TOWARDS HYPER - TRANSPATIAL ECOLOGIES OF CO-EXISTENCE
STUDENT NO - 20073651 RESERACH CLUSTER - 16 DAYE -29/7/2021 TUTOR - EMMANOUIL ZAROUKAS M.ARCH URBAN DESIGN BARTLETT SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE ,UCL
CONTENTS Abstract
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1. The Transitory Anthropocene
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2. The Onotlogical Entanglement Of The Human And Non-Humans
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3. Ecology For By Of And As Objects
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3.1Biolgical Ecology 3.2Human Relationships Of Ecology 3.3Ecology As Objects By Objects 3.4Ecologies Geenrated By Artificial Intelligence 4. Ecology As Collection Of Hyperobejcts
M.ARCH URBAN DESIGN BARTLETT SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE ,UCL
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5. Nous Of Cosmos Era- Engineering Existence Into Trans-Species 6. Bibliography
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7. Figure List
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ABSTRACT
The aim here is to redefine terminologies like ecology, ideology, geology ,materiality, nature , information and collective intelligence collapsing in all together to form / design ecosystems of existence , designed / engineered to harbour evolution of a new era, with more awareness than before of all planetary scales forces at play . To suggest a post anthropocentric/ nous of cosmos era.The study aims at understanding what ontology can provide us as the first step towards alienation of self centeredness to understanding the ontology of other intelligences to evolve into better existence changing the social , political structures as we know it today. The anthropocene era is a geological era marked that shows large scale transformations done by the humans, on the planetary scale that has drastically altered landscape.This era introduced the machinic systems that have helped human achieve their personal aspirations. This era largely comprises of the industrial revolutions accelerating into the digital age, where the physicality is drastically controlled by information, data flows throughout the planet. This layer of information is an intangible layer, which is as virtual as physical, but the “human earth” cannot function otherwise. Digital evolution has led to many accidents that have accelerated our worlds in unimaginable ways.Digital era is an era where the definitions of built environment are as temporal and permanent in its existence as it can get. An era of hyper reality where, as Timothy Morton mentions, many hyper objects exist at the same time, time which is a relative entity to one ontology and almost extinct to another. An era where, metaverse has collapsed in one timeline, living in many metaverse, where what is spatiality is not just limited to physicality anymore. New forms of spaces, species and innovation keep occurring at greater speed which have collapsed the traditional meaning of economical, political and social structures. The world is a feedback loop made of geometries, political borderlines, humans relying on machine visions to read the world, claiming rights on data and information on the planet. The planet is a territorial machine where now, the information is the input of machine systems.This territorial machine has many parts, where the parts are expandable and more important than the whole, as the part evolves so does the whole. From the satellite, the planet imagery forms patterns at every scale of resolution. These patterns store information of every level. If investigated ,could tell us about the human, natural, digital systems in play. This study aims at asking questions to provoke thoughts , visions and ideas. What is natural and digital? What is the nature of existence in today’s day and time? What is spatiality?
Figure 1 | The Anthropocene 4
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1 THE TRANSITORY ANTHROPOCENE
This section aims at tive of ideologies and
Figure 2 | Deleuze’s vector field of societies of control
providing concepts
a brief overview of the essay suggesdiscussed in depth in the essay ahead.
In Gilles Deleuze’s paper A Postscript on the Societies of Control, a dystopian view of contemporary society is presented. Deleuze explicates the way that socio-physiological systems are control mechanisms competing to impose their own interests upon the individual. He sees the corporation as a most dangerous example and pervades that it invisibly redefines individual notions of human condition, to sinister effect.The imagery he provides uses a vector field, with each vector representing an individual human actor or non-human force. These directional arrows, like compass headings, denote individual trajectories derived by the combination of the individual’s desires and the desires of those around them. Representing the current societal structure, where we create accidental formations or timelines. Deleueze’s undertaking of the societal hierarchies and structure resonates with the modern day as well. He was able to speculate in 1992 that any mechanism developed that gives freedom at any position or point of time with an open environment is not be perceived as science fiction this statement resonates the open environment technology has been to provide to the humans, nonetheless a society that is highly driven by personal aspirations ends up creating hierarchies and structures. In this sense then,human aspirations and labour are the most significant force on earth impacting the way of living and our environment. These structural organisations are the most convenient ways of functioning where the top few powerful people organise and control such behaviours. The impact of political assertiveness , rendering countries trying to establish power by creating nuclear reactors, had led to the Chernobyl disaster, where humans as species had no rendition of what a faulty reactor would lead to. This disaster is one such process where humans have managed to create an environment inhabiting its own timeline , a hyper object that has rendered a regional impact , transforming the way the humans are forced to interact in this environment. It is an entity that has its own time and scale as an environment. It also is an object that now transforms the landscape in the territories of its reach. The object itself now is a landscape of ruins that stands in permanence so as to define a new landscape of study altogether. The anthropocene is an era of multiple hyper objects created by human actions and the most profound one has been industrial landscapes that have managed to terraform and create new territories that are a composition of machinic activities and human desires .Referred to as machine landscapes, increasingly becoming an extension to support the human lifecycle and synthetic intelligences fosters blurring the boundaries of natural and artificial.
