Monday, October 31, 2011

Crossing the line by drawing the line out of the sphere of imagination

Aisan Kianmehr






Abstract 

    "From this detached imagination attached imagination derives."

Ibn Arabi, who has introduced imagination as the creative source of manifestation, the very cause of our existence and keeping in contact with the Infinite and the Absolute, explains that our power of imagining things, that is, our ability to conceive of their forms abstracted from their sensible bodies, belongs to "Attached imagination" (Khayal Muttasil). It is the imagining faculty functioning within a human psychological framework. It is referred to as "Attached" because it is an imagination conjoined to the imagining subject and inseparable from him.

"Detached imagination" (Khayal Munfasil) is Divine Imagination, God imagining the world and is the presence of the world in the divine Mind whereas "attached imagination' is human imagination and the forms conceived by it are extracted by the senses from natural forms which are part of the cosmic forms, which embody cosmic realities, man imagining the forms of existents brought into existence by the creative power of Divine imagination. Since human imagination has the power of participating in the world of potential existence, it is capable of composing an infinite number of various types of images.

That brings us to a question that is overwhelming the imagination of most artists and architects, Is it possible for us to think and form images of objects which in principle are impossible to construct?

The concept of impossible in the world of Architecture is specifically derived from the forces of gravity, an essential limit for architecture that rises up in a relationship of tension with the earth. This fact has always been motivating the architects to seek for approaches to be freed from this limitation and have repeatedly dreamed of flying buildings; the tendency which was commonly popular in the era of the French and Russian revolutions. Now architects who claim to be designers of Cyber-Architecture proclaim their freedom to design in a digital network space of zero gravity free from the constraints of gravity.

As cyber-space evolves to replace the actual space as a target for capital investment, it appears to be heading the direction where the meaning of the word Architecture is expanding to include the conformation of virtual space in computer displays and the architecture in practice has crossed the boundaries of Art and Science.




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