Vera Bühlmann
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), Architecture, senior researcher and head of the laboratory for applied virtuality at the Chair for CAAD
Professor for architecture theory at Vienna University of Technology TU, and director of the Department Architecture Theory and Philosophy of Technics ATTP (www.attp.tuwien.ac.at).
My main fields of interest are digital architectonics and the emergence of a quantum literacy, as well as aesthetics from a new materialist point of view. I am editor of the applied virtuality book series with Birkhäuser (with Ludger Hovestadt), which engage from a philosophical, a mathematical and an architecture theory point of view with digitalisation (www.degruyter.com/view/serial/AVBS-B).
MA in Literature and Language Studies and Philosophy from Zurich University (2002), and PhD in Media Science from Basle University (2009). I have been co-founder and co-director of the laboratory for applied virtuality (since 2010) at CAAD ETH Zurich. Before that, I have been working in the fields of media culture and design for several years and in different contexts.
Address: Fachbereich Architekturtheorie und Technikphilosophie ATTP
Institut für Architekturwissenschaften/Fachbereich Architekturtheorie
Technische Universität Wien
Wiedner Hauptstr. 7/Stiege 2
A-1040 Wien
Austria
www.attp.tuwien.ac.at
personal research blog:
http://monasandnomos.org
Other Academic Affiliation:
ETH Zurich
D-ARCH / ITA / Chair for Digital Architectonics
Building HIB / Floor E 15
Stefano-Franscini-Platz 1
8093 Zürich
www.caad.arch.ethz.ch
My main fields of interest are digital architectonics and the emergence of a quantum literacy, as well as aesthetics from a new materialist point of view. I am editor of the applied virtuality book series with Birkhäuser (with Ludger Hovestadt), which engage from a philosophical, a mathematical and an architecture theory point of view with digitalisation (www.degruyter.com/view/serial/AVBS-B).
MA in Literature and Language Studies and Philosophy from Zurich University (2002), and PhD in Media Science from Basle University (2009). I have been co-founder and co-director of the laboratory for applied virtuality (since 2010) at CAAD ETH Zurich. Before that, I have been working in the fields of media culture and design for several years and in different contexts.
Address: Fachbereich Architekturtheorie und Technikphilosophie ATTP
Institut für Architekturwissenschaften/Fachbereich Architekturtheorie
Technische Universität Wien
Wiedner Hauptstr. 7/Stiege 2
A-1040 Wien
Austria
www.attp.tuwien.ac.at
personal research blog:
http://monasandnomos.org
Other Academic Affiliation:
ETH Zurich
D-ARCH / ITA / Chair for Digital Architectonics
Building HIB / Floor E 15
Stefano-Franscini-Platz 1
8093 Zürich
www.caad.arch.ethz.ch
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Monographs by Vera Bühlmann
Theoretical consideration of digital technology
Images, Imagination, Language and Science
New volume in the Applied Virtuality Book Series
Vera Bühlmann, Professor of Architectural Theory, Vienna University of Technology, Head of the Research Unit Architectural Theory and Philosophy of Technology.
––––––––– IN GERMAN
Die Autorin erörtert eine Denkweise über digitale Technik, die sich auf die Optik und die Sensibilität des neuen Materialismus stützt. Nature and Poetics verwendet dabei als Beispiel die Photosynthese und die Kernspaltung als ebenso künstliche wie natürliche Prozesse, um zu erklären, wie die digitale Technik im Paradigma einer “natürlichen Kommunikation” – einer “kommunikativen Physik” – gesehen werden kann. Das Buch untersucht die Vorstellung, dass Metaphern Ideen und Dinge jenseits einer strikten Natur-Kultur Unterscheidung in Bewegung halten und greifbar machen, und dass Sinnbilder helfen, Gedankenwelten zu ermessen und in Proportion zu bringen. Die Autorin schließt: wir können uns selbst und die digitale Technik besser verstehen, wenn wir uns ansehen, wie sie in der natürlichen Welt interagiert, und wenn wir Vorstellungen davon entwicklen, wie Energie, Form und Intellekt in einer Architektonik von Welt in vielfältiger Weise zusammenspielen.
Theoretische Betrachtung der digitalen Technik
Bildliche Sprache und Naturwissenschaft
Neuer Band der Reihe Applied Virtuality Book Series
Vera Bühlmann, Professorin für Architekturtheorie, TU Wien, Leiterin der Forschungseinheit Architekturtheorie und Technikphilosophie.
"Mathematics and Information in the Philosophy of Michel Serres" introduces the reader to Serres’ unique manner of ‘doing philosophy’, namely, as a novel manner of bearing witness. It demonstrates the reality of intellectual courage at work in Serres’ oeuvre that crucially involves mathematical thinking, and that makes possible a novel kind of dialogue in the world, not just on the world. Discourse around such dialogue thoughtfully articulates the principle of ‘the priceless’, folding it into an architectonics that is coefficient with nature.
Situating Serres’ universalist yet plural reading of knowledge as power, at the same time reveals it as coextensive with anonymous, incandescent and inventive thought. Vera Bühlmann’s work acquaints the reader with some of the epistemologically unsettling situations in contemporary science and technology that Serres addressed, formulating the original concept of ‘Quantum Literacy’ to examine the particular way in which he responded to these situations.
Imagine a world where the power is always on, where there is not just enough energy, but an abundance of it. Such a world is no Utopia, it is a possible reality. Using indefinitely available sources of energy – especially photovoltaic solar, in combination with others – and networking this energy, much in the way that we have networked information, we can get beyond our current energy ‘crisis’ and resolve it. The world we then find ourselves in is not a world without problems – we will face new challenges on the way – but in terms of energy it is a world of plenty. Rooted in sound theory and based on technology that is available now, A Genius Planet offers an accessible but detailed and insightful perspective on how we can free ourselves from our dependency on natural resources and generate, trade, and use energy in ways that open up the genuine potential that we have at our disposal today.
FROM THE FOREWORD:
"This book has a simple and optimistic message: energy isn’t a resource, energy is clean, and energy isn’t scarce, in fact the opposite, it is abundant! Because now, with information technology, energy has become what we might call an ‘intellectual wealth’ that can be captured, stored, distributed – ‘cycled’, so to speak – by electronic coding. And as there are no limits in principle to how much ‘energy cycling’ is possible, energy itself loses the limitations we’re used to associate with it.
It is not, at first, entirely obvious or perhaps intuitive to think of energy as an ‘intellectual wealth’ that can be ‘cycled’, and so the book explains in detail how and why this is so, and it makes a compelling case for embracing this extremely relevant reality: we have more than enough energy. For the foreseeable future, and beyond. We can relax. "
Ein Pixel.
Zahlen und Buchstaben bespielen die Atomistik der Einbildungskraft.
Medien sind generische Gestalten.
Eine Gestalt ist eine Verbundenheit.
Ein Raster ist eine generische Verbundenheit.
Ein Punkt ist eine Verbindlichkeit.
Ein infinitesimaler Punkt verbindet einen kontinuierlichen Inhalt.
Eine Form ist eine Regelmäßigkeit.
Eine symbolische Form stellt Medialität bereit.
Medialität ist eine Regelmäßigkeit im Verbindlichen.
Ein Vertrag.
Reports by Vera Bühlmann
knowledge and ethics in societies that are governed by algorithmic digital systems and objects endowed with agency?
Compendium Books by Vera Bühlmann
Edited Volumes by Vera Bühlmann
This book is above all about architectonics and communication. What, you may ask, does this have to do with ar- chitecture and urbanism? Data and software are thought to reshape the city, while the word ‘architecture’ refers equally often to buildings and to the organization of computer software and hardware components. With this book, we want to cast a projective space that accommodates various Auseinandersetzungen (settings, or setting ups, articulated dispositions of grounds that are quarrelsome) with implicit and explicit mixtures of these two domains interpenetrating each other. Contributions are short enough to make a point, yet long enough to glimpse the great variety of ‘scales’ of abstractive contemplation that these points index.
With contributions by Teuvo Kohonen, Ludger Hovestadt, Sha Xin Wei, Barbara Hammer, Timo Honkola, Vera Bühlmann, Michael Epperson, Elias Zafiris, Vahid Moosavi, André Skupin
ON THE METALITHIKUM SERIES
Technology is not simply technology, it changes character over time. We suggest there is a twin story to that of the Neolithikum. We call it Metalithikum and postulate that it has always accompanied the former. It concerns the symbolics of the forms and schemes humans are applying for accommodating themselves within their environment. We assume that the protagonists of this twin story, the symbolics of those forms and schemes, are also not simply what they are but change character over time. After Printed Physics (2012) and Domesticating Symbols (2013), this book is the third volume based on the Metalithikum colloquies organized once a year, where distinguished personalities from a broad range of architecture-related fields come together to discuss particular technical developments that are economically significant and philosophically interesting. The colloquies are organized by the applied virtuality theory-lab at the Chair for Computer Aided Architectural Design, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zürich.