Figure 3 | Human labour ; Industrial park in China 6
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They also present us with new forms of spatiality and aesthetics which are often known as destructive in nature but also makes us question when the ideal idea of nature has now become utopic , how do we go forward to evolve? When the human is part of nature , does artificial also become nature? The manufacturing and landfill and recycling landscapes provide the reality of the colgies that are being generated and ignored from the human lifestyle. These trash and waste substances that have long life cycles are consumed and disregarded into an invisible land farm from the immediate reality.The imagery of microchips collected to recycle, suggestive of spatial topography when investigated thoroughly provokes a dominant materiality. This Flow of materials which also provides us with information on the planet that are inherently made of minerals dug from earth are also the ones that are radically transforming the compositions of the landscape. Their presence is a massive distribution in space and time.The anthropocene then reconfigures itself to be an era where the ideal idea of geology is being questioned. When the artificial is becoming a dominant characteristic to identify with, what we call as ecologies , territories and landscapes have to be rethought. The information , digital spaces proves to be the actuator of transformation of the physical territories.
Figure 4 | The Manufacturing Lnadscape; China
These informational and digital systems have now become a necessity to read, understand and adapt to planetary changes that they cause. Satellite information is amongst the first to bring the balck box into existence. These robots are now the only source through which humans can capture the ongoings on the planet .Machine visions provide an interesting point of view. Landsat8 captures imagery in strips which is the result of the way landsat operates, conveying that data collection and processing are virtual systems of consuming information that provide different ways of reading the planet. Thus humans depend on non-human visions to navigate the world. This co-dependent relationship of humans with technology proves to be the key mechanism that has a hyper presence and is accelerating economic, urban and global changes at a greater speed each passing day. The Anthropocene is also a time space where the agency of the non-human and machines alike are being embraced to cause evolution. When machines investigate Animals and humans which have the ability of light sensing molecules on their skin. In a way these molecules are sensing the light as information to enforce a behavioural response , then essentially all planetary scale operations to humans and non humans are consuming information through different forms of intelligence. Thus, machine visions are now opening up new visuals and spaces that humans couldn’t have been perceived without the machines. They provide access to unfamiliar virtual spaces , visions and scales of the world pertaining the object in examination, human point of view then respostions itself to be a part of the larger system.
Figure 5 | E- waste Recycling ;China 8
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Benjamin h Barton thus puts forth the notion of the earth being a territorial machine, where the information is the inputs of specific outcomes and transformations on a planetary scale which is also accidentally building up the stack, the way of operating planetary scale computation and a way of being and existing. Our existence is continuously redefined with new innovations and technologies that produce a certain culture, a system of interaction opening up dialogue visually , literally , architecturally , culturally in a point in time when all these modes of interaction prove that their categorisation have caused us to rethink their interdependencies and isolated existence as terminologies solely based on the human point of view. This aspect is very well brought forward in the movie Arrival, where the language of the alien species is a non- linear way of communication.The protagonist struggles to understand and perceives the language in human point of view. As the protagonist dissects this language she gains the ability to develop non linear visions in space and time inherently gaining abilities to have visions of future and past in the present. The aim is to translate the importance of understanding the point of views of types of intelligence that exist and that engineering and designing a coexistence with the assistance of these intelligences can be essentially a beautiful, uncharted, evolutionary mode of moving forward as a multi- species planet. This moment in time Is where we could understand that our evolution with all forms of intelligence could lead us to an era which can be called the nous of cosmos / the awareness of the intelligence era where the idea of nature is being actively shaped and designed.The hyper presence and knowledge of entities are celebrating coexistence with all scales and species. The built does not distinguish itself from the ideal nature , the machine , the non-human and the human operate in a symbiotic function, where coexistence is calibrated to support cycles of temporality. Architects then aren't just designing the “built” but are collaborating to design ecosystems , that acknowledges, the psyche, economics, biology, synthetic evolution provoking art and new cultures zooming out to then become a part of the planetary scale existence.
Figure 6 | Alien Language study ; Arrival
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2 THE ONTOLOGICAL ENTANGEMENT OF THE HUMAN AND NON-HUMANS Artificial intelligence has become a common technological development that has introduced its potential in computing big data . It as an infrastructure is seen as a subservient form of intelligence made by the humans for the humans. Our relationship with this form of intelligence, while many think will lead to AI dominating and then eventual extinction of the human species,the various thinkers argue to put across a new perspective in relation to this matter. Their objective is to insist that we need to assess our perceptions and faults in our thinking of the existence of AI. Luciana Parisi lays down key moments in the history of mankind when cybernetics as a tool took birth and evolved into systems .¹”The period from the 1940s to the 1960s, involving the rise of the cybernetic infrastructure of communication and the introduction of computational logic into decision-making procedures; second, the 1970s and 1980s, which saw a shift towards interactive algorithms and expert and knowledge systems; and third, from the post-80s to the post-2000s, which were characterized by a focus on intelligent agents, machine-learning algorithms, and big-data logic”. (parisi, 2015)This timeline helps one understand the evolution of machine learning and how it has started building and impacting the physical world, so much so that Benjamin H Barton argues that we constantly want this synthetic form of intelligence to be human-like. He persuades his argument by stating that we need to understand if AI knows what it means to be human and the potential danger that it carries to humans is even understood by it in the first place. He tries to enforce that AI is a form of intelligence in itself ,cannot be and should not be made to constantly prove itself to be human-like in order to prove its capabilities as an intelligence . He then goes on to make us understand how our societal beliefs and self centeredness prohibits the understanding of AI.² The Turing test asks the computer and a participant to pass itself as a human and if it could prove itself to be a human or any specific gender, it passes the test of intelligence. (barton, 2015)
Figure 7 | Human like AI ; Ex- Machina
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This obsession for AI to have human mentality or our precise definitions of what is to be a human has been also imposed on our species as well where colour, racism and gender inequality are some of the few problems arising from societal beliefs. Patricia reeds then helps us understand how these societal beliefs are also shaping up the AI and its definition to read what is to be human. She points out how computing data has whiteness as the index of being human. ³This forces the AI to look past all the various differences in us as a species and starts establishing a brutal logic that acts as a decision made by the AI about the data it gathers (parisi, 2015). ³This ubiquitous computing, where our every conduct with a technology is computed to generate behavioral models also will start making AI understand how humans think. It is of importance to also know and understand how algorithms learn and think among themselves. (Barton,2015)
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These models are the backbone of the way we communicate today, that our language of communication has changed into a programmed language that also is a feedback loop in itself, always learning about humans. Algorithms now suggest preferences on all platforms according to our conduct in the digital realm. This learning of human choices, behaviours, likes and dislikes could also be weaponized by the few powerful agencies in the world. This understanding of big data computing now urges us to move past this matrix of programmed thinking and start understanding/evaluating how to think. Both Luciana Parisi and Patricia reed insist on a dramatic shift in perspective , while the former pushes us to start educating ourselves on how to think, the latter states that alienation of the concept of self could drive a change. All of this boils down to the deep rooted structures of society , beliefs and systems erected by humans where we are programmed by the knowledge being presented to us. A societal hierarchy with political agendas on a global scale driving the economic model of materialistic success which continues to lead crises economically , globally and ecologically. .All of them are interwoven in the way we structurally work as society and how we use , understand and perceive this form of synthetic intelligence. It is a pivotal point in time to restructure ourselves as part of this universal working and remove ourselves from the centre stage. Benjamin Barton aggressively puts forth that the planet is not made for us and is not there to cater our needs.
