:: STEF'S BLOG ::

:: Thursday, August 05, 2004 ::

congruent relationships....you know how lots of things tend to get divided into two opposing sides, contradictions in architecture...a cliched one inside-outside, i'm just wondering about all the in-betweens rather than divide everything up so conveniently, i think the arrow articel by massumi was interesting, because it was more about the unseen points in between rather than the initial position of tha arrow and the end point on the target board, maybe, your curve-euclidean dilemma may lie somewhere in-between? just a passing thought......cos this congruent relationship thingy's been on my mind since some while ago.

:: Stephanie 4:28 AM [+] ::
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thoughts on felicity

"is animation achieved through form of building alone? to what degree do ligting, color - environmental conditions - influence the preceived animation. " the experience and perceiving abilities of the user as well?

"If a tree falls in a forrest and there is nobody to hear it, does it make a sound?" really like this,it's as though in order to understand anything at all, one have to reposition oneself and constantly question, if in asking the above, you're questioning what makes up sound, then in turn, what exactly makes up animation then? and, architecture? not purely being about movement or a moving building. what is the essence of animation and if that can potentially be extracted or honed in, and then architecture infers from that, does that then makes animated architecture?

"when do you stop the process, when do you play god? – the desperate act."....because animation procedures seem to have a never ending capability about them ( and this is what a tutor once said), it is important on the part of the archtiect, to know quite precisely, the intentions of the processes, and the aim of it, so that in the end, it depends on the better judgement of the architect to make a decision of when enough is enough....and that is the ongoing challenge, when does the process end? when is it enough? maybe its when the outcome is sufficient in producing a reasonable answer intended prior to the process.



:: Stephanie 4:23 AM [+] ::
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Potential in the Unfamiliar the virtual in architecture

In this day and age, we live in a reality interjected with a new kind of reality, that being a virtually-induced reality. Virtual extensions of familiar activities and simulated environments are top on the agenda for this century. How do we, as people, begin to respond and try to understand this shift? Consequently, how does architecture, which functions primarily for the people, in turn, accommodate this change seeing that ever since the beginning of time, architecture’s ‘claim to fame’ has always been in the material and the physical?

We have begun to test the potential of our senses and in turn the potential of the world we are living in. As Massumi writes in Brightness Confound (pp164, 2002) “there is a gap between what he has seen and his seeing”. With notions of virtuality being the order of the day, the problem of integrating such concepts into a successful physically built outcome arises time and again within the field of architecture.

The dilemma may simply lie in the fact that in some cases, these ephemeral i.e. ‘virtual’ affects are trying to, or there is an expectation that they do, find their way into the built physicality of architecture and somehow reveal themselves in the final form.

Is this necessarily true? This essay wishes to pose the argument that while they should be integrated and taken into consideration within the confines of design, concepts such as these need not manifest themselves through the built architectural form, literally and physically but rather through other methodologies. Perhaps the time has come to stop being too close minded in thinking about everything within and only within their exclusive context and understanding them as being independent of each other. Rather than categorizing them in their respective absolutes, a more inclusive form of understanding should prevail. To put it plainly, the point put forward is that architecture need not see the diagram or reality need not see the virtual as being a non- of themselves. Essentially, the first step is to view all relationships as being closely intertwined, tightly meshed somehow with no finite distinction between them. Secondly, it also intends to discuss the relevance of ‘potentiality’ over ‘actuality’, the ‘virtual’ over the ‘real’ and the ‘diagram’ over the ‘architecture’ and the legitimacy in both.

This brings me to a quote by Aristotle (pp356, 1995) in the hopes of extricating the notion of virtuality from its polar opposite of reality as we are accustomed to.

"nothing can happen if it doesn't have the potential to happen in the first place"

This is the concept of potentiality, “dunamis” and actuality, “energia” according to Aristotle. He discerns 3 stages within this framework, firstly, a “virtuality with the potential to become reality” (actuality), secondly, an “existent reality in which exists virtuality as yet uncovered” (in a state of emergence), lastly, a “state of reality where all virtuality has become real”, put simply, all potentiality has been transformed to a state of actuality and merged with the state of actuality which was present prior to the transformation.

