HUMAN ARK by Cutler Patierno

An Architectural Inquiry into the Meaning of Human Existence

HUMAN ARK by Cutler Patierno Advisor: Karen Lange California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo Undergraduate Architecture Thesis Fall 2020, Book 01

This thesis aims to define what it means to be Human through the narrative of humanity facing ultimate oblivion. Humanity has become an existential threat to its own existence. Due to global climate change, the Earth has a specified extinction day in which the entirety of humanity will have perished. The only way to preserve the human race is by going to space. Humanity must work together to create a vessel that will carry the last survivors of Earth, the last artifacts of the human condition. What is gathered and included on this vessel as it travels into the next plane of human existence? What is the definition of our species and of all human culture? What does it mean to be human?

01 02 03 04 05

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE HUMAN? -Abstract Video 01 -Questions No One Has Answers To 21 -Experiment 01 02 -Hurdles of Humanity 41

EXPIRATION DATE

EVACUATION

03 -June 21st, 2050 55

04 -Toward A Common Goal 65 -Experiment 02 05 -Life On Noahâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Ark 85 -Vellum Furniture Design Competition

VESSEL OF EXPERIENCE

06 -Site 111 -24 Hour Experiment 07 -Program 133 -Program Experiment 08 -Occupying the Machine 151

HOW TO BE A HUMAN BEING

09 -The Replicator 165 10 -June 22nd, 2050 175

? 10

WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE HUMAN?

MAKING OF MANKIND

ABSTRACT VIDEO To try and begin comprehending humanity and its struggle for self-consciousness, I looked to create an abstract circumstance in which a machine would help to become the means to achieve this goal of understanding humanity. This video portrays a future time in which a machine is used to create human identity utilizing machine technology and artificial intelligence. The images seen next are from the video which can be viewed at the link below.

Morphing â&#x20AC;&#x153;In order to understand what it means to be human, the collective consciousness is developed and analyzed through the assemblage of human knowledge and data. This data is represented by humanoid objects, which are created through the help of machine technology. These humanoids are a manifestation of human thoughts and knowledge, constantly morphing and adjusting due to further input of information.â&#x20AC;?

Making of Mankind

Machine â&#x20AC;&#x153;The humanoid objects that were constructed now begin to take over the machine that had been their creator. The humanoids learn to grow on their own, sharing information and working together toward a common goal.â&#x20AC;?

Making of Mankind

Assembly â&#x20AC;&#x153;The collective assembly of the humanoids now becomes the embodiment of the collective human consciousness. Working in unison with the machine to grow and nurture helps to comprehend the meaning of the human spirit. The collective system of humanoids now becomes the embodiment of the collective human consciousness. Working in unison with the machine to grow and nurture and comprehend the meaning of the human spirit... But what does one do with all this knowledge? Does this answer what it means to be human?â&#x20AC;?

Making of Mankind

01 Questions No One Has Answers To

After 200,000 years of modern human existence, humans as a species have been able to reach incredible heights in science: from putting a man on the moon, to identifying organisms at the atomic scale. Yet, even with the existence of this vast knowledge there seems to be a large piece of the puzzle missing when it comes to the explanation of, Why? This essay explores the relationship between humanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s perception of time as a variable that affects the way we interpret the necessities of our reality.

Self-

actualization

Self- fulfillment needs

achieving oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s full potential, including creative activities

Esteem needs:

prestige and accomplishment

Belongingness and love needs:

Psychological needs

intimate relationships, friends

Safety Needs: security, safety

Physiological Needs: food, water, warmth, rest

Basic needs

Questions No One Has Answers To

Questions No One Has Answers To Human Meaning as a Function of Time

The difficulty with answering the question of what it means to be human lies in the manner in which we as humans percieve the collective experience of humanity through only individual bias. Thus, in order to answer the questions of humanity that have no answers, the thought process must be taken from a holistic point of view. Ideas about what it means to be human are found in many different facets of societal constructs. These theories can be derived from Biology or Anthropology, from Science or Physics, Philosophy or Religion, and many more. Yet even through the analysis of these fields the questions of the root of our existence and meaning is still unclear.

Timeline of Needs and Perception

Through this thought experiment, I hope to gain access into the intersectionality of all of these different fields of thought and intellectual fervor. What is found to be a constant across the borders of these subjects is that of Time. Time is a construct of human imagination that brings meaning and consistency to our lives creating the ides of past, present, and future. However, Time can be used as a variable for existential comprehension. This experiment will try to map the meaning of humanity, through analyzing the critical path that is taken by which a human determines its most pressing needs for any given time-frame.

hours,

My hypothesis on this topic is that the way in which humans will identify the most important needs to them at a given moment is directly related to Maslowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Hierarchy of Needs. (Time) is used as the variable in which (Needs) are the resultant factor at these different time intervals:

seconds, minutes,

days, weeks, years, decades, lifetimes, generations, ...?

(1) -Basic Human Needs

-istockphoto.com

Happiness? Girl with Balloon, BANKSY -flickr.com

Questions No One Has Answers To

-In a second to second timeframe the only thing a human thinks about is the necessity to breathe and for air to fill their lungs. This simple biological need is found in the lowest-level physiological needs outlined by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.1

-In an hour to hour timeframe a human begins to get an understanding of needs and desires that are beyond the simple necessity of survival. Once shelter and safety are secured the human can begin to engage in activities that make them happy and pursuing interests they want, including relationships with other individuals. These relationships help to nurture the psychological needs of the individual as observed in the hierarchy of needs. This stage brings us to an answer to one of our first questions of “Why?”. The answer for many humans is answered by the reward of feeling happiness. This continues the conversation of existential reality by asking “what are feelings?” If not for just the biological reaction that our body has to its environment in order to identify a setting or situation as positive or negative for selfsecurity.2 This is one of such realizations that will arise during this investigation that is a topic that is not answerable through simple fact and data, and instead is a part of a greater unknown.

In a minute to minute timeframe the human begins to think about other biological needs that it can obtain in the given moment. These are things like the consumption of food or water, or performing short tasks that will help to ensure their safety in any given moment. The needs identified here wrap up the remainder of the physiological needs that a human has for its basic level of survival.

1- Mcleod, Saul. “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.” Simply Psychology, Simply Psychology, 20 Mar. 2020, www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html. 2- Johnson, John A. “Biology Determines Every Thought, Feeling, and Behavior.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers

The Persistence of Memory- Salvador Dali Time, the constant and crushing code for existence that controls the model of our perception. Defined in order to add regiment and structure to our day, our week, our lives. Yet all an illusionary concept, creating itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s implicit importance through the weight of its existence in our minds. What time is it?

Questions No One Has Answers To

-In a day to day timeframe a human now has the time and energy to accomplish tasks that help to set them up for the near future. These tasks can be working toward getting a job and receiving money. This money now allows the human to maintain the biological needs that it has, like food, water, shelter, and continue to grow their relationships and connections to things that make them happy. This stage brings up important topics like that of money and value of time as a constituents to a system that rewards certain actions which allow the human to function in a large system of other individuals. Through this we comprehend that every human needs to play a part in the system in order to receive their necessary amount of money which helps them to secure their biological needs. This topic of value answers the “Why?” for reasons that humans will do particular things that they do not receive happiness from, which is in reaction to this monetary reward system.

In a week to week timeframea human thinks about more than just the necessity to attain this value of monetary capital put forth by society, but also how to continue to receive this on a consistent basis. Job security becomes an important consideration for the individual in order to meet their basic needs on a consistent basis ,giving a sense of security in the structure of their lives on a weekly basis.

-in a year to year timeframe a human reaches the ability to now focus on the idea of mastering a particular subject and reaching a feeling of accomplishment. In thinking about a career, the human must now think about what they would like to pursue on a full-time basis; because recieving payment it is no longer shifting from week to week but is now a long term investment of time and energy. This means that the individual is thinking about the prestige and feeling of accomplishment that comes from their every-day activities and add up to yearly production. This stage brings up the idea of a career, which is derived from the previous mentioned method of receiving capital, but now asks the “Why?” of the particular job or task that is being performed. The individual has the scope to think about different ways that they may make this monetary value, but get more of a fulfillment from doing so.

in a decade to decade timeframea human begins to engage in solidifying a system of social constructs in order to set up future security for psychological and basic needs. In thinking about decade to decade planning, the human may also be thinking about or beginning to create new life and adding to their familial system. In this time frame the individual looks beyond the basic and physiological needs for self and thinks about its dependents as well.

Pyramid of Giza

Hieroglyphs and Generational Culture -Britannica.com

What is exposed when we uncover secrets of the past? These relics of history and the stories they tell, the realities they depict. Generational culture passed down through time in as many representations as possible. How can these historic pieces tell us about how we write notes to the future?

Heironymus Bosch - Garden of Earthly Delights (1503) -thegaurdian.com

What is the nature of our Reality? Is there some greater purpose that we have yet to discover or even fathom? The Triptych by Bosch brings up questions of opulence and freedom, yet of sin and damnation, leading us to wonder what it is about the chaos that makes us see so much of ourselves. What is it about this fantasy land that makes us dream ourselves into this world? What can art start to tell us about the cultures of yesterday, today, tomorrow?

Questions No One Has Answers To

-In a lifetime timeframe a human grapples with the meaning of their existence and what they hope to leave as their footprint on the universe. When thinking on the scale of an entire lifetime, the object of one’s story develops in further clarity and it becomes easier to comprehend the pinnacle of Maslow’s hierarchy. The individual now pursues their personal method for selfactualizing the knowledge and experience that made up their lifetime. There is now a motivator: the inevitability of death and an end to their active participation in writing their life’s story.

-in a generation to generation timeframe a human is recognized as a part of a network of societal structures based on many factors that have developed throughout their life experience and the unique system in which they have grown and helped to grow. Through this multi-life span the individual helps to build a creation for their particular group towards the output of culture. Culture becomes the meaning and the reason for life through generations. Culture, defined as the customs, arts, social institutions, religious artifacts, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group.3

For many, this meaning beyond death is found in religion, while for others it is determined by what they leave behind or to whom they leave what they leave behind. Regardless of an individual’s view on death it is important to think about the afterlife in the sense of our collective human knowledge, and how generations of thinkers and creators have allowed the human species to think and create further, toward a deeper understanding of life.

This stage brings up the idea of human meaning going beyond the lifespan of one individual, and instead being a part of a collective network and a broader existential scope. Culture becomes the definition of human experience over time, the collective production of a group of people toward a shared vision.

3- “Culture.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster. com/dictionary/culture.

Questions No One Has Answers To

-On an infinite timeline what is the definition of consciousness and human existence? This question leads us to a new barrier in comprehension of human existence. Human life is defined by the necessity of mortality, but the idea of infinite time for development and progress brings up new questions about the hurdles that we have passed and the hurdles yet to come. If generational existence thus far for humans has resulted in the foundation of culture, as a means of expressing knowledge and ideas for future humans, what is the next level of human progress defined by? What this thought experiment reveals about the condition of human existence is the forward-looking nature by which we can begin to define the wants, and needs, and desires of a species. These needs may be outlined by Maslowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hierarchy, but these thoughts go further, questioning what is beyond the idea of needs and is instead found in metaphysical desire. Yet, what it also brings up is the large gap of unknown that is found at the end of this metaphorical timetable. This leads us to the question: Can the definition of what it means to be human be found at the convergence of universal culture? Is the answer to the collective existence of the human species found in a collective human culture? And if soâ&#x20AC;Ś what is keeping us from answering this question?

RELICS OF HUMANITY

EXPERIMENT 01 This experiement questions the antiquity of human knowledge and the flaws of such metacognition. How have we as humans defined life, and further, the meaning of human life and sentience? The intention of creating this object, was to ask the viewer to ponder the relationship of fossils of past life with fossils of past thought. The only way to perceive the future in an objective way is done through the analysis of growth from past understanding. What are the implications of an evolution vs. religious perception of our developed consciousness? In what ways does Anthropocentrism hinder our ability to understand a collective existence?

Longing for Eternity, 2018, Yayoi Kusama -thebroad.org

Portals, 2019, Anthony James

-anthonyjamesstudio.com

Portals, 2017, Peter Gronquist

-anthonyjamesstudio.com

Relics of Humanity

Relics of Humanity An Inquiry into Human Meaning as a

Infinite Perception The construction of this piece was done using the artwork of Peter Gronquist, Anthony James, and Yayoi Kusma as precedents. What inspired me is the way in which all of these artist use infinity mirrors to give the viewer of their works a privileged perspective of the universe, or of themselves in an infinite plane. This experience of seeing our reality as simply a fragment in a long line of moments creates a sense of unity within oneself with that of the expansive universe.

This instills in us the assumption that the boundless universe dilutes that which we hold most valuable, but also concretes our reality of the here and now. How can we design a space with implications of the infinite time scale? And how do we as humans begin to think about our actions, or about what we are to leave as artifacts of our existence when we see artifacts of the past fade into oblivion?

When we think of an infinite timeline, we begin to question identity and self by introducing the idea of alternate planes and alternate meanings to this individual perception which we experience in our daily lives. By offering a view into a moment of multiplicity we allow create an understanding of who we are and ask us questions about our existence. In Yayoi Kusama’s infinity rooms, she tries to “create phenomenological experiences that provoke a sense of boundlessness and transcendence.”1 Art and architecture can begin to create moments of reflection on ourselves, but also our ideas and our knowledge.

1 -“Yayoi Kusama - Bio: The Broad.” Bio | The Broad, 2013, www.thebroad. org/art/yayoi-kusama.

Future of Pasts Relics of human existence are placed into a perception box. The Trilobite fossil on the left is a representation of evolution and the development of humanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s understanding of life. Through uncovering fossils of creatures that once lived on Earth we receive insight into the development of life, and another piece to the puzzle of our existence as we know it. The fossil on the right is a representation of humanâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s meta-intelligence. The Vitruvian Man being a relic of our past knowledge of our own species that is no longer how we find our identification with the cosmos. No longer is humanity regarded as a system that revolves around the perfect dimensions of a white European male. The new ways in which we have come to understand ourselves as a species can be seen through the collection of these past relics and how their development over time has brought us closer to a fuller representation of self. Our species becomes more developed and self-comprehensive through the culmination of these pieces of knowledge and their development over time. Especially when we find the intersection of these in relation to the infinite.

Relics of Humanity

01 -Physical Model with the light in the interior of the infinity mirror turned off. The viewer looks at themselves in the mirrored surface. 02 -Physical Model with the light in the interior of the infinity mirror turned on. This reveals to the viewer the relics of the past, relics of past thought, of past knowledge. 03, 04 -Digital Modeling of the Perception Box helps to reveal further dimensional reflections of these Relics of Human Knowledge. With deeper inspection into the object the viewer begins to see an infinite plane, one that alludes to a moment when these objects become one harmonious entity. The moment when the Relics of our Past Knowledge combine and change, to create the Knowledge we carry into the future. 04

Relics of Humanity

02 Hurdles of Humanity

When trying to answer the question of what it means to be human it is important first to analyze the potential issues that are holding us back from answering these questions. These hurdles of humanity that we must get past may just be the things that we need to overcome in order to comprehend our consciousness. We look to the stars and wonder about the future, about the past, about the moment we are living right now. We look to the cosmos and we shout our questions in hopes for a glimpse of clarity, but all we hear is the echo into eternity. Where do we find the answers to our existence? Why is it that we feel alone in this universe? Are we shouting to the depths of oblivion with our voice of humanity?

Utopia or Oblivion -R. Buckminster Fuller -medium.com

“Whether it is to be Utopia or Oblivion will be a touch-and-go relay race right up to the final moment… Humanity is in a final exam as to whether or not it qualifies for continuance in the Universe.” “Oblivion is rushing toward climate catastrophe with a loss of civilization as we know it by the end of the century. Utopia is the bringing into balance humanity with Spaceship Earth, and the collective facing of all the big challenges this decade. Setting up globally coordinated systems thinking at all levels necessary to bring equilibrium and restoration.” The ideas proposed by Fuller in the 60s are even more prevalent and necessary to act on today. Can the climate crisis be a catalyst for global pooling of resources to necessitate the definition of what it means to be human?

Hurdles of Humanity

Hurdles of Humanity What Hinders Us in the Search for Meaning

The Other One of the ways in which we could try to answer the meaning of human existence is through a philosophical lens, and the idea of comprehension of self derived from the presence of an “other”. Utilizing the concepts derived by Georg Hegel in “Phenomenology of Spirit”, we can take the philosophical approach to answering what it means to be human through the relationship of “the other” by which we can comprehend ourselves.1 Hegel argues for this recognition of self by means of it only being possible “when each is for the other what the other is for it, only when each [actor] in its own self through its own action, and again through the action of the other, achieves this pure abstraction of being-for-self.” What this statement is trying to achieve is the idea of recognition of an “other”, and the understanding that there is another entity functioning in a similar way, that brings further comprehension of one’s own self and the actions they are performing. Bringing this scenario of “other”ness into a cosmic and global sense, the argument that I will now try to make is that humanity cannot define itself because of the lack of presence of an “other”.

In the scope of our species this could mean the presence of an extraterrestrial species that would be discovered as having similar levels of intelligence which would then lead to much greater understanding of ourselves as humans. In this scenario humanity would become defined because of it’s recognition of another species and the other species’ recognition of humanity. These species would “recognize themselves as mutually recognizing one another”, bringing notion to the self-consciousness of the entirety of both species. However, due to the obvious lack of extraterrestrial life present in our society (or solar system?) I will instead talk about why it may be that we have yet to find these “other” cosmic beings; in doing so it will also be seen how we have created a divide of “other”ness in our own human social structures due to this lack of a common other actor.

1 -Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, et al. The Phenomenology of Spirit. University of Notre Dame Press, 2019.

Möbius Strip II -M.C. Escher -nga.gov

Advent of Nuclear Bombs -nuclearsecrecy.com

“The American public’s reaction to the first atomic bombs was a mixture of exaltation and ambivalence — a relief that science appeared to be a possible deus ex machina that would end the terrible war, an ambivalence about the question as to the morality of the weapon and its implications for what wars in the future would look like.” What could finding extraterrestrial life mean for the possibilty that other civilizations could have manufactured catastrophic life-ending devices, and been able to overcome their existence. The discovery of these civilizations could mean great news for our use and control over nuclear weapons.

