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‘A Study Of Perspectives’ Beijing, China, Ai Weiwei
Sometime in 2011, Ai Weiwei was detained without questions by the Chinese authorities, it sparked one of the biggest cries to free the artist and activist known for being a ‘dissident citizen’ in native China. The details of which activities that led to his arrest by the Chinese authorities will be mentioned later in this essay. Before we delve in further, this essay wishes to bring the reader into seeing to what extent does architectural media play a role within the contemporary society. What its future possibilities are. So what has the detainment of a Chinese activist got anything to do with the future of architectural media ? Before we jump in, we should understand that architectural media varies in medium and form and includes, but is not limited to, drawings, models, diagrams, films, text/writings, websites and installations to name a few. To discuss and compare all of the mediums would be futile and methods are taken to focus on specific mediums and new forms of emerging media. Among the topics that will be discussed are issues regarding the current social impact of architectural media, augmented reality scenarios and speculations on possible design medium futures emerging from this.
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Q. What is the future of architectural media (e.g. drawings, models, diagrams, films, texts/writings, websites, installations etc.) Critically discuss in relation to one or more medium and theories of architecture and of the media/medium addressed. Refer to a case study design project created after 2010. Speculate on and/or invent a new form of an existing design medium or a new design medium per se.
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Reference image ‘Future Relic Objects’ Daniel Arsham
Let us dissect the definition of “architectural media”. The word “Media”, which is Latin, is the plural of “Medium”, with its nouns meaning “vehicle”, “method”, “avenue” etc. Based on the definition of the word “media”, Kostantinos Papamichael defines architectural media as “anything used in architectural practice, not only with respect to documents, but equipment used for their production as well.” Here she further states that if we were to distill it down, it can be abstracted in what she refers as “essential media” which are images and messages. “Images come in the form of pictures, drawings, paintings, scale models, plots, etc. While messages can contain three information elements: text, sound and gestures.” In effect, these “mediums” function as transmitting elements for the dissemination of architecture to a wider audience. New digital advancements has further added and expanded upon the already existing forms of architectural media. Increasingly, we’re seeing architectural discourses taking place around the role of “New Media” and its quickly evolving role within the field. The term itself seems to represent something vague, and is affirmed by the definition from the New Media Institute, stating “New Media is a 21st Century catchall term used to define all that is related to the internet and the interplay between technology, images and sound.” Continuing on to say that the meaning will continue to change on a day-to-day basis in accordance with advancements in technology. It comes with the very elusive nature of defining something ‘New’. The interest in
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Detail joint of ‘Wikihouse’
One aspect worth discussing is the growing role of open source software and now, hardware, in dissolving the boundaries of architecture. All around the world pockets of “maker communities” are emerging from fabrication labs, Do-ityourself drone building groups to DIWO, do-itwith-each-other movements like Wikihouse. What new media managed to do, is use the existing architectural media and democratize it to everyone and anyone within contact. Take the Wikihouse movement for example by London architecture firm 00:/ (pronounced, zero-zero). They took the same underlying principal from open source software, i.e from Wikipedia, which is an open continuous platform of shared knowledge that can be edited from anyone about anything into what can be best described as the world’s evolutionary encyclopedia. Alastair Parvin of 00:/ who spearheaded the project in his TED talk, asks the audience what would happen if everyone could print their own house? With Wikihouse, you can literally print a model of a house, have it CNC manufactured and self-assembled. And this project, which saw a prototype being built in 2012, is well on its way to becoming a game-changer in the field of architecture as other groups around the world adopted, improved the designs and shared those designs back to the community.
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the discourses surrounding “New Media” in the architecture circle lies not in the technology of coding or CSS but how digital interface is now spilling over into the ‘real’ world. In other words effecting us spatially. Changing how we interact, organize and respond to the environment, as individuals and as communities. Among those included in “New Media” are digital interfaces as well as devices which supports it. This would include augmented reality, and with it the Google Glass which will be discussed further on.
