On Saturday, January 24, 2004, at 01:27 PM, Architexturez. wrote:
i am not sure who is writing this, and i would
skip it as a result, yet there is enough extra
complexity added-in to any rhetoric of ideas,
deciphering each other's language or sense
of things, whatever is going on- that i would
like to make a few points about the text below
and then focus on the venn diagram idea which
i prefaced so as to limit it to a narrow approach
to a specific problem, not a universal application
for all aspects of architecture. though in the below
there is some thinking that can be addressed...
MIT/MediaLab, it is still in our categories, no? Got talking about
Marvin
Minsky (papers referred linked below) at dinner today, some former
students
were pointing out the possibilities of interfacing, computational
logcs,
modelling, machine vision.... excited discussion, so words were thrown
about
quite racklessly. They said the Heterologies projects already had these
things, and the City-Machine projects _are_ these. I kept nodding, and
at
the same time, thinking to myself, yes, these are the building blocks
of
City Machines, but City Machines do not resemble the assemblies like
this.
So to put aside the disagreement, I'd say, similar things are thought,
but
I'd still put Architecture at the core, and desire! Perhaps I am too
conservative, or perhaps I just like Le Corbusier a little. Managed to
explode yesterday evening when some TVB School academics defended
interdisciplinary studies and a non-exclusive institutional domain for
the
same reasons, I just feel Architecture, good old fashioned architecture
still brings us a semblance of sanity, so back to the buildings and
things.
i would like to make a venn diagram example, yet
with this complexity i need to respond to it first to
get back a simplicity, about communicating ideas.
i appreciate the ideas above and do not find my-
self in any general disagreement, though specifically
they do not touch what i was carefully trying to get at.
here it is called 'suspending judgment' or 'disbelief',
to hear some ideas out, before determining value,
as maybe something is more complex than one is
first to assume and so, it is hard to share ideas when
they are already dismissed in such a context, and
this stops communication quickly. as it is a waste of
time for everyone. reasoning, if complexity is to be
approached, may require going back to formations
of assumptions, earlier judgments and re-testing
them. and with concepts or ideas, and that great
snippet about diagrams, well, it is simple in that
and is not excluding any of the above- so it needs
to be said so. but i also assume my words before
made this clear, the intention of what could be new
tools for sharing ideas, and as architectural as any
hammer, which could be used for engineering or
a computer, or architecture, which may have an-
other approach, even if fused with engineering,
which to not include cultural aspects is to render
architecture a technical question and efficiency,
best exemplified by the horrendous architecture
in the .US WTC process- the height of engineered
objects, which 'language' won the game, yet the
architecture is engineering at best, it is missing
the reality and engagement that architecture is
able to provide, to understanding, conceptualizing
and communicating a sense of things, and in that
there is a lot 'written' in texts and buildings and, if
questioning the _interdisciplinary_ aspects of the
field- what is one approaching ontologies for, they
are not of architecture, implicitly, are they? what
about structuralism, communications theory, the
computer? please let me know how a computer is
more architectural than ideas, how Minsky can be
simply considered 'architecturally relevant' yet a
logic diagram, thought itself and reasoning, is
somehow less about building, especially arising
from an architectural questioning? how can D&G
be applied architecturally, psychiatric-philosophy,
without a question, yet to get to any architectural
understanding, less philosophy uniquely based
in architectural awarenesses, is somehow less
real or relevant than a computer program that can
be downloaded or created from a programming
lab or group, with no relation to architecture itself?
architecture is a generalist domain, like it or not.
it may be, today, that of specialists if considering
to be an architect in the old sense, is to also be
a corporation today, using an industrial world-
view in which to construct, envision, and build
(not ideas, but) ideologies of the past, on and on.
architecture, for instance, in dealing with cities
or machines is not just language, it is history,
economics, labor issues, technology, how things
work and function, engineering, communication,
structures, political consideration, -- considering
a simple idea of 'ontologies' for architecture is to
relate to philosophy, to linguistics, to post-modern
theory, psychological issues of perception and
consciousness, communications theory, and this
in the larger realm of architectural education and
practice, legal issues, cultural values, models of
reality, issues of truth, justice, power in society.
