autopoiesis & generative architecture · botanic forms in to the first iteration for a canopy...

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Winter ESARQ 2014 Student Handbook

Autopoiesis & Generative Architecture:Systems from Nature & Technology

Digital Visualization Modeling Fabrication

Autopoiesis y Arquitectura Generativa:Sistemas de la Naturaleza y Tecnologa

Visualizacin Digital Modelado Fabricacin

2 Autopoiesis & Generative Architecture 3

Can buildings think? descends from: Can machines think? The original was posed by Alan Turing in 1950 referencing computers and became a

theoretical challenge and then an algorithmic quest implicating biological simulation, artificial intelligence (AI), and synthetic biology. Today we take

AI for granted. It powers Google searches, autopilot in Airbus and Boe-ing airplanes, and game simulators in your Andriod or iOS smartphones. Through lectures, presentations, projects, and discussions this studio will

reformulate Turings visionary question to peruse strategies for how genera-tive architecture is approaching biological and computational intelligence using strategies from nature. We look to technology both for visualization

techniques and for production implementation. In our work we cover theory as it drives ideas for new concepts of material production and performance

inspired by biology. Furthermore, we look to how synthetic biology, AI, and mobile technologies conceptualized in experimental roles impact design and material issues of generative design, environmental justice,

social responsibility, and machine fabrication. The questions: Can machines think? and Can buildings think? thus drive the studio exploring biologi-

cal and computational simulation, intelligent materials, and nature as they emerge for biodigital advanced architecture specifically in the context of

biomimetics, simulation, drawings, and fablab performance.

First Project The first project looks to technological transformations from nature visual-ized from an electron-scanning microscope (right & pp 3-11). This project moves from morphological digital visualizations to produce materials and/

or systems using Rhino and laser, CNC or STL modeling.

Autopoietic-Generative Architecture


Technological Visualization for Design Systems

Assignment 1. The potential of new architectural systems using lightweight easily transported infrastructure is behind this studio investigation. Think of flexible system based in cables and ropes and how through advanced visualization they might join to make nets and frames that could be part of a kiosk or an experimental structure. Consider the way snaps, hooks, anchors, and links work in the natural world. To begin this design research we begin innovating structural and aesthetic architectural junctures. And we look to nature and technology to do it. Connectors are abundant in the plant world with its stickers, thorns, barbs, and burrs; all in one way or another connecting one living thing with another support system. Researching connectors

from seeds, branches, and barbs can be done with a magnifying glass, a light microscope, and more technologically, with an electron scanning microscope. Illustrated here are thorns, invisible to the naked eye the images if explored in terms of structural use will reveal functional properties that may be translated into connector systems for design. Imagine something like Lego + Velcro systems evolved from branches or interlocking cable structures that could lead us to a construction project at a larger scale. The assignment has two parts 1) draw the hook and receptor (see Rhino drawings above); and, 2) fabricate both as a connetion system (next page).


Technological Visualization for Design Systems

Assignment 1. Part #2Branching

Following the research for a connector system, this segment involves ways to interlink the connections in a structural system the link-segments could be blocks like Lego, struts as in geodesic components, or branching systems as illustrated as a revisualized tree growth (left) or as curved STL pieces illustrated (right).


Visualization to Fabrication

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STL Heart Leonardo da Vinci: The Mechanics of Man

The Queens GalleryPalace of Holyroodhouse

Edinburgh, Scotland02 August 2013 to 10 November 2013

STL Model by Dr. Gregory GibbonsWMG: University of Warwick, England

The STL model originated as a CT scan exported as an STL file and printed on an Connex 260 and

the material is Veroclear. The model is not directly manufactured from Leonards drawings but was in-

tended to accompany them as a demonstration of the correctness of da Vincis anatomical observations.

Left, heart detail: Leonardos, The Cardiovascular System and Principal Organs of a Woman. 1509-10.

STL Demonstration ModelDennis Dollens, 2011

Plant branching from a generated digital tree used as a structural bridge frame. Generated

in Xfrog, exported & edited in Rhino and exported again as an STL file for 3D printing.

YouTube video of early digital tree growth experiments.

Modeling Anatomy & Morphology
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3IVPXDitEc


Autopoiesis:Leaf: Structure, Membrane, Performance

The Xfrog, L-system drawing above activates biological algorithms to model stem and leaf growth behavior and provide a window to potential folding and unfolding for building performances determined by the buildings design parameters and expected responses to environmental conditions both inside and out.

Assignment 2: BioRobotic LeafInvestigation here begins with the selection of a leaf. First: Identify your own leaf and gather biological data. The next step is to draw how the leaf unfolds, its morphological development and to articulate its structural support and circulatory system on different drawing layers. The design principles involve materialization between the structural network of the leaf (its veins), its system of communication (its veins) and its cellular performative the surface.