“Virtuality and actuality are merely two different ways of being.” (Massumi, 2002)

Therefore the new or what was previously non-existent, is not something from the future, rather the ‘new’ is a past potentiality. It is also clear that both potentiality and actuality are not independent of each other but site themselves within an infused relationship. The virtual, then, is argued to be in the realm of the about-to-occur, a potentiality which can be equated to a state of emergence.

“the virtual is that which has potential rather than actual existence”. (Massumi, 2002)

This throws a new light in thinking about virtuality, that despite being a recent and current operation, it is a reflection of the ‘real past’. The important thing would then be not the actual outcome which is virtual but the ever present potential for it to occur in the first place. Our reality as we understand it to be physical, concrete, and corporeal has always been a burgeoning realm filled with potential for new events. The virtual is argued to have been a ‘past potentiality’ made real. Consequently, there is no distinction between the virtual and the real; both are reliant on each other.

“The virtual possesses complete reality, in its virtuality” (Gilles Deleuze, 1994)

Massumi makes reference to the failure of the grid which is understood indubitably for its points in space. An alternative would be a topological surface. Topology is the study of the characteristics of mathematical surfaces, such as their number of sides, edges or holes. Deforming a surface changes its shape, but not its characteristics; an edge remains an edge, and a hole remains a hole, no matter how distorted the edge or hole appears. The claim of topologists that a donut (torus) and a coffee cup are topologically equivalent

Virtuality is suggested in the folds of an image, any given still taken from a topological process is architecturally viable to be constructed, as such, a virtuality is expressed in the real. This then further strengthens the polar comparison of relationships. In topological processes, at every moment, there exists potential, potential is present throughout the whole process. The virtual then occurs at the very instant when there is a change from one form to the next.

As Massumi (pp1, 2002) talks about the story of the arrow in “Concrete Is As Concrete Doesn’t” he offers us an analogous mode of thought. The journey of the arrow from the start, the hand, to the end, the target board is an indefinable whole entity not composed of a series of points. The emphasis is clearly in the in-between, the grey area of movement rather than the distinct points.

This is applicable in thinking about topological transformations where it is hardly definable, remaining a continuous transformation not dissimilar to the path taken by the arrow. The processes are both potential and actual throughout, except when stills, i.e. images are taken from a particular transformation, does this cease to be the case and the potential begins to break away from the actual.

I would like to extend this train of thought into thinking about architecture and its use of the diagram, in the hopes to ease for myself the dilemma as mentioned above. The diagram is employed as the middle man between the "world-as-imagined" & the "world-as-experienced” as expressed by Lars Spuybroek in Diagramming. It does not exist as a unique component rather it functions as the in-between, the bridge between the incorporeal and the corporeal.

I quote Gin & Arakawa, (2002) “The tense of architecture should be not that of "This is this" or "Here is this" but instead that of "What's going on?”

This leads to a question of what is it exactly that could lie beyond architecture’s physicality and its reign of solidity? Hitherto, it is difficult to draw away from conventional thinking, the constant envisioning of architecture to be ‘real’ and arriving at a dead end whilst trying to move on with the times. Perhaps the diagram is at its best accepted for what it can achieve, ceasing to try and be what it cannot and may never be less its essence is lost when it is physically challenged architecturally.

Architecture DOES not mimic the diagram!

First, it is important to define what a diagram means and what it is in its relevance in architecture. Rakatansky in Motivations of Animation (pp50) defines the diagram as “a graphic design that explains rather than represents a drawing”. A diagram is pictorial representation of “arrangements and relations”. Diagrams are the containment of ideas, relationships and arrangements, interactions; diagrams are potentials of all these and more. But more importantly, the diagram can be equivalent to the potential of an actuality. Every diagram is thus potentially a building; however, not every diagram is potentially architecture. This is not to say that the diagram is of little use or ‘simply not good enough’, rather architecture only surfaces as an actuality when the diagram is successfully employed and its essence remains intact during the translation process.