Figure 8 | For this essay, the image is used to convey the OOO philosophy ; Scan processor Studies
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Alienation from self or evaluating our thinking or to simply plot ourselves as a mere species in the inter planetary scale, Tessa leach reverbarates on the concept of object oriented ontology. While phenomenology rounds itself around the human sensoria with its surroundings, here the author pushes to imagine solely the machine’s point of view of its suroundings.It is only ethical to not follow the urge of finding human notion linked to its experience. 4The machines that we design are generally having human-like functions or are even made to look like human body parts, but the machines are made up of other materials and that defines their conduct / relationship with other objects as well. (Leach, 2020,pg no.22) Any machine built to be human centric in the way it responds or behaves. Their behaviour is altered to be of service to the humans. 5Siri acts like a digital voice assistant to humans and now occasionally gives witty answers (Leach, 2020, pg no.33), derived and formulated by human behaviour. This precisely limits and defines our relationship to the nonhuman as a user experience but the notion also urges us to understand and consider ourselves as the object to the non-human and part of their user experience. This analysis ,the author states, will help advance the relationship between humans and non humans.This concept also applies to our understanding of AI and our relationship with it. Our human centric approach of the design of the synthetic intelligence has led to accidents that have made us see the algorithm as a species inhabiting this earth, having its own decision mechanism beyond our control.
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“Planetary-scale computation takes different forms at different scales—energy and mineral sourc- ing and grids; subterranean cloud infrastructure; urban software and public service privatization; massive universal addressing systems; interfaces drawn by the augmen- tation of the hand, of the eye, or dissolved into objects; users both over-outlined by self-quantification and also exploded by the arrival of legions of sensors, algorithms, and robots”. (Barton, 2015, Pg no.4) This is often framed as a territorial machine by barton that is creating a new structure, physicality and reality of the society, also can be seen as a new media landscape in which the human activity is the input to certain outcomes, that have a territorial impact on how the world is transforming. 6
“Smithson was an anti-McLuhan, in that he saw the media not as extensions of man but as extensions of the earth”. (Wark, 2020, Pg no. 20)Information, digitization, software and hardware which encomapses to be known as media are important terms to remember as they house the softwares/ algorithms that run the world today. While these algorithms can be declared as species altogether ,Jussi Parika suggests their ontological study points out many intersections between the earth materials and media outlining a concept of the geology of the media.Mckenzie Wark analyses these media objects into extraction of materials,stating that media materiality is very metallic. A microchip could be made of 60 different components, manufactured and assembled in different parts of the world. Benjamin H Barton then stresses an important point, that information/ media knows no political boundaries, it’s a metaphysical world that is deeply rooted from the earth but precedes the political structures created by the humans, so is the information flow. This media landscape has a physicality in terms of its hardware, that has managed to create its own massive landscapes that now redefine what ecology is. Slovak zizek then argues that ecology is being treated as religion and ideology that we think we need to refer to evolve and stop the global crisis. The human made manufacturing landscape of media and product consumption is our doing and is the new ecology that we need to embrace. He strongly suggests that this new ecology’s materiality which is often treated as trash after it’s lifecycle should be used to create a new aesthetic dimension where we redefine a new biosphere and move away from the outdated idea of what nature is. 7
Figure 9 | Territorial Machine ; The stack
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3 ECOLOGY FOR, BY, OF AND AS OBJECTS
The research methodology focuses ical review of literature and case connectedness of all terminologies ment ( word includes the built) to
on dissecting the term ecology through critstudies that helps one understand the interand systems that exist to form the environspeculate new design framework and thinking.
