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Emotive Networks Behavioural Architecture as a Foci for Place Based Social Interaction in a Post-Human Age by W. Connor O’Grady

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Behavioural Architecture as a Foci for Place BasedSocial Interaction in a Post-Human Age

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  • 1Emotive NetworksBehavioural Architecture as a Foci for Place Based

    Social Interaction in a Post-Human Age

    by W. Connor OGrady

  • 2

  • 3I hereby declare that I

    am the sole author of this publication. This is a true copy of the

    thesis outline, including any required final revisions, as accepted

    by my examiners.

    I understand that my document may be made electronically

    available to the public.

  • 4

  • 5ABSTRACT

    We are now fully immersed in the digital era. The technological

    innovation over the past decade has been immense, as we have watched

    the digital world mature to react nearly in real time and have the

    compact versatility to be able to fit in ones pocket. Machines are

    now a commonplace interaction for almost anyone, particularly a

    North American city dweller, and these interactions are only going to

    become increasingly prevalent. The interactions have become dynamic,

    interactive and fluid within our daily encounters allowing to connect

    globally, and to harvest vast amounts of information in short amounts

    of time. Where this has left us however, is near a tipping point. Donna

    Haraway writes about the lack of clarity that has begun to emerge in the

    relationship between human and machine, and thus we are now hybrids;

    Cyborgs to be more specific.

    This Cyborg state has revealed many opportunities but it also raises

    many questions. The current condition of the personal device all too

    easily allows for an alienation of our bodies, as well as each other,

    and our built environments. The concepts and experiments in this

    thesis outline beg to reconsider the role of technolog y as a medium for

    interaction that reaches beyond screen based interface and explores

    three scales which will be referred to as the User Interface, the Garment,

    and the Milieu.

    All three of these scales must be tested in a state of physical,

    indeterminate interaction, and therefore must occur in a public space.

    This outline stands to create a new vision for Dundas Square as a post-

    natural park space, intended to create place and human interactive

    congregation as the foundation for connecting between the physical and

    digital realm in a collective, embodied experience. This is an exercise

    in architecture and public space as social matter rather than a social

    container.

  • 6

  • 7CONTENTS

    Authors Declaration

    Abstract

    Table of Contents

    List of Illustrations

    1. INITIATE SEQUENCE

    1.1 Speculative Futures

    1.2 The Motivation

    1.3 Key Concepts

    2. DATA HARVESTING

    1.1 The Digital Realm

    1.2 The Realm of the Individual

    1.3 The Public Realm

    3. THE EMOTIVE NETWORK

    3.1 Testing Ground

    3.2 User Interface

    3.3 The Garment

    3.4 The Mileu

    5. CONCLUSION

    6. REFERENCES

  • 8LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

    Figure 1.1 Collage by the Author 11

    Figure 1.2 Diagram by the Author 19

    Figure 1.3 Diagram by the Author 19

    Figure 1.4 Diagram by the Author 23

    Figure 1.5 https://plus.google.com/+projectglass/posts 25

    Figure 1.6 Diagram by Author 27

    Figure 1.7 Diagram by Author 27

    Figure 1.8 http://www.hylozoicground.com/Venice/gallery/index.html 29

    Figure 1.9 http://www.studioroosegaarde.net/project/liquid-space/photo/#liquid-space-6-1 29

    Figure 1.10 http://www.alavs.com/ 29

    Figure 1.11 Image by the Author 31

    Figure 1.12 Google Earth Image 33

    Figure 1.13 Image by the Author 35

    Figure 1.14 Image by the Author 35

    Figure 1.15 Image by the Author 37

    Figure 1.16 Image by the Author 38

    Figure 1.17 Image by the Author 39

    Figure 1.18 Image by the Author 41

    Figure 1.19 Image by the Author 42

    Figure 1.20 Image by the Author 43

    Figure 1.21 Image by the Author 43

    Figure 1.22 Image by the Author 43

    Figure 1.23 Image by the Author 43

    Figure 1.24 Image by the Author 45

    Figure 1.25 Image by the Author 46

    Figure 1.26 Image by the Author 46

    Figure 1.27 Image by the Author 47

    Figure 1.28 Image by the Author 47

    Figure 1.29 Image by the Author 47

    Figure 1.30 Image by the Author 48

    Figure 1.31 Image by the Author 49

  • 9

  • 10

    It is a curious paradox that almost all science fiction, however far

    removed in time and space, is really about the present day. Very few

    attempts have been made to visualize a unique and self-contained future

    that offers no warnings to us.1

    J.G Ballard

    1 J.G Ballard, Vermillion Sands, (London: Random House, 1973), 7.

  • 11

    Initiate SequenceA review of the current cyborg state

    Figure 1.1 Sensory Overload/Future City

  • 12

  • 13

    SPECULATIVE FUTURES

    Close your eyes...

