teaser

The exact meaning of life made possible by life
The exact meaning of standardization made possible by standardization
The exact meaning of protocol made possible by protocols.

a life as resistance to life
a standardization as resistance to standardization
a protocol as resistance to protocol

the desire for the subject to transcendent the given while still be constituted in the given

the ineffable

"Loss is inevitable in the story of each person. Losing your wallet, losing your job, losing your home, your family, your city—the degree of loss escalates from the inconvenient to the inconceivable, and with it the experience of the ineffable. Loss, however, is necessary in order for us to change, not only in our habits, but also in our understandings and beliefs. As long as we cling comfortably to what we are and know, we cannot learn, or create. If design is to be a creative act, it must take on the most difficult situations in our lives. It must offer more than comfort and reassurance. It must confront the unspeakable—the ineffable—and become a means by which we can transcend it. This means that we—as individuals and as architects—must, as the Existentialist poet Nikos Kazantzakis once put it, “build the affirmative structure of our lives over an abyss of nothingness.” A heroic—probably too heroic—task, it is true. Except for those who have no choice."

Lebbeus Woods

network ethics

“its impossible to justify epistemological or ontological claims without invoking value statements, and hence, ethical and political concerns. Philosophy today that doesn’t talk about oppressions like racism and global capital is radically incomplete, and even if its implied ethics is anti-oppressive.”

in another point he adds

" I think that the only reason for having a flat ontology over any other is ethical. And I don’t think you can separate ontology, epistemology, aesthetics, and ethics – yes, for practical purposes they may be distinct, but each implies the other when it comes down to it."

Christopher Vitale

I think this is something that I have tried to argue for so long. If we as architects are about to be engaged in a deep and profound way with the machine (computer) and to ride the wave of emergence that would mean a new ontological and epistemological framework through which we express and practice architectural design. if this is the case then nothing remains intact in terms of ethics and aesthetics. if ontology and epistemology change then we need to reinterpret and think afresh both ethics and aesthetics. It seems appropriate to think in terms of ethics of immanence and aesthetics of pragmatics.

unknown unknowns

>after this the unknown unknown has been forever aligned with the inability of one to imagine utopia but only dystopia. The image of the future becomes the image of death, fear and terrorism. This whole idea of this double negation can also be explored through the banned "kinder chocolate eggs" in 1960's. It was from the unknown unknowns that the youth should be protected... A whole society wasn't able to confront surprise... and unfortunately this surprise in the contemporary world has been aligned with FEAR!

hypertrophic state

why those two approaches are so politically different?

creativity and experimentation are to be discussed...

but what does it mean to overlay one system on top of another without any intrinsic communication between the two and what does it mean to exploit a system? The failure of the system is its success. They did manage to push the system in a hypertrophic state... to maximize its virtual states, to push it beyond of what is meant to be. It is this possibility to think the impossible that marks the second example as political resistive.

I would like to close this post with what E. Dijkstra said in 1972:

“I have the feeling that one of the most important aspects of any computing tool is its influence on the thinking habits of those that try to use it.”

now replace computing tools with any technological machine and you would have them opened into a machinic field. Experimentation becomes the mode to generate and acquire knowledge.

algorithmic text as beyond text

"today to write theory means to write code"

Galloway & Thacker, The Exploit

theorization and its mode of experimentation. I will come back on this shortly, it is a field that we would like to exploit by putting forward an interdisciplinary web platform. The goal is not to destroy IT but to push IT into a hypertrophic state, further than IT is meant to go... this is resistance through an active experimentation

confront the unexpected

"Many people refuse to be absorbed by something they don’t know. Žižek talks about Kinder eggs. Kinder eggs were forbidden in California in the mid-1960s because it was a total disruption of American life where everything needed to be predictable, and here you didn’t know what was inside. You could buy cocaine but not Kinder eggs because they thought it could corrupt the young. Kinder eggs were made by the Germans after the war to reconnect to the unknown and to force the kids away from the lazy period where everything was free. It’s a beautiful articulation of knowledge."

Francois Roche in a conversation with graphic novelist Warren Ellis, moderated by blogger Geoff Manaugh, at the Architectural Association, London, 29 May 2009.

thirst for servitude!

"I hear myself experiencing what might have been, what could have happened, if it weren't for this bunch of alienate cretins that you!

- you! there in front of me, were so willing to identify with

if it weren't for that fear, that pathogenic fear of the unknown of anything really unprecedented and new, that you hide behind and use as an excuse for your own passivity- and thirst for servitude!"

as Deleuze would remarkably asked "Why do men fight for their servitude as stubbornly as though it were their salvation?"

I've heard about! Francois Roche

His talk at the Tate on 26th of October will be postponed

the history of hacking documentary

it is that moment that Nietsche's "gay science" produces innovation and redefines the ethical aspect...

steve wozniak

co-founder of apple computer

hacking is about invention

john draper

a.k.a Captain Crunch

hacking is about experimentation

kevin mitnick

wanted by FBI 1992-95

hacking is about subversion