3.1 The Biological Ecology Peter Trummer in Engineering ecologies quotes Carl Woese’s article ‘A new biology for a new century’,where in Carl Woese states that 8“reductionist biology with its assumption that biological processes can be understood by studying genes and molecules, obsolete. What is needed instead, argues Woese, is a new synthetic biology based on emergent patterns of organisation. He posits that the time of merely seeking to understand existing nature has come to an end, and that our future will be about projecting new natures” (Trummer, 2008, Pg no.97). Here tries superimposing that our understanding of the term ecology has very loose associations and tries deriving a permanent state of this ever evolving entity. He then reverberates onto the experiment described by Felix Guattari in his book The Three Ecologies, written in 1989,10a landmark experiment by Alain Bombard, a doctor, biologist and senior member of the European Parliament, who has dedicated his life to the study of marine biology, and established and presided over several marine laboratories. 9He once conducted the following experiment on television. Of two glass tanks, one contained polluted water and a healthy and thriving octopus, and the other contained clear and unpolluted water. When the octopus was transferred from the polluted to the unpolluted water, it almost immediately sank to the bottom (Trummer, 2008, Pg no.97)
Figure 10 | Microorganisms reacting to the salt runoff in these water pools ; Biological Ecology
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He uses this experiment to state his argument of what ecologies actually are and how objects/ entities function in terms of deriving relationships with one another.10In addition to his attempt to give an understanding of how ecology works, he demonstrates the way in which our understanding of ecology is misguided by preconceptions, formed by typological thought and reduction to averages or simple reductionist views, in which the richness of stimuli and forces is obliterated in order to derive and apply recognisable objective types of ideas and understandings. This is a technique or modus operandi that collapses differences into a homogenous view of environments in order to engineer them with simple and reductive laws, regulations and methods. (Trummer, 2008, Pg no.98)Ecology as a term has evolved over the centuries to describe various systems in play trying to describe relationships formed with specific objects of specific categories, but existence itself is an ecology that is a set of complex forces at play being dissected by humans to rationalise a way of living.
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3.2 Human Relationshisps Of Ecology Gregory Bateson, drawing upon Alfred North Whitehead, noted that the fundamental unit of evolution was not the organism, but rather the organism plus environment, whilst fellow cybernetic biologists Humberto Maturana and Fransisco Varela similarly noted that organisms are ‘structurally coupled’ to and ‘co-evolving’ with their environments. The ‘relations’ that Haeckel refers to then are in complex ways, networks of internal and external flows that operate at multiple organisational scales or orders. In the case of the human, they describe a set of organism-environment relations that must include social, cultural and economic agents. (Goodbun, 2016, Pg no. 37) 11
Sonaran Desert
Soil radiation
To bring the built environment into the discussion, which is seen as a separate entity from nature itself made by humans, Peter Trummer introduces the notion of morphogenetic urbanism that brings into attention the various aspects that derive an ecology of a specific locality. The associative design- urban ecologies design studio at Berlage Institute in Rotterdam emphasises the notion of forming dynamic relationships between form and matter instead of creating fixed relationships in the environment .This particular project is based out of the research conducted in Phoenix, Arizona.The Sonoran Desert is the world’s wettest desert and the topographical expression in terms of it’s ecology is formed by relationships between consolidated -unconsolidated rocks, seasonal floods and flora and fauna that form a network called washes.The process of the proposal involved understanding the desert as an active matter not as sum of absolute states but the forces that control and create the conditions and ecology on site. So, the urbanisation process is embedded into the desert’s genetic potential and material substance. Peter Trummer aims at using forces of intense bonding energy that forms crystallised structures as a way to actualise various urban forms and spaces. In this project , the radiation of soil and the economic value of sonoran desert is understood as a field in which every point is different from its neighbours as various factors that generate specific territorial conditions will lead to arriving at the topography, economic value, vegetation cover, water retention and noise pollution as a few design parameters to consider when subdividing the desert to create a new urban form. As a design technique the territorial conditions will act as parameters to generate a field that responds to the desert as a dynamic system. This design protocol was also used to explore and derive various scales of the project. (Trummer, 2009, Pg no. 66) 12
Subdividing by generating economic values
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Proposal of the Neighbourhood
Figure 11 | Process of Morphogenetic Urbanism ; Phoenix, Arizona studio project
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3.3 Ecology As Objects By Objects
This morphogenesis embraces the natural forces at play in the Sonoran Desert but at the same time the design aims at creating parts to generate as a whole system, which are a whole object/ entity in itself that are governed by various factors. While Peter Trummer acknowledges the natural forces at play as design strategy he also introduces the notion of city as objects later in research where when the city is studied as an object, we tend to either undermine or overmine the object in terms of the context and relationships it carries or generates. Trummer argues that le corbusier undermined the city as object by reducing it to being a space of habitation like a biological cell while overcoming the city as an object ,argument was sourced out of the idea of phenomenology that focuses on the essence of this object and that it constructs of language determined from the experience of the human. Both positions he argues fail to recognise the city as an object that is real. He then goes on to quote Harman defining the object to be an autonomous entity13”a dark crystal veiled in private vacuum; to its own pieces and equally reducible to its outward relations with other things.” (Trummer, 2013, pg no.53)
Figure 12 | Discreetness of an Object ; Flat Ontology
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Tom Wiscombe offers a new viewpoint on the discourse of parts to whole in architecture. He emphasises that the emergence theory puts forward a new idea of how the whole qualitatively exceeds the sum of the parts. It offers to make one understand that things can be viewed as whole objects. Tom proposes Flat ontology as a terminology that enforces to embrace that everything that exists is a complete entity and shouldnt be identified by the relationships ity might drive with the other objects that make an environment. He quotes an example of how an orca could be reduced being formed by set of DNA mutations and that reduces the specificity that animal carries in terms of it’s characteristics that are mysterious and alluring.He emphasises on the need to embrace the discreteness of all objects rather than reducing them by using generalised terms and reductionist thought process. He paves a way of applying flat ontology to the built as well,again asking to view a buildings made of objects;14”Architectural elements that interact and empathise with one other rather than remaining fully autonomous.Things can nestle, squish and envelope each other as long as they dont fuse or damage each other” (Wiscombe, 2014, Pg no.43)