that is just a beginning, and if one wants to be
'an architect' one can be a specialist and be like
a machine, continually developing the past as
the future, redoing and reconstructing the en-
framing and frameworks, yet i thought it was
to be assumed that this was a question of these
investigations into ideas- that maybe there is a
hypothesis at work that does not work, yet it is
not being acknowledged that architecture goes
beyond language, or one kind of communication
or understanding, yet it is also an empirical realm
or could be, in a sense of shared knowledge that
goes beyond subjectivist positions of opinion on
poetic vantages of the perceptual or conceptual.
that is, it gets down to the making of things, ideas.
minsky is fine. other things are fine. and show just
how wide-ranging the generalist sense can be.
though minsky, if my memory serves, had ideas
that applied to learning (even teaching children,
or as part of his work). not cold computation or
that is how i read 'the society of mind'. it is one
part of a very large universe of architecture. so
too with machines. okay, Paul Shepheard, read
about buildings & machines and say anything
about machines in that context, then go read
about mumford and machines, gibbons and
machines, technocracy, fordism, taylorism, and
industrialist worldviews (represented by .US
policy today) and it is this same approach that
worked for le corbusier's time that does not
work for today's, as they are no longer alive
and experts about what is going on today, and
ideas need to be re-interpreted. especially one
like 'machines' which is vastly more complex
than discourses today, especially of any one
view of a popular philosopher or theorist, as
there is a huge, long, complicated story to all
of this, and it is an open question or needs to
be. else, the way things work are obviously
automated towards these older approaches,
and machinic desires can feed this thing just
like shoveling coal into an old steam engine
train, on the tracks, faster and deeper into hell.
architects, today, who are not questioning the
way things work and systems of operation are
all but robots servicing these machines that
have very simple desires. the networks and
theories easily service the worst in human
relations, simply for not being upgraded to
hypotheses, open questions, from theories,
as some pseudo-proven laws of nature in
which the absurdity of psychology continues.
an architect can plug-into a system which is
not serving human needs, communal needs.
and maybe this is not to be assumed, that
persons have shared needs/desires/goals.
i mean, in capitalist, privatized worldviews
(extremely so, if moderately so) it is easy to
ignore everyone else's ills as long as one is
to benefit from the system (which may be
directed by machine goals, not human ones,
such as bureaucracies to continue growing
and consolidating powers, then to oppress,
even while entertaining those who buy-into
its workings that somehow they are rebelling
by continuing its structure is an absurdism
far exceeding that of previous nihilists).
sure. i could but will not debate any of this.
it is undebatable. i would rather share an
idea rather than try to prove the current
model is in some way serving human needs
and architecture is the cultural beacon it
once was, and could again be, by using
the ideas and words from other disciplines,
other (dead) architects, to justify continuing
inhumane and automated decision making
(free will, limited, deterministic, extremely so).
architecture can address development and
the outside world, hunger, distribution, other
issues. or, it could. architecture can bring into
relation infrastructures, buildings, engineering,
systems, for the right values that serve people,
not bureaucracies. architecture can transform,
can facilitate and build change. yet beyond a
simplistic aestheticism as religious as anything
seen before, about the cult of visualization as
having inherent truth, or value, when being a
technique may be less valuable than knowing
a bit about dirt, about soil, rocks, than some
language-based generalist thinking that does
not have the universal connection that it nor
its followers purports. theory is dead, and the
theorists are dead-enders or new cult leaders.
