Shape

48 Introduction: Tell Me All About It
allowed for ambiguity. 5 You could calculate with shapes on a computer only if you
could describe them with symbols. You had to segment shapes into lowest-level constituents
to start. Then there was the combinatorial play with simple things to make
complex ones. Meanwhile, I worked out the details of embedding, so that you could
calculate with shapes in the same way you see. 6 Symbols were unnecessary for shape
grammars—on a computer or not. I still see Gips today, and he’s happy to admit the
wonders of ambiguity in shapes and everywhere else. He likes to tell me I’m a fake. I
look like a strict formalist interested in rigor and rules. But really, it’s the ambiguity
that counts. Being a fake is high praise for a shape grammarist. One use of shape grammars
is to produce new things—fakes—in a known style, for example, villa plans that
look like Palladio’s. 7 Take a look at the pair of plans
Which is the fake? No matter how you answer, you won’t be wrong. Making fakes lets
you see how well you understand a style. The idea is to be rigidly formal, and I’m to
blame for it. Only it’s the magic of shapes as they change that really fascinates me.
I’ve never tried to hide it. It’s magic everyone can see. And I want to show that it’s rigidly
formal without feeling that way. That’s why I’m a fake. But use your own eyes. The
enchantment is always there when you calculate with shapes.
One of the things that I like to say when I talk about shapes is this: ‘‘What you
see is what you get.’’ It pretty much sums up what this book is about. At the very least,
it’s the way I want to calculate. I wish I had been the first to use the phrase—it appears
many times, initially on page 6—but it’s from Geraldine Jones. Flip Wilson created and
played the comic siren on American television. 8 Geraldine used the refrain to describe
herself. She wasn’t lacking in curves, and remember, she was Flip Wilson in drag. The
refrain is always fitting when you’re talking about shapes. Geraldine put seeing ahead
of getting, and you can do this with a twist and a flip. I can use three lines to get the
shape
and then see the triangle