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“A civic economy is emerging, one which is fundamentally both open and social. It is an economy which is fusing the culture of Web 2.0 with civic purpose” from the ‘Compendium For the Civic Economy’ by 00:/
Besides gaining knowledge through our senses, our earliest method of obtaining information are through other external objects. Picking up a newspaper, flicking through books, watch the news on the television set. A separation exists between states of different objects and us, the receiver of information. We can choose to be disconnected from the information
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Questions of authorship arises and blurs the boundaries between production and designers, professionals and amateurs. How will this affect the role of the professional architect if everyone can build? Questions similar to this and more will force the profession to think its roles differently and adapt accordingly. Indy Johar, author and founding architect of 00:/, in their report “Compendium for the Civic Economy”, underlies that an overall emerging recurrent theme in all of the self-building communities is “self organization & collaborative management built on user centric and open scale-free platforms.” The report is full of successful case studies of such communities; an ethical bike salvage shop in Amsterdam, an edible public realm in Todmorden, United Kingdom, the list goes on. An opening passage of the report, summarizes the current movement, “A civic economy is emerging, one which is fundamentally both open and social. It is an economy which is fusing the culture of Web 2.0 with civic purpose”. Here, the role of architectural media has been pushed further, not merely as a representation, a closed container of information, but as a catalyst. An agent of change. It transcends its former role and becomes a tool for social construct.
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‘Hyper-reality’ by Keiichi Matsuda
1151 hours “Got some time before mate comes over from Oxford. Decided to head over to Saacthi gallery. Gallery receptionists asks whether I’d like to buy exclusive media content to accompany the exhibition. Said why not, and handed a slip with a code written on it. Scans the code by blinking and walks into exhibition space. Looking at an empty space with only a marble chair. Finger points to the chair, and video of the artist explaining the meaning behind the work pops up. As with other works, clips of processes, behind the scenes look, you know, the usual stuff. Made a square frame gesture with my hands and took a photo of the work. Posted it on my Facebook feed there and then.”
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at any time. Through the increasingly important role of the internet and the mobile device, the separation of information and ourselves becomes thinner and thinner. Jeremy Hight in his article, “A New Area For Collective Activism”, explained it brilliantly saying “The breadth and coverage of our realities keep expanding, but they are converging in our awareness of space and time”. If we talked about information and our realities converging in ‘our awareness of space and time’ thirty years ago, people would have thought it was impossible. “This is augmented reality, a new and emerging level of interaction. Augmented reality is a system of technology and visualization that allows information to be placed in the field of vision as one moves.” explains Hight. Imagine moving around, and a visible layer of moving film and sound can be seen through our field of vision. Overlaying and informing us of our reality. A high speed computer at the very tip of our retina’s, computing as fast as we can think. Below is a possible scenario of what reality would be with augmented reality:
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Google Glass
1545 hours “Passing by London Bridge, sun is setting. The colour is unnaturally yellow due to the smog hanging over the city. Voice commands a video to be taken and sent to the environmentalist network I know for a cleanup to be done by the proper authority. Video is sent and is seen by 14000 viewers in 21 minutes.”
“Fetches friend and together walk home. Saw a bike cycling past that I’ve been wanting to get but didn’t know the model. Caught a glimpse of it before it went around the corner, the image is slightly blurred, but nothing image stabilization can’t adjust. Sent the scan in and within seconds I receive the model and manufacturer details of the bike. Ah, it’s a Bianchi Pista 2300, perfect. All this while my friend was babbling on about the ‘Big Brother’ state and how we’re the most watched citizens on the planet. Political science major, go figure.”
Though in actuality, this scenario has not yet arrived, we are however very close to achieving it. Currently augmented reality still requires the interface of other devices such as mobile screens to work. Google glass however, is the closest device to simulate augmented reality. Developed by technology giant Google, is in its simplest form, prescription glasses with an optical head-mounted display (OHMD). Where users communicate using voice commands connected to the internet. As with all technology, we could be seeing the development jump from being thick glasses to getting as small and thin as a pair of contact lenses. Many parties are interested in the open possibilities of augmented reality. Corporate branding companies snatched up the technology
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“If our media and our built spaces do not follow the same evolutionary paths, what is the relationship between these two fields of production and experience?� Shannon Mattern, Media & Architecture.
A possible scenario as written by Martin de Waal in his book, “The City as Interface” is the “deployment of digital and mobile media as ‘territory device’: an appliance or systems that can influence the experience of an urban area.” Essentially digital information is specifically geo-tagged onto the location, embedded with previous data such as history and past visitors to the place. A sort of urban ghost gets left behind and its possible for visitors to continue updating the ‘ghost’ with new experiences.
