Re-thinking metaphor,experience and aesthetic

awarenessJoanna Wlaszyn

Ecole Nationale Superieure dArchitecture Paris-Malaquais (ENSAPM),Paris, France

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore current questions about metaphor, experience andaesthetic awareness that persist through the variations of critical approaches and projective researchin architectural theory and practice.

Design/methodology/approach Further considerations focus on the advanced technologicalpossibilities which re-invest the relations between principles of cybernetics and architecture.

Findings The current between art and architecture is more than ever manifested in fields related tothe computer sciences and its conceptual background: cybernetic sciences.

Originality/value The paper re-thinks the aesthetic value of architecture and architecturalexperience in this time of digital productivity.

Keywords Cybernetics, Architecture, Aesthetics, Experience, Technology, Metaphor

Paper type Research paper

1. Introduction: drawing up the contextAccording to many theorists, the last centurys development of digital binarycomputers as well as the cybernetics ideas about system, information and conversationtheory or artificial life have come together to define our current digital culture (Gere,2008 [2002]). The fascination and the direct influence of cybernetic science on theartistic movements that developed mostly during the 1950s and 1960s were verystrong, passing through kinetic and programmed art, resulting in the determination ofdigital architecture. The influence of technology was not weaker, just like that ofindustrial robotization, but also new scientific discoveries or avant-guarde art, and thisis a well-known fact. Cybernetics predecessors of todays digital installationsanticipated research focused on the aesthetics of dynamic and process-orientedpossibilities of interaction. Cybernetic culture brought into existence the variety ofideas that continue to inspire, sometimes unconsciously and/or indirectly todaysartists, architects and designers at the era of digital productivity. Some of the recenttechnological quests have influenced the hybridization of procedures and methods byintroducing cybernetic strategies into the design process. Recently, the versatility oftechnological innovations becomes the common parameter of disciplinary definition.For example, the emerging design encompasses technologies such as: sensing systems,software programming, forms of artificial intelligence, robotic design andcommunication systems for new forms of knowledge (Tierney, 2006). From now on,these emerging technologies have disclosed the experience of simultaneity andinteractivity. The concept of interactivity defined by Gordon Pask in ConversationTheory (1969) has become the origin of the interactive architecture development at the

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KybernetesVol. 40 No. 7/8, 2011pp. 1196-1206q Emerald Group Publishing Limited0368-492XDOI 10.1108/03684921111160421

time of so-called second-order cybernetics. Pasks early experiments with mechanicaland electrochemical systems provided a conceptual framework for building interactiveartefacts. These interactive artefacts were dealing with the natural, dynamiccomplexity of the environments without becoming prescriptive, restrictive andautocratic (Haque, 2007). Negropontes (1970) ideas of interactivity as he described inThe Architecture Machine were more concerned with the relations man-machinewith digital media as well as design processes rather than the physically builtenvironment. Next, by expanding upon the earlier ideas of Gordon Pask, Eastman(1971) further developed the model of interactivity as Adaptive-ConditionalArchitecture. Eastman interpreted spaces and users (participants) as completereactive feedback systems in which the reaction of one element to another led in returnto a response (input-output). His model of feedback was to control an architecture thatself-adjusts to fit the needs of users in this machine-led approach. These cyberneticideas essentially described such actions as responsive (Fox and Kemp, 2008).

The question arises: interactive, reactive or responsive? By these notions if we candescribe today any emergent technology, what about architecture? The currentarchitectural terminology overflows with terms such as digital architecture,intelligent environments, responsive environments, smart architecture, or softspace. Such a terminological inflation (Glanville, 2001) can be related to the fact thatinteractivity is actually used to encompass many technologies providing diverse formsof reaction to the input (Glynn and Shafiei, 2009). These questions are debated aboutjust because the deep investigation of certain cybernetic assumptions and theirintersections with other fields and disciplines can result in being indispensable inorder to understand the new meaning and the specificity of the actual architecturalresearch that is increasingly close to the artistic practice in the shared explorationof new technologies. The centrality of reflection on the interactivity favoursthe reconsideration of realities issued from real time experience, simulation orfeedback.

