διάλεξη 15 Δεκεμβρίου 2011

1/12/11, 18:00, στα πλαισια του 3Σ1.07 o σχεδιασμός μέσα απο ένα "παιχνιδι" "αποσταθεροποίησης" και "αποδιάρθρωσης" (Β.Τεντοκάλη, Η.Γραμματικός, S.Duque) αιθουσα 209, τμ. Αρχιτεκτονων μηχανικων ΑΠΘ

intensive fields lectures

Conference, Taper Hall 101, USC, 12 December 2009

part1 Ma, DeLanda
part2 Snooks, Fornes, Reas
part3 Schumacher
part4 Roche

Boundary conditions in architecture. The concept of the virtual architectural object.

(presented at the Images of Virtuality, conceptualizations and applications in everyday life, international workshop, Athens University of Economics and Business , Greece, 2009)

This paper focuses on the ontological conditions necessary for the constitution of an architectural object that can involve in procedures that unfold in real time. It examines the changes inflicted by the constitution of the virtual object in opposition to the relations of representation-critique (western metaphysics) and the consequences in the understanding of time, the relation of the fragment to a totality and the dipoles produced by this correlation. Elements from the theory of systems (informational, biological) and the function of force-fields are used as mediums in understanding the emerging conditions, resulting in the importance of the examination of systems in conditions of crisis and the necessity of their incorporation as catalysts in the re-radicalization of the concept of the object.

1. THE CONCEPT OF FRAGMENT IN WESTERN METAPHYSICS

Western metaphysics is based on the relation of subject-object in which the dipoles of representation-reality [ Reality should be understood as this condition that is also closely connected to the sense of real.] and criticism-representation are interjected, through which any relationship between separate things can be understood. On the two dipoles of representation-reality and criticism-representation, the relation of possible-real emerges internally. Thereby, representation constitutes a possibility of the real, while criticism constitutes a possibility of representation. Anything we are aware of comprises either a representation or a criticism of representation. Representation constitutes a fragmentary expression of the real and criticism expresses possibility in representation. Therefore, possibility is un-variably placed in opposition to reality. It realizes itself, so it has no reality on itself, as it fragmentarily emerges either as criticism or as a representation of reality. The sense of possible is related to the sense of real, in accordance to the resultants of similarity and constrainment. The possible expresses a pre-existing image of the real and it is realized through its forces of attraction to the real. Therefore, even though the possible [ The sense of possible is also closely linked to the mathematical expression of the probable. The probable follows the laws and theorems of the theory of probabilities.] constitutes a phantom [ The possible is a phantom entity because at first it is not realized and at second because it doesn’t possess any finite form but it is a totality of possibilities fully attributable to and controlled by the real through the constrainment of similarity. An image, as opposed to a phantom entity, constitutes a possibility of reality as a realized representation of the real while a phantom entity constitutes the totality, the whole, of these images. Derrida connects etymologically phantom and phasm and claims that it is a pure matter of recurrence. (see Jacques Derrida, the phantoms of Marx) He also connects it to the words revenant (the returning dead), spectacle, fantome and all the words mentioned before to the sense of mystical.] entity, due to its attraction to the real, it appears as a truthful and faithful copy of the real. The necessary condition for this to happen is the function of constrainment. The function of constrainment filters the totality of the possibilities of the real. Even though anything can exist as a possibility (of a phantom or an image) of the real, not everything can be realized, cause then “…the world would become saturated in a clamoring instant and historical time would be annihilated altogether. Everything would not only happen once, but would indeed already have ‘happened’.”(Kwinter, 2002. p7)

In the same manner, the fragment can be understood as part of a totality, as an imperfect representation of a totality. The fragment can be abstracted by a totality but it can never be produced in means of augmentation. It is taken as a given that the rules that condition the fragment are intrinsic in the order of the totality and they can not differ; for then they could not be perceived as such. If the rules of the fragment differ, then they have to be conceptualized as parts of another totality, cause else this difference would be contrary to the basis of the unique hypostasis of the object and the favor of a unique point of surveillance that epitomizes god (in religion), the existence of “grand narratives” of universality (philosophy) or the scheme of logos and logocentrism (philosophy and sciences) to name but a few. The existence of a unique point of surveillance is made possible by conceptualizing an exteriority that can control the versions of reality through the functions of similarity and constrainment.