Mobile Mediated Environment: Leaf MorphologyMedio Ambiente Mobile mediada: morfologa de las hojas

Leaf morphology (top) played a role in the genera-tive design (above) of a tobacco leaf used to extend botanic forms in to the first iteration for a canopy shelter (right).

Morfologa de las hojas (parte superior)jugaron un papel en el diseo generativo(arriba) de una hoja de tabaco que seutiliza para extender las formas botnicas en la primera iteracin de un refugio del dosel (derecha).


Student Projet Rubber Band Bridge

Rubber Band BridgeThis project began with an investigation of branching systems using L-Systems and quickly reached the stage of a 2.5m recon-figurable structure built with standard rubber bands. It demonstrates emergent and distrib-uted strength, easily supporting the weight of a person.

Rubber Band Puente Este proyecto se inici con una investigacin de la ramificacin sistemas que utilizan L-Systems y rpidamente llegaron a la etapa de una estructura reconfigurable 2,5 m con-struidos con bandas de goma estndar. Esto demuestra la fuerza emergente y distribuida, fcilmente soportar el peso deuna persona.

ESARQ. BioDigital Architecture MasterDigital Biomimetic Studio, 2010Dennis Dollens, professorStudents: Milos Raonic, Homer Garcia,and Juan Padro.Oriol Palau, structural testing.


Student Work:10m Tensegrity TowerTrabajos de Estudiantes: Torre Tensegridad 10m


This brief video illustrates non-standard urban visualiza-tions and place mapping with a digital overlay of a living organism. What does ALife mean here? Is it important to know we are in Paris? What does it tell us about its makers views of urban occupation and movement. Im previewing it here for you to have a sense of the type of material that can propel class projects. What is this videos relationship to graffiti for example, and how could we learn from its tech-nology and aesthetics using mobile phones as research and production equipment? What does it tell us about marking place or making signs? Is there a narrative? Are we enter-ing the territory of e-games?

Rhetorical questions perhaps, but one of the responses to class could be a series of linked, mobile produced & edited in the field, biomimetic research videos. Graffiti videos a minute or under. Hit-and-run ideas, tested for generative idea value.

Are urban spaces technologically alive? In a digital age what does place, space, & time mean for mobile e-learning? What is mobile research and design medi-ated by a smartphone? How can it be understood as generative, contributing to ideas of presence, environment, screen ID, occupation of space & ALife?

Asignacin de Presencia Mapping Presence: The Projected Life

le3paris Golden Tigerhttp://vimeo.com/36338299

En la era digital, qu lugar, espacio, y tiempo medio para mviles de e-learn-ing? Qu es la investigacin celular y mediada por el diseo de un telfono inteligente? Cmo puede ser entendida como generadora, lo que contribuye a las ideas de la presencia, medio ambiente, la pantalla del identificador, y la ocupacin del espacio?

Para el Urban Drift: Este breve video muestra no estndar visualizaciones de mapas urbanos y lugar. Qu lugar de decir aqu? Es importante saber que estamos en Pars? Qu nos dice acerca de puntos de vista de su autor de la ocupacin urbana y el movimiento. Yo estoy aqu para obtener una vista previa que usted tenga una idea del tipo de material que puede impulsar proyectos de clase. Cul es la relacin de este vdeo con el graffiti, por ejemplo, y cmo podemos aprender de su tecnologa y la esttica que utilizan los telfonos mviles como equipos de produc-cin? Qu nos dice acerca de marcar el lugar o hacer signos? Existe una narrativa? Estamos entrando en el territorio de los e-juegos?

Las preguntas retricas, pero quizs una de las respuestas a uDrift podra ser una serie de mviles enlazados, produci-dos y editados en el campo de video, comentarios. Graffiti vdeos, un minuto o menos. Las ideas de golpear y correr, la prueba del valor de la comunicacin en el m-learning. (34-35)

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le3paris Golden Tiger

http://vimeo.com/36338299

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http://vimeo.com/36338299http://vimeo.com/36338299http://vimeo.com/36338299


Apps


The class uses a suite of apps that provide communication lines between mem-bers a screen base where we receive messages, images, & videos; sites where collaboration might take place. In a sense, the apps ground the class in asynchronous time and dispersed locations. The class, in the mode of mobile e-learning then becomes a hybrid facilitator between your work, your digital equipment, and the place(s) you map, track, overlay, video, photograph, write about, make music for, sculpt, or build. It helps create and organize data layers for a mobile screen presence in a kind of m-leaning atlas of space, form, and time.

