The Asignifying Affordance of
Assemblage
A Heuristic of the Energetics of
the Exteriority of Relations
This
is an outline of a research project on urban architecture cartography based
on the Movement-Image and its exhaustion through enabling
constraints/obstructions. The project was developed by Andrej Radman and
Marc Boumeester, researchers at the Delft School of Design, Faculty of
Architecture at the Delft University of Technology. It is an education
program consisting of research driven design practice that strives to set
up collaborative networks which include the Faculties of Architecture at
Cambridge University, Nanjing University, University of Liverpool and AA
London.
Urban architecture cartography is governed by the following pragmatic 'rules' of composition:
Identify and subtract the
'unique' or hegemonic meta-signifier
Construct a multiplicity using only a number of available dimensions
Prevent the fallacy of reducing
a multiplicity to either One or Many
To get in touch send an e-mail to AAA@3xA.org
___________________________________________________________________________________
News:
23-02-2012 DSD MSc 3 AAA organizes research trip to
Cambridge- London-Liverpool from April 21-26 2012
25-02-2012 This year’s International Architecture Exhibition
- the Venice Biennale - hosts a special program called the “Biennale Sessions”,
with the theme Common Ground. Under this special program, la Biennale offers
the possibility to stipulate an agreement granting a number of benefits to
groups of at least 50 participants (teachers and students) from any single
educational institution. Under the title AAA Urban Architecture Cartography, TU
Delft, Delft School of Design, will take part in the program in the form of a
workshop/seminar and site visit by MSc 3/4 students
__________________________________________________________________________________
Glossary
≠
Signifying/General
ASIGNIFYING
=
Significant/Singular (Extraordinary)
≠
Function
AFFORDANCE
=
Relation (Pragmatic)
≠ Object
ASSEMBLAGE
=
Objectile (Event)
≠ Method
HEURISTIC
=
Trial & Error (Aesthetic)
≠
Extensive
ENERGETICS
=
Intensive (difference which makes a difference)
≠
Anthropocentric
EXTERIORITY of Relations
=
Ecological (Life-form + Environment)
As Robin Evans diagnosed, the peculiar disadvantage under which
architects labour is that they never work directly
with the object, but through an intervening medium which is almost always the
drawing, "while painters and sculptors, who might spend some time working
on preliminary sketches and maquettes, all end up
working on the thing itself." The paradoxical separation between the doer
and the deed often causes architects to commit the fallacy of misplaced
concreteness by treating concrete actual entities as if they were categories of
thought or representation. AAA seeks to invigorate
radical empiricism (speculative pragmatism) as a means of tapping not into the
solipsistic world of design, but into the relation of exteriority or the design
of the world. Such anti-representational disposition resonates strongly with
Felix Guattari's Ethico-Aesthetics,
or ecological experimentation, that seeks to challenge all-too-reductive egological conceptions of power relations, be they
neoliberal democratic or Marxist revolutionary, constituted by the Habermasian consensus or conversely by Mouffe’s
agonism.
AAA is
shorthand for what contemporary neuro-cognitive
sciences classify under the dynamic system theory (DST). Perception cannot be
considered independently because it is defined as an evolved adaptive and
constructive assemblage of the life-form and its environment. The founder of
the ecological school of perception James Jerome Gibson insisted that
perception is for action. Consequently, the environment - as the lawful source
of information about the risks and opportunities afforded - cannot be
considered independently of perception either. The traditional chasm between
the "two cultures" -- quasi-objective scientific empirical and
quasi-subjective humanistic speculative -- as well as the categories of the
knower and known, become obsolete. Gilles Deleuze's
advice is to start from the middle (milieu) instead, hence the importance of
the current Affective Turn, between the too abstract (infinity) and not
abstract enough (finitude).
This daring trial-and-error approach was adopted by the Danish film
director Lars Von Trier in the psycho-cinematic experiment “The Five
Obstructions” (2003), where he challenged the epic cinema-veteran Jørgen Leth to remake his highly
original short film “The Perfect Human” (1967) no less than five times. As soon
as Leth produces a version Von Trier enforces a new
set of obstructions. Ultimately, the product results in the complete surrender
of all authorship notwithstanding Leth’s responsibility
for it. The purpose of this game is
to 'rid ourselves of ourselves' #1.
As much as this is a film about film, it is also a film about embracing
constraints (Nietzschean amor fati). As there is no distinction between
the process, content and production #3,
the precedent will serve as the guideline for the AAA
project.
