Directors:

Xavi González
Carlos Gómez

Jury Board:

Manuel Gausa (IAAC Dean)
Elisabeth Plantada (BAU)
Eduard Martín (IMI)
Raffaela Fagnoni (Universitá degli Studi di Genova)
Roberta Bosco (El PAIS)
Ethel Baraona (DPR – Barcelona)
Behnaz Farahi (USC School of Architecture)

IAAC’s MAI at SONAR 2013 from Gerda Antanaityte on Vimeo.

“2.3/seg” is the first project Alejandro showed us, which studies the death and birth rates of the human race around the world. The question posed was how often are people born and how often do they die? Alejandro underlined that he was not so interested in the accuracy, but more in the concept of this.
The results showed that 4 people are born and 2 people die every second, resulting in 2 new people on the planet per second. The data used to generate this project was collected through the World Census Bureau, and conceptually inspired by the work of Jagadish Chandra Bos, and in particular his invention of the Creschograph, a technology that allows a person to see a plant grow in real time.
“The laboratory to explore the birth of ideas” was a complex technology inspired by his father, who taught him how to generate electricity.
Alejandro then went on to explain how another of his projects was inspired by a dream in which fruit communicated…”hello world”. Would it be possible to make a computer out of fruit? An organic computer?
He then started working with ph levels present in fruit to generate a binary system, starting with the use of lemon and tangerine. This makes us reflect on how we create technology, questioning its historical generator, that is for attack or defence mechanisms…this could be a poetic way to create technology!
The fourth and final project showed was inspired by an image of the northern lights, a sort of connection between magic and nature. But what are these northern lights, and how are they created?
These are a consequence of solar explosions, the earth is therefore a natural sensor of these explosions. Alejandro wanted to find a way to get connected with them, a poetic way of depicting these explosions. He created a system that would turn the energy of these explosions into data, and in return transformed this data first into fire (a natural phenomenon becomes data to then rebecome a natural phenomenon), and then in later versions of this projects into explosions using gun powder. This was called “8 minutes (when the sun explodes we explode)”.
Finally, sometime was spent discussing the workshop underway with the MAI students, “white box” that aims to break the concept of technology as a black box, rendering technology more open and accessible, that is white, allowing us to experience the poetic, nature and magic of technology in everyday life.

Alejandro Tamayo at the IaaC

Lecture “Technology: between magic and everyday life“

Alejandro Tamayo is an artist, researcher and teacher working in the intersections between artistic practice, science, technology and everyday life. He has been a tutor at Medialab Prado interactivos? workshops including Technologies of Laughter (Mexico) and Neighborhood Science (Madrid) and has teaching for over eight years at various art and design schools in Colombia including the Art Department from Los Andes University and the School of Fine Arts from the National University. He has been a guest speaker in various venues including Pixelache University-Reinventing the Teaching Situation (Helsinki), CIANT gallery (Prague), and the International Image Festival (Colombia).

Nicholas Negroponte is the founder and Chairman Emeritus of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Media Lab, and also known as the founder of the One Laptop per Child Association (OLPC).

In 1967, Negroponte founded MIT’s Architecture Machine Group, a combination lab and think tank which studied new approaches to human-computer interaction. In 1985, he created the MIT Media Lab with Jerome B. Wiesner, a pre-eminent computer science laboratory for new media and a high-tech playground for investigating the human-computer interface. In 1992, Negroponte became involved in the creation of Wired Magazine as the first investor contributing, from 1993 to 1998, with a monthly column: “Move bits, not atoms.” Negroponte expanded many of the ideas from his Wired columns into a bestselling book Being Digital (1995), which made famous his forecasts on how the interactive world, the entertainment world and the information world would eventually merge. Negroponte is a digital optimist who believed that computers would make life better for everyone.

In 2006, Negroponte stepped down as lab chairman to focus more fully on his work with One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) although he retains his appointment as professor at MIT.

On Tuesday, February 26^th, Nicholas Negroponte will be lecturing at the Institute for Advanced Architecture of Catalonia – IAAC.

