Linda Just
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applications. These tools and representations are appealing in their familiarity, but there is an odd and unsettling disconnect in scrolling through a seemingly endless tableau of text, or rendering errors non-existent with the press of a key. Print is finite, permanent and knowable; as frustrating and constraining as that may be at times, it is also reliable and comforting. Reliability lends itself well to preservation. Writing and architecture both establish a corporeal form for the intangible – space within buildings, ideas within text; the physical objects can long outlive their makers. The ephemeral nature and fluidity of digital media contradicts the permanence of the fabrication process – of literally setting in stone . The final product – the unapologetic deliverable – requires considerable energy and resources, since the implications of permanence demand care. Both buildings and manuscripts are thus refined through draft forms, to reduce the risk of having an error writ large and forever present for public scrutiny. For this reason, editing and curation play a major role in this aspect of text and architecture. Economics, culture and politics – all can impact whether a project is ultimately realised. Seen positively, those factors can be constructive filters for quality and stimulants for creative thinking. They can also be quite detrimental; they just
as easily stifle ideas in the names of profit, censorship, propaganda or elitism. The accessibility and unilateral nature of digital media has the compelling ability to forego the negative limitations, and so the internet has become a global market place for the previously unknown and unrealised. However, the converse is that some content eschews the benefits of editing – the sheer volume of material can make the task of finding truly exceptional [and perhaps most troubling, factual] work increasingly challenging. This, if nothing else, is a major argument against those who would fully reject print as moribund and its content as irrelevant. The digital realm has yet to establish the filters and standards that physical publication had imposed upon it by the constraints of its evolution and development. As a necessarily physical response to the basic need of shelter, architecture cannot be fully realised in an intangible format as can text, but it is susceptible to many of the same conflicts writing has met with its conversion to digital media. Information models, animations and renderings are highly sophisticated tools that allow more detailed and varied experimentation. Alluring in their malleability and in the degrees of perfection and complexity they can achieve, with them designers can now frame and present their envisioned worlds with cinematographic precision, and prospective users can get a sense their spaces before ground is even broken.
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