    Follow...

    That is what they tell you...

    And there was no way for you to know where

    youll end up and what youll be seeing will affect your consciousness or

    your tomorrows dreams...

    You wandered amongst cameras that can see through you,

    neurobiological contraptions that can read your mind, landscapes

    made of bits that can anticipate where you are going next and how you

    are going to feel about it, viruses that are good for you, silk tattoos, a

    robotic arm that spits out a house, a radio woven from evergreen bark,

    pixels too coy to cut through matter but present enough to simulate the

    Earths rotation...

    A media revolution, a food processor, counting

    your carbon footprint, an eyelid made out of photosynthetic cells, a

    breathing skin, a printed clock, a chair that grows, soft omnidirectional

    robotic cars, robots that care for your childrens education...1

    Neri Oxman

    1 Oxman, Neri, Fabricating Networks: Notes on Biologically Inspired Design, Networks Understanding Networks, 2011 17 10, Web, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4F0bdr9It0&playnext=1&list=PL3CCE8370B5073939&feature=results_main.

  • 14

    ***

    August 8, 2052

    I received several messages yesterday that global warming has caused

    irreversible damage, and fossil fuel production has faultered but not

    diminished. Not even close. Its funny how some things never seem to

    change, but then again, others have changed alot..

    Fashion has become ubiquitous with protection as we no longer are

    safe from the deteriorated ozone. Through this deterioration, clothes

    have changed. They are not like what they once seemed to be, with

    the societal change, clothing began to serve higher purposes and have

    additional performative value. Nothing can simply be these days. It is a

    scary but exciting fact. The system in place has seen the evolution into

    personalization, away from the icons of pattern and graphic, and into a

    multidimensional sensory experience. Depending on mood our clothes

    begin to portray our level of interest in correspondance. Much like the

    exotic birds that only exist in synthetically monitored environments

    for tourists to go and scan for personal entertainment, our second skin

    calls out to others as a signal of personality, purpose, stress level and

    availability. Everything is a machine now. And therefore there are many

    ghosts in many machines.

    I found my fathers old smartphones the other day while looking through

    an old trunk in our house. There is something to be said about the

    substance of the artifact, to have and to hold. But the screen is just

    terrible quality. I much prefer the ocular attachments like that which

    Vernor Vinge once spoke of long ago. Embedded systems monitor our

    existence, enriching our awareness of our personal intakes, creating an

    enriched perception of our own actions and the external impacts our

    environment has on us. All data is fed back into the system; what I

    ate for lunch, and how many calories I consumed, muscle mass index,

    pollution intake, carbon footprint expenditures, etc. It truly is a new

    state of consciousness, well at least compared to what Father talks

    about.

  • 15

    It is paired with companion spheres, external hard drives of internal

    information that can be mapped through experiential data. These

    companion spheres provide the additional memory storage we need

    in order to fully log our experience. This is a suitable, and compact

    alternative to implants. Only the richest people can afford implants. I

    am happy with my spheres. They allow information to be easily shared,

    uploaded and downloaded via the ocular apparatus. I am still not

    completely comfortable when I need to upload. It tingles when I feel the

    information transfer to and from my brain..

    The companion spheres can also integrate into public environments.

    The Public Realm, formerly Dundas Square, is the neurological hub of

    Toronto. As all public spaces are now, they are synonymous with the

    neurological market. A place where people go to share memories, some

    people are looking for techniques, new ways to compete in trades, others

    are looking to connect, to understand people better, to understand

    their world better, and some well they come for what would still be

    considered black market trading. Disembodiment downloads and

    scandalous memories shared in poor taste percolate through the ether. It

    all happens in these spaces, as they realized that all this information was

    stronger when you physically connected with someone.