Printed Physics documents the first Klausur which took place in May 2010. The central phenomenon considered was the production procedure of printing electronics and its economic context and prospect.
It looked at the technological developments with which the physical characteristics of materials can be formally analyzed, technologically constructed and (bio-)chemically synthesized, and which – hence the wording in the title – are meanwhile being industrially produced and distributed worldwide: electronics. It is no exaggeration to call this an actual printing revolution, although unlike in Gutenberg’s day, the printed products do not stand for something specifically, their symbols do not represent, but instead they are functionally operative for articulating what is only generically "terminable", in a sense that we call pre-specific.
This book shifts the frame of reference for today’s network- and structure-oriented discussions from the applied computational tools of the twenti- eth century back to the abstractness of nineteenth–century mathematics. It rereads George Boole, Richard Dedekind, Hermann Grassmann, and Bernhard Riemann in a surprising manner.EigenArchitecture argues for a literacy of the digital, displacing the role of geometrical craftsmanship.
The book comprises a programmatic text on the role of technology in architecture, a philosophical text on the generic and on algebraic articulation, and seven exemplary projects by post- graduate students in 2012 at the Chair for Computer Aided Architectural Design at ETH Zurich, Switzerland.
The book features contributions, statements, and conversations with internationally renowned authors such as Greg Lynn, Christopher Peterka, Wolfgang Weingart, Marcel Alexander Niggli, Christian Labonte, Fiona Raby and Anthony Dunne, Christian Doelker, Philipp Sarasin, Raymond Guidot, Eric Zimmerman and Manfred Fassler among others. It is designed by Ludovic Balland, and published with the Institute for Research in Art and Design HGK FHNW in Basel.
Articles and Book Chapters by Vera Bühlmann
The earth sends out messages, like the sky does – thus Michel Serres’s proposal of a materialist poetics of cosmic time suggest somewhat surprisingly. In the belly of the planet lie stars – can they be read like the firmament? Wouldn’t this mean bringing together matter and form, mass and light, hard and soft? It is the most ordinary thing, you will perhaps say. Every thing that exists does this, subject as it is to time, and living in space.
As an outlook to a book on Artificial Intelligence and Materials today, this text aims to evoke and nurture a kind of ideation which lives from a manner of synthetic reduction that distils its material articulations mathematically but with vivid imagination and speculation. Such ideation is what was once meant by the philosophical term “architectonics” in the modern discourses on first and matter-of-principle questions, i.e. in metaphysics. This context is relevant for the theme that preoccupies many of us today, namely how matter and information, hardware and software, technologies and skills are all thought of in their constitutive relationality.
http://mediatheoryjournal.org
Keywords:
Noise, New Materialism, the Cryptographic Locative, Circumstantial Metaphysics, Diachronicity, Chronopedia, Ecstatic Epiphany, Meteorological Order, Spaces of Similitude, White Concepts, Quantum Optics
by Vera Bühlmann, TU Vienna
New European Bauhaus
Rationalist Instrumentation, Architectonic Contemplation
Architectonic Form Originates in Death, or Eupalinos’ Mathematical Ideation
René Descartes’ Entwurf of the Method...
... and the Ethics of its Discourse (An Impredicative Method that has "Nothing" to Teach) Omitting La vray nature de la lumière from any description: Fabulating the Plenum Spatium for an Open World.
Coda. Politics, Diachronicity, and Architectonic Constitutions
Atemwende
Zenith Boil
Exhalations of the Earth
A Saving Grace
Subject to Aspiration
Transcripts
A Diacritical Eye
Spiritus
The Meridian Voice
Gegenworten
An Imaginary Present Tense that Attends to Twinkling
Meteorology
Once Upon the Autonomy of Words;
Local: The Talk of Things in Statuesque Words (writing ;
Global: The Cosmocratic Speech in a Quantum City;
General: Architectonic Form, Action as a Magnitude.
Theoretical consideration of digital technology
Images, Imagination, Language and Science
New volume in the Applied Virtuality Book Series
Vera Bühlmann, Professor of Architectural Theory, Vienna University of Technology, Head of the Research Unit Architectural Theory and Philosophy of Technology.
––––––––– IN GERMAN
Die Autorin erörtert eine Denkweise über digitale Technik, die sich auf die Optik und die Sensibilität des neuen Materialismus stützt. Nature and Poetics verwendet dabei als Beispiel die Photosynthese und die Kernspaltung als ebenso künstliche wie natürliche Prozesse, um zu erklären, wie die digitale Technik im Paradigma einer “natürlichen Kommunikation” – einer “kommunikativen Physik” – gesehen werden kann. Das Buch untersucht die Vorstellung, dass Metaphern Ideen und Dinge jenseits einer strikten Natur-Kultur Unterscheidung in Bewegung halten und greifbar machen, und dass Sinnbilder helfen, Gedankenwelten zu ermessen und in Proportion zu bringen. Die Autorin schließt: wir können uns selbst und die digitale Technik besser verstehen, wenn wir uns ansehen, wie sie in der natürlichen Welt interagiert, und wenn wir Vorstellungen davon entwicklen, wie Energie, Form und Intellekt in einer Architektonik von Welt in vielfältiger Weise zusammenspielen.
Theoretische Betrachtung der digitalen Technik
Bildliche Sprache und Naturwissenschaft
Neuer Band der Reihe Applied Virtuality Book Series
Vera Bühlmann, Professorin für Architekturtheorie, TU Wien, Leiterin der Forschungseinheit Architekturtheorie und Technikphilosophie.
"Mathematics and Information in the Philosophy of Michel Serres" introduces the reader to Serres’ unique manner of ‘doing philosophy’, namely, as a novel manner of bearing witness. It demonstrates the reality of intellectual courage at work in Serres’ oeuvre that crucially involves mathematical thinking, and that makes possible a novel kind of dialogue in the world, not just on the world. Discourse around such dialogue thoughtfully articulates the principle of ‘the priceless’, folding it into an architectonics that is coefficient with nature.
Situating Serres’ universalist yet plural reading of knowledge as power, at the same time reveals it as coextensive with anonymous, incandescent and inventive thought. Vera Bühlmann’s work acquaints the reader with some of the epistemologically unsettling situations in contemporary science and technology that Serres addressed, formulating the original concept of ‘Quantum Literacy’ to examine the particular way in which he responded to these situations.
Imagine a world where the power is always on, where there is not just enough energy, but an abundance of it. Such a world is no Utopia, it is a possible reality. Using indefinitely available sources of energy – especially photovoltaic solar, in combination with others – and networking this energy, much in the way that we have networked information, we can get beyond our current energy ‘crisis’ and resolve it. The world we then find ourselves in is not a world without problems – we will face new challenges on the way – but in terms of energy it is a world of plenty. Rooted in sound theory and based on technology that is available now, A Genius Planet offers an accessible but detailed and insightful perspective on how we can free ourselves from our dependency on natural resources and generate, trade, and use energy in ways that open up the genuine potential that we have at our disposal today.
FROM THE FOREWORD:
"This book has a simple and optimistic message: energy isn’t a resource, energy is clean, and energy isn’t scarce, in fact the opposite, it is abundant! Because now, with information technology, energy has become what we might call an ‘intellectual wealth’ that can be captured, stored, distributed – ‘cycled’, so to speak – by electronic coding. And as there are no limits in principle to how much ‘energy cycling’ is possible, energy itself loses the limitations we’re used to associate with it.
It is not, at first, entirely obvious or perhaps intuitive to think of energy as an ‘intellectual wealth’ that can be ‘cycled’, and so the book explains in detail how and why this is so, and it makes a compelling case for embracing this extremely relevant reality: we have more than enough energy. For the foreseeable future, and beyond. We can relax. "
Ein Pixel.
Zahlen und Buchstaben bespielen die Atomistik der Einbildungskraft.
Medien sind generische Gestalten.
Eine Gestalt ist eine Verbundenheit.
Ein Raster ist eine generische Verbundenheit.
Ein Punkt ist eine Verbindlichkeit.
Ein infinitesimaler Punkt verbindet einen kontinuierlichen Inhalt.
Eine Form ist eine Regelmäßigkeit.
Eine symbolische Form stellt Medialität bereit.
Medialität ist eine Regelmäßigkeit im Verbindlichen.
Ein Vertrag.
knowledge and ethics in societies that are governed by algorithmic digital systems and objects endowed with agency?
This book is above all about architectonics and communication. What, you may ask, does this have to do with ar- chitecture and urbanism? Data and software are thought to reshape the city, while the word ‘architecture’ refers equally often to buildings and to the organization of computer software and hardware components. With this book, we want to cast a projective space that accommodates various Auseinandersetzungen (settings, or setting ups, articulated dispositions of grounds that are quarrelsome) with implicit and explicit mixtures of these two domains interpenetrating each other. Contributions are short enough to make a point, yet long enough to glimpse the great variety of ‘scales’ of abstractive contemplation that these points index.