The participants will be asked to re-make their cinematographic mapping
-- the assemblages of mediascape, ethnoscape,
ideoscape, technoscape --
according to a set of obstructions defined by tutors every time anew. In this
way cartography becomes less and less extensive, making way for an exploration
of extrinsic capacities/tendencies, rather than intrinsic properties. Chiseling
away the number of dimensions rather than adding them #2 will allow the participants to act within the realm of the
affective (connectivity and heterogeneity)
in an unprecedented free and provoking way. The attunement to the rates of change is a crucial step
towards the mapping of agencies,
which is not to be confused with the agency of mapping. The participants will
launch probes into the immersive post-humanist space, towards the intensive
space which is the real (virtual) condition of possibility of the extensive
(actual) space.
The participants will work collectively but will be individually
responsible for specific sections of the process. Although the outcome and the
medium will not be predetermined, a concrete result is expected nevertheless.
The AAA project will consist of a colloquium, introductory lectures, collective
viewings, collective field work and studio sessions. A detailed description of
the program will be provided on request.
Marc BOUMEESTER (Amsterdam, 1965) has been working for various major television-
and film-producing companies and realized over 60 products, varying from
commercials to drama series and feature films. Combining his affection for
architecture with his knowledge of instable media resulted in a number of
collaborative experimental research projects involving master-students and
fellow researchers, situated in various countries around the globe.
Currently he is
appointed as lecturer and researcher at the Delft University of Technology,
Delft School of Design, he has co-founded (and leads) the department of
Interactive / Media / Design at the Royal Academy of Art in The Hague and he
lectures in the field of media theory. His research focuses on the liaison
between human perception, architectural conditions and instable media, in
particular cinema.
Publications
(selection):
- Boumeester,
Marc, “Reconsidering Cinematic Mapping; Halfway between Collected Subjectivity
and Projective Mapping” 2011, Urban Cinematics,
(Intellect, Bristol), pp. 239- 56.
- Boumeester,
Marc, “Bridging Alterities; Mediating Media” 2011,
Film and Media Conference London, University of London, United Kingdom.
- Boumeester,
Marc, “City and the Agency of Moving Image après Debord”
2011, Atmophere 2011, University of Manitoba, Canada.
- Boumeester,
Marc, “Designing Paradigm Shifts; Follow and Lead” 2010, Cumulus Conference,
Genk, Belgium.
- Boumeester,
Marc, “Projective Mapping; using collected subjectivity to depict future
memory” 2010, Mapping, Memory and the City Conference, University of Liverpool,
United Kingdom.
- Boumeester,
Marc, “Cinematic Mapping Reviewed; Transitioning to ‘Collected Subjectivism’ by
transferring media typologies” 2009, Film, City and Narrative Conference, University
of Cambridge, UK
Andrej RADMAN (Zagreb, 1968) is a licensed architect who has won a number of
awards from national competitions in partnership with architect Igor Vrbanek, including the Croatian Association of Architects
annual award for housing architecture in Croatia in 2002.
Radman has been teaching design studios and theory courses at TU Delft
Faculty of Architecture in The Netherlands since 2004. In 2008 he joined the
teaching and research staff of the Delft School of Design (DSD) as Assistant
Professor of Architecture. A graduate of the Zagreb School of Architecture in
Croatia, he received a Master's Degree with Honours from the TU Delft Faculty
of Architecture. His current doctoral research focuses on radical empiricism in
general and J.J. Gibson's ecological approach to perception in particular. He
is a member of the National Committee on Deleuze
Scholarship.
Publications
(selection):
- Radman, Andrej,
"Figure, Discourse: To the Abstract Concretely" in Cognitive
Architecture - From Bio-Politics To Noo-Politics,
ed. Deborah Hauptmann and Warren Neidich (Rotterdam:
010 Publishers, 2010), pp. 430-451.
- Radman, Andrej, "How
did Neutelings and Riedijk
in one decade pass from WHAT?-WOW! to WOW!-WHAT?" in Oris
(No. 59, 2009), pp. 48-52.
- Radman, Andrej,
"Phase Portrait of Public Interior; or How Uexküll
Made Peaceful Active Coexistence Possible" in Čovjek
i Prostor (Vol. LV, No.
1-2, 2008), pp. 64-66.
