Sense and the Sensor;
The world around us: the world we design and build to experience. All around us we have created stuff, stimuli, candy for the modern imagination, stimulation for the conglomeration. Taste, touch, smell, sight, & hearing; Our senses are our tools in creating experience, continually being deciphered, illustrated, manipulated, morphed, and manifested.
We are amidst a trans-connected threshold, whereby everything is networked, plugged in, online, and in real-time. High definition, remastered, active, reactive, interactive, Wi-Fi, Hi-Fi, and accompanied by your favorite iPhrase to make it clever.
Computer chips now out number humans 100 to 1, and the question of embodiment is not being questioned. ‘Digital networks are no longer separate from architecture and pervasive computing is being inscribed into the everyday social, political and environmental complexity of the existing physical environment’ (McCullough, 2005). Everyday the world is becoming increasingly clearer that it is one of individual interconnected self expression.
Who is to be responsible for these new endeavors, designs and spaces? McCullough States, “Human life is interactive life, in which architecture has long set the stage,”(McCullough, 2005) It is architecture’s responsibility to illuminate the way. And if architecture is at all interested in creating experience in this information age then it must be rigorously responsible at incorporating this realm, its constructs, and infrastructure. In this new space ‘The Architecture becomes the information editor’ (Plottegg & Trapp).
‘The real is already virtual’ (Novak, 2001), and “The virtual connects body and perspective in new ways” (Queau, 1995). But the last thing we need is more meaningless connectivity in the vein of virtual reality. Attempting to simulate reality by symbolizing it. Rather a new capacity needs to be investigated, alternative to that which is known.“Existing notions of body and space have to be re‐programmed to stay meaningful” (Hoog, 2005), and so “Alternity” originates.
Alternity supersedes virtuality by attempting to avoid symbolism. Alternity exists between the physical & metaPhysical, material & immaterial, real & unreal, it breathes within this blurred threshold. The threshold which architecture is in need of a defense. Defending its necessity and responsibility in these new realms of world making, this need is paramount. The stage is changing, This is our world, and the world is our stage. Architectures’ stage.
This thesis is an exploration in alternity. An experiment which spacial (geometric projection) and temporal (sonic projection) harmonics are generated through he mapping of perception (EEG data). This feedback loop of projected perception allows for a unique possibility of sensory experience. Opening the doors of perception can harmonize experience, projecting space by perceiving our sense of it.
August 20, 2009, 6:22pm