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3.4 Ecologies Generated By Artificial Intelligence
While physical entities are whole objects creating assemblies of interaction, new innovations by humans intervene this organisations that over time creates a feedback loop of behaviours, drastically altering the existing organisations(ecology) in the form of generating new behaviours in the humans and non humans of this organisational system thus always being a dynamic system evolving the environment over time for better or for worse. Artificial intelligence has created such a point in time where, when in the past , their capabilities and influence over these systems were underestimated, to now when human species are re-evaluating this synthetic form of intelligence as a new species altogether creating, inhabiting and nurturing artificial environments so much so that the interdependent relationship between the humans and this form of intelligence has become indistinguishable. Jenny Odell stresses this reliance by citing the use of satellite imagery to read, interpret and build our world today which also gives us access to sites that are otherwise invisible in our immediate surroundings but help keep our day to day lives stable. 15 These are the network towers, the treatment plants, the energy farms, the machinic landscape , that support our entire existence and the existence of artificial intelligence. When these machine landscapes are observed through satellite images, these landscapes are very embedded into the surroundings, so technological in their appearance , we are merely a small ,dead pixel at the scale of these landscapes. (Young, 2019, Pg no .33) As much these artificial environments are required today for sustaining the lifestyles humans have built, Noumena’s project Robotic habitats helps understand the conscious involvement of such intelligence and the infrastructure required by it. They embrace this form of intelligence as a new form of species that is actively designing and shaping the environment around it. As such they argue that artificial intelligence will try to sustain itself and start manipulating the environment around them but they propose to use this intelligence capabilities to redefine better coexistence, that could be built.They predict that the technological progress and their omniscient need will trigger them to evolve into a new species performing specific tasks. The evolution of autonomous systems on land and air like drones has them suggesting that bots like drones would be scanning the environment for resource manipulation while creating feedbacks for ground activities there by actively participating in creating new habitats by forming symbiotic relationships with the nature around. Harbouring to the praecipe of artificial intelligence actively shaping our world,New York-based artist Ian Cheng develops digital simulations of new worlds that are based on narrative agents that learn from history to project future neurotopias. The author intends these neurotopias ato not be a biological ecology anymore, they are rendered as ecologies made out of artificial material systems, rows of hard drives that predict a post anthropocene scenario , where swarms of machines and communities of artificial intelligence are playing out their lives, transforming the current landscapes.
Figure 13 | Robotic Habitats 24
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This trilogy starts by narrating the chaotic life around a volcanic site, where an ancient community of human species resides , focusing on their traditions to listening to a shaman that guides them through channeling the voice of their forefathers he suggests the community to not leave their motherland when the landscape starts experiencing tremor. This ancient tradition is perceived as a form of intelligence that would guide people to make decisions and an emissary is introduced. As lifetimes pass the volcano landscapes get transformed into a crater of lake managed by the AI. In this timeline of the neurotopia, the AI is studying the original human matter left from the 21st century to train its emissary that inhabits its life. It uses the last preservation of the original human matter to test out certain interactions that its emissary shiba shouldnt stray away from. (Young, 2019, Pg no.115) Here Ian Cheng tries deploying the ideas of an intelligence that is curated, conscious of its actions but the ability to love like a human is seen as a rebellious trait. As the Ai becomes the source of management and nurturing of these landscapes , the author moves ahead in this timeline predicting that the crater lake gets evolved into an oceanic substance and gets merged with the landscape to form sentinel atoll. Here , the AI as the mother AI that governs different layers of landscape and as it’s reign gets tiring it tries provoking a generative death of the landscape by introducing mutations. 16
Ian Cheng tries suggesting that over time the landscape becomes an intelligence that is conscious of its actions, surviving through lifetimes ends up imitating the cyclic form of nature of birth and destruction. The author composes a scenario where, AI’s own search of generative death through introducing anemones in the bio layers causes reaction from the system to develop by its own, Oomen that is the immune system of the atoll ecology whose mechanism acts upon removing foreign anomalies out of the system here by suggesting that the ecologies will keep evolving into landscape that we aren’t capable of predicting but designing and AI is one such species that develops a hyper presence throughout, trying to self sustain echoing the notion of hyperobjects. The era of computing leads to new forms of ecology that tries to maintain itself by the need of generating machinic landscapes that support these synthetic intelligences. The biological ecology we know of adheres to different scales of time cycles found uptil now but we humans have managed to surpass certain of the temporalities by introducing massive spatial temporal objects that act as permanent objects by reducing the linear time scale of human life. Time in this form of ecology then also becomes a manipulative source and agent that relatively affects all interdependencies formed.
Figure 14 | Crater Landscape maintained by the AI ; Emmisaries
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While Ian Chneg tries painting a future of the human- non human kind in his work of fiction , these genre of fictions hold certain scenarios that have started appearing in the present day. This object of intervention, AI generates new spatial entanglements that can be observed in countries like China. Photojournalist Xingzhe Liu captures the human workers in China tending to the “machine farms” in the province. These are bitcoin mines that run over the hydraulic power drawn from the mountain stream. This mining activity ultimately derives its power from natural resources, but this new form of currency that is intangible could be compared to actually mining and farming activities. These server farms need human attention to if any processor goes offline, always tending to the flickering of the LEDs. Such cross engagement where the natural is supporting the artificial environments increasingly blurring the self created boundaries that support another dimension created by us humans that is the internet space. Another such fringe of machine landscape transforming cultures and interactions can be found on the Pearl river delta in China. The technological transformations showcase that machine landscapes are a synthesis production systems in architecture and human culture. Its materiality reflects the globalisation in the modern day human world, where these landscapes are now transcends its territories, rather comply to no notions of boundaries but are heavily now influenced by producing and reflecting cultures and natures thereby also re-organising and being suggestive of new ecologies to come.
