The Myth of Symbiosis, Trasparency, and Psychotropy within the Built Environment
Publication: Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research, Volume 9, Numbers 2 and 3 ©2011 Intellect Ltd Article. doi: 10.1386/tear.9.2-3.313_1
Keywords: architecture, built-environment, dwelling, interaction, symbiosis, psychotropy, affectivity, transparency
Abstract
Based on earlier studies of J. C. R. Licklider, this article translocates the context of symbiosis between man and the machine into the built environment, and more specifically into contemporary methods for the design of domestic/residential spaces. According to this, a discussion is made concerning the implementation of media and sensor technologies within the architectural DNA that initiate the emergence of psychotropic spaces of Ballardian Architecture; structures that are capable of becoming extensions of the inhabitant’s mood, emotion and psyche. Furthermore, this article presents Plinthos Pavilion, a collaborative artwork that confronts issues of transparency, ubiquity and invisibility; an example of synergy between the primary notions of architectural and media design, which blend with the use of electronic and digital technology, transforming a physical structure to an organism that breathes, reacts and communicates.
Shifting Evolution
At present, cyber-alchemists associate the philosopher’s stone with elaborative methods for universal – technological, scientific or artistic – innovation. The quest for discovering the Prima Materia is based on the ageless desire of humans to understand the macro and nano universe, the surrounding environment, biological and cognitive processes, or even, if possible, look straight into the matter of soul. To attain absolute knowledge, efficient methods need to be employed, and in order to achieve significant results ‘we must consider […] technological prosthetics’ (Spiller 1998: 32). Modern technological frame-works provide godlike powers that intoxicate intelligence and perception, and inevitably infiltrate constantly and deeper into the core of human existence. It seems that the destiny of technology is to access all of our intimate and secure places we possess; electronic transparency is almost impossible to achieve; we ‘have to work hard to produce limited zones of privacy’ (Mitchell 2003: 29).
Computational systems and digital information become the norm coefficient in architecture, establishing a ubiquitous layer in every physical or mental activity. This intrusion reveals the emergence of post-digital architecture, where ubicomp and ambient intelligence dominates over spatial arrangement and design methodology, ‘just as system supersedes structure’ (Ascott 1967). It becomes evident that digital technology has extraordinary abilities to morph the built environment ‘into an organism capable of conveying message using various media, integrating them into the building fabric’ (Puglisi 1999). To achieve sensuous creations with temporal adornments, architects have to consider media prosthetics; ‘dematerialized imagescapes end up having a beneficent effect on the hardscapes of built spaces’ (Lunenfeld 2003: 11).
Following McLuhan’s reflections, media is a powerful extension of consciousness, completely defining the notion of the world that surrounds us; by ‘altering the environment’ it is possible to evoke ‘unique ratios of sense perceptions’, able to change our human core, and as McLuhan believes ‘when these ratios change, men change’ (1967: 41). Media technology possesses significant power to register fluidity and transformation in physical or ethereal substances, or to construct shifting behaviours for the attainment of desired inhabitancy, providing even more sensitive interfaces that ‘prolong our sense of freedom and possibility’ (Rushkoff 2002). Heidegger suggests that architecture has to become responsive and affective and to promote a new context where the environment supports the inhabitant with every possible method: ‘the word “thing” in Heidegger’s vocabulary describes life’s paraphernalia immersed in experience and use, rather than distantly observed according to an abstract system’ (Sharr 2007: 46).
Symbiotical Dwelling
Man–computer symbiosis is a concept that relates to immediate communication between biological and digital processes that accomplish goals normally unreachable; however, current protocols fail to succeed understanding to deeper intellectual and cognitive instances. J. C. R. Licklider suggests that man–computer symbiosis does not have to be approached in the same perspective as man–man symbiosis, but rather it is preferable to use computers ‘effectively into the formulate parts of technical problems’, help us overcome routinized and clerical tasks, and create a ‘resulting partnership [that] will think as no human brain has ever thought’ (1960). Architecture could now be characterized as an extended computer interface, a device that can exhibit behaviour and intelligence, and formulate practices of supportive dwelling and inhabited adaptivity.