Hurdles of Humanity

Fermi Paradox The basic definition of the Fermi Paradox: it is essentially a thought experiment with the goal of answering the question of ‘where are all the aliens and extraterrestrial life? From a statement in an article by Space.com the theory states, “Given that our star and Earth are part of a young planetary system compared to the rest of the universe — and that interstellar travel might be fairly easy to achieve — the theory says that Earth should have been visited by aliens already.”2 The paradox therefore becomes the upset in information where we as humans are overwhelmingly likely to NOT be the most intelligent beings in the universe, yet we have been unable to identify any evidence of other species amongst the vastness of the cosmos. “Fermi realized that any civilization with a modest amount of rocket technology and an immodest amount of imperial incentive could rapidly colonize the entire galaxy,” this statement goes to show that the immaturity of humanity in general should mean that there is much further intelligent life in the infinite galaxy, but why have there been no colonization efforts of Earth? Or traces of other existence? Carl Sagan speculates that:

“

We think it’s possible that the Milky Way Galaxy is teeming with civilizations as far beyond our level of advance as we are beyond ants, and paying attention as we pay to the ants

”

For some scientists, this paradox of lack of evidence of extraterrestrial life leads to the notion that humans and our existence may just be the most intelligent beings in the universe. However, this anthropocentric view of the cosmos hinders our ability to fathom

our meaning as a whole species and only further perpetuates our dominating and colonizing world-view that has begun to terrorize our own existence and endanger our life on Earth. Carl Sagan writes, “Despite the utter mediocrity of our position in space and time, it is occasionally asserted, with no sense of irony, that our intelligence and technology are unparalleled in the history of the cosmos”, and this is a prime example of the anthropocene becoming a barrier to our understanding of ourselves. In thinking that we are the center of the universe we are limiting ourselves from comprehending the true meaning of our existence. Arguments in support of this anthropocentric worldview are given by evidence from Frank J. Tipler asserting that, “Our civilization is the most advanced not merely in our Galaxy, but in the cosmos; of all the 10^23 planets which are implicit in Tipler’s arguments, and in the 15 billion year history of the Universe, ours is the only world on which an advanced technology has evolved.” Tipler argues that because we still lack any evidence of extraterrestrial life, nor have we come into contact with any mechanism or production indicative of intelligent life, must mean that there is no intelligent life greater than Humans. As the argument goes, and relating back to the Fermi Paradox, “any extraterrestrial civilization, only a little more advanced than we, will necessarily infest the Galaxy in a few million years with exponentiating devices.” Tipler uses this lack of evidence, of cosmic machines that should be roving all over the galaxy, to support his theory that states that humans and the development of our consciousness and intelligence may be the only instance of intelligent life in the scope of the entire universe.

2 -Howell, Elizabeth. “Fermi Paradox: Where Are the Aliens?” Space.com, Space, 27 Apr. 2018, www.space.com/25325-fermi-paradox.html.

Hurdles of Humanity

Further points made in the research journal of Carl Sagan and William I Newman, “The Solopist Approach to Extraterrestrial Intelligence” are ones that talk about how humanity discovering other-worldly species would tell of potential solutions to our human fallibilities. In particular these issues are weapons of mass-destruction, and the lack of a common harmonious nature between human cultures, nations, social groups, etc.

us to still reject Tipler’s “hope that Man is the pinnacle of creation”. Instead the comprehension of the more likely notion is that of the Great Filter Theory: that we as humans may have not yet passed a barrier of consciousness in which we can even communicate with extraterrestrial life. Great Filter Theory

“Civilizations devoted to territoriality and aggression and violent settlement disputes do not long survive after the development of apocalyptic weapons… Civilzations that do not self-destruct are pre-adapted to live with other groups in mutual respect”. This brings us to the very scary reality that we as humans are facing today with the advent of nuclear weapons and the climate crisis that is affecting the entire planet.

The Great Filter Theory is a response to The Great Silence (also the Fermi Paradox) mentioned above. This theory brings up the idea of the future of humanity and what that would look like and what is holding us back from reaching this infinite existence. As stated in the essay “The Great Filter - Are We Almost Past It?” by Robin Hanson, “there exists a great filter between death and expanding lasting life, and humanity faces the ominous question: how far along this filter are we?”4 These filters are used as a measure developed by fields of science that would explain the rough steps that human life has had to take in order to develop to the level of intelligence that we are at now. Combining the knowledge and comprehension of our species from biologists, astronomers, physicists, anthropologists, and social scientists our best-guess evolutionary path, according to Hanson, is as follows:

The change of humanity and the way that it functions is not a matter of the adjustment of state or individual, but must apply to the entirety of humanity in order to be successful in terms of our long-term existence as a species. These new changes to society might take thousands of years to implement, including in “rearing the young, in education, in the structuring of adult society”.

1- The right star system (including organics) 2- Reproductive something (e.g. RNA) 3- Simple (prokaryotic) single-cell life 4- Complex (archaetic) single-cell life 5- Sexual reproduction 6- Multi-cell life 7- Tool-using animals with big brains 8- Where we are now 9- Colonization explosion

“if every civilization that invents weapons of mass destruction must deal with comparable problems, then we have an additional principle of universal applicability”3, meaning that if we were to find a civilization that went through similar problems that our species has, then we could begin to solve our issues as a species to live in peaceful coexistence as the entirety of humanity.

Yet all of this is said with the gap in knowledge about some extraterrestrial society truly existing. But “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”, and the absurdity and sheer scale of these numbers and arguments may lead

3 -Sagan, Carl, and William I Newman. “The Solopist Approach to Extraterrestrial Intelligence.” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol. 24, 30 Oct. 1982, p. 113., adsabs.harvard.edu/ full/1983QJRAS..24..113S. 4 -Hanson, Robin. “Are We Almost Past It?” The Great Filter, 15 Sept. 1998, mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/greatfilter.html.

The Climate Clock

-designboom.com

Led by artists Gan Golan and Andrew Boyd, climate clock follows the methodology of the carbon clock made by the Mercator Research Institute on global commons and climate change (MCC), which uses data from the recent IPCC special report on global warming of 1.5Â°C. The report states that starting from 2018, a carbon dioxide budget of 420 Gt of CO2 gives us a 67% chance to stay under 1.5Â°C of warming. The installation in Manhattan now depicts the time remaining until irreversible damage is done to our environment that would result in extinction of our species.

Hurdles of Humanity

What follows from this break-down of the potential filters that our civilization has faced in order to develop to our current state of intelligence poses the “colonization explosion” as the next step for civilization. What this explosion entails for Hanson is the development of technology that would allow for human civilization to expand across the universe inhabiting the stars and cosmos as we continue to grow and develop both mentally and existentially. The problem this also brings up is the gap between numbers 8 and 9. What is the hurdle that exists here? And is the answer really simply that technology is not yet at the level of allowing for this expansion or is there something wrong with our species that is preventing our ability to reach this further plane of existence. For the sake of the argument I will make next, I will operate under the assumption that Hanson introduces, that this “colonization explosion” in which humanity colonizes the universe is the ideal outcome for humanity. While the argument could be made that would prefer our descendants “chose a more stable path, less likely to ‘disturb the universe’”, I will continue with this assumption that colonization at the cosmic scale will include further development of human knowledge which is beneficial to the whole of humanity. Returning to the topic of the Fermi Paradox and the implications of the Great Filter Theory, it is offered as a point that maybe other universal civilizations were unable to pass through the filters of nuclear war or ecological collapse. This assumption that we may hold the key to our own demise as a species would hopefully encourage us as a collective species to place “much higher priority on projects like Biosphere 2, which may allow some part of humanity to survive a great disaster”.

The Next Hurdle This idea Hanson mentions of “allowing some part of humanity to survive” brings up an important philosophical point and the basis for the scope of my thesis. Through the duration of this book I will pose the argument that the next hurdle humanity needs to overcome in The Great Filter Theory is the lack of a “commonality” between the entirety of humanity. Due to the divides and otherness that we have placed on our own existence, we have created disunity in our species as a whole which hinders our ability to get a greater understanding of our collective existence. The problems of International conflict, nuclear war, racism, xenophobia, poverty, and much more can be attributed to these divides that we synthesize in order to try and define the human existence. We as humans have created a system in which we fabricate a social “other” that we pre-identify as something or someone different from us in order to start to define what we are. But this is counter-intuitive in the scope of humanity as a whole civilization. If you think about humanity as being a single entity then we are really only acting in civil war on ourselves when we make strife over borders or religion or oil. The question then becomes, how can the entirety of humanity be forced to come together for a common goal that would unite the resources and shared vision of our collective species? The End of Earth My project will seek to answer this question through the development of a narrative of an apocalyptic scenario, in hopes that the reaction to this life-ending circumstance will result in bringing us closer to answering the question of what it means to be human.

???

Emergence Theory Derivation -precisionprinciple.com

â&#x20AC;&#x153;When many things come together, sometimes new features or characteristics bloom into existence. They emerge from the previous level of organization. For example, chemistry describes how atoms can come together to form molecules. Some molecules can link to form things like amino acids and proteins. Biology describes how proteins are the building blocks of cells. Cells make up organs. The brain is an organ with particularly special abilities. Brains are capable of feeling, thinking, believing, and even creating, which are studied by the field of psychology.â&#x20AC;?5

Hurdles of Humanity

This narrative development hinges on the “collapse of humanity” which will be used as the unifying occurrence that is applicable to all human beings. This “life-ending” event will then become the common goal for all of our species to rally around creating a global unification. The common goal of our species will be focusing on “allowing some part of humanity” to survive this event. Because this event is to end life as we know it on earth, it will necessitate the creation of what is to be the last remnants of human existence. Through the development of this narrative I will pose the end of human life on earth to be due to human-caused ecological threat to the environment that will lead to the death of all humans on our planet. In this manner the problem is emblematic of our ignorance as a global society and inability to work together toward a common goal. Whether this be due to greed, ignorance, or exceptionalism, the result is that there is now a global problem that faces all of humanity and only through the unification of our species will we be able to produce a coherent model for all walks of life that will be saved as the last remainder of humans and what is left of humanity. The project that is then proposed to meet the need of harboring the remnants of humanity will be an architectural intervention that will deliver the human species from a past of division into a future of unity. Emergence Theory In philosophy, science, systems theory, and art, emergence occurs when an entity or object is observed to have properties that are occurring because of the interaction of parts in a wider whole rather than in the individual parts themselves. These ideas become a theory of integrative levels or complex systems in which the culmination of knowledge about a certain subject or in a certain field creates the emergence of a new system. This can be described in the relationship of biology to psychology:

“

the phenomenon of life as studied in biology is an emergent property of chemistry, and psychological phenomena emerge from the neurobiological phenomena of living things.6

”

From this theory of the development of higher planes of complex systems from the cohesion of other systems of data and information, we begin to comprehend that there is likely systems that can result from the ones we are already familiar with. This concept is illustrated in the figure on the left, in which I propose the hypothesis that the meaning of humanity may be revealed to us through the culmination of culture into a further plane of knowledge which emerges from this intersection. By proposing the “whole is greater than the sum of its parts” for systems logic, we come to the question of the relationship of the part-to-whole for that of the entirety of global culture. Through the expiration date that is publicized to the global community, there will be a necessity for cultures to come together in order to be recorded and included in the final remains of the human species. When these many diverse perspectives and experiences intersect and intertwine in a sustainably functioning system new features and characteristics will bloom into existence. These new objects that emerge from previous levels of organization, and the derivation from global culture, could be the puzzle piece we need, in understanding what it means to be human. 5 -“What Is Emergence? - Your Next Breakthrough.” The Precision Principle, 28 Jan. 2016, www.precisionprinciple.com/human-potential/ what-is-emergence. 6 -O’Connor, Timothy; Wong, Hong Yu (February 28, 2012). “Emergent Properties”. In Edward N. Zalta (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2012 Edition)

EXPIRATION DATE

03 JUNE 21st, 2050 Based on the timeline of human needs, and taking into consideration the hurdles that face humanity in defining our existence, it becomes obvious why we are unable to comprehend human consciousness. The problem lies in the inability to access the entirety of the human condition because of the separation of our species and the borders we have put up that limit our ability to access the collective human experience. These borders such as racism, greed, politics, and fear have created a global scenario in which countries donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t share information and resources that would benefit the common good. Selfishness and exceptionalism have created a divide between the have and have-nots in which the global community is no longer a consideration, and a selfish attitude has been adopted instead. To underline this problem, the creation of a global circumstance is presented in which humans must work together toward a common goal, helping them to set aside their differences and act in a way that would unite the global community. The catastrophic event that creates a necessity for humans to work in cooperation is the problem of climate change, and the assertion of a defined expiration date in which humanity will expire.

Images by Artist Dave Cutler -PNAS.org

June 21st, 2050

June 21st, 2050 The End of Life on Earth

Tragedy of the commons First hypothesized by American ecologist Garret Hardin in 1968, The Tragedy of the Commons describes a situation where shared environmental resources are overused and exploited, and eventually depleted, posing risks to everyone involved.1 Hardin’s argument that the short-term interest of an individual is to take as much as possible from the common resources available, but this is in direct opposition to the overall societal good. If everyone in the system were to act on this individual interest the overall demand for these shared resources would outweigh the supply, making the resource entirely unavailable. As put poetically by Hardin, “Ruin is the destination toward which all men rush, each pursuing his own best interest in a society that believes in the freedom of the commons. Freedom in a commons brings ruin to all.”2 The Tragedy of the Commons can also be seen in affect in regards to the 2020 outbreak of to the COVID-19 pandemic. With the global outbreak raging in major cities leaving people to not want to leave their houses this created the panic of people afraid that they would run out of resources needed in their homes. People began to stock up on

food and utilities and (toilet paper?) at a ridiculously high rate, because they assumed that everyone else would also try to stock up. The solution then became to try and gather as many supplies as possible before another person could. These individual actions come from thinking logically, but not collectively, a perfect reflection of the Tragedy of the Commons. During the pandemic, individuals took advantage of shared resources that would benefit themselves, but dispersed the harmful effects of these actions across society. Where this theory of individual vs. societal goals and needs came into play for our environmental impact as humans is in the environment being the tragically ransacked toilet paper isle. Shared resources amongst all of humanity that mitigate the impacts of the climate crisis are abused constantly for individual gain. Many resources like clean water, fresh air, and dense forests, have been drained, polluted, and cut.

1 -“What Is ‘Tragedy of the Commons’?: Earth.Org - Past: Present: Future.” Earth.Org - Past | Present | Future, 25 Aug. 2020, earth.org/whatis-tragedy-of-the-commons/. 2- Hardin, Garrett. The Tragedy of the Commons. American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1968.

June 21st, 2050

Lack of One Government One main issue with why problems like water shortages, pollution, and deforestation are so rampant in modern society is because of rich companies taking advantage of resources at their disposal to benefit their people with no regard for the global community, and because no single authority can pass laws that protect the entire ocean. Each country is only able to pass laws and regulations on the Sea, Air, and Land that is in their territory, which leaves the common space beyond as an open resource to be plundered or polluted. This lack of one governing body over all civilization leads to obscene amounts of ocean pollution that results in large garbage paches in the middle of the ocean that no government is legally responsible for. Our poor governance over the commons of our natural resources further exacerbates our environmental problems.The problem also in-lies with international organizations and laws not having any legal reprimations that would prevent countries from acting in the way that brings harm to the collective global community. To this end, Economist Scott Barrett at Columbia University says that:

of financial gain are writing the ticket to the demise of our species, and the time will soon come that the environment will no longer be able to cash the check. But Money! No longer was money even able to save the United States and other highly rich countries. According to the WWF, the biggest negative economic impact that affects the global economy is due to nature loss. The United States will see $83 billion wiped off of its annual GDP every year leading up to 2050. The economists and capitalists that continued to ignore warnings of environmental decay for the sake of money, have now begun to lose money due to their cognitive dissonance of natural resource issues that were slowly gripping their necks. The Global Futures study used new economic and environmental modeling to assess the impacts that are coming. Our ignorant approach to the enviornment as a nation, and as a species, results in at least $479 billion a year, adding up to $9.87 trillion by 2050 -roughly equivalent to the combined economies of the UK, France, India, and Brazil.4

“

International law has no teeth, so treaties are essentially voluntary. Even when countries decide to take part in collective conservation efforts, they can simply pull out again when they want to.3

”

This is what happened with Canada in 2011 when it removed itself from the Kyoto Protocol, or when America withdrew from the Paris Agreement in 2019. These examples of American Exceptionalism and other rich countries choosing selfish acts for the means

3 -Battersby, Stephen. “News Feature: Can Humankind Escape the Tragedy of the Commons?” PNAS, National Academy of Sciences, 3 Jan. 2017, www.pnas.org/content/114/1/7. 4 -“New WWF Report Reveals US Will Suffer World’s Biggest Economic Impact Due to Nature Loss.” WWF, World Wildlife Fund, 11 Feb. 2020, www.worldwildlife.org/press-releases/new-wwf-report-reveals-us-willsuffer-world-s-biggest-economic-impact-due-to-nature-loss.

Stephen Hawking, Inventor of the Theory of Everything -newscientist.com

Drought Cracks in Death Valley, CA -Photographer: Ken Hanson

June 21st, 2050

Our Time Has Come The date of June 21st, 2050 as the expiration date of humans on planet earth was derived from a study by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) that warns us that the human race is “plundering the planet at a pace that outstrips its capacity to support life.”5 This study included a damning condemnation of Western society’s high consumption levels stating that by 2030 we will be consuming the amount of 2 full Earth’s worth of resources. The WWF report, which is based on scientific data from leading specialists around the world, reveals that “more than a third of the natural world has been destroyed by humans in the past three decades.” These astounding statistics provided by the World Wildlife Fund gives us a harrowing image of how our future reality is going to look because we continued on in our consumptionist mindsets with “business as usual”.

The bleak environmental and economic reality is that the only next steps for our species, is to prepare for the creation of a vessel which will contain the last survivors and the last artifacts of our once Earthbound civilization. Professor Stephen Hawking predicted this outcome for humans on earth by stating “I don’t think we will survive another 1,000 years without escaping our fragile planet.”8 The well-known professor at Oxford and theorist on space, asserted that this climate crisis is the ever-increasing risk that threatens our life on Earth, saying:

“

I think the human race has no future if it doesn’t go to space.

”

Humans will now go extinct in 2050 due to the lack of existing resources available to support life for our species. June 21st is the hottest recorded day in the world for the entire globe, making it the date of the worst drought, and the final day of humanity’s existence on earth.6 “Seas will become emptied of fish while forests - which absorb carbon dioxide emissions - are completely destroyed and freshwater supplies become scarce and polluted.”7 This description of our very near future is provided by an article in The Gaurdian about the modern man and our species current mission to failure. Because of the mentality that many humans hold, especially in western societies and in richer countries in particular, we have now reached a point where there is no turning back.

5 -“Global Futures Report.” WWF, wwf.panda.org/?359334. 6 -Kennedy, Caitlyn, and Rebecca Lindsey. “If Things Go as ‘Normal,” Most U.S. Locations Will Have Their Hottest Day of the Year by the End of July: NOAA Climate.gov.” If Things Go as “Normal,” Most U.S. Locations Will Have Their Hottest Day of the Year by the End of July | NOAA Climate.gov, 7 July 2020, 7 -Burke, Jason, and Mark Townsend. “Earth ‘Will Expire by 2050’.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 7 July 2002, www.theguardian.com/ uk/2002/jul/07/research.waste. 8 -Langlois, Shawn. “Earth’s Expiration Date, According to Professor Stephen Hawking: 3016.” MarketWatch, MarketWatch, 17 Nov. 2016, www. marketwatch.com/story/earths-expiration-date-according-to-professorstephen-hawking-3016-2016-11-17.