More than others, the technological, non-linear quest about interactivity is apparentin dynamic prototypes, performative installations and large-scale active objects. Aninteractivity offers an explicit engagement for the user allowing anyone who interactsto become at minimum a collaborator and in some cases a co-creator of sensitiveexperience. Still, this approach could be criticized for its overly technologicalapplication related to the possibilities of designing the control systems by selectingdifferent value ranges of an interactivity that makes in the end aesthetic experienceartificially programmed. We can then ask if such explorations of the non-linearinteractive process are not just a derivation of the aesthetic experience explorations?Or, to put it in other words: are these complex calculations based on research intointeraction, real-time simulation or feedback in fact the innocuousness quest for newkinds of aesthetic experience? Does technologically programmed interactivitystimulate our senses or simulate our perception of space?

In such a context of recent architectural explorations, persisting through theresearch about interactivity, the main purpose of this paper is to re-think the currentaspects of cybernetics concepts (interaction, simulation and feedback) in order tobetter understanding the actual meaning of aesthetics awareness, experience andmetaphor.

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2. Interactivity of metaphor(s)Gordon Pask defined cybernetics as the art and science of manipulating defensiblemetaphors. In the architectural field metaphor is usually employed as instruments fordescriptions which convey over the creative ideas and poetic involvement. Metaphor(s)have also an essential role of creating knowledge as an explanatory device, which, by theway, has to be distinguished from analogy or comparison. Metaphor is a poeticcounter-concept to the materiality of built architecture, like a dream image of a space thathas been liberated from physical limitations (Vrachliotis, 2008). The term metaphor isetymologically related to the Greek metapherein, which means, transfer and carryingover. As the French historian of architecture Antoine Picon observed, since antiquity,the sciences have served as a source of images and metaphors for architecture and havehad a direct influence on the shaping of built space. Metaphor represents one of the threeregimes of scientific inspiration for architecture after knowledge and method (Picon,2008). In cybernetic science, metaphor was used as a concept to understand naturalphenomena. For Weiner for example, mathematics was a vast metaphor, a hugeinterchange to close or overlapping phenomena of logical-mathematical sequences(Bougnoux, 1993). Thanks to these processes of metaphoricization concepts such ascommunication and feedback advanced to the status of productive and effectiveguiding ideas in the architecture of succeeding decades (Vrachliotis, 2008). This isconsistent with the most persistent ideas in current architectural explorations such as:interactivity and simulation. Both permit architecture to be extended from static todynamic object through the simultaneity of variations like real-time changes. In thispaper, we will not examine interactivity of kinetic research such as robotic installationswhere the interactive experience is augmented by the effects exuded from the imposingpresence of form and movement. In order to discuss the aesthetics awareness we willfocus on the interactivity based on spatial experience of sensory perception and a mentalregistration of a sensory environmental stimulus.

Interactivity, as artists and theorists Usman Hauqe, Ruairi Glynn andRanulph Glanville explain, cannot be reduced to the simple act of reacting as a fixedtransfer of predetermined functions (Haque, 2005, 2007). The concept of interactivity interms of performance a response to the stimulus in action/reaction mode becomes asimple trick (Glanville, 2001) that trivialised the meaning of interaction to the point thatit no longer holds conceptual value (Glynn and Shafiei, 2009). A truly interactive systemis one that offers conversation, based on continual and constructive informationexchange. It makes clear that architecture is not simply interactive because it isembodied by computation and communication technologies premised merely toactuating. Interactivity is neither about control nor behavioural simulations. Thedriving force of interactivity is rather about creating the possibilities for participation(Eidner and Heinrich, 2009).

