Subject: ANC: Symposium - terms of engagement - [soft information architecture]

From: [email-masked] (Peter Erni)
Date: 7 Apr 1995 01:53:34 -0400

ANNOUNCEMENT  
  
Symposium: terms of engagement  
Pratt Institute School of Architecture  
NYC  
  
A panel discussion on the impact of digital information space on
architecture and related design fields.  An investigation of the present
state of emerging and developing technologies that are directly affecting
the defintion of architecture and the role of architects and designers.   
  
Additional info in this document:  List of Panelists, Schedule, Detailed
Description.  
  
for more information:  
email [email-masked] or [email-masked] or call 718.636.3405  
 
Peter Erni  John Veikos 
_____________________________________________________________________________  
List of Panelists:  
  
Alan Wexelblat - Researcher with the Autonomous Agents Group, MIT Media
Lab.  Current research involves the development of intelligent software
agents designed to aid people in the management of dense information
spaces.  
  
Jeet Singh - Founding partner of Art Technology Group, which creates
hardware and software for multifarious new media venues: museum
installations, the workplace, retail environments, CD-ROMS and on-line
services.  Recent projects include the development of the network groupware
for Chiat/Day Advertising.  
  
Marcos Novak - Director of the Advanced Design Research Program, School of
Architecture at the University of Texas at Austin.  Currently investigating
the architecture of virtual and intelligent environments - extreme
intermedia; employing algorithmic techniques to compose actual, virtual and
hybrid worlds.  
  
Heinrich Schnoedt - Architectural Theorist/Lecturer at the Virginia
Polytechnic Institute.  Pursues research on a number of issues concerning
Architecture’s dilemma with digital technology.  Current work is centered
around epistemological constructs in the education of architects, including
the influences of digital media.  
  
Alberto Pérez-Gómez - Saidye Rosner Bronfman Professor of the History of
Architecture, School of Architecture at McGill University.  The author of
several books including Architecture and the Crisis of Modern Science.
Current work addresses questions of architectural representation in
digitally mediated information spaces.   
_____________________________________________________________________________  
Schedule:  
  
Monday. April 24. 1995  
  
Afternoon Presentations  
  
3:00 pm	John Veikos and Peter Erni  -  Opening Introduction  
3:10	Alan Wexelblat  -  Current Work  
3:40	Jeet Singh  -  Current Work  
4:10	Break	  
4:30	Marcos Novak  -  Current Work  
5:00	Heinrich Schnoedt  -  Current Work  
5:30	Alberto Pérez-Gómez  -  Current Work  
6:00	End	  
6:05	Break and Video Snips	  
		  
Evening Panel Discussion  
		  
7:00	Dan Bucsescu  -  Opening Remarks  
7:05	John Veikos and Peter Erni  -  Opening Introduction  
7:10	Panel Discussion	  
8:30	End  
_____________________________________________________________________________  
Detailed Description:  
  
Are you speaking of Architecture or architecture?  In a world of
accelerating spatial complexity with respect to information, one is
increasingly more likely to come across the word architecture used in
reference to things not of capital *A* [A]rchitecture.  The evolution of
information [production/distribution] systems - digital technology being
the latest manifestation - embodies the desire to increase the intensity
and precision of the terms that describe the nature and scope of realness. 

*[A]rchitecture is a hard information system.*   
  
The task with which Architecture has been historically and still is charged
with, the research and development of form encompassing and defining
relevant cultural idioms [latencies], has not changed.  The potential of
reading history through Architecture with extreme power and depth expresses
the potency of this, the task of Architecture.  However, the familiar and
expected terms of engagement [methodologies] in the discourse of
Architecture in this moment are not capable of maximizing that potency
given the disjunction of those cultural latencies and existing
methodologies.  It is this present trajectory of Architectural discourse
within the larger context of a society at the end of a millennia
super-absorbed by its own technological fabulousness, that is the subject
of this symposium.  
  
As soft information delivery systems such as the Netscape WWW Browser and
the hardware they employ become inevitably more powerful, their authoring
languages more sophisticated, and their extension into the physical world
more pervasive and seductive, so will their spatial complexity develop to a
degree where the architecture of those environments will be essential to
their success.  These will be parameter based pro-active architectures;
highly customizable, extremely intimate, and very intelligent.  The nature
of occupiable space and meaningful place are becoming more complex and have
already moved into cyberspatial domains beyond the direct influence of
Architecture.  Within these socio-cultural cyberspatial places, such as
MUD’s, MOO’s, newsgroups, and web pages, the density and structure of
information, the information architecture, is what determines the quality
of experience and degree of usefulness.  And while the level of realness,
or sensorial saturation, in these spaces at the moment is limited to GUI
text driven interfaces, it is only a question of time before more spatially
complex, immersive, tactile interfaces are technically possible.   
-- 
F.C.O.O.C -sorting