the ideal cinema...

"...it is safe to say that old forms of the cinema will disappear.

the film has nothing to do with the symphonic, spatial organization of the stage elements. its task is to break clear of all imitation of the theater. the film has grown mature enough to create its own form of architecture which must signify 100 percent cinema. our age is an optical one. the rapidity of events and their brief duration require a receding apparatus that can register as speedily as possible. it is the eye. the speed of light waves exceeds that of all other waves. the film is the optical flying machine of camera.

the film is a play on surface, the theatre a play in space, this difference has not been realized concretely in any architecture, either that of the theatre or the cinema. the ideal cinema is the house of silence."

frederick j. kiesler, 1929, from selected writings.

multi-purpose chairs...

images from a 1943 article in architectural forum about the "recent" designs of frederick kiesler for peggy guggenheim's art of this century gallery. kiesler was a wonderfully inventive architect whose projects such as the conceptual endless house; and his only built structure, the shrine of the book at the israel museum, are clearly the work of a visionary.

his ideas regarding the display of artworks were somewhat nuts and definitely over the top (and probably pissed off a number of artists); but the idea of sacrificing the integrity of the single object towards an interactive spatial installation in many ways pre-figures the thinking behind much installation art from the 70's by at least 30 years.

the drawings above are for "the multi-purpose chair"; which was not only a beautiful organic form, but part of a larger project where single objects/structures could have multiple uses. the drawings, which suggest numerous uses, are certainly reminiscent of corb's modular drawings...