Nicholas Negroponte’s lecture at IAAC, will be streaming live in our youtube channel

]]> http://legacy.iaacblog.com/blog/2013/iaac-lecture-series-nicholas-negroponte/feed/ 0 http://legacy.iaacblog.com/blog/2013/mai-research-studio-close-to-the-body/ http://legacy.iaacblog.com/blog/2013/mai-research-studio-close-to-the-body/#comments Thu, 14 Feb 2013 09:30:17 +0000 admin http://legacy.iaacblog.com/?p=9440 This MAI Research Studio will be conducted by the Department of Industrial Design at the Eindhoven University of Technology and specifically by the following professionals: Eunjeong Jeon, Martijn ten Bhomer, Kristi Kuusk, Eva Deckers and Oscar Tomico. Other partners for the research studio will be the Higher School of Design (ESDi), part of the Fundació del Disseny Tèxtil (FUNDIT) by the person of Marina Castan, Bywire.net by the person of Marina Toeters and Sietske Klooster by the person of Sietske Klooster.

The research studio explores smart textile technology as an emergent design space and proposes a new design practice focused in textiles as an intimate and central element in daily life.

More info here.

Manuel believes that in the last 20 years a new way of thinking has emerged, that is a new operative logic, associated to a new territory of research, or “mental map”, through more open ways of conceiving and organizing the dynamics and irregularities of space. Hence thinking with a more effective spatial formulation and communication, being less prejudiced and more relational with respect to its information (intended in the wider sense, that is as an active vector of exchange).

A new relational and “informational” logic ultimately connected with the understanding of our environment, hence of the dynamic systems and their relative irregular structures, capable of combining, through links, multiple events and heterogeneous processes (for example complex energies) contingently activated and concurred in the same field of action and vibration.

In particular, the debate touched a series of topics, or doubts arisen during Manuel’s research, that are to be the theme for the students’ next research exercise (The man with x-ray eyes):

1_ Are we working with a new architectural logic – a new thought – or just with new technological tools?

2_ Are we in a new cultural time – informational – or even in a predominantly post-modern culture?

3_ Can we really speak of a “new architecture” – complex, advanced, interactive, informational, etc. – or are we just assisting to the wrinkling, the folding – the mannerist warp – of the modern and post-modern architectures?

4_ Can we detect, in “these new operational logics”, a propositive-critical attitude towards the system –radicalism, rebellious, alternative, etc.- or just a propositive-conformist attitude (and / or collaborationist) with the system? (operational-optimism vs. fresh-conservatism?)

5_ What differences of modern radical avant-garde of the 60’s (alternative) to the advanced innovation (reactive) of the 2000′s (strategic)?

6_ Can we talk about a shared and cultural adventure and research in recent architecture or just about a combination (a sum) of individual trajectories?

7_ If we can speak of a same relational logic … why join Greg Lynn – or Hernan Alonso for example – to Lacaton-Vassal … or MVRDV?

8_ What differentiates the anticipatory explorations (heterodoxes) of the radical modern architecture to the pioneering explorations (heterotopics) of the “informational” advanced architecture?

These doubts brought forth interesting thoughts, and other doubts or questions…

→Does Grasshopper bring us to design a process rather than a building?

→Can we design a process without formalization/ a formal concept?

→How abstract is the process?

→Are we inventing logics according to our tools?

→Does Advanced Architecture create tools that improve humanity? How much do these benefit our society?

→If post-modern architecture is a gesture, calligraphy; is advanced architecture a movement, trajectories in space, the strategy of a process?

→If modern architecture is about structure, is advanced architecture about infrastructure?

→If complexity is a contradiction in modern architecture, is it a symbiosis in advanced architecture?

… and many more.

All of this was topped off with a series of images, diagrams, maps and plans allowing us to complete the theoretical concepts with visual information.