This approach to interactivity allows us to think about architecture as an opensystem which offers possibilities to new kinds of experience. Since then, technologyhas become the metaphorical generator of space as an integrative and formativeelement of architectural interactivity. Even so, to bring a metaphor into a physicalworld, as American architects Elisabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio did with theirBlur Building, nevertheless, they clearly reject any metaphoric associations fortheir project, certainly not to reduce the whole concept of the building to merely a fog(Figure 1).

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The primary building material is water, which is pumped from the lake, filtered, andshot as a fine mist through 31,500 high-pressure mist nozzles. A smart weathersystem reads the shifting climatic conditions of temperature, humidity, wind speedand direction, and processes the data in a central computer that regulates waterpressure; controls fog output in response to shifting climatic conditions such astemperature, humidity and direction wind speed. Inside, the visitors participate in thenew experience of fog sensing accompanied by the crushing noise of high-pressurenozzles. Blur Building exemplifies perception capacities by focusing on spaceexperience. Here, the technology goes beyond the visual aspect of simulation. BlurBuilding offers not a metaphor but a real-time transfer of immateriality based oninteractive interdependence: technology-nature. This is an example of interactivitywithout any aspect of control, as the weather cannot be controlled, or 100 percentpredicted. A building becomes here an interactive machine, a defensible (in)formalmetaphor of dematerialised (in)visible architectural form. Metaphor as a poeticcounter-concept to the materiality of built architecture becomes its tangiblerepresentation.

Another counter-concept to the representation of architectural materiality issimulation. Usually, the term simulation is understood as visualisation based oncomputer modelling, but here we will discuss simulation as a representation of spatialbehaviour.

Figure 1.Diller and Scofidio

architects: Blur Building,Yverdon-les-Bains,Switzerland, 2002Source: Photo: Norbert Aepli

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3. Simulations, simulacra and the reality effectThe representation of reality oscillates between metaphor and simulation. As the Frenchphysicist and theorist Simon Diner has observed, simulation is a formalisedinterpretation of reality and represents a process by another process, for example thephysical process by a mathematical one, etc. The current connections between art andarchitecture more than ever are manifest by the common interest in fields such asmathematics or computing sciences. It is related to the cross-over process of making,contesting and designing space from non-normative viewpoints of immaterialrepresentation (like mathematical abstractions). This kind of representation hasalways been a part of non-ending enquiry about experiencing architectural space.Simulation of spatial behaviour is linked to this through the questions concerning theinterrelationships between interactivity and feedback. The French architects R&Sie(n)recently tried to explore these questions in their conceptual project called: Architectureof Humeurs (Figures 2 and 3). Francois Roche, the head of the studio explains thatexperiment, presented as an artistic installation, provides an interrogation of theemission of desires. Through the scanning of certain physiological signals and theimplementation of a chemistry of the moods of future purchasers taken as inputs

Figure 2.Explanatory diagram ofthe project Architectureof humeurs

Blood sample

Language interface

Physio:

Inhabitants

Lobotomy

Psychosurgery

Nano absorption

Micro needle

EEG

Pulse-heart beatSkin sampleSweatDNAMedical imagery scannerX RayMRI

Physio biochemical

Physio psychological

Invasive

Behavioral survey

Psychoanalysis

Hypnosis

Voice recognition

Polygraph (lie detector)Video tracking (facial emotions)

Non invasive

Source: Roche (2010 R&Sie(n))

Figure 3.Physiological room forphysiological datacollection for the projectArchitecture of humeurs Source: Roche (2010 R&Sie(n))

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generating a diversity of habitable morphologies and the relationships between them.An architecture of humeurs means breaking into languages mechanism ofdissimulation in order to physically construct misunderstandings (Roche, 2010).