So if this can be accepted, let us not be disappointed with Van Berkel and let us celebrate the Moebius House!(1993-1998)

In the beginnings of the process, the diagram has the capacity to be perceived, experienced, interpreted, and translated differently, but once further along the process, the diagram seems to become stagnant, once it becomes less potential and more actual, less abstract and more evident in the built outcome. Perhaps this situation can be addressed by re-analyzing the diagram as an informant of the architecture and not its predecessor.

Gregory Bateson (http://psycho-ontology.net/unconscious) defines the context of the diagram. Essentially, the diagram has no context. The word ‘context’ comes from a Latin root meaning to weave together; to form, construct, or compose as by interweaving of parts. When an entity is deemed to have no context or is context-free, this means that it is self-contained i.e. “that there is nothing more to understanding its operation than understanding its own contents.” Hence, the diagram is a self-contained entity, which should be credited for its infinite potentials in forming or revealing relationships rather than the graphic from which architecture merely imitates.

"the essence of modern technology is by no means anything technological”

“Heidegger took a stand from within technology, his recognition that we are suspended within the languages of modern technology leads to the critical proposition that it is from there that we have to find our way" (Iain Chambers, pp 136, 2001)

Heidegger saw technology as a way of revealing rather than of production. Likewise for the diagram, apprehend it for what it can do rather than what it is therein lays its dynamism. Architectural form, rather than be directed by the diagram, should capitalize the diagram in allowing it to reveal potentials and possibilities and that in turn affect the built in some way. A diagram reveals relationships and interactions and it is this which constitutes form not dictates it.

This essay does not propose any solutions at this stage except to rethink the function of the diagram and clarify why the ‘built diagram’ is belittling the whole concept of diagram. Perhaps in reassessing diagrams, one could then reassess architecture so that the former is not merely aesthetically incorporated. In a lecture, Peter Corrigan once said that in “those days, the building always outshone the drawing and nowadays, it seems to be the reverse” The argument remains that architecture should extract the qualities of the virtual instead of try in a futile attempt to incorporate it physically.

Let’s have a fantastic building and not just a fantastic render!

In pursuing this, perhaps one method would be to extract oneself from the conventional, the familiar. What happens if we place ourselves in a situation where we are removed from a condition of familiarity? Would we then allow ourselves to be exposed to potentials of infinite dimensions? How are we traditionally accustomed to architectural space and its ideas on solidity, materiality, and this constant engagement with architecture as complying with these notions? Can the experience of space somehow take precedence over its traditional ideals? One approach would be to remove ourselves from it, to allow for a sense of “now”, described as “moments of meeting” which “emerge through the falling apart of familiar procedures”. That is to say, we extract ourselves from what is familiar to us and this extends to include our understanding of space, its physical properties and the experience of it. "these moments are unfamiliar, unexpected in their exact form and timing, unsettling or weird” (http://www.ijpa.org)

In a very simplistic fashion, architecture has already begun straying away from the ‘familiar’ in envisioning space as not composed of flat floors, levels, and series of stacked levels. Design entries for the Eyebeam Museum & technology in New York by several architects clearly express this. MVRDV’s proposal viewed in section throws off balance the idea of inhabiting space. Levels seem to infuse into one another and then taper off vertically. This interweaving suggests different ways of thinking about space and its compositional members.

The entry by Asymptote also further reinforces this. From the exterior the skin is a permeable-looking entity which cases the internal level malleablities. Structural integrities are challenged, so are notions of walls, floors, ceilings and ramps.

The other approach is to rethink and break through the confines of the familiar may be not to remove oneself from it rather by engaging in a rigorous and thorough re-examination of what is already familiar, and by bringing that to its extremes, stretching it to its limits, boundaries may be broken. Thus, we remain in the familiar but are able to view it through new light, extracting new means of understanding it and pursue new relationships. In this way, the constant struggle of what defines a ‘real’ architecture becomes easier because it is now possible, despite stable and familiar environments which we are accustomed to, we may somehow find a way to express beyond the familiar.

