Auto – Surr looks into the polemics of the current state of architectural imagery as a means to the architectural production to the act of execution. It looks into various images by artists showcasing the poetics of space to the current architectural practices that produce space not only to imagine the physical space but also to construct a virtual experiential space. As mentioned in “construction of the virtual space”, its ideation is almost hallucinatory. The space is almost real but still not physically present.

The word surrealism is often used to define the irrational, hallucinatory, or the bizarre, but as understanding the surrealist movement, it positioned itself not as a way of escape from life but as a revolutionary force within it. It almost becomes a method of communication of the political, literary, aesthetic, and visual ideation of the society. As Andre Breton defines it “Psychic automatism in its pure state.. dictated by thought, in the absence of any control exercised by reason, exempt from any aesthetic or moral concerns”.

Surrealism never meant to imitate nature but as a method to expose the hidden rationality of nature through the curatorial practices of coincidence and chance encounters, unleashing the sub-conscience in the control of the conscious mind. Like Andre Masson painting ‘Battle of the Fishes’ where he poured sand over the glue to produce turbulent landscapes and mythological beasts or Meret Oppenheim’s ‘Object’ where she covered a cup and soccer with fur.

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Auto-Surrealism Surreal automation is a method of artistic creation in which the artist suppresses conscious control over the creation process, allowing the unconscious to have great influence. In the early 20th century Dadaists such as Hans Arp used this method through random operations. Surrealist painters, most notably André Masson, adapted to art the automatic method of writing by André Breton and Philippe Soupot, who co-composed Les Champs Magnétiques (Magnetic Fields) in 1919. Automatic Communication (1933) was one of Breton’s significant theoretical works on automatism. Origin Automation took many forms: automatic writing and drawing originally (and still) explored by the Surrealists can be compared to analogous or parallel phenomena such as non-idiomatic improvisation. “Pure psychic automatism” was the way André Breton defined surrealism, and while the definition proved to be capable of significant expansion, automatism remains paramount in movement.

Surr_Auto

Surr Automatism Some Romanian surrealists have invented several surrealist methods (such as cubomania, entopic graphomania, and the movement of fluid on a vertical surface), which assumed that automatism becomes absurd, and the name was given “super automatism” implies that the methods “go beyond” automatism, but this position is controversial.

Auto_Environments

Today surrealism is important because it provides what it has ever since its inception—the opportunity to escape external structures to peer into unconscious interiors and explore what’s hidden there. It implies big questions about the nature of accepted reality and urges viewers to redefine themselves based on their own internal worlds.

La_Conclusión

With Auto-Surr we understand surrealism not only as an art practice but now more as a tool for the unveiling and showcasing the layered rationality towards the production of the subject. This is now supported by the increasing constructivism of the virtual realities and supported by the increasing resolutions of images with the help of tools enhancing workflows that are increasingly procedural and algorithmic. Hence surrealism can now be automated in a constructive mannerism towards the display of the anthropogenic society.

When working with memory, memory is used, therefore the unconscious does not prevail, but the conscious and with this loyalty is lost. In automation, it is necessary to require a minimum of previous planning. It is here that automatism becomes the rebellious son of surrealism from which it was originally the father, etymologically speaking.

Auto_Surr is a project of IAAC, Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia developed in the Master in Advanced Architecture 2020/21 by:

Students: Alisa Iureva, Aditya Mandlik & Harsh Vora

Faculty: Manuel Gausa & Jordi Vivaldi