AA Intermediate Unit 3 Extended Brief 2011/12 Unit Masters: Nannette Jackowski and Ricardo de Ostos
Post Cyberpunk Codec
The-Diavik-Diamond-Mine-Canada
“If you want a new measure of rationality in this world, one that suits the complexity we are creating, you will need new concepts, new tools, new arrangements, and perhaps even new gods to replace those old ones like individuality, rationality, predictability, and the like.” --- The Techno-Human Condition, Braden R. Allenby and Daniel Sarewitz
(Environmental) complexity and (social) participation are Inter 3’s main research concerns when exploring infrastructures and social conditions. Technological pre/post digital possibilities are growing rapidly, getting ever more complex and multiplying our ways to interact with each other and with the urban and natural surroundings exponentially. However our understanding of the environment around us does not match the same speed. While we seem to long for organic food, recycle our waste, despise blood diamonds, buy fair-trade coffee, tweet our hearts online, upload our intimacy on corporate I-Clouds and strive for ‘different interactions and experiences’ we, 21st century global citizen, can hardly grasp the environments we create, alter and re-shape simply by being. In this scenario technological action and social reaction are not that straight forward and transparent, they are ambiguous at best.
India_Oil_Depot_Fire
This techno-social charade is a contemporary condition. While individuals might ignore or do not suspect the complexity and implications of piling up landfills on the outskirts of their towns, growing e-waste landscapes in distant worlds, exhausted abandoned mines, underground sweat factories, nonrecyclable nuclear sites, … How does the public participate? Beyond the basic concept of the social and the public, that is ’giving shelter’, architecture can and should also speculate about possibilities of how spaces and cities will adapt to the techno-social condition. Tales of wondrous unnatural opportunities, unexpected man-machine symbiosis, prototyped visions and cautionary stories about unforeseen catastrophic scenarios Inter 3 will explore many ways to create architectural spaces and enrich ambiguous situations. Edward Burtynsky, Alberta Oil Sands
AA Intermediate Unit 3 Extended Brief 2011/12 Unit Masters: Nannette Jackowski and Ricardo de Ostos
Focusing on interactive infrastructures, this year Inter 3 will study adaptation and technological nature based on myths of the digital/physical. The world has advanced in aggressive networks and diverse new ecosystems between natural and technological entities. Although living in a hyper interactive society can be seen as business as usual, nothing seems to be the same. If urban life was in a way detached from supporting regional infrastructures (waste dumps, farms, factories) now the digital world has provided an ever more complex web of inter-personal and inter-geographical relations.
Ghost in the Shell
We will enter a brave new world of excitement, fun and entertaining ex-infrastructure-now-rollercoaster experience where it is more and more difficult to understand not only the immediate but also the long-term consequences of our actions and lifestyle. We will investigate the ever increasing complexity of digital infrastructures to discuss possible environments and relationships these can generate. As in previous years Inter 3 will continue to explore the techno-human condition via design narratives and infrastructural speculations. Following the traces of sci-fi literature genre ‘post-cyberpunk’ we will study the complex interrelations between technology, fabrication and the role of the individual in the process of being part and shaping/altering an environment. Counter to the myth of technological precision – of simplistic technophile and optimistic human adaptation - we welcome uncertainty, provocation and speculation. From symbiotic buildings to mechanical interactive terrains, we will constantly navigate between design and make, test and build, observe, adapt, re-make, dream and act.
Technological Nature
Our research will focus on dynamic technological natures based cultural patterns. We will study concepts of participation and DIY attitude in relation to techno-infrastructures to inspire new design opportunities and the creation of individual ecologies. Instead of looking for puzzling new technology equations and solutions, we will develop collaborative environments. Stories: lava landscapes, seismic terrains, data collecting institutes, phantom observatories, augmented reality ghost. Acting as agent provocateurs we will blur the logic of corporations embedded in advanced technologies and crossbreed these with narratives and myths while investigating man made fields. 1stAveMachine nature
AA Intermediate Unit 3 Extended Brief 2011/12 Unit Masters: Nannette Jackowski and Ricardo de Ostos
Deus Ex Human Revolution cityscape
Inter 3 is open to individual talents/skills and multiple forms of design/presentation methods, however, three aspects shall unify the rather diverse research and output: 1-
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The production of an interdisciplinary interactive architecture being able to transit between effective and poetic modes (documented through process and identified in the final product), architectural spaces and infrastructural fields; A personal and inquisitive view of architecture, engaged with broader societal issues; Fictional and literary inspirations informing process and/or programme (including video games, graphic novels, sci-fi films and classic fiction).
Most importantly, we are a design unit. If design was a language how would you express yourselves? The unit will continue having a strong focus on atmospheric expressive drawings and series of working prototypes. How can drawings ‘talk’ and express passion, disagreement, tolerance, refusal and criticism? Ambient drawing involves material choices, light conditions, space qualities and human emotions, sensual experiences. We highly encourage students to develop a very personal working method, design obsession and virtuosity.