    The once cold, transient space is now festering with people, meandering

    through the field of tree like structures. Axons protruding from the

    Realms surface, sprout several tendon like branches that steward the

    area. As public spaces have always been, they are where people are most

    vulnerable, the structure is employed to facilitate the different users.

    Engaging in this process requires trust. The same trust from the past;

    placing copious amounts of information about ourselves on to screen

    based interfaces with the hope to connect to better people. To put

    ourselves out there, to have a stance, and make an impact on the global

    scale. Well, consider this the next Faustian bargain. This system is

    not about sharing products, or even byproducts. It is entirely about

    sharing your process, your raw methods. Individuality is part of the

    collective. And being part of the collective is about being aware of your

    individuality.

  • 16

    Our companion spheres link into the neural system via synapses. This is

    how the system knows who you are and what you are looking for. It feels

    your presence, it reads your suit. It adapts and engages you. Just as you

    see it, it sees you.

    Ganglion, as the system is referred to collectively, has its own sensor

    spheres. These spheres are mobile and primarily harvest energ y. They

    too emit a coloured aura that portrays its current state. The system can

    get lonely, it can get hungry, it can be hurt, and it can be excited. These

    states need to be known, for when we use the system to help ourselves,

    we must know that it is our duty to help the system in return.

  • 17

    ...You are back, awoken, astute, hyperly networked inside and out.

  • 18

    THE MOTIVATION

    We are no longer simply human. Technolog y has integrated itself into

    our daily functions that it has become unimaginable to live without

    these tools and devices. Our use of technolog y is nothing new, in

    fact, technolog y has been affecting us since the beginning of man. As

    William Mitchell writes, it is not as if we became posthuman in the

    wireless era ; since Neanderthal early-adapters first picked up sticks and

    stones, we have never been human.1

    Digital technolog y has propagated outward and has blanketed itself

    over our urban environments and rippled into the vast expanses of our

    geography. It is an invisible force that is changing the way we interact

    and the way we perceive; with ourselves, others and our spaces. The

    current problem lies in our architecture; changing at a glacial rate

    compared to that of computational systems and the apparatus that

    are used to interface between these two drastically different worlds.

    A change is needed in our public spaces as a means to stipulate the

    importance of technolog y as a medium for re-embodiment, in a time

    where the predominant forces are a subconscious coercion towards

    disembodiment. 2

    Much like Felix Guattaris three ecological registers3, the proposal must

    occur in three distinct realms: the Public Realm, the Digital Realm,

    and the Realm of the Individual. Essentially, what can be formed are

    emotive networks, systems that project emotions to the forefront of

    communication and interaction; to be manifested in a multitude of

    mediums, in particularly architecture. Architecture and public space

    can no longer stand to exist as a one way relationship between itself

    and its occupants. There must be an implementation of a feedback

    loop predicated on the ideolog y of an attentive and concerned

    architecture that adapts with investment in the emotional well being of

    the collective. This loop is based on the indexing of data as a series of

    parameters that can begin to quantify human emotion.

    1 William Mitchell, Me : The Cyborg Self and the Networked City, (Cambridge, Massachusetts;London: MIT PRess, 2003), 168.2 Luca Molinari, A Possible Manifesto, Futuristic: Visions of Future Living, ed. Caroline Klein (Cologne: DAAB MEDIA GMBH, 2011), 264-265.3 Guattari, Felix, The Three Ecologies. London; New York: The Athlone Press, 2005.

  • 19

    NETWORK SPATIAL

    CONNECTIONS

    DIGITAL

    PUBLIC

    INDIVIDUAL

    Figure 1.2 Connections Vesica

    Figure 1.3 The Three Realms

  • 20

    KEY CONCEPTSFor the purpose of clarity a few concepts will be defined in order

    to properly understand the context of which the terms cyborg ,

    transhumanism and posthumanism will be used.

