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Marvin Minsky
In the next century we can expect to learn more about ourselves. We'll
learn how knowledge and skills are stored in our brains, and what
feelings are and how consciousness works. We'll know more about how
we get new ideas, not only in science but also in art. This could
change everything that we do -- because, once we understand how our
brains think, we'll invent new ways to learn, solve problems, and
to extend the abilities of our brains. We'll be able to invent new
ways to think.
What will happen to us then? No one can predict this. The only thing
that seems certain is that it will be like a new phase of evolution.
Whenever we discover a new way to create and control more knowledge,
we'll also discover new ways to interconnect our "personal data
bases" with other externally shared resources. This means that
we'll be dealing not only with brains, but with networks combining
our brains with machines. It might even get hard to distinguish between
individuals and communities. At every step in this evolution, we'll
have to face new, complex problems about how to organize larger collections
of knowledge and skills. Humanity is beginning an unimaginably difficult
enterprise. If we do not make too many mistakes, it should also be
unimaginably rewarding.
Roy Ascott
While traditionally the plastic arts directed us to the surface appearance
of things, our attention is now turned towards the invisible, to processes
of emergence and complexity, and the bringing-into-being of consciousness,
form and meaning. Post-biological systems, the ubiquitous Net, intelligent
architecture, artificial life, are significant elements in an emergent
world view which opens up unprecedented pathways for development in
art and science, as well as demanding new moral and ethical values
for the kind of worlds we can envisage and eventually construct. Equally,
they challenge the immutability of human identity, offering the prospect
of transformation and distribution of the self.
The history of this changing attitude lies more with developments
in science and technology than in philosophy, political theory or,
until recently, the arts. But it is in art now, in its alliance with
digital systems and new technologies, that models of our post-biological
behaviour can be engendered and refined. Our cultural immersion in
interactivity, transformative systems and hyperlinked structures,
set in virtual spaces, with world wide connectivity, may lead to the
next evolutionary leap. All fields of knowledge have become permeable,
all systems connect. The paradox is that, after the relentless materialism
of the industrial age, it is technology and science which are foregrounding
issues of consciousness, mind and spirit, and it is in consort with
a telematic and radically constructive art, that we can see the prospect
of a truly noetic culture.
Arata Isozaki
When will the urban and architectural melt-down occur ?
$B!!(BInformation media are expected to lead to great changes in the
forms of architecture. However, this is not going to happen so easily.
The idea of completely wiring office buildings for the commercial
application of aerospace technology surfaced more than a decade ago.
The point behind such buildings, whichare called "smart"
in the United States and "intelligent" in Japan, was to
bring all kinds of information media into the office space. The idea
was put into practice, but made absolutely no change in building appearance.
This is because the wires linking the various information media were
embedded into the floors, walls, and ceilings. Overinflated expectations
that information media would change architecture were therefore betrayed.
This raises the question of whether or not virtual space have an impact
on actual space. To consider it, let us picture an operator interfacing
a media terminal. He can enter the virtual space within the media
and take a long journey in it. However, all that would be seen by
an observer would be a machine and an operator sitting before it.
In this sense, the observer is in actual space, and the operator is
in virtual space. In this scene, architecture is on the side of the
observer. The appearance of the interior may remain totally unchanged.
The organization of work has merely made this interrelationship more
complex. As such, unless there is a fundamental change in this organization,
there need be no change in the form of architecture.
One form of architecture that did undergo early change was the unmanned
factory. This is a building that is not for human access. It permits
unusual design. The paradox is that people cannot experience this
space.
Nevertheless, cities are already showing signs of melt-down. Buildings
are beginning to lose their facades, which used to receive the most
emphasis. Architecture is a type of media sending a message to the
city, and the facade was its face. But its place has since been taken
by billboards, signs, and decorative illumination. Moreover, these
elements are not fixed in a certain place, but are diffuse, blinking,
and in flux.
It would be unreasonable to expect buildings to retain a stable make-up.
