I


 * WEEK I: >**


 * Text** **I - “From Object to Field” - Stan Allen - 1997**

RESPONSE TO FIELD. There exists a negotiated relationship between that of the idealized design of a building to that of the accommodations made necessary by both existing foreseen and unforeseen conditions upon a site. This in not in line with the Modernist strategy of a-site-specific design. Nor is it in complete accord with “the conventions of classical architecture” in which “precise rules of axiality, symmetry or formal sequence govern the organization of the whole [while]…individual elements are maintained in hierarchical order by extensive geometric relationships to preserve overall unity.” For what appears to be of true interest to Mr. Allen is not in fact a top-down unity of design of an object, but a bottom-up programming of parts to respond to localized rules generating an adaptive overall pattern, as in the example given of the //[|Boids]// of Craig Reynolds. “The boids were programmed to follow three simple rules of behavior: first to maintain a minimum distance from other objects in the environment (other boids, as well as obstacles); second to match velocities with other boids in the neighborhood; third, to move toward the perceived centre of the mass of boids in its neighborhood…the rules were entirely local, referring only to what an individual boid could do and see in its own vicinity…and yet flocks did form every time.” That is not to say that the principles inherent in Classical Architecture do not in fact possess a similar method of programming both the individual elements and the subsequent proportional relationships between them, but they are fundamentally different in their approaches to what constitutes a whole, and how to obtain such results. This in combination with the cited examples of the Post-Minimalist reactionary movement to Minimalist art, (where “when working with materials such as wire mesh ([|Alan Saret]), poured latex ([|Linda Bengalis]) or brown flour ([|Le Va]), the artist simply cannot exercise a precise formal control over the material…the artist establishes the conditions within which the material will be deployed, and then proceeds to direct its flows.”) is somewhat telling of what strategy towards design the author is a proponent of. For ultimately the article is brought to the notion of “Logistics of Context” in which the variables taken into account when designing a city, or a building are the adaptive standardized systems of distribution. If the individual component is properly programmed, and conducive to movement in a range of meanings, it will in turn respond to its surrounding conditions and generate a cohesive whole, which was not necessarily designed as an exact composition, but that would be understood as “the interplay between laws and chance [where]…complex, but roughly predictable configurations of a non-hierarchical nature” are produced.


 * Text II - “African Genesis (A Presentation)” - Sanford Kwinter - 1998**

The opening paragraph is somewhat difficult to adjust to, and not for the un-stunning claim of sexual intercourse having a direct correlation to political economy and the unremarkable distribution of wealth. That is a boring admiration. No, it is in fact the wrongful use of the concept of the volatilization of space as a direct result of the concentration of or “__enfoldment__ and entrapment of energies” within the body of a tiger. It is true that tigers are at an apex of the //Food Web//, and that they consume a good quantity of “free-ranging energies”, but this does not take into account the incredible magnitudes of energies that are never to be touched by tigers. Vast energies re-absorbed by the ecosystem at large. Such a confined definition of a volatilization of space is rather subjective in nature, and in a paper which ultimately is attempting to prove the advantageous aspects of an //objective// design strategy, in which “today we can almost envision a new type of design that proceeds in its first stages by deletion: where the main principle is the clearing away of the willful and hubristic” the argument is at odds with itself, and that is the over-arching dilemma that this paper presents. It is not truly objective, but presents itself as if it is. It is an issue of perspective. The tiger may present from its concentration of energies, a volatile creature to its prey, or a human in the vicinity, but that is a perspective. One could take an indifferent view towards the movement of the tiger, and therefore not allow for the alteration of consciousness to intervene. The tiger would no longer be viewed as volatile, for its actions would yield no response. The trees and the earth through which the tiger roams are not on a fundamental level affected by the pent-up energies within it. If anything, the shifting of tectonic plates would be a truly unavoidable volatilization of space to which the tiger would be subject, and not vice-versa. “Nietzsche argued that forces could affect only other forces and never their fixed products directly.”