03 EVACUATION

04 Toward A Common Goal

With the global recognition of evidence that life for humans on Earth will be ending in 2050, the next question becomes; What is to be done in order to make this â&#x20AC;&#x153;Vessel of Humanityâ&#x20AC;? that is to be sent to space? How will we come together as citizens of the world? The best way to begin to answer these questions is by looking at precedents for projects that have begun work towards a similar outcome, and also looking at precedents of global catastrophes when political leaders of the world needed to work together.

(1) -Life After Earth: Imagining Survival Beyond This Terra Firma -nytimes.com

Toward A Common Goal

Toward A Common Goal The End of Life on Earth

Doomsday Vault An example of an organization working to create a copy of human existence in the likely event of an Earthly catastrophe (manmade; like climate change, or nuclear war, or extraterrestrial; like an asteroid collision) is The Alliance to Rescue Civilization or (A.R.C.).1 Robert Shapiro, the group’s founder, is a professor emeritus and senior research scientist in biochemistry at New York University; he emphasizes the need for a project of this scope when he said in an interview with Mr. Burrows when working on an essay for Ad Astra, an astronomy journal:

“

We’ve got to use space to protect humanity!

”

The plans for this project involve the creation of a Lunar base in which DNA samples of humans would be preserved and stored in a facility that would be safe from the tragic events that would be happening on Earth. This project differs from other so-called doomsday projects, because it envisions a lunar base, because in the case of a global catastrophe, humans could carry on, with this project protecting DNA samples that would ensure our future survival and maintain a bank of human knowledge.

In a similar project that is constructed in Norwary, The Svalbard Global Seed Vault recognized the necessity to collect the DNA of species that are going extinct in present times. All five prime ministers of Scandanavia met to “break ground on a $4.8-million doomsday vault” that will stockpile crop seeds in case of global catastrophe.”2 This project is located on an icy mountain island above the Arctic Circle between Norway and the North Pole. Deep in that snowy and remote location lies a resource of vital importance for the future of humankind, “It’s not coal, oil or precious minerals, but seeds.” This vault holds over 930,000 varieties of food crops and is essentially a huge safety deposit box, holding the world’s largest collection of agricultural biodiversity. While this project boasts the extra safety of Arctic temperatures, the seed bank is just the latest life-preservation plan to reach reality, joining genetic banks like the Frozen Ark, a British program that is storing DNA samples from endangered species that are going extinct because of human-caused climate change. 1 -Morgan, Richard. “Life After Earth: Imagining Survival Beyond This Terra Firma.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 1 Aug. 2006, www. nytimes.com/2006/08/01/science/01arc.html. 2 -Duggan, Jennifer. “Norway: ‘Doomsday’ Vault Where World’s Seeds Are Kept Safe.” Time, Time, 2020, time.com/doomsday-vault/.

2 -The Svalbard Global Seed Vault

-time.com

Seed Cathedral, Thomas Heatherwick Studio -heatherwick.com

Seed Vaults pose a very interesting opportunity for architects to begin designing their interpretation of a vault for knowledge. The manner in which the “Svalbard Seed Vault” creates a literal bomb shelter for DNA and information is contrasted greatly by the “Seed Cathedral” which was the UK Pavillion for the Shanghai Expo in 2010 and encouraged visitors to view the vast depth of biodiversity that we have on earth in a grand visual spectacle. These projects start to become precedents for two very different approaches of creating “vaults of human knowledge”, for literal storage and safe-keeping, and for public perception of the necessity of a project through the creativity and spectacle of art.

5 -Arrival, Frame from the 2016 movie by Denis Villeneuve -time.com

Toward A Common Goal

The Frozen Ark is a project that looks to understand the consequences of the catastrophic decline in biodiversity being caused by global climate change, asserting that, “scientific research needs access to current and historic information and biological material for species decline”. This project thus becomes a way for researchers to: “safeguard the genetic material of endangered animals for their conservation and as a resource for the benefit of future generations.”3 This project also warns that cooperation from the entire global community is imperative in order for a proper development of biobanked samples to support a comprehensive database. The Nagoya Protocol for access and benefit sharing of genetic resources has inhibited movement of materials across international borders, and as a consequence, many countries are unable to access the information that is highly important to the development of this global database of information.”Implementation of a common database built through cooperation amongst institutions is essential.” “The Nagoya Protocol on Access to Genetic Resources and the Fair and Equitable Sharing of Benefits Arising from their Utilization to the Convention on Biological Diversity is an international agreement which aims at sharing the benefits arising from the utilization of genetic resources in a fair and equitable way.”4 However, the failure of this institution to create a system that requires countries to share information between borders is another prime example about how international governments and leadership function in greed and selfishness instead of toward a common goal. Global Cooperation This failure of the Nagoya Protocol brings us to the topic of International Governments and the necessity to work together in order

to create unified access to shared information that will benefit the totality of humanity. In the past, international systems like the United Nations, or treaties and agreements like the Paris Climate Agreement have not been able to instate any real legal repercussions for the members and leaders of the global community that did not adhere to the highly important contracts. However, with the international statement of guarantee that humanity will expire on June 21st, 2050, there becomes much more incentive for diplomatic participation in the construction of this project that will become the last remains of human life. Precedents of times when the global community needed to come together for the benefit of the international community can be found in science fiction, and real-life science discoveries. Arrival A Hollywood example of this cooperation between international governments is in the film “Arrival” written by Ted Chiang and Eric Heisserer and directed by Denis Villeneuve. The main premise of the storyline is that an extraterrestrial race has come to Earth, and in doing so has arrived with 12 obelisk “spaceships”. The obvious first reactions to these foreign vessels is “Why are they here?” and “What do they want?”. The protagonist Louise, played by Amy Adams, is a linguistics expert and reasons that before they are able to understand the information they are to transfer with the others, there needs to be a line of communication. Her character states: “let’s just start with seeing them, understanding them and saying ‘Hello.’”5

3-The Frozen Ark, www.frozenark.org 4 -Unit, Biosafety. “The Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-Sharing.” Convention on Biological Diversity, Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2 Nov. 2020, www.cbd.int/abs/. 5 -Roark, David. “Alien and Time: The Philosophy of ‘Arrival’: Features: Roger Ebert.” Features | Roger Ebert, 8 Dec. 2016, www.rogerebert.com/ features/alien-and-time-the-philosophy-of-arrival.

6 -Arrival, Cyclical Foreign Language

-medium.com

Toward A Common Goal

The premise quickly reveals an important issue in the global operation of the international political system when the foreign obelisks are placed at random in 12 locations around the world, making each one under a different foreign “jurisdiction”. In the movie, China was trying to reason with the visitors over weaponry and decided that it was time to take nuclear action against these entities, a move which was strongly suggested against by Louise seeing as the visitors had not used any means of force. This ties back to the problem stated in ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’ and the issue of privatization of property, but now in the scope of an international sense and an idea of ownership of the information presented at each site because it is within their countries borders. What is developed through Louise’s communication with the extraterrestrials is that they have arrived at Earth to give the gift of their language. Once Louise has become “fluent” in speaking this foreign language the storyline alludes to the SapirWhorf hypothesis of language that states that, “language doesn’t just give people a way to express their thoughts—it influences or even determines those thoughts.”6 Operating from this hypothesis, Louise begins to “think” the way that these visitors do, in their cyclical language, which allows them to see into the future. Once she is able to do this she can look into the future when the unrest amongst international leaders has been solved and she is able to speak in a friendly way to the leader of China, in which he tells her information that creates a bond between them. This narrative development aims to teach the viewer that there is a large obstruction between foreign communities working cooperatively toward a common goal for humanity. In this film it took humanity being visited by extraterrestrials to solve domestic conflicts and work together in a diplomatic way, which reveals a terrifying reality about our global political system.

COVID-19 A more pragmatic and “down-to-earth” example of a time when our global community has needed to work together is through the sharing of scientific information and knowledge at the onset of the novel Coronavirus at the beginning of 2020. The premise for this outbreak, that may as well have been a hollywood movie, was not about extraterrestrials visiting earth however, but instead an outbreak of a highly-infectious disease that quickly grew into a global concern toward the end of March, 2020. In the early stages of the outbreak many global leaders and politicians called for the closing of their borders not only in visitors but also in resources and information. “Nationalism” became a sweeping problem in which rich countries like the United States were not hit as hard as lower-income countries because of access to scientific information and resources to begin fighting the spread of the disease. However, this sense of xenophobia and selfish outlook on the affects of the pandemic left many countries looking desperately for help that was not going to come. According to the United Nations News, “Leaders from the Caribbean, in prerecorded addresses to the UN General Assembly, stressed that their small economies are largely dependent on one or just a few industries, and called for strengthened global cooperation and financing mechanisms to overcome the health crisis sparked by the coronavirus pandemic and recover from its massive socio-economic fallout.” Nations all around the world had to come together through this unifying catastrophe to reimagine ways that they respond to issues that face the entire human population.

6 -Panko, Ben. “Does the Linguistic Theory at the Center of the Film ‘Arrival’ Have Any Merit?” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 2 Dec. 2016, www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/does-century-oldlinguistic-hypothesis-center-film-arrival-have-any-merit-180961284/.

Toward A Common Goal

An excellent example of such effective multilateral cooperation between countries is the “UN COVID-19 Response and Recovery Fund”. The Fund supports low- and middleincome countries helping them to overcome the health and development crisis caused by the pandemic and bringing support to those most vulnerable to the economic hardship and social disruption that came with this outbreak. What was revealed about this outbreak and the manner in which it was handled by the global community under the coordination of the UN World Health Organization (WHO) is that there can be great success in achieving a common goal as a population when international governments and leaders work together in sharing information and resources across borders.

Exipiration and Global Resources In looking at past precedents of information and resources being shared between countries it is now seen that the global community is able to work together toward a common goal. With the development of the narrative that the population of Earth is going to expire on a given date, June 21st, 2050, the leaders of international governments will begin to find it necessary to participate in the construction and development of Human Ark. The necessity for constructing this vessel of humanity highlights a sad and terrifying reality, that humanity is only driven to work together when it is the only hope left for the survival of our species. Only in death, Is life seen in its most vivid clarity.

In a speech given by the Prime Minister of the smallest nation in the Western Hemisphere, Saint Kitts and Nevis at the UN World conference related to COVID-19, he recognized that we as a collective human species need to:

“

underscore that the moment of global reckoning wrought by the pandemic, demands a renewal of purpose and promise, through multilateralism, and stronger international cooperation.7

”

The result of cooperation amongst countries due to the virus is a positive factor coming from this tragedy, it reveals similar ideas to Arrival in which a worldwide event brought together our global community toward a common good. However, it also shows the magnitude in which an event must be viewed as a catastrophe that could end humanity, in order for the public sphere and public media to take the threat seriously.

7 -“‘Instead of Nationalism, We Need Global Cooperation’; Caribbean Leaders Call for United Front against COVID-19 Pandemic | | UN News.” UN News, United Nations, 26 Sept. 2020, news.un.org/en/ story/2020/09/1073932.

INTERSECTION OF TIME

EXPERIMENT_02 Time is the construct by which humans define our reality. It unifies our species through its ability to bring quantitative meaning to the changes that occur in our perception.1 Yet, time is also just a construct meant to identify that which is unknown and undefined. Can this operation be deconstructed and run in reverse? How can â&#x20AC;&#x153;TIMEâ&#x20AC;?, this connection of realities, be manifested through a visual portrayal? If time can be the great unifier of our species, yet time is also a construct of our species as a whole, can a physical representation of this intersection result in a buildabe connection of our species?

Language and Perception The 4 most-spoken languages of the world are English (1.13 Billion), Mandarin (1.11 Billion), Hindi (615 Million), and Spanish (534 Million)2 Through the extrusion and intersection of these languages the cultural and linguistic overlap is used to refer to a shared perception of time. Once the unique words for “TIME” in each language were extruded upon one another, the resulting forms become defined as the visual manifestation of Time without the barrier of language. Can this intersection become a new form of reality defining something that unifies us as humans even greater than time? 1- Kuhn, Robert Lawrence. “The Illusion of Time: What’s Real?” Space. com, Space, 6 July 2015, www.space.com/29859-the-illusion-of-time.html. 2- Ghosh, Iman. “Ranked: The 100 Most Spoken Languages Around the World.” Visual Capitalist, 15 Feb. 2020, www.visualcapitalist.com/100-most-spoken-languages/.

Intersection of Time

Time as Space After extracting the forms received through the intersection of extrusions, the resultants are organized in different ways to begin to define space. These organized forms are representational of the cyclical relationship between society and time. The structures of society defined time, time then began to define how our social systems function, and now the function of our social systems create the structures that define time. Through the orienting and reorienting of these forms, the representation shows the infinite ways to create reality through the manipulation of time.

Intersection of Time

Time, Transience, Tourniquets Through the creation of this formal and spatial experiment, questions arise that begin to inform the way in which Human Ark can be designed. A space becomes the embodiment of the inersectionality for a global community, in relationship to the infinite nature of time. Can this new form become the space in which our species is unified through the connection of Time? Can space begin to shape a new idea of Time? A new reality entirely?

Intersection of Time

Form as Fiction Space and time become intersected in a multidimensional form. Going beyond the means of what is understood as reality a new architecture is created. All previous understood elements of reality (including gravity and physics) melt away into a new flow of shared intersectionality amongst all inhabitants. Space becomes as illusionary as time and a liminal space emerges in response. Where is everyone going? How does anyone have the time? What time is it?

Intersection of Time

05 Life on Noahâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Ark

Once it is identified that there is a potential for the global population and government leaders to work together on this cooperative project, new questions arise in the construction of this vessel. Upon decision to leave Earth as being the only feasible means of conserving remains of human life, questions of feasibility of a project come up: How is the ship going to function? Where is this ship going to go? Who is going to be on the ship?

Biosphere 2

-cachettemagazine.com

Life on Noah’s Ark

Life on Noah’s Ark Designing Humanity in a Bottle

“

Western civilization isn’t simply dying - It’s dead. We are probing into its ruins to take whatever is useful for the building of the new civilization to replace it.1

Now, with the necessity of creating a spacefaring ship that will be leaving Biosphere 1, the architectural and engineering techniques used in the creation of Biosphere 2 may be a useful precedent in looking to design Human Ark.

This quote came from the co-founder of Biosphere 2, John Allen. Biosphere 2 is an American Earth system science research facility located in Oracle, Arizona. The mission for the creation of this inhabitable space was to serve as a center for research, outreach, and lifelong learning about Earth, its living systems, and its place in the universe. Created in the 1990s, with the noble goal of “researching and developing self-sustaining, space-colonizing technology, Biosphere 2 is a tiny microcosm of Earth’s biomes.”2 The project began as an investigation into the potential for life to be sustained in a closed system that would be applicable for life in a spacecraft.

This novel project in Arizona however is not as out-of-the-ordinary as it may seem, and the idea of earth as a biosphere has deep historical roots. The Russian scientist Vladimir Vernadsky coined the term “biosphere” in a published a book dedicated to the concept. To Vernadsky, the biosphere was the selfsustaining ecological web of life that formed a skin on the planet.4

”

This was proposed as a viable project in the early 90s because of the rising global temperatures in Biosphere 1 (planet Earth), which now feels even more relevant and necessary in 2020 with carbon dioxide levels at 415 parts per million. According to NASA, the carbon dioxide levels in the air are at the highest they have been in 650,000 years.3

1 -Zimmer, Carl. “The Lost History of One of the World’s Strangest Science Experiments.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 29 Mar. 2019, www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/sunday-review/biosphere-2-climate-change. html. 2 -Tucson, Visit. “Biosphere 2 Is America’s Most Ambitious and Dramatically Disastrous Science Experiment.” Roadtrippers, 25 Mar. 2019 3 -“Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet.” NASA, 10 Nov. 2020, climate.nasa.gov/. 4 -Vernadsky, Vladimir I. Biosphere. Copernicus Springer, 2014.

Biosphere 2 -Interior Atrium Rainforest -visittuscon.org

Spaceship Earth -The Inhabitants of Biosphere 2 -vulture.com

Life on Noah’s Ark

Closed Ecological System To begin designing the future of human civilization in the closed ecological and of Human Ark, the Biosphere 2 and its functioning capabilities can be used as a basis for exploration into scalability of large scale habitations. The site was a 40 acre campus with a 3.14 acre research facility. “Within the interior of this structure was 7 biome areas that functioned in harmony in order to not produce any unwanted waste. Its seven biome areas were a 1,900-square-meter (20,000 sq ft) rainforest, an 850-square-meter (9,100 sq ft) ocean with a coral reef, a 450-squaremeter (4,800 sq ft) mangrove wetlands, a 1,300-square-metre (14,000 sq ft) savannah grassland, a 1,400-square-meter (15,000 sq ft) fog desert, and two anthropogenic biomes: a 2,500-square-meter (27,000 sq ft) agricultural system and a human habitat with living spaces, laboratories and workshops.”5 While this project was a wonderful attempt at the creation of a biospheric system that could support human life elsewhere in the galaxy, learning can also be taken from the way in which it failed. Much evidence about how humans function and interact in isolated groups can be learned from projects like Biosphere 2 and Antarctic research stations. The phenomenon studied in these types of situations are called “confined environment psychology” according to scientist Jayne Poynter, who was a member of the first Biosphere 2 crew. The relationships between the individuals in groups that are isolated into controlled environments is of great relevance when thinking about Human Ark, because this project will be a confined environment for possibly the rest of humanity’s duration of existence. According to an essay written by Mark Nelson, “Group dynamic challenges: Insights from Biosphere 2 experiments”,

Biosphere 2 shared many similarities of characteristics in project scope to that of deep space travel. Stress factors for the crew of a physically isolated team, adjustment time, food production and caloric limitations, and most intriguingly, the development of an us-versus-them syndrome in which power conflicts came up between the owners and participants of the experiment.6 The studies of social stressors that arose through the functioning of Bioshpere 2 are useful when thinking of coordinating a system that includes a much greater number of participants in which they will need to live in harmony in order to have the project be successful. On-Board Cooperation Another relevant factor of Biosphere 2 that helps in preparation for the occupation of Human Ark, is the way in which Mark Nelson talked about the cooperative mentality that must be upheld for the entirety of these confined environment crews. In order to ensure the success of a project like Biosphere 2, or Antarctic overwinter research, there must be an understanding of the need to uphold the goal of the mission as the most important consideration for the team, that rules over all acts performed throughout the group. There becomes a necessity in projects of this scope to create a “task-oriented” mindset in which groups are governed by “the conscious acceptance of goals, realitythinking in relation to time and resources, and intelligent management of challenges.”6

5 -“Fast Facts.” Biosphere 2 Masthead Image, University of Arizona, biosphere2.org/visit/about-biosphere2/fast-facts. 6 -Nelson, Mark, et al. “Group Dynamics Challenges: Insights from Biosphere 2 Experiments.” The Committee on Space Research (COSPAR), 5 July 2015, doi:Published by Elsevier Ltd.