Figure 15 | Human worker tending to the processors ; Bitcoin mines , China
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4 ECOLOGY AS COLLECTION OF HYPEROBJECTS ARGUMENT
“He considered that ecosystems had to be considered to be communicating and informational systems,and even as mental systems, as minds, not just as material and energetic systems.” (Goodbun, 2016, Pg no.41) Jon Goodbun quotes Gregory Bateson’s concern regarding ecologists ,when defining ecology ,“overemphasise energy exchange and attend insufficiently to information exchange” also echoing the thoughts of many thinkers studied across this essay like Luciana parisi , Benjamin h barton and Gregory Bateson now stating that we need to recognise ourselves as part of the system and not derive a system from us. Ecologies are to be studied with us as an object that interacts and is interacted with also leading to information exchange in relation to other entities present at all scales of interaction. Gregory Bateson suggested that information flow isn’t just another addition on top of matter and energy flows, but they colonise informational flow in relation to subjecting changes with all other flows in an ecosystem. He argued that nature /culture dualism has a direct correlation with the mind/ matter dualism forming interdependent relationships that are based upon the interaction with the information systems. Bateson formulates ecology to be full of mind which establishes rationality by performing life processes, being in the network and rationalising interactions constituting what one calls agency today. He evolves the notion of ecology perceived by mind as not just human consciousness but that the human consciousness extends itself to be part of the ecology,and across it as well as an ecological condition in the social cultural realms. 17
These ecologies of extended consciousness reverbarets the idea of what Ian Cheng suggested in the his trilogy emissaries as landscapes that are inhibited by an intelligence evolving the whole and parts of system.This evolution suggests that the synthetic intelligence is what developed systems and subsystems through lifetimes as a mother AI, making the biological ecology a part of its synthesis, studying and generating various forms intelligences that also had interactions simulated for particular informational flows governed by the mother AI.18The individual mind is immanent but not only in the body. It is immanent also in the pathways and messages outside of the body; and there is a larger Mind of which the individual mind is only a subsystem immanent in the total interconnected social system and planetary ecology. (Goodbun, 2016, Pg no.42) Figure 16 | Human mind part of the larger mind ;Ecologies of Mind
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This larger mind consists of a physicality that is largely defined by its material systems and its own inherent intelligent subsystems developing its own presence . To study such presence across scales and time, Timothy Mortons introduces hyperobjects and certain properties that help us study these presence and their relationships in depth. 19“A mesh consists of relationships between crisscrossing strands of metal and gaps between the strands. Meshes are potent metaphors for the strange interconnectedness of things, an interconnectedness that does not allow for perfect, lossless transmission of information,but is instead full of gaps and absences. When an object is born it is instantly enmeshed into a relationship with other objects in the mesh. Heidegger calls this mesh the contexture of equipment, a term that has roughly the Same metaphorical provenance.” (Morton, 2013, Pg no.83) To first gain a wider perception out of the human boundaries of the interactions, Timothy Morton uses interobjectivity as a way of dissecting systems that go beyond the definition of human existence. He cites the gigantic bamboo forest on Qi Lai Mountain in central Taiwan as an environment that generates an after effect of certain forces that describe the interobjectivity between all entities, 20“it is as if one is surrounded by a theater of air, leaves, and stalks. The bamboo sways, sometimes violently, sometimes delicately, to the wind that rushes through it. Each gust causes a cascade of bamboo clicks to sound in front, to the right, to the left, and behind. A ridiculously complex assem- blage of high-pitched frequencies floats, resembling something between percussion and a hand stirring a bowlful of pebbles or small crystals. The wind is heard in the bamboo. The bamboo forest is a gigantic wind chime, modulating the wind into bamboo.. The bamboo forest ruth- lessly bamboo-morphizes the wind, translating its pressure into move- ment and sound. It is an abyss of bamboo-wind.” (Morton, 2013, Pg no.81).
Figure 17 | Dinosaur footprints at Dinosaur State Park and Arboretum, Rocky Hill, Connecticut. ; Interobjectivity
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This interobjectivity when studied ontologically forces us to remove the human perception and as the main source of understanding interactions with the environment. This also forces one to move out of the scale and relativity of time of the human and consider different scales that are acting as a force that is never a direct experience but is mediated through entities. When considering the built as an object of intervention, Tom Wiscombe argues that architecture in this discourse needs to engage with new and that the anthropocentric view is that of comfort and convenience for the human experience, but engaging with these notions could invite access to new reality that is free of the human scale.21 “The aim would be to enchant the familiar by flattening assumed scale hierarchies onto a single ontological plane, as in the film Men in Black (1997), when a jewel on the collar of a cat is found to contain a galaxy.” (Wiscombe, 2019, Pg no. 81) The idea is to consider all scales as objects and zoom in to identify entities and relationships that are interobjective and are ontologically studied to design this co-existence of all kinds of intelligence at play.25”The abyss in front of things is interobjective” (Morton, 2013, Pg no. 81)
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The project in the studio developed this year focuses on a hyper object that engages at different scales of the human and non human. As an object of intervention, the proposal is a distribution of a redesign topography that indicates the ongoing changes in the landscapes in the world at this moment. It is a conscious effort to integrate and define the design of a new ecology that moves away from the traditional meaning of landscape, geology and ecology. It uses the non -human intelligences to design a spatial existence that embraces the materiality found in increasingly altered ecology of the human while also considering the hyper environment of the site as an interobjective mode of design which in response is to distribute massive entity that creates its own presence forming a synthesis than a fusion or co-dependent form of existence. This sectional drawing, also aims to contain ecologies of large scale in it that redefines symbiosis of nature and artificial as different stratas of existence but is also seen as a whole object that reiterates the notion of flat ontology.
