Showing posts with label Aesthetics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Aesthetics. Show all posts
8.11.13
The Politics of Parametricism: Digital Technologies & the Future[s] of Sociality @CalArts
MA in Aesthetics and Politics presents
The Politics of Parametricism: Digital Technologies & the Future[s] of Sociality
A conference curated and organized by Matthew Poole and Manuel Shvartzberg, happening next Friday and Saturday 15—16 November @ REDCAT.
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This two-day conference includes a range of international experts from architectural practice and theory, and explores urgent questions that concern the social and political ramifications at stake in the evolution of computational design. Parametricism has been heralded as the new avant-garde in the fields of architecture and design—the next “grand style” in the history of architectural movements. Parametric models enable digital designers to create complex structures and environments, as well as new understandings of space, both real and virtual. Whether as tools for democratic action or tyrannical spectacle; self- and community-building capabilities; a post-humanistic subject; or the mediatized politics of our desired futurisms—all these themes are figured and being assembled within the Parametricist discourse.
This two-day conference includes a range of international experts from architectural practice and theory, and explores urgent questions that concern the social and political ramifications at stake in the evolution of computational design. Parametricism has been heralded as the new avant-garde in the fields of architecture and design—the next “grand style” in the history of architectural movements. Parametric models enable digital designers to create complex structures and environments, as well as new understandings of space, both real and virtual. Whether as tools for democratic action or tyrannical spectacle; self- and community-building capabilities; a post-humanistic subject; or the mediatized politics of our desired futurisms—all these themes are figured and being assembled within the Parametricist discourse.
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Guest speakers are Phil Bernstein, Benjamin Bratton, Christina Cogdell, Teddy Cruz, Peggy Deamer, Andrés Jaque, Laura Kurgan, Neil Leach, Reinhold Martin, Patrik Schumacher.
Guest speakers are Phil Bernstein, Benjamin Bratton, Christina Cogdell, Teddy Cruz, Peggy Deamer, Andrés Jaque, Laura Kurgan, Neil Leach, Reinhold Martin, Patrik Schumacher.
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Program
Program
7–9pm, Friday 15 November: Keynote event:
“Architecture and politics: Parametricism within or beyond liberal democracy?” – a discussionReinhold Martin: “On Numbers, More or Less”
Patrik Schumacher: “Thesis on the Politics of Parametricism”
“Architecture and politics: Parametricism within or beyond liberal democracy?” – a discussionReinhold Martin: “On Numbers, More or Less”
Patrik Schumacher: “Thesis on the Politics of Parametricism”
Saturday 16 November: Conference panels:10am–noon – Panel 1: Introduction to Parametricism: historical and technological context
Phillip G. Bernstein: “Finding Value in Parameters: How Scripting Beyond Form Changes the Potential of Design Practice”
Christina Cogdell: “Breeding Ideology: Parametricism and Biological Architecture”
Neil Leach: “There is no such thing as a political architecture; there is no such thing as digital architecture”
2–4pm – Panel 2: Parametricism, the commons and social representation
Teddy Cruz: “The New Political: Where the Top Down and the Bottom up Meet”
Peggy Deamer: “Parametric Schizophrenic”
Laura Kurgan: “The Method is the Message”
4:45–6:30pm – Panel 3: Designing subjectivities, curating new models of sociality
Benjamin H. Bratton: “The Always Partial System: For an Inhuman Parametricism”
Andrés Jaque: “Architecture as Rendered Society”
11.4.13
Luciana Parisi - Contagious Architecture: Computation, Aesthetics and Space - MIT Press, Usa, April 2013
In Contagious Architecture, Luciana Parisi offers a philosophical inquiry into the status of the algorithm in architectural and interaction design. Her thesis is that algorithmic computation is not simply an abstract mathematical tool but constitutes a mode of thought in its own right, in that its operation extends into forms of abstraction that lie beyond direct human cognition and control. These include modes of infinity, contingency, and indeterminacy, as well as incomputable quantities underlying the iterative process of algorithmic processing. The main philosophical source for the project is Alfred North Whitehead, whose process philosophy is specifically designed to provide a vocabulary for "modes of thought" exhibiting various degrees of autonomy from human agency even as they are mobilized by it. Because algorithmic processing lies at the heart of the design practices now reshaping our world -- from the physical spaces of our built environment to the networked spaces of digital culture -- the nature of algorithmic thought is a topic of pressing importance that reraises questions of control and, ultimately, power. Contagious Architecture revisits cybernetic theories of control and information theory's notion of the incomputable in light of this rethinking of the role of algorithmic thought. Informed by recent debates in political and cultural theory around the changing landscape of power, it links the nature of abstraction to a new theory of power adequate to the complexities of the digital world.
Luciana Parisi is a Senior Lecturer and runs the MA program in Interactive Media: Critical Theory and Practice at the Centre for Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths University of London.