I was once in a studio where we were working through diagrams, mapping and finding relationships involving flows. Needing only 10 diagrams at the most, we were instructed to locate 10 000 which, at the end of the day was a healthy exercise because it encouraged us to be removed from our own personal comfort zone and to be open to possibilities which otherwise would remain unencountered. This anecdote above just provides an example of seeking to find the unfamiliar in the familiar through a rigorous process of reexamining the familiar.

The second approach is suggestive of a hope for architecture in dealing with the virtual, and this dilemma may be lessened, by re-thinking architecture through not the physical rather through its interactions and the relations it provides. In this way, the translations are less literal and less of an exhaustive problem.

To seek the unfamiliar may be a logical and hopefully fruitful approach, as it allows architecture explorations into how it can remain in its ‘real-ness’ while challenging ideas of the familiar. At this juncture, a quote from Spuybroek (pp 243) states that "architecture can be liquid but the building is solid......the building should be static but architecture should never be at rest"

This essay explores this idea of the unfamiliar through the studio of Diller & Scofidio and Vito Acconci whose works included below seek to re-categorize relationships that are familiar and push them into the realm of the unfamiliar.

D+S approaches the age old question of what defines the ‘real’. On two extreme sides of the equation, technophiles and technophobes alike, nevertheless, have one common goal, to define the ‘authenticity of the real’, "liveness", a term that has grown to be synonymous with authenticity and a trusted reality. Their work challenges us to rethink the role we play in today’s society.

The work of D+S removes from architecture the notion that it is about shelter, comfort and functionality suggesting viewing architecture from a non-physical point of view. They provide an eloquent concept for architecture as “environments of thought”. Their conceptual projects explore the avant-garde tradition of making the familiar strange, even ominous, by creating environments in which the objects and modern comforts of our everyday world are made to reveal their contradictions, ironies, and inefficiencies. Attempts to rethink and redefine existing relationships, challenge conditions reveal the anonymous values and norms of the society rendering them visible, readable, audible and tangible.

For their first project for the web, entitled Refresh (1998), Diller + Scofidio have taken office web cams as their point of departure, with the intention of examining the role of live video technologies on everyday life.

These live cameras provide a way of connecting viewers via real time. For each of the dozen sites selected for this project, they have constructed fictional narratives. For every site there is a grid of twelve images, one of which is live and refreshes when clicked; the other eleven have been constructed for this project with the aid of hired actors and Photoshop. None of the people from the actual location appear in the fabricated images; however, the juxtaposition of the live and the fictional establishes a provocative correspondence. The stories, concentrate on subtle changes in behavior as a consequence of the acknowledged presence of the camera in the office. There is nothing shocking or dramatic, rather, everyday conventions are slightly modified, either to perform for or to hide from the camera. Surveillance alters the notion of the mundane activity into a somewhat performative action. The simple relationship of the viewer and the viewed is stretched so much so its impact causes a change in behavior.

How can this impact architecture, how can the familiar be stretched so that an acute awareness can be brought about? Another project Facsimile (2001), is a video monitor across the façade of the new Moscone Convention Center in San Francisco. A live video camera back-to-back with the screen is pointed into the public lobby where it broadcasts live and pre-recorded imagery to the screen. We see the concepts in Refresh, a virtual entity of the web, finding their way into architecture.

The various projects of Vito Acconci also challenge this notion of the ‘familiar’ as well as dabble in reconfiguring the role of the user. It takes a different, rather radical approach in conceiving of the environment, providing a fresh view for the function of architecture.