The consequences of the existence of a unique point of surveillance in architecture can be synopsized in what we call typology. Typology refers to the incorporation of a type either as it is (function of representation) or as a standard that is modified-reinterpreted (function of critique). The prevailing/dominating tradition is considered as a fact that can not be disputed, as a carrier of principles (social, political) and meaning (metaphysics). The underlying scheme of tradition is representation, from which derives the appeal to the ideal (grand narrative, logos) as the validating principle. The constant appeal to types and their modification (critique) improves them by adjusting them to the varying social standards and even though this effort is futile, this repetition is not different than the repetition of its birth, the point of conception of the concept of history and its creator, the history of architecture and the history of the architect. The repetition of type and typology validates the new as a new condition that has to be subsumed in the scheme of continuity of logos. Logos emerges in the sense of the architectural typology as an interiority of architecture. As a consequence, this condition could be conceptualized as historical formalism, the obsession repeated in the sequence and recitation of historical/architectural events/types-typologies. A reality repeated is realized as an image (of an immune to time, timeless ideal world) of that exteriority that can control and oversee.

The architectural object as a timeless totality is considered as a perfect organized total, which has a definite and specific function. The relations between its parts are metric, stable and immutable and usually can be attributed to an ethical-aesthetic rule. Any change, transformation, deformation or destruction of the architectural object is corruptive, as it deviates from its initial, perfect condition which is totally attributable to an architect-creator. Architecture is the image of the architect. Fragments can only be conceived as parts or degenerate/unfinished forms that are obliged to discipline and routinize to the rules of the architectural conception and its creator.

2. EXPANDING THE CONCEPT OF THE FRAGMENT.

Expanding the concept of the fragment, the way according to which we conceptualize anything that is fragmented, presupposes a line of thought that does not affiliate the dipoles of representation-reality and critique-representation and consequently a line of thought beyond control and surveillance. Instead of examining what a system is composed of, resulting in functions of similarity, we should focus on the interactions that elements/fragments are involved in. Instead of dealing with a fixed object, we are facing a world as an opened up, expanded body of relations or as a force field. The body and its parts are not immune to the correlations or forces that exist and as a result neither the totality, nor the fragments ascribed to it are.

According to Sanford Kwinter (Kwinter, 2002. p7), we can assume that a force field is comprised by micro and macro architectures. The term micro refers to those architectures-correlations that enclose, while the term macro refers to those architectures-correlations that are enclosed. Micro and macro architectures are variable as force fields. They are constituted not as structures comprised of specific elements, but as fields and subfields of forces, that are able to diffuse forces and subsequently are intrinsically attributed with the characteristic of reconfiguring in different formations. Force fields vary according to the energy or the amount of information that circulate in and through them. Depending on the amount of information, forces are activated or de-activated, stimulated or calmed and in general information adjusts the dynamics of the system.

The first issue that we are faced with is that of the proximity of the object and the fragment. This issue can be resolved with the range/scale of interactions in which an object is involved, compared to what is conceived as fragmented. In this case, the questions how inside a forcefield something as fragmented emerges, how a forcefield can emerge as fragmented, restore metaphysics, as the function of similarity is applied on the level of interactions. The expanding of the concept of the fragment is possible by expanding the actions that it can incorporate, in other words those interactions that are not intrinsic to the conception of the body/field. The intrinsic interactions of the body/field lead us to a conceptualization of the fragment as part of a totality. As a result we can conceptualize the fragment either in correlation to the discontinuities that emerge in the body/field or in correlation to an exteriority. Nevertheless both these possibilities can be examined as one, if an error can be conceived as an expression of exteriority, because in any other occasion the fragment could not be understood as such.