if architecture is to have commonality, across
world cultures, to share something, so that
anyone can travel around the world and work
in the field of ideas, of building, creating, and
doing so for reasons beyond the technicalities,
that there is some purpose to architecture that
exceeds the person, yet is still potentially also
secular, in the public, open to interpretations,
not determining psychologies (see new WTC),
that may be about education, law, strategic
planning, design, thinking, mathematics,
visualization, topology, ontologies, game-
design, infrastructures, logic, language,
physiology, cognitive science, etc. and to
be able to engage universal questions that
countries and peoples are dealing with today,
such as issues of 'space' (public private, or
religious /secular), time (speed, technologies,
infrastructures, work), material (nanotubes,
matter, cosmology), light (more, nuclear
physics, astronomy), tools (computers,
databases), infrastructures (cities, networks,
grids) relations (humans, human-machines,
thinking), belief, and on and on- it could be
any of these things are a launching-pad into
another discourse, discursive practice if it
needs to be stated as such to be understood,
yet, it can also be 'bounded' (in the sense that
it has a boundary to which it cannot exceed)
by and in and through language, methods of
communication- which limit the free thinking
and sharing of ideas and architectures, and
thus, this is a question equally so about how
architecturally-minded persons may be able
to communicate their positions about such a
complex thing as a 'machine' (itself a construct
of many ideas, depending on what you mean,
which is itself not universal, and can range
from the very simplistic or ideological to the
very complex and long considered, even both).
therefore, what may seem basic may be way
more complex than one presumes. which is
also what i presume about what is written
here by others. that there may be something
not immediate but that sits around in my mind,
to learn more about its value. the below quote
is a double-edge, as it also shows predisposed
thinking, and it is wondered what this is meant
to convey, as for original thinking it declares
itself the words of another, thinking for some-
one else, about some truth that is actually a
question, that has been answered in some
righteous sense. it is not about architecture,
but psychological relationships and a way to
position oneself to what is perceived to be at
question. intelligent machines? this is poetic
but debunked for larger claims. a machine is
bounded, also. just the same as humans with
a venn diagram, but humans can change it
by understanding their boundaries, bounding,
relations, not through brute force but through
an ability to work through complexity and to
actually engage things with their intellects,
not predisposed ideas, i.e. ideologies, that
makes them very similar to being machines.
and, architects, IMO, remains human beings.
[When intelligent machines are constructed, we should not be surprised
to
find them as confused and as stubborn as are men in their convictions
about
mind-matter, consciousness, free will, and the like. For all such
questions
are pointed at explaining the complicated interactions between parts
of the
self-model. A man's or a machine's strength of conviction about such
things
tells us nothing about the man or about the machine except what it
tells us
about his model of himself.]
if we cannot question our psychological and
philosophical 'model', at the same time as
applying easy-going poetic theories of such
generalism, it is ultimately hypocritical and
counter-productive to communicate or even
to try to, at all, in this field, as then it would
seem the model (industrialism) discourages
acknowledging the crashes, freezes, failures
of the current (old) model, and cannot be
upgraded without a very large shift in relating.
read the above quote and just in terms of
language, it is privatized, yet speaks as if
in universal terms (man's), thus 50% of the
world is not in this universalist proposition,
and in the statement itself is thus not able
to represent the whole, explicitly. this is a
'private' text as such, it could be dated or
a marker of a certain type of psycho-social
worldview (men are the speakers, the word).
and, is this to represent culture, thinking?
architecture? ideas? today? it is language
which carries this complexity of interpretation,
at any moment it can be shot down. and the
complex can be piled on and everything
can easily become impossible. that is why
clear thinking, open reasoning, empirical
shared contexts of the full range of the field
of inquiry, can fuse the science and arts, or
mathematics and languages (Two Cultures,
C.P. Snow) that are uniquely found to be of
central importance to architecture, uniquely
so, as a generalist realm of endeavor. that
is, if it is valued as such, and is not to be
another profession in how to further the
automated, chaotic goals of 'the machine'
made of infinite machinery, of all variety.
if architecture is not about ideas, it is not
about reality, so what is the purpose then?
to build things requires some concessions
to other worldviews, that if the several and
various intriguing aspects 'over there' that
can be appreciated, can be linked up with
what is 'over here' in going's-on, that maybe
there is something beyond language games
and looping arguments in buggy codework.
agreement is not the point, truth is. it should
not matter if it is agreeable or not, what is
of importance is whether it is valued. if truth
is of no value in architecture, if content is
of no value in ideas, then formalism and
formulas of the past are superior in every
way, to a bounded-in-thinking being, it
may be a human, machine, even architects.