TweetDeck for Laptops, iOS, & Android Free Mobile Twitter Tweet7 Vine Ning

La clase utiliza un conjunto de aplica-ciones que ofrecen las lneas de comu-nicacin entre los miembros - una base de la pantalla donde recibimos mensajes, imgenes, y vdeos, sitios donde la colaboracin puede tener lugar. En cierto sentido, las aplicaciones de tierra de la clase en el tiempo asncrono y ubicacio-nes dispersas. La clase, como un tipo de mviles de e-learning se convierte en un facilitador hbrido entre su trabajo, su equipo digital, y el lugar (s) de asignar, pista, cubierta, vdeo, fotografa, escribir, hacer msica para, esculpir, o construir. Ayuda a crear y organizar las capas de da-tos para una presencia en la pantalla mvil en una especie de m de tendencia atlas de espacio, la forma y el tiempo.

hashtag:

#aupo

There are many Twitter ag-gregators available. Tweet7 is illustrated because of its fast graphic presentation and clear design. Above a video made with Vine is illustrated.

https://vine.twitter.com/


TweetDeck for Sequential Texts & ManifestosTweetDeck para los Textos secuenciales y Manifiestosx

Always include the #aupo hashtag, and as long as each member of the class is following, we can sync and exchange messages, images, and brief videos. TweetDeck for desktops and mobiles collects and organizes all posts. The hashtag organizes the class in a social media space for informal talk as well as announcements.

Siempre incluya el hashtag #aupo, y siempre y cuando cada miembro de la clase est siguiendo, podemos sincronizar e intercam-biar mensajes, imgenes y vdeos cortos. Tweet-Deck para computadoras de escritorio y mviles recopila y organiza todos los mensajes. El hashtag organiza la clase en un espacio social los medios de comunicacin para la conversacin informal, as como anuncios.

TweetDeckhttps://tweetdeck.twitter.com/

Class Hashtag#aupo

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Mobile Tracking Cycling Walking MapMyRide

With a tracking program working in the background, it is often pos-sible to use location screen shots in ongoing conversations and work distribution and documenta-tion. Such posts can be organized with research during fieldwork or linked to ongoing information collection and later coordinated with the maps. Consider how MapMyRide groupings image/video, location could be orga-nized for indexing research data and/or presentations.

MapMyRidehttp://www.mapmyride.com/app/


The OlloClip Macro Lens(iPhones only)

Morphology Field Research:The OlloClip Macro Lens

http://www.olloclip.com/3-in-1-iphone-macro-lens/

(See pps 58-59)

Adobe: SketchBookX with image from the Olloclip

Morphology Field Research with an OlloClip Macro Lens image used as a template layer in Sketchbook Mobile.

http://www.olloclip.com/

http://www.sketchbook.com/sketchbookmobile

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Adobe IdeasiOS & Android

$9.99

Adobe Ideas Bloghttp://blogs.adobe.com/

adobeideas/

AutoDesk SketchBookX Android & iOS Free

This is a very good app for sketching that also imports photos allowing you to draw or annotate them. However, there is no free version . . . see next page for an excellent alternative.

SketchBook is a beautiful drawing tool with a great airbrush feature. There is both a free and a pro ver-sion. Most screen draw-ings reproduced in this handbook were sketched with it.

Esta es una aplicacin muy buena para dibujar, que tambin importa las fotos que le permite dibujar o escribir en ellos. Sin em-bargo, no hay una versin libre. . . vea la pgina siguiente de una excelente alternativa.

SketchBook es una herra-mienta de dibujo hermoso con una funcin de gran aergrafo. No es tanto una gratuita y una versin profesional. La mayora de los dibujos de la pan-talla se reproducen en este manual fueron trazados con la misma.

. . . if you dont like drawing with your finger; remember a touchscreen stylus . . .

. . . si no te gusta dibujar con el dedo; Recuerdo a un lpiz tctil . . .

Adobe Ideas Android & iOS $9.95

click click

SketchbookiOS & Android Free

http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/
http://blogs.adobe.com/adobeideas/http://blogs.adobe.com/adobeideas/http://blogs.adobe.com/adobeideas/ http://usa.autodesk.com/adsk/servlet/pc/


Mobile CAD FormIt (Autodesk) iPad & Android Browser Version in Beta

Mobile CAD 123D Design (Autodesk) iPad, Mac, Windows, & Web App Free

http://autodeskformit.com/ http://www.123dapp.com/designclick click
http://www.123dapp.com/designhttp://autodeskformit.com/


Mobile FAB (sort of) 123D Make (Autodesk)iPad, iPhone, Android, Mac, & PC

Mobile Scanning xxxx (Autodesk) iPad & Android Browser Version in Beta

http://www.123dapp.com/make

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http://www.123dapp.com/make


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QR Code Generator & Scanner Android & iOS FreeQR Code Generator y Escner de Android y iOS Libre

The Red Wheelbarrow Meets QR Codes & GPS Distribution

One possible use of QR codes for learning is to code sequential messages, manifestos, or poetry and distribute them variously through a mapped trail of discovery. The locations could be predetermined and included in the QR generation to lead read-ers or students to the next sites (the printed codes could be tied or taped where other graffiti is found.) The possibility of learning games created with literary, botanic, art, or program information and linked over a learn-ing course is huge. In this approach there are strong relationships to the MScEL course, Introduc-tion to Digital Game Based Learning where our map-ping and tracking relate to game courses strategies: go there: do this: get that.

