IaaC bits 2.0 by IAAC bits

Implementing Advanced Knowledge

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2.0

Impurity editorial team

2.0 Impurity

One of the main characteristics of our informational societies is that, in spite of its in-cohesive appearance, its open and diffuse identity offers a strong capacity to weave (to warp and to cross, to articulate and to link) heterogeneous conditions, circumstances and events. This crossing situation is the consequence of an increasing process of interaction between simultaneous (and multiple) levels of conditions and information. It configures a scenario (and its relation with informational and relational processes of exchange) that is the big revolution of our era, more heterogeneous, variable and irregular in its manifestations. In a certain way, our “big-data” contexts operate as matrix bases (not as empty moulds, but as organising patterns) that promote and enable several encounters and (multi)relational (inter)connections in-between them. Links understood as supports or liaisons, but also as plots, arguments or horizons, that is to say, criteria and logics of actions. Therefore, is this infrastructural and relational conditions of our present what permits the articulation and combination of different scenarios – crossing “data”, “stories” and “events”, multiple and interlinked– and, at the same time, assures an elastic, adaptive and fluctuant property in the system. It has the possibility of being reformulated, modified and altered and at the same time, keeping certain generic properties in itself. In fact, in spite of its continuous capacity (and ability) to mutate, its possible to propose certain vectors of immanence and/or significance in a new kind of flexible order –without formal or mega-structural restrictions– that is able to provide a performative and articulative intention to the system. In this scenario, the notion of “purity = coherence” becomes relative and anecdotic, and the notion itself of interaction calls to operate with an underlying impurity, in a new kind of systems that can be constituted by a bigger amount of indiscrimination and in-definition, understanding them more as a substantive and formal kind of strategic ambiguity rather than as a lack of criteria. A phenomena that would be manifested in the combinatory, mutable and evolutionary capacity of our systems to react to the diversity of our sociocultural and poly-territorial circumstances. To accept and to deal with the impurity it also implies a bigger grade of receptivity –tolerance or sympathy– to the mixture, the simultaneity and the superposition of combinatory information. 2

Operating with a bigger capacity to deform and alter our reality/ies through multiple operations of crossing, overlapping, and intersection. A capacity that ultimately is more open to integrate, articulate and assume perturbations, distortions and intrusions. Crossings and bastardizes as anti-typological manifestations. In this second edition of IaaC Bits, we want to emphasise the capacity and the fruitfulness that this notion of impurity deploys in our contemporaneity. As an open condition for the exchange and crossing of knowledge on different scales (cities, buildings, manufacturing) and areas of expertise (ecology, energy, digital fabrication and new technologies). In this sense, we are convinced that the concept of purity and all its derivations have become obsolete in order to analyse and operate in a present that increases, more and more, its mixed/mixtured, trans-disciplinary and, why not, extremely ambiguous, “nature”. In this regard, the selection of contributors here proposed –although all coming from different contexts and backgrounds, they express a combined and interlinked approach that, far from acting just from its “pure” fields, tries to act being contaminated, distorted and deformed by inputs coming from other –“not-disciplinary”– terrains. This impure entrance, far from the traditional, closed, harmonic and cohesive doctrines, acquires an un-predictable, anarchic or even untamed, “tonus” that expresses itself in the polyhedral manner in which our reality behaves. Promoting the apparition of potential situations of crossed and transversal coexistence related to the mixed and hybrid parameters of our organisations, as possible actions able to decode pre-established trajectories with new ambivalent maps. This uninhibited relation with what is not codified would allude to an apparent informa(tion)al indiscipline: a new kind of flexible order that – despite of being mono-significant and uni-clear– is far from the strictness and obedient “old notion” of regulation and close to the new notions of variation and (ex)change. Therefore, in the next 12 articles we will find this heterogeneous attitude that promotes the a-conventional and un-disciplined –but rigorous and precise– thoughts, suggested by the notion of impurity. An understanding not related to prefigured manners, codes or behaviours, but open to the knowledge produced in multiple and eye-opening disciplinary fields, flexible enough to assume them not as mere codes, rituals or souvenirs, but as strong combinatory tools, devices or mechanisms to reflect our present. Cover - Digital Matter, IaaC Archive

IAAC BITS

IAAC

DIRECTOR:

IAAC SCIENTIFIC COMMITTEE:

Manuel Gausa, IaaC Dean

EDITORIAL COORDINATOR Jordi Vivaldi, IaaC bits Editorial Coordinator

EDITORIAL TEAM Manuel Gausa, IaaC Dean Mathilde Marengo, Communication & Publication Jordi Vivaldi, IaaC bits Editorial Coordinator

ADVISORY BOARD: Areti Markopoulou, IaaC Academic Director Tomas Diez, Fab Lab Bcn Director Silvia Brandi, Academic Coordinator Ricardo Devesa, Advanced Theory Concepts Maite Bravo, Advanced Theory Concepts

DESIGN: Ramon Prat, ACTAR Editions

IAAC BIT FIELDS: 1. Theory for Advanced Knowledge 2. Advanced Cities and Territories 3. Advanced Architecture 4. Digital Design and Fabrication 5. Interactive Societies and Technologies 6. Self-Sufficient Lands

Nader Tehrani, Architect, Director MIT School Architecture, Boston Juan Herreros, Architect, Professor ETSAM, Madrid Neil Gershenfeld, Physic, Director CBA MIT, Boston Hanif Kara, Engineer, Director AKT, London Vicente Guallart, Architect, Chief City Arquitect of Barcelona Willy Muller, Director of Barcelona Regional Aaron Betsky, Architect & Art Critic, Director Cincinnati Art Museum, Cincinnati Hugh Whitehead, Engineer, Director Foster+ Partners technology, London Nikos A. Salingaros, Professor at the University of Texas, San Antonio Salvador Rueda, Ecologist, Director Agencia Ecologia Urbana, Barcelona Artur Serra, Anthropologist, Director I2CAT, Barcelona

PUBLISHED BY: Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia ISSN 2339 - 8647 CONTACT COMMUNICATIONS & PUBLICATIONS OFFICE: communication@iaac.net

Institut for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia Barcelona

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