We can conclude that the fragment emerges in and through a body / field during an intensive condition, that is closely connected to the boundary conditions (exteriorities) or conditions when the system is in a crisis (error). The fragment either emerges via the mutation/transformation of the correlations in the field (error) or it constitutes the field where transformation occurs through the application of correlations that are seemingly conflicting (exteriority). The fragment emerges either as a hybrid (exteriority) or it emerges as a metastasis (error). As a result the fragment can be conceptualized as an intrinsic modality of the expanded object. The problem that concerns the ontology of the fragment can be rephrased as, which are the presupposed conditions for the embodiment of the fragment when it emerges? How can we embody it and what can we do with it/what can it do?

3. THE RECONFIGURATION OF THE CONCEPT OF THE OBJECT AND THE RE-RADICALIZATION OF THE SENSE OF TIME AS INTERIORITY. INTERACTION AND THE VIRTUAL ARCHITECTURAL OBJECT.

In the scheme of a single force that effects on an object, the temporality of transformation is the time during which the force applies to the object, therefore an exteriority to the object. The time of the force-field is a field of temporalities, temporalities that are connected with the epimerized forces. Time as an interiority of the field appears with different qualities as it constitutes the cohesive structure and necessary ontological condition of a system, due to time-transformation coidentity. The way in which a system transforms is the way time transforms, the same way its configurations/morphemes interact. Therefore we have the transition to a kind of time that is qualitative. Instead of a time that imposes itself as normality, time is regarded as a process of becoming. Time is an affect and not an effect. Intensive and not extensive.

Time as an effect, affects the object by constituting it as an entity which is and as a result bears an identity, which can be discovered as far as the entity’s limits are finite-closed, because identity is concrete. As a result, any change is enforced by transforming the way in which the object is, the way the object is inscribed as a totality in its environment. This inscription constitutes the object’s devotion to the environment, which presupposes the devotion and adaptation of the object to the events that occur in it; therefore, time is normalized as the object loses its interiority, because the only possible movements are directed from the one to the other, from the environment to the object, or from the object to the environment. Within this movement, the western metaphysical scheme is restored. The necessary condition for the emergence of the affect demands the constitution of the object as a system or a body, which is surrounded by other systems-bodies that ontologically can be affected / interact, hence the sense of the limits of a system and the sense of the limits of a body need to be opened up and to expand to a scale that their integrity/identity is questioned. Therefore, a definition of the future is possible. The future is not just what might come and consequently would effect the system. The future is a system that is constituted as an open body, thereby the future is open to the logic of the events that took or will take place. “…duration is what it differs from itself. Matter, on the other hand, is what does not differ from itself; it is what repeats itself”. (Deleuze, 2002. p37)

Differentiation though should not be thought as tautological with interaction. In such an occasion, evolutionary time would be considered as an interaction only because of its emergence. The necessary condition is the emergence of time as an otherness to itself through duration. In other words, we should avoid the eidetic logic and evolution, what is generally called “the eidetic path” [ Eidetic is an Aristotle’s term referring to that which is connectd with eidos (kind), with the sense of form, with the ideal sense of beings. ] which encloses the element of pure eminence between pre-configured groups.

Instead of the possible-real dipole for any configuration, the virtual-actual relation that affects every configuration is proposed. Actual is what actualizes the virtual, though the actual never fully realizes what the virtual supposes, in a way that something always remains unrealized. For Bergson, the virtual is a power that comes from the past, which stays with us in the present, until it is actualized. It is not something that is incompletely expressed, because it is not pre-figured. It is the dynamics of an element that under certain circumstances is actualized within the present. “Virtuality exists in such a way that it actualizes itself as it dissociates itself; it must dissociate itself to actualize itself. Differentiation is the movement of a virtuality actualizing itself.” (Deleuze, 2002. p40)

Past and present converge in a way that neither one stays intact. This presupposes that the past is never really gone, but it is actualized as a recollection in every moment for the whole temporal duration of the world as an expanded body-system. The transition from possible to real is, according to Bergson, anticipated. The relation of virtual and actual is one of surprise, because virtuality, as a contraction of temporalities, promises something different to actuality. Virtuality produces and always includes in it the possibility of something different instead of the actual. (Grosz, 2001. p11) Instead of a representation, virtual is intrinsic and a differentiation (an actualized virtuality) in two ways according to Gilles Deleuze: first of all because no memory is similar to another cause it is singular and secondly because it contributes difference making every moment a new one. (Deleuze, 2002. p45)