With contributions by Teuvo Kohonen, Ludger Hovestadt, Sha Xin Wei, Barbara Hammer, Timo Honkola, Vera Bühlmann, Michael Epperson, Elias Zafiris, Vahid Moosavi, André Skupin
ON THE METALITHIKUM SERIES
Technology is not simply technology, it changes character over time. We suggest there is a twin story to that of the Neolithikum. We call it Metalithikum and postulate that it has always accompanied the former. It concerns the symbolics of the forms and schemes humans are applying for accommodating themselves within their environment. We assume that the protagonists of this twin story, the symbolics of those forms and schemes, are also not simply what they are but change character over time. After Printed Physics (2012) and Domesticating Symbols (2013), this book is the third volume based on the Metalithikum colloquies organized once a year, where distinguished personalities from a broad range of architecture-related fields come together to discuss particular technical developments that are economically significant and philosophically interesting. The colloquies are organized by the applied virtuality theory-lab at the Chair for Computer Aided Architectural Design, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zürich.
Printed Physics documents the first Klausur which took place in May 2010. The central phenomenon considered was the production procedure of printing electronics and its economic context and prospect.
It looked at the technological developments with which the physical characteristics of materials can be formally analyzed, technologically constructed and (bio-)chemically synthesized, and which – hence the wording in the title – are meanwhile being industrially produced and distributed worldwide: electronics. It is no exaggeration to call this an actual printing revolution, although unlike in Gutenberg’s day, the printed products do not stand for something specifically, their symbols do not represent, but instead they are functionally operative for articulating what is only generically "terminable", in a sense that we call pre-specific.
This book shifts the frame of reference for today’s network- and structure-oriented discussions from the applied computational tools of the twenti- eth century back to the abstractness of nineteenth–century mathematics. It rereads George Boole, Richard Dedekind, Hermann Grassmann, and Bernhard Riemann in a surprising manner.EigenArchitecture argues for a literacy of the digital, displacing the role of geometrical craftsmanship.
The book comprises a programmatic text on the role of technology in architecture, a philosophical text on the generic and on algebraic articulation, and seven exemplary projects by post- graduate students in 2012 at the Chair for Computer Aided Architectural Design at ETH Zurich, Switzerland.
The book features contributions, statements, and conversations with internationally renowned authors such as Greg Lynn, Christopher Peterka, Wolfgang Weingart, Marcel Alexander Niggli, Christian Labonte, Fiona Raby and Anthony Dunne, Christian Doelker, Philipp Sarasin, Raymond Guidot, Eric Zimmerman and Manfred Fassler among others. It is designed by Ludovic Balland, and published with the Institute for Research in Art and Design HGK FHNW in Basel.
The earth sends out messages, like the sky does – thus Michel Serres’s proposal of a materialist poetics of cosmic time suggest somewhat surprisingly. In the belly of the planet lie stars – can they be read like the firmament? Wouldn’t this mean bringing together matter and form, mass and light, hard and soft? It is the most ordinary thing, you will perhaps say. Every thing that exists does this, subject as it is to time, and living in space.
As an outlook to a book on Artificial Intelligence and Materials today, this text aims to evoke and nurture a kind of ideation which lives from a manner of synthetic reduction that distils its material articulations mathematically but with vivid imagination and speculation. Such ideation is what was once meant by the philosophical term “architectonics” in the modern discourses on first and matter-of-principle questions, i.e. in metaphysics. This context is relevant for the theme that preoccupies many of us today, namely how matter and information, hardware and software, technologies and skills are all thought of in their constitutive relationality.
http://mediatheoryjournal.org
Keywords:
Noise, New Materialism, the Cryptographic Locative, Circumstantial Metaphysics, Diachronicity, Chronopedia, Ecstatic Epiphany, Meteorological Order, Spaces of Similitude, White Concepts, Quantum Optics
by Vera Bühlmann, TU Vienna
New European Bauhaus
Rationalist Instrumentation, Architectonic Contemplation
Architectonic Form Originates in Death, or Eupalinos’ Mathematical Ideation
René Descartes’ Entwurf of the Method...
... and the Ethics of its Discourse (An Impredicative Method that has "Nothing" to Teach) Omitting La vray nature de la lumière from any description: Fabulating the Plenum Spatium for an Open World.
Coda. Politics, Diachronicity, and Architectonic Constitutions
Atemwende
Zenith Boil
Exhalations of the Earth
A Saving Grace
Subject to Aspiration
Transcripts
A Diacritical Eye
Spiritus
The Meridian Voice
Gegenworten
An Imaginary Present Tense that Attends to Twinkling
Meteorology
Once Upon the Autonomy of Words;
Local: The Talk of Things in Statuesque Words (writing ;
Global: The Cosmocratic Speech in a Quantum City;
General: Architectonic Form, Action as a Magnitude.
Meteora#2. Chambers of Arguments, the Freihaus.
more info on the studio here:
https://www.meteora.ch
CONTENTS
Pulsating Alloys of Androgynous Nature
Mathematics of Percolation and Concepts that are Capital
Quantum Literacy: Nature “Speaks” in Saying Nothing-in-particular
A Metaphysics of Mixtures that Lacks a Proper Notion of Conception
How to Call the Subject of an Impersonal Voice by its Proper Name?
* this my forthcoming manuscript in Vera Bühlmann, Ludger Hovestadt, Vahid Moodavi (eds.), Metalithikum IV, Coding as Literacy (Birkhäuser: Vienna, 2015).
mit der Überschrift : » Eine Art Einleitung. Woraus bemerkenswerter
Weise nichts hervorgeht. «1 Das Folgende handelt in eindrücklichster
Weise von einer Welt, in der sämtliche Eigenschaften generisch sind : eine
Welt allgemeiner Natur, in der jedes Ausgezeichnete nur ausgezeichnete
Regelmäßigkeit ist, die auf zahlreiche Arten in logistisch ausbalancierten
und global-uniformen Verhältnissen variiert : » Über dem Atlantik
befand sich ein barometrisches Minimum; es wanderte ostwärts, einem
über Rußland lagernden Maximum zu, und verriet noch nicht die Neigung,
diesem nördlich auszuweichen. Die Isothermen und Isotheren
taten ihre Schuldigkeit. Die Lufttemperatur stand in einem ordnungsgemäßen Verhältnis zur mittleren Jahrestemperatur, zur Temperatur des kältesten wie des wärmsten Monats und zur aperiodischen monatlichen Temperaturschwankung. «2 Und so geht es weiter, über mehr als zweitausend Seiten. Das Fantastische an Musils Werk ist nun aber, dass
eine solche Schilderung der Dinge in ihrer prinzipiellen Gleichwertigkeit
ein absurdes Projekt darstellt, welches den Erzähler in die eigenartige
Situation drängt, nicht primär Episoden aneinanderzureihen und ineinander
zu verschachteln, sondern Dinge in ihrer generischen Struktur
mit Merkmalen von Regelmäßigkeiten auszustatten, sodass jedes im
Gesamtgeschehen des Romans interessant aufgeladen, angereichert und
von Aktualität durchströmt wird. Doch alles, was geschieht, geschieht
nicht über das Anstoßen von Veränderungen in Situationen, über welche
eines zum Nächsten führt und jegliches, was ausgezeichnet ist, voller Implikationen wäre. Stattdessen geschieht alles in Musils Roman unmotiviert oder zumindest ohne zwingenden Grund, sondern einzig durch die Qualifizierung der Aktualität eines Geschehens. Von diesem Geschehen
sprechen wir vielleicht am treffendsten als einem, welches vom Erzähler
der Vorstellung eines Großen im Ganzen überantwortet worden ist und
von dem dieser, in sachlichem Tonfall, lediglich Nachricht erstattet.
Wir möchten diese Gedanken als einleitendes Bild verwenden, um damit
einen bestimmten Vorstellungsraum zum Nachdenken über Kommunikation und Medialität zu evozieren. Wir wollen Information als natürliches Element begreifen und jenem musilschen Qualifizieren von Aktualität, welches darin zum Ausdruck kommt, eine technische Entsprechung zuweisen : das Codieren von elektrischem Strom zur Übermittlung von Signalen. In einer solchen Natur der Allgemeinheit, so die Behauptung, hängt alles – Musils » Großes im Ganzen « – von der Art und Weise ab, wie erzählt wird. Und so wollen wir, von seiner Erzählhaltung ausgehend, die Dinge in ihrer Generik auszustatten und die energetischen
Stromkreise zu modulieren, welche sie durchströmen, eine Alternative
zum vorherrschenden kybernetischen Bild des Kommunizierenden als
Steuermann in den stürmischen Ozeanen der Informationsflut sehen.