In Personal Island (1992), a rowboat is sunk into the ground on land, its bow is filled with soil and grass, with a tree growing out of the bow. The oars are embedded in the ground, as if rowing on land. The user steps down into the boat, and sits inside, as if the land were water. Facing the boat, in the water, is its mirror-image: a rowboat wedged into a circular plane of grass. The rowboat combines with the grass: as in the rowboat on shore, its bow is filled with soil and grass, a tree growing out of the bow. The user then steps out onto the grass plane, and into the boat, and row: the boat takes with it the circular plane of grass which is extracted from a semi-circular cut in the shore, hence the user can row your island out to sea.

Just as this work attempts to redefine the notion of land and object, the following installation does the same with the idea of furniture and architecture.

Tele-furni system (1997) is hybrid not in form but in function. It places emphasis on the shift in function, rather than prioritizing the physicality of the architectural form. Comprising of a system of architecture and furniture, for viewing videotapes, that is made up of the video monitors that are being viewed, the monitors are spread through the room at different heights and in different directions. The monitors are stepped on, sat on, reclined on, in order to look at other monitors. They are employed simultaneously as architecture and furniture for viewing, which are, in turn, viewed from other monitors. The concept is to display the intricacies of the architectural-furniture-viewing relationship which exist in one singular whole so much so that it is impossible to extricate any one of these form their make-up.

The final project included here re-examines the notion of the garden where two existent gardens give birth to an urban garden between them. Garden between Gardens (1993) is a horizontal plane four feet off the ground. A system of pathways makes a maze through the plantings. As you walk into the garden, you're embedded in the garden; the garden is all around you, at chest-height. As you go inside, further and further, the garden comes in toward you, closer and closer. When you sit down, the planting is at your head, over your head, you sink down into the garden. Whereas the old garden is a garden for the eyes only, this new garden is a garden for the body.

These projects alter the way we are traditionally accustomed to experiencing the world around us challenging familiar relationships of form and function. Pushing it into the realm of the unfamiliar through thorough re-examination of the familiar. If it can be said that the diagram is to architecture what the unfamiliar is to the familiar, perhaps this essay has succeeded in proposing a reasonable relationship between the two in thinking about the virtual and the real.


:: Stephanie 12:41 AM [+] ::
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states of emergence....local interactions which affect global scale, reading Steven Johnson's "emegence", the article on street and urban planning about pedestrian walkways and sidewalks providing the right kind and rigth number of interactions which then in turn affect the neighbourhood and street scape int eh long run, if you think about the different urban planning in different countried and I can only name three which I am familiar with, the difference amount to a difference in behaviour and social behaviour. In Malaysia, houses are lined side by side very much like suburbia in Melbourne, however the fundamental difference is there is no pedestrian pathway or sidewalk in front of the houses unlike here. Even in the city areas, there is no clear distinctions for pedestrians to use, the walking person is not prioritised in any way. The city is for the vehicles and only them. And you can see the difference in the type of society produced by that. Maybe, people here are more friendly and less wary of their neighbours because constant interaction occurs. Even if your neighbour is a complete stranger, after half a dozen meetings, i'm sure you could afford a smile. Teh sidewalk thus promotes a better soociety through forcing interactions, and this applies to the city as well. I fyou look at Singapore, there is even less interaction. With most of the housing being apartmetns or flats with houses basically stacked ontop one another, the area for interaction is greatly lessened. hmmm..or is it?...i guess, maybe there level of familiarity between neighbours of one level is more than one street in malaysia btu in general the level of hostility is more....just a thought anyway...interesting to note how building planning on a small scale can affect society on a larger scale.
:: Stephanie 6:43 AM [+] ::
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Daniel N Stern

layered model of development : assumes a progressive accumulation of senses of self, socioaffective competencies and ways-of-being-with others.

each domain facilitates the emergence of the ones that follow

two different, paralle systems of perception, cognition, affectivity and memory for encountering and making sense of the physical and human worlds.

3 preverbal senses of self : the sense of an emergent self + the sense of a core self + the sense of a subjective (intersubjective) self : the view is that the 3 do not develop one after the other rather the 3 emerge simultaneously through their interations with each other.