“The thrill of this volume lies in its sustained pursuit of the problem of chance, randomness, and noncomputability as core dynamics in digital media. Its brilliantly heterodox take on computation allows Contagious Architecture to develop a groundbreaking account of algorithms and software, an account that puts debates about prediction and control in computational cultures on a much more exciting footing.”
—Adrian Mackenzie, Lancaster University; author of Wirelessness: Radical Empiricism in Network Cultures
—Adrian Mackenzie, Lancaster University; author of Wirelessness: Radical Empiricism in Network Cultures
“In Contagious Architecture, Luciana Parisi gives us a sense of space beyond spatiality, showing us an architecture in which the fixed is fluid—an evocative and rigorous study whose scope exceeds traditional disciplinary boundaries.”
—Eugene Thacker, School of Media Studies, The New School; author of The Global Genome
—Eugene Thacker, School of Media Studies, The New School; author of The Global Genome
“Contagious Architecture is the antidote to the cyclical trend of Auguste Comte’s neopositivistic ‘order of discourse.’ By restoring the whole spectrum of languages, the multiple whispering in computation’s Tower of Babel, Luciana Parisi introduces contingencies, the ‘one thousand plateaus,’ as a factor of knowledge—rid of its deterministic and intrinsic nature of control—to release its consequences as well as its presuppositions.”
—François Roche, architect
—François Roche, architect
Read more on MIT Press
Read more on Technologies of Lived Abstraction
Dr Luciana Parisi’s research looks at the asymmetric relationship between science and philosophy, aesthetics and culture, technology and politics to investigate potential conditions for ontological and epistemological change. Her work on cybernetics and information theories, evolutionary theories, genetic coding and viral transmission has informed her analysis of culture and politics, the critique of capitalism, power and control. During the late 90s she worked with the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit at Warwick and has since been writing with Steve Goodman (aka kode 9). In 2004, she published Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Biotechnology and the Mutations of Desire (Continuum Press), where she departed from the critical impasse between notions of the body, sexuality, gender on the one hand, and studies of science and technologies on the other. Her work engaged with ontological and epistemological transformations entangled to the technocapitalist development of biotechnologies, which un-intentionally re-articulated models of evolutions, questioning dominant conceptions of sex, femininity and desire. Since the publication of Abstract Sex, she has also written on the bionic transformation of the perceptive sensorium triggered by new media, on the advancement of new techno-ecologies of control, and on the nanoengineering of matter. She has published articles about the relation between cybernetic machines, memory and perception in the context of a non-phenomenological critique of computational media and in relation to emerging strategies of branding and marketing. Her interest in interactive media has also led her research to engage more closely with computation, cognition, and algorithmic aesthetics. She is currently writing on architectural modeling and completing a monograph: Contagious Architecture. Computation, Aesthetics and the Control of Space (MIT Press, April 2013).
Read more on Technologies of Lived Abstraction
Dr Luciana Parisi’s research looks at the asymmetric relationship between science and philosophy, aesthetics and culture, technology and politics to investigate potential conditions for ontological and epistemological change. Her work on cybernetics and information theories, evolutionary theories, genetic coding and viral transmission has informed her analysis of culture and politics, the critique of capitalism, power and control. During the late 90s she worked with the Cybernetic Culture Research Unit at Warwick and has since been writing with Steve Goodman (aka kode 9). In 2004, she published Abstract Sex: Philosophy, Biotechnology and the Mutations of Desire (Continuum Press), where she departed from the critical impasse between notions of the body, sexuality, gender on the one hand, and studies of science and technologies on the other. Her work engaged with ontological and epistemological transformations entangled to the technocapitalist development of biotechnologies, which un-intentionally re-articulated models of evolutions, questioning dominant conceptions of sex, femininity and desire. Since the publication of Abstract Sex, she has also written on the bionic transformation of the perceptive sensorium triggered by new media, on the advancement of new techno-ecologies of control, and on the nanoengineering of matter. She has published articles about the relation between cybernetic machines, memory and perception in the context of a non-phenomenological critique of computational media and in relation to emerging strategies of branding and marketing. Her interest in interactive media has also led her research to engage more closely with computation, cognition, and algorithmic aesthetics. She is currently writing on architectural modeling and completing a monograph: Contagious Architecture. Computation, Aesthetics and the Control of Space (MIT Press, April 2013).
8.1.13
Francesco Tacchini - Uneven grounds: from the archive to the glitch
Foreword
This paper is an investigation into remediation trends in the realm of contemporary art and design. The analysis will extend into a methodology of the reuse of both the mere materiality of technological media devices and their operative modes. I will approach the topic under the umbrella of “media archaeology”, a branch of media studies devoted to alternative media discourses. Media archaeology is a methodical way for excavating repressed or forgotten devices and remediation practices, as well as an artistic modus operandi close to bricolage culture, software and hardware hacking, circuit bending and other Do-It-Yourself exercises.