Während der kybernetische Steuermann sich jegliche Kommunikation
im Hinblick auf die Generalität in der Form der abbildbaren Inhalte hin
anschaut, so sieht der Erzähler darin eine symbolisch-stoffliche Lösung
allgemeiner Intelligibilität und Sensibilität, die er – ähnlich wie ein Chemiker
– weiter aufzulösen, anzureichern und zu sättigen sucht.
Punkt unserer Weltverhältnisse ? 32 · Virtualität und die Frage nach
dem Konstitutivem von Medien 43 — I.II. Informatisierung als kulturgeschichtliche
Wendezone 57 · Zur Notwendigkeit einer Radikalisierung
des kritischen Programms 57 · Das Problem der Rahmung
eines erweiterten Prinzips der Verfügbarkeit 58 · Grenzen einer
phänomenologischen Ontologie 66 — I.III. Aufs Neue : die Frage
nach der Referenzialität von Zeichen 72 · Die Begründbarkeit von
Information im Element des Symbolischen 72 · D ie theoretische
Neugierde 79 · R äumliches Denken – C odieren eines Aussen nach
Übereinkunft 86 — Zusammenfassung 93
MOTTO:
»Obwohl das Klima des Zögerns und Zweifelns intellektuell
ehrlicher ist als das Engagement und der Fanatismus, sind beide
in Wirklichkeit Attitüden einer Verzweiflung. Sie bezeugen
beide den Verlust des Glaubens an den Intellekt, ohne die nihilistische
Stimmung positiv zu überholen zu versuchen. Das ist
die Situation der heutigen Philosophie.« (Vilém Flusser, Vom Zweifel, 2006, 13)
DER BEGRENZUNG 111 · EIN PLANET NAMENS » TERRA « ODER DER MYTHOS DES FIRMAMENTS IM MOMENT DER VERMEERUNG 113 · » LEGERE IN LIBRO NATURAE « ODER VON DER SCHEIDUNG DER WELT IN EINE WELT DER WERTE UND EINE WELT DER FAKTEN 115 · » RELATIONENONTOLOGIE « ODER DIE NEUZEITLICHE INTEGRATION VON BEWEGUNG IN DIE ART UND WEISE, VERHÄLTNISSE ZU BESTIMMEN 123 · DIE RELATIVIERUNG VON STETIGKEIT ALS VORAUSSETZUNG ODER VOM DETERRITORIALISIERTEN DENKEN BIS ZUR REKOMBINANTEN SYNTHESE 132 — II .III. FUNKTION, SINN UND FORM 136 · » FUNKTION « – GESCHICHTE UND VERWENDUNG ALS THEORIE UND TECHNIK 136 · IMAGINATION UND METHODE ODER DAS ENDE DER REPRÄSENTATION
DURCH DIE VORSTELLUNG 154 ·DIE FRAGE NACH DEM SINN ODER DAS PROBLEM DES ANFANGS 164 · DIE IDEE ALS » DIFFERENTIAL « DES
DENKENS ODER ZUM VERHÄLTNIS VON STRUKTUR UND GENESE IM SPRACHSPIEL DES VIRTUELLEN 180 · DAS » IN FORMELLE « ODER ZUM KONZEPT DER ÄHNLICHKEIT ALS MEDIUM 192 — ZUSAMMENFASSUNG 203
A VENTRILOQUIST’S VERNACULARS
THE MERIDIAN VOICE
DIACRITICAL HOUR GLASSES
Speziell wird das Generische nicht mehr als ein strukturelles oder poststrukturelles Phänomen angesehen. Aus der Algebraisierung des Rechenbaren und des semiotisch Bezeichenbaren können wir eine abstraktere (und entspanntere) Haltung finden gegenüber den zentralen Fragen gegenwärtiger Diskurse rund um das Posthumane, das Postmoderne, das Poststrukturelle und das Posthistorische.
Die These des Buches ist die Möglichkeit einer medialen Architektonik. Mit dieser These wird davon ausgegangen, dass sich der Theoriebegriff nicht am Erkennbaren entwickeln kann, sondern am Lernbaren und am Können. Das Algebraische führt eine abstrakt symbolische Verfassbarkeit ins Denken und Urteilen ein, deren Modalität weder kontingent noch notwendig ist, sondern virtuell. Algorithmik, Simulation, generisches Modellieren werden somit an ein genuin städtisches, architektonisches Vermögen gebunden.
Der Argumentationsverlauf gliedert sich in drei Teile und einen Epilog. Im Zentrum des ersten Teiles steht der Begriff der Medialität im Verhältnis zu einem Begriff des Virtuellen. Der Zweite Teil behandelt die Begriffe der Begrenzung, der Funktion, und des Problems. Ausgerichtet an diesen drei Gemeinplatz-Begriffen (Topoi) wird eine algebraisch-philosophische Perspektive auf die mediale Architektonik skizziert. Der dritte Teil widmet sich den symbolischen Methoden einer medialen Architektonik. Der Epilog zeichnet ein Diagramm durch gegenwärtige Architektur."
On Werner Hamacher, "For-Philology" in Minima Philologica (2015 [2002])
MA Module "DIGITAL ARCHITECTONICS" at ATTP
Vienna University of Technology (2020)
The lecture series "Architecture and Philology" in the Module Digital Architectonics deals with the role of language in today's architecture. This suffers from the increasing flood of images that are largely meaningless (because they are generic and unspecific in what they represent). In contrast, as in the Renaissance, many interesting vernacular colloquialisms emerge on a new technical basis. We follow the idea that architecture is spoken and not drawn, and gives generous space for speaking. It deals with the rhetorical and dialectical figures, as well as literary formats in which the techniques and manners of an era manifest themselves.
Architecture and Philology full playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWfc_2VBcW9TTKPKrTuU_LVu-yb5keVb3
On Werner Hamacher, "For-Philology" in Minima Philologica (2015 [2002])
MA Module "DIGITAL ARCHITECTONICS" at ATTP
Vienna University of Technology (2020)
The lecture series "Architecture and Philology" in the Module Digital Architectonics deals with the role of language in today's architecture. This suffers from the increasing flood of images that are largely meaningless (because they are generic and unspecific in what they represent). In contrast, as in the Renaissance, many interesting vernacular colloquialisms emerge on a new technical basis. We follow the idea that architecture is spoken and not drawn, and gives generous space for speaking. It deals with the rhetorical and dialectical figures, as well as literary formats in which the techniques and manners of an era manifest themselves.
Architecture and Philology full playlist:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWfc_2VBcW9TTKPKrTuU_LVu-yb5keVb3
https://www.infolaw.at/der_oesterreichische_it-rechtstag.htm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWUHgEYVLko
Recht der Zukunft – Zukunft des Rechts Philosophische Aspekte von KI.
(Eupalinos der Architekt, und das uneigentliche Vermögen von Orpheus)
Vera Bühlmann
Der Digitale Kontinent als Ort für Präzedenz
In der Optik von Welt Bürgern
Das Rezitieren als Logistik: die Quanten Natur der lebendigen Rede
Ein Fall im Weiten Feld: Intellektuelles Handwerk und Praxis der Ethik Striktes Recht: zwei prinzipielle Architektoniken
Durch die aufspreizende Öffnung: Immanenz als Quelle (Canon
Law)
Durch die bündelnde Linse: Instrumenten Bau (Common Law)
Welt Theater: Öffentlichkeit und der Codierte Satz der Identität Eupalinos der Architekt, und das uneigentliche Vermögen von Orpheus
Abstract:
Im Fokus steht das Verhältnis von "intellektuellem Handwerk" im Zusammenspiel mit den algorithmischen Verfahren der AI. Es gibt heute verteilt durch die unterschiedlichen Welt Gegenden zwei prinzipiellen Architektoniken, die sich zunehmend gegenseitig durchdringen. Diese gilt es zu unterscheiden – das Canon Law und das Common Law. Denn für die neu aufbrechenden Diskussionen um den Einsatz von Algorithmen im Recht spielt der Unterschied davon, was diese beiden modellhaften Rechtsgebäude zu "Systemen" mit bestimmten logischen Anforderungen macht, aus philosophischer Perspektive eine grosse Rolle. Es handelt sich um zwei Architektoniken, die beide jeweils massiv und in unterschiedlicher Weise die Kulturgeister prägen. Es geht mir darum, in Verbindung mit einer praktischen Ethik des Codierens ein neues Primat der Rhetorik vor der Logik zu respektieren: eine entsprechende Ethik und ein Pakt zwischen den beiden prinzipiellen Architektoniken von zivilen Rechtsgebäuden kann dabei helfen, wie AI den Wert von Öffentlichkeit für Zivilgesellschaften stärken (anstatt nur schwächen) kann – diese Vorstellung soll im Vortrag ausgestaltet werden.
Koninklijk Nederlands Instituut Rome, Via Omero 10/12, 00197 ROMA, Italy.