Current technological innovations are employed within architectural structures to enable instant support to human needs. This type of symbiosis could be better characterized as symbiotic mutualism (Boucher et al. 1982), a context where each partner uses their own abilities to help the other achieve better survival chances with means they normally cannot afford in isolation. For this reason, mutualism needs to be employed to elevate human–computer–architecture symbiosis into a higher level of adaptation. This ecology of normally incompatible entities has to be properly contextualized to accompany the notion of posthuman dwelling, and provide a holistic approach to communication and interaction between physical and virtual substances. The new role of architecture is not only to provide shelter and protection against natural phenomena or other animalistic menaces, but rather to function as an intellectual or even physical extension of man, to ‘flex like the muscles in the body’, and to ‘record individual requirements’ (R. Rodgers cited in Puglisi 1999). Based on this important condition, Heidegger argues that dwelling is a process that does not just occur; there has to be a strong psychological and emotional connection between the inhabitant and the space:
These buildings house man. He inhabits them and yet does not dwell in them. In today’s housing shortage even this much is reassuring and to the good; residential buildings do indeed provide shelter; today’s houses may even be well planned, easy to keep, attractively cheap, open to air, light and sun, but do the houses in themselves hold any guarantee that dwelling occurs in them? (1971: 145–46)
Dwelling occurs only when residents leave their personal traces in the poetic substance of their interior space. The personalization of this built environment – the thing – should be implemented to the expressional and creative domain of its occupants, and as Sharr argues the residence ‘should be understood through tactile and imaginative experience; not as a detached object’ (2007: 46). As Brand analyses, the original meaning of a building is ‘unchanging deep structure’, but it never remains unchanged, as it is building and rebuilding according to the actions of the inhabitants (1995). After frequent use, a domestic space reveals a significant level of personalized information; psychoanalysis of a space would easily expose attributes of its residents’ substance. For example, Merzbau is an interior space that is transformed into an abstract almost mythical and anthropomorphic – sculpture according to the aesthetics, idiosyncrasies and eccentricities of its inhabitant. The structure is not confined inside space, but sometimes it transcends it, cutting through the ceiling and floor to original armature of the building (Mansoor 2002), altering static architectural space into a new transformable form.
In the same sense, interaction with computational media become personalized experiences that indicate aspects of dwelling and inhabitancy. A personal computer after regular use absorbs styles and defects creating digital avatars of actions, preferences and memories that may holistically synthesize or recreate the entity of its operator. According to this, inhabitant awareness and perception is morphed, altering current perspectives, and as Goulthorpe notes ‘technology as extensions of man (in Marshall McLuhan’s terms) is 1. never a simple external prosthesis, but actively infiltrates the human organism, certainly in a cognitive sense’ (2008: 38).
Psychotropic Environments
In the short science fiction story ‘The Thousand Dreams of Stellavista’, J.G. Ballard introduces the concept of Psychotropic House, an architectural space that is able to scan, record and analyse mental and emotional profiles of inhabitants, and react, communicate, adapt or express itself through kinesis and metamorphosis. An ecology of interconnected sensors are embedded inside the physical structure of the building, which gives the ability to identify external and internal processes of inhabitants such as movement, gestures, facial expressions, as well as mood, behaviour, memory and emotional status. This fictional scenario proposes a superior architectural machine that reaches a higher level of adaptability, competent to absorb in its infrastructure every cognitive aspect of human mind. According to the level of mental and psychological infiltration, the house is able to accurately mirror this information through morphopoiesis, and as Ballard describes the house echoes ‘every shift of mood and position of the occupants, that living in one is like inhabiting someone else’s brain’ (1962). Therefore, it is important to acknowledge the instance where the machine is capable of absorbing emotional and intellectual features of its residents, and build a psychological profile based on these registered events. It is highly possible that affective properties of the space would exhibit instability and unpredictability; possibly an outcome far more interesting than any pre-programmed logic the designer defines; the system has now human-like idiosyncrasies.