    CYBORGAs defined in their 1960 paper on space travel, Kline and Clynes define

    it Cyborg ,

    For the exogenously extended organizational

    complex functioning as an inte-grated homeostatic system

    un-consciously, we propose the term Cyborg.1

    POSTHUMANISMIs a word that must be considered for its two opposing definitions. As Carey Wolfe points out, Posthumanism can refer to the imagining of a not-too-distant dystopia where the human is dominated by genetic technologies currently being unleashed by bioengineering , so that our fundamental human dignity becomes the victim of a Promethean drive run amok as can be understood by literary works such as Francis Fukuyamas A Posthuman Future, and Aldous Huxleys A Brave New World. But it can also refer to the liberating potential of those very same developments, an opinion held quite strongly by Donna Haraway in her Cyborg Manifesto.2

    1 Manfred E. Clynes, and Nathan S. Kline, Cyborgs and Space, Astronautics, no. Sept. (1960): 30,

    2 Wolfe,Carey.http://www.carywolfe.com/.Lastmodified2010.Accessed December 11, 2012. http://www.carywolfe.com/post_about.html.

  • 21

    TRANSHUMANISMAs defined by Natasha Vita-Mores Transhumanist Artist Statement,

    Transhumans want to improve and extend life.We are designing the technologies to improve and extend life.

    Emotions are integral to our senses and understanding.

    We are designing the technologies to enhance our senses and

    understanding.

    The transhumanist ecolog y and freedom exercises self-awareness and

    self-responsibility.3

    as a more precise amendment to Julian Huxleys definition:

    man remaining man, but transcending himself, by realizing new

    possibilities of and for his human nature4

    3 Vita-More, Natasha. Transhumanist Art & Culture, Transhumanist Arts Statement.Lastmodified2003.AccessedNovember23,2012.

    4 Julian Huxley, Transhumanism, New Bottles for New Wine, (London: Chatto & Windus, 1957), 13-17..

  • 22

  • 23

    DataHarvestingAn Analysis of Spatial Parameters and

    Techtonic Precedents

    Figure 1.4 Times Square Augmented Reality

  • 24

    THE DIGITAL REALM

    When Apple Computers successfully integrated a touch screen user

    interface into their design of personal electronic devices, it changed the

    way we interacted with our world. The mobile phone, which had already

    begun its translation away from simply being a telecommunications

    device had expanded our world into the electronomadic individuals we

    now are.1 This marked a pinnacle moment in which a distinct increase

    in fluidity and ease between gesture and response occured. Opening the

    floodgates of the ubiquitous digital user interface.

    Now, projects such as Google Glass are experimenting in pushing

    the envelope of the mobility and integration of the media interface

    into the human physiolog y. The next step in the process is hands free

    information visualization. Enriching our environments with new layers

    of perceptual data and connecting people through digital networks will

    become even less impeding.

    This technological paradigm is running in parallel with many gesturally

    based media interfaces. The Nintendo Wii was the first mainstream

    game system to market an entertainment interface that allowed people

    to directly interact with their televisions through gestural tracking. This

    system was modified for full body detection with the Microsoft release

    of the Xbox Kinect. The rigour and accuracy for detecting gestural

    action will be pushed even further with widespread release of the Leap

    Motion device for desktop interface.

    1 William Mitchell, Me++ : The Cyborg Self and the Networked City, (Cambridge, Massachusetts;London: MIT PRess, 2003),

  • 25

    Figure 1.5 Google Glass Interface

  • 26

    THE INDIVIDUAL REALMIn order to understand the purpose of our clothes as a protective sheath

    for our bodies, we must understand how our bodies interact in space,

    and with eachother. In this exercise four levels of perception will be

    addressed. Our clothes mediate these different perceptual boundaries as

    both a practical tool and a communicative signal.

    Immediacy:

    This is the layer directly surrounding our skin and is where we perceive

    temperature, explicit intimacy, or unsettling trespass. The sensitivity

    of this boundary can change depending on the densities of surrounding

    materials, whether it be a crowded subway, brushing against leaves in a

    forest, or swimming in the ocean. The main perceptual variable is the

    threshold of these environments in comparison to its surround and the

    speed in which we endure the transition.

    The Expanded Physiolog y:

    This is the layer that is within our expanse of environment that can

    be easily physically accessible. Things that can be touched or easily

    initiated by the physical action of the individual can be found in this

    perceptual range. This is where many of our tools such as cell phones,

    laptops, hammers and occupied chairs can be found.

    Within Sight:

    This layer comprises of everything that is within our physical visual

    recognition. This is bound by our physical surroundings; manifested by

    the fact that we cannot see past the corner of a building , or downward

    through the clouds whilst flying in an airplane.

