Implicit Visions From the Underlands

3 units

For many reasons, we tend to turn away from what lies beneath. But now more than ever we need to understand the Underland. "Force yourself to see more flatly," orders Georges Perec in Species of Spaces. "Force yourself to see more deeply," I would counter. The Underland is vital to the material structures of contemporary existence, as well as to our memories, myths, and metaphors. It is a terrain with which we daily reckon and by which we are daily shaped. Yet we are disinclined to recognize the Underland’s presence in our lives or to admit its disturbing forms to our imaginations. Our flat perspectives feel increasingly inadequate to the deep worlds we inhabit and to the deep time legacies we are leaving (Robert Macfarlane). The first installment of the "Media Mediating Material Relations" seminar series addresses the Underlands and seeks ways to visualize, materialize, and ultimately manifest in the surface environment the many forces flowing deeply yet affecting us daily. The course is made of reading discussions and presentations and a Delivery of the semester long fabrication/ visualization project. This project is directly correlated to the topics presented in the class.