Nobody can directly define what is virtual, because in the transition from being to existing virtual is already actualized. In the actualization process of the actual, the virtual abolishes itself so that it can re-emerge as actual, which produces its own virtual multiplicities. “The virtual thus is not an abstraction, a generality, or an a priory condition. It doesn’t take us from the specific to the generic. It increases possibility in another way; it mobilizes as yet unspecifiable singularities, bringing them together in an indeterminate plan.”(Rajchman, 2000. p11)

Therefore, what constitutes the past (or else tradition) of a configuration can not be divided from its present, because that way it would presuppose the past (tradition) as an exteriority of the same configuration. The past is a modality that is beared as a virtual part of the present but in a way that it (or tradition) is not alien but intrinsic, in a word inattributable.

The inattributable is interweaved in architecture with the movement towards the incorporation of interaction as a medium for design. The approaches to interaction can be synopsized in the way that the object results as the synergy of its environment. How can the object emerge through interaction and how can an object that does not have a standard form / function transform interacting with whoever is using it?

The emphasis put on the process of the production of the object through interaction appeared with the first efforts to deal with the management of the environment as information (quantification of the parameters of the environment, extensive entities). The management of the environment as information presupposes the conception of the environment as a space of flows, where information can be transmitted smoothly, as well as the design of a protocol of quantification (transforming qualities to information) of qualitative attributes.

There are, generally, three types of functions that a system performs with information (Kwinter, 2002. p23):(i) it imports information from its environment (this modifies both the system that imports and its environment), (ii) it exports information to its environment producing this double effect, but this time as an asymmetrical eversion, (iii) it transfers information from certain levels of the system to different levels of the same system, causing events that could be unpredictable with respect to the structure of the system, the process and the scale of the side-effects. By importing information, a system modifies its own function. As a system functions according to the information that it imports, neither all kind, nor all the amount of information is valuable as there might be an amount that is not incorporated either because of information incompatibility or because of system overload. Most of the times, it is impossible to detect incompatible information with regard to the transformation of a system, but such information affect a system usually at extreme conditions by cushioning its transformation. In other words, the amount instead of the type of information is more important to the function of the system. This approach was widely used by architects-urbanists with structuralist backgrounds since the 60’s. The main critique was focused on the behaviorist models used to design the protocols for the quantification/digitalization of qualitative features.

The answer to the problem of quantification/digitalization of qualitative features, such as the knowledge that derives from the study of a context, came with the use of the diagram. Between digitalization and knowledge, it would be wrong to define digitalization as one of the many forms that knowledge can take as if knowledge was an instrument that formulates. On the contrary, digitalization/quantification is a technology of power and has to be understood ontologically, in means of a diagram, in the sense of Deleuze or Foucault, as something that refers to panopticism or fold, as the activation of a power in unformed matter and the not finite function, producing formalized matter as visibilities and functions that can be defined as assertions. When Deleuze writes about Foucault’s panopticism he refers to that as a diagram of power (Deleuze, 1986. p38). The diagram of relations between forces is a non-unifying immanent cause coextensive with the whole social field. “It is precisely because the immanent cause, in both its matter and its function, disregards form that it is realised on the basis of a central differentiation, which, on the one hand, will form visible matter, on the other will formalise articulable functions.” (Deleuze, 1986. p38)

Diagramming a space is to carte this space and not to calque it, a map that does not map anything pre-existing but on the contrary, it designates zones of indistinction from which becoming processes might emerge, if they are not already unfolding without being understood. In other words, social space can not be rendered with Cartesian coordinates, as it always envelopes many sub-spaces that insert distances and adjoins of an impossible to be calqued kind. (Kwinter, 2002. p49) A calque is a process that depicts points and should be understood as a correspondence. A carte, on the contrary, designates areas that bear a dynamic and that it is not known whether or not they will have a becoming. Zones of indistinction are epigenetic [‘Epigenesis’ is the term used to describe the relatively mysterious process of how form emerges gradually but dynamically out of a formless or homogenous environment or substrate. In embryology –add in much modern philosophy- it remains a theoretical question of how specific features can emerge from nothing, how a differentiated emryo can emerge from the blastula, a field of identical cells.” (Kwinter, 1993. p214) The term epigenesist refers to the process that takes place in an epigenetic landscape that was devised by Conrad Waddigton in order to explain morphogenesis using non-linear soft systems. Spuybroek uses the term epigenesist in the same sense. ]. When Deleuze discusses the fold as that which mediates between virtuality and actuality, he uses the term as a diagram ... It is not the organisation of matter into some visible form, nor the finalisation of matter into function. Rather it is the virtual relations of force that destabilise the determinable and the articulable into the new. (Jackson, p11)