Buildings themselves have become mechanisms, networked stations in
vast large-scale development, while on the other hand the interiors
of even small, cramped buildings are crowded with countless different
elements. Interactivity, which is beginning to come to the fore in
the operation of new media, will probably destroy any remaining stability.
Building composition will be ignored, giving rise to an appearance
that might be described as "unformed."
Until very recently, cities and architecture encompassed space that
was physically comprehensible. They were grounded in human proportions.
This human proportionality shaped and solidified our perception of
space. The space of virtual reality is starting to erode this basic
perception. We are moving from a transparent concept of space to an
ambivalent, dizzying one. The transition is changing the paradigm
of proportionality, which is becoming generative.
The aforementioned harbingers of meltdown suggest that we are in the
midst of a landmark shift from anthropomorphism to demiurgomorphism.
This shift can be outlined as follows.
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Anthropomorphism
Hierarchical (City structure) Diffuse
Ordered (Building composition)
Proportionate (Spatial relationship with the human body)
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Demiurgomorphism
Diffuse
Interchangeable
Generative
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Shigehiko Hasumi
Rebirth
The notion of looking to Gutenberg for the origin of print culture,
if not exactly mistaken, must be termed indicative of an excessively
abstract view of history. Rotary presses ushered in by advances
in thermodynamics during the mid-nineteenth century made possible
high-speed printing, and it was only when such presses began to
turn out printed matter in massive quantities that printing arrived
as a medium befitting modern society. All types of media have such
a moment of second birth. Art since the start of the modern period,
like the novel, must be discussed in connection with this rebirth.
When was the second birth of cinema, which was added to theportfolio
of human property in the late nineteenth century thanks to the creative
workof the Lumi$BqS(Be brothers and Edison. Scientific and technological
advancesbrought the invention of the talkie, the introduction of
color film, and the incorporation of electronic media, but none
of these developments qualifies as the moment of second birth as
media. This rebirth can instead be regarded as having taken place
on a global scale around 1934; there has not been any fundamental
change in cinema as media ever since. However, an assertion that
this second birth coincided with the rise of fascism is not necessarily
correct. Cinema clearly entered a new stage in its history at that
time, but the moment of this change can be identified not by historical
science but by semiotics, which is capable of analysis of structural
phenomena.
From 1934, the year that Hitler, Stalin, and Roosevelt came topower,
through 1935, cinema obviously took its place as a medium tailoredto
popular society, whether in Hollywood, Berlin, or Leningrad. This
transformation could be characterized as a narratological revolution.
In the society of the 1930s, demands began to surface everywhere
to the effect that it was not permissible to watch the scenes unfolding
on the screen. In the process, cinema ceased being a visual object
and was reorganized into an object suited to imagination via ideals.
The change took place not only in Japan and Germany but also in
the United States and Soviet Union. It might be paraphrased as a
taboo on visual effects and the establishment of the predominance
of the narrative. In all countries, a visual stability that was
in service to the story made cinema more transparent. That this
was nothing less than a second birth of cinema is what I shall show
by examining two films shot in 1934, "Footlight Parade, "
directed by Lloyd Bacon, and "Chapayev," directed by the
Vassiliev brothers.
Jeffrey Shaw
THE DIS-EMBODYED RE-EMBODYED BODY
The history of art exemplifies a complex set of negotiations between
body and space - negotations between the actual domain of the real
body of the viewer and the space he inhabits, and the virtual domain
of represented bodies and spaces. The technologies of immaterial
representation have opened a pandoras box of new relationships between
the viewer and the artwork. The desire for the dissolution of the
corporeal artwork seems to be consistent with the avant guardistic
ambition for the convergence between 'art and life'. A new aesthetics
comes to the fore - the artwork is more and more embodied in the
interface, in the articulation of a dynamic meeting space between
the artwork and the viewer.
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Monday,October 21,1996 13:00-16:00 [Finished]
yurakucho Asahi Hall