[a]://>
media
++ technology determinism
[b]://> interface
[c]://> inFORMation processes
[d]://> metadesign
[e]://> archit[text]ures
[f ]://> hyper[text]ures
[a]://> media ++ technology determinism
'the medium is the
message'
McLuhan, understanding media
In his
writings, McLuhan develops a media determinism based on
technological innovations as fundamental vectors of civilization processes.
Technology is not conceived as an external or alien object, but as complete
extensions. It complements integrally our sensitive apparatus; as a medium, it
thus conditions not only communication modes but also the way we perceive and
conceive our environment. As Marshall McLuhan
underlines, communication and computation technologies are all related to a
proper structure, transmitting, apart from a specific message, its own significance.
Consequently, the signification of the message depends not only on the
intentions of the author, but also on this meta-construction, which,
independently from the subjective intentions, determines the field of
communication.
Like any
media, they produce an auto referential development of communication systems,
of specific codes and symbols as well as their own transmission channels and
their own modes of participation and interaction, new cognitive and sensory
experience, through which the society constitutes its functional subsystems as
well as its conceptual, semantic and informative inscriptions which influence
our space-time representations. As extensions of human capacities and senses,
media thus reconfigure and anticipate the transformation processes of the very
society that created them influencing not only social and psychic behavior patterns, mental structures of thought (knowledge
and memory) and cognitive settings but also their forms of representation such
as architecture and town planning. Obviously, if they have such effects on our
society, communication and computation technologies are not meaningless
technical supports, and the passage from analogical to digital technology can
directly be related to the transformation of an industrial society to a
post-industrial society, from modernity to trans-modernity.
"The
science of endophysics claims that the world as it is
given to us is only a cut, an interface, a difference inside what is real (the
whole). This has some powerful implications, including the possibility to
change the whole world (i.e. the interface world). "
Otto E.Rössler ,"the
world as an accident" in the art of the accident, NAI Publisher, page.172
According
to Otto Rössler, the world ' is not the world in
which we live' but the interface through which we perceive and act, and the
electronic realm induced by computation and communication technologies are not
' the world of data and information' in which we are brought to live because
the real world 'doesn't function anymore', but the interface to a set of
symbolic and expressive 'processes'. Consequently, O.Rössler
describes a system depending on the particular observer position for which the
projected universe is perceived through one among many possible cuts, an
interface. This relationship between the observer and the external world
through an interface is a determining factor, since a microscopic change inside
the observer's world can drastically modify the interface and thus the
perception and conception, the cognitive and mental set ,
whereas the universe as a whole remains unchanged by this fact. It is a
transmitted reality, depending on the interfaces, as a condition of 'assignment'
which determines the models and concepts of reality. In fact, the medium
determines and controls the scale and the forms of human associations and
actions as well as their forms of representation. The interface thus affects
the relationship between man and the external world, thereafter extending the
notion of interface to the very human senses and spirit, the brain, from senses
(perception) to senses (cognitive and mental set of signification).
"Media,
by altering the environment, evoke in us ratios of sense perceptions. The
extension of any one sense alters the way we think and act - the way we
perceive the world. When these ratios change men change."
Marshal McLuhan, playboy interview march 1969
http://www.mcluhanmedia.com/mmclpb01.html
Mc Luhan's quotation underlines the close relationship between
our sensitive apparatus and technological extensions of our body, our
functions, which directly conditions our perception and behaviour, the psychic
and social effects. In this manner technology constitutes the interface to the
external world. Otto Rössler, like Marshall McLuhan (" the medium is the message "), starts
thus from the fact that the interfaces determine our perception, conception and
practice of space. In this manner new technologies are the confrontation
between what man regards as possible and what the machines present as feasible.
Technologies thus permanently shift the relation between the possible
(potential) and the feasible (functional), where the construct of the real
constitutes such a "negotiation" between the potential and the
functional, being constantly reformulated according to technological
progresses. The cut, (assignment condition) can thus be modified by technology,
augmenting cognition and perception through multiple potentialities. These
considerations lead us to conceive the conditions of assignment in a broader
form, such as Marcos Novak describes them through the concept of the screen
display - ' screening':
"We
learn through a logic of selective reductions :
projections, screens, interfaces are at the same time reductions and
clarifications of worlds in the broad sense, with which we never have direct
contact. Any reality, including self-knowledge, is only available through the
mediation of interfaces and screens: the projection of senses, sensorial and
hermeneutic filtrations, personal and political veilings. The very question of
conception and representation itself is an incommensurable question of
interfaces."
