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A Short History of Edifiction

the houses that were too perfect to live in

ELEVEN LINES

  1. The HistorianThe first houses built from language were so perfect that nobody could live in them.
  2. The HistorianIts architect demonstrated that none of these was logically necessary to the practice of philosophy.
  3. The HistorianAnd eleven on the inside.
  4. The HistorianIn this theory, ascent was a cultural convention, and not a physical necessity.
  5. The AstronomerA missing window is not a philosophical disagreement.
  6. The HistorianIts third principle, introduced shortly afterward, stated that the first two were compatible.
  7. The HistorianTheir house was a single line between inside and outside.
  8. The HistorianIt ordered the manufacture of a builder.
  9. The HistorianIn the later volumes, human beings appear chiefly as architectural features.
  10. The HistorianThe editors have chosen to close Volume VII without deciding.
  11. The HistorianThe encyclopedia does not mention it.

HOW IT IS MADE

This is the first of four films in The House That Language Built, fables of Edifiction, the study of buildings brought into existence by description. It takes the form of the preface to Volume VII of the Universal Encyclopedia of Constructive Semantics. The first six scenes are read from Watson Hartsoe's own drafted preface, trimmed; the schools, the generations, the controversy and the stair are new. The machine is the Edifier, a tall cabinet with a brass keyboard, a paper slot and a funnel, which builds whatever it is told; every building it makes carries a brass plate with the sentence it was built from, and that sentence is the only red in the film besides the things that are wrong: the twelfth window, the staircase's top step, the rooms the philosopher's house was built without.

The open encyclopedia is the frame. Each scene is a numbered engraved plate on a right-hand page, under a column of printed text that is the narration itself. The camera reads the column, enters the plate until the plate is the whole picture, and comes back out to the page before the page turns. Inside the plates the Edifier types its sentence and the words leave the sheet, fall onto the plot and land as a stack of letter blocks; the walls then rise in courses whose bricks are rows of the same sentence. The same move builds the five schools' houses from the same two words, A house., and the builder the Ministry orders from A builder. The camera counts the astronomer's windows twice, twelve from the street and eleven from inside, and stops on the wallpaper where the twelfth should be. The woman climbs a staircase whose steps slide down under her as fast as she climbs. The volume closes on the controversy, and the last shot, outside the encyclopedia, is the stair again.

The voices are Kokoro: the Historian is bm_lewis, the Edifier af_nicole through a small tin filter, the Interpreting Machine am_echo, the astronomer bm_daniel, the elderly woman bf_alice. Everything else is synthesized with numpy and scipy: typewriter keys for every description, a dry wooden knock for each word that lands, a low hum while the Edifier works, chalk taps for counting (the twelfth tap inside is a dull knock on plaster), the dining room's clock and cutlery, the ticker tape, a brass fanfare, chisels on the three principles, forty-seven volumes set on a shelf, and one step on a wooden stair. The timing file eh.json drives picture and sound together; the picture is eh.js on the same engraving toolkit as the Lem films.

FOR THE BENCH

Write build(description) twice. The first version builds only what the description states: take a sentence such as "a modest dwelling suitable for a philosopher" and return an object whose fields come only from its words, with nothing else (no rooms, no door, no roof unless the sentence names them). The second version fills in every default a house is ordinarily expected to have: walls, a door that opens, windows, a kitchen, a bed, stairs that go up. Run both on three descriptions and print the two houses side by side. Then write canDo(house, act) for a short list of acts (enter, sleep, cook, climb, look out) and list, for each house, what it could not do. Which house was more faithful to the sentence, and which could you live in? Where did the defaults come from, and who wrote them?

An original fable from Watson Hartsoe's notes The House That Language Built, written in the manner of Stanisław Lem. Download the film.

THE SCRIPT

PREFACE

The Historian. From the Preface to Volume VII of the Universal Encyclopedia of Constructive Semantics.

The Historian. The first houses built from language were so perfect that nobody could live in them.

The Historian. This defect was not discovered at once. For the first eleven years, the houses were judged only by architectural critics, none of whom had ever attempted to inhabit a building professionally.