Un posible uso de los cdigos QR para el apren-dizaje consiste en codificar los mensajes secuen-ciales, manifiestos, o de la poesa y los distribuyen de diversas maneras a travs de una ruta asignada de descubrimiento. Los lugares podran ser prede-terminada y se incluye en la generacin de QR para llevar a los lectores o los estudiantes a los lugares prximos (los cdigos impresos pueden atar o pegar donde el graffiti se encuentra otro.) La posibilidad de aprender los juegos creados con el bo-tnico literario, el arte, o la informacin del programa y conectados a travs de un curso de aprendizaje es enorme. En este enfoque, hay una fuerte relacin con el curso, Introduccin a la MScEL aprendizaje del juego digital basada en nuestra cartografa y el seguimiento se refieren a campos de juego de es-trategias: ir all: Haga esto: conseguir eso.

Wikipedia The Red Wheelbarrowhttp://en.wikipedia.org/

wiki/The_Red_Wheelbar-row

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read

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QR GeneratoriOS & Android

http://qrcode.kaywa.com/(Static Codes Free)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Red_Wheelbarrow


Experiments


electiveLa Ampliacin de la M-Nociones de Investigacin:Archivos Mviles, Biomimtica, y Diseo

Ernst Haeckel: Die Radiolarien

http://caliban.mpiz-koeln.mpg.de/haeckel/radiolar-

ien/

This project uses mi-croscopic organisms for both material and form. In a sense Radiolarians have glass exoskeletons. Whereas human skeletons are made of calcium, these are made of silica. And they grow in an astonish-ing array of forms. Search the website either on a desktop or mobile, select a radiolarian to work with and bring that from into a new use this can be done by hybridizing new shapes and/or developing a new material approach based in structure and us-ing glass biomimetically.

Wikipedia Radiolarian

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiolarian

Este proyecto utiliza organismos microscpi-cos de material y forma. En un sentido radiolarios tienen exoesqueletos de vidrio. Considerando esqueletos humanos estn hechos de calcio, estos estn hechos de slice. Y crecer en una sorpren-dente variedad de formas. Buscar en el sitio web ya sea en un escritorio o mvil, seleccione una de radiolarios de trabajar y aportar en la que a partir de un nuevo uso - esto se puede hacer por hib-ridacin de formas nuevas y / o desarrollo de un enfoque nuevo material basado en la estructura y el uso de vidrio biomi-metically.

Consider implications for design including mem-

branes, panels, skeletons, nets, & geodesic structures Function in the environ-ment Determine if other

organisms have glass skeletons. (26-27)

Considerar las implica-ciones para el diseo,

incluyendo las membranas, paneles, esqueletos, redes, y las estructuras geodsicas Funcin en el medio am-biente Determinar si otros organismos tienen esquele-

tos de cristal. (26-27)Metabolic Glass Structures

Las estructuras de vidrio metablicos

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Expanding Notions of M-Research:Mobile Archives, Biomimetics, & Design
http://caliban.mpiz-koeln.mpg.de/haeckel/radiolarien/http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiolarian


electiveExpanding Notions of M-Research:Virtual Microscopes

Scanning Electron Microscopes

Life forms with silica (glass) skeletons present material challenges when imagining biodigital struc-tures and materials. Exten-sion of ideas from such re-search to design is assisted through exposure to nature at shifted scales where the atomic-field is made vis-ible by scanning electron microscopes (SEM) and

other instruments. In terms of our visual and morpho-logical research, the use of scientific equipment is productive in design for illuminating or inspiring new realms not only of forms and materials, but of connectors, spaces, and massing. Optical equip-ment presents new chan-nels for visualization.

University of Illinois Virtual Microscope

http://virtual.itg.uiuc.edu/

Las formas de vida con slice (vidrio) material de esqueletos presentan retos al imaginar las estructuras Biodigital y materiales. Extensin de las ideas de este tipo de investig-acin para el diseo con la ayuda de su exposicin a la naturaleza a escalas desplazadas, cuando se efecte el campo atmico

visible por microscopios electrnicos de barrido (SEM) y otros instrumen-tos. En trminos de nuestra investigacin visual y morfolgica, el uso de equipamiento cientfico es productivo en el diseo de nuevos reinos iluminacin o inspiracin, no slo de formas y materiales, sino de conectores, espacios y

masajeando. Equipo ptico presenta nuevos canales para la visualizacin.

Consider low-tech alternative visualizing

Metabolic Glass StructuresLas estructuras de vidrio metablicos

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http://virtual.itg.uiuc.edu/


Mobile Mediated Environment: Leaf Investigation

Medio Ambiente Mediada Mvil:Hoja de Investigacin

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This leaf, tracked at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, presents four views for an advanced 3D structural translation into the leaf panel (far right). But for urban drift, considered in situ, it pro-vides ideas for translation into drawing, sketches, or video.