The humours collection is organized on the basis of interviews that make visible theconflict and even schizophrenia of desires, between those secreted (biochemical andneurobiological) and those expressed through the interface of language (freewill).Mathematical tools produce a morphological potential (attraction, exclusion, touching,repulsion and indifference) as a negotiation of distances between the human beingswho are to constitute these collective aggregates. The design process is focused ondynamic, non-linear effects-amplification, self-organization, symbiosis andco-evolution (Figure 4).

To put it briefly: this experiment is the simulation of the neuro-biological emissionsof each visitor/participant through computational, mathematical and machinistprocedures. It was designed to produce an urban feedback structure in conformity withthe mechanism of dissimulation. This project evokes another counter-concept such as:simulate/dissimulate. According to the French theorist Jean Baudrillard to simulate isto feign to have what one does not have. To dissimulate is to pretend not to have whatone has. One implies a presence, the other an absence. (Baudrillard, 1994, 1996) Assimulate is not pretending this reversibility of absence-presence rapports can beunderstood as an abstract reception of reality.

This idea can be applied to another experiment based on the process of simulation.The project Touchable Holography of Takayuki Hoshi and Masafumi Takahashi is atactile and holographic display, which adds tactile feedback to the hovering image inthree-dimensional free space. Tactile sensation is produced on a users hand withoutany direct contact and without diluting the quality of the holographic projection(Figure 5). The question is: is this a simulation of reality or real simulacra? ForBaudrillard, there is no longer any distinction between reality and its representation;there is only the simulacra. In addition, Baudrillard, 1996 states that:

[. . .] technology has taken into itself all the illusion it has caused us to lose, what we have inreturn for the loss of illusion is the emergence of an objective irony of the world, irony as theuniversal form of disillusionment in a world which hides behind the radical illusion oftechnology.

Figure 4.Process of evolution: fromphysiology to physicality

through the algorithmsproject Architecture of

humeurs

De la physiologic des humeursaux malentendus

Lesmalentendus

Physiologie deshumeurs

Physiomorphologique Multitude

De la computationphysio-morphologique la multitude

Robotic process

Algorithme(s)

Bio-cement weaving

Physicalit bio-tricote

Structuraloptimization

Mathematical operatorsfor structural optimization

Source: Roche (2010 R&Sie(n))

Du malentendu la computation physio morphologique

De la multitude la l Algorithme(s)

De la physicalit bio-tricote la l Algorithme(s)

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His wishful postulate was to go back to the appearance in the world of illusions ratherthan disappearing in the world of simulations. The simulation can be alsometaphorically extended to a concept defined by the French social and literary criticRoland Barthes as the reality effect. For Barthes, simulation can be the narration of thereal in a desire seen as verisimilitude as a referential illusion, which produces thereality effect. In the narrative representation the real is nothing but an unformulatedconcept, sheltering what is being referred to (Barthes, 1984). Simulation becomes herean interactive metaphor of appearances, a real-time, physical experience of illusion.Anyway, the fact is that the human emotions and sensory perceptions can now beproduced by virtual simulacra in the material world of immaterial projections.

Then, we can ask if this complex calculation-based research about interaction,real-time simulation or feedback is not in fact another quest for new kinds of aestheticexperience?

4. Aesthetics awareness of real-time experienceAs Frank Popper, a historian of art and technology observed, perception is aprimordial factor of intelligibility about cybernetics creations (Popper, 1975). It goesthrough the exploration of the aesthetic experience far beyond the aestheticappearances such as pre-programmed simulation of interactivity. This approach isexplored by Usman Haque Josephine Pletts and Dr Luca Turin in their project Scentsof Space (Figure 6). The project is an interactive smell system installation that

Figure 5.Project TouchableHolography by TakayukiHoshi and MasafumiTakahashi, University ofTokyo (2008) Note: It is possible to feel the appearance of the raindrops falling on the hand

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involves a three-dimensional placement of fragrances. There are two levels ofinteraction: the primary level occurs between visitors and the installation and thesecond one between the visitors and the smells themselves.

