief: How To Design And Execute One Or More Works Of FUTURIST SCULPTURE
"The sculpture that we can see in the monuments and exhibitions of Europe affords us so lamentable a spectacle of barbarism and lumpishness that my Futurist eye withdraws from it in horror and disgust." —Umberto Boccioni
The past is dead. The future is alive. Peace and comfort and beauty are dead. Speed, noise, machines, pollution, and cities, THESE are all alive. Join the future, build the future, live in the future, or die — this is your choice. Start by creating truly futurist sculpture, sculpture that has no connexions with a dead, decaying, disgusting past. Here are detailed instructions on how to sculpt a future. Do it now.
- Imbue yourself with futurist spirit. Read and write futurist manifestos. Reside in futurist architecture. Listen to futurist music. View and review futurist cinema. Cook and devour futurist food. Fuck and suck with futurist lust. Exercise with futurist vigor. Do not relax.
- Surround yourself with a blanket of futurist thought, and the materials from which you will create your FUTURIST SCULPTURE: loud noises, piercing smells, sharp debris, industrial artifacts, radioactive objects, packaged foods, modified genes, etc.
- Feel bold emotions; think thoughts that place you far above the common human herd; express these in overwhelming strength in your sculptural design. Slash at precepts and preconceptions, letting their blood run down the gutters of time. With both fists, pound your ideas into shape. Shout while you work. Shout again. And again.
- Your design must include several specimens of the types materials listed above: metals, glass, concrete, synthetics, electronics, isotopes, viral contempt, velocity. Your design must move, emit light and sound and smell, discourage touching, intimidate the weak. Your design must be abstract but real, so real that it hurts.
- Now write about your design. Write a great deal about it, until it becomes real in your mind. Now sketch out your design. Sketch it at least once, until it fills one or more pages. Now start making a documentary film or video about your design, waving your sketch page(s), shouting your words, all faster faster faster. Now build your design, with the camera running, singing and shouting as you work.
- You have done well. Now do it all again. And again. And again. The future is coming, inexorable, unstoppable, relentless. The future will not wait patiently while you rest lazily. Time doesn't stop; you can never stop.
"HOME: A place to go when all the other joints are closed." —anon.
WHAT TO DO
- Count your money. This will determine the size (huge, large, medium, small, microscopic) of your home, and the materials (stone, concrete, steel, wood, cardboard, sand, dung) you may build it with.
- Measure your available space. This will determine the size and shape of the home you will build, keeping in mind point #1. Some reshaping (cutting, filling, draining, burning, etc) may be required.
- Count the occupants. This will determine how much space you should allot to different functions (eating, sleeping, shitting, fighting, focking, bathing, working, plotting, sacrificing), keeping in mind points #1 and #2.
- Design sleep space. For each set of occupants (human, animal, robotic, alien, etc.) who will sleep together at any one time, allocate one sleeping space, while keeping in mind points #1 and #2 and #3. Offshifting may be needed in large households with limited space.
- Design other space. For all the other functions listed in point #3, allocate one functional space for each group of occupants performing that function at one time. Some spaces may be used for several functions — thus, sleeping & focking & fighting may all occur in one space, while eating & bathing & plotting may occur in another space. Again, offshifting may be necessary.
- Design external space. Some functions may need to occur outside, offsite, and otherwise separated from the home by some aspect of space-time. Determine availability of space and materials for outbuildings, tents, burrows and dugouts, vehicles, etc. Consider squatting on nearby unused lands.
- Design inputs and outputs. Provide plenty of internal and external connections for water and sewage and gerbil piping, power and phone and cable and broadband lines, ash and trash chutes, antennae and EMF shields, etc, keeping in mind the prior points. Consider pirating certain services.
- Account for other criteria. Determine the availability of time, workers, skills, materials, tools, weather, divine or demonic possession, and other factors that may affect the outcome of the home-building. If you come up short on any of these, trim your design, keeping in mind all the previous points.
- Do your paperwork. Draw up detailed plans, lists, schedules, charts, mandalas, diagrams, maps, prayers, etc. Staple them all together. Put them in a safe place. Don't fax me a copy, please.
YOU'VE DONE IT!
See how easy that was? Now all you need to do is put the plan in operation. Consider learning Arabic at this time. The Arabic language has no tenses. Thus, to agree to do something is the same as having done it. By designing your home, you have built your home. All the rest is mere detail.
PS: If you had to deal with realtors, brokers, lenders, lawyers, title officers, any of that crowd in order to obtain a property and financing for your new home, you'll want to deal with them properly when the transaction is complete. I suggest lining them up against a stout wall and hosing them down with an Uzi or other full-automatic weapon — unless you want them to suffer as much as you have, in which case you should throw them into a pit filled with hungry scorpions. They deserve it, eh?
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(THEORY)
The Total Moron's Guide To Sculptural Stuff
How To Tell If You've Made Architecture Or Sculpture
New Approaches To Sculpting Without Breaking A Sweat
Revolutionary Architecture & Politics, And Vice-Versa
(PRACTICE)
HOLY ARCHITECTURE: How To Design A Temple
PERSONAL ARCHITECTURE: Home Design For Morons
How To Design & Execute One Or More Works Of Futurist Sculpture
BARBARIAN DECOR: The Warlord's Guide to Decorating
(ADDENDA)
Labyrinths & Mazes For Total Morons
15 Principles of Style / Design / Architecture
Notes On Extreme Architecture
(NAVIGATE)
Art & Culture Notes
Return to GO! index
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