Figure 18 | Procedural Landscape sheltering ecologies in volatle environemnets ; Hyperobject
Figure 19 | Human , non-human scales of coexistence ; Hyperobject 34
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5 NOUS OF COSMOS ERA- ENGINEERING EXISTENCE INTO TRANS-SPECIES
CONCLUSION
The manifestation of humans’ desire to imitate itself and other intelligences to support its activities in terms of technologies have created a new flow of material, information and landscape on earth. This anthropocene era is a hyper environment generating hyper objects as multiple environments that humans non-human have to adapt to. The materiality of this era is a hyper presence that actively redefines the existing ideas of geology ,landscape and the environment of habitation. All hyperobjects whether in symbiotic relationships or isolated are capable of generating their own environmental condition that needs to be adapted to by humans and non humans alike. These conditions are newly generated where they have to be investigated , studied and ontologically understood to derive a better coexistence with all. While Timothy Morton puts these hyperobjects across as ecological disaster causing objects, these objects are opportunities to further design, understand and produce environments that are woven by collective intelligence and point towards an era of evolution. 26“As architects and space performance creators, we trigger social interactions; therefore, we also need to thoroughly investigate how technology is influenced by nature rather than just how nature is influenced by technology. We also need to deeply experiment with such evolving technologies, looking into the “trans-species” principles that the latter can bring to space, buildings and us humans.” (Gausa, 2020, Pg no.17) Moving towards transpieces thinking, is to evolve and mutate into an existence that is not based on fusion of the existing characteristics but opens up a new paradigm for the intelligences to perform symbiotic ways of existing as an architectural manifestation. The artworks created by Eduardo Kac show a progressive way of dealing with the boundaries of the human - non human, biological and technological. He calls it expanding biodiversity by blurring such boundaries. Even though he uses the terms hybridisation and transgenic work in the same context, his work is his attempt at creating an artificial ecology which has firm boundaries but is also experienced by the humans through the digital mediums directs us towards creating better inter-objectivities as design strategy when talking about ecologies, existence and temporalities.
Figure 20 | Synthetic + Natural , Machine + Biological ; Transpatial Fictions
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Specimen of Secrecy about Marvelous Discoveries is a series of works comprised of so-called “biotopes”, The biotopes are a discrete ecology, because within their world the microorganisms interact with and support each other (that is, the activities of one organism enable another to grow, and vice-versa). However, they are not entirely secluded from the outside world: the aerobic organisms within the biotope absorb oxygen from outside (while the anaerobic ones comfortably migrate to regions where air cannot reach). (Gausa, 2020, Pg no. 121)While studying entities ontologically or as an object often invites us to create boundaries to transition into an era that is a hyper knowingness and presence of all intelligences to design cities, boundaries are often spaces reflection to strategise , invent an dproject new futures. 28“We shouldn’t believe in the symmetry of negative-positive, nor in any boundaries, when we deal with nature. This expanded state of nature and artifice integrates both the augmented state of human culture and non- human natural systems; it operates in a complex contemporary ecosophy “ (Gausa, 2020, Pg no.23) 22
Francois Roche In conversation with Manuel Gausa criticises having a very binary approach to the projections of future even in the work of fiction.He states that having either dystopian -utopian view points are a lazy product of capitalist era promoted through publicity, advertising , politics and commerce. He states that the state of experimental architecture has shifted its discourse to post digital, post activist and post democractic zone. While,Areti Markopoulou in the same conversation points out the speed at which evolution is taking pace and the need to reevaluate our circumstances and our positions as architects in the harbouring of the built. “Millennials, immersed in virtual and mixed-reality worlds, cyborgs with augmented capacities and senses, or countries granting passports to AI humanoids... All this showcases a society running at much higher “bits-per-second” speeds than the philosophical debates on the dualistic separation (or not) and the “ecosophic” equilibrium (or not) between nature and artifice. The empowered actions of such an accelerated society in the Anthropocene – or Capitalocene – era are the ones that position us a step away from the “déjà vu” and definitely far away, still, from any “entendu”. (Gausa, 2020, Pg no.16) 23
Figure 21 | Biotopes; Discreet Ecology 38
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Franois Roche explains what it means to dissect the evolution of culture at the pace at which anthropocene proceeds but to also understand its impact, influence and move towards re-integrating these aspects by creating , thinking and projecting work of art, fiction and built that pushes us to move away from the totality of human existence and step into living in symbiotic models of living that celebrates existence at all scales, species and mutations. 24“Queer, androgynous, carnal, disturbing, disenchanted, pornographic, transient, transactional world,where scenarios, mechanisms, misunderstandings, psychological and physiological fragments are what makes up walls and ceilings, cellars and attics, schizoinatural response than a consuming, contaminating architecture with a long-term footprint. All in all, the essence of our design and thinking is not limited to robots or mere technology: merging technological, natural and human agents, we are opening new possibilities for inhabiting architecture and space. In those novel inhabitation models, space evolves with and through nature, not against it. We are not focusing on merely protecting our built environment from the natural environment, nor are we distinguishing the two. We envision architecture as a new living organism in synchronization with multi-species inhabitants and the environment itself, adapting to nature and evolving with it, co-existing with bacteria, animals, humans and augmented humans.” (Gausa, 2020, Pg no.22) So , when Timothy Mortons suggests a terrifying reality of the hyperobjects, their viscous omniscient presence, that threatens the survival of the human species, i propose this discourse to become an integral part of understanding hyperobjects to be the truth, an objective reality that forces architects today to embrace what exists beyond the humans, to bring into discussion, creation ,scales of intelligences that provides and helps generate exciting possibilities of what the future cities could work. Or that when we embrace this hyper objective reality, like slovak zizek suggest that it is important to move away from the idea of what nature is and become increasing artificial by emarcing ecology that humans continuously seem to generate into an aesthetic dimension of existence, to which this essay proves to add moving into aa nous of cosmo- era: a hyper knowingness of all forms of existence that might lead the ecology and us humans into trans species mode of existence.