The system is constantly evolving through a creation of responses to a smelldatabase, from which strategies of repelling or alluring are developed. Scents ofSpace questions the invariant sensitive and spatial interaction through olfactoryperception. Sensing the environments through technological touch can radicallychange the modes of everyday perception. More and more, the architectural designprocess emphasises using senses other than vision to explore the borders of spatialperception. Haque, 2005 believes that:

[. . .] if we assume that technology systems in environment design could deal with thepractical and functional requirements of constructed spaces then the beauty in design comesfrom the poetries of those who use/implement/remake it.

This example of interactive space reflects the physical environment in the dynamicrelationship of real-time changes. In such a kind of creative research, the goal is to gotowards the natural phenomena through the technological experimentation and not tosimulate it. Architecture becomes a space of sensory input/output experience and sensitiveprocess of interactive creation. Moreover, the possibilities brought by the emergingtechnologies (sensing systems, software programming, forms of artificial intelligence,robotic design and communication systems for new forms of knowledge, etc.) amplify thecreative aspect of the interactivity. Experience becomes a sensitive process of feedback inthe logic of instantaneity based on human-technology relations, which redefines the

Figure 6.Scents of SpaceSource: Haque Design + Research, Josephine Pletts and Dr Luca Turin (2006)

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concept of aesthetic awareness. Clearly, aesthetic awareness becomes today the inquiryabout the emotional alienation from and accommodation with technology.

5. ConclusionThe current connections between art and architecture, nowadays more than ever aremanifested by the common interest in fields related to the computer sciences and itsconceptual background: cybernetic sciences. The notion of an interactive architectureemerged from cyberneticists concepts brought to ideas the interactive environmentsand spaces able to sense, converse, and participate with their users. Since, the processof interaction re-designs the abilities of sensing as a new kind of generating experiencedialogue. So, the externalisation of cybernetic conceptual models of interactivity, aswell as technological progress, influences the explorations of the (in)formal and(in)visible nature of architectural space and its representation. It is related to thecross-over process of making, contesting and designing space from non-normativeviewpoints of immaterial representation. In this context, metaphor embraces theemotive and sensorial aspect of the design process and then, sensitivity becomes theprimary expressions of spatial reality. Re-definition of the nature of aesthetics as anon-predicted space experience is seeking to liberate the perceptible potentiality ofarchitecture rather than be encased as new technological standards of design andproduction. Such a concept of aesthetics reflects a permanent dialogue between thetechnological world and human behaviours, between systems and metaphors as wellas limits and delimitations of creativity. Then, the most important point is tounderstand better the creative possibilities and limits that the ubiquity andmulti-functionality of technology offer. In other words: to be aware of the technologicalreality effects is to remember the true conceptual value of any artistic production.

Finally, to re-think the current aspects of aesthetics awareness, experience andmetaphor is to accept the existence of the new possibilities in understanding the spaceimmateriality as a system of permanent interactions. And, according to thecybernetician Humberto Maturana:

Understanding a system requires both intuition as a gestaltic grasping of the systemiccoherences of the system under consideration, and the seeing of the structural (causal)coherences of the locality where the observer stands. Understanding further involves relatingthese two different operational perspectives in a manner that, although not deductive, showsthe dynamic connectedness of any part of the system to the dynamic totality that thesystem is.

References

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Baudrillard, J. (1996), The Perfect Crime, Verso, New York, NY.

Bougnoux, D. (1993), Sciences de linformation et de la communication, Larousse, Paris.

Eastman, Ch. (1971), Adaptive-conditional Architecture, in Cross, N. (Ed.), Design Participation:Proceedings of the Design Research Societys Conference. Manchester, September,Academy Editions, London, pp. 51-7.

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Eidner, F. and Heinrich, N. (2009), Sensing Space: Future Architecture by Technology, Jovis,Berlin, English/German Edition.

Fox, M. and Kemp, M. (2008), Interactive Architecture, Princeton Architectural Press, Princeton.