Esta hoja, seguido en el Real Jardn Botnico de Edimburgo, presenta cuatro puntos de vista de una avanzada de traduc-cin estructural en 3D en el panel de la hoja (a la derecha). Sin embargo, la deriva urbana, considerada in situ, que proporciona ideas para la traduccin al dibujo, bocetos, o el vdeo.

If you think of Leaves as shape-

shifting organisms, what quality does

that invoke?

Si usted piensa en las hojas como cambiar de forma los organismos, lo que la calidad es

que invocan?

Right and above: The leaf influenced the layered structure, embedded sensors, and curving form for an air-exchange, architectural panel.

Derecho y, sobre: La hoja de influencia de la estructura en capas, sen-sores integrados, y la forma curva de un aire de cambio, el panel de la arquitectura.

Leaf to Leaf Panel

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Seedpod Data & MorphologyDatos Cpsula de Semillas y Morfologa

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The important point here is not the generative results; it is the original visualiza-tion of how the seedpods rotational flight path is phenotypic with extract-able practical information available to observation, while being convertible to visualized data. The seedpods flight is influ-enced by environmental factors such as wind velocity, sine frequency, and seedpod trajectory. Natural forces thus alter the shape of its subsequent spirals. This is information useful to project research. And, such data is available to observation at almost every point in the natural world, here without scien-tific equipment. It is a core lesson for understanding biomimetics as they meet technology.

Three spirals of differing direction and frequency were used from seedpod flight to generate this footbridge.

Tres espirales de direccin diferente y la frecuencia se utilizaron en el vuelo vaina para generar esta pasarela.

El punto importante aqu no es los resultados gener-ativos, es la visualizacin original de cmo el camino de la vaina de vuelo de ro-tacin es fenotpica con la informacin extrable prc-tica accesible a la obser-vacin, siendo convertible a los datos visualizados. El vuelo de vaina est influenciada por factores ambientales tales como la velocidad del viento, la frecuencia de seno, y la trayectoria de vaina. Las fuerzas naturales as alterar la forma de sus espirales posteriores. Esta infor-macin es til a la inves-tigacin del proyecto. Y, estos datos est disponible para la observacin en casi todos los puntos en el mundo natural, aqu sin equipo cientfico. Es una leccin fundamental para la comprensin de la biomimtica y cuando cumplan con la tecnologa.

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3D Spirals

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Mobile Video, Distribution & App Production Vdeo Mvil, Distribucin y App Produccin

Yucca Video #1 TestYouTube

http://youtu.be/9smfLA_2Huo

The idea illustrated here is to use video as a tool of discovery, documentation, and research employing in-phone apps. By making very brief one minute for example videos, you can explore specific aspects of a subject. Using an app video editor (here iMovie) production can be completed outdoors or in a cafe, associated with MapMyRide or Google Maps and distributed via TweetDeck or other social media.

La idea se ilustra aqu es utilizar el video como una herramienta de descu-brimiento, documentacin, investigacin y empleo de aplicaciones en un telfono mvil. Al hacer muy breve - un minuto, por ejemplo - vdeos, usted puede explorar aspectos especficos de un tema. El uso de un editor de vdeo aplicacin (en este caso de iMovie) la produccin se puede realizar al aire libre o en un caf, asociada con los mapas de Google y MapMyRide o distribuidos a travs de TweetDeck u otros medios de comuni-cacin social.

in-Phone video edit posted to YouTube

Mobile Video playing from YouTube

iMovie iOS $4.99http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/imovie/id377298193?mt=8

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VidTrim Android Freehttps:a//play.google.com/

store/apps/details?id=com.goseet.VidTrim

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Flowers spiral distribution

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http://youtu.be/9smfLA_2Huohttp://itunes.apple.com/us/app/imovie/id377298193?mt=8https:a//play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.goseet.VidTrim


L-Systems & Generative BioAlgorithmsL-Systems y BioAlgorithms Generativas

Generated from interlock-ing tree branches using Xfrog, Rhino, and MAX to create an exoskeleton (box, left), the project is visual-ized to include robotic ac-

tuators (second from left) here represented as spheres that control leaf-like panels that open and close for ventilation and light, as well as filter the air. Based on tree structures, leaf functions, and seedpod spaces the tower illustrates digital biomimetic systems visualized as both bioro-botic, living, and environ-mentally friendly.

Generado a partir de ramas de rboles entrelazadas con Xfrog, Rhino, y MAX para crear un exoesqueleto (caja de la izquierda), el proyecto se visualiza

para incluir actuadores robticos (segundo desde la izquierda) en este caso representado como esferas que controlan como la hoja de los paneles que se abren y cierran para ventilacin y la luz, as como un filtrado del aire. Sobre la base de estructuras de rbol, las funciones de la hoja, y los espacios de vaina de la torre ilustra digitales sistemas biomimticos visualizarse como vivos biorobotic, y no agresivos medioambientalmente.

