today i attended the
subtle technologies conference in Toronto. Lots of thought provoking stuff - not necessarily all applicable to this project so maybe i'll go post some on (burp)...ahem. or maybe just float them here. Some of it had neat implications for collaborations and interdisciplinarity, even if the themes of architecture and biotech were at times a little too far out of my sphere. Sub-theme of "self-organizing" principles and understanding order in complexity resonated with the group improv stuff we did at FIP too.
some floating thoughts...or points
* flow drives organization
* tissue is structured through a cell's sense of spatial distribution
* environment drives both function and disfunction; architecture dictates and drives behaviour
* we tend not to be creative in rapidly changing environments because we are caught up in our a priori assumptions about the way things are - this stops us from really making use of the unique properties of newer technologies because we haven't shifted our normative frames and standards based on old technologies. While our culture celebrates the new we usually end up subordinating it to the old.
* having to move across many topics means you work more in information than in knowledge...
* "enactive knowledge" - from developmental psychology is how we learn through body movement (kinaesthetic knowledge) actively coupled with surroundings
* when we think about technology and culture, where is public art?
* in interactive art the public is not only audience, they are also the medium
* how do you structure participation? is it empowering or hindering engagement?
* interactive art in digital space tends to privelege anonymity or creation of alter egos, whereas interactive art in physical surroundings makes things more "personal" and make the individual more identifiable. so how do these 2 work together?
* how do you get people to think big?
* at the molecular level the boundaries between the natural and the synthetic are extremely permeable.
* 3 ages of science: 1) problems of simplicity (Newton: action, reaction); 2) problems of disorganized complexity (Brownian motion); 3) problems of organized complexity (Fibonacci spirals, fractals etc.)
Something i can't articulate about collaboration was the repetition of biochemists saying things like "of course architects understand this" and vice versa. It's like the dissolution of the barriers between what we think of as material and organic are dissolving the more people are using simulation models and can see far into the structures of cells etc.
like i said, not sure what this has to do with this specific piece, but maybe if we float it a bit....
