When Tools Become Instruments: Introduction to the Special Issue

2018

This chapter traces the parallel development of the concept of standardization in architecture and of the idea of the architect as an artist / individual. The juxtaposition between the two goes back to Leon Batista Alberti, underlines modern architecture and reaches the current day where it still defines two different approaches for the production of architectural form through with the aid of digital media. The chapter proposes a third direction that breaks free from the dialectical opposition of the two and follows Deleuze’s idea of the analog as a way to operate through modulation. That new direction is illustrated through an example in digital fabrication.

International Symposium on Algorithmic Design for Architecture and Urban Design (ALGODE ), 2011

In this paper we examine some of the main characteristics of the transformations induced by digital culture. Our argumentation is based on a triple point of view. First we reconsider the architectural form as a significant instant inside a sequence of potentialities. Second we mark the renewal of the notion of ornament and its inscription into the digital culture. Third we return to the fabrication-conception continuum and we note the abilities of tools and technologies to stimulate perceptual entities. Finally we illustrate these topics with two examples of architectural algorithmic design. Based on these examples, we will mark the links between intuition and computation and the emergence of a digital materiality.

In : Architecture and the Machinic : Experimental Encounters of Man with Architecture, Computation and Robotics. Edited by Arie Graafland and Dulmini Perera, Köthen : Hochschule Anhalt, Hochschulbibliothek, 2018, pp. 38–44. (urn:nbn:de:gbv:kt1-3735)

VLC arquitectura. Research Journal

This study explores the architectural design tools that have evolved through digital media in the postdigital era, which is evaluated through analog and digital hybridize. It raises the question of how the tool, as a mediator between the designer-subject and the designed-object in the architectural design process, can be re-examined in a hybrid design environment. The study proposes that what connects the designer-subject and the designed-object can be understood not only as a tool but also as a prosthesis. In this context, the “tool” in architectural design is described by the oscillation between the concepts of “becoming-tool” and “becomingprosthesis” and their impact on the designer-subject through bodily, cognitive, and consciousness extensions. The relations among the concepts are discussed by folding them on each other using the hermeneutic methodology.

ISBN number 978-3-96057-0424, 2018

"Architecture and the Machinic is an attempt to critically interrogate and present the multiple logics of the machinic explored within the cluster of research and teaching practices (studios, workshops, seminars and theory discussions) that deal with man-machine technologies within the past decade at the Dessau International Architecture Graduate School (DIA). While a more common name for this strand of experimentation and practice within architectural discourse is ‘digital architecture’ (which these experiments are invariably part of), the diverse natures and evolution of the projects discussed in this volume have contributed to develop a broader position related to the emerging interdisciplinary field of man-machine technologies. Hence the machinic as it appears in this collection of essays is not limited to the tropes or themes of digital theory. Neither does it denote a mechanical positivistic framework. Instead, it is closer To Felix Guattari’s use of the term to denote process, connectivity, and assembly that are at the crux of the processes of architectural production influenced by digital technologies. The machinic in this volume deals with the corporeal and incorporeal processes and the multiple (almost non-unifiable) themes at work when trying to develop projects (object models) and curricula (knowledge models) related to digital technology. On the one hand, the projects presented in this volume complement themes and broader discussions on man-machine relations emerging throughout the last decade mapped out in AD volumes such as Computational Design Thinking (2011) by Achim Menges and Sean Ahlquist, The digital Turn in Architecture, 1992-2012 (2013) by Mario Carpo and Dynamics of Data Driven Design (2014) by Henriette Bier and Terry Knight at a time when digital culture in architecture was a core theme of concern. On the other hand, this volume seeks to make connections on the relevance of the man-machine trajectory of experimentation to a more recent research theme relating to the theoretical and material conditions known as the Anthropocene. Within the architectural discourse, the interest in digital culture is at present overshadowed by other themes such as the Anthropocene which is more ecological in character. Nature (ecology) that is at the crux of the current debates in architecture is only available to architects and designers through collaborative constructions by disciplines and disciplinary instruments through the expansion of discourse networks into broader fields. The trajectory of research and practices on computation often discussed under a plethora of titles such as cybernetics, systems research, digital theory, robotics etc. has unwittingly always been a primary component of this ecological discussion. Hence, the multiple logics of the machinic developed through the past decennia, as evinced in these essays, are by the same token steps taken towards a more coevolutionary understanding of the nature-culture relation.” Perera, Dulmini. “Introduction.” In Architecture and the Machinic, edited by Arie Graafland and Dulmini Perera, 06-07. Anhalt University Press, 2018.

