UPATIT: Adaptation, Translation, Transposition in Architectural Linguistics.

Francois Truffaut spoke of adapting the spirit and adapting the letter. Different formats,
different forms operate with a medium specific syntax. This you cannot transpose Truffaut
argued. Adaptation is an interpretation, an analytic process that bridges forms and lacks
the substitution of signs but the creation of new ones. Translation transitions from one
language to another within the same form. To transpose is to substitute, and usually this
occurs at the aesthetic level. These processes, however disparate, should serve to preserve
a concept in a communicably fluid manner, across modes of consumption, interaction, and immersion.

The UPATIT project adapts, translates, and transposes architectural linguistics to the
photographic language. In doing so, concepts are preserved, enhanced, sometimes destroyed.
Buildings speak not with words, but through immersion. The process of immersive linguistics
is like any other media. Compartmentalization/modularization of Language (systems of communication)
(process of transmission of information); Letters form words form phrases form paragraphs in a linear
fashion. One after another left to right, front to back. Shots form a set form a series form a
portfolio, down to up, left to right, creating a grid like database, a matrix of fragments. Floors
form buildings, form neighborhoods, form cities and skylines. Writing, photos, architecture all
modularize forms, which are reintegrated, reinterpreted in media. A media is a packet of form.

Units of data conjoined together are the foundation of communication. Assembled data creates meaning.
Prepositions, contexts, design, mortar, bolts. Units of information need to be packaged to communicate
effectively. Linguistically, literature, photography and architecture all share this OS. Floors,
buildings, neighborhoods, do not exist in vacuums; they are interpreted based on their contextual
situation. Words also need to be located within a particular literal environment a neighborhood
of words. Photographs are contextualized much more viscerally, by looser associations of environments,
real and imagined, cultural subtexts -- a neighborhood existing in our subjective and fluid
preconceptions. But, photographs also form our foundational preconceptions and play off and
against existing ones. The mortar of photographic communication would not survive a mild earthquake,
whereas architecture is monolithically stable, if only due to its fascist physical presence.
Buildings, you could argue, hold a monopoly on the use of physical force.

UPATIT speaks to all of this. It mimics the way we experience the cityscape,
looking up at it -- from bottom, to middle, to top. In steps, or perhaps one upward panning
shot. UPATIT deconstructs this process, be it like frames from the cinema, or singular
photographic shots. It represents the neck-cramping gaze that skyscrapers force upon us.
Their physical nature is felt and seen. But it must be seen in chunks because their size
prohibits one expository vantage point. Even from a distance only a fraction can be experienced at a time.

The modularized shots that form the whole also represent the modularization inherent in
their construction. Rooms, floors, buildings; one precedes the other. There is an order,
inherently orderly. Photography communicates in a shorthand of signs: three shots, or
floors of images, account for the 50 storey structure. Several buildings make for an
entire skyline. Feigning an index, it appears whole.

UPATIT transposes from the sculptural image to the visual image – looking at the building
to looking at the photo. Substituting steel and glass with pigment and pixel. It translates
from the physical to the intellectual within the architectural language. Three dimensional
shapes are translated into two dimensional graphic elements. Making them consumable “off-site”.
Just like Nabokov’s Lolita translated to Russian, increases its range of communication
across seas. For a person who does not understand architectural language, they may understand
photographic language. The sense of immersion has been mostly lost due to the filmic destruction
of the interior space. The presentation of the images produces a sense of street view, and a
gallery presentation would create an immersive experience, but only a shadow of the real
experience of entering and navigating the profilmic structure. This speaks to how buildings
communicate. What is gained however, is a sense of perspective that is non-existent on the ground.
The lens alters the perspective as it pans upward, masking the congruence of the geometry,
it shows us how we see the buildings from such extreme angles in a way that our cognitive
systems correct in real time. So while the photographs virtually ignore the experience of
immersion, it foregrounds the experience of perspective. This is adaptation.

UPATIT is about the consumptive experience of language. How it is produced and shared,
and how it can be represented and manipulated. It is about adaptation, translation, and
transposition across mediums that are semantically incongruent. These are the words of
the images of the buildings.