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and its application like hot pancakes, for its ability to advertise, in theory, everywhere. Long gone are the roadside billboards, the ads of the future are literally in front of our face. Architecture however, has not managed to keep up spatially to counter the vast improvements in media. A critical question raised by Shannon Mattern was, “If our media and our built spaces do not follow the same evolutionary paths, what is the relationship between these two fields of production and experience?”. Mattern who is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Media Studies and Film, The New School New York, understands that there is a possible future where we could become disconnected from our physical surroundings if it continues to develop in the same way spatially. That our built environment plays an equally important role. Our spaces around us should make us more aware. It should be able to jolt us out from behind the clutter of information media and require us to interact using our other tactile senses such as touch and smell. Force us to move fast and slow, and at varying speeds through the landscape. The environment should be just as engaging as the media.
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Portrait of Ai Weiwei
Since China’s authority is notorious for cutting off certain information from the public such as the incidents of Tiananmen Square for example and blocking sites which pose a threat to the state, people have been afraid of voicing out their opinions. Throughout countless interviews, in publications and videos, Ai Weiwei has reaffirmed time and time again that he relies on blogging to make commentaries on a lot of social injustice and taboo issues. In his interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist, when asked on why he appreciates the internet, Ai Weiwei answered “During the Cultural Revolution we never had a chance to write, besides writing some critical stuff, so I really like to pick up on that, and the blog gives me a chance”. Due to his increasing readership and growing support from locals,
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Despite the increasing nature of our networked society, the digital environment unfortunately doesn’t belong to individuals only. State powers, authorities and the powers that be have also been exercising their digital might. The ‘Big Brother’ image is further fuelled by the increasing ability of technology to keep tab at any data as long as it has been recorded. This brings us to the story of Ai Weiwei earlier in the essay and how he got detained by the Chinese authorities. Ai Weiwei is an artist, as well as an architect and an activist. His rise to fame was due to his involvement in the Beijing Olympic stadium, ‘Bird nest’,with ‘starchitects’ Herzog & De Meuron, and since then has garnered international recognition and commissions from both the art and architecture world. Part of his rise to fame was also due to the expanding role of the internet and social media.
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‘Moon’ by Ai Weiwei & Olafur Eliasson
Another aspect worth noting is that, because of his unique situation some amazing projects have emerged such as Project Moon (2013). Moon is a collaborative project with Danish-Icelandic artist Olafur Elliason as a virtual meeting place to exchange ideas. As quoted by Robin Cembalest in his ArtNews review, “Moon is a place where people from anywhere on Earth can connect through drawing. It exists beyond the art world, beyond borders, beyond traditional ideas of authorship and value”. A virtual site (https:// www.moonmoonmoonmoon.com) literally left open to the public, the organizers of moon saw users evolving from leaving scribbles and doodles to “collaborations, and clusters, and virtual versions of the Surrealist game Exquisite Corpse”. If we were to speculate on possible futures for project Moon, collaborations could be done on
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he was hailed as a political figure. His far reaching influence got the authorities stirred up, and they started to monitor his activities. In 2009 his blog was finally shut down after a mere 3 years of being active. Not stopping there he continued on with posting relentlessly on twitter and being a vocal voice of the people. Inevitably on 3rd of April 2011 he was mysteriously detained. News of his arrest become international news almost overnight and rallies for his release fell on deaf ears. 80 days later he was suddenly released with the reasons of his detainment unknown. ArtReview named him “most powerful artist” claiming that they chose Ai Weiwei because of his political activism, as much as his artwork. Along with his release, the state refused to return his passport and he currently cannot leave China. Though that did not hinder the fearless man either. He continues to organize exhibitions beyond the borders of his native country, thanks to the internet no less.
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Neighbourhood Watch emblem
Based on the previous examples, it is clear that architectural media is evolving from just a method of representation, a vessel, to a medium that is able to empower the end user. Somehow, the medium has gone full circle. Architectural media is evolving into a framework. The initial creator of the content will eventually become the end user and vice versa. Authorship will be blurred and what matters is the individual desired outcome. The process will become both important and unimportant at the same time. In order to test this, a design scenario will be investigated. This scenario is based on a personal design project which looks into how a neighborhood watch community evolves and operates via the use of open source software and hardware. Located in the Greenwich Peninsula, this particular neighborhood watch society utilizes DIY (Do-it-yourself) drones controlled by its members as a surveillance mechanism. On the surface it is seen as a normal British community within a fairly domestic urban setting, the difference being the community’s openness to DIY culture. The community is a connected network of open software and hardware where the factory is everywhere. A self-building community
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the scale of the object, installations, buildings even. Whole databases open to be built upon, and not just of good ideas but of the mundane and obscure too. A truly open architectural media would emerge. Moon and Ai Weiwei’s situation shows the possible future of architectural media and its usage is a reflection of the human condition. As much as we and the creators would like to predict the intended future and outcome of this evolving medium, humankind would always find a way to mold and play with it. In the case of Ai Weiwei, human spirit and ingenuity will always prevail.