Marcos Novak
Novak
classifies interfaces, screens, as filters acting as follows: · the sensitive
screen constituted by our nervous system, synaptic networks, filters and
membranes, perceiving a small section of a broader spectrum, or a congruous
caption of the rough data constituting our environment · the cognitive screen
of our interest compared to world, building our piece of knowledge constrained
by the filter and the magnifying glass of our temporary attention ;· the faciality screen (representation and self-knowledge), our
face being screens which veil and unveal identity,
the character and the expression with the double purpose to mask and become,
protection and vision.
They
include our skin and its echoes as the ontological set of our self (clothing,
architectures, avatars…) - the psychological screens of intersubjective
and social reflections, identity constructs and political representation. This
assignment of significance transforms all objects into subjects of our
conscience.
In a
significant manner, this transformation erases the distinctions between
physical artefacts and symbolic ones, 'expressions'. For instance, the
distinction between a brick and its image becomes a question of perception and
cognition, semantic inscriptions, rather than a pre-determined polarity between
reality and simulation, reality versus virtuality. Consequently, Novak's
classification extends the concept of the 'assignment condition' from sensual
perception to the shared and mental conscience, the conceptual one.
"We
tend to believe that something is assumed to be real if there is a consensus
about it. Reality becomes a problem of inter-subjectivity.You
know, in Antiquity, the Unicorn was real because there was a consensus about
its existence. It is no longer real because there is no longer any consensus
concerning the Unicorn."
Vilém Flusser, interviewed by Miklos Peternak
http://www.c3.hu/events/97/flusser/participantstext/miklos-interview.html
The
extension of the assignment condition between the perceptible and conceptual to
the consensual enables us to tackle the question of interface as a construction
between what Gibson's calls the 'consensual hallucination' and the 'cyborg', between the technological extension of our self,
mental space and interconnection of individuals and the set of reality
(consensual hallucination). Consequently, technologies are not only direct
extensions of the body, they also influence our mental
processes by influencing the symbolic (representation), psychic and social
constructs.
"To
say that the images we now produce are simulations does not make much sense.
Concretely they affect us just like objects do. This is my constant, let's say,
dialogue with Baudrillard. Baudrillard
believes that we are living in a world where the simulations hide reality. I
think this is a nonsensical proposition. I believe that we are in the middle of
a world which is either concrete or abstract. And those images are just as
concrete as is the table on which your machine is standing now. We do not have
any ontological tool any longer to distinguish between a simulation and a
non-simulation."
Vilém Flusser, interviewed by Miklos Peternak,
http://www.c3.hu/events/97/flusser/participantstext/miklos-interview.html
The
introduction of the ontology description, set, of our self is directly related
to the question of interface described by modern phenomenology, conceptualising
the real as 'transmission' of information, and particularly on stimulation of
our sensitive apparatus. It is the computation of stimulations - inputs which
determines our concept of the real, an ontology based on communication
processes and the comprehension of their respective synthesis in images,
feelings... This process is operated by our nervous system inside which the
electromagnetic signals are interpreted by the brain into images, odours,
feelings... what we call perception is determined by this process. We do not
perceive the world instantaneously but transform 'inputs' into perception.
Reality thus is a parameter of transmission and computation. Consequently
computation and communication technologies are extensions of our body
anticipating mental and cognitive processes; they are the essential interface
of world settings, instruments of the construct of an active space-time.
" Trough the sensory experiences, stimulation
became one of the main vectors of interaction and active space".
Marshal McLuhan, playboy interview march 1969
The
stimulations caused by information technologies are described in McLuhan's "hot and cool media ". Introducing the
stimulation of our nervous system as a parameter of the qualification of a
media / technology determines their participative potential. McLuhan characterizes the ' cool media' by low definition
and intense participation (e.g: a comic strip) and
the ' hot media' by a high definition and a low participation (a photography).
This distinction is characterized by the implication of the user in the process
of inFORMation. In the case of a medium with weak
definition, the user takes part in the formalization process of the contents, he/she is thus stimulated, mentally and
emotionally active, while in the case of a high definition medium the user
becomes a reactive witness.
The main
interest in McLuhan's definition of hot and cool media
lies in the qualification of interactivity according to stimulation, including
these mental and cognitive processes. Qualifying stimulation in the case of the
real defines the active space as a ' cold media', built by interactive and
participative interfaces. Digital technologies develop relational systems,
determined by a high degree of interactivity and immersion, thus gathering the
parameters of an active space. Creating an interface is thus programming human
characteristics and behaviours inside the electronic space. The interaction
requires a stimulation of the sensitive system - a sensory and mental
experience. The interface, related to the assignment condition sets up a
relational system in which the cyberspace takes the form of an experimental space,
as much through mental processes as through the direct and sensual interaction
with information.