International Space Station -nasa.gov

Life on Noah’s Ark

In a section titled “Group cohesion - caring for the life boat overrides other agendas”, Nelson goes on to say that “Despite challenges to the project’s direction and the at-times bitter factionalism which developed inside, it did not affect either the operation of the Biosphere 2 facility and life systems, nor of anyone’s area of responsibility or research work. Crew workloads reﬂected the principles of “work democracy” where each person has unique areas of responsibility as well as working in teams”. An important factor that helped to create this commitment to a common goal and cooperation of the team toward the upkeep of their home was the inclusion of the crew in the construction of the Biosphere. Scientist Roy L. Walford put it that “[the crew] poured the cement, did the electrical wiring, designed and installed the computer systems, and participated in expeditions to sea, desert, savanna, and jungle to collect the 3800 species that made up the ﬂora and fauna of Biosphere 2. Biosphere 2 therefore became ‘our baby.’”7 This connection that the crew made to the project through participation in the design and installation of their life support systems is an important consideration for thinking about the design of space travel projects. The successes of this project are seen in the ability for a group of people to come together in an environment to share a common goal and act in unselfish ways to support their home above their individual needs. The crew developed an appreciation of the value of biosphere interconnectedness as both an everyday beauty and challenging reality. Scientist from inside the project even went so far as to say that “the deep sense of connection of all life forms may well be even more the case for permanent habitation in space with bioregenerative life support systems”

it is understood the great level of importance a project of enclosed human conditions can have with regards to social cohesion of the inhabitants. This translates on a global scale when looking at projects like the International Space Station (ISS) and the complexity of cooperation due to the inputs of multiple governmental factions and leaderships working into the project. Similarities arise in the construction of the ISS and its attempt to create a unity of shared space by having the assembly of the station done in cooperation with all international partners involved. In this way all parties feel a similar level of investment and societal interest. The international Space Station requires the support from international partner agencies in the function of its programs. According to the NASA website, these programs include: “construction facilities, launch support and processing facilities, mission operations support facilities, research and technology development facilities and communications facilities.”8 The international space station is a great example of a project that is the culmination of a cooperative effort between the global community in order to efficiently utilize international resources. In working toward the development of a common goal, there would be less waste in resources by working on individual national projects that would have many overlaps in required program and construction. This same thought also reinforces the need for Human Ark as being a collaborative effort for the entirety of human society, because multiple different projects would not have the resources to create a seriously viable project in the time that it would become imperative.

International Cooperation

7 -Walford, Roy L. “Calorie Restriction in Biosphere 2: Alterations in Physiologic, Hematologic, Hormonal, and Biochemical Parameters in Humans Restricted for a 2-Year Period.” The Journals of Gerontology, 1 June 2002, doi:The Gerontolocial Society in America.

From looking at the precedent of Biosphere 2

8 -Garcia, Mark. “International Cooperation.” NASA, NASA, 25 Mar. 2015, www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/cooperation/index.html.

If The World Were 100 People:

60 would be from Asia 16 would be from Africa 10 would be from Europe 9 would be from Latin America 5 would be from North America

This graphic is created using information retrieved from 100people.org. Other information regarding these demographics is as follows: 12 Would speak Chinese, 6 would speak Spanish, 5 would speak English, 4 would speak Hindi, 3 would speak Arabic, 3 would speak Bengali, 3 would speak Portuguese, 2 would speak Russian, 2 would speak Japanese, 60 would speak other languages. 14 people would be illiterate,.11 would live on less than $1.90 USD per day. 18 would be without electricity. 22 would live without shelter. Only 7 would have a college degree.

Life on Noah’s Ark

The Crew Going beyond just the functional validations needed for a project of this scale and scope, a very important consideration is to be WHO is occupying the vessel of humanity. The population of the globe does not just consist of educated, old, white, men with PhDs in astrophysics, and so the question of inclusion of the entire population becomes a necessary meditation in the creation of this project. Operating under the assumption that a form of transportation could solve the issue of global interaction, meaning that there would be a way for all walks of life to travel and visit the Human Ark while it is under construction, this would then make for a more plausible argument to the idea that it would be possible to “gather” a proper ratio and census of the human population from all parts of the globe (referenced in the essay “24 Hour Experiment”). The participation and ratio for the occupation of this vessel would then be a direct correlation to that of the human population. This ratio of individuals from all over the world is represented by the graphic show at the left, where the global population is visualized through 100 people. This graphic comes from statistics that were first published in 1992 by Amy Hilgendor, in a curriculum entitled “Unheard Voices: Celebrating Cultures From the Developing World”.9 From the information provided by this research, and the representation of the demographics of the global population, it becomes clear that biases of the location of this project need to be hindered in order to get a better informed census of global culture and participation in this project. If the World Were 10,000 People The number of humans that will be on board is 10,000 people. This number comes from multiple sources that insist upon a large sample size to be sent in order to mitigate

problems like inbreeding. One of the sources for the determination of 10,000 participants in this project is a study on the “50/500” rule. This theory of the Minimum Viable Population (MVP) suggests that a minimum population size of 50 is necessary to combat inbreeding and a minimum of 500 individuals was needed to reduce genetic drift.10 While 500 could be the minimum amount of passengers aboard the vessel, the determination of 10,000 came from research into a non-profit organization called “Space for Humanity” or (S4H). An article in SpaceNews.com wrote that S4H is looking to send 10,000 people from all walks of life to space in order to further democratize space and develop solutions to world problems through the increasing of human awareness.11 The goal of this project is to make space exploration have a more global participation rather than just the largest governments and richest private companies. Dylan Taylor, a space industry angel investor and SpaceNews columnist, says about the project, “We are not going to send multimillionaire white males who can afford to go...

“

...When those people come back and talk about their experience, someone who lives in New Delhi who makes $1 a day is not necessarily going to relate to that experience. We need to send someone from their community who can share their experience.

”

9 -Hilgendor, Amy. 100 People: A World Portrait, 1992, Univesrity of Wisconsin, Madison. www.100people.org/statistics_100stats_original.php. 10 -Robinson, Scott K. “Minimum Viable Population.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., www.britannica.com/science/ minimum-viable-population. 11 -Werner, Debra. “Space for Humanity Seeks 10,000 Citizen Astronauts.” SpaceNews, 29 June 2017, spacenews.com/space-forhumanity-seeks-10000-citizen-astronauts/.

The Survival Imperative -Using Space to Protect Earth -lifeboat.com

The Alliance to Rescue Civilization, “a group that advocates a backup for humanity by way of a station on the Moon replete with DNA samples of all life on Earth, as well as a compendium of all human knowledge — the ultimate detached garage for a race of packrats. It would be run by people who, through fertility treatments and frozen human eggs and sperm, could serve as a new Adam and Eve in addition to their role as a new Noah.” This excerpt about A.R.C. comes from the website of Lifeboat Foundation, a nonprofit nongovernmental organization dedicated to “encouraging scientific advancements while helping humanity survive existential risks and possible misuse of increasingly powerful technologies, including genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics/AI, as we move towards the Singularity.”

Life on Noah’s Ark

This idea of involving populations from all demographics in a space endeavor project is directly related to Human Ark and the goal of creating an inclusive copy of humanity that embodies a proper census of the global population. Overlooking the Who In the scenarios of “creating a copy of humanity” proposed by scientists like Robert Shapio, a chemist from New York Univesity, the idea that humanity being copied would take a great deal of effort into deciding WHO is to be on board the spaceship is greatly overlooked. Shapiro’s proposed project, “A.R.C.”, referenced in ‘Toward a Common Goal’, calls for humanity to create this copy of existence on earth in the case of a “cataclysmic event” which would serve as “a backup of our cultural achievements and traditions”.12 Yet, when reading about proposals of this magnitude it is hardly ever mentioned that the greatest quantity of human achievement in culture and tradition is not in Europe or the Americas but in Asia and Africa. These continents that make up over half of the global population have been ignored and discounted as a human culture, why? Because of a lack of astrophysics program? These questions are not to be taken lightly and overlooked, as this ignorance to the way in which global cultures are underrepresented in ideas of space travel defeats the main purpose and goal of these missions in the first place. When the intention of a space program is to save the human species, that means more than just white males. An example of how oversights to this topic can be found in many space proposals is in the research developed by Al Globus. Globus, a member of the National Space Society Board of Directors, created and upkeeps his website ‘Free Space Settlement’, that creates an argument and an outline for

further development of colonization habitats in orbit around Earth. In an opening introduction on the site, Globus quotes Princeton physicist Gerard O’Neill talking about future space colonies, “unlike earlier colonization events, no people will be oppressed and no ecosystems destroyed”.13 And while this website contains greatly useful information about the survival of human species in biomes or spacecrafts in orbit, statements like this one blatantly glaze over a reality of oppression that will not be solved simply. Colonization is oppressive not only to the communities that are being overrun, but it is also biased and self-righteous in the sense of space travel being only in favor of those that have the resources and means of paying for a seat. The necessity for human survival CAN bring together humanity toward a common goal, BUT in order to do so these concepts need to be addressed with a high level of concern and thought. Globalization and Geography This idea that the global population should get equal representation in correspondence with geographical location brings up the logistical issue of transportation to the site of the Human Ark. Designing for global inclusion of all humans starts by outlining the main obstacles impeding the success of the project. I will operate under the assumption that the main concerns that could hinder the ability to have all walks of life visit and participate in the construction and occupation of the vessel are as follows: transportation, financial, and educational.

12 -Austen, Ben. “After Earth: Why, Where, How, and When We Might Leave Our Home Planet.” Popular Science, 16 Mar. 2011, www.popsci. com/science/article/2011-02/after-earth-why-where-how-and-when-wemight-leave-our-home-planet/. 13 -Globus, Al. Free Space Settlement, space.alglobus.net/.

International Travel Methods -Insider.com

Life on Noah’s Ark

These items become the pragmatic rationalizations in which the construction of Human Ark could be argued against as a viable option for creating the “copy of humanity”. The way in which these issues can be addressed is in how globalization and breakthrough technologies can be used for the benefit of the global population. An article written in Access magazine, a report on University of California Transportation Center, outlines just how narrow our view of transportation is.

Could future transportation infrastructures like a global hyperloop or cargo drones become a way in which the global community can become more integrated, and the voices of developing countries heard in a conversation about future human civilization. When the issue of economic feasibility and financial possibility is answered with a global need to create systems of transportation for the benefit of the global community holistically, many problems can be solved through these pipelines of knowledge and resources.

“

It’s not just a way to move people and freight around. It’s basically a way to achieve the goals of society—whether the goals are growing food, commuting to work, expanding production and trade, building better cities, creating jobs, or reducing poverty.14

”

This statement brings up the idea that a systems approach to the design of future global transportation can begin to expose ways of increasing mobility in conjunction with achieving larger societal goals. In the book “Transportation and World Development” written by Owen Wilfred, the author of the magazine article mentioned above, the argument that mobility systems can become the catalyst for economic change in developing countries, is made in more detail. While this book was written in 1987, the forward looking manner in which ideas are proposed to use infrastructures such as unit trains, pipelines, and integrated railroad systems can give us ideas for modern problems and future solutions.15

14 -Owen, Wilfred. “Global Transportation.” ACCESS Magazine, 31 May 2017, www.accessmagazine.org/fall-1998/global-transportation/. 15 -Owen, Wilfred. Transportation and World Development. John Hopkins University Press, 1987.

HUMANOID CHAIR

VELLUM DESIGN COMPETITION The piece that I designed for the Fall Vellum Competition was an exploration into form as a meaning of humanity, as fabricated through the use of machine. By researching how past artists have expressed human qualities through objective shape, tactile, and perceptive senses, I was inspired to make a piece of furniture that worked toward a similar goal. I wanted to manifest the idea that a machine could start to create a humanoid object, injecting it with the embodiment of humanity in the process of pulling it into form. In doing this, the hope is to rid ourselves as humans of the idea that our existence in reality is so precious above all other objects on earth, and we ourselves are objects that are a part of a larger system.

Pamela Rosenkranzâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Our Product (2015) at the Venice Biennale

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Humanoid Chair

Human as Object-Object as Machine Vellum Design Competition

Through research into Object Oriented Ontology and the book written by Graham Harman, “A New Theory of Everything”, I tried to understand how objects are irreducible down to their most basic elements, and embody an intrinsic value in and of themselves.1 An object according to Harman is anything that cannot be reduced or simplified either downwards to what it is made of or upward to what it means. The basis of this inability to break down and simplify something gives it the qualities of an object. In the sense of my project, this idea came to mean that the humanoid object created by a machine is not reduced down to the elements of the machine, nor the meaning of the human-like qualities. Instead, the embodiment of the object is in the occurrence of the process of creating the humanoid form. This brings importance to the idea of the act of creating the human from the machine rather than either the inputs or resultants. This project also aims to be a rejection of the anthropocentric tendency to claim that the focus of the universe should be on Man.

Thus, a machine is constructed that creates the meaning of humanity through its function, exposing the frail ego of Man. As expressed by Harman, “The world is not the world as manifest to humans; to think a reality beyond our thinking is not nonsense, but obligatory.” This brings up the idea that the world would still be present without humans, and the end of humanity does not mean oblivion of existence as a whole. In the images on the left, the artist Pamela Rosenkranz filled the Swiss Pavilion at the 2015 Venice Biennale with flesh-toned liquid and synthesized baby musk. This comes as a statement of the nature in which we view the meaning of the human as being an object with specific sensational qualities. In this manner, it is also possible to fabricate these qualities through the use of materials that mimic these sensations of touch, sight, and in this case, even smell.

1- Harman, Graham. Object-Oriented Ontology a New Theory of Everything. Pelican, an Imprint of Penguin Books, 2018.

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Humanoid Chair The goal of this installation, and a goal for my vellum project was to create this embodiment of the human through the use of inanimate elements, mimicking human qualities with synthetic materiality. The color of the humanoid pool is “a standardized northern European skin tone,” the same color that the press release says is utilized in contemporary advertising as “a proven way to physically enhance attention.” In an article written about Rosenkranz’s installation, the author states, “The immersive installation questions our conception of the real by confronting the historically, religiously, and commercially transmitted image of what it means to be human with its biological genesis. Like the rendering discussion about AI-intelligence and the case of the Turing test it asks: what does it take to be accepted as real/as human? Is it enough to mime or look like it, if it can fool the viewer/test person to believe in it?”2 This comment brings up the question of the Turing test, a test that entails a robot that can prove that it is human even though it is seen as being an obvious robot. Does this experiment, and the installation bring evidence to the idea that a human is defined by the way in which it acts human or the way that it feels, looks, smells? Can machines begin to manufacture the qualities of humanity and create an object that becomes defined as human? 2- Winther&nbsp;Kristensen, Katrine. “Our Product – the One We Never Will Know.” Posthuman Aesthetics, 15 Nov. 2016

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Humanoid Chair

Objects of the Absurd Humanoid Forms Manipulated by the Machine

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Vellum Construction 01,02 -3D Print Files divided the piece into 18 unique parts that were then printed, joined, and spackled together to create the final homogeneous form. 03 -The final joined form is sanded down and painted in preparation for fiberglassing. The color pink is used as a satire of “standardized” skin tone, resembling the Northen European complexion. This comes from the relation to the work of Rosenkranz’s “Our Product”, mentioned earlier. 04 -The fiberglass is applied to the final form of the object using epoxy resin. In this manner the project becomes smooth and slick to the touch, mimicing human skin. 05 -The intention with the footings was to take the 3d printed models and create aluminum positve casts using a foundry. Because of lack of access to resources due to Covid-19, the 3d printed positives were just used instead.

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Humanoid Chair

RESIN FIBERGLASS

1” STEEL TUBE

STEEL FOOTINGS

The design of a Form that is “Manipulated by the Machine” is created through the use of steel rods that are asserted into a malleable gooey mass. Then then rods begin to pull the mass into a desired Form that becomes a Humanoid object. This method of the steel rods pulling the form into position and then securing it in this posture through the use of steel footings is intended to be emblematic of the human being created by the machine. Because if it looks like a human, and has all the qualities that humans have, it must be a human... right? 05

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Machine as Human Objects hold a further poetic meaning than that which they simply convey. The culmination and orientation of the machine creating a humanoid form brings meaning to the form that is created. Manifesting man through the use of machines, this project shows that the sensations of human life don’t reflect the realities of the human spirit. Can the machine help to reveal to us what it is to be “human” so that we can start to understand what it is to be HUMAN. We lose an existential sense of self, trudging through daily monotony without a sense of purpose. In what ways can machines help us to refocus on what it means to be human? Rather than delivering us into a technological unreality.

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VESSEL OF EXPERIENCE

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06 Site -Central Park

Central Park is known today for being a great unifier of culture and community for New York City, and a breath of fresh air for the highly dense and urban city. However, many people are unaware, or chose to forget, the history of elitism, racism, and displacement that went into the planning of the public land. In what ways can the history of this site become relevant for designing a structure that is meant to be a unifier of the global community and an emblem for harmonious human relations?

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Smith & Knapp Map, 1893, Central Park

-wikimedia.com

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Site

Central Park 40.7812° N, 73.9665° W

In order to understand the future of central park and its potential for becoming a site of unity for the global community, it is important first to recognize how and why it came to be. Through the comprehension of the past of the site, the creation of a new project can reinforce, or grow, or depart from the downfalls of past community efforts.

people could agree on the design for the space.”1 Ideas and designs for the park were recommended and denied until finally, in 1857, the park held a design contest in which there was a winning entry from city architect Calvert Vaux. Superintendent Frederick Law Olmstead finalized these plans for the park, called the “Greensward Plan”

Elitism and European Wannabes

The design submitted by Olmsted and Vaux reflected the board of commissioners desires to create a landscaped parked modeled on the romantic and naturalistic parks of Europe, and English traditional in particular. “Olmsted and Vaux suggested that the park be divided into two sections; the Upper Park, which was characterized by bold and sweeping slopes, grand scale gardening, and the Reservoir; and the Lower Park, which was characterized by a much more varied landscape including a long and rocky hillside.”1 The Greensward Plan also included plans for four below ground roads to alleviate traffic throughout the Park while maintaining a healthy and tranquil atmosphere. Once the design for the park was decided upon, the only decision left was preparing the site for construction.

Through the influence of the industrial revolution, New York City grew in unprecedented ways and quickly became overcrowded and densely inhabited. As the city grew larger and larger, the city of New York began to receive criticisms about being crowded and dirty from snobbish European aristocrats. These criticisms of America as a whole and specifically New Yorkers was in regards to their lack of classiness and their inability to maintain public spaces that were landscaped and indicative of a beautiful thriving city culture. In reaction to this criticism, the elite class of New York City in the late 1850s sought to prove these European critics wrong. The hope was that a well-manicured central garden would prove the wealth and style that the upper echelon of the city so dearly wished to flaunt.“While most New York city officials were in agreement about the need for a centrally located city park, few

1 -Harris, Karen. “Central Park, Elitism, and the Destruction of Seneca Village.” History Daily, 28 July 2019, historydaily.org/central-park-elitismand-the-destruction-of-seneca-village.