Seedpods & Leaves influence BioRobotic Panels

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Territory


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Cycle Drive, Flnerie & uDriftCiclo de Drive, y Flnerie uDrift

For most students, map-ping and documenting environmental influences and research subjects will be in urban or suburban locations. But there is no reason not to consider a bicycle in a rural or city context. The program eas-ily accommodates discov-ery, exploration, documen-tation, and site research from walking or riding. If you decide to use a bicycle one aspect to keep in mind is the emergence of cycling culture in the from of neighborhood develop-ment, city markings of bike lanes, public policy, bike cafes, and specialized forms such as fixies. Here, a project yucca (32-33) is documented with a pin drop in MapMyRide and later exported to Google Earth as part of research data.

Para la mayora de los estudiantes, la cartografa y la documentacin de las influencias ambientales y temas de investigacin sern en lugares urbanos o suburbanos. Pero no hay razn para no consid-erar una bicicleta en un contexto rural o ciudad. El programa se adapta fcil-mente a descubrimiento, exploracin, document-acin e investigacin del sitio de caminar o montar a caballo. Si usted decide usar una bicicleta un as-pecto a tener en cuenta es la aparicin de la cultura de la bicicleta en el barrio de las marcas a partir del desarrollo de la ciudad, de los carriles para bicicletas, las polticas pblicas, cafs para bicicletas, y las for-mas especializadas como fixies. Aqu, un proyecto de yuca (32-33) se docu-menta con una cada de un alfiler en MapMyRide y posteriormente exporta-do a Google Earth como parte de los datos de la investigacin.


electiveMobile Mediated Environment:Tracking Graffiti

Mobile Mediated EnvironmentTracking Graffiti

Google Mobile Latitudehttp://www.google.com/

mobile/latitude/

Documenting, mapping, cross referencing, and interpreting graffiti is a way of reading the con-temporary city (42-43). Insights into art, politics, and environment are expressed, often reflecting local qualities of neighbor-hoods as well as readings of contemporary art and graphics. By mapping, reading, and layering graf-fiti, a record of ephemeral flnerie creates mobile documents open to alt research (42-45).

La documentacin, carto-grafa, referencias cruza-das, y la interpretacin de graffiti es una forma de leer la ciudad contem-pornea (42-43). Miradas en el arte, la poltica, y el medio ambiente se expre-san, a menudo refleja las cualidades de los barrios locales, as como lecturas de arte contemporneo y los grficos. Mediante la cartografa, la lectura, y capas de graffiti, un registro de flnerie efmera crea documentos mviles abiertos a la investigacin alt (42-45).

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Urban Tattoos?

If you consider architecture as elements of an urban body, by extension would graf-fiti have a role in marking, signing, and communication similar to that of tattoos written on a body?

Does this change our perceptions of ur-ban space and the nature of u-drift? How is this related to Flnerie and/or Drive?

Do we alter the notion of narrative struc-ture if we consider urbanisms and bodies related via semiotics, data, form?

Does the idea of written on a body take new aesthetic and political meaning when considered as performance? As politics?

Can you track narrative, sign, and symbolic meaning via graffiti vis--vis tattoos?

Mobile Mediated Semiotics: Graffiti as Urban TattoosMviles Semitica Mediadas: Graffiti como Tatuajes Urbanos

Writing the City / Writing the BodyEscritura de la Ciudad / Escritura del Cuerpo

Tatuajes urbanos?

Si se considera la arquitectura como ele-mentos de un cuerpo urbano, por extensin, que el graffiti tiene un papel en la marca, la firma, y de la comunicacin similar a la de los tatuajes por escrito en un cuerpo?

Se modific nuestra percepcin del espacio urbano y la naturaleza de la u-la deriva? Cmo se relaciona esto con Flanerie y / o derivar?

Se altera la nocin de estructura nar-rativa si tenemos en cuenta urbanismos y organismos relacionados a travs de la semitica, los datos del formulario?

La idea de escribir en un cuerpo a tomar un nuevo significado esttico y poltico cuando se considera como el rendimiento? Como la poltica?

Puede realizar un seguimiento de la narrativa, el signo y el significado sim-blico a travs del graffiti vis--vis los tatuajes?

Is the screen shot of an Urban Tattoo? What about the drawing/inscription on

the building, left?


La Arquitectura como de Graffiti

This is a study model made at the site where a bit of palm bark was found. Its joined with a broken zip-tie. The idea is to generate bio-models from found material. Study and document them on the site, leave them as 3D graffiti, and then generate digital models from the experi-ence. (46-47)

Se trata de un modelo de estudio realizado en el sitio donde se encontr un poco de corteza de palma. A esto se une con una fractura de las bridas. La idea es gen-erar bio-modelos a partir de material encontrado. Estudiar y documentar que en el sitio, dejarlos como el graffiti en 3D, a con-tinuacin, generar modelos digitales de la experiencia. (46-47)

Architecture as Graffiti

The models provide form & material data for later studio translation.