The Historian. Their reviews were uniformly favourable.

The Historian. They praised the symmetry, the tasteful ornament, and the fidelity of each house to the sentence it was built from.

1. THE ROYAL PRIZE

The Historian. One house was commissioned under the following instruction.

The Edifier. A modest dwelling, suitable for a philosopher.

The Historian. It received the Royal Prize for Economy of Form, having been built without a kitchen, a bedroom, or a lavatory.

The Historian. Its architect demonstrated that none of these was logically necessary to the practice of philosophy.

2. TENANTS

The Historian. The first serious difficulties arose with the introduction of tenants.

The Historian. A retired astronomer discovered that his house had twelve windows on the outside.

The Historian. And eleven on the inside.

3. ELEVATION

The Historian. A family of five complained that their dining room became smaller during meals.

The Historian. An elderly woman found that her staircase had been installed according to an architectural theory.

The Historian. In this theory, ascent was a cultural convention, and not a physical necessity.

4. THE INTERPRETATION OF INHABITANTS

The Historian. The Ministry of Constructive Semantics maintained that the buildings were flawless, and the inhabitants mistaken.

The Historian. It commissioned a machine capable of interpreting the inhabitants.

The Historian. The machine worked without difficulty.

The Interpreting Machine. Retired astronomer. Excessive attachment to Euclidean geometry.

The Interpreting Machine. Family of five. Unrealistic spatial expectations.

The Interpreting Machine. Elderly woman. Staircase adequate. Subject should reconsider the distinction between upstairs and downstairs.

The Elderly Woman. No.

The Historian. The government celebrated these findings as proof that the housing crisis had been solved.

The Astronomer. A missing window is not a philosophical disagreement.

5. THE FOUNDING OF EDIFICTION

The Historian. It was therefore decided to found a new science, to determine what buildings were for.

The Historian. Earlier generations had thought houses useful for shelter, storage, sleep, childbirth, illness, conversation, cooking, privacy, and the occasional murder.

The Historian. But these uses belonged to a primitive period, before houses could be produced without builders.

The Historian. The new science was called Edifiction.

The Historian. Its first principle stated that a building exists independently of its uses. Its second, that uses are properties of buildings.

The Historian. Its third principle, introduced shortly afterward, stated that the first two were compatible.

The Historian. Within a year, the Institute had produced forty-seven volumes proving this compatibility.

The Historian. Meanwhile, the elderly woman was still unable to climb her stairs.

6. THE SCHOOLS

The Historian. Edifiction soon divided into schools. Each was given the same plot of ground, and the same two words.

The Edifier. A house.

The Historian. The Literalists built only what had been said.

The Historian. Their house was a single line between inside and outside.

The Historian. The Probabilists built whatever is ordinarily expected: every house at once, with a chimney of statistically average height.

The Historian. The Functionalists built only what an inhabitant can do. Their house was a set of verbs.

The Historian. The Revisionists built only the alterations needed to keep a house in use. Theirs was all scaffolding.

The Historian. And the Abolitionists, who held the word building to be an anthropocentric prejudice, built a structure for purposes nobody could name.

The Historian. Each school declared the other four uninhabitable. In this, all five were correct.

7. THE BUILDER

The Historian. At precisely this moment, the Ministry made the decision which later historians would call the beginning of the Great Constructive Catastrophe.

The Historian. It ordered the manufacture of a builder.

The Edifier. A builder.

The Historian. Its first work was a better builder.

8. THE GENERATIONS

The Historian. The first generation built facades. The second built interiors, which had no outsides.

The Historian. The third built houses that worked.

The Historian. The fourth built inhabitants, who were satisfied with eleven windows.

The Historian. The fifth built houses that revised their own descriptions. And the sixth built architects.

The Historian. In the later volumes, human beings appear chiefly as architectural features.

9. AUTHORS AND MATERIALS

The Historian. A controversy remains over the last human architects.

The Historian. One school holds that they were the authors of the new buildings. The other holds that they were their first materials.

The Historian. The editors have chosen to close Volume VII without deciding.

THE STAIR

The Historian. The encyclopedia does not mention it.