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Lake Manhattan Old Reservoir, Central Park -historydaily.org

Past Images of Seneca Village -meaww.com

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Seneca Village “The Seneca Village settlement was founded in 1825 following the liberation of black people after years of slavery. It was the first community of its kind in the city and was also inhabited by several other minority communities that included Irish and German immigrants.”2 The once existing settlement for marginalized communities was located on land that was bound by 82nd and 89th Streets and Seventh and Eighth Avenues. In order to undermine the families and the existing homes that were located in Seneca Village, the upper class elites that were pushing for the construction of the park began telling reporters that the area was poorly run.

“

As the number of residents living in the area started to grow, journalists and supporters of a movement to build a park in the same area began to spread rumors about the land.

”

Journalists and park supporters began describing the area that was to be slated for the park as, “a swampy wasteland that was inhabited by squatters”.3 This degradation of a marginalized community, that was only recently freed from slavery and acquiring property, is reflective of the racist attitudes and biases in systemic American politics. Despite wide controversy over the acquisition of the land from these communities, the city purchased the land through eminent domain, the law that allows the government to take private land for public use with compensation paid to the landowner. While this is a legal move made by the city that gave the current residents compensation for their property, still over roughly 1,600 inhabitants of Seneca Village were displaced.

And, although landowners were compensated, it was for a much undervalued rate than the property was worth, not to mention the community and cultural assets that were stripped along with their land. Construction “Construction for the park began during the financial panic of 1857. Mayor Fernando Wood used the opportunity to provide over 20,000 jobs for Irish and German immigrants and native-born New Yorkers in order to secure votes.”4 It is interesting to note that even after the mass-displacement of AfricanAmericans and Irish immigrants the elitists and politicians of New York City still used the park as a means to enhance their political posture. The construction of Central Park was difficult because of the terrain conditions that were present and the geography that included large natural water features. “Over 500,000 cubic feet of soil had to be removed in order to plant 270,000 trees”. Large boulders were removed using more gunpowder than was fired at the Battle of Gettysburg. “Thirty-six bridges and arches were built along with six man-made bodies of water.”4

2 -Vasudevan, Varsha. “Seneca Village: How Racism and White Supremacy Led to the Creation of New York City’s Iconic Central Park.” , 7 June 2019, meaww.com/seneca-village-dark-history-new-york-central-park-africanamerican-racism-community-white-supremacy. 3 -“The Story of Seneca Village.” Central Park Conservancy, www. centralparknyc.org/articles/seneca-village. 4 -“Central Park.” NYPAP, www.nypap.org/preservation-history/centralpark/.

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An Escape for the Elite, Women in Elegant Dresses in the Park

-historydaily.org

Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir -central park.com

Officially named the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir in 1994, the Reservoir is famed for the 1.58 mile track that encircles the 106-acre body of water. When the Reservoir was built in 1862, its original purpose was to provide clean water for the city. While this function is not carried out today, the Reservoir does distribute water to other Central Park locations, such as the Pool, the Loch, and the Harlem Meer.

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Site

Once Again: Elitism The park completed the final stages of construction and opened in the winter of 1859. New Yorkers were ice skating on the frozen ponds that season and by only 1865 the park attracted over seven million visitors a year. However, Staying on theme with the narrative of Central Park reinforcing the elitist agenda or erasure of lower socio-economic culture, upon the first opening of the park, the upper class were the only visitors to the now “public” land. The location of the park in midtown Manhattan was only used by the wealthy classes that were able to access the area that was much farther uptown than walkable for the working class in the city. On many afternoons the park was filled with women in elegant dresses attending such events as open-air concerts, which were planned on weekdays when the average workers were unable to attend.5 It wasn’t until the 1920s when playgrounds were installed in the park, making the area more usable for children and parents of the working class, much to the annoyance of the elite class. “By the 1940s, then--parks commissioner Robert Moses worked to add more play areas to the park and to transition it from a park for the wealthy to a park for all.” The park today is the highlight of recreation and outdoors spaces for one of the worlds largest cities, blending cultures and communities of New York as one of the largest public urban parks in the world. There is even an estimated 38 million visitors to central park a year, not including the locals in the community that even chose to visit the park on a daily basis. But even this open public space is not without its tainted past of racism, elitism, and discrimination, and the worst thing that we can do is to erase this past with rhetoric

that overlooks the true history of this land. When we talk about central park as being simply a piece of beautiful landscape that was built upon land that was unable to have skyscrapers constructed on it, we fail to recognize the history of Seneca Village, and the many lives that were affected and dismantled in order to allow for the area of recreation we now use today. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir The largest body of water on the cite of Central Park is Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir which is over 1 Billion gallons of water. The reservoir provided water to the city of New York until 1993 when it was decommissioned because of a new main water source located underneath 79th street. “Though deemed obsolete, it remained a part of the NYC water supply and it was intended to be used to supplement the city’s upstate water supply in drought emergencies.”6 The decommissioned reservoir was renamed after Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis in 1994 to commemorate her contributions to the city (which included saving Grand Central Terminal from demolition and restoring it as an architectural landmark, protesting against the building of structures that would hinder Central Park’s beauty)7 and also because she enjoyed walking in the area. The next question becomes: How can this site breathe new promise into a past of oppression, and become a place of hope for a future of change?

5 -”Central Park History,” Central Park Conservancy. Article retrieved July 2009 6 -Roberts, Sam (August 28, 1993). “131-Year-Old Reservoir Is Deemed Obsolete”. The New York Times. 7 -Kifner, John (July 23, 1994). “Central Park Honor for Jacqueline Onassis”. The New York Times.

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24 HOUR EXPERIMENT

DEEP SITE EXPLORATION I find this site to be an intriguing location for the placement of Human Ark because the decommissioned water reservoir is the core of the first public park in America, and it is used for the simple pleasure of recreation, but in the case of a drought emergency it would supply water to the entirety of Manhattan. This dichotomy of leisure and survival becomes brazenly polarized when the expiration date of the human species is proposed. When the end of human civilization is revealed that it is due to our own ignorance of climate change, the meaning of this site will go from being one where strolls around the jogging path turn into a scene of desperation to consolidate the meaning of humanity, in the last dying moments of our species. What lies beyond the visible of this site? What is revealed through further analysis of the infrastructures that manifest this site into existence? This experiment aims to enlighten the intricacies of transportation to the site which will be the destination of the vessel of humanity. The most visited tourist attraction will become the most visited construction site in the world. One defined by the pilgrimage of people, ideas, and knowledge that create the meaning of this monument.

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Synaptic Plasticity

-cognifit.com

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Neuroplasticity, also known as neural plasticity, or brain plasticity, is the ability of neural networks in the brain to change through growth and reorganization. These changes range from individual neurons making new connections, to systematic adjustments like cortical remapping.â&#x20AC;? Can this idea of the intersection of neural synapses and how their creation becomes the development of knowledge and memory become a metaphor for the creation of shared knowledge through the intersection of peoples and ideas?

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24 Hour Experiment

Transportation Tapestry 24 Hour Experiment

In addition to being a location that will become highly contrasted due to the effects of climate change, Central Park was also chosen as the location of this project because of its exposure to the international community and accessibility to many transportation outlets. With the necessity to create a vessel in which the global community takes part in the construction and implementation of the project, it is of the utmost importance to comprehend the logistics of traffic reception to the site. With this in mind, I wanted to try and map and express these transportation avenues and create a visualization of this information. The 24 hour site experiment is an exploration into the site for 24 hours. The theory is that during this time period the wanderings and stumblings of being on the site for an extended period of time begins to reveal information deeper than the surface of the site. Sadly due to COVID-19 I was unable to spend 24 hours in central park, so instead I decided to do a directed dive into what the internet had to say about central park, new york, and any other oddities I could discover in the deep dark interweb. I began my search by researching ideas about transportation as a means for understanding how a city functions, through the flow of people from destination to destination.

In this search I came to an article in which a city and regional planner for New York City, Alan Leidner, described a city as “a living organism”. Leidner imagined that the infrastructural systems and transportation systems below the city are “a body consisting of various systems—respiratory, nervous, skeletal—that share the same space and even intertwine.”1 This work of mapping the underground labyrinth of New York became intriguing to me because of the way in which these systems were described as the “roots” of an organism that grows and flourishes above the surface. In the book “The Global City” by Saskia Sassen, the author states that: “Cities themselves are ecosystems and infrastructures are their roots. Infrastructures are the lifeblood and circulatory systems of urban ecosystems. This way, we realise that urban metabolism and function extend far beyond the city limits and its hinterlands. Cities are connected globally and are the outposts and command posts of globalisations”.2

1 -Milner, Greg. “Nobody Knows What Lies Beneath New York City.” Bloomberg.com, Bloomberg, 10 Aug. 2017, www.bloomberg.com/news/ features/2017-08-10/nobody-knows-what-lies-beneath-new-york-city. 2 -Sassen, S. The Global City: New York, London, Tokyo, 2nd ed.; Princeton University Press: Princeton, NJ, USA, 2000.

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Scales and Scopes I began to wonder: Can these infrastructures of transit begin to become the roots for growth of a New Tree of Life? Transportation of people and ideas, of data and knowledge becomes the nutrients that feed the Tree of Life for Humanity? Will mapping these systems and networks of infrastructure help to give an overall vision of the interconnectedness of our local communites to the global community, showing that this project can help to fill in the gaps of globalized communication? The Goal for this experiment became trying to map the interconnectedness of the systems of transportation infrastructure in a series of scopes, in order to get a better understanding of the systems in place for the transportation of people, and thereby ideas and knowledge. By researching the modes of transportation for the local (Central Park and Manhattan), regional (New York), national (United States), and global (International) communities, I was better able to comprehend the ways in which this site fits into a global scale and function. The investigation of this site became a study of the invisible systems that make a city able to function, and travel and transportation coordination for a scope of large volumes of traffic. Through this investigation of documenting the systems of transportation I wanted to create a visualization that took into account the volumes of traffic that were incorporated into each form of transportation. That is why in figure 02 the unique forms of transportation are scaled by the increasing factors of traffic for each system. Using figures provided by openstreetmap.org and nyc.gov the GIS data was translated into “pipes” with radiuses based on the volume of transported visitors on an average day. 3 -“Subway and Bus Ridership for 2019.” MTA, 14 Apr. 2020, new.mta.info/ agency/new-york-city-transit/subway-bus-ridership-2019.

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01 -The visible built environment that can be see from an aerial view is a representation of the density of the city. Towards the right of the image is headed toward downtown in which the buildings get much taller and denser than that of the left which is more residential. 02 -Foot traffic is represented with walking paths and running routes throughout the park and in neighborhood areas. Bike routes are represented with slightly larger tubes than walking. Roads are represented with even larger tubes by which taxis, private vehicles, and 3rd party transportation vehicles (i.e. Uber, Lyft) use these routes most frequently. Busses are a form of public transportation that have an even more frequent usage. Subways are represented below the surface and are the most used form of transportation within the city and greater regional area. According to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, “the subway in New York has a daily ridership of approximately 5.5 million and an annual ridership in 2019 of roughly 1.698 billion”.3

24 Hour Experiment

THE VISIBLE

THE (IN)VISIBLE

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Global Scale The subway and bus systems are so important in New York because of the usership in the area. New York has the highest percent of workers that commute by public transit than any other city in America with 33% of the workforce commuting using public transit on an average day. 4 In addition to this, the greater New York area is also notable for its national and international access. Of Americaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest and most trafficked airports, based on passengers serviced per year, the Tri-state area has 2 airports in the top 15. Number 6 on the list is John F. Kennedy International Airport (JFK), servicing 61 Million Passengers a year. Located in Queens, New York, JFK is the busiest international air passenger gateway into North America. This region also has Newark Liberty International Airport (EWR) which services 43 million passengers a year, making it number 14th on the list.4 JFK airport is represented with the domestic and international flight plans in figure 03. This figure aims to show the way in which international travelers enter New York and make their way into the city and to central park. This is relevant information in planning for a project that will rely heavily on international travel capabilities in order to best incorporate a global voice in the making of a project that embodies the entirety of humanity. For the next analysis of transportation in New York, GIS data was analyzed and represented through the use of visual displays of traffic volume in the streets of the city. This information is important in a project that aims to be a hub of global transportation and pilgrimage, therefore making it necessary to track the most used hubs of infrastructure already found in the city. 4 -Bureau, US Census. â&#x20AC;&#x153;American Community Survey (ACS).â&#x20AC;? The United States Census Bureau, 22 Oct. 2020, www.census.gov/programs-surveys/

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03 -Regional transportation systems are overlapped with International travel patterns. This representation incorporates the simultaneous coordination of a system like airline travel being accommodated with bus and subway systems to enter and commute in a city upon arrival. 04 -Sphere volumes are extrapolated at intersections of high traffic in and around the city of New York. These volumes are sized by the frequency of vehicles passing through the intersections on an average daily basis average by the year. The 3 sizes correspond to: 1- less than 10,000 vehicles per day 2- greater than 10,000 vehicles, less than 100,000 vehicles per day 3-greater than 100,000 vehicles per day

24 Hour Experiment

REGIONAL, NATIONAL, GLOBAL

REGIONAL INTERSECTION VOLUMES

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Hierarchical Diffusion Hierarchical diffusion is the transfer of information, ideas, or knowledge from a person of power to other persons continuously throughout communities. Hierarchical diffusion is an important factor in globalization and the ability for a global community to receive access to resources like medical and health information. However, “although globalization can create ample opportunities and spaces to share experiences and information, the diffusion of ideas, especially in global health, is primarily influenced by the unequal distribution of economic, political, and scientific powers around the world”.5 This insight of the mismanagement of health information in favor of High-Income Countries comes from a journal in “International Health Policy Management”. In this research study, the team addressed that because global health is rooted in these (HICs), and ideas are then dispersed to lower income countries, there is a divide in the global community. Where these efforts should be increasing the overall global access to health information, there is instead a further gap in medical knowledge worldwide. This group, led by Emilie Robert from Montreal University Hospital, argues that:

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Acknowledging and addressing this invisible trend would contribute to a greater degree of open discussions in global health.

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This acknowledgment, and thereby creations of initiatives to try and reorient the global system in favor of alternatives, could create culturally sound solutions for persistent health problems, and reduce global inequality.*

*Can transportation at the local scale, like in New York, become a model for global connectivity initiatives? The creation of initiatives that seek to benefit the global community and reduce inequality in not only access, but also representation, is at the heart of the function of Human Ark. Because this project creates its own credibility of existence through being the last remains of humanity, it holds the power to become the hearth for a new hierarchical diffusion structure which usurps the need for government involvement.

5 -Robert, Emilie, et al. “Globalization and the Diffusion of Ideas: Why We Should Acknowledge the Roots of Mainstream Ideas in Global Health.” International Journal of Health Policy and Management, 3 June 2014, doi:10.15171/ijhpm.2014.55.

Can the structural function of Hierarchical Diffusion become a precedent for reverse engineering this diffusion of ideas? In the creation of Human Ark, the assembly of humanity will be in an inverse to this graph in which connections in the global environment will result in a hearth of culture.

24 Hour Experiment

Hierarchical Diffusion Structure:

Hearth

Important Place

Early Diffusion

Later Diffusion

No Diffusion

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Hearth Un-coincidentally, the use of the term “Hearth” in theories of hierarchical diffusion as, “the center point by which innovation and invention of key cultural traits moved to influence surrounding regions”,6 brings us relation to Gottfried Semper’s, The Four Elements of Architecture. In a most poetic prose, Semper stated that the hearth was the first element created: “The first sign of settlement and rest after the hunt, the battle, and wandering in the desert is today, as when the first men lost paradise, the setting up of the fireplace and the lighting of the reviving, warming, and food preparing flame. Around the hearth the first groups formed: around the hearth the first groups assembled; around it the first alliances formed; around it the first rude religious concepts were put into the customs of a cult...

“

...Throughout all phases of society the hearth formed that sacred focus around which took order and shape.7

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The first element of architecture, the first element in the construction of a new society, of a new hope. Semper attempts to explain the origins of architecture through the lens of anthropology, and in doing so creates an outline for the function of architecture as a means of defining humanity. With Human Ark as the Hearth, a new society and human population can grow from the rubble of a species that worried so much about the individual, that it neglected the whole.

6 -Glenn, Amy S. “Culture Up.” GEOG 1303 NOTES - THEMES: CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY, 19 Oct. 2017, www.amyglenn.com/GEOG-REGIONAL/ geog1303cultural.htm. 7-Semper, Gottfried. The Four Elements of Architecture. Die vier Elemente der Baukunst, 1851.

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03 01 -The Primitive Hut, Marc-Antoine Laugier, 1753 Exploration into the anthropological origins of architecture as being the relationship between humans and the natural environment. 02 -Mind Map of 24 Hour study, looking at the Loose Connections within the Scopes and Scales of New Yorkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s transportation system network.

03,04 -Preliminary Sculptural studies for an Object that represents the Hearth, from which hierarchical diffusion of ideas of knowledge stem from and spread around the globe. But in a reverse manner, the Hearth is created from the culmination of human input, and the flow of ideas, and knowledge, and culture, creating a monument representing the conjunction and intersectionality of human existence.

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Monuments and Memories A sculpture was created in order to illustrate the idea that these transportation systems become the synapses and roots of a living organism. This monument is to become the site of a mass pilgrimage of all walks of life, becoming even an element of a higher power. Does the culmination of humanity start to hold religious implications? This resultant figure of the intersection of humanity is the final tapestry of existence for life on earth, the door into a new reality. This sculpture also loosely holds a relationship to the idea of spaghettification. Spaghettification is also known as the “noodle effect,” in astrophysics is “the stretching out of an object as it comes into contact with an extreme gravitational field, typically that of a black hole. Black holes have incredibly powerful tidal forces. The singularities within them contain the most powerful gravitational fields in the known universe.”8 This project becomes a singularity of sorts for the existence of humanity and all that is embodied in our existence on earth. A project shared by the entire human population, entangled with the memories, knowledge, and experience of the peoples that once walked on this planet. This project becomes the shared Goal of the species, it becomes the shared Government of the species, it becomes God. 8 -“Spaghettification - Facts and Information.” World of Phenomena, Moonlight Developments, 16 Aug. 2019, www.phenomena.org/space/ spaghettification/.acs/.

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07 Program

The approach that must be taken in designing a vessel that is to include the remains of human civilization needs to be broken down into sections according to the different programmatic needs of the project. The way in which these program elements are defined is through the needs outlined in Maslowâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s hierarchy: 1 -Basic Needs, 2 -Psychological Needs, 3 -Self-Fulfillment Needs Because this project will encompass the entirety of the human condition for many years, there is not only the necessary element of survival for the inhabitants, but also the ability to find meaning in life along the journey. These programmatic elements are thereby translated into architectural elements: 1 -Survival Systems, 2 -Live/Work Systems, 3 -Unification Systems Through further development of these different systems, Human Ark becomes programmed in order to meet the entirety of the needs of humanity in order to ensure success for future function of the vessel and civilization.

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Intersection:

Unification Systems

space for the convergence of total human culture

Human Embodiement: livelihood, culture

Housing Needs:

Live/Work Systems

shelter for 10,000 passengers

Basic Needs:

food, water, health, biodiversity

Mechanical Needs:

space travel, energy, transportation

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Survival Systems

Program

Program Designing the Vessel of Humanity

Survival Systems

Mechanical Needs

The design for survival systems for the vessel is based on the mechanical needs for the project (i.e. the necessary energy elements for deep space voyage) and the survival needs of the passengers on board.