(September 17 – 20, 2019)
This paper is not really a response to the Crisis in which Europe is said to find itself in, because every critique seeks to save its object by banning it to a geocentric horizon. Critique locks up what it seeks to criticise/save at a projective end-of-the-world that is-not-really-one. Instead, I want to talk about an objective kind of ideation and an impersonal logos at work in such ideation. I want to reach beyond any critical horizon by recalling a particular fable of the world, one authored by René Descartes and told in the impersonal terms of geometric fabulation. I want to demonstrate how the objective ideation of Descartes' applied method is capable of unlocking ends from within a projective horizon. Objective ideation, then, is ideation capable of unlocking what is banned critically, through depicting it without picturing it. Following Descartes, I will describe those ends that can be unlocked as Meteorite Ends-they are suspended yet not invalidated ends. I will discuss how they can be rendered as panoramas for an a-territorial geography, and how such Panoramas, as the coding-covers of cylindrical solids, can reconnect us with the idea of a Centrifugal Conatus in Descartes' notion of the Universe as Plenum. By proposing that we might think of those conati of valid tendencies kept in suspension, by cryptically rendering them as massive solids, as manifesting an Optical Unconscious, I will suggest that even so meteorite ends are suspended in cycles, there is reason to the methods that are capable of controlling such ends. It is a Reason capable of providing for an a-territorial geography that might perhaps lend itself for re-imagining Europe today-as a continent that grounds in Abductive Reason.
are being crafted. I will suggest to regard concepts within such a domestic
architectonics as Capital concepts - concepts that do not delineate but that are conductive, concepts that establish what is “frequent” and “current”, concepts that do not contain meaning but offer spaces to accommodate it. Perhaps this can open up a novel relation between classic and modern as one of being-with, rather than one of being after.On Alberti's Weltraumbilder in the manner of satellite images avant GPS, taken from within the outer time of the present. Copying as a kind of writing in plenty (latin Copia, the plenty) through coding, cornucopian instruments and capital concepts.
Lecture at the ATTP Conference 2018, "Sophistication – In Lieu of Statements, Articulation" (November 2018, TU Vienna). All lectures of the conference online on the ATTP YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCElbxUKKUdCK5h-A1Dd6xqw/videos)
Opening lecture for the Architektur Theorie Tage 2018, held at TU Vienna, November 2018.
Presented at the Sophistication Conference at TU Vienna: Copia and Copiousness. Circuitous Articulations that Matter (November 2019)
(first part in German, main part in English)
For apprehending a simple line for what it is, the Art Historian Wilhelm Worringer writes in Abstraction and Empathy (Abstraktion und Einfühlung) from 1906, “I have to expand my inner vision till it embraces the whole line; I have inwardly to delimit what I have thus apprehended and extract it, as an entity, from its surroundings.” Worringer foregrounded thereby a particular kind of psycho-motoric activity, which he called "apperceptive action", as a means for attending to the socio-political role of art in relation to an individual subject´s aesthetical sense and cultural technical "progress". This paper will discuss Worringer´s proposal beyond the strictly disciplinary scope of Art History, and extend its concerns to the societal role of "Intellectuality" at large. It proposes to consider Worringer´s psycho-motoric activity in relation to the economy of an active life.
With Abstraction and Generosity, this paper proposes a generalised concept-couple that is to relate the concerns raised by Worringer one hundred years ago to our own situation, with regard to what it means to date an object: Inevitably, Datafication too involves an "apperceptive activity." But, this paper asks, Where to locate, and how to identify the "subjectivity" to which this psycho-motoric activity is to be attributed? Key points of reference will involve also John Stuart Mill´s theory of "naming" in his A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive (1836), Dante Alighieri´s Convivio (in German: Das Gastmahl, 1306), Rem Koolhaas´s Generic City (1995).
CONTENTS // 1 The quickness of a magnanimous universe // 2 Impersonal agency // 3 Invariance: Genericness as entropy // 4 Genuine and immanent to the All of Time: Le “logiciel intramateriel” // 5 White Metaphysics: How old does the world think it is? // 6 Materialism of identity // 7 (Pan’s) Glossematics: entropic economy // 8 Quanta of agedness: from heat to incandescence, from storage to bank account // 9 Quantum writing: the priority of substitutes to things themselves
Keywords: Michel Serres; the algebraic quantity notion; computability; General Literacy; general linguistics; programming language
It is my manuscript for the fifth Metalithicum Conference in May 2014.
All videos of the conference: http://appliedvirtualitylab.wordpress.com/2014/05/16/computation-as-literacy-self-organizing-maps/
CONTENTS
(1) Introduction: The Materiality of sense, or: “capable of being continued”
(2) Tracing important distinctions regarding the notion of Quantity
(3) Impredicativity, or The mode of insisting existence proper to the circular
(4) The alphabetization of the numerical in computation
(5) The cipher, and its quantum-body of objective neutrality: nothingness
(6) Disparseness, or In the element of neutrality-the many bodies of nothingness
(7) Glossematics: Theory conserves, circulates and differentiates the materiality of sense
(8) Beyond the Apparatus, or: getting over the deadlock of tautology by repetition (alphabeticity)
(9) Signals and codes: the world translates itself in the elementary nature of thought
(Gilles Deleuze, Qu’est-ce que fonder?)
Departing from the central rôle played by what Deleuze calls ‘quantitability’ in Difference and Repetition (1968), this paper will explore the perspective on a symbolically algebraic understanding of logics. The guiding – yet abstract ! – analogy will be how we can conceive of logical ‘territoriality’ in a similar way as symbolic algebra has come to conceive of the ‘territoriality’ of the real numbers (the famously infinite and continuous “number line”). Such conceived symbolical territoriality, I will suggest to call ‘limitudinality’.
Since antiquity, limits have been considered as the form of magnitudes. This understanding is assailed by the symbolic procedure of determining limits that arose in the 19th century (the so-called Dedekind Cut), and which operates by encoding one infinity with another infinity. The abstractness of this procedure unfolds as an empirical ground, I will argue, once we conceive of the relationality of a multitude of such encodings among each other. Such an empirical ground constitutes a kind of logical territoriality where quantization as an ability (Deleuzes’ ‘quantitability’) precedes quantification. Limits, then, are no longer best conceived as the form of magnitudes, where forms are to be determined ideally while magnitudes are taken as givens (Aristotle’s Naturalism), nor in purely formalistic terms as an operation which cannot itself be considered (Hilbert), but as the symbolically indexable formality of magnitude’s negativity. Such an infinitized negativity becomes analyzable (differentially) once we consider logical quantification as derived and dependent upon an ability to ‘quantize’ (rather than as axiomatically constituted). The paper will demonstrate how such a perspective leaves us with an inversion from where we started out: not the forms are to be determined ideally, and the magnitudes empirically, but the other way around. It is along these terms that the paper will present a reading of Deleuze’s transcendental empiricism which can be related to Hjelmslev’s ‘glossematics’ as well as to Peirce’s ‘diagrammatics’.
The joint PHD colloquy CAAD ETH Zurich & ATTP TU Vienna is looking comparatistically at how the notion of the digital features in today’s discourses. Our stance for such a comparatistics is this:
Technology always embodies a promise.
Technique always embodies an “abledness” (ein Können)
Notions like continuum, discretness, generic, transparency, neutrality, immediacy, mediacy, determination, destiny, spectra, ghosts, identity, union, record, data … abound in contemporary theory – thereby capitalizing, in many diverse ways, on the ancient legacy of metaphysics, and a certain ‘conspiration’ between mathematics, theology, and logics that is inherent to this legacy. This happens, largely, in the name of “techno-science” – we want to better understand what is happening thereby, and how it is happening.
[...] The system constructed here beginning with a production, temporarily placed in a black box, is parasitic a cascade. But the cascade orders knowledge itself, of man and of life, making us change our terminology without changing the subject. It is an interesting circuit which we shall follow in order to understand one thing, various landscapes, sever epistemologies. Maybe polyphony is in order. I call the language of many portals "philosophical."
(Michel Serres, Parasite, 1980, 5/6)
"In a violent but just reaction against perverse ancient ideas preaching a universal that's almost always reducible to an imperialistic and invading domination, our discourses, for at least a half-century, have rumbled with our differences. Dominant, the social sciences during this period of time taught us not only to love one another but to recognize and respect the rights of cultures, genders, sexes, languages and customs, others. We must be grateful to them for having opened up these varied multiplicities. But by some perverse paradox, difference ends up imposing itself in turn as a universal dogma that everywhere and always forbids speaking forever and everywhere. Is it only the local that can be expressed globally? This law without justice forgets geometry. For knowing the differences, wanting to content ourselves with them and not overstep boundaries didn't bring us peace: in the name of these same differences twenty wars are flaring and raging today in singular localities of the world, bringing as many misfortunes to men as the imperialist conflicts generalized to the entire world brought to our youth. We had thought we'd die from totalization; here it is that we can perish from splitting up. Everything happens as though violence was equitably dividing up its ravages. Might it be universal like geometry? " Michel Serres (Origins, 2017, 4)
(»New Materialisms, Novel Mentalities, Quantum Literacy«, Bühlmann, Colman, van der Tuin 2016)
MAIN READING
Nassim Taleb: The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007) Elie Ayache: The Blank Swan: The End of Probability (2010) BACKGROUND READING Jacques Monod: Chance and Necessity: Essay on the Natural Philosophy of Modern Biology (1970) Manfred Eigen, Ruthild Winkler: The Laws of the Game: How The Principles of Nature Govern Chance (1982 [1975])
The philosophical notion of »the object« has given way to multiplicitous and unsettled »relationalities« within the paradigm of computational modeling: computational models are equally reflective as they are projective, equally analytical as they are synthetic. How to approach this situation? The French philosopher Michel Serres has suggested »a communicational apriori« to representation and modeling.