architecture and architects today are not
enlightened as to the culture that exists-
they are among the most ignorant as a
result of presuming superior knowledge,
an inflation in understanding- and it is a
unique task to architects to get ahold of
what is going on and to start shaping the
world towards human ends, for one's own
locality though also for the good of all. if
this is not agreed, one can call themselves
whatever they want- but they are just making
buildings, engineering, then, in my opinion.
that's not the same as engaging questions
whose outcome could change processes
of this misguided industrial machinework.
a simple venn diagram goes a lot further
than any theorism can, and it has had a
30 year+ run at it, and to what effect?
networks of babble, and the lessening
of the value of ideas, for the muddiness
of some belief in truth inherent in words,
like the monkey's and typewriters claim
that since has been debunked, that there
is inherent intelligence in just doing it.
architecture requires sacrifice, and few
are willing to go beyond personal safety
to risk taking on the issues the field ignores.
and many are unsung. not considered to
be architects. and are glorified by smaller
worldviews such as economics, where a
Bill Clinton speech can be summed up as
follows (this is the only joke i know...)
Clinton:
15 percent! .... (applause)
minus 4... (more applause)
300,000! ... (standing ovation)
7 different....
30 million dollars! (clapping)
... nineteen ...
love...
hurt...
and, 2 billion dollars saved!
(standing ovation)
this is what is hailed as the best of the
recent past here, a naive economic outlook
followed up by the Bush administration. if
one looks at values, economic value drives
a lot of the machinery and value systems,
and decisions making (and predetermined
choices) due to this cultural imbalance and
lack of effective representation. it is a bureau-
cratic and cultural machine, it is a value system
in which 'status quo' star architects contribute,
by serving the client (or machinery of state,
public and private) and is how value is also
measured, and success in architecture today.
it is also how it is a bubble-economy of ideas,
how truth is less important than power (WTC),
and how 'education' has turned into 'training'
of mechanics for the non-stop growth of this
machinery. this is the model that is being
fought over in global strikes. in anti-global
actions. in countries so in debt as to never
get out of poverty, to be held under by these
value systems and desires to base all kinds
of cultural richness solely in one-dimension,
and all that is lost is also what is missing in
the 'buildings' which are more like machines
than architecture, even the words and ideas
and theories, constructed for purposes other
than those of architectural aims or goals as
could be compared historically, or at least
in the naive sense of pragmatism in making
things that also goes beyond, beyond the
boundary, the models, to get at the society
unfolding all around, to engage it, not to
lock it out through some law of language
and psychological conditions prior to the
substance of architectural inquiry. words,
in this sense, do not matter, by default they
support this system. whatever one says. it
helps justify this system, unless it is able to
question it, bring it into common relation and
to collaboratively offer options for changes,
architectural evolutions one could say.
we can fight eachother, and all lose. we can
try to trust, try to suspend judgment, try to
work for clarity, try to be forgiving of human
character differences, and try to go beyond
the stalamate of language. how to do this,
though, when across the world, when there
is not an even distribution locally? it is tied
to words, language, concepts, precepts,
and the ability to communicate ideas. if
one has to debunk every predisposed view
held, there is no ability to share the ideas.
so, this is how scarcity will occur, unless it
is understood that not all ideas are equal,
in terms of their thinking, for the time in
which they occur, and that it may be futile
to communicate at all in an environment
in which truth is irrelevant to the functioning
of language, communications, messages
of pre-valued meanings, when this is so
contrary to common sense experience and
living in the world of dirt, rocks and nuclear
bombs, that 'architecture' may need to hold
a higher standard of interpretation than that
of the past, whose authors hold no actual
responsibility for interpretations of works in
the future, except their own conscience in
writing and boundaries or limits to what they
can imagine happening. words are dangerous
if mindlessly applied and used recklessly. and
this is said because words are not able to do
what is inherently needed in architecture, to
diagram is a basic skill which is absent online.
and to force all ideas into words is unrealistic.
