Seamlessness -Reply

        If I may weigh in with a qualified agreement w/ spN's comments
on sustainability...The "conservatism" he perceives in much
environmentalist discourse (and I am not certain whether he was
punning in his use of the term - sustainability, of course, specifically
encourages "nagging conservatism")  is what I was referring to in my
recent post about the "nature" of nature.
         It seems to me that as long as sustainability is conceived as a
natural "steady-state" or closed loop system, then the inevitable
contingencies of cultural production get left out. This was a point made
by some of the Complexity folks in Santa Fe who had some difficulty w/
the term, "Sustainable", as defined by the Rio Summit. In any event, while
we might, and perhaps should, idealize such a state vis a vis the
biosphere, to deny its mutuality w/ technological humanity, both in terms
of how the former is conceived and consequently acted upon, is to
overlook ourselves. This disjunction underwrites the "duality" that
"ecological logics" (w/ its emphasis - if I can be dualistic for a moment -
on relationships over objects and process over substance) attempts to
overcome.
        The topological "space" and process that information technology
has revealed is, at very least, a compelling analogue to biotic ecological
processes. My own students' increased interest in the relationship
between the mechanosphere and biosphere stem from their computer
work.
        Finally, being a Dewey/Rorty pragmatist (albeit one who can't
abide Venturi) whose interest in Deleuze extends, mostly, to his utility in
the everyday-life business of figuring out how to put one foot in front of
the other each day,  I am not sure that he is exactly what the
"sustainables" presently need (despite their interest in the actual
rhizome). I could be wrong. However,  many ideas involved w/
Hypersurface and the systemic topology that goes with it are certainly of
value in re-focussing the discussion about architecture and the "ground"
on which it sits and in which it operates...that is, the biotic environment.

PW
NSSR/PSD


>spN, is hyper-surface a sustainable condition?

The ensuing topological movement in architecture/infrastructure that
stems from the electronic revolution is absolutely a new opportunity to
think architecture in relation and as continuous with ecological logics.
Hypersurface is an open architecture that absorbs the "other." The other
has been the environment. Finally the avant garde can be green. The
work of
Keller Easterling is a good example, (she is involved with Bateson's mind
ecologies and othe New Ager thesis). But I want to make clear that there
is that nagging conservativism in the terms that I see sustainability
posited these days. Ask any biologist, an ecology won't live if it is static.
It has to circulate. Hypersurface affords that kind of circulation in an
open and continuous system.  I envision a seamless environment, and
toward that electronics is good glue, (could even be solar powered like
Venturi's proposed South Ferry electronic billboard). Deleuze's
theoretical interest in overcoming dualities is the theory the
"sustainables" need to make it really work. I don't think they are reading
him though.

spN