Quotes from Animate Form Part II

"A landscape is a system where a point change is distributed smoothly across a surface so that its influence cannot be localized at any discrete point. Splines are the constituent element of topological landscapes. (...) The slow undulations that are built into any landscape surface as hills and valleys do not mobilize space through action but instead through implied virtual motion. The movement of a point across a landscape becomes the collaboration of the initial direction, speed, elasticity, density, and friction of the object along with the inflections of the landscape across which it is traveling." (29)

"topological surfaces that store force in the inflections of ther shape behave as landscapes in that the slopes that are generated store energy in the form of oriented rathr than neutral surfaces. (...) The boat hull is itself a micro-landscape for the movements stored in its surface shapes, across which viscous water flows. Similarly the global flows of the water and wind present a macro-landscape for the motion of the boat to flow through." (30)

"The relationship between a system of internal constraints (...) and the context in which they unfold is intensive, just as a topological landscape or an assemblage f blobs stores various attractions and combinations in a single surface, so too can topological entities be mutually inflected by the fields in which they are situated." (32)

"The spatial context within which surfaces and splines are conceived then is also animate rather than static. This possibility of an animate feld opens up a more intricate relationship of form and field than has been previouly possible. Rather than an entity being shaped only by its own internal definition, these topological surfaces are inflected by the field in which they are modeled." (32)

"Difference and repetition, when thought of in a continuous rather than discrete manner, mandate a thinking in duration rather than in points." (34)

"The dynamic concept of architecture, however, assumes that in any form there are inflections that direct motion and provoke and influence the forces moving through, over, undr and around surfaces. The form is the site for the calculation of multiple forces." (34)

"A landscape is a ground that has been inflected by the historical flows of energy and movement across its surface. These historcal forces manifest a geological form of development that is inflected and shaped by the flows that hav moved acroos it. These slow transformational processes result in forms which are oriented with motion, both the virtual motion of their history and the actual motion they indicate through their slopes and valleys. " (35)

and anypassage really between pp. 39 and 41, which I think are trully beautiful. See you all tonight I hope for Spectropia, Paul