Los modelos proporcionan los datos del formulario y material para la traduccin de estudio ms adelante.


elective

Mobile Mediated Environment: Found Objects & Graffiti Sculpture

This is one of many ap-proaches for using found natural objects for design. (44-45) It is an investi-gation and has an open trajectory where you define the project research you undertake. This is an e-learning deployment to blend the uses of technol-ogy, urban, and natural observation for form, structure, composition, connections, and struc-tures. The project need not be with shells; it could successfully be researched with leaves, feathers, flow-ers, bones, seedpods etc. The goal is transition; to engage natural elements for design invention; the results of which do not look like what you began with. Your time in the field should be used to inves-tigate materials and build or assemble materials as form/structure studies. Your models may be built on site and revisited many times or almost instantly lost. Think of the models as small urban interven-tions as 3D graffiti.

Este es uno de los muchos enfoques para el uso de ob-jetos naturales encontrados para el diseo. (44-45) Se trata de una investigacin y tiene una trayectoria abierta donde se define el proyecto de investigacin que emprendan. Se trata de una implementacin de e-learning para mezclar los usos de la tecnologa, urba-no, y la observacin natu-ral de la forma, estructura, composicin, conexiones y estructuras. El proyecto no tiene que ser con conchas, con xito podra ser investigado con hojas, plumas, flores, huesos, vainas, etc El objetivo es la transicin, para participar los elementos naturales de invencin de diseo, cuyos resultados no se parecen a lo que se inici con . Su tiempo en el campo se debe utilizar para investi-gar materiales y construir o ensamblar materiales como los estudios de la forma / estructura. Sus modelos se pueden construir en el sitio y revisado varias veces o se pierde casi al instante. Piense en los modelos como pequeas interven-ciones urbanas - como el graffiti en 3D.

Entorno Meditico Mvil:Los Objetos Encontrados y Escultura de Graffiti

Natural & synthetic (junk) found objects used for on-site models.Objetos que se encuentran naturales y sintticos utilizados para los modelos en el sitio.


Texts


elective

Mobile Games, Complexity, & DesignJuegos para mvil, la complejidad, y diseo

I began the course playing PacMan on my iPhone. I played all over the city; in the metro and at cafes. After days of playing I saw the game course as a labyrinth and city related.

From that, I looked to PacMans labyrinth as a playing field, maplike, and related to urban drifting. Later I realized that cellu-lar automata, as seen in the Game of Life, could gener-

ate lines, nodes, triangles, squares and rectangles and therefore could be used as a plan or design simulator. Further, these paths (top right) may be extruded to generate 3D compositions.

Underscore Life iOS $0.99http://itunes.apple.com/app/underscore-life/id340143362?mt=8

click

Empec el curso jugar PacMan en mi iPhone. He jugado toda la ciudad, en el metro y en los cafs. Despus de das de juego que vi el transcurso del juego como un laberinto y

de la ciudad relacionados. A partir de eso, me pareca laberinto de PacMan como un campo de juego, map-like, y en relacin con la deriva urbana. Ms tarde me di cuenta de que los

autmatas celulares, como se ve en el juego de la vida, podra generar lneas, nodos, tringulos, cuadra-dos y rectngulos, por lo que podra ser utilizado como un simulador de plan

o diseo. Adems, estos caminos (arriba a la dere-cha) puede ser extruido para generar composicio-nes en 3D.
http://itunes.apple.com/app/underscore-life/id340143362?mt=8


Complexity & Emergence

This image of a bracketed [ant] from a cooking schools banner and logo in Barcelona, attracted me to its graphic design and urban humor (ants clearly know something good when theyre headed to an experimental pastry shop.) As a sign, symbol, or marker it alerts our m-leaning class to how visual language, form, color, design, and graphics are integrated into our biological cognition as well as into the modern urbanism. It illus-trates a means of physical and symbolic communication and ways data is transmitted by abstract and associative signs and symbols (semiotics). For years the ant has been the subject of research concerning emergence, pheromone communica-tion, and bottom-up intelligence. An ants structural and design abilities, their nest building, infrastructure, and management, is frequently con-sidered emergent architecture. For us ants building powers are examples of superorganisms and bioarchitec-ture without architects. Their work is seen as a model of collective, emergent behavior with biologically modified materials. I think of the [ant] sign as part of an emergent text telling us of constantly changing biological assemblies we call a city. Consider: other species may sense or recognize what we see as a city,

as nests or hives. Factoring in a perspective through nature might help us develop skills for reading and interpreting city and natural environments as design research and using that data as design generative. Thats part of the strategy for this class: map new strategies through digital equipment and software that opens percep-tions of new forms, structures, organisms, and design. The unique but not difficult use of mobile smartphones and tablets is developed to link research and investigation of physical and material spaces as well as cultural and environmental

places in a network of connected class tools. Edward O. Wilsons research, begun decades ago with ants has rever-berated through his subsequent work as well as through next-generations of scientists and theorists. In this class we drift over the writings of Wilson to where they intersect Complexity Theory. In this sense, Steven Johnson in his 2001 book, Emergence, factors in insect societies and their consequent structural expression as superorganism:

