Thesis

Networked Forms

Abstract

Introduction

Significance of the Issue

The way we experience 'space' is changing. The way we live our everyday lives has change from being local to global, static to dynamic. It is as Michael Benedict points out in Cyberspace: First Steps Ever more dependent upon channels of communication, even more saturated by the media, even more reliant on the vast traffic in invisible data and ever more connected to the computers that manage it, we are becoming each day divided more starkly in the entertainers and the entertained, the informationally inept. Bombarded everywhere by images of opportunity and escape, the very circumstances of a tree and meaningful human life have become kaleidoscopic, vertiginous. Under these conditions, the definition of reality itself has become uncertain There has been many factors which have changed our sense of space and made us more conscious of its organization. Sensors and actuators, ubiquitous computing, information technologies, surveillance society and networked interactions have change our concept of space and how we relate to it. Because of this, the very definition of what 'space' and how we experience it has been called into question.

'Space' has always been the root of many debates in the architectural discourse. Although architects have mainly focus on 'Euclidean space', it is also discussed epistemologically, phenomenologically, culturally, socially, semantically etc. Michael Bendict posits that Insubstantial and invisible, space is yet somehow there and here, penetrating, and all around us. Space, for most of us, hovers between ordinary, physical existence and something other. Thus it alternates in our minds between the analyzable and the absolutely given. Or so it was until modern physics and mathematics revealed space's anatomy, as it were, show its inextricably from the sinews of nature of knowing itself. The early part of the twentieth century saw post-Euclidean geometry and the Theory of General Relativity admit the concepts of curvature and higher dimensions, introducing "inertial frames," "manifold" "local coordinate systems" and "space-time" to all discourses about space. These ideas had myriad practical consequences. Physical space, we learned, is not passive but dynamic, not simple but complex, not empty but full.(125, Cyberspace: the first steps)

Over the past two decades, the artificial network of the internet has position itself as another form of spatial experience. Because the network of the internet has embedded itself into our reality, it has called into question the very discourse of architecture itself. An extended lineage of theorists deployed a comparative logic to transform architecture in a system composed of interlocking and equally valued elements, operating as a kind of biological mechanism, and evolving on many fronts. Architecture itself became a discourse that could move sideways. No longer standing still, looking up and obeying timeless orders, the discourse fixed its eye on the horizon and started to explore an ever-widening territory.(The Architectural Brain, 32)

In the coming years, architects will witness a change in the way they practice, design and construct spaces. Interactive and virtual environments influenced by ubiquitous computing, sensors and actuators, environmental data and information visualization are all possibilities in affecting the practice of architecture. The need for interaction design has become especially acute with respect to computers, the first truly interactive technology. No longer just a tool for producing documents, networked computing has long since become a social medium. As recently pioneer Brenda Laurel declared in the early 1990's "the real significance of computing has become its capacity to let us take part in shared representation of action." These representation can be of organizations, activities, problems, work practices, communities of interest, and not just predictable numerical models. (Malcolm McCullough, Digital Ground page 4) Because of the increasing use of technology, the way we experience our built environment today is much different than we did ten years ago. Today much of our time are spent in the immersive environment on any given community located on the internet.

As a result of today's ubiquitous technological influences and networked societies, architecture can now be seen as relational, process dependent and influenced by situations of a dynamic all of which are constantly changing. Forms can now be conceived from the initial phases of design as pieces that can be retrofitted to become part of a dynamic system that alters state over a period of time. From facades which can alter their presence based on sensing the environment, to mediated spaces which blur the boundaries of "the real" and "the virtual," a new typology in the field of architecture is now being created. The time has come for architects to engage, understand and even question relevance of mediated spaces constructed in our society today.

Within the past few years, the perceptions of how our reality would adapt to the technology 'the virtual' has drastically altered. The virtual on an everyday basis is in fact the reality of the experiences on the internet. Those of us who are connected to the internet are trapped confines of two realities which are profound tension with each other. We can see this is changes from the use of the hand mouse to touch screens, intelligent networks such as Amazon and Facebook which adapt to the information which you have entered into your account. Networks like these are constantly seeking out new information to understand the users. These systems could in the near future begin to alter our physical experiences as well based on the collective which exists in a particular network. Image the space of Facebook for instance using event information to alter and adapt to the personalities, likes and dislikes the event goers in the physical space. We have clearly moved away from the ideas of the ‘Gibsonian cyberspace in which users would loose consciousness of the real world and lose themselves in a universe of abstract forms and disembodied perspectives, the contemporary debate has shifted onto the terrain of globalization. The most common image of cyberspace used to be that of a virtual-reality environment characterized by direct interface and full immersion (data, gloves, goggles, embedded microchips and electrodes), now the image is that of a common space of information flows in which the political and cultural stakes are played out.”