The means by which energy would be made possible for Human Ark is through the conjunction of solar cell and nuclear energy technologies. According to NASA, the ion propulsion engine is the most efficient and effective method of space travel. The ion propulsion system uses nuclear power to function the thrusting systems for space exploration.

The mechanical systems needed for the project need to be derived from the plan of where the vessel will be traveling to. This information will indicate the means by which the project will travel and thus the architectural and engineering design that is necessary in order to function. Scientists stated in 2011 that “none of the 500 planets known to orbit stars outside our solar system is believed to have an atmosphere capable of sustaining human life”1, but almost all of these were discovered in the past decade. This fact led two astronomers to conclude in a recent paper that the probability of finding a planet that is within the habitable zone for humans by the year 2264 is 95 percent. However, even with this knowledge, space-traveling technology could allow for “generation ships” to survive indefinitely, harvesting materials from asteroids and comets while traveling through deep space.

“The ion propulsion system consists of five main parts: the power source, the power processing unit, the propellant management system, the control computer, and the ion thruster. The power source can be any source of electrical power, but solar or nuclear are usually used.”2 A solar electric system uses sunlight and solar cells to generate power, and a nuclear electric propulsion system uses a nuclear heat source coupled to an electric generator.

1 -Austen, Ben. “After Earth: Why, Where, How, and When We Might Leave Our Home Planet.” Popular Science, www.popsci.com/science/ article/2011-02/after-earth-why-where-how-and-when-we-might-leave-ourhome-planet/. 2 -Dunbar, Brian. “Ion Propulsion: Farther, Faster, Cheaper.” NASA, NASA, 2 May 2008, www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/technology/Ion_Propulsion1. html.

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4 -Bioregenerative Life Support Systems, Plant Growth Aboard ISS -nasa.gov

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Program

Through the use of these systems simultaneously, the spacesteading vessel would be able to satisfy the need for travel in space while also being able to provide energy and electricity to the rest of the project, creating an inhabitable environment for humans. This manifestation of nuclear power and solar power working in unison, will become an important facet of the programming of the vessel of humanity. The energy that this system provides will become the backbone for the function of the project making all other elements possible. Basic Needs The way in which basic needs can be met for the inhabitants of Human Ark can be found in precedents that explore the creation of entire environments and closed-ecosystems. As discussed earlier in the essay “Life on Noah’s Ark”, Biosphere 2 is a useful reference for designing a closed ecological system. This project created 7 biome aeras that would support biodiversity and allow for the human occupants to fit into an environmental system that recycled waste into future consumption patterns. The biomes that were used in the project can also become an outline for the creation of program for Human Ark. The 7 representative biomes in Biosphere 2 were: 1 -1,900 square meter rainforest, 2 -850 square meter ocean with a coral reef, 3 -450 square meter mangrove wetlands, 4 -1,300 square meter savannah grassland, 5 -1,400 square meter fog desert, 6 -2,500 square meter agricultural system, 7 -human habitat3 In addition to these biomes there was a below-ground technical infrastructure. This element is represented in the design of Human Ark in the ‘Mechanical Needs’ system for the project. Incorporating this framework of 7 biomes into a vessel for humanity would be a way in which to create a closed ecological system for space travel that could

last for an indefinite amount of time. The design of an environment would need to include biodiversity of both plant and animal species in order to ensure generational life support for life to be sustained onboard. Additional ideas for how ecology can be addressed is through the use of bioregenerative life support systems (BLSS). These systems are artificial ecosystems consisting of many complex symbiotic relationships among higher plants, animals, and microorganisms. NASA uses this form of plant growth system at the International Space Station because of the ability for these plants to be grown artificially without the help of Earth’s biospheric resources. “Results from plant growth on the space station have come from experiments designed for developing bioregenerative food production systems for the space station and for future long-duration exploration missions.”4 Live/Work Systems Scaling these systems up in order to provide for a much greater amount of passengers would require great amounts of architectural attention, especially in the matter of the ‘human habitat’ which would need to include space for 10,000 passengers. According to the study on the census of the world population, and in relation to the idea that this vessel is going to be a copy of humanity, Human Ark will have 10,000 passengers from all walks of life and all parts of our current world: 6000 from Asia, 1600 from Africa, 1000 from Europe, 900 from Latin America, 500 from North America.

3-Gaia. Biosphere 2, Environment and Ecology, 2020, environment-ecology. com/ecological-design/255-biosphere-2.html. 4 -Johnson, Michael. “Plant Biology and Bioregenerative Life Support.” NASA, NASA, 11 Mar. 2019, www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/ research/news/b4h-3rd/sv-plant-biolobgy-and-biogerneative-life-support.

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5 -Rethinking The Public Realm, Behavior Settings in Malaysian Cities 25 Behavior Settings in Klang Malaysia, 2018, Robert Powell -researchgate.net

The public realm in many Asian cities is rapidly declining as they succumb to the dominance of the automobile. How can designers of cities in the 21st century create a walkable public realm that has uplifting and memorable qualities? How can this question instead relate to the design of Human Ark?

6 -KEO, 2001, Jean-Marc Philippe -orbit.zkm

7 -NASA Golden Record

-jpl.nasa.gov

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Program

Housing Needs What was also learned from Biosphere 2 about the creation of a closed system is the need for a diversity of public and private spaces. The design of spaces to create behavioral settings is important in a confined environment in order to provide areas in which unique activities can break up monotonous existence. Behavioral settings are defined as the theorized entities that help explain the relationship between individuals and the environment - particularly the social environment. 5 Behavior settings can be created through specific organization of space to suggest a particular activity or program. These spaces become mediating structures that help explain the relationship between the dynamic behavior of individuals and stable social structure. According to a journal written by Karl A. Fox, a professor of economics, the implications of designing behavior settings for social sciences is widespread in function.“Behavior settings are the immediate environments of all human behavior and experience. They are objectively defined, directly observable entities with clear-cut boundaries in space and clear-cut beginnings, durations, and endings in time.”5 With this understanding it is thus possible to design architectural spaces with the intention of giving humans diversity of social settings, offering a variety of canvases by which humanity can paint the existence of reality.

was proposed but never fully realized in 2006. The goal of this project was to create a time capsule satellite that would carry messages and knowledge from contemporary humanity to then re-enter earth 50,000 years later. “KEO was named after the most frequently used sounds in all languanges - k, e and o.”6 In addition to carrying messages from any contributors that were interested, KEO also planned to carry a drop of blood, samples of air, and sea water. The satellite also held “photographs of people of all cultures and information about human existence from a ‘Contemporary Library of Alexandria’, an encyclopedic compendium of current human knowledge.” Another Project with a similar goal is the NASA Voyager Golden Record. This project tried to create a time capsules by gathering an ensemble of human life and culture through the means of imagery, sounds, music, and language. The contents of the Golden Record were selected for NASA by a committee chaired by Carl Sagan of Cornell University. Dr. Sagan and his associates assembled 115 images and a variety of natural sounds, such as those made by surf, wind and thunder, birds, whales, and other animals. To this they added musical selections from different cultures and eras, and spoken greetings from Earth-people in fifty-five languages.7

Human Embodiment To understand the way in which the human experience can be manifested in Human Ark, and how culture can become present even in a condition where the human experience is completely modified, precedents were identified that tried to achieve this goal. The first sort of projects that looked to achieve this goal are time capsules. The first time capsule I will analyze is the KEO satellite, that

5 -Fox, Karl A. “Behavior Settings and Eco-Behavioral Science: a New Arena for Mathematical Social Science Permitting a Richer and More Coherent View of Human Activities in Social Systems, Part I.” Mathematical Social Sciences, vol. 7, no. 2, 1984, pp. 117–138., doi:10.1016/0165-4896(84)900015. 6 -Krebs, Gunter Dirk. “KEO.” Gunter’s Space Page, space.skyrocket.de/ doc_sdat/keo.htm. 7 -Nelson, Jon. “Voyager - What’s on the Golden Record.” NASA, NASA, voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/whats-on-the-record/.

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8 -Poem Pavilion, 2020 Dubai Expo, Es Devlin -dezeen.com

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Human Message While these time capsule projects do a good job of creating a consolidation of human artifacts, some projects begin to ask the question of what ‘humanity’ is trying to say. Going further than just what humans are, what does being human mean? An example of one of these projects is the Poem Pavilion, designed by Es Devlin for the Dubai Expo 2020. This performative structure created poems using artificial intelligence. According to an interview with Dezeen, Devlin commented on her use of AI generated poetry:

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With poetry in Arabic, Chinese and French, as well as English, Devlin hopes that the pavilion will give visitors from all countries and cultures, a sense of unification.8

”

“Poetry brings order to language, and machine-learning is a way to weave our voices together without prejudice while following the rhythms of centuries of poetic thought in a range of diverse cultures,”Devlin told Dezeen. The project was designed with the intention of being a “message to space”, inspired by Stephen Hawkings 2015 project, Breakthrough Message. This project was an international competition that invited participants to create digital messages that would represent humanity, were we ever to encounter other advanced civilizations.

be that of a planetarization, “in which all cultures mutually approach and influence each other, as never before”.9 It is important to distinguish the difference between Planetarization and a commonly used term, globalization. Globalization is nothing more than the traditional assertions of imperial centers to make other peoples revolve around their proposed languages, customs, clothing, codes, etc. Instead, planetarization and the humanist movement looks beyond these traditional forms of ‘uniting’ the global population to look instead to one that values all walks of life and all culture worldwide. Spaces on-board Human Ark must be programmed in order to focus on this convergence of cultures in a manner that brings benefit to all parties in the intersection of the human condition. This harmonious amalgamation of the global human identity must include the high-level of technology and sciences found in places like Silicon Valley, but also the Traditional Ecological Knowledge developed by Indigeounous peoples all over the world for generations. The culmination of the human condition is more than just pictures of people from different cultures, it is the entirety of the existence of culture. How can the design of this project reflect this intersection and deep existential purpose?

Convergence of Cultures Designing for the unity of humanity is built upon the ideas of the Humanist movement in which the global population and the many cultures that are present are seen in equal representation and value. According to Humanist Movements, the goal of cultural convergence is for the resulting manifest to

8 -Hitti, Natashah. “Es Devlin to Design Interactive Poem Pavilion for Dubai Expo 2020.” Dezeen, 26 Sept. 2018, www.dezeen.com/2018/09/27/ es-devlin-interactive-poem-pavilion-uk-pavilion-dubai-expo-2020architecture/. 9 -“Convergence of Cultures.” Convergence of Cultures - New Humanism Universalist Humanism - Methodology of Active Nonviolence - Humanist Movement, Humanist Movement, June 2012, www.humanistmovement. net/?secc=5.

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PROGRAM EXPERIMENT

MANIFESTING PROGRAM THROUGH FORM EXPLORATION As discussed in the “24 Hour Experiment”, the idea was proposed that the transportation systems of New York City could become the roots by which to grow a new tree of life. But what does the manifestation of this statement entail? How does the creation of this tree of life begin to create meaning for humanity? How can this project be constructed to bring an identity to a problem and thereby a form to it’s solution?

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Tree of Life -Kabbalah -wikipedia.com

This diagram comes from the archetype of the Tree of Life from the Jewish Kabbalah, in which 10 nodes and 22 lines are symbolic of celestial bodies and the creation of meaning in life, connected through values and proper ways of life.

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Program Experiment

Program Experiment Formal Investigation

Tree of Life The Tree of Life is a fundamental and widespread archetype that has connections to mythological, religious, and philosophical fields of thought. It is related to the idea of the sacred tree by which life and fertility are created through symbolism. Through research into different interpretations of what the tree of life can mean to different religions and cultures, there is a potential to create an intersection of these ideas into a homogenous formal expression. In ancient mesopotamia the Assyrian tree of life was represented by a series of nodes and criss-crossing lines . The tree became a symbol for eternal life, with its vivacity certifying continuance of life in the universe.1 These ideas of a tree of life becoming a “cure” by which humanity can find eternal life in hardship has a direct relationship to the program of Human Ark in which a vessel holds the cure to an existential threat to humanity. In correlation to the investigation in the “24 Hour Experiment” in which nodes were representative of the intersection of lines of transportation and traffic, the Kabbalah, or tree of life in Hebrew, uses a similar representation. The tree of life diagram

pictured to the left is used in various mystic traditions. The diagram consists of 10 nodes and 22 lines connecting the nodes: the nodes are usually represented as spheres, and the lines are usually represented as paths. “The nodes represent encompassing aspects of existence, God, or the human psyche.”2 With the meaning of the lines being the relationship between the spheres of knowledge, the symbolic requirements become the values necessary to transfer between them. This symbolism can find further meaning and resonance in the ways that Human Ark creates spaces and circulation. This becomes an embodiment of a new-found relationship between human function and human values related to this “higher power”.

1 -Taheri, Sadreddin (2013). “Plant of life, in Ancient Iran, Mesopotamia & Egypt”. Tehran: Honarhay-e Ziba Journal, Vol. 18, No. 2, p. 15. 18 (2). doi:10.22059/jfava.2013.36319 2 -Mills, Robert. “Kabbalah - The Tree of Life”. www.byzant.com. Byzant Mystical.

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Modular Mentality The goal of the creation of this sculpture from a material perspective was to use a modular, recycled material. The use of ElectronicCigarette aluminum sleeves for the objective of repurposing, is consistent with the idea of utilizing infrastructures existing in our modern humanity for a new unifying goal. The industry of “disposable” nicotine devices is reflected in future research of Human Ark by the manner in which the infrastructures of global war and destruction can be reoriented; instead becoming productive in sustaining life rather than causing death. To gather the necessary materials for the creation of this model, I asked publicly on a social media platform if anyone would be willing to recycle their e-cigarrette “Puff Bars”. I received an incredibly large response and was able to gather over 500 of these now post-consumed products. Many people understood that it was unsafe to throw away lithium ion batteries but did not know what to do with the waste. With the main goal of making this model being the creation of a formal investigation into the tree of life, a secondary goal became informing the public on the scale of waste that is produced from the “disposable” production industry.

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These products specifically are even more harmful to the environment because they produce multiple forms of waste, single-use plastic and electronic waste. Even worse yet: “these pods can’t be recycled with other plastic waste because they contain nicotine, which is hazardous waste”.3 The harms associated with the vaping industry and consumer waste is paralleled by an even larger threat to humanity, the nuclear industry. The idea that a similar approach of repurposing, for this industry, is elaborated on further in “Occupying the Machine”.

There has been a dramatic increase in the amount of waste that the nicotine and cannabis industry have produced because of the new market for “disposable” devices. However, these products contain matierals like aluminum and lithium ion batteries which should not be simply disposed of. According to an article by Earth 911, a resource for proper recycling, “Disposable vape pens and cartridges are flooding the market, and with them an enormous amount of post-consumer waste.”4 The secondary goal of this project thus become to convey the adaptive reuse and recycling of a material that is wasted improperly through our human consumption.

3 -Environmental Protection Agency (1980). CFR §261.33 Discarded commercial chemical products, off-specification species, container residues, and spill residues thereof. https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/ CFR-2012-title40-vol27/pdf/CFR-2012-title40-vol27-sec261-33.pdf

4 -Roth, Patti. “Disposable Vape Devices Inspire Art &amp; Action To Reduce Waste.” Earth 911, 19 Feb. 2020, earth911.com/inspire/disposablevape-devices-inspire-art-action-to-reduce-waste/.

“Puff Bar” E-cigarette Recycled Aluminum

Program Experiment

01 -Top view of final model. This angle provides a look through the aluminum sleves showing the verticality of the modular elements.

02 -Image of the E-Cigrattes being taken apart, showing the amount of waste that is produced from these â&#x20AC;&#x153;disposableâ&#x20AC;? products. Improper recycling of the lithium ion batteries can lead to fire hazards as well as exposure to the toxic metals that are encased.

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Creating an Identity What this sculpture becomes is the creation of an identify for the unification of culture through the unity of global transporation and resources. Through the reorientation of destructive infrastructures, the mode of materiality becomes the home for a new tree of life. The tree of life creates a sense of growth from the ashes of a system that was broken. Instead, a system is made that fosters a new human existence, one that is built upon the intersection of humanity with equality in representation and space.

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08 Occupying the Machine

This essay discusses the aesthetic and architectural qualities that manifest to become Human Ark. The way in which a machine is designed that begins to work for all of humanity, and becomes an emblem of humansâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; capabilities to work together when a shared vision and goal could be carried into the future. With the meaning of a machine as being an â&#x20AC;&#x153;assemblage of parts that transmit forces, motion, and energy one to another in a predetermined manner1â&#x20AC;?, this project becomes the occupation of a machine, in which humans define the meaning of humanity while sustaining life within this closed-system machine.

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Weaponry to Livingry

-apiaryman.blogspot.com

The essence of livingry is human-life advantaging and environmentcontrolling. With the highest aeronautical and engineering facilities of the world redirected from weaponry to livingry production, all humanity would have the option of becoming enduringly successful. ~RBF

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Occupying the Machine

Occupying the Machine Finding Meaning in the Machine

Buckminster Fuller, american philosopher, architect, and inventor, called for a technological transition that he named “emergence by emergency”. This idea was reflected in his idea that once global problems reach the point of becoming an existential threat to humanity, the necessity for action will become indispensable. Fuller asserted that the radical transition to solve such global problems would be through “the demilitarization of territorial control and a more equitable use of energy.”2 Climate change and the imperative to reduce greenhouse gases is precisely such an emergency, in which technologies that exist around the world must be used to create a system that is functional for the entirety of humanity, and for the creation of a sustainable biosphere. Human Ark becomes the embodiment of this idea. Technologies of destruction and separation of humanity can instead become the machines that function for the benefit of a system that is equitable for all of humanity. The idea of creating this sort of machine however, brings up many questions in regards to what a machine means in relationship to the human identity.

The First Machine What began with Archimade’s lever, pulley, and screw, modern society has now become reliant on machines in every aspect of life. With the advent of automation and artificial intelligence, machinery has become entrenched into the entire existence of the human condition, raising the question: How do humans differ from the machine? How can humans use machinery, live in machinery, and create a meaning of human existence in machinery? What follows are precedents from architectural practices and projects that begin to create a sense of meaning found in the machine. These precedents were selected for their relationship to the ideas necessary for the function of Human Ark, and the dichotomy of machine-human interrelationship. For Human Ark, the machine becomes what humanity needs in order to survive, but how can life aboard this machine become the creation of a new found definition of the ideal human condition?

1 -“Machine.” Merriam-Webster, Definition 1d(1). www.merriam-webster. com/dictionary/machine. 2 -Gomez-Luque, Mariano, et al. New Geographies 09: Posthuman. Actar D, 2018.

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01,02 -The Writing Machine, Daniel Libeskind, wordpress.com In a theoretical project titled, “3 Lessons in Architecture”, 3 machines were made by Libeskind for the 1985 Venice Bienalle. The writing machine was one of these which was intended to be an object that creates a langauge that is open to interpretation. “Texts do not have a fixed meaning established by what its author intended to say, but rather multiple meanings that readers have to interpret for themselves.” In this same way, architectural objects are oepn to consideration of meaning and scope as well.