In this colloquium we will get familiar with Serres’ philosophy of what he calls »the transcendental objective« and his notion of an »infra-material software«.
READINGS include excerpts from:
Michel Serres, Le Système de Leibniz et ses modèles mathématiques (1968)
Michel Serres, The Birth of Physics ([1977])
Michel Serres, Genesis (1982)
Michel Serres, Biogea (2010)
Michel Serres, The Natural Contract (1990)
Michel Serres, Statues: First Book on Foundations (2015 [1987])
Michel Serres, Rome: Second Book on Foundations (2015 [1983])
Michel Serres, Hermes I-V (1969-1980)
Michel Serres, The Parasite (1980)
Anne Crahay, Michel Serres, la mutation du cogito: Genèse du transcendantal objectif (1993)
Reasoning, argumentation, and »the object« maintain a multiplicitous and unsettled relation within the paradigm of computational modeling: computational models are equally reflective as they are projective, equally analytical as they are synthetic. How to approach this situation? French philosopher Michel Serres has suggested »a communicational apriori« to representation and modeling. In this seminar we will get familiar with Serres’ philosophy of what he calls »the transcendental objective«, and we will explore what it might mean to »argue« and to »reason« with concepts that are, as he suggests, to be conceived of as spectrums rather than forms. We will attempt to extrapolate what this shift in perspective (from form to spectrum) implies for terms central to reasoning like 'object', 'type,' 'category,' 'class,' 'generalization,' 'abstraction,' 'scheme,' 'diagram' and we will try will ask what might be gained from these considerations for clarifying what is at stake in terms like 'product,' 'article,' 'one-of-a-kind,' 'generic,' etc.
In complementation to this abstract and formal level, we will look at key moments in the history of architectural theory where the architectural object has been addressed in novel manners. We will do so with the speculative assumption that each of those transformations has introduced a novel »apriori« for reasoning in architecture. As preliminary and tentative suggestions e.g.: Vitruv and the »negotiation apriori«, Alberti and the »representation apriori«, Corbusier and the »mobility apriori«.
We will try to identify diverse instances of »computational objects« on various scales in contemporary architecture, and compile them in a lexicon. Every student will choose one such »object« and explore in short presentations to the class, with several iterations over the semester, how it might be addressed best – such that a »reasonable« »argument« can be built around it. The elaboration of a suitable format for such an argument is an overall objective of this course.
FINAL EXAM // As the final work with which students conclude and earn credits for this seminar, they will build a story of their “Argument” around a computational object of their choice.
COURSE MATERIALS // A selection of articles, book excerpts and online lecture will be provided. The weekly preparation of about 20-30 pages will be expected for the participation in the seminar. The lecture class “The computational object in design and in philosophy” will be largely complementary to this seminar; participation in the lecture course is highly recommended, yet not mandatory.
GUESTS // There will be several guest lectures from post-graduate researchers associated with the applied virtuality theory-lab at the CAAD Chair, Institute for Information Technology in Architecture ITA, ETH Zurich. They will present the “computational objects” at stake in a diverse range of architectural research fields.
www.appliedvirtualitylab.wordpress.com // www.caad.arch.ethz.ch
The notion of »the object« reveals itself currently in a novel manner that not only produces powerful pragmatic tactics and protocols (e.g. parametrics, agent-based modeling) as well as the aesthetics of a »geometry of the colossal« (Peter Sloterdijk), but it also enriches and complicates the philosophical spectrum of how possibilities and necessities can be reasoned, established, augmented, preserved or exploited. The notion of »the object« occupies a central position in a younger generation of contemporary philosophical thinkers, who seek to situate the role of speculation and imagination in reasoning from within the relation »the object« maintains to its »computability«.
This lecture class introduces to some of the positions in these emerging discourses. We will trace a few invariant themes that currently resurface, and we will examine how they do so in novel and interesting manner. Thereby, we will pursue the following vector of interest: Are there novel aspects and interesting framings to be found in these discourses for developing a »speculative architectonics«? And how would such an architectonics relate to the double-interest formulated by a »verallgemeinerte Baukultur« (Expanded Culture of Building), namely to expand architecture beyond its disciplinary confines on the one hand, while attending to its local situatedness on the other?
COURSE MATERIALS // The positions that will be discussed include Michel Serres’ philosophy of what he calls “the transcendental objective”, as well as a broad range of thinkers and writers that group around labels like speculative realisms, new materialisms, accelerationalism, object-oriented-design, flat ontology, speculative poetics. Much of this discourse takes place online, so there are plenty of podcasts as well as texts to connect the students directly with »the sources«. Material for weekly preparation will be suggested and it is highly recommended to work through them. However, it is not mandatory for the participation in this course and it will not be part of the final exam.
FINAL EXAM // In the last meeting, the students are asked to write a short essay (1-2 pages), in which they portray and discuss one particular line of thinking from what has been discussed throughout the semester (of their own choice).
Readings:
Robert Blanché, L’Axiomatique (1958)
Fernando Zalamea, Synthetic Philosophy, Contemporary Mathematics (2012)
Elias Zafiris, Natural Communication and Cryptography (workshop 2015)
"Bacteria, fungus, whale, sequoia, we do not know any life of which we cannot say that it emits information, receives it, stores it and processes it. Four universal rules, so unanimous that, by them, we are tempted to define life but are unable to do so, because of the following counterexamples. Crystal, indeed, rock, sea, planet, star, galaxy: we know no inert thing of which we cannot say that it emits, receives, stores and processes information.
Four universal rules, so uniform that we are tempted to define anything in the world by them, but are unable to do so because of the following counterexamples. Individuals, but also families, farms, villages, cities, nations, we do not know any human, alone or in groups, of which we cannot say that it emits, receives, stores and processes information.“
– Michel Serres (2014)
Technology presumes given measures to operate steadily, mechanically, reliably and unbiased. In other words, technology can work smoothly when metrics is not problematical. Yet there is a reciprocal germination of our ability and sophistication in measuring: technical devices allow for new practices, and hence are capable of opening up new understandings of matter, time and space, new modes of inhabiting the world, new knowledge, new forms of organization, new insights, new interests, altered cultural values – new manners of measuring and new devices. This relation between the (collective) subject of a lived praxis (civilization) and the (collective) subject of a functioning operator (technology) constitutes the core of media studies: it is through this relationally within collectivities (rather than individual subjects) that media are distinguished from technical instruments.
In this PhD colloquy we will read a selection of texts by the classical protagonists of the field: Eric Havelock, Harold Innis, Marshall McLuhan, Friedrich Kittler. Thereby, we will (1) sharpen a particular perspective that foregrounds the role of „technical channels“ and their quasi-physical reality in techniques of algebraic symbolic encryption, and (2) we will pursue, question, discuss and elaborate this perspective in relation to the fact that from today’s point of view, we are dealing not only with McLuhan’s unsettling observation about the non-neutrality of the communication channels, namely that The Medium is the Message; a tip more abstract now, e.g. in peer-to-peer filesharing, we have the situation that Each Message Constitutes a Channel.
Since Claude Shannon‘s Mathematical Theory of Communication (1936), the notion of information in its technically treatable sense is often distinguished from its linguistic sense by ascribing to the former, as opposed to the latter, a purely quantitative treatment. Yet since the founding documents of a general linguistics in the late 19th century, it is clear for every linguist who affirms the break with the traditional way of studying language as philology, that the notion of the sign is to be treated purely quantitatively as well. Ferdinand de Saussure‘s structuralist paradigm for understanding processes of signification views the linguistic sign as a quantitative value, yet as a negative one which cannot, in itself, be positivized. As a negative value, it can only be specified by „profiling“ it through infinitary lists and their net of contrasts: a ,this‘ can never be signified directly, Saussure held, but only by labelling it as ,not-that‘ and not-that‘ and ,not-that‘ etc. In short, a linguistic sign can only be determined structurally and differentially, within a framework of place-value distributions.