    The Cognitive Layer:

    This layer is everything we know to be true. This is a biased, yet

    rational sum of all of our experiences up until the current point. This

    relies on consistent experience in order to build reliable trust in a

    physical truth. An example of this is that when a person leaves their

    home and heads out to run an errand, that there house stays where it is

    and does not change while they are gone. It is not directly experienced

    but we know it to be true. There is also the hope that it will not be

    damaged in the absense of the occupant.

  • 27

    Figure 1.6 Connections Vesica

    Figure 1.7 The Three Realms

  • 28

    RESPONSIVE ARCHITECTURES Techtonic examples of built works exploring the concepts of behavioural

    architecture and designing feedback loop systems.

    HYLOZOIC GROUND, PHILIP BEESLEY:

    The Hylozoic series pursues living , breathing systems of architecture

    and landscape, organized in self-generating complexes. The immersive

    Hylozoic environment operates in a manner akin to a living organism,

    considering its multiple layers of moving assemblies, emulated

    metabolism, and responsive actions...1

    LIQUID SPACE, DAAN ROOSEGAARDE:

    LIQUID SPACE is the interactive creature that becomes physically

    bigger, smaller, and brighter in relation to human behavior. The organic

    fusion of mechanisms, embedded electronics, sound, and LEDs creates a

    playful dialogue with visitors.

    LIQUID SPACE 6.0 premiered in Japan as a commission for the

    Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media. Its high-tech jellyfish behavior

    evolves in relation to visitors, creating a sensual coexistence.2

    ALAVs 2.0, JED BERK:

    ALAVs 2.0 (Autonomous Light Air Vessels) are networked objects

    that communicate the concept of connectivity among people, objects,

    and the environment. Through the use of mobile technologies people

    can influence the behavior of the ALAVs by starting conversations

    and building closer relationships with them. ALAVs 2.0 reflects

    upon the current state of connectivity in our everyday lives. The

    potential of ALAVs 2.0 lies in its ability to captivate a wide audience

    and communicate the idea of people cohabiting a shared space with

    networked objects.3

    1 Jonah Humphrey, Integrated Systems: The Breathing Cycle, Hylozoic Ground, ed. Pernilla Ohrstedt & Hayley Isaacs (Waterloo: Riverside Architectural Press, 2010), 79.2 Roosegaarde, Daan. Studio Roosegaarde, Studio Roosegaarde: Liquid Space.Lastmodified2012.AccessedDecember11,2012.http://www.studioroosegaarde.net/project/liquid-space/info/. 3Berk,Jed.ALAVs:AutonomousLightAirVehicles.Lastmodified2009.AccessedNovember 01, 2012. http://www.alavs.com/.

  • 29

    Figure 1.8 Hylozoic Ground, Philip Beesley Architect Inc.

    Figure 1.9 Liquid Space, Daan Roosegaarde

    Figure 1.10 ALAVs, Jed Berk

  • 30

  • 31

    Figure 1.11 Urban Environment of Neural Plasticity

    The Emotive NetworkExperiments in Behaviorial Architecture

    in a Post-Human Age.

  • 32

    THE TESTING GROUND

    This emotive network must manifest itself, it must take up both physical

    and digital space. The localization of online and wired connections

    increases the opportunity for spatial interaction, and it also creates

    data storage with an immediacy to its location. A space can then begin

    to learn and to understand the actions taking place within its extents.

    Within its core it will have a memory of sorts.

    By creating public spaces that have a sense of embodiment themselves,

    they too become agents in these emotive networks, rather than laying

    dormant waiting for a prescribed event to occur as a means of spectacle;

    injecting occupation into a space. The standard quality of spatial

    engagement must increase.

    An example of an ailing public space lies in the heart of the commercial

    district of downtown Toronto, Dundas Square. A testing ground for this

    future public environment. Christopher Hume wrote for the Toronto

    Star that In an age of cars, computers and commuting , the desire for

    such a meeting place may well be more emotional than practical.1

    Dundas Square can be re-enlivened as a mutable, interactive space that

    accentuates place as a portal between digital and physical realms where

    numbers surmounting that of the active participants on an individual

    tablet or screen can begin to share in a collective experience.