For this thesis, I will take the position that 'space' is defined by the shared experience between an individual and their environment. Because humans in general are wired to interact with one another, the experience of 'Euclidean space' is augmented social interactions. A case can be made that our reality is define by the symbiotic relationship of Euclidean space and the social infrastructure. Today information technologies has penetrated the social infrastructure. David Tomas points out that an individual is a continuously constructed product of a similar intersection or junction of social spaces and cannot therefore be considered to exist in a unified homogeneous space. The body, in face, "works in Euclidean space, but it only works there. It sees a projective space; it touches, caresses, and feels in a topological space; it suffers in another; hears and communicates in a third; and so forth, as far as one wishes to go." As a result, architects and designers must take into account an array of possibilities because of dependence on these technologies today. The experience of space is transformed through the use of mediated technology and our information and networked society.

"Communication technologies do more than just link different localities. Pathways and roads, canals and railways, telegraphs and satellites modify the speed at which goods, ideas, micro-organisms, animals and people encounter and transform each other. They actively mold what they connect by creating new topological configurations and thus effectively contributing to the constitution of geopolitical entities such as cities and regions, or nations and empires."(Terranova, Page 40)

The internet has proven itself to be a network which acts as a catalyst for interaction between distant participants. It affects the time and space because it can be access at from almost anywhere in the world and at hour of the day. The internet as it exist today does work with standard time; it actually works detach from the hours and minutes which exists in our physical spaces. Terranova points out that "the internet participates in the emergence of a globalized culture, following and expressing the fractal folds of a spatiality that twists and knots together different scales of interaction-the local and the global, but also the regional and the national."

(Malcolm McCullough, Digital Ground page 4)

Implications of Spatial Consequences Online!

Part I: Network Analysis

Rise of Networks

Network Topologies

Social Interactions

Physical Sociability

Digital Sociability

Part II: Information Visualization: Representing Networks:

Part III: Physical Interpretation

Intro to Physicalization

Precedents: Three specific types of precedents have been chosen to highlight the various approaches in visualizing social network condition. The first highlight Mark Lombardi's Global Network Structure. His drawings are well know in network theory and analysis because of the controversial context he depicted within his drawings. Lombardi's network structures are simple ink on paper diagrams, which focus on a specific social condition in our society. The second type discusses a mediated condition by discussing Ben Fry's Valence project. He has chosen construct network structures which allow for screen based interactions. The users is able to engage the network through the use of a keyboard and/or mouse to navigate through its construction. Finally, the third type looks at physical manifestation of a network structures. The three projects include Usman Haque, Involving Sonic Environment, Listening Post, and Rafael Lozano-hemmer, relational Architecture.

Intangible Network Structure

Mark Lombardi: Global Networks

Global Networks: Mark Lombardi

Mediated Conditions

Publications:

Ben Fry: Valence

Writings:

Valence?

Immersive Network Structures.

Publications:

Rob Davis & Usman Haque – Evolving Sonic Environment

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

Listening Post: Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen

Writing:

Sonic Environment by Usman Haque
Listening Posts Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen
Relational Architecture by Rafael Hemmer

Development of the Form:
The development of the physical form which houses the components were derived through investigating each component individually. Starting with the cube as the form and carving out the needs of each component. The simple need to hand the object and having it move to different height levels played a role altered the shape to a rounder form. The cube is very axial and would often shift its axial position when it started to move. Additionally, when the other components were added to it, such as the lcd screen with its weight shift the cube off balance. The wiring and their attachment to the cube became a factor and influence the cubes alteration.

HUBS:\\ The physical installation is compose of three hubs. Each hub is has one of three color associated with it. Connected to it's digital self, each hub is linked to a user profile on Facebook. This association is based one of three individual most active within a network of connections. The three hubs, linked to profile page, are activated physically through weighted data. For example, the forms may based on the frequency of conversation that has occur within a given period time. Each one of the hubs can be replaced by another digital user based on the level of activity within that given period of time.

In the perspective of Deleuze and Guattari, we are being changed from 'arborial' beings rooted in time and space, to 'rhizomic' nomads who daily wander at will across the globe, and even beyond it through communications satellites, without necessarily moving our bodies at all.(The information subject, page 17)

Page 101 Although our information society is rooted in

Questions to Answer:
What is the connection between Digital and Physical Environment?
How is the Data travel from the Digital to the Physical Environment?
What particular data is traveling between the two spaces?
What is being affected by the data?
What does the affect on the object actually imply?
What experience does this bring to the physical space?
How does a user engage the objects within the physical space?
Does the interaction with the physical object get recorded?

Literature Citations

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