From a logical point of view, de Saussure‘s paradigm of negative determination obviously entails problems regarding methodological feasibility, since it holds, by principle, that the necessary infinitary lists can never exhaustively be made explicit. This is the decisive reason why de Saussure himself considered his own structural approach, which attempted to conceive of language as a system, as having ultimately failed. Surely the post-structuralist critiques on such a notion of general linguistics are well known; yet from the point of view of algebraic computability (rather than that of logics), the situation looks different and is hardly explored today. Louis Hjelmslev is one of the very few linguists who continued the „differentiability within negativity“ approach initiated by de Saussure, by extending it mathematically. He considered Saussure‘s ,negative values‘ in a generalized sense as ,algebraic invariants‘. Like this, the structuralist paradigm is open for taking probabilistic procedures like Markov Chains and other algorithms, with which the diverse programming languages ordinarily work today, into account. From the logical point of view, this can hardly count as a forward pointing path, since it does not clarify how a notion of system could be objectified.
Yet with regard to the logistic networks, such fixation is (arguably) neither necessary nor desireable. Here, Hjelmslev‘s algebraic approach offers a powerful alternative to the pre-dominant approaches in terms of semantic or object-oriented (informational) database logic and ontologies, because it is capable of abstracting from the distinction between natural language vs artifical/formal language and needs not subject one to the other: communication and signification can be treated as mutually complementary aspects.
In this kolloquium we will work through Hjelmslev‘s Prolegomena to a Theory of Language (1943), and appropriate it methods in practice. We want to explore if and how structural linguistics as glossematics (in the sense of Hjelmslev) can be extended towards an alphabet of things that were capable of integrating the operability of generative linguistics (Chomsky etc), and hence could provide a powerful method of pre-specific modeling.
According to Shannon & Weaver’s mathematical theory of information, information is strictly speaking neither a value (number) nor a magnitude (quantity), but it can be treated symbolically in terms of so-called random variables: values governed by chance. But how can we have a mathematical theory of information, then? For treating it mathematically, they postulated a proportionality framework within which information is to be measured: the more information in a system, they assume, the less strictly organized is the system, and the more uncertain they take the system’s behavior to unfold. With their notion of information entropy, Shannon & Weaver have set up a framework analog to the dynamic paradigm of thermal machines.
Within this paradigm, the goal for communication processing is clear: to help reduce uncertainty by organizing a systems flows, transformations and exchanges more strictly. What if we tried to view a mathematical theory of information within a quantum paradigm, rather than within a thermodynamical paradigm? The most important change as opposed to the thermodynamic paradigm is that the formalism’s capacity does not have principle boundaries by restricting it to the real number space: instead of focusing on the determination of random variables, at interest here is the articulation of path integrals. According to a quantum paradigm, we can deal with a decoupling and open ended paralleling of what (within the thermodynamic paradigm) needs to be nested into one comprehensive system: in a quantum paradigm we can deal with a stream of ‘data’ (1) and a formalism that captures quanta from this stream (proportional to its individual capacity to integrate) (2), and an act necessary for deciding when and with regard to what the formalism is to capture and integrate ‘stuff’ from the live stream (3). The goal in this paradigm is to increase the tolerance for a model to cope with uncertainty, not to decrease it. The outlook promised by this paradigm is that the model’s capacity to integrate probable behavior can be developed by training (e.g. with self-organizing maps SOMs).
The main reading of this Kolloquium is Richard P. Feynman’s QED, The strange theory of light and matter (Princeton
University Press 1983).
Computation is largely treated today as the procedure to »mechanize« »logics«. Our interest with a projective theory on technology is not to reject (negate) or affirm (analyse) the assumptions involved, but to sort them out strategically. Our interest is to complement the scientistic paradigm of »control« for theorizing technology with a humanistic dimension of ability and artistic mastership. This interest has a long tradition in philosophy, and crystallizes in the so-called Master Argument. The Master Argument regards the possibility if and how we can meaningfully and methodically involve temporality and self-referentiality into logical/formal considerations. The inferential structure of the Master Argument has first been articulated by Diodorus Cronus in the 3rd century BC, and tries to formalize a paradox which has preoccupied all the main steps of development in systematical thought ever since. This is why the many attempts to formalize this paradox provide, for our projective theory interest, a rich and differentiated reflecting surface that allows to investigate, comparatistically, how these questions have been treated over time.
While the philosophical interest in the Master Argument was mainly in questions of legitimation and foundation, our interest in it is operational. We will not take, allegorically speaking, the position of the Despotic Priest, the Philosopher King, the Statesman or the Assigned Administrator, but that of the Symbolical Metallurgist. In short: we will seek to extract from the Master Argument and its history a template that allows us to cultive computing as an ability, namely the template of a mechanism for learning how to learn when being equiped with the generic methods of algebra.
We will read Jules Vuillemin‘s book Necessity and Contingency, The Master Argument (Center for the Study of Language and Information, Stanford University Press 1996). The historical account he gives is framed by the rôle of probabilistics for Information Science and Computing, and thereby especially relevant.
Computation is treated today as an art, just as Mechanics
had been in the Renaissance and the Baroque periods. This
basically means that its actual performance is widely recognized
and welcome, striking in effect, unexpected, fascinating and also
convincing-by-fact, while at the same time the actual methods and
procedures are applied rather like recipes. Over time, this gives
rise to: 1) a lot of the same, boredom. And 2) to vast disputes
around ancient questions on the rôle of technics in the nature of
reasoning, intelligence, science.
We want to gain a better insight about the modern theoretical
context of these involved topoi, and will start with reading
Michael Potter‘s introductory book to the main stances Reason‘s
Nearest Kin –Philosophies of Arithmetics from Kant to Carnap,
Oxford University Press 2002.
Setting the table for this, contributors are invited to look for orientation in the assortment of "victuals" attached to the present call. They are indicative (yet not prescriptive) in relation to the pre-text of the issue.
Proposed contributions will be evaluated on the basis of a 500 words abstract.
Contributions must be written in English, and should be between 5000 and 9000 words.
All texts (including footnotes, image credits, etc.) should be submitted digitally in .doc format and edited according to the Oxford Style Manual. The font of choice should be Times New Roman 12 pt with double line-spacing.
Proposals for contributions to Convivia #1 "Filth" may be submitted electronically to convivia@attp.tuwien.ac.at before 30/07/2021. Delivery of the full papers is scheduled for 30/11/2021.
More info: https://url.tuwien.at/pyjjb
year at the Technical University Vienna, as a
cooperation between the Department for Architecture
Theory and Philosophy of Technics ATTP and the
chair for CAAD ETH Zurich, where we invite distinguished
as well as young scholars from dierent
fields to think about how such »architectonic
intellectuality« aects our relations to the world at
large – our institutions, as well as our ordinary daily
lives.
How can we find a novel understanding of
human intellectuality in co-existence with
artificial intelligence? The Sophistication
Conferences are dedicated to a basic kind
of literacy in how to think about coding as
an "alloy-praxis" that glues letters with
numbers, physics with information,
mathematics with language. If the digital
has placed us in an era of New Sophistics,
we need an up-to-date corresponding
discourse on Sophistication. At the core
of such a new materialist literacy is a
di erent relationality among time, nature,
subject, and object : Hence our interest is
in a »digital gnomonics« that could
provide a theoretical framework for
addressing computational modelling,
machine learning and algorithmic
reasoning in a manner that will eventually
propel and facilitate ethics,
not moralism.
2019 Sophistication Conference #3
Copia and copiousness.
Circuitous articulations that matter.
technics, and thinking? Because we live in a time of a proclaimed condition
of “Post-Truth” or “Post-Facticity”, where arguments are neither heard nor
appreciated. This is scary. But the time of the Sophists was not only one of
sophistry, abuse, and manipulation. It was one of intellectual modesty as much as one of intellectual challenge and competition. It marked the introduction of humanist values, and triggered a veritable explosion in the spreading of knowledge, in artistic articulation, and subtle forms of sophistication. Without the sophists, no philosophers!
Different than statements, articulations have no immediate claim to truth.
There is an interesting and strange kind of autonomy to articulations. They
manifest what in German we call “ein Können”, an abledness, a distinctiveness, and articulacy. By being somewhat disrespectful toward contexts-of-common sense, crafted articulations are in their own peculiar way always genuinely situation-relative. And they are firmly rooted in “sense” that is “common”.
