DIPLOMA 6
UNKNOWN FIELDS DIVISION Strange Times 0 -180° Longitude
“I want to stay as close to the edge as I can without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see from the center.” Kurt Vonnegut
These times are defined by unpredictability. Economic instability and environmental uncertainty make the future a seemingly volatile place, more than ever we try to read signs, spot portents and make predictions of things to come. Fraught with insecurity, these are indeed strange times. Far from the metropolis lie the dislocated hinterlands and remote wildernesses that support the mechanizations of modern living. Diploma 6 - the ‘Unknown Fields Division’ - probes the fertile territory between nature, technology and culture to explore our contemporary condition through critical acts of speculation. We map the complex and contradictory realities of the present as a site of strange and extraordinary futures. The Division is a nomadic design studio embarking on expeditions to explore these unreal and forgotten places, techno-landscapes, alien terrains and obsolete ecologies. The otherworldly sites we encounter afford us a distanced viewpoint from which to survey the consequences of emerging environmental and technological scenarios. Last year we speculated on the reinvention of nature and spun aboriginal creation myths with the modern mining technologies of the Australian ‘Never-Never’. This year we continue to slip suggestively between tradition and science as we voyage to the edge of today, through the strange times of far north Alaska.
AUTTUMN TE ERM 1.
W WEAK SIG GNALS
D Def: In futuress research "weak k signals" may be understood as advanced, nooisy and sociallyly situated indiccators of change in trrends and system ms that constituute raw informaational materiall for enabling annticipatory actiion.
From the Oracles andd Augurs of the t ancients tto the predicttive modellin ng of modernn digital proph hets, wise t the ages a have claiimed to see into i the futurre. Cultures ddiffer in theirr concept men andd charlatans through of time aand their attittudes towards the future, w which are cen ntral to thesee acts of preddiction. Alaskan Inuits, informedd by ancestraal memories of o their envirronments and d its patternss, embrace thhe uncertaintiies of the future w with a deep belief in theeir own adaaptability. Meeanwhile, env vironmental scientists atttempt to assemblee their obserrvations into climate moddels in order to predict the future as precisely as possible. Caught bbetween imp provisation an nd premeditaation these cu ultural relatio onships to lanndscape and time will define thhe future of th he North and d in turn our cities beyond d. We will begin by neggotiating the chaotic, the unpredictablle and the acccidental. W We will be exp plorers in j by time, depploying time--based mediaa to explore nnotions of seequence and chronology. We will be joined luminariees from the fields of film m, animation, storytelling, gaming and choreographhic drawings who will help us tto construct dynamic d spacces of motionn and commo otion, cycles and a shifts, ebbbs and flowss. These coollaborators will augmentt the studio with skills workshops w an nd group disccussions and d through these perrsonal explorrations in tim me you will deevelop your own o language to representt scenarios accross time and a boody of researcch informing a polemical aargument.
FIELD RESEARCH 2.
STRANGE TIMES
As Winter Solstice approaches we will head into the darkness of an eternal night. We will dance along the Date-Line, our paths illuminated by twin electric skies, as we spend neon afternoons in the city and bask under the flickering Aurora in the wilds of the frozen tundra. We will stalk the artic fox, marvel at the vast military outposts scanning the frontier and listen for the roar of ice road truckers snaking along the oil lifeline stretching south. We will discuss predictive modelling with scientists and talk with native communities about an uncertain future. It is a cyclical landscape of natural and artificial time and here in the darkness we will draw on the rich uncertainty of this territory, speculating on possible futures, rewriting histories and altering presents. Joining us on our travels will be a photographer, filmmaker and writer and together we will form a travelling circus of research visits, field reportage, rolling discussions, and impromptu tutorials.
SPRING + SUMMER TERM 3.
AUGURS, ORACLES, OMENS and ALMANACS
The polemics we develop through our time-based explorations will evolve into strategies and tactics, choreographies and dynamic interventions for our far north futures. Students will define their own agendas, taking a critical position towards notions of unpredictability. In the division we do not design ‘architecture as object’, rather we design and illustrate architectural scenarios that become critical instruments for exploring the consequences of emerging technological and ecological conditions. Your work will acknowledge multiple possibilities and parallel futures. Projects may take the form of films, animations, illustrated novels, events, performative models and so on. We ask you to explore alternative forms for the architectural project. We ask you to question the format of a folio and to question the medium in which the project is produced, to question who the audience is for the work and the way it is ultimately disseminated. Dextrous adaptability and contingency thinking alongside agile acts of speculation will serve to build a coherent and sophisticated body of work, exquisitely executed and powerfully argued. Although wonderfully provocative our projects will be grounded in rigorous technical investigation, which will be embedded and tutored within the design studio in collaboration with key experts. Modelled after Lockhead Martins XPlanes division this is the Diploma 6 ‘Skunkworks’ experimental technologies department. Together we embrace and explore technologies from the military, mining, aeronautics, biology and material sciences and investigate how these processes inform architectural innovation. Within the studio we have developed a strong history of award winning technical projects where we emphasise a dialogue between physical material testing and digital experimentation and simulation. In this way your projects will become both a wildly imaginative design speculation and a rigorous technical investigation. It is in this rigor that your projects will find their critical edge. We will develop the role of the architect as agitator and the potential of the architectural project to instigate debate and discussion as opposed to describing discrete objects. You will position your project within a rich history of architectural provocations and develop your own individual polemic that will have a currency beyond the walls of this building and extend into your future practice. Embedded in any worthwhile speculation is the element of risk and we will look for dangerous and confronting projects. We encourage you to brave with your work in an institution that once defined itself by the controversy of its agenda. Joining us in the division will be fellow time travellers from the worlds of technology, science and fiction and together we will examine the Unknown Fields between cultivation and nature and spin cautionary tales of a new kind of wilderness.