 * Text III - “From Grid to Network” - Mark C. Taylor - 2001**

From Grid to Network is summarized well in this quote: “If the defining perspective of the Cold War was //division//, the defining perspective of globalization is //integration//. The symbol of the Cold War system was the wall, which divided everyone. The symbol of globalization is the World Wide Web, which unites everyone…whereas walls divide and seclude in an effort to impose order and control, webs link and relate, entangling everyone in multiple, mutating, and mutually defining connections in which nobody is really in control.” In order to illustrate such notions, Mr. Taylor makes example of the High Modernists such as [|Charles Edouard Jeanneret], and [|Herr van der Rohe] by quoting their assessments of man in modernity: “man governs his feelings by his reason; he keeps his feelings and his instincts in check, subordinating them to the aim he has in view…as feelings and emotions are controlled, order is wrought from disorder.” This rationality of the modern age was brought on by the reduction of humanity to rigidly calculated components within a totalizing, mechanistic view of the world in which “the all-encompassing logic of industrialism, work, leisure, and the rest are designed to promote efficiency and thus increase profitable production…Mechanical engineering, in other words, cannot work without an equally calculated social engineering. Toward this end, social engineers develop strategies to separate work and home in a way that secures different domains for different activities.” But this is essentially, as Mark Taylor puts it, a linear approach, grid-based in nature, and non-adaptive to the true necessities of the world-as-is. He is essentially illustrating the point made towards the beginning of the paper in which linear modes of causality are compared with that of recursive, cyclical systems, that as the language suggests are in fact non-linear, and are infinitely more complex in nature. They possess an adaptive organization where they are better “able to coordinate complex activities and [are] best able to evolve as well.” Unlike van der Rohe, whose “preference for an aesthetic that represents values at odds with the complexities and contradictions of the contemporary world…[where his buildings are] always complete pavilions” the non-linear approach is suggestive that the current situations of the world demand a readily adaptable environment that may even be considered as //incomplete// in appearance and nature, allowing for easier re-appropriation or direction of a more immediate purpose. This is not allowed for within the High Modernist allegiance to universal ideals and classical geometries, with buildings as entities in completion and rigidly opposed to external influence and immediate necessity.


 * Film I -** **//Code 46// - Michael Winterbottom - 2003**

Manipulation of linguistic centers. Viral acquisition of skill sets. Reduction of dignity. Surveillance and reprogramming of experience. The enigma of the Theban Sphinx has been revived. With each manifest form it takes, a new set of riddles must be solved, appropriate to the age in which they are present. The terror it reaps upon the populace, the gates to which it denies access, the secrets to human life that it yields all are present in its every form. Only the methods used and the language clothed are changed, and to a human of any age, it offers the same challenges re-invented. Such is the symbolic link of the agency of The Sphinx, whose presence is felt everywhere, and whose knowledge is used to restrict or permit access to wherever it deems necessary, for the Sphinx knows all. If one responds with the wrong answer, or lingers where they do not belong, the sphinx will devour them. And this is not a literal consumption of a human being as it once was, but a symbolic fate worse than death…an exile from all the gates of all the cities of all the world. To become untouchable, a non-entity. If one is not so indispensable, then they may merely have all trace of an event, all memories of an experience purged from their memory. Any thought associated with an occurrence obliterated; and what are humans if not a sum of their memories and a composite of their genes? Genes however, in such a future have ceased to be the property of the individual, and are under the dominion of The Sphinx. Even memories have been reduced to localized data. Selectively disposed. So it ends where only within dreams are humans still human. And only in dreams can they communicate, and sense each other. This is the realm of the unconscious. The living world is in its throes of death, and now, everything must go below the surface, as it has already begun.


 * Film II - //Syriana// - Stephen Gaghan -** **2005** **[See also: Steven Spielberg’s,** **[|Munich] (2005)]**

I get it. Globalization. The movie had to do with globalization…It was rather clumsy in its execution however. [|Munich], a movie of a similar type, was significantly better in almost every aspect. From character development, to dialogue, to scene flow and cinematography. I find it difficult to determine the purpose behind the viewing of the movie. Not to say that I did not enjoy it, but I fail to see the relevance, where up to this point, all the readings, and even the other movie all had a common theme of manipulation of a medium via external forces or internal programming of individual components. If that existed within this film…which there is a very slight inkling of…it is so underdeveloped, and unsophisticated that it escaped my notice. Hollywood giving it a good shot, and always falling short. They did the best they could. But that is an American concept is it not? Even when ones best is rather lacking.


 * week ii >**