2019

Intelligence Everywhere: What artistic explorations can tell us through and about technological development presented on Sept 18 2019 during the Humanities and Public Life Conference at Dawson College, Montréal, Canada Recent developments in machine learning and what John McCarthy has named artificial intelligence in 1956 have repeatedly been portrayed in the media as competing with human creativity. Binary narratives that (narcissistically) anthropomorphize and present technological advancements as either miraculous or antagonistic spread fear and fascination amongst the public. Machines, some threaten, will take your job as an artist, a lawyer, a taxi driver, a doctor, an accountant, and govern us … In this presentation I wish to draw a historical lineage between ideas that were at the roots of the British branch of cybernetics comparing and contrasting the worldview that underlined it with the approach taken by the founders of the Artificial Intelligence project in 1956. I wish to establish the link between the cybernetic worldview and the recent developments in machine learning that we commonly refer to as Artificial Intelligence. (AI) These powerful discoveries are currently used to generate images, natural language, soundscapes and videos that can be mistaken to have been produced by people. This has pushed some to declare that the machines were themselves creative. I will argue that while the tools do display what N.Katherine Hayles calls non-conscious cognition, a process that is found everywhere in nature, creativity, in the realm of art, is a concept rooted in the self-reflexive sense-making ability of the person orchestrating it as well as in the social, cultural and political context in which it is being examined. Presenting creativity from the point of view of the art world, I will argue that the definition of art does not lie solely in the formal aesthetics of the object produced but is a shifting culturally constructed concept that is by no means negated by machine “imagination” or “creativity”. The notion of authorship in relation with automation in the creative process have been explored thoroughly in the realm of art ever since, for example, Marcel Duchamp presented his readymade, Walter Benjamin published his famous text in 1937 and Roland Barth examined aspects of the topic in 1967. Early cybernetic prototypes that displayed cognitive behaviours as well as artworks that use automation in their creative process will be presented as well as a selection of recent art practises that explore and comment on the use of statistical models or what Hunger calls “enhanced pattern recognition” systems such as artificial neural networks and adversarial neural networks. (Hunger 2017) These artworks often present advanced technical tools as one component of a network (Latour) /agencement (Deleuze) in which humans interact with them in complex and intricate ways. Through the examination of a selection of projects by artists from various backgrounds, such as the recent work and writings by indigenous artists as well as local and international artists, I wish to point to some of the shortcomings they bring to light as well as how they engage us into some much-needed reflection about the technologies we generate and how they hold the potential to redefine us and the environment.

The notion that human activity can be characterised in terms of dynamic systems is a well-established alternative to motor schema approaches. Key to a dynamic systems approach is the idea that a system seeks to achieve stable states in the face of perturbation. While such an approach can apply to physical activity, it can be challenging to accept that dynamic systems also describe cognitive activity. In this paper, we argue that creativity, which could be construed as a 'cognitive' activity par excellence, arises from the dynamic systems involved in jewellery making. Knowing whether an action has been completed to a 'good' standard is a significant issue in considering acts in creative disciplines. When making a piece of jewellery, there a several criteria which can define 'good'. These are not only the aesthetics of the finished piece but also the impact of earlier actions on subsequent ones. This suggests that the manner in which an action is coordinated is influenced by the criteria by which the product is judged. We see these criteria as indicating states for the system, e.g. in terms of a space of 'good' outcomes and a complementary space of 'bad' outcomes. The skill of the craftworker is to navigate this space of available states in such a way as to minimise risk, effort and other costs and maximise benefit and quality of the outcome. In terms of postphenomonology, this paper explores Ihde's human-technology relations and relates these to the concepts developed here.

Studio Research Issue 1, 2013

As is well known, the lexicon used to describe what we now call “the creative process” shifted its center of gravity during early modernity from imitation (imitatio) to invention (inventio). The latter category, though still considered an essential component of rhetoric, evolved separate—though still related—meanings in the domains of poetry and the visual arts, coming to refer to the origination and development of programs for paintings, buildings, and even whole cities. Artistic invention was explained largely by referencing the psychological concept of imagination (phantasia). While this overall development has received scholarly attention, there remain many lacunae, such that the domains of visual and manual invention, notwithstanding their evident relevance, remain understudied. This paper seeks to illuminate invention in general by examining the discussion of architectural invention in the 15th-century Libro architettonico written by the Florentine sculptor Antonio “Filarete” Averlino. In his Libro, Filarete recommends the practice of disegno (“drawing”) not only as the best catalyst for developing excellent architectural ideas, but also as the best way to train one’s inventive capacity in general. He also strikingly insists that practicing disegno improves one’s ability to understand both architectural drawings and actual buildings. Architectural invention thus turns out to be a practice. Filarete argues that all practices share a common psychological basis in the faculty that he calls ingegno (“ingenuity”), such that excellence attained in any one will improve one’s performance in all others. The specificity of each practice remains bound up in the characteristic matter with which it works, but all practices in general rely upon a cognitive process of “finding” or “invention” for which ingengo serves as the engine. The rhetorical canon of Inventio thus turns out to be the most venerable site in our tradition wherein the basic principles of practical thinking—phronesis, prudentia—have been articulated. And the so-called topoi of invention, which constitute the heart of Inventio, turn out to be the most authoritative model for construing the form of rationality that underwrites all artistic endeavor.