by the way...: 2011

“The White City and the Chimera.”

- A City of Silence

The body as a “cerebral, phenomenological, aware, and operational entity” [1] is propelled beyond its biosphere by information; refashioning and reforming the post-evolutionary human structural vessel.

In a world where a reliance on social networking sites and the Internet has led to social disconnection between the city and it’s community, a world of intense information transfer is born[2]. An environment saturated into a soup of electromagnetic data signals makes way for a fast approaching ‘white signal state’, consequently creating signal blackout. [3]

Compared to swift electronic transfer, the extraction of information through verbal communication is considered inefficient and deemed unnecessary. With this, the inferior audio sense is disregarded and forgotten. However, within an echo lies a paragraph of our understanding and perception of materiality, our connection to the city is gradually eroded until our understanding diminishes completely. [4] With it, we loose the comfort and reassurance provided by structure until mans extensive quest for information undermines our evolutionary programming of spatial comprehension, blurring the boundaries of mans epidermis and his Surroundings.[5]

Restabilising this connection between the city and its community becomes a priority, one that allows for a frantic information exchange to occur, but at the same time allows an intimacy without proximity on an entirely heightened level than has previously been achieved. A reengagement program is proposed that utilizes the raw phenomena of resonance and vibration in order to reconnect with ones community and environment. We reach out into the city and a flow is reestablished between us until we are re communalized by the ‘mother of all senses: Touch.[6] In effect, one will reach beyond the understood physical boundaries of self and city, reading and perceiving each on a much heightened level of understanding, a level less corrupting of our perception giving a fuller experience of space.

We have passed a point in our existence that shows the majority of the world’s population now live in cities which will obviously effect our ‘evolution’. Transhumanism theories challenge Darwinian ideas, anticipating the next stage of our evolution will come through the integration of mechanical systems into the machine of the body. One understands this transition easily when the body is understood as an organic machine; one relies on his organs to function and operate with a distinction of body and mind. These instruments and machines of the body plot our perception and operation in the world, therefore distinguishing between mechanical and organic machines becomes irrelevant when assessing the possibilities of extending mans operational parameters.

In our quest to augment our perception and understanding of our connected environment, one envisages the importing of senses into the body through mechanical installations, the incorporation of the machine. For the first time, human inhabitation of the functionalist “buildings as machines” [7] and the phenomenological mimicking of structure by ones body is reversed[8]. The architecture inhabits us, reconnecting the body with an architectural environment, aiding man in his reach out into the environment and strengthening his grasps on perception.

In order to achieve this, man must ‘learn’ to read his environment through the phenomena of resonation. He must resolve and process relevant information to the same capacity as the eye interprets light variation via the optic nerve.[9]

[1] Stelarc, The Monograph, chapter 7 “Animating bodies, mobilizing technologies”.

[2] "The most significant planetary pressure is no longer the gravitational pull but rather the information thrust". Will we be merely hardwired into a world ‘Imagineered’ by global corporations where we will be increasingly isolated even as we are ‘communified’ in artificial communities? (Prosthetics, Robotics and Remote Existence: Post evolutionary Strategies, Leonardo 5, 1991)

[3] ‘White Signal State’: Electromagnetic radiation signals traveling on all available frequencies, interfering constructively and destructively until every signal is corrupted and deemed useless.

[4] “The sense of gravity is the essence of all architectonic structures and great architecture makes us aware of gravity and earth. At the same time of making us aware of the depth of the earth, it makes us dream of levitation and flight. “ (Pallasma, eyes of the skin p. )

[5]Merlau Ponty, Heideggar and Kant’s theories of space, boundaries and perception detailed below

[6] All the senses including vision, are extensions of the sense of touch: the senses are specializations of the skin, and all sensory experiences are related to tactility. Ashley Montagu's view, based on medical evidence, confirms the primacy of the tactile realm: '[The skin] is the oldest and the most sensitive of our organs, our first medium of communication, and our most efficient protector [...]. Even the transparent cornea of the eye is overlain by a layer of modified skin [...]. Touch is the parent of our eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. It is the sense which became

differentiated into the others, a fact that seems to he recognized in the age-old evaluation of touch as 'the mother of the senses'. (Architecture of the muscles - steps at the Helen Shrine Garden, Tokyo.)

[7] Functionalist and Rationalist views shared by Le Corbusier and Buckminster Fuller

[8] “ We feel pleasure and protection when the body discovers it’s resonance in space. When experiencing a structure, we unconsciously mimic it’s configuration with our bones and muscles: the pleasurably animated flow of a piece of music is subconsciously transformed into bodily sensations. Unknowingly, we perform the task of the column or of the vault, with our body. (Socrates's conception of the body as a hindrance to pure knowledge)

[9] Stelarc implanted an electrical sensor into his thigh in order to pick up nerve signals that would operate a mechanical third arm attached to his right shoulder. The learning process of separating the nerve signals in his leg however took months to learn, so tasks such as writing with three limbs could be achieved.