The
increasing implication of communication and information technologies in the
process of production and knowledge leads to the fundamental re-thinking of the
organization and the definition of space. Technology based on the transmission
and computation of information influences organization models (modes of
production, of work and of knowledge) and affects the communication process
(code, symbol) and the social relations as well as their specialization. The
affectation of traditional articulations between information, space and time
leads to the augmenting need to flatten the electronic realm into intelligible
space settings.
If, as all
communication systems, new technologies induce a transmission channel
(signal-medium), a message (information) and a code, their property is to
operate on any kind of information, even space, a reduction in a sequence of
elementary information coded in a binary language, 0/1 or bit/second. But
contrary to its analog counterparts within which
information was materially fixed on a medium, digital media celebrates the loss
of inscription; it is the transposition of all stable "FORM" into
transmissible and editable "inFORMation".
In
electronic media, proximity is no longer a concept of space but of time. The
instant access to information thus reconfigures the concept of proximity to a
question of temporal proximity, instantaneity. Space has turned into a
transmissible parameter, a variable of time defining our environment as a
mediated device. The implosion of space in favor to
time redefines all forms of space experiences by 'here and now' ( hic and nunc). As information is inseparably related to
human experience, communication processes through binary codes projects our
experience and conception of real in digital media. As
extension of our sensible and sensitive capacities new technologies of
information and communication transforms our perception (sense) and conception
(cognition) of ourselves as physical entity defined by spacetime.
Spacetime thus operates as referent proper to our
mental and cognitive understanding - to our ontological definition.
Information
processes are space-time constructs based on communication and computation
technologies inscribing our experiences in a hypercontextualisation
where instantaneity, expanded to the global network reconfiguring space by transforming
our representations sub-symbolic - mental and cognitive scripts.
In relation to >INFORMation< processes, metadesign is Information architecture, related to the
structuring of information and its textual, graphical, spatial, biomorphic
transcription and interfacing based on the inherent logics of computation and
communication technology in networked societies.
Metadesign deals with the setting of new 'senses' as
components of language, while improving, increasing our cognitive capacities
and influencing in a major way our psychic state (conscience), our emotional
and social behavior and thus takes part as much in
the individual project than the collective. Consequently in the field of new
media, it is important to understand the relation established between
perception (the use of senses), recognition, comprehension and the
representation (the extraction of sense/meaning), and the action that is
resulted (production of sense/meaning).
In this manner, information architecture deals with intelligible electronic
constructs not only as modalities of perception and cognition, but as mental
and psychic settings of behavior, ontological
concerns, as well as the production of active and functional space settings,
spaces of intervention within the constitution of e.SPACE
CONSTRUCTions.
Metadesign is information architecture as a mental
and behavior pattern in electronic space, where media
determinism is understood as the overcome of representation (<>'enaction') and metaphors (<>structures and processes)
in shared environments and their social settings. In this manner it deals with
information as meta-inscription, rather than an output of interpretation - and
data as objective reality rather than information as narrative and simulation.
In this manner 'metadesign' displays the theme of new
space constructs relative to information processes, as the formalizations of
communication and computation processes according to social, semantic and
spatial structures (architecture) as much as on the level of language (code,
structure) in order to build up connectivity and effectiveness.
It is a definition of 'info-architecture' as the constitution of
codes/languages drawn from concepts of communication and information sciences
with that of architecture.
', ... we already live in a rhizomatic
multiplicity of globally mediated mind spaces.'
Marcos Novak
The
weakness of the concept of 'territoriality' and the
dematerialization/inscription of signs operated by networked computation
technologies, even more leads to the loss of economical, political, social and
cultural signification of the local space in favor of
new (less 'space' than 'information' related) identities and social cohesion
models. As the condensation of space increasingly affects the definition of
urbanity; urbanism can no longer be focused on material 'appearance' and 'representation',
but has to deal with dislocated, disembodied and transmissible systems. The
classical question of articulating public and private space, localizing
boundaries and identifying built entities, is now a question of being in a
dynamic space(s)-time(s) matrix of connectivity, interaction and imagination.
The opposition of real space and virtual space has turned into an inefficient
model to describe environmental conditions. The association of information
structures and processes with the urban structures and infrastructure flows
widens the comprehension of the relation between space-time and information, as
well as their multiple implications in behavior and
space settings. In opposite to space-based concepts in the digital universe,
the increase of information flows and its condensation of space define urbanity
as a media. The urban density (congestion) is thus more of a mediated, rather
than material setting, being formed by condensing information. Consequently,
the social model ' city' changes from a ' static' and localized state into a
delocalised and temporal condition of connectivity; a hyper infrastructure
generating and generated by material and immaterial flows.