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Surveillance Camera (2010) Material: marble Ai Weiwei
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can then operate independently or with the central command. Shared knowledge and self fabrication through the means of 3d printing, CNC and laser cutting means that anyone can self-produce their own drones, erect small huts and structure (example: Wikihouse) via CNC milling or further develop those ideas and share it with the rest of the community. Littered across the neighborhood watch landscape are domestic objects such as for example; gnomes equipped with sensors, but with a specific function built into them. These objects would become informants of their surroundings and the information relayed back into the network and users will be able to experience it via augmented reality. Leopold Lambert describes this situation as an “immanent panopticon” in his Funambulist Papers. To which he built this notion on Foucault’s paradigm of the disciplinary society, mentioning “The mode of surveillance is thus shifting from a transcendental mode — operated by the centralized proctor, symbolizing an entity like a government or an institution — to a completely immanent mode, in which each member of the society supervises the ensemble of the other members while being supervised himself ”. Architectural media would have now turned into a powerful framework, almost having authority.
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Portrait of Cedric Price
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All in all, it cannot be denied that architectural media is changing rapidly. The role of the architect of the future is more important than ever. We will see vast shifts in the role that society plays within the built environment. Architects must act as strategic thinkers and apply these strategies either with or without a building. Cedric Price famously scolded to a bickering husband and wife when designing their new house, by saying “You don’t need a new house, you need a divorce!”. Which goes to show that a new building isn’t always the answer. It also shows the limit of the architect to create social change through spatial means. Through examples discussed throughout the essay however, we see that future architectural media can just as much create social change. Just like how open source did for the internet, the architect is the applier of open source hardware and to facilitate network infrastructures. Maybe the architect of the future builds more open-source framework than actual buildings. Only time will tell.
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Free Ai Weiwei !! - glasses
Aram Bartholl - F.A.T. Lab fffff.at 2011
Bibliography 1.
Waal, M.D., ‘The City As Interface’. Netherlands (nai 010 publishers) 2014.
2.
Obrist, H.U., ‘Ai Weiwei Speaks’. London (Penguin) 2011.
3.
Hyde, R., ’Future Practice’. London (Routledge) 2013.
4.
Hight, J., ’A New Arena For Collective Activism’ in Volume #16. (Stitching Archis) 2008.
5. Lambert, L., ‘The Funambulist Pamphlets Volume 2: Foucault’. New York (Punctum Books) 2013.
7. Caldwell, G.A.,Foth,M., ‘DIY Media Architecture: Open and Participatory Approaches to Community Engagement’. Denmark (ACM) 2014.
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6. Johar, I., et. Al., ‘Compendium For The Civic Economy’. London (00:/ Publishers) 2011.
8. Mattern, S., ‘Media and Architecture’ (2012): http:// www.wordsinspace.net/wordpress/teaching/course-list/ media-and-architecture/
9. Mattern, S., ‘Silent,Invisible City: Mediating urban Experience for the Other Senses’ (2009): http://www. wordsinspace.net/wordpress/publications/arti cles-review/publications-materiality-sensation/ 10.
Papamichael, K., ‘Digital Media in Architecture: Op portunities and Challenges’, Berkeley, (University of California) 1999.
11. https://www.moonmoonmoonmoon.com/ 12. Wikipedia, Google Glass, http://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Google_Glass 13. http://www.newmedia.org 14. Parvin, A., ‘Architecture By The People For The People’, http://www.ted.com/talks/alastair_parvin_archi tecture_for_the_people_by_the_people?language=en 15. Weiwei, A., ‘BBC HARDtalk’, https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=dn6TBflISVY 16.
Ai Weiwei:Never Sorry. Dir. Alison Klayman. Expressions United Media, 2012.
17. Draw On The Moon, Dir. The Creators Project, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tFqpogR-ki8
History, Theories & Futures MArch Architecture, University of Greenwich
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Essay created by Muhammad Shamin Bin Sahrum
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