it is a paradigm of structuralism and post-
structuralism which may have some but not
all relevance. if meaning were inherent, then
it would have been clear a long time ago. it
is a question, what is needed today, to deal
with such ideas, such that yes ontologies do
matter immensely, on a global scale, and to
address all these aspects of the generalist
field? and issues such as development, as
housing, shelter, equitable living standards,
at least to try... all i know is it is to try. and if
trying is not good enough for others, then
they had better take off the masks and try
themselves a bit harder, to deal with things
as they are, beyond themselves, to consider
architecture as beyond one's own vantage.
this is the most basic of understandings today.
architecture is an immensely important realm
of questioning that architects are to engage.
if they do not engage these questions, and only
have answers, infinitely at their disposal, what
is to say they are actually questioning archi-
tecture, per se, and are not actually robots
who are serving the inhumanity of machines,
and these desires, which may be locked into
contexts of the past, psychological limitations,
which take-away rather than give of cultures,
which take-away of humanity's richnesses,
rather than contribute to it, understand and
share these, and what if the values are not
for civic and domestic realms, but only one
or that the dueling machines of all dimension
are to do a survival-of-the-fittest, as they have
been, without human agency or control over
their end-games, still in pursuit of power at
all costs, and an empire of such a finality?
well, there would be no architects alive then.
that's not a belief. that is a truth of architecture.
or at least, as it has been recorded by architects.
language today serves the interest of power.
it distorts, maims, suppresses, and devalues
that which does not serve machinic desires.
architects need to learn and teach diplomacy,
and also to set a new standard for engagement
of ideas as 'truths' are subservient to automatons
today. architects invent, in some way, the future.
it is a knowledge-based, imagination-fueled,
and pragmatic-bound field of pure possibility.
why let language stop this profession dead?
we cannot. language, in terms of architecture,
is inferior to the fullness that is architecture-
the medium certainly is not the message of
architecture, if it is to be equated with a textual
architecture, then the best architecture today
would be the media-saturated, print and visual
ubiquity of the WTC and memorial- it shines in
propaganda of words, the falsity of ideas, and
a manipulation of truth and power for other ends.
it is unconscionable that this is being ignored
by the profession, even worldwide. and it is
because it is not responsible for its own self,
for its own ideas, architecture is not beholden
to its own interests, but those of economics or
political-economies of some industrial vision,
closely aligned with le corbusiers yet without
any of the insight into the present, into forces
at work, the questions of the moment, eternal
yet uniquely open to being engaged. this is a
very complex field and communicating by a
text in discourses pales in comparison to what
is involved or possible or to be assumed as
common knowledge in a field that has lost
its integrity, through language, for language,
for theories that have limited, bound, and cast
into bondage the greater purpose of architects.
ok. i was going to share that venn diagram yet
had to write this, fairly enough, yet it may only
create more tensions where none should exist
if the basics that are presumed to exist in the
profession (social dimensions, knowledge of
contexts of very large technological systems)
were common knowledge-- but, at least in the
.US, it is not, it is ignored, not taught, and it is
the economic and political-economic, minus
the social and cultural, that substitutes for the
whole-- and lacks realism because of it. if in
another place, there is a much greater chance
to not do this, it is blaringly obvious why so.
the architecture is, simply, non-existent in the
realm of buildings. it is fantasy, projections,
and over-valuations and compensation and
inflation for inferior work, inferior thinking, and
a general low-balling (not aiming high in one's
goals or efforts) at what is possible and needed
in the realm of natural and built environments.
everyone who is working their hearts out in this
field, in whatever way, may indeed compose
an architecture machine whose desires go
towards the right ends, using this potential to
move things, to design things, shape things
and thinking, to better options, opportunities,
shared goals, dreams. it is all possible. but it
also means revolution within the field today.
and, if it is not going to happen as a result of
9/11, i have no idea how it will. as that was
the bellwether of responsibility, at least for
a large segment of the focus on architecture.
equally so should be Bam, Iran, they all need
to be held in the realm of responsibility that
computer code does not disqualify as what is
of value and purpose and meaning in this
field. there are few architects in the world.
some may be bankers. some may be poor.
some may be licensed. all have conscience
about what it means to build, and for whom.
that is blasphemy, possibly, for a profession
which no longer exists, and is only a mirage
of some social construct now 'simply media.'
architecture is architecture. and it is of value.
bc