- Radman, Andrej,
"Through the Forests and Mountains of the Epigenetic Landscape: The
Importance of Being Weissmann" in Čovjek i Prostor (Vol. LIII, No. 5-6, 2006), pp. 28-31.
- Radman, Andrej and Deborah
Hauptmann, “Northern Line” in Deleuze and Architecture, ed. Hélène Frichot and Stephen Loo (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, forthcoming)
- Radman, Andrej, GIBSONISM:
Ecologies of Architecture (forthcoming).
THERE'S NO REPRESENTATION,
ONLY ACTION – THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL
The Thesis of Immanence (AAA #1)
[Against
transcendence: Identify and subtract
the 'unique' or hegemonic meta-signifier]
At one time, PRACTICE
was considered an application of THEORY, a consequence; at other times,
it had an opposite sense and it was thought to inspire theory …
In any event, their
relationship was understood in terms of a process of totalization.
For us, however, the question is seen in a different light. The relationships
between THEORY and PRACTICE are far more partial and fragmentary.
…
The relationship
which holds in the application of a theory is never one of resemblance. …
PRACTICE is a set of relays
from one theoretical point to another and THEORY is a relay from one
practice to another. …
A theorizing
intellectual, for us, is no longer a subject, a representing or representative
consciousness. …
Representation no
longer exists; there’s only action – theoretical action and practical action which
serve as relays and form networks.
(M. Foucault and G. Deleuze, 1977)
ASK NOT WHAT'S
INSIDE YOUR HEAD BUT WHAT YOUR HEAD'S INSIDE OF
The Thesis of Multiplicity (AAA
#2)
Ever since Descartes, psychology has been held back by the doctrine that
what we have to perceive is the PHISICAL WORLD that is described by physics.
I am suggesting that what we have to perceive and cope with is the world
considered as the ENVIRONMENT.
We cannot hope to understand natural stimuli by analogy with socially
coded stimuli,
for that would be like putting the cart before the horse.
(J.J. Gibson, 1979)
PHYSICAL WORLD ENVIRONMENT
INDIRECT perception DIRECT
perception
Descartes Gibson
CORRELATION(ISM) (EN)ACTION
interpretation involvement/synaesthetic
& kinaesthetic
hermeneutic extended, embedded, embodied and
affective
INTERIOR EXTERIOR
passive active/proporioception
computation resonance
MECHANICS RECIPROCITY
general laws b/w life-form & environment
OBJECTIVITY MULTIPLICITY
myth of the given emergence/dynamic
structure
properties capacities
DUALISM IMMANENCE
subject vs. object milieu/middle
private mind vs. public world 'superject' and 'objectile'
extended matter/unextended mind continuum
MEANING PRAGMATISM
as inference/matter literally meaningless affordance/signifiance
associative/bucket theory of mind differential/searchlight
TOM
LINEARITY RECURSIVITY
input/output feed-back-forward/transduction
space antecedent to movement space
as derivative of movement
a priori (*)neither a priori nor a posteriori
REPRESENTATION AFFECT
rationalism/mentalism empiricism/pluralism
Cogito ergo sum Sentio
ergo sum
(I think therefore I am) (I
feel therefore I am)
Perception is DIRECT and therefore unmediated by cognitive processes. It
is not an event enclosed within the perceiver's mind, rather, it is a detection
of structures that emerge within the RECIPROCAL movement that plays back and forth
across the perceiver and the environment. This is the Gibsonian
challenge to the Cartesian mind-body dualism that continues to haunt the
discipline of architecture despite (or perhaps because) of the so called
digital turn.
BEING IGNORANT
OF MOTION IS BEING IGNORANT OF NATURE
The Thesis of Irreducibility (AAA #3)
[Against structure(lism): Prevent the fallacy
of reducing a multiplicity to either
One or Many]
neither nor nor…
MANY ONE IN-BETWEEN
Chicken Egg Chegg
micro-reductionism macro-reductionism hybrid
undermining overmining romanticising the marginal
It is not about
bringing all sorts of things under a (single) concept but about relating each
concept (multiplicity) to the variables that determine its mutation.
… rather
ONE
= ALL
Ignorato motu ignoratur natura T.Aquinas, 1224-1274
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Links
Delft School of Design (DSD)
http://www.delftschoolofdesign.eu
Royal Academy of Art (KABK)
Academy of Visual Arts (Artez-AKI)
Marc Boumeester (MB)
Radman Vrbanek
Arhitekti (RVA)
Arhikord (AK)
© 2012 Boumeester / Radman