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03,04 -MICROMEGA Drawings. Made in 1979, before the making of the machines, Libeskind used drawings to depict a new and ambiguous spatial world emerging from an older, familiar one, of architectural form and representation.

Occupying the Machine

Libeskind’s Machines A precedent by which the Human Ark can draw meaning from the machine is in the early works fo Daniel Liebeskind and the exploration of machines that are created in order to manifest a sense of language in architectural form. Elaborately constructed and enigmatic in purpose, Libeskind’s machines produced the idea that,

“

Architecture must be “read”, or understood, in the same way as written text.3

”

The idea that this is trying to assert is that the chief structural features of written language, grammar and syntax, which organize the way in which words create a coherent and meaningful ensemble, relates to the creation or architectural pieces. This relationship of architecture to written language draws parallels to concepts of poetry and meaning. In many ways a written artifact can hold many different meanings. The abstraction of the written word becomes an opening in which multiple interpretations can be derived using various cultural codes and references. Ambiguity through the use of recognizable infrastructure thereby becomes the frame in which interpretation can trade hands from the creator, to the experiencer. In this way Libeskind’s Machines become a formal assembly in which the viewer creates new understanding from the obsessive collection of mechanical objects, and a new concept emergeces from the holistic piece. Libeskind argues that architecture has incorrectly developed into a manner of finding correct answers in unanswerable questions. Rather, architecture should be a maeans of exploration into meaning and

questions as a way of creating many different answers for the ubiquitous unknown. The machines he created for the Venice Biennale in 1985 thus looked for a way to prognosticate the written destiny of architecture, whose oblivion is closely associated with Victor Hugo’s prophecy: “In the twentieth century war will be dead, the scaffold will be dead, hatred will be dead, frontier boundaries will be dead, dogmas will be dead; man will live.4” This quote from the late poet finds new meaning through the creation of the Human Ark, and the manner in which technology once used for war and hatred can be reoriented into the means of sustainable living. A new life is possible at the termination of the old. Machine for Living This idea of a “machine for living” is not new however. The phrase was made popular in 1927 with the manifesto Vers Une Architecture (Towards an Architecture) by Le Corbusier.5 His argument that a house becomes a tool we use and live inside of gives inspiration to the idea that machines are the medium by which humans interact within their environment. But this idea can be taken to a further literal and physical sense through the use of aesthetic development, in which an entire system becomes a machine and humans begin to occupy this system. Thus, the “machine for living” gives way to much more than just the essential means of sustenance of life, but prospering of spirit.

3 -Woods, Lebbeus. “LIBESKIND’S MACHINES.” LEBBEUS WOODS, 12 Dec. 2009, lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com/2009/11/24/libeskindsmachines/. 4 -Victor, Hugo (18 February 2014). La Fin de Satan: Nouvelle édition augmentée. Arvensa editions. ISBN 9782368413029. 5 -Morse, Greg. “What Is a Machine for Living In?” Place Exploration, 29 Oct. 2015, placeexploration.com/2015/10/28/a-house-is-a-machine-forliving-in/.

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Dirty Geometries + Mechanical Imperfections, Bryan Cantley -metalocus.com

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Boxes, squares and any possible recognizable geometry appear forced to move within the paper letting the imagination run wild and transFORMING concepts into a CLOUD of possibilities. Impossible spaces into something more intimate, beyond any gravitational attraction or landscape specification. Imagination is a mediating element between THOUGHT and BEING.â&#x20AC;?

A+U 246 March 1991, 21, Neil Denari -rndrd.com

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Occupying the Machine

Bryan Cantley Another precedent of architectural projects that look deeper into the meaning of the relationship of the anthropotechnic human-machine relationship is architect and educator Bryan Cantley. The work of Cantley’s practice Form:uLA, is reflective of the idea that machines can become the catalyst by which space and interaction become possible. In an exhibition at SCI-Arc in 2014, Cantley exhibited the show “Dirty Geometries / Mechanical Imperfections”. This show looked to engage the viewer with a “dialogue of imperfect machines struggling to construct perfect moments of architecture.” “These visionary projects abandon perceived mechanical precision in lieu of spatial poetics, political overlay and architectural inquiry.”6 Cantley’s work does not create architectural answers but instead creates questions that help us to inquire about the way in which we shape our environment for function, but in doing so limit the ability of space to create new meaning beyond the simple and literal. Neil Denari Neil Denari, American architect and educator at SCI-Arc, grapples with similar questions of mechanical aesthetics, but with a further attention to the relationship of technology to a global context. Early in Denari’s career, he produced a large body of theoretical work through competitions related to the topic “machine architecture”. During this time he designed objects such as “Entropy Machines” and “Floating Illuminators”. His interests in the field of architecture later shifted from “the narrowly focused machine reference, to the broad and open possibilities of cultural conditions not yet coded with an architectural symbol”.7 This change came with it a new ideology for Denari that became primarily concerned

with the dynamic relationship between architecture and technology. The ways in which technology, and thus architectural design, are rapidly changing is part of a greater phenomena - globalization. This relationship naturally brings up the discourse of representation in the field of architecture, and how the development of technology can be an activist, ensuring equity in a further connected global community. Technology and the Globalization Machine Through the analysis of these precedents it can be understood the important role that the development of technology can play in the creation of architectural design. The way in which the construction of a Living Machine utilizes current and future technologies is capable of creating an entirely new way of living, especially in a new age of global interconnectedness. The development and aesthetic design of Human Ark will play an important role in the connection of future technology to the development of globalization, for the means of equitable participation in the creation of this vessel. Thus, a ‘Machine of Meaning’ is created, that becomes an amalgamation of the most current technologies of humanity. The “occupation” of this machine becomes a metaphor for the way in which technology can support the sustainable living for the entirety of humanity, as it supports the remainder of Earthly life aboard Human Ark.

6 -Rebollo, Sara. “Bryan Cantley. Dirty Geometries + Mechanical Imperfections.” The Strength of Architecture | From 1998, 11 Nov. 2014 7 -McCarthy, Annie. “Infamous Lines -Neil Denari.” Georgia Tech School of Architecture, 2011, cargocollective.com/InfamousLines/Neil-Denari.

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OCCUPYING THE MACHINE (pt.2)

AESTHETIC DEVELOPMENT Collage is used as a means of formal expression, developing an aesthetic from ideas of technological reorientation. The idea of nuclear technologies and machinery becoming a means of living and functioning in space is portrayed through the breaking-down of mechanical parts for function in a new system. The Machine becomes the development of technologies finding new meaning and purpose, as do the inhabitants of this new machine object.

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HOW TO BE A HUMAN BEING

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09 The Replicator

Human Ark has already proved the necessity for global involvement in the project: the need to come together as a community to gather what is to be the remains of the human species. However, through the development of the societal structures that were designed for the vessel, further questions of humanity started to find answers. Previously to the discovered need to come together as a species in order to construct Human Ark, humans living in High-Income Countries would not agree to the re-distribution of global wealth for the benefit of Middle and Low-Income countries, because it would take away from their equity in their capitalistic societies. But, when the economic system that ruled supreme began to utilize its resources for means of a project that benefited an international goal, questions of why the society functioned in the way it did started to find new meaning. This essay analyzes the theories of capitalism from philosopher Herbert Marcuse, and how an â&#x20AC;&#x153;apparatus that satisfies needâ&#x20AC;? could become an awakening to Americans, and communities built upon capitalism, that they are being fooled into a system that is limiting human development. Instead Human Ark can become a new model of how humans can live in a reality of unrepressed consciousness.

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Steam Engine Locomotive, 1698

-bibalex.org

The steam engine was one of the most important inventions of the Industrial Revolution. Steam engines were used in all sorts of applications including factories, mines, locomotives, and steamboats. Was this lifechanging invention the beginning of the end?

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The Replicator

The Replicator What would you do? If you were Free

Capitalism. When we hear this word in our modern society we think of the free world, America, the land of opportunity. We associate ideas of hard work equaling increased career progression, leading to further monetary gain, and a comfortable life that we built for ourselves and our families. With this monetary gain we can buy the things that we need. We can buy the groceries that we need for dinner, we can buy a house that will give us shelter, we can buy warm clothes so that we are comfortable even in poor weather. With this career we have, we can even buy things that we don’t need for survival. We can buy objects that make us feel that we fit into a vision of society that we feel we are supposed to, in order to live a “successful” human experience. But why? Why do we feel the need to purchase these luxury items? Why do we as humans in a capitalistic system think we need to work so hard, when the final result is simply the purchase of a new item that brings us a false sense of fulfilment and purpose? Marcuse’s thesis of capitalism may have answers to these questions, and an analysis of these answers can become a critique of our social system, in hopes of understanding what the future looks like for our “free world”.

This analysis becomes an inquiry into why we as humans have been influenced by our societal status quo. And why we have created a system that perpetuates the advent of false needs, in order to reinforce a positive feedback loop for this insatiable capitalistic desire. The American Dream Capitalism was created at the turn of the industrial revolution by which the need for a system that would encourage the work of laborers was incorporated to help build the new frontiers of America. With this creation came incredible benefits to humans, and the quality of life was increasing all over the country and the world as a whole. There was great money to be made in the sale of goods and the production of the modern capital that we function with even today. From the steam engine to the skyscraper, the country was progressively developing, as were humans as a species. While many of the inventions and progressions that were made during this era were indicative of a successful and thriving nation, there comes a time when human needs are satisfied and a new definition of capitalism is born.

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The Replicator

The modern technological era in which we currently reside is still highly influenced by the energy of the industrial revolution that pushed our nation into its current existence. The way of life that many Americans call reality, the charged desire to work hard and receive monetary assets and recognition is ingrained into our society and thus our consciousness. No longer do we look to work hard as humans to increase survivability on our planet, we seek to work for the means of feeding an ego that can never be satisfied. Many people in our modern civilization are no longer laboring at day jobs just to put food onto the table, but instead it is to fill the desires that we have built into our consciousness, that we need the newest and best thing that is being advertised to us. (While this statement is surely not indicative of all society, it gives an insight into the function of upper classes, and their perception of money and capital.) In this way capitalism has shifted from the workhorse that helped to build our nation and meet the biological needs of survival, and has instead created the societal pressures of want and need for the members of its constituents. “Capitalism, as economic freedom is often called, has changed the world for the better by harnessing individual self-interest: the most reliable motivator there is.”1 This statement, written in an article by Forbes magazine, stands as a testament to the perception that many people in America hold for what capitalism is, and how it has developed the economic liberty and freedom for the people of our nation. However, where this statement lacks, and where Marcuse would contradict the statement, is the way in which it refers to individual self-interest. In our modern capitalistic society the motivator that we have developed which influences us in our daily lives is no longer our own consciousness, but is the control that the societal status quo has created for us.

Marcuse states that, “Freedom of enterprise was from the beginning not altogether a blessing. As the liberty to work or to starve, it spelled toil, insecurity, and fear for the vast majority of the population”.2 This quote comes from Marcuse’s book ‘OneDimensional Man’; this statement becomes a call for the realization that as a society we have put the pressure on ourselves for unnecessary competition between one another. Even worse yet, it is not even benefiting the greater good any longer. The quality of living is no longer making dramatic leaps in the way of technology that can help us acquire the goods that perpetuate our survival, but rather the pressure is put forward blindly out of societal habit. Through capitalism, man has created many great achievements that have developed our world and our reality into how we know it today, but with the evolution of our society it is no longer needed for the progression of human consciousness. Marcuse argues that,

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If the individual were no longer compelled to prove himself on the market, as a free economic subject, the disappearance of this kind of freedom would be one of the greatest achievements of civilization.

”

This statement aims to argue the entire idea that capitalism is creating the “freedom” that the modern human truly desires, and thinks that it is receiving. Due to society evolving, so have our needs, and the way in which freedom has been defined to us by societal norms no longer fits the conventions of our reality. 1 -Powell, Jim. “Why There Is No Human Progress Without Capitalism.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 24 Jan. 2012 2 -Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man. Routledge, 2002.

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3.2 -Replicator Technology, Star Trek -space.com

Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second before Waking, Salvador Dali, 1944 -https://www.museothyssen.org/

Surrealist art and literature are presented as actively countering the repressive effects of a socially conservative France, aspiring not only to be at the vanguard of social change but of a change of consciousness in society. Art is used as a means of creating a sublimation in which the repressed self is expressed in as much freedom as possible.

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The Replicator

The illusion of a free marketplace and world that we have built through marketing, advertisements, and money, have led us as humans to believe that we desire the false needs that are put forward by the system that we ourselves created. The false needs and superficial liberties that have been woven into our social fabric must be reconsidered and redirected in order to benefit the human existence as we move out of the capitalistic tendencies that no longer serve our needs. The Replicator How Marcuse envisions this societal revolution of our reality is through the utilization of automation, and an apparatus that would satisfy all of the natural biological needs that a human may have for survival. This thought experiment raises the question of what the humans’ true desires actually are when the pressures of society and capitalism are lifted, and the individual is free of the enterprise which harnesses their energy back into the system. “Marcuse was adamant that technology must be present in any future Utopic vision: a radical technology, one that does not master us, but is under our direct control and aimed, exclusively, at the alleviation of suffering, the alleviation of disease, and the alleviation of unnecessary labor and toil.”3 This excerpt related to Marcuse’s theory of a technology based future is from an article in Society for U.S. Intellectual History. His vision for humanity being a place in which: “We would be free, radically free, not merely from the constant ebb-and-flow of commodity fetishism, but our very instincts would be freed to pursue heretofore inaccessible goals: we could pursue, for example, discovery for discovery’s sake, to wonder at the great mysteries of the cosmos for the sheer love of knowledge acquisition, that is, a true philo-sophia.”

This concept proposed by Marcuse, that a system of technology that can serve the centrality of the need to alleviate scarcity, draws connections to science fiction. In particular, this relates to the technology found in Star Trek, “the ‘replicators;’ devices capable of recycling ambient base matter into anything from tools to haute cuisine”.3.2 While this machine, found in a 1960s retrofuturistic rendering, is simply an idea of what society could one day have, it finds theoretical and philosophical similarities in the function of Human Ark: a project with the goal of serving a global community in the creation of a closed system that meets the needs of all members. But what then becomes the outlet for human energy? The theory of “Repressive Desublimation” is a concept that is proposed by Frued, and it serves as an outline for the current status that we are operating under in our modern society.4 Our desires and energy are funneled back into the capitalistic system through the use of marketing and advertising to drive us to want and desire certain things. Marcuse’s response to this, through the thought experiment he proposed, was an idea of Eros and “re-eroticizing” perception. By this, the ego becomes motivated toward all of reality and desires to experience all of it. This unrepressed sublimation of reality, and the freedom from structured desires and false needs, allows the human species to reach a greater connection to themselves and the world.

3 -Kuryla, Pete. “To Boldly Go: On Star Trek, Marcuse and Utopias.” Society for US Intellectual History, 5 Sept. 2016, s-usih.org/2016/09/to-boldly-goon-star-trek-marcuse-and-utopias/. 4 -Bowring, Finn. “Repressive Desublimation and Consumer Culture : ReEvaluating Herbert Marcuse.” New Formations, vol. 75, no. 75, 2012, pp. 8–24., doi:10.3898/newf.75.01.2012.

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HIGH-INCOME COUNTRIES

Create false need through advertisement to justify Capitalism, Classism, and Oppression

HIGH-INCOME COUNTRIES

HUMAN ARK

Freedom from a system that polarizes wealth, in favor of a system that can function for 100% of Humanity

LOW-INCOME COUNTRIES

Need a societal system that can help with supplying basic survival needs Human Ark and Freedom from Oppressive Systems This graphic is mean to represent the intersection of populations from high-income countries and low-income countries for the means of mutual benefit. With the proposition of a system that allows for a new way of life, this project paves the way for a new human consciousness. A life not focused on fulfilling desires structured by false-need, but rather free of needs entirely, enabling an experience of life that is driven by unrepressed sublimation.

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The Replicator

Freedom This idea of there being a “freedom from our current societal desires” seems like a radical concept. But,the answer to this may be, that this freedom from capitalism and shared economic status amongst all people, may be the future of evolution for our species and may be the obvious next step for humankind. Maybe this apparatus proposed by Marcuse is a wonderful metaphor for the need for humans to break free from the capitalistic society that we have all bought into, in favor of a system for all of humanity. We have been fooled into the capitalistic status quo that it is necessary to compete against one another and alienate ourselves from a global community. But the reality is that humans have been fooled into competition through a never-ending cycle of demand and production. Instead we could use shared resources for the potential of making “the world work, for 100% of humanity through the use of existing technologies.”5 as said by Buckminster Fuller. Maybe what was needed in order to create a reality from these thought experiments proposed by Marcuse, was the advent of Human Ark, and what occurred when all of humanity faced a truly existential threat. What is manifested through the reaction to this catastrophic event could even become the restructuring of the entirety of human consciousness and perception of reality. With the Human Ark acting in Marcuse’s theory as a tangible construction of the “replicator”, it is now possible to understand the global implications of this project in bringing together humanity socially. In addition to just the physical assembly of the human species, this project brings up questions about the way in which a society would function with the common goal of “harmonious living” possible for all members. This project becomes a model for

a society in which there can be, and must be, people from all over the world of every different background, living in a system that functions to the benefit of everyone. With the entirety of humanity acting to construct and inhabit this vessel of human existence, there becomes a sense that a new model for society is being constructed, one that serves the entirety of the global population, rather than just the elite class. With the notion that this project is creating a “copy of human existence”, it also becomes a small-sample model for how the population of Earth can be re-structured in order to make society as a whole, function for the whole. The rules for living in the Human Ark were created by the inhabitants of the ship with the goal of equity for the whole population, but remaining consistent with the overall goal of the project being a closed-loop system that could ensure the survival of the species in a long journey to a new home. The “replicator” isn’t simply a tangible machine that creates meals from matter, it is a metaphor for a system that provides every member of the society the means of receiving the basic needs of survival. Human Ark, and the systems that it creates, not only benefits people from Low-Income Countries, by providing basic needs for survival and new access to health and medical information, but it also benefits members from HighIncome Countries. By stripping society of the capitalistic desire to compete and progress in contention against the “other”, humanity is free to pursue passion and discover what the true nature of humanity can be. In this way, Human Ark becomes the apparatus that brings together the global community, with the goal of creating a society that is able to function with an interconnected, holistic outlook. 5 -Freund, Pablo. “Dymaxion Forum.” Making the World Work | The Buckminster Fuller Institute, 1 Jan. 1970,

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10 June 22nd, 2050

June 21st, 2050 arrived. And right on schedule, Human Ark was geared and ready for take-off, aimed at the stars and a new horizon for the last existence of mankind. After decades of construction and a mass pilgrimage of humans from all over the world, the worldwide droughts and famine have reached their denouement. But, there were still humans left on Earth. According to the statistics that had been accurate for the past 30 years of human development and global ecology, the entirety of the human race should have gone completely extinct, with the exception fo the passengers aboard the Ark. However, on the day of take-off, against all odds, there seemed to be a final glimmer of hope for life on earth. With these remaining humans in mind, and in the defining moment for the vessel to leave Earth, the questions that were originally asked of humanity were remembered. What does it mean to be human? What is the definition of our species, of our consciousness, of all human culture? And what is holding us back from answering this question? It is realized that Human Ark answered these questions. In doing so, does this vessel of human existence find a completely new meaning?