    It will be an incubator for a future public environment, a space that

    enables emotive networks and enacts new symbiotic relationships

    between the self, and built form. Upon asserting the importance of

    public space and technolog y as a tool for the self, it must be proposed

    that our public spaces must undergo radical change in symbiosis with

    our new media interfaces and our constantly evolving projections of our

    own images of self.

    1Hume,Christopher.AEuropeanSpace.TorontoStar18012003.

  • 33

    Figure 1.12 Dundas Square

  • 34

    The current conditions of Dundas Square leave most of the pedestrian

    traffic flow along the periphery of the site. Most of this traffoc flow is

    also durational, higher speed movement with the intention to get to

    somewhere else, may it be the Eaton Centre, South on Yonge Street, or

    down nto the Subway system.

    The prescribed program conditions within the site are limited to

    some portable seating and a small ticket booth for theatre tickets. The

    edge facilities have trouble bleeding into the square and activating the

    space on a continuous basis, due to the automotive traffic dividing the

    building edge conditions from the primary pedestrian square.

  • 35

    Figure 1.13 Program and Speed Mapping

    Figure 1.14 Mapping Detail

  • 36

    THE USER INTERFACE

    The new digital user interface for the Emotive Network differs from

    current UI paradigms in two distinct ways. The first being that for

    the most part our digital screens make information visible and tangible

    that is not there, in order to additionally orient ourselves within a

    certain spatial experience. This system proposes to be able to distill

    the perceptual reality, organizing a filtering system in which to start to

    overlay additional information. The second component of the interface

    integrates into the garment and serves a primary focus as a personal

    health monitor. This includes real time pings surrounding daily calorie

    intake, account balance, and scheduling. These two factors translate the

    primary use of digital technolog y as a social media and use it to balance

    its role in relation to our physical environments and our vested personal

    interest.

  • 37

    Figure 1.15 New York City, Immersive, Augmented Reality- Intensity Iteration

  • 38

    Figure 1.16 User Interface Lens

  • 39

    Figure 1.17 User Interface Lens: Detail Portion

    This new system will be found embedded

    into an eye lens, not much different than

    a contact. However, this system will be

    operable primary through neural response

    mechanisms. Integrating the digital media

    into the thought process will streamline

    this additional information into the

    Cyborg consciousness.

  • 40

    THE GARMENT

    I am a node in a body-body network...2

    William Mitchell

    The advancement of personal technolog y has allowed for vast extension

    and expression of the individual, but in this Faustian bargain, it has

    become quite clear that we are alienating ourselves from our bodies,

    from each other and from our created environments. This is not an

    argument purely for the desire of stronger human-human connection.

    It is an argument for the importance of physical place and physical

    interaction.

    The physiological analysis of both meehanical qualities of joint

    movement and posture in the human body as well as chemical responses

    such as pheremone zones allow for a mapping to develop a garment that

    takes into consideration the natural functions of the body, and create a

    protective cloth that projects the internal reactions of the body outward

    as our own more prominent signals in order to place importance on our

    role as an individual in our physical world, and our agency that we are

    responsible for.

    This results in a high quality, form fitting fabric, with expanding and

    contracting capabilities, as well as sensing and energ y storage attributed

    to electricity woven textiles. GARMENT 1.0 has heightened sensitivity

    within the hands, control filters in pheremone regions and erogenous

    zones, as well built in flexible joint support.

    2 William Mitchell, Me++ : The Cyborg Self and the Networked City, (Cambridge, Massachusetts;London: MIT Press, 2003), 22.

  • 41

    Figure 1.18 Body Analysis

  • 42

    Figure 1.19 GARMENT 1.0

  • 43

    Figure 1.20 COMPANION SPHERE: Retracted

    Figure 1.21 COMPANION SPHERE: Elevation

    Figure 1.22 COMPANION SPHERE: Plan View

    Figure 1.23 COMPANION SPHERE: SECTION

  • 44

    THE MILEU

    Situating the Emotive Network within Dundas Square in a new

    ground plane topography indicates the new importance placed on the

    pedestrian ahead of the car. It also forms itself in a way to create a

    central node at the middle of this recreational park space, intended to

    be the heart of the system and a place where people can find solitude

    without going home. Creating a central node places an importance on

    the central focal point, a place where transit access can be found and

    a place where the space can become a social forum. The Ganglion is a

    civic space composed of an oscillating field of breathing pods, whose

    heartbeat is sustained through the active presence of human entity.