Because of architecture’s nascent tendency to synthesize myriad of agencies involved in the formation of design, it has the potential to play an important role within accelerated convergence of matter and information. While data visualization techniques widespread in other fields are productive for the communication and legibility of large data, they are not yet explicitly involved in production. Data materialization however, involves the direct activation of an abundance of data in the formation of other systems, via a connective hinge positioned within the domain of design. What could be called data materialization is opening up the potential for architecture to finally resonate with the complexity of ecology. While data visualisation exposes the hidden beauty, intelligence, and complexity of observed systems, data materialization can produce such beauty and complexity within new synthetic fields. Through recently expanded computational simulations within design, it is becoming possible to access behavioral tendencies of matter at a finer grain. Scientific discoveries and harvested data can now be incorporated into massive resolution material speculations via newly revealed algorithmic profiles of matter, increasing designability of matter and opening doors for enriched synthesis. Unlike the principles of total holism that characterized early ecological thinking, this kind of synthetic landscape offers resilience and redundancy of Increased Resolution Architectural Fabrics, with an enlarged capacity for interweaving contingent agencies.

Alisa Andrasek is an experimental practitioner and research based educator of architecture and computational processes in design. In 2001 she founded Biothing, a cross-disciplinary laboratory that focuses on the generative potential of computational systems for design. In 2005 she initiated CONTINUUM, an interdisciplinary research collective focusing on advanced computational geometry and software development. Andrasek graduated from the University of Zagreb, and holds a Masters in Advanced Architectural Design from Columbia University.  She teaches architecture studios and theory seminars at the Architectural Association in London (AA DRL) and has taught at Columbia University, Pratt Institute, the University of Pennsylvania, RMIT Melbourne and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and has lectured at architecture schools worldwide.  Andrasek was co-winner of the Metropolis Next Generation Design Competition, 2005 and received the FEIDAD Design Merit Award, 2004. Recent exhibitions of biothing’s work include: Permanent Collection Centre Pompidou Paris 2009; FRAC Collection in Orleans 2009; Transitory Objects TB-A21 in Vienna 2009; Synathroisis in Athens Greece 2008; Scripted by Purpose at the F.U.E.L. gallery in Philadelphia 2007; Seroussi pavilion at the Maison Rouge gallery in Paris 2007; Ars Mathematica in Paris 2007; the 2003 Prague Biennale; the 2004 Sydney Biennial; Architectural Biennial Beijing 2004, 2006 and 2008; and the New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, 2005. She curated the East Coast section for the “Emergent Talent Emergent Technologies” exhibition for the Beijing Biennial 2006 and for the “(Im)material Processes: New Digital Techniques for Architecture” for the Beijing Biennial 2008.

Because of architecture’s nascent tendency to synthesize myriad of agencies involved in the formation of design, it has the potential to play an important role within accelerated convergence of matter and information. While data visualization techniques widespread in other fields are productive for the communication and legibility of large data, they are not yet explicitly involved in production. Data materialization however, involves the direct activation of an abundance of data in the formation of other systems, via a connective hinge positioned within the domain of design. What could be called data materialization is opening up the potential for architecture to finally resonate with the complexity of ecology. While data visualisation exposes the hidden beauty, intelligence, and complexity of observed systems, data materialization can produce such beauty and complexity within new synthetic fields. Through recently expanded computational simulations within design, it is becoming possible to access behavioral tendencies of matter at a finer grain. Scientific discoveries and harvested data can now be incorporated into massive resolution material speculations via newly revealed algorithmic profiles of matter, increasing designability of matter and opening doors for enriched synthesis. Unlike the principles of total holism that characterized early ecological thinking, this kind of synthetic landscape offers resilience and redundancy of Increased Resolution Architectural Fabrics, with an enlarged capacity for interweaving contingent agencies.

www.bloom-thegame.com

www.biothing.org

The aim of the seminar, leaded by Josep Miàs and Silvia Brandi, is to investigate the extreme possibilities of textile constructions and structures which make them possible. Starting from analyzing existing technologies, we will end up building three pavilions that will be portable and packable, and that can be used as a living space, exhibition room, or meeting point…