In this
manner the shift of the traditional understanding of material body space to a conditon of fluctual information
fields, hyper[text]ures, transforms the urban model
into a system of interwoven information supports that leads to the increasing
need to flatten the electronic realm to the social and political one.
To describe the city as a relational field is the cogent causality of a formal
thinking, perceiving space as a differentiated interactive matrix, a dislocated
media of bit.second.
The city as a n-dimensional matrix is no longer a
common space but a fragmented matrix of multi-temporalities and
multi-spatiality's opposing the different forms of urbanity. In the combination
of the local and global into a 'glocal' environment
the social parameter of space might be the most crucial factor, accessibility
and intelligibility of information its focal point - a question of interface.
The
interfacing of communication and computation systems, metadesign,
transposes these processes in order to built up
expressive and symbolic social exchanges - and how these interfaces can be the
mean of politics, economics, tectonics… according to the urban field. The
networked and digital space is thus not an external space, reality, but an
interface of our very understanding according to space-time parameters.
Hypermodernity
might be understood, in an unbroken relation with modernity, as continuous
transition of our body in accelerated spacetime's,
environment that can be transmitted and shared. The blurring of the borders
between cyberspace and body space and the fact that it constitutes a new space
of intervention and activity has to be seen as the first shared reality since
the physical setting of space.
From a
very technological point of view, hypertext is a system of information
organization and transmission based on computation processes (code) and their
interconnection settings (structure / networks). Hypertext is a communication
media of spatially organized data, ensuring the transmission of information,
composed of multiple inter-connected fragments; woven in a network using
hyperlinks.
It is not only a communication technology delivering specific messages, it
forms a real meta-language throughout its code and metaconstruction,
primary set up through the encoding/decoding and transfer process.
As Meta
language the hypertext incorporates contents and links but also the
instructions necessary to its own editing (presentation/representation), to its
encoding/decoding (standard of alphabet/language, protocol of transfer) and to
its indexing. The hypertext 's characteristic is that
each sign, each color, each hyperlink is included in
its structure and contributes to the construction of meaning. If the technology
itself signifies the manner to formulate and to understand a message, the
hypertext as a medium goes beyond in representing through its intertextual and rhizomatic
structure, cognitive and mental relationships a production of thought patterns
that functions by association (hyperlink).
The
hyperlink brings to productive introduction of the user in the system of
interconnection (interactivity) and as a system of 'enaction'
the hypertext found relation between thought and action. Hypertext becomes thus
a language of productive action based on cognitive and mental processes, which
enacts significance proper to neuronal operation models. The hypertext as
behavioural system based on mental and cognitive processes (neuronal) affects
as much the social body (language) than the individual (interaction). As language
(code) it not only reconfigures patterns of thought (signification - semantics)
but also our senses (perception).
As a polysemic support of scattered but interconnected fragments
the hypertext substitutes the hierarchical and material conception of space by
a rhizomatic and interactive formalisation of intersubjective communication (network). The hypertext has
thus become the emblematic model of a reticular (rhizomatic) thinking, replacing the classical hierarchical
conception of relations (analytical sequences) into a system of interrelated
fragments based on complex dynamic processes inside the digital media.
Hypertextures formed by interconnected codes and systems
therefore questions the signification of space and its shift to hybrid
spaces-times within the digital media. The hypertext as a semantic structure of
language includes communication and computation processes determining a
space-time experience of the digital medium. Through the instant editing
related to inFORMation processes and structures, the
hypertext projects an active / interactive experience of space flows as a space
composed and decomposed by data and the flows that generate them. As the notion
of flow is necessarily subordinated to the concepts of space and time, the
hypertext can be described as a space-time system which dynamic state results
from InFormation processes.
'Hypertextu(r)al environments' can thus be defined as the
comparison between communication modes (the hypertext) and spatial constructs (
architecture and urbanism ) which allows us to ponder on possible spatial and
semantic transformations of these spacetime systems
according to the implications of new communication and information
technologies. In this manner they deal with the specific inscription of
information processes and the modalities of their transcription in order to
render information processes into active space settings, necessary for each
social setting.
As a new
synthesis between communication, technology and space, they mark the transition
from a structural thinking to a thinking in systems and processes gathering
processes of computation and communication in a coherent unified model and its
transcription in textual, graphic form (two-dimensional), space
(three-dimensional) and biomorph (auto-generative and
n- dimensional) allows to think of the space and semantic transfers of
architecture. It is thus about a definition of architecture like codes /
joining together language of the concepts drawn from the communication, of the
information sciences (connectivism and connexionism) with that of architecture.