Figure 22 | Human + Non human agnecies in Symbiosis, towards a transpeices living; Transpatial Fictions
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BLIBLIOGRAPHY
Barton, B. h. (2015). The Stack. MIT press. barton, B. h. (2015, February 23). outing AI. New York Times. https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2015/02/23/outing-a-i-beyond-the-turing-test/ Gausa, M. (Ed.). (2020). Ecologies and Ecosophies: A conversation. Black ecologies, (9th), 15-25. Goodbun, J. (2016). Gregory Bateson’s Ecological Aesthetics - an addendum to Urban Political Ecology. Architecture and Indeterminacy, vol4(issue 1), 36-46. field journal. ISSN: 1755-068 Leach, T. (2020). Machine Sensation: Anthropomorphism and ‘Natural’ Interaction with Nonhumans. Open humanities press.
BLIBLIOGRAPHY
Wiscombe, T. (2014). Discreetness or towards flat ontology of architecture. Project, (issue 3), 35-43. https://files.cargocollective.com/598962/Towards_a_Flat_Ontology_Wiscombe.pdf Wiscombe, T. (2019). A Specific Theory of Models: The Posthuman Beauty of Weird Scales, Snowglobes and Supercomponents. Architecture Design, 81-89. John Wiley and Sons. young, L. (Ed.). (2019). Emissaries. Machine Landscapes - Architecture of the post anthropocene, profile 257, 119-125. John Wiley and sons. Young, L. (Ed.). (2019). Satellite Landscapes. Machine Landcsapes - Architecture of the Anthropocene, profile 257, 32-33. John Wiley and sons. Zylinska, j. (2020). AI ART- machine vision warped dreams. open humanities press.
Morton, T. (2013). Hyperobjects: Philosophy and Ecology after the End of the World. University of Minnesota Press. parisi, l. (2015). Reprogramming decisionism. eflux. https://www.e-flux.com/journal/85/155472/reprogramming-decisionism/ Reed, P. (2017). Xenophily and Computational Denaturalization. https://www.e-flux.com/architecture/artificial-labor/140674/xenophily-and-computational-denaturalization/ Trummer, P. (2008). Engineering ecolgies. In Archit Design (pp. 96-101). John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. https://doi.org/10.1002/ad.647 Trummer, P. (2009). Morphogenetic Urbanism. Archit design, 64-67. https://doi.org/10.1002/ ad.919 Trummer, P. (2013). City as an object : Thoughts on the from of a city. Observation on architecture and the contemporary city, (log 27), 51-58. https://www.jstor.org/stable/i40082940. 15474690 Wark, M. (2015). Molecular Red. verso. Wark, M. (2020). Sensoria. Verso.
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FIGURE LIST Figure 1 | The Anthropocene , Edward Burbtynsky | https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/projects/photographs Figure 2 | Deleuze’s vector field of societies of control ; Figure 3 | Human labour ; Industrial park in China , Edward Burbtynsky | https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/projects/photographs Figure 4 | The Manufacturing Lnadscape; China , Edward Burbtynsky | https://www.edwardburtynsky.com/projects/photographs Figure 5 | E- waste Recyceling :China , Edward Burbtynsky | https://www.edwardburtynsky. com/projects/photographs
Figure 12 | Discreetness of an Object ; Flat Ontology ; https://tomwiscombe.com/publications Figure 13 | Robotic Habitats ; Noumena ;Black ecologies Figure 14 | Crater Landcsape maintained by the AI ; Emmisaries; Ian Cheng ; Machine Landscapes - Architecture of the post anthropocene, Figure 15 | Human worker tending to the processors ; Bitcoin mines ; Machine Landscapes Architecture of the post anthropocene, Figure 16 | Human mind part of the larger mind ;Ecologies of Mind; https://undisciplinedenvironments.org/2017/12/18/ecopsychoanalysis-minds-politics-and-ecology/
Figure 6 | Alien Language study ; Arrival
Figure 17 | Dinosaur footprints at Dinosaur State Park and Arboretum, Rocky Hill, Connecticut. ; Interobjectivity ; Hyperobjects ; Timoth Morton
Figure 7 | Human like AI ; Ex- Machina ; https://www.businessinsider.com/biggest-challenges-human-artificial-intelligence-2016-2?r=US&IR=T
Figure 18 | Procedural Landscape sheltering ecologies in volatle environemnets ; Hyperoject ; Author’s Own
Figure 8 | For this essay, the image is used to convey the OOO philosophy ; Scan processor Studies , Reprogramming Decisionism , Luciana Parisi Figure 9 | Territorial Machine ; The stack , The stack , Benjamin h Barton Figure 10 | Microorganisms reacting to the salt runoff in these water pools ; Biological Ecology ; https://www.blog.google/products/earth/most-stunning-images-from-google-earth/ Figure 11 | Process of Morphogenetic Urbanism ; Phoenix, Arizona studio project ; Morphogenetic Urbansim ; Peter Trummer 44
FIGURE LIST
Figure 19 | Human , non-human scales of coexistence ; Hyperobject; Author’s Own Figure 20 | Synthetic + Natural , Machine + Biological ; Transpatial Fictions ; New Territories https://www.new-territories.com Figure 21 | Biotopes; Discreet Ecology ; Black Ecologies Figure 22 | Human + Non human agnecies in Symbiosis, towards a transpeices living; https://www.new-territories.com
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