CECA | phase one jury

MSc Computing and Design v.0910

CECA [Centre for Evolutionary Computing in Architecture]

University of East London

Unsupervised

"Being able to train an artificial neural network to recognize patterns or features in data sets using supervised learning algorithms is impressive. Creating networks which find patterns in data sets without supervision is amazing."

David Grimshaw here

picture: Dissociated culture of rat hippocampal neurons via /www.greenspine.ca

thinking the impossible

Chrysanthi Nigianni from UEL poses a crucial question - on the premise that our society conceives actions like experimentation and risk as signs of stupidity, idiocy and irrationality and additionally it is built on the premises of "reality principle" that distinguishes, through rigid boundary articulations, the life and death, the real and the illusion, the organic and inorganic and that declares 'safety' and 'stability' as the highest social and moral ideals. - "Is our society willing to encourage the experimental, irrational, risky and dangerous thinking?"

Are we ready to abolish this pathogenic fear for the new and the unprecedented?

Are we ready to confront "a life" or a life that is not stable with the illusion of safety?

Are we ready to think the impossible and occupy the unforeseen?

Did we learn anything from the economic crisis from an economy that was built on such presuppositions?

These are the questions that architects have to answer.

These unexplored domains of the social organization of the post-Fordist society need to be rethought in order to renovate our understanding of heterogeneous spatial constructs.

And from my point of view stochastic computational models like swarms and neural nets can unleash this required creativity... are we prepared to risk?

the creation of alternative algorithms

I came across with this abstract from Alexander R. Galloway's paper entitled “Alternative Algorithms (On Method)”

"It happens from time to time that a certain amount of reflection becomes necessary, not simply concerning the objects of the mind, but as to the actual manner in which intellectual work is done. This typically comes under the heading of methodology, which today has a distinctly liberal profile. With method, it is often more a question of suitability than existential correctness, often more a question of personal style than universal context. Hence methodological discussions these days often devolve into a sort of popularity contest. Who advocates what method and for what purpose? Which general equivalent trumps all others—is it race, or is it class, or is it the logos, or the archive, or the gaze, or desire, play, excess, singularity, resistance, or perhaps life itself—elevating one methodological formation above all others in a triumphant critique (to end all future critique)? In this paper I examine what sorts of methodological approaches make sense today, making the case that the proper methodological position for those working critically within techno-culture is the creation of alternative algorithms."

looking forward for the full text.

innovation and creativity in Post-Fordist Capitalism

There is no point to expand on the whole critique that Shaviro develops for Boutang's latest book Le Capitalisme cognitif, But I would like to focus on a very crucial point that Shaviro makes clear in his text: "we shouldn't buy uncritically on the current capitalist mythology of "innovation" and "creativity"- without thinking through what it might mean to detach these notions from their association with start-ups and marketing plans and advertising campaigns (and how this might be done)". Shaviro will bring into the discourse the work by Whitehead and Deleuze which I also find very important in order to re-conceptualize innovation and creativity.

biopolitics in space

I have to agree more than anything else with Christopher Hight when he points out that:

"Architects have not worked through the implications of such Post-Frodist social organizations constructed through biopolitical operations rather than humanist representations. to so so engage such territories requires architects and urbanists to renovate their understanding of spatial complexity and heterogeneity."

Christopher Hight in Space Reader: Heterogeneous space in Architecture, 2009 p. 27

building as a thing

the dinstinction between "object and thing" was at the core of the lecture hosted at the Sociology deperatment of Goldsmith's college where a diverse audience of architects, designers and Social Scientists where gathered to follow an ANT methodological approach to Rem Koolhaas' design process. I didn't get exactly the arguments cause all of them where so obvious... I suppose for the social scientists and the ethnographers to understand the process of an architectural project was some kind of revealing... Yes, I will agree with the distinction between the object and the thing, between a symbolic understanding of a build project and its understanding as a multiplicity but however as an Architect I would expect to see such a distinction in the way occupants inhabit spaces. I had my conclusions and I have to admit this kind of "synergies" between different fileds could only be constructive.

oh! and it is something else... the really annoying fascination of Architects with the trendiness... they feel guilty if they use words that somehow have been used before and mark a theoretical exploration in architectural design... and this is happening due to the fact that architects approach theory in a fragmented fashion and not as a continuous transformation of concepts and ideas...