Michael Najjar photograph - man made?
Arduino Board
A series of workshops, talks and individual tutorials will clarify how digital drawings and physical models can define a project’s ambience and ambition. We will empower students with a carefully selected tool kit in order to assist you with the right skills for the right task at the right time. Students are encouraged to research precedents not only in architecture but also in art, science, games and literature. Bearing in mind the intense research led attitude of Inter 3, students will be asked to constantly challenge the role of research and references within their portfolio (enough of Google pictures!). Apple’s Antenna Test Lab
AA Intermediate Unit 3 Extended Brief 2011/12 Unit Masters: Nannette Jackowski and Ricardo de Ostos
Term 1 [12 weeks: 26|09 - 16|12|2011] Guts Glued Ghosts, Go-Go Have you ever jacked together a zombie space? What if your creation becomes alive? In Term 1 we will study decentralized infrastructures moving in-between hardware and software. Starting with the core of man/digital interfaces we will dive deep into the world of techno-human conditions designing speculative scenarios. Part 01 - Makers “A gizmo is neither a ‘machine’ nor a ‘product’. It doesn’t want you to accomplish any task in particular. It wants a relationship; it wants to be an intimate experience, as close to you as your eyebrow.” --- Tomorrow Now, Bruce Sterling
Key aspects are social speculation and DIY culture. How does our close environment enable or disable social co-existence? What is an architectural material today? Focusing on hardware as physical presence we will make, write, hack, read and test things, re-make, hack again and use things. Inspired by Cory Doctorow’s novel ‘Makers’ we will investigate the culture of mass production and opensourced decentralised technology in the form of interactive environments and its creatures. The main idea is to design not only a spatial artefact but to create experimental interfaces. From talking toys to electronic gadgets, students will research via making the ‘intelligence’ behind existing products. We will browse through Argos’ catalogue, junkyards and toyshop megastores to scavenge and utilise existing hardware found in everyday objects. We will experiment with plug-ins, add-ons and unexpected byproducts and create endless combinations and iterations of prototypes and drawings. Confronting realities with personal visions, peculiar characters might merge with interactive biomechanic spaces. From ghost materials, pervasive pets, vampire energy beings, Frankenstein machine gardens to sensorial environments students will generate their own bespoke and fabricated ecology.
The White Drought, Chain Reaction Prototype, Conner Callahan
AA Intermediate Unit 3 Extended Brief 2011/12 Unit Masters: Nannette Jackowski and Ricardo de Ostos
Hannes Karlsson and Fajer Wennerberg
Part 02 - Dial ‘S’ for Sentient
Basmah Kaki
“In terms of the future well-being of our species, does it matter that we are replacing actual nature with technological nature?” --- Technological Nature, Peter H. Kahn, Jr.
Based on their previous prototypes, students will expand their concepts based on implications of the work produced in an environment. Focusing on software, hacking and physical computing students will explore embedded and ubiquitous technology and test, experiment and check for implications in the built environment.
Tom Bernard, Jonas Braoude and Hugo Reichmann
This phase will be supported by very inspiring sci-fi readings which explore the limit of social infrastructure in relation to individual behaviour. What are the effects of your design, what are the implications? Students will be self-critics and investigate the unforeseen effects in their designs using time base tools like CG animation and simulation. The final output of Term 1 will be a carefully crafted dossier consisting of a created world and its fragments including its failures and successes, speculations fabrications and processes. The document should enlighten the reader/viewer upon the subject described. Details, special information and other insider’s items should be included in this critical archaeology of the digital future. Harikleia Karamali
AA Intermediate Unit 3 Extended Brief 2011/12 Unit Masters: Nannette Jackowski and Ricardo de Ostos
Unit Trip “The way to get wonderfully lifelike behaviour is not to try to make a really complex creature, but to make a wonderfully rich environment for a simple creature.”
Neutrino Observatory - Japan
---David Ackley
During our research trip we will look for contrasting environments where natural wilderness and man made cultivation cohabit. Our shock therapy trip will take us to places of extremes, to the primeval techno landscapes of Japan. We will hack a culture of technology and tradition to explore some exciting possibilities in a quintessential cyberpunk nation. Japan emerged in the 80’s as a powerhouse of mass consumer of interactive technology which generated a culture that many times was marked between the absurd and the conventional. From gaming, speculative near future animations to volatile subculture technophiles populating many post-Tokyo scenarios, Inter 3 will scourge the ghettos for cyber myths and contemporary gods.