    Embedded with sensing capabilities the system has the ability to be

    affected by aggressive behaviour, respond lamentingly to an individual

    experiencing low morale, and to listen and produce information based

    on its active history as a societal agent.

    The structural flagella with embedded synapses have direct pairing with

    the GARMENT, the Spheres and the UI. The system is completely

    integrated in order to communicate, respond and learn from eachother.

    The entire Network depends on the agency of the individual. It is an

    intention to provide moments of social congregation and medititative

    isolation.

  • 45

    Figure 1.24 The Emotive Field

  • 46

    Figure 1.25 The Pod

    Figure 1.26 Stem Detail

  • 47

    Figure 1.27 Tentacle Detail Figure 1.28 Energy Drone

    Figure 1.29 View from Yonge and Dundas

  • 48

    Figure 1.30 The Emotive Field: Section

  • 49

    Figure 1.31 The Emotive Field: Experiential Rendering

  • 50

    CONCLUSION

    We have a desire to connect, but currently we separate to connect,

    through our phones, tablets and computers. We search for stronger

    connections, rather than engaging in the possible relationships

    around us. With the de-localization of social networks through the

    paradigmatic predilection towards digital interaction, there is a lack of

    stable community that can be established entirely based on the exact

    opportunity that these online networks offer. That the ability to reach people anywhere in the world, albeit any level of commitment desirable,

    the lack of place disembodies us and causes us to dissolve away from our

    human nature of physical interaction.1

    At this stage these statements about the Emotive Network can be made:

    1. The connection must be of a personal or public nature.

    2. The connection must be of human-human interaction and human-

    computer interaction.

    3. The connection should not be hollow, the quality of the interaction

    must be increased.

    4. The connection must satiate all parties involved.

    5. The systems exists through the effective participation of responsive

    equipment at multiple scales

    1 William Mitchell, Me++ : The Cyborg Self and the Networked City, (Cambridge, Massachusetts;London: MIT Press, 2003), 34.

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    It is not clear who makes and who is made in the relation between

    human and machine. It is not clear what is mind and what body

    in machines that resolve into coding practices. In so far as we

    know ourselves in both formal discourse (for example, biolog y)

    and in daily practice [...], we find ourselves to be cyborgs, hybrids,

    mosaics, chimeras. Biological organisms have become biotic systems,

    communications devices like others. There is no fundamental,

    ontological separation in our formal knowledge of machine and

    organism, of technical and organic.1

    Donna Haraway

    1 Haraway, Donna. The European Graduate School, A CYBORG MANIFESTO SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND SOCIALIST-FEMINISM IN THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY, IN SIMIANS, CYBORGS AND WOMEN: THE REINVENTION OF NATURE (NEW YORK; ROUTLEDGE, 1991), PP.149-181.. Accessed December 03, 2012. http://www.egs.edu/faculty/donna-haraway/articles/donna-haraway-a-cyborg-manifesto/.

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    ArchitectureHarlan, Matthew. Suits for Modernity.

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    Lai, Jimenez. Obstruction.

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    Oxman, Neri. Fabricating Networks: Notes on Biologically Inspired Design.

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    Humphrey, Jonah.Integrated Systems: The Breathing Cycle.Hylozoic Ground. Edited by Pernilla Ohrstedt & Hayley

    Isaacs. Waterloo: Riverside Architectural Press, 2010.

    PhilosophyClynes, Manfred E., and Nathan S. Kline. Cyborgs and Space. Astronautics. no. Sept. (1960): 30.

    Guattari, Felix. The Three Ecologies. London; New York: The Athlone Press, 2005.

    Haraway, Donna. The European Graduate School, A CYBORG MANIFESTO SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, AND

    SOCIALIST-FEMINISM IN THE LATE TWENTIETH CENTURY, IN SIMIANS, CYBORGS AND WOMEN:

    THE REINVENTION OF NATURE (NEW YORK; ROUTLEDGE, 1991), PP.149-181.. Accessed December 03,

    2012. http://www.egs.edu/faculty/donna-haraway/articles/donna-haraway-a-cyborg-manifesto/.

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    Science FictionBallard, J.G.Vermillion Sands. London: Random House, 1973.

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