be·spec·ta·cled | b ’spektekeld by images shai yeshayahu A tech-driven life collapses our perception of time, habits and habitats. We can now stitch together the frames made for livestock, plants, pipes, wires and roads that gradually turned into a series of transactional infrastructures across the globe. In record time, flying machines, rocket ships, and artificial satellites invented during WWI, WWII, and the Cold War spread so far – so fast that we can feel, in real time, how signals and images exponentially infiltrate our thoughts, ideas, and imagination. Yet, in a remarkable inversion of power, characteristically reserved for military might, NASA’s CubeSat Launch Initiative deploys your personal satellite into space. Like superman, we can expand our eyesight, flying above the troposphere at an increased pace.
time travel Long before the aerospace race came into existence, Hera, the goddess of the sky, had an all-seeing giant named Argus Panoptes. He was able to selectively turn on or off any of his one hundred eyes at will. Such power amplified his ability to stay abreast of information even when one or a few of his eyes napped. In the twenty-first century, that ancient mythology has come to fruition. A multitude of transistors on microchips turn currents on and off; they activate a series of artificial eyes and sensors across every atmospheric stratum surrounding earth. These instruments are now humans’ supernatural eyesight; millions of panoptic eyes proliferate information that aid in discerning the past, present and future of human design. craf t At the Design of the In/Human Symposium in Germany, Beatriz Colomina dates this evolution from the invention of the aircraft. Flying, she said, ignited a resurgence for architectural practices and educational praxes. She explained the phenomenon by citing a post from Le Corbusier’s sketchbook, dated January 5, 1960, quoting, ‘In 50 years we have become a new animal on the planet.’ She reflects on his text, This posthuman is an animal that flies; the airline network is its ‘efficient nervous system’, its web covering the globe. The hyper- mobile architect is a symptom of a globalized society in which humanity will be necessarily transformed. 1 Colomina built on Le Corbusier’s flying agenda to declare that air travel did not simply represent a metamorphosis for his practice but also for how he learned, reimagined and redistributed ideas about his spatial thinking and modes of building. In essence, she
explained, ‘the tight economy of space in the airplane gave him ideas for his projects, just as the ocean liner and the car had once been the source of inspiration’. ibid Unquestionably, Colomina positioned the plane as a tool to ‘craft’ the mobility of ideas, concluding that: The AA generation that circulated ideas through teachers and books would form the core of a new generation of global practitioners. Some of the best and most mobile teachers, such as Rem Koolhaas and Tschumi, and their students, for example Zaha Hadid and Steven Holl, would lead an international avant-garde with major projects throughout the world. A generation that grew up trafficking in ideas is now trafficking in projects. ibid habits from space Over the decades since Le Corbusier’s pronouncement, humans gained access to visual sensor systems, telescopes, space stations and many communication satellites. This access enabled them to receive, deliver and alter all kinds of information regardless of distances and without the gruelling schedule Le Corbusier endured. Trafficking in ideas increased exponentially, particularly for design thinkers engaged in the digitisation and digitalisation of earth. Digits, as it turns out, allow designers to model and simulate a representation of the real world using satellite signals and images 2 , an occurrence that begins to blur the micro- and macro-scales of real and artificial infrastructures enabling life.
1 Colomina, Beatriz. ‘Towards a Posthuman Architect’ Design of The In/ Human . November 19-21, 2009 http://www.design-in-human.de/symposium/colomina.html
2 Longley, Paul A, Michael F Goodchild, David J Maguire and David W Rhind. Geographic informationsystems and science . John Wiley & Sons, 2005
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