Godzilla daikaiju
We will visit landscapes where man has changed nature and nature has also tamed men. Active volcanoes, nuclear stations, Gulliver’s kingdom genetically modified crop fields and underground flood control facilities will be a few of our destinations. We will collect, sketch, interview and observe the strangely familiar and the familiarly strange. Gods, rituals and myths of primeval nature will be confronted with mythologies of the near future where biotech monsters, gigantic robots, and a nanotech flora pulsate together. Films like ‘Ghost in the Shell’, ‘Summer Wars’ and ‘Dreams’ among many others will be aiding our journey to the technological nature. The ascension of what Peter H. Kahn describes as ‘Technological Nature’ can largely be found in Japanese diverse environments. Robots, avatars, digital fire places, robotic pets, mediated homes and numerous natural mimic gizmos live side by side creating an ancient, aggressive and highly mediated nature.
Erupting Volcano - Japan
The recent horrific catastrophe and the consequences of natural disasters in highly technological infrastructures like the nuclear plant in Fukoshima occurred despite the existence of highly efficient watch-dog programmes and anti-tsunami measuring technology. Are these events generating an even higher technological demand to mediate nature? Are new labs and observatories, sealed spaces to interact with extreme conditions, mere measuring instruments or can they include unexpected public participation? Water Discharge Tunnel - Japan
Taebeom Kim
AA Intermediate Unit 3 Extended Brief 2011/12 Unit Masters: Nannette Jackowski and Ricardo de Ostos
Charlotte Moe
Term 2 [11 weeks: 09|01 - 23|03|2012]
Harikleia Karamali
Term 3 [9 weeks: 23|04 - 22|06|2012] “You have to be somebody before you can share yourself.” --- You are not a Gadget, Jaron Lanier
The final design will be a speculative research into the future of technological environments. Based on the experiments, prototypes and research from the first term students will develop the final project proposal. The unit encourage second and especially third year students to work collaborative with guest consultants in order to explore the social implications and possibilities technologies explored.
Soonil Kim
3rd Years Technical Studies Inter 3 offers an unique platform for bespoke and innovative Technical Studies. Based on each student’s individual project the TS3 will be a creative research focusing on the development of working prototypes mixing both low and high tech methods. Successful past Inter 3 TS projects involved wind/acoustic energy generation, tidal forces, robotic buildings and aquacultures among many others. Reoccurring TS themes are interactive technology, artificial environments and sensorial ambience (light, atmospheric effects, performative spaces).
Basmah Kaki
AA Intermediate Unit 3 Extended Brief 2011/12 Unit Masters: Nannette Jackowski and Ricardo de Ostos
UnitKey Points Through the interaction of talks, individual tutorials, workshops, etc. we aim to stimulate architectural debates based on constant production – with ideas being shaped into elegant drawings and models. Tutorials . Tutorials are held twice weekly on an individual basis throughout the year. Talks . The unit will promote a series of talks held by us as well as specialist guests in order to explore a variety of spatial narratives and literary inspirations. Specialist Consultants . A part of the unit’s budget is retained to invite specialist consultants to give talks/lectures, form part of juries and/or hold individual tutorials. Juries . Unit internal pin ups and critics are constantly held throughout the year in order to practice and further your presentation skills – graphically, physically and verbally. Juries with high profile guests will take place at least at the end of each term. Portfolios . The process of a project is of high importance to us. Portfolios are expected to contain every stage of development of your project of each term rather than the final product only. They should include all sorts of representation material - drawings, sketches, photographs, collages, renderings, etc. From the first term on you will be encouraged to develop your own unique portfolio language specifically tailored to your project. Our aim is to increase individual diversity and reduce homogeneous architectural output; therefore we will also emphasize a research into drawing and other techniques based on the studied object. Models . 3d computer models are essential to present your project, but we also emphasize physical models and installations of all kinds, scales and stages as they will help you to explore your project from a different angle.
AA Intermediate Unit 3 Extended Brief 2011/12 Unit Masters: Nannette Jackowski and Ricardo de Ostos
Bibliography -----------------------------------------
Makers - Cory Doctorow Rewired, The Post-Cyberpunk Anthology - James Patrick Kelly & John Kessel Lobster - Charles Stross Neuromancer - William Gibson Moxyland - Lauren Beukes Pattern Recognition -William Gibson Technological Nature, Adaptation and the Future of Human Life - Peter H. Kahn, Jr. The Techno-Human Condition - Braden R. Allenby and Daniel Sarewitz Out of Control -Chapter: Industrial Ecology -Kevin Kelly Shaping Things -Bruce Sterling Visionary Architecture –Neil Spiller The BLDG BLOG Book -Geoff Manaugh Ambiguous Spaces –NaJa & deOstos Concept Design 2 -Neville Page, Scott Robertson Interactive Architecture -Michael Fox and Miles Kemp Bioreboot, The Architecture of R&Sie(n) -Giovanni Corbellini Hylozoic Ground -Philip Beesley Proto Architecture: Analogue and Digital Hybrids –Bob Sheil Design through Making –Bob Sheil Pamphlet Architecture 12: Building; Machines -Robert McCarter
Webography ---------------
www.makezine.com www.instructables.com www.howstuffworks.com www.nextnature.net www.newscientist.com www.treehugger.com www.pruned.blogspot.com
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more to come