Gere, C. (2008 [2002]), Digital Culture, 2nd Edition, Reaktion Books, London.

Glanville, R. (2001), Intelligent architecture, Convergence, Vol. 7 No. 2.

Glynn, R. and Shafiei, S. (2009), Digital Architecture: Passages Through Hinterlands, RuairiGlynn Publisher, London.

Haque, U. (2005), The architectural relevance of Gordon Pask, in Bullivant, L. (Ed.),Architectural Design: 4dsocial: Interactive Design Environments, Vol. 77, Wiley, London,No. 4, pp. 80-8.

Haque, U. (2007), The Choreography of Sensations, in Bakke, M. (Ed.), Going Aerial. Air, Art,Architecture, Jan Van Eyck Academie, Maastricht, pp. 64-77.

Negroponte, N. (1970), The Architecture Machine: Towards a More Human Environment, MITPress, Cambridge, MA.

Picon, A. (2008), Precisions: Architecture between Sciences and the Arts, in Moravanszky, A.and Fischer Ole, W. (Eds), Architecture and the Sciences: Scientific Accuracy or ProductiveMisunderstanding?, Jovis, Berlin, pp. 48-81, English/German Edition.

Popper, F. (1975), Art, Action and Participation, New York University, New York, NY.

Roche, F. (2010), An Architecture of Humors, in Naphegyi, C. (Ed.), Thresholds 38: Future, MITEditions, Cambridge, MA, USA, pp. 14-26, R&Sie(n).

Tierney, T. (2006), Collective Cognition: Neutral Fabrics and Social Software, CollectiveIntelligence in Design: New Forms of Distributed Practice and Design (CollectionArchitectural Design), Wiley, Hoboken, NJ.

Vrachliotis, G. (2008), Poppers Mosquito Swarm: Architecture, Cybernetics and theOperationalization of Complexity, in Gleiniger, A. and Vrachliotis, G. (Eds), Complexity.Design Strategy and World View. Context Architecture. Fundamental Concepts BetweenArt, Science and Technology, Birkhauser Publisher, Basel.

Further reading

Beesley, P., Sachiko, H. and Ruxton, J. (2006), Toward Responsive Architectures in ResponsiveArchitecture: Subtle Technologies 06, Riverside Architectural Press, Toronto.

Frazer, J.H. (1995), An Evolutionary Architecture, Architectural Association Publications,London.

Pask, G. (1975), Conversation Cognition and Learning, Elsevier, Amsterdam.

Pask, G. (1976), Conversation Theory: Applications in Education and Epistemology, Elsevier,Amsterdam.

Pask, G. (1995), Foreword, in Frazer, J.H. (Ed.), An Evolutionary Architecture, ArchitecturalAssociation Publications, London.

Picon, A., Ponte, A. and Lerner, R. (2003), Architecture and the Sciences: Exchanging Metaphors,Princeton Architectural Press, New York, NY.

Wiener, N. (1950), Cybernetique et societe, in Bougnoux, D. (Ed.), Sciences de lInformation et dela Communication, Larousse, Paris, pp. 442-54 (1993), available at: www.nedelcu.net/documents/Wiener-Theo-de-la-communication.pdf

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About the authorJoanna Wlaszyn, architect and researcher, is a member of LIAT Research Laboratory at EcoleNationale Superieure dArchitecture Paris Malaquais ENSAPM in Paris. She graduated fromTechnical University of Gdansk in Poland (MArch.) and Design School ENSCI in Paris (MS NewTechnology Design) and is now working as an independent professional architect and designerand carrying on PhD research called: (In)visible Dimension: Technological Reception ofArchitecture. Research fields include: the phenomenological approach to contemporaryarchitecture, the aesthetic relationship between art, architecture and technology, with aparticular focus on the experimental architecture and its technological modes of production,reception and representation. Joanna Wlaszyn can be contacted at: joanna.wlaszyn@gmail.com

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