My thesis work is structured as follows: the first part introduces the key theoretical concepts that make up the ground onto which carrying out the media-archaeological investigation. I will briefly outline the genesis of this (sub-)field of media studies and then point out what media archaeology has been up to now. The second part of this paper will execute the media-archaeological analysis undertaking three different case studies. The first is an investigation of works from Yuri Suzuki, a Japanese sound designer and artist, which I had the opportunity to meet and interview regarding what I am writing about. I will discuss how his artistic intervention celebrates the non-linear pasts of media culture by manipulating technological devices.
The second and third case studies witness a shift from the previous manual intervention on the physical device to a more subtle (re)mediation at the level of its processual modes. I will turn to designers engaging with (programming) contemporary media and repurposing the clean aesthetics of lines, geometrical patterns, algorithms and data processing, as well as the random noisy aesthetics of glitches, dis/continuities and visual abstraction.
My thesis work is structured as follows: the first part introduces the key theoretical concepts that make up the ground onto which carrying out the media-archaeological investigation. I will briefly outline the genesis of this (sub-)field of media studies and then point out what media archaeology has been up to now. The second part of this paper will execute the media-archaeological analysis undertaking three different case studies. The first is an investigation of works from Yuri Suzuki, a Japanese sound designer and artist, which I had the opportunity to meet and interview regarding what I am writing about. I will discuss how his artistic intervention celebrates the non-linear pasts of media culture by manipulating technological devices.
The second and third case studies witness a shift from the previous manual intervention on the physical device to a more subtle (re)mediation at the level of its processual modes. I will turn to designers engaging with (programming) contemporary media and repurposing the clean aesthetics of lines, geometrical patterns, algorithms and data processing, as well as the random noisy aesthetics of glitches, dis/continuities and visual abstraction.
23.1.12
Without Criteria Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Aesthetics - Steven Shaviro (MIT University Press, Usa, 2009)
Without Criteria
Kant, Whitehead, Deleuze, and Aesthetics
Steven Shaviro
In Without Criteria, Steven Shaviro proposes and explores a philosophical fantasy: imagine a world in which Alfred North Whitehead takes the place of Martin Heidegger. What if Whitehead, instead of Heidegger, had set the agenda for postmodern thought? Heidegger asks, "Why is there something, rather than nothing?" Whitehead asks, "How is it that there is always something new?" In a world where everything from popular music to DNA is being sampled and recombined, argues Shaviro, Whitehead's question is the truly urgent one. Without Criteria is Shaviro's experiment in rethinking postmodern theory, especially the theory of aesthetics, from a point of view that hearkens back to Whitehead rather than Heidegger.
Shaviro does this largely by reading Whitehead in conjunction with Gilles Deleuze, finding important resonances and affinities between them, suggesting both a Deleuzian reading of Whitehead and a Whiteheadian reading of Deleuze. In working through the ideas of Whitehead and Deleuze, Shaviro also appeals to Kant, arguing that certain aspects of Kant's thought pave the way for the philosophical "constructivism" embraced by both Whitehead and Deleuze.
Kant, Whitehead, and Deleuze are not commonly grouped together, but the juxtaposition of them in Without Criteria helps to shed light on a variety of issues that are of concern to contemporary art and media practices (especially developments in digital film and video), and to controversies in cultural theory (including questions about commodity fetishism and about immanence and transcendence). Moreover, in his rereading of Whitehead (and in deliberate contrast to the "ethical turn" in much recent theoretical discourse), Shaviro opens the possibility of a critical aesthetics of contemporary culture.
Technologies of Lived Abstraction series
About the Author
Steven Shaviro is DeRoy Professor of English at Wayne State University. He is the author ofPassion and Excess: Blanchot, Bataille, and Literary Theory and The Cinematic Body.
Endorsements
"Shaviro brings Whitehead to center stage and gives us a fascinating new vision for contemporary philosophy. By demonstrating the richness and timeliness of his concepts, Shaviro's book will inspire other scholars and, I hope, inaugurate a return to Whitehead."
—Michael Hardt, Duke University and co-author of Empire and Multitude
—Michael Hardt, Duke University and co-author of Empire and Multitude
"In this work of great poise and deep insight Steven Shaviro draws a new and important diagram of the relations between the philosophies of Kant, Whitehead, and Deleuze. In so doing, he opens up novel and productive lines of enquiry for each thinker, most notably in the field of aesthetics. This is a book of mature and yet quick-witted philosophical critique with ramifications through many contemporary problems and debates (in philosophy, critical theory, theology and aesthetics—to name but some). Very few readers will fail to be touched and excited by the ideas he develops with free-ranging boldness tempered by an appropriate aesthetic feel and tact. Shaviro achieves the extraordinarily difficult task of combining thoughtful rigour, intellectual generosity free of resentments and compartments, and carefully argued textual interpretation."
—James Williams, University of Dundee
—James Williams, University of Dundee