The concept of the diagram indicates that what is conceived as the architectural environment/context should interconnect its consisting parts and the interactions between them, and not act as a controlling or hierarchical device. This requirement demands a non-mediating environment, an environment that can be ontologically conceived as a series of rules of interaction. A series differs from a set, a class, a type, or a totality in that it remains open to forces of divergence and deviation. (Rajchman, 2000. p62) We could argue that a series consists of intensive instead of extensive (DeLanda, 2005. p80) quantities, singularities instead of particularities, as they interfere synergetically in linearity and they render it multiple. (Wagensberg, 2003) Accordingly, the architectural environment/context should enable: (i) the coexistence of configurations, (ii) the potential of reciprocal access to them, (iii) the potential of negotiating the terms according to which interaction can happen and (iv) the opening-up of the configurations in communication and acceptance of the rules of interaction. In such an architectural environment/context, the condition of negotiating the terms according to which the opening-up of configurations can happen is the event of the emergence of the fragment, the event of the expanding of configurations into inexact interaction. It is the event of expanding interaction between anexact configurations.

Many models that aim to satisfy the presupposed conditions of the architectural environment/ context have been introduced. From the concept of “animate form” by Gregg Lynn and the concept of “force-fields” by Sanford Kwinter (both focusing on topology), to the application of the work of sociologist Manuel Castells on “space of flows” in architecture and Kas Oosterhuis’s concept of “swarm architecture”, the focal point revolves around the properties of a non mediating architectural environment/context. The interaction between users and architectural objects is met as a dimension of the same problem.

4. THE ATTRIBUTES OF THE EXPANDED ARCHITECTURAL OBJECT

The expanded architectural object can not be isolated from its environment, it doesn’t have exact form but some kind of virtualized form, it has forms in singular number. It is part of an unstable field of interactions and it can not be reduced to an elementary item. Instead, it is organized around a hybrid serial genetic algorithm constituting a quasi interiority instead of an identity. The hybrid serial genetic algorithm provides the conditions for the emergence of a kind of identity that is based on the virtualization of a series of interactions between the configurations of an expanded architectural object. The constitution of a quasi interiority is necessary for the preservation of the operativity of the object in relation to its environment (larger scale configurations). This quasi interiority does not represent the configurations of an object, but it impels the instantaneous conditions of interactions, that are based on serial logic, and aims to actualizing the virtualities of divergence and deviation, that modify the limits of the expanded architectural object and the modalities of its environment, that it can interact with forming new configurations with emerging quasi interiorities.

References

Kwinter, S. (2002) . Architectures of time, toward a theory of the event in modernist culture, The MIT Press, London, England

Deleuze, G. (2002) . deserted islands and other texts 1953-1974, semiotext(e) foreign agent series, paris

Grosz, E. (2001) . Architecture from the outside, essays on virtual and real space, The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England 2001, p11

Rajchman, J. (2000) . Constructions, The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, England

Deleuze, G. (1986) . Foucault, University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis.

Kwinter, S. (1993) . Soft systems. In B. Boigon (Ed), Culture lab 1 (pp.210-216). Princeton architectural press.

DeLanda, M. (2005) . Space: extensive and intensive, actual and virtual. In I. Buchanan & G. Lambert (Ed), Deleuze connections, Deleuze and space, Edinburgh University Press, 2005.

Wagensberg, J. (2003) . Synergy. In The metapolis dictionary of advanced architecture, Actar, Barcelona, 2003.

Mark Jackson, diagram of the fold, the actuality of virtual architecture, retrieved from