Except that psychotropic space exhibits behaviour and expresses itself in multiple and peculiar ways, it has to serve, support and adapt, especially when it is intended as a domestic environment. For this reason, it is vital to establish methods for accurate data acquisition, analysis, categorization, reasoning, representation, synthesis and spatio-temporal distribution. The psycho-physiological responses of the inhabitants have to be recorded as patterns that help the environment react according to these results. System intelligence has to identify elements and sequences that enable the trigger- ing of a specific internal, cognitive or emotional process. To activate targeted cognitive aspects, emotion or memory, stimuli have to be triggered in a precise manner, and as it is already proven emotional memory is triggered effectively if senses are aroused in specific patterns (Sacco and Sachet 2010). Another significant matter relates to the methods of interaction between space and inhabitant, as it needs to be based on the same principles of interaction between humans; ‘it should be intuitive, multimodal, and based on emotion’ (Reeves and Nass 1996). Additionally, this type of architecture demands registration of personalization, as well as to record mood and behaviour that ultimately promotes positive performance and disapproves negativity; ‘the explicit knowledge about a so-called digital soul of human beings requires the development of different standards for social behavior, and it might even be desired to protect people against their own attitude’ (Aarts et al. 2002: 249).
Plinthos Pavilion: Solidity and Transparency
Plinthos Pavilion is a collaborative artwork that consists of an architectural structure with an embedded sensorial skin that becomes an example of synergy between the primary notions of architectural and media design, which blend with the use of electronic and digital technology into an interactive installation of inner discovery, and subliminal exploration of the self. Minimal form, design and materials become compositional elements for the manifestation of psychological and emotional actuators that transform the purposes of a physical structure into an affective, supportive and adaptable system. Media prosthetics are fundamental components to the construction of this cyborgian object that provide authority of ether and time, transforming the porous structure to an organism that breathes, reacts and communicates, presenting an installation that extends ‘the possibilities of an architecture’ to the post-digital culture (Goulthorpe 2008).
The construction of the site is based on plinthos (aka rudimentary clay brick), a standard construction element that provides strength, durability, resistance, absorption, and intimate, social and public isolation. However, in this context the 21.816 bricks reach a paradox – an identity crisis – as transformation is achieved via misuse, stacking the bricks on-end so that vertical voids are oriented horizontally. Inevitably, the porous sides are revealed, and thus permeable surface is achieved, openness is accumulated and transparency is employed. At certain oblique angles, the structure becomes a conventional wall; however, direct view reveals a high degree of porosity. Plinthos Pavilion does not remain in stasis, but rather it allows human behaviour to affect its shiftable properties. Sound, light and air become expressional elements of architecture, synthesizing a harmonious sensation and inviting exploration through tactile, auditory and ocular channels. The medialization of the structure transforms it into a mystical – almost sacred and ritualistic – space of exploration and discovery. Hidden well inside the physical structure, the multi-sensory mechanism identifies a number of activities and occurrences that help build a cognitive foundation that responds in analogous manners. Based on visitor proximity towards the curved wall, ventilation devices are triggered, blowing fresh air through the porous skin of the structure, causing transparency to fully emerge. Visitor position, movement and overall circulation are analysed from the system, and according to the results, light and sound synthesis is configured in real time. This creates a dynamic system that causes visitors to be submerged and suddenly subjected to seemingly reactions, immersed in layers of optical and acoustic stimuli. The sonified environment activates perceptual images of harmony and exhilaration, 4. communicating aural awareness, closeness and affection. Except for its short-term understanding of the spatial activity, Plinthos has long-term (and more specifically episodic) memories stored in its prefrontal cortex, mostly referring to recollections of its genesis. These memories remain hidden, unless visitors activate them using stem lights that appear in the middle of the structure. These objects closely resemble hair cells found on the human ear, acting as sensory receptors of tactile input, having direct access to digital memory space. Upon triggering, sonic events are distributed in the environment showing past snapshots of the structure’s embryotic state.
Conclusion
Based on issues raised in this article, it seems that architectural practices increasingly promote the embedding of computational media within physical structures, in order to formulate posthuman dwelling according to technological utilities that have the power to become fundamental extensions of selves and personalities. Thus, interior spaces are transformed to shiftable multidimensional interfaces that suggest conversational patterns of support and affection. For symbiosis to occur, physical and virtual utilities need to properly sense body and mind, and to define technological instances competent to elevate consciousness to a state where new and creative possibilities emerge.
References
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Suggested Citation:
Didakis, S. (2011), ‘The Myth of Symbiosis, Psychotropy and Transparency within the Built Environment’, Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research 9: 2+3, pp. 313–319, doi: 10.1386/tear.9.2-3.313_1