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Posthumanism

Emergence Theory Derivation â&#x20AC;&#x153;When many things come together, sometimes new features or characteristics bloom into existence. They emerge from the previous level of organization.â&#x20AC;? In this new diagram, the derevation of Posthumanism comes from the convergence of culture. What is learned from the intersection of global culture is the idea that there is a system and interconnectedness in which all of humanity makes up the evolving ecosystem.

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June 22nd, 2050

June 22nd, 2050 The Next Day. What if it wasn’t too late? Through the development of Human Ark as the vessel of human existence, a new model of human existence was created. An entirely new system was constructed, one that works for the entirety of humanity rather than for the benefit of few. From the questions that outlined the original premise of this thesis, the goal for the creation of Human Ark was to answer the unknowns of human existence and to define human consciousness. Through analyzing the way in which humanity looked to save a copy of human existence in a final spacecraft, many of these questions were answered. The function of Human Ark thus becomes a model for sustainable life in a closed ecological system. But not only is it a model for a sustainable ecology, it is also a representation of humanity functioning in diverse harmony, through the shared necessity of survival and working towards a common goal. Relating back to Emergence Theory, which was first mentioned in ‘Hurdles of Humanity’, the idea proposed by Buckminster Fuller of “emergence by emergency”1 was the necessity for the development of Human Ark. Global climate change and the expiration of humanity became the means in which

all walks of life were to come together for a common goal. However, the question of emergence in the previous essay was, “what is the resulting system that is created from the intersection of global culture?” The answer is: a new human identity which is defined through the functioning aboard Human Ark. This new form of human consciousness can be described by the philosophical perspective of Posthumanism. Posthumanism Posthumanism is a philosophical perspective of how change is enacted on the world. Where this conceptualization differs from humanism, is found where the humanist perspective assumes a human is autonomous, conscious, intentional, and exceptional in acts of change. A posthumanist perspective instead assumes that agency is distributed through dynamic forces in which the human participates but does not always completely intend of control. In this manner the human is a part of a larger system that works conjunctively “with” human intention, but also influences the means by which a human enacts change in its environment.

1 -Ravasio, Patricia. “‘We Will Have an Emergence through Emergency’ – Buckminster Fuller.” BUCKYIDEAS, 6 Dec. 2016.

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Infrastructures of a Posthuman Reality

-traversingtradition.com

â&#x20AC;&#x153;The posthuman is one who has unambiguously surpassed the human by current standards, the one who advocates a worldview that affirms limits of human biology as something to surpass and is possible to be surpassed through reason, science, and technology.â&#x20AC;?

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June 22nd, 2050

According to an Oxford Journal entry, written by Diane Keeling and Marguerite Lehman, Posthumanist philosophy constitutes the human as:

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(a) physically, chemically, and biologically enmeshed and dependent on the environment; (b) moved to action through interactions that generate affects, habits, and reason; and (c) possessing no attribute that is uniquely human but is instead made up of a larger evolving ecosystem.2

”

This statement, outlining the participation of humans in a larger system, underlines the idea that a conscious human subject participates in change at a larger level than simply that of the self.Posthumanism can also be defined by the way in which technology brings utility to human beings.

of technology becoming a new level of advancement in systems that are used as tools by humans, but seem to function even beyond human perception, is indicative of commonalities to posthuman society. Posthuman Infrastructure In relation to Human Ark, the idea that contemporary technologies can be used as a tool to manifest a new meaning of humanity, brings validity to the idea that technics could act in a way to usurp the boundaries of culminating global culture. Modern and future infrastructures (i.e. hyperloop systems, flying cars, floating program) all become an aesthetic semblance of the idea that technology can develop for the means of unifying the global public. Because the weaponizing of technology was replaced with means of supporting life, further and further advancement in technological infrastructure becomes a deeper network in which the collective consciousness is clarified.

An article in Genealogy of the Posthuman, talks about the development of the posthuman narrative, stating that, “To the extent that technologies have been viewed as tools, instruments, or prostheses for human use, and thus under human control, they have largely been seen in positive, utopian terms.”3 This statement brings up an important idea that the advancement of technology has reached a point of “permanent innovation”.

The collective consciousness, is defined by sociologist Émile Durkeim as the “set of shared beliefs, ideas, attitudes, and knowledge that are common to a social group or society.”5 The way in which Human Ark utilizes technology to planetize the global community, creates a new model for society through these posthumanist ideals, intersecting the collective consciousness for all of humanity.

Bernard Steiger, a french philosopher, alaborates on this point of permanent innovation by stating that, “Technics evolves more quickly than culture”.4 With this comment Stiegler seems to suggest that contemporary technologies have themselves begun to destabilize the categories and concepts through which “technology” has traditionally been defined. These ideas

2 -Keeling, Diane Marie, and Marguerite Nguyen Lehman. “Posthumanism.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication, 2018, doi:10.1093/ acrefore/9780190228613.013.627. 3 -Rutsky, R.L. “Technological and Posthuman Zones.” Critical Posthumanism Network, Genealogy of the Posthuman, 19 Nov. 2018, criticalposthumanism.net/technological-and-posthuman-zones/. 4 -Bernard Stiegler, Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus, trans. Richard Beardsworth and George Collins (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 15. 5 -Cole Ph.D., Nicki Lisa. “Understanding Emile Durkheim’s ‘Collective Consciousness.’” ThoughtCo, 16 Jan. 2019, www.thoughtco.com/ collective-consciousness-definition-3026118.

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A New Model The development of Human Ark brought meaning and action to a species that was an existential threat to its own existence. However, the project scope now goes beyond a simple mission for the last remaining humans to leave Earth. With the advancement of technology that unified the global population in order to occupy the vessel, new systems were created globally. With all of the development that went into producing a closed ecological system, the biological knowledge that resulted brought further understanding to the systems of life on earth. The result from the development of the systems needed for the function of Human Ark, is similar to how research and development for NASA missions created the knowledge needed for everyday necessities on Earth. Scratch resistant astronaut helmets led to the material used for prescription glasses, shock absorbers for buildings during earthquakes came from landing gear of space rockets, and photovoltaic solar cells were created to power space missions but are now widely used for energy creation.6 In this same manner of research and development for the technologies needed for the spacetravel and function of Human Ark, the positive impact that these systems could have on Earth is omnipresent.

A collective consciousness can be understood from the interconnected nature of existence, and being a part of a system that feeds this development of unrepressed intersection, becomes the definition of what it means to be human. So, on June 22nd, 2050, the day after Human Ark was to embark for the heavens, the question soon became:

“

If through the creation of Human Ark, we as humans have solved the problems of our existence on this planet, do we still need to leave Earth?

”

But going even further than simply the technology of the vessel, the societal function of the vessel also teaches important lessons for terrestrial life. The way in which society can come together for the means of a common goal of shared human survival and experience gives a glimpse into the opportunity of the species to go beyond the imaginary borders that have been created through political systems of modern life.

6 -Green, Josie. “Inventions We Use Every Day That Were Actually Created for Space Exploration.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 8 July 2019, www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/07/08/ space-race-inventions-we-use-every-day-were-created-for-spaceexploration/39580591/.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY

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01 -Questions No One Has Answer To

04 -Toward A Common Goal

1- Mcleod, Saul. “Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs.” Simply Psychology, Simply Psychology, 20 Mar. 2020, www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html.

1 -Morgan, Richard. “Life After Earth: Imagining Survival Beyond This Terra Firma.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 1 Aug. 2006

2- Johnson, John A. “Biology Determines Every Thought, Feeling, and Behavior.” Psychology Today, Sussex Publishers

2 -Duggan, Jennifer. “Norway: ‘Doomsday’ Vault Where World’s Seeds Are Kept Safe.” Time, Time, 2020, time.com/doomsday-vault/.

3- “Culture.” Merriam-Webster, Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster. com/dictionary/culture.

3-The Frozen Ark, www.frozenark.org

02 -Hurdles of Humanity 1 -Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, et al. The Phenomenology of Spirit. University of Notre Dame Press, 2019. 2 -Howell, Elizabeth. “Fermi Paradox: Where Are the Aliens?” Space.com, Space, 27 Apr. 2018, www.space.com/25325-fermi-paradox.html. 3 -Sagan, Carl, and William I Newman. “The Solopist Approach to Extraterrestrial Intelligence.” Quarterly Journal of the Royal Astronomical Society, vol. 24, 30 Oct. 1982, p. 113., adsabs.harvard.edu/ full/1983QJRAS..24..113S. 4 -Hanson, Robin. “Are We Almost Past It?” The Great Filter, 15 Sept. 1998, mason.gmu.edu/~rhanson/greatfilter.html. 5 -“What Is Emergence? - Your Next Breakthrough.” The Precision Principle, 28 Jan. 2016, www.precisionprinciple.com/human-potential/ what-is-emergence. 6 -O’Connor, Timothy; Wong, Hong Yu (February 28, 2012). “Emergent Properties”. In Edward N. Zalta (ed.). The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2012 Edition)

03 -Expiration Date

4 -Unit, Biosafety. “The Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit-Sharing.” Convention on Biological Diversity, Secretariat of the Convention on Biological Diversity, 2 Nov. 2020, www.cbd.int/abs/. 5 -Roark, David. “Alien and Time: The Philosophy of ‘Arrival’: Features: Roger Ebert.” Features | Roger Ebert, 8 Dec. 2016, www.rogerebert.com/ features/alien-and-time-the-philosophy-of-arrival. 6 -Panko, Ben. “Does the Linguistic Theory at the Center of the Film ‘Arrival’ Have Any Merit?” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 2 Dec. 2016 7 -“‘Instead of Nationalism, We Need Global Cooperation’; Caribbean Leaders Call for United Front against COVID-19 Pandemic | | UN News.” UN News, United Nations, 26 Sept. 2020

05 -Life of Noah’s Ark 1 -Zimmer, Carl. “The Lost History of One of the World’s Strangest Science Experiments.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 29 Mar. 2019, 2 -Tucson, Visit. “Biosphere 2 Is America’s Most Ambitious and Dramatically Disastrous Science Experiment.” Roadtrippers, 25 Mar. 2019 3 -“Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet.” NASA, 10 Nov. 2020, climate.nasa.gov/. 4 -Vernadsky, Vladimir I. Biosphere. Copernicus Springer, 2014. 5 -“Fast Facts.” Biosphere 2 Masthead Image, University of Arizona, biosphere2.org/visit/about-biosphere2/fast-facts. 6 -Nelson, Mark, et al. “Group Dynamics Challenges: Insights from Biosphere 2 Experiments.” The Committee on Space Research (COSPAR), 5 July 2015, doi:Published by Elsevier Ltd.

1 -“What Is ‘Tragedy of the Commons’?: Earth.Org - Past: Present: Future.” Earth.Org - Past | Present | Future, 25 Aug. 2020, earth.org/whatis-tragedy-of-the-commons/.

2- Hardin, Garrett. The Tragedy of the Commons. American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1968.

8 -Garcia, Mark. “International Cooperation.” NASA, NASA, 25 Mar. 2015, www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/cooperation/index.html.

3 -Battersby, Stephen. “News Feature: Can Humankind Escape the Tragedy of the Commons?” PNAS, National Academy of Sciences, 3 Jan. 2017, www.pnas.org/content/114/1/7.

9 -Wisconsin, Madisson. 100 People: A World Portrait, 1992, www.100people.org/statistics_100stats_original.php.

4 -“New WWF Report Reveals US Will Suffer World’s Biggest Economic Impact Due to Nature Loss.” WWF, World Wildlife Fund, 11 Feb. 2020, www.worldwildlife.org/press-releases/new-wwf-report-reveals-us-willsuffer-world-s-biggest-economic-impact-due-to-nature-loss. 5 -“Global Futures Report.” WWF, wwf.panda.org/?359334. 6 -Kennedy, Caitlyn, and Rebecca Lindsey. “If Things Go as ‘Normal,” Most U.S. Locations Will Have Their Hottest Day of the Year by the End of July: NOAA Climate.gov.” | NOAA Climate.gov, 7 July 2020, 7 -Burke, Jason, and Mark Townsend. “Earth ‘Will Expire by 2050’.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 7 July 2002, www.theguardian.com/ uk/2002/jul/07/research.waste. 8 -Langlois, Shawn. “Earth’s Expiration Date, According to Professor Stephen Hawking: 3016.” MarketWatch, MarketWatch, 17 Nov. 2016,

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10 -Robinson, Scott K. “Minimum Viable Population.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., www.britannica.com/science/ minimum-viable-population. 11 -Werner, Debra. “Space for Humanity Seeks 10,000 Citizen Astronauts.” SpaceNews, 29 June 2017, spacenews.com/space-forhumanity-seeks-10000-citizen-astronauts/. 12 -Austen, Ben. “After Earth: Why, Where, How, and When We Might Leave Our Home Planet.” Popular Science, 16 Mar. 2011, 13 -Globus, Al. Free Space Settlement, space.alglobus.net/. 14 -Owen, Wilfred. “Global Transportation.” ACCESS Magazine, 31 May 2017, www.accessmagazine.org/fall-1998/global-transportation/. 15 -Owen, Wilfred. Transportation and World Development. John Hopkins University Press, 1987.

Bibliography

04 06 -Site

1 -Harris, Karen. “Central Park, Elitism, and the Destruction of Seneca Village.” History Daily, 28 July 2019, historydaily.org

09 -The Replicator 1 -Powell, Jim. “Why There Is No Human Progress Without Capitalism.” Forbes, Forbes Magazine, 24 Jan. 2012

2 -Vasudevan, Varsha. “Seneca Village: How Racism and White Supremacy Led to the Creation of New York City’s Iconic Central Park.” , 7 June 2019,

2 -Marcuse, Herbert. One-Dimensional Man. Routledge, 2002.

3 -“The Story of Seneca Village.” Central Park Conservancy, www. centralparknyc.org/articles/seneca-village.

3 -Kuryla, Pete. “To Boldly Go: On Star Trek, Marcuse and Utopias.” Society for US Intellectual History, 5 Sept. 2016, s-usih.org/2016/09/to-boldly-goon-star-trek-marcuse-and-utopias/.

4 -“Central Park.” NYPAP, www.nypap.org/preservation-/central-park/. 5 -”Central Park History,” Central Park Conservancy. Article retrieved July 2009 6 -Roberts, Sam (August 28, 1993). “131-Year-Old Reservoir Is Deemed Obsolete”. The New York Times. 7 -Kifner, John (July 23, 1994). “Central Park Honor for Jacqueline Onassis”. The New York Times.

07 -Program

1 -Austen, Ben. “After Earth: Why, Where, How, and When We Might Leave Our Home Planet.” Popular Science. 2 -Dunbar, Brian. “Ion Propulsion: Farther, Faster, Cheaper.” NASA, NASA, 2 May 2008, www.nasa.gov/centers/glenn/technology/Ion_Propulsion1. html. 3-Gaia. Biosphere 2, Environment and Ecology, 2020, environment-ecology. com/ecological-design/255-biosphere-2.html. 4 -Johnson, Michael. “Plant Biology and Bioregenerative Life Support.” NASA, NASA, 11 Mar. 2019 5 -Fox, Karl A. “Behavior Settings and Eco-Behavioral Science:” Mathematical Social Sciences, vol. 7, no. 2, 1984, pp. 117–138., doi:10.1016/0165-4896(84)90001-5. 6 -Krebs, Gunter Dirk. “KEO.” Gunter’s Space Page, space.skyrocket.de/ doc_sdat/keo.htm. 7 -Nelson, Jon. “Voyager - What’s on the Golden Record.” NASA, NASA, voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/golden-record/whats-on-the-record/.

4 -Bowring, Finn. “Repressive Desublimation and Consumer Culture : ReEvaluating Herbert Marcuse.” New Formations, vol. 75, no. 75, 2012, pp. 8–24., doi:10.3898/newf.75.01.2012. 5 -Freund, Pablo. “Dymaxion Forum.” Making the World Work | The Buckminster Fuller Institute, 1 Jan. 1970,

10 -June 22nd, 2020 1 -Ravasio, Patricia. “‘We Will Have an Emergence through Emergency’ – Buckminster Fuller.” BUCKYIDEAS, 6 Dec. 2016. 2 -Keeling, Diane Marie, and Marguerite Nguyen Lehman. “Posthumanism.” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Communication, 2018, doi:10.1093/ acrefore/9780190228613.013.627. 3 -Rutsky, R.L. “Technological and Posthuman Zones.” Critical Posthumanism Network, Genealogy of the Posthuman, 19 Nov. 2018, criticalposthumanism.net/technological-and-posthuman-zones/. 4 -Bernard Stiegler, Technics and Time, 1: The Fault of Epimetheus, trans. Richard Beardsworth and George Collins (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), p. 15. 5 -Cole Ph.D., Nicki Lisa. “Understanding Emile Durkheim’s ‘Collective Consciousness.’” ThoughtCo, 16 Jan. 2019, www.thoughtco.com/ collective-consciousness-definition-3026118. 6 -Green, Josie. “Inventions We Use Every Day That Were Actually Created for Space Exploration.” USA Today, Gannett Satellite Information Network, 8 July 2019, www.usatoday.com/story/money/2019/07/08/space-raceinventions-for-space-exploration/39580591/.

8 -Hitti, Natashah. “Es Devlin to Design Interactive Poem Pavilion for Dubai Expo 2020.” Dezeen, 26 Sept. 2018, 9 -“Convergence of Cultures.” Convergence of Cultures - New Humanism Universalist Humanism - Methodology of Active Nonviolence - June 2012,

08 -Occupying the Machine

1 -“Machine.” Merriam-Webster, Definition 1d(1). www.merriam-webster. com/dictionary/machine. 2 -Gomez-Luque, Mariano, et al. New Geographies 09: Posthuman. Actar D, 2018. 3 -Woods, Lebbeus. “LIBESKIND’S MACHINES.” LEBBEUS WOODS, 12 Dec. 2009, lebbeuswoods.wordpress.com/libeskinds-machines/. 4 -Victor, Hugo (18 February 2014). La Fin de Satan: Nouvelle édition augmentée. Arvensa editions. ISBN 9782368413029. 5 -Morse, Greg. “What Is a Machine for Living In?” Place Exploration, 29 Oct. 2015, placeexploration.com/2015/10/28/a-house-is-a-machine-forliving-in/. 6 -Rebollo, Sara. “Bryan Cantley. Dirty Geometries + Mechanical Imperfections.” The Strength of Architecture | From 1998, 11 Nov. 2014 7 -McCarthy, Annie. “Infamous Lines -Neil Denari.” Georgia Tech School of Architecture, 2011, cargocollective.com/InfamousLines/Neil-Denari.

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