Pollock + Krasner Study Center

Space is a natural thing to talk about when it comes to the art of Jackson Pollock. His drip paintings were flattened pieces of explosive space, both challenging the then dominate nature of the canvas as frame and the figurative nature of art. So when proposing a new building on the site of Jackson Pollock’s and Lee Krasner’s home in the Springs, Long Island, New York to house the administrative offices, research library, community events and academic programs of the Pollock + Krasner Study Center, one can not but help to think of space and the process of defining that space as an integral part of the design.

Classical Space
Space and time are thought of as negative, empty medium in which events happen. Space is used to measure phenomenon but holds no affective power of its own. Space is the field of extension. Time is used similiarly to keep pace or measure the rhythm of events but is empty in its power to affect. Space frames the events and objects that occur within it. Framing space is the closest conception of space to our conscious perceptions of space.

Space and Time in Relativity
Einstien showed that all objects are in constant dynamic motion but split this motion between the four dimensions of spacetime. Certain objects like light (photons) only travel through space while matter travels in all four dimensions. Motion through spacetime warps and distorts extensive space and time. Extensive lengths and durations are relative to ones motion or energy. Ones energy can be thought of as ones affection on the shape of spacetime. Space and time are now united into a field that influences and is influenced by the motion of objects and events within it. The field of spacetime is conceived of as a set of relationships between objects in motion. That is space and time are now intensive. The spacetime field at this scale is how our pre-conscious bodies interact with space. This is what Merleau-Ponty called motor-intentionality.

Space-Time at the Quantum Level
As the scale of spacetime gets smaller, space time starts to fluctuate and with each shift of scale the fluctuations become more and more violent till the Planck Length at which point any conception of spacetime as a continuous field breaks apart into what has been called the quantum foam. Objects no longer have a definite motion or location but exist across areas of potentialities in a fashion known as wave-particle duality. Wave-particle duality is the behavior of matter-energy to show characteristics of both a wave field (interference patterns) and a quantized, discrete object. At the quantum scale spacetime is indistinct and constantly fluctuating yet the frame and the field become united in a new hybrid.

Space-Time in String Theory
All four major forces and the composition of matter is now thought of as being due to the resonant vibrations of tiny strings the average size of the Planck length. The strings vibrate in 10 space dimensions and 1 time dimension. These vibrations cause electromagnetism, the strong force, the weak force and gravity. So like gravity, motion produces and affects matter energy. Other space dimensions are curled up and very tiny.
String theory says that spacetime is a complex multi-dimensional place where events happen in multiple asynchronous ways.

Space in the Work of Jackson Pollock
Jackson Pollock’s work seems to hover between a classical framed space and the field & layered spaces of modern physics. The liquid consistancy of the paint carried the force of Pollock’s action, transfering that force onto the canvas. This act of preservation transforms the intensive, spacetime motion, into a extensive spatial object effectively collapsing the spacetime field. Pollock very carefully composed his paintings within the frame of the canvas, yet the frame had to grow to contain the high energy motions involved. A line, drip or spatter’s identity is only understood in its relative motion to the other lines, drips, or splatters and the space of the canvas between. The observer, in turn, re-expands the flat frame of the canvas into the spatial movements involved, thus the painting tends to hover between the flatness of it materiality and the spatial depth of the movements involved in its creation.

Construction
The process of construction becomes the process of defining space, with the joint as its primary expression. But the joint is never complete, the two or more objects are always held apart, always in the process of coming together, always becoming. Like the Pollock’s critique of the canvas, the building becomes broken apart, with the ever changing field of human behavior spilling out between the cracks. Yet, like the canvas, the framing mechanism of the building persists, not entirely lost. For the building isn’t the figure in this story, but remains just a influencing intensive space from which the figure emerges as the human body and its field of interaction.