Sophistication: Rhetorical, Geometrical, and Computational "Articulation"
A Symposium on Architecture, Technics, Theory, and Thinking
At the Department for Architecture Theory and Philosophy of Technics ATTP, Vienna University of Technology (www.attp.tuwien.ac.at)
Vergehen begriffen ist. Bei Nancy wie bei Serres gibt es ein fallendes Fliessen, genuin, überquellend, verausgabend, überflüssig, einnehmend; ein Katarakt der etwas erhält, ergreift, mitführt und verteilt, was sich niemals und von nichts aneignen, besitzen, lässt. Die Aktualität, die sich aus Begehren nährt, „verzehrt sich und verbraucht sich“, wie Nancy formuliert, jedoch „weder als entropische Auffüllung noch in symmetrischer Form einer klaffenden Unmöglichkeit unter dem Phantasma“. Das Asymmetrische ist konstitutiv für solch fallendes Fliessen. Ganzheit und Rest sind beide darin aufgehoben, in jeglichen Partitionen, ohne dass sich das eine ins andere ganz auflösen, oder in relativierter Weise ein für alle mal separieren, ablösen würde. Asymmetrie ist konstitutiv für eine Aktualität die kein Bestehen kennt, die in einer Inversion von Stasis dem Unstetigen Dauer geben kann, wenn auch immer nur für eine Weile. Für Begehren gilt, dass das, wonach es verlangt, weder angeeignet werden kann noch fremd bleibt – das Begehren durchkreuzt jede Eigentlichkeit: es behauptet sich als ungehalten, zulassend und fordernd, offen, porös, herausragend, quellend und saugend, empfangend und gebend, fortschreibend auch, jedoch ohne eine bestimmte Urheberschaft; in einem radikalen Sinn ist nichts sich selbst, was sich – ob an Zeugung oder Zeugenschaft beteiligt – in der Hingabe verausgabt.
Das Interesse dieses Textes gilt der Vorstellung eines Transzendentalen, welches nicht Übersteigung sondern Überquellen meint. Nancy’s und Serres’ Denken treffen sich in einem Bestreben, eben solche Transzendentalität begrifflich zu erschliessen.
INHALT
0 Das üppige Transzendentale
1 Eindeutigkeit und Bündnis (Föderalismus)
2 Exscription: Jean-Luc Nancy’s kategorischer Imperativ
3 Die transzendentale Allgemeinheit von Information: Michel Serres
4 Coda, das atomistische Zögern und die Möglichkeit eine Semiotik von Elementarität
In the episodes of this lecture course, contemporary architecture theory stances are presented and discussed before the motivic question in the courses title (foregrounding the relation between "space" and "scale").
Here are is the YouTube Playlist of the reference Lectures that provide the motivic ground for these edited lecture notes:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWfc_2VBcW9QeluXQDQ_XTxpBn9Smfd9S&si=jO7Ehbg1SkbY9G1W
In the episodes of this lecture course, contemporary architecture theory stances are presented and discussed before the motivic question in the courses title (foregrounding the relation between "space" and "scale").
Here are is the YouTube Playlist of the reference Lectures that provide the motivic ground for these edited lecture notes:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWfc_2VBcW9QeluXQDQ_XTxpBn9Smfd9S&si=jO7Ehbg1SkbY9G1W
In the episodes of this lecture course, contemporary architecture theory stances are presented and discussed before the motivic question in the courses title (foregrounding the relation between "space" and "scale").
Here are is the YouTube Playlist of the reference Lectures that provide the motivic ground for these edited lecture notes:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWfc_2VBcW9QeluXQDQ_XTxpBn9Smfd9S&si=jO7Ehbg1SkbY9G1W
In the episodes of this lecture course, contemporary architecture theory stances are presented and discussed before the motivic question in the courses title (foregrounding the relation between "space" and "scale").
Here are is the YouTube Playlist of the reference Lectures that provide the motivic ground for these edited lecture notes:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWfc_2VBcW9QeluXQDQ_XTxpBn9Smfd9S&si=jO7Ehbg1SkbY9G1W
In the episodes of this lecture course, contemporary architecture theory stances are presented and discussed before the motivic question in the courses title (foregrounding the relation between "space" and "scale").
Here are is the YouTube Playlist of the reference Lectures that provide the motivic ground for these edited lecture notes:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWfc_2VBcW9QeluXQDQ_XTxpBn9Smfd9S&si=jO7Ehbg1SkbY9G1W
In the episodes of this lecture course, contemporary architecture theory stances are presented and discussed before the motivic question in the courses title (foregrounding the relation between "space" and "scale"). Here are is the YouTube Playlist of the reference Lectures that provide the motivic ground for these edited lecture notes:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWfc_2VBcW9QeluXQDQ_XTxpBn9Smfd9S&si=jO7Ehbg1SkbY9G1W
In the episodes of this lecture course, contemporary architecture theory stances are presented and discussed before the motivic question in the courses title (foregrounding the relation between "space" and "scale"). Here are is the YouTube Playlist of the reference Lectures that provide the motivic ground for these edited lecture notes:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWfc_2VBcW9QeluXQDQ_XTxpBn9Smfd9S&si=jO7Ehbg1SkbY9G1W
In the episodes of this lecture course, contemporary architecture theory stances are presented and discussed before the motivic question in the courses title (foregrounding the relation between "space" and "scale").
Here are is the YouTube Playlist of the reference Lectures that provide the motivic ground for these edited lecture notes: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWfc_2VBcW9QeluXQDQ_XTxpBn9Smfd9S&si=jO7Ehbg1SkbY9G1W
The Introductory "Reader 1" is entitled:
Once upon a plenitude: four lectures on form.
I
Vom kultivierten Umgang mit dem Rationalen wie mit dem Irrationalen
Werden was man schon ist: Form, aktiv und passiv (8-10) // Im Anthropozän: Gewalt und das Walten, das Regeln und das Spielen (10-13) // Schlüsselmotiv: Automat und Lustspiel (13-15) // Constant, New Babylon (1950-70er Jahre) (16-20) // Urbanismus in der Krise (20-22) // Situation als Ambiente: “Lebensform” die noch keine (bestimmte) “Form” hat (22-27) // Exodus, or the Voluntary Prisoners of Architecture (1972) (27-30) // A Mirror Image of Architecture as Something that Terrifies (30-33) // Ein befreiendes Gefängnis (33-37) // Superstudio, Monumento Continuo (1969-70) (37-41) // Fazit (41-43)
II
Form und Lebendigkeit: von Mytho-Poetik zu Meta-Physik
und Kulturtechnik
What Form is not (49-61) // Naturphilosophie des Himmels (61-66) // Empirie – und mythische Vorstellungen von Zeit: Chronos, Aion, Kairos (66-68) // Architektur und Ethik – Metaphysik und “das gute Leben” (68-72) // Politik – Architektur, Denkschulen, und Mechanik als Kunst (72-77) // Computer und Architektur (77-79) // Architektonik und die Zählbarkeit von Zeit – Algorithmus und Mnemotechnik (79-82) // How to conceive an idea? Selbstbezug ohne Selbstgenügsamkeit (82-84) // Entwurf – Idee und Plan, Form und Figur, Linementa und Materia (84-91) // Architektonik: Copia, Rhetorik, und Philologie (91-93)
III
Urform, Lebensfülle und Kopie
Die Unermesslichkeit von Zeit (97-98) // Aion, Bewegliches Abbild der Lebensfülle (98-99) // Kronos, die zählbare Zeit, die passiert (99) // Kairos, Der glückliche Moment des Zufalls (99-100) // Ananke, die Spindel der Zeit und die Schicksale (100-112) // Aufklärung und Ästhetik (112-116) // Von Common Sense zu Common Taste – der “gute” Geschmack (116-120) // Die berstende Natur – Urform und Archetypus (120-126) // Spekulation und Projektion – Metaphysische Gesten (126-129) // Tempora – Zeitformen (129-132)
IV
Mechanik–Oder der Schlüssel als Motif und Figur
Mechanik als Kunst, Wissenschaft und Ethik (136-146) // Moderat und im Überschwang: Zwei Arten von “Theorie” (146-149) // Daidalos – das kunstvolle Arbeiten (149-152) // Mathematisch gedacht, gebaut im Licht des Könnens (152-157) // Anatomie des Verfertigens im allgemeinen (157-163) // Rhythmus und Temperament – ein (Denk)Körper von Formen (163-165) // Peripatetik – Statik ist etwas ungemein Bewegtes (165-167) // Weltmaschinen – Theorematische Maschinen (167-174)
more info on the studio here:
https://www.meteora.ch
Theme and brief in spring 2020: Chambers of Arguments. Freihaus.
IT IS VIOLENT OUT THERE.
ALL ARGUMENTS DEAD.
TRUMP VS GRETA.
FAKES VS ATTITUDE.
TERROR VS TYRANNY.
EVERYTHING IS SCIENCE.
OR ART.
OR NOT.
ARGUMENTS, SANCTIONS.
YOU CAN’T IMPROVE BY DOING BETTER.
WHITE NOISE.
FREIHAUS IS A QUIET PLACE IN THE CENTER OF THE CITY, MOSCOW, BUENOS AIRES, ZÜRICH.
FREIHAUS LIKES YOUR INTELLECT.
YOUR ARE SAFE IN THE FREIHAUS, IF YOU ARGUE AND DO NOT SHOUT.
FREIHAUS KNOWS EVERYTHING. NOTHING LEAVES THE FREIHAUS: NO TEXT, NO IMAGE, NO THING, NO MONEY, NO SOUND ... NO NOTHING, BUT YOU.