Internal Objects : constructed from repeated interactive patterns

emergent sense of self : "coming-into-being at the present moment" Woolf, 1923

primary conciousness is not self-reflective, it is not verbalized, and it lasts only during a present moment that corresponds to a "now"

vitality affects : that which is in the background that perpetuates a thought : eg. an immobile man, not moving, one can sense a expereince from the way his body is tense, one can guess an emotive quality from it.

the intentional object is whatever the mind is stretching toward. It is whatever is "in mind"

primary conciousness is the yoking otgether , in the present moment, the now, of the intentional object (what is in mind) and the vitality affect (what is in the background)

sense of emergent : an awareness at a now moment of living an experience (whatever its contents)

:: Stephanie 12:34 AM [+] ::
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will post more of reading from CTRL+SPACE after dinner..
:: Stephanie 5:50 AM [+] ::
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- - - - - CTRL+SPACE - - - - - -
:: Stephanie 5:48 AM [+] ::
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i guess i'm just popping in so as to not neglect this..i know the essay submission is in two weeks......which is alright i guess...will get to it soon...no more lectures....no more tutes.....only the submission between me and the hols!!!!!!
:: Stephanie 11:33 AM [+] ::
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VPRO __ MVRDV




:: Stephanie 11:20 AM [+] ::
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reading from MVRDV

architecture is an interface between reality + architecture + its users

architecture argues from a non-reality (the ideas) and sets this within the context of reality via the architectural work. It is a contextualization, the 'putting into circulation' within reality of an architectural system

architect as "generators of space"

"We know that the computer era has now taken over once and for all" its like the final ultimatum!! continues " We find ourselves caught in a moment in which we have a clear notion of something being different, yet we persist in trying to understand this according to concepts that don't on the whole, apply." this is a remarkably similar view posed by ( can/t remember now) about concepts not being too abstract but not abstract enough to understand a point.

The computer abstraction of architecture transforms our way of understanding the production process, but also the very meaning of architecture as a productive activity in relation to reality

proposes to conceive of architecture and its context as a non-linear progression which begins with the intent to the drawing to the building and finally ending with the users, rather the whole process as being an interwoven-web of relations .."architecture_ must be conceived as a complex interaction of flows of information, matter and energy, over and above the mere linear sum of parts---human, material or categorical---which comprise up

architecture as interface

endophysics (look it up) introduces the idea that our perception of reality is a question of interfaces

according to Godel's theorem of indefinition, it is only from outside a comples universe that it is possiblr to giom description of it

so architecture becomes the interface and it is this interface which transforms reality

classical arch was highly non-interactive and hierachical, now we have to take into consideration ideas and concepts of emergence.

form as not being reliant on aesthetic syntax

architecture which comes after modernity, interaction of other factors external to the archtiect himself is in the increase.

"THe aesthetic of interactivity are based on action much more than on visual perception" Dick Rijken

The consequence of architecture as the interface of computerized reality is that there is a direct relationship between information and form, in the postmodern project, information literally takes on a shape, a form , would this be a counter argumetn posed in the essay where immaterial data taking on form or being translated directly is wron? indirect translation is okay.....??


:: Stephanie 10:51 AM [+] ::
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"The system, the artificial world, interpellates each individual within it so completely that their perceived subjectivity is a complete fiction, a simulacrum, while their "real" subjectivity is completely unknown to them. Their fictional subjectivity is taken for granted, never questioned, even to the point where their real physical existence and perceived physical existence are literally worlds apart" taken form the matrix essay. its a twisted yet unsplitable co-existence.
:: Stephanie 9:21 AM [+] ::
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Terrorism of the present, according to Baudrillard, is concerned with transparency, melancholy, and fascination: simulacra are made transparent to reveal the loss of the real beneath them; nihilism is melancholic because it is overcome by an indifference inspired by the transparency of simulacra; the nihilist's fascination is fascination "by all forms of disappearance, of our disappearance"

