Intersections of Language
In an age of massive change, how have traditions evolved?
It feels more and more like traditions themselves (the old growth trees of our culture), are in short supply. Given the digital revolution and its implications for the future of learning how architecture is a force for good in culture, it feels as though the profession of architecture no longer rests on a discernible epistemological ground, at times. Given the progress made in the technological and cultural spheres in the larger profession (or intent to progress, in some cases) of design, how do we understand history anew in the process of creating BIM-centric and parametric-oriented everything, the internet of objects we’re all supposedly dreaming of. If one thing is clear, the the laws of physics haven’t changed, but our understanding of them has.
The growth of intuition
The theory explaining how the Earth’s moon formed has changed a number of times in the past 100 years; and it certainly was not the moon which reformulated itself based on our new understanding. We changed our thinking as our understanding of advanced predictive (reversed) modeling, sampling, and analysis of lunar facts, which has influenced formation theory in deep ways. We’ve learned and adapted to fit what we understand about the physical world into a further study. A feedback loop, in short. Sometimes these feedback loops are forces for good, sometimes they are runaway processes of their own, finding the limit.
The effect of this iterative process (known as science) is perhaps is a deeper sense of questioning what we know, and how we know about the world around us. The door to perception opens and we’re suddenly able to hold new facts aloft, to study them and consider their implications in relation to other known* ideas. Even if the problems are wicked ones… and there are certainly wicked problems about. Income inequality, challenges posited by globalization on local environments, and ineffective governance as related to the regulation of assault weapons, and the massive impact of our choices on the climate, to name a few.
An intuitive mind might take the stance of ‘knowing’ as given. “Yes we KNOW the climate is suffering, but what are we doing about it?” But it’s clear to me this process involves just as much unlearning as learning, very often. Doubt enters the picture. What we see ourselves as convinced of, may in fact be entirely cultural in origin, and thereby not only mutable, but purposefully reconfigurable. Nature loves a module.
Escher’s Treadmill
The sets of potential origins of the majority of human behavior is rich ground for study in my view. We are endlessly complex creatures with nearly limitless capabilities for experiencing a wide range of emotions and thoughts. Add a few more characters and you’ve created a puzzle of complexity larger than imaginable. However we have internal tools to handle these types of complex interactions between ‘others’ — namely culture itself. It may not seem particularly scientific or productive to share a meme related to an emotion or story, but I believe the underlying mechanism of such a process might start to explain how we develop relationships which are meaningful rather than siloed. We have internal social rev-limiters; sorts of intuitive predictive algorithms of our own which are constantly running in the background, wondering how we fit into our environment. Neil Leach’s Camouflage studies the implications of such an idea. We are reflexive elements of our environments. Improving and looking to improve those same environments is fraught with long and drawn out and officiated processes, and for good reason (they resemble games at times). No one person should have the kind of agency required for reconstituting an entire city. Such a process is inherently a multi-party process involving many players, citizens, and laborers.
Which brings me to the notion of form. One way of experiencing how creativity and thinking is linked to a larger sphere of meaning is in seeing the results of our labor in the world. Should one help clean up a neighborhood, paint a mural, or participate in a community forum, one has set out on the path of making meaning. Does the same apply to someone who has set out to create an artwork? In the collective sense there may be ideas one riles against, or for — formulating cultural groups with fluctuating identities. But the intent — form, or its absence is perhaps what relates back to us. How do we FEEL about what we’ve created? The impact we have or have not had on the places we live? How does walking through our city make us feel? Fundamentally this is how we experience the world, not through an academic lens of influence and history, but through experience.
So in creating any given form, what then is the most important element of the design, say of a building? Perhaps context (temporal and geographic) is the strongest contender, but there are other influences. Think of the spirit of a place for example, how does one relate to such a thing other than by sampling what it has to offer?
I’ll stay here, on Escher’s treadmill. Wondering about the interconnection of all processes as one. Some sort of organized dream which is impossible and relates to everything and nothing.
