Thanks for the thoughtful reply. I checked out your photos and they looked good. I will try to give some feedback upon your work soon. As you know I am first in our crit group and am trying to make a video, something I have never done before so that’s a little interesting/difficult.

I will check out the sections on the Uber-Mensch. Andrew mentioned the over man was a high wire walker in our urban poetics class, and then I promptly forgot it. Thanks for reminding me. The Effortless Grace is a tricky topic, one because it is subjective, as Kant says of the sublime perhaps not exactly the same thing but close, “But in respect of our judgement upon the sublime in nature, we cannot promise ourselves so easily the accordance of others.” But also it is something which even for myself is difficult for me to name. Beauty Kant tells us is more objective, as most will agree the rose is beautiful. But the rose’s purpose is to live and continue a legacy, to imagine it has another purpose is poetic, but ultimately speculation. But eventually looking at nature as one looks at a machine, (ie this does that, that turns the other) one never understands the whole picture whatever age one lives in with whatever collective insight/knowledge is applied. As the buddhist allegory goes, or at least as my retelling of it is,

A student asks his master what holds up the world and the master says a turtle. The student leaves content with the answer knowing “now I know what holds up the world.” But as time progresses he becomes uneasy with the answer. He returns to the teacher and asks “what holds up the Turtle” The teacher tells him that under the Turtle is another Turtle. The student asks what holds up this Turtle? The master replies “oh from there on it is turtles all the way down.”

No matter how hard we try to explain the world around us and our own minds inside us there is always another mystery outside our story. Yet I know of no other way to try to learn other than by a cycle of exploration and reflection. Perhaps the trick in all of this is to use the mind in a way which is not repetitive, but more plastic, helical rather than circular. Each turtle may reveal another, but no two turtle are the same, each one if looked at with open eye and mind fascinating and beautiful.

Hope your work is going well.

Thanks jamie

The second thought I had concerns your references to Immanuel Kant and to the concept of “effortless grace” that you mention. In one of Kant’s writings about aesthetics (Analytik des Schoenen in A Critique of Judgement) he describes beauty as “that which has purposiveness without purpose.” To me this seems rather close to “effortless grace.” Kant’s example comes from nature and is a rose, which most agree is beautiful, but the reason for its beauty is not always known. Kant was writing in the 18th century and botany and biology weren’t what they are today. Today we know that plants have flowers to attract bees so that they can be pollinated. Pollination means the plant lives on. The rose’s beauty is due to natural evolution for the plant’s survival. I am sorry if my explanation is so long, but what I am trying to say is that just as architects study natural structures and discover and utilize their natural beauty so too I think your work with these rigs, ropes and materials will evolve and is evolving. I know you have already discovered your own examples in art, architecture and writing of these sort of relationships, but I thought I’d give you a more historic reference that also comes from one of the major aestheticians whose work you are already reading. If you want to know exactly where the quote above comes from please let me know.

Christian