the concept of disappearance features a lot this century, the loss of the physical domain which makes it difficult for architecture's progress....is it because the world is trying ot radically alter existence just because of technological advacement? introduction of computers? Is it because the unreal, the world of tech is so much more fascinating than this world we've always known? I was showing Kit Aymptote's project for the NYSE and he commented, why are architects trying to get themselves involved in the virtual? It should be left to the web designers!! which, when you think about it, makes complete sense!
:: Stephanie 9:19 AM [+] ::
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""more impressed" by the fake TV props than by the actual space vehicles " taken from the matrix essay blog.....isn't this like what massumi writes about the everyday being boring...and we seek this uncanny in the familiar, in order to stimulate ourselves? why is virtual reality so interesting otus all...bacause its something we're unable to grasp at this present time, take the history and lineage of architecture for example, tracing the progression of form, alternate geometry became so ;in' at one stage and it was the main focus for a period of time, now, its presence still remains but assymetrical form and non-linear geometry are being taken over by computer processes and the like. Architecture is beginning to leave its very core motivation...form!
:: Stephanie 5:17 AM [+] ::
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couplings

Social reality + fiction
material reality + imagination
ambiguous + natural
machine + organism
materialism + idealism
Representation + Simulation
Organism + Biotic Component
Depth, integrity + Surface, boundary
Heat + Noise
Physiology + Communications engineering
Small group + Subsystem
Perfection + Optimization
Organic division of labour + Ergonomics/cybernetics of labour
Functional specialization + Modular construction
Reproduction + Replication
Bioogical determinism + Evolutionary inertia, constraints
Community ecology + Ecosystem
Scientific management in home/factory + Global factory/Electronic cottage
Public/Private + Cyborg citizenship
Nature/Culture + fields of difference
Co-operation + Communications enhancemenet
Sex + Genetic engineering
labour + Robotics
Mind + Artificial Intelligence
Virtual + reality
familiar + unfamiliar
diagram + architecture
space + void
immaterial + materealism

:: Stephanie 3:42 AM [+] ::
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quotes from Donna Haraway's, "A Cyborg Manifesto

Irony is about contradictions that do not resolve into larger wholes, even dialectically, about the tension of holding incompatible things together because both or all are necessary and true

Social reality is lived social relations, our most important political construction, a world-changing fiction

an argument for the cyborg as a fiction mapping our social and bodily reality and as an imaginative resource suggesting some very fruitful couplings

relation between organism and machine has been a border war. The stakes in the border war have been the territories of production, reproduction, and imagination. This chapter is an argument for pleasure in the confusion of boundaries and for responsibility in their construction

the plot of original unity out of which difference must be produced

The cyborg is resolutely committed to partiality, irony, intimacy, and perversity. It is oppositional, utopian, and completely without innocence

the one can no longer be the resource for appropriation or incorporation by the other

nothing really convincingly settles the separation of human and animal. And many people no longer feel the need for such a separation

The cyborg appears in myth precisely where the boundary between human and animal is transgressed. Far from signalling a walling off of people from other living beings, cyborgs signal distrurbingly and pleasurably tight coupling

Late twentieth-century machines have made thoroughly ambiguous the difference between natural and art)ficial, mind and body, self-developing and externally designed, and many other distinctions that used to apply to organisms and machines. Our machines are disturbingly lively, and we ourselves frighteningly inert.

the boundary between physical and non-physical is very imprecise for us

miniaturization has changed our experience of mechanism. Miniaturization has turned out to be about power; small is not so much beautiful as pre-eminently dangerous

The ubiquity and invisibility of cyborgs is precisely why these sunshine-belt machines are so deadly. They are as hard to see politically as materially. They are about consciousness - or its simulation

So my cyborg myth is about transgressed boundaries, potent fusions, and dangerous possibilities

There is no drive in cyborgs to produce total theory, but there is an intimate experience of boundaries, their construction and deconstruction.

It means both building and destroying machines, identities, categories, relationships, space stories. Though both are bound in the spiral dance


:: Stephanie 3:37 AM [+] ::
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Reality is a matter of consensus, not some arbitrary decision from the recesses of your mind.
:: Stephanie 5:09 AM [+] ::
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