Just as the social insect deserve to be seen as some of the planets most suc-cessful organisms, so too should the superorganism of the city . . . because they [cities] have done such a good job of rep-

Complejidad y Aparicin

Esta imagen de una corchetes [ ant ] en el estandarte de una escuela de cocina y el logotipo de Barcelona , me atrajo su diseo grfico y humor urbano ( hormigas saben claramente algo bueno cuando se dirigen a un taller experimental de pas-telera. ) Como signo , smbolo , o marcador que alerta a nues-tra clase -m inclinada a cmo el lenguaje visual, forma, color, diseo, y grficos se integran en nuestra cognicin biolgica, as como en el urbanismo moderno . Ilustra un medio de comu-nicacin fsica y simblica y datos maneras se transmite por signos y smbolos ( semitica ) abstractos y asociativos.Durante aos la hormiga ha sido objeto de investigacin en relacin con la emergencia , la comunicacin de feromonas , y la inteligencia de abajo hacia arriba . Capacidades estructurales y de diseo de una hormiga, la construccin del nido , la infraestructura y la gestin , se considera con frecuencia arquitectura emergente . Poderes de construccin Para nosotros de la hormiga son ejem-plos de superorganismos y bioarquitec-tura sin arquitectos. Su trabajo es visto como un modelo de comportamiento emergente colectivo con materiales biolgicamente modificados . Pienso en el signo [ ant ] como parte de un texto emergente decirnos de constante cambio ensamblajes biolgicos que llamamos una ciudad. Considere : otras especies pueden detectar o reconocer

lo que vemos como una ciudad, como nidos o colmenas. Factor-ing en una perspectiva a travs de la naturaleza puede ayudar-nos a desarrollar habilidades para la lectura e interpretacin de la ciudad y los entornos naturales como la investigacin del diseo y el uso de esos datos como diseo generativo . Eso es parte de la estrategia para esta clase: mapear nuevas estrategias a travs de los equi-pos digitales y el software que se abre la percepcin de nuevas formas , estructuras , organis-mos y diseo .El uso nico, pero no es difcil de telfonos inteligentes m-viles y las tabletas se desarrolla para vincular la investigacin

y la investigacin de los espacios fsicos y materiales , as como lugares culturales y ambientales de una red de herramientas de clase conectados.La investigacin de Edward O. Wilson, hace dcadas comenzado con las hormigas ha re-verberado a travs de su obra posterior , as como a travs de prximas generaciones de cientficos y tericos . En esta clase vamos a la deriva en los escritos de Wilson a donde se cruzan Teora de la Complejidad . En este sentido, Steven Johnson en su libro de 2001 , Aparicin, factores en las sociedades de insectos y su expresin estructural conse-cuente como superorganismo :

Del mismo modo que el insecto social, merece ser visto como algunos de los organ-ismos ms exitosos del planeta , tambin lo debera ser el superorganismo de la ciudad. .


licating themselves, drawing in migrant populations from around the world, and encouraging for the most part higher birth rates and longer life spans within their confines. (99)

Recognizing the city as an organ-ism, as part of a living cultural dynamic whose vast complexity drives emergence, then provides us some guidelines for studying and experimenting with gen-erative design systems where the city is employed to provide alternative design ideas and data. From here we could track Wilsons definition: emergence [is] the appearance of complex phenomena not predictable from the basic elements and processes alone (Consilience 94) and hybridize it with Johnsons words stress-ing that laws of entropy are temporarily overcome, and higher-level order may spontaneously emerge out of underly-ing chaos (Emergence 52). In such emergence, we seek generative ideas and research situations to propel approaches to our projects. In doing so, research via mobile research presents to us the question of how to deploy emergence as a research method. Here, we look to Walter Benja-min for a perspective on seeking data in an urban landscape: Perhaps the daily sight of a moving crowd once presented the eye with a spectacle to which it first had to adapt . . . . [T]hen the assumption is not impossible that, having mastered this task, the eye welcomed opportunities to confirm its possession of its new ability. The method of Impressionist painting, whereby the picture is assembled through

a riot of flecks of color, would then be a reflection of experience with which the eye of a big-city dweller has become familiar (The Arcades Project 1999). Through Benjamin we are brought to understand that moving in a city walking and cycling present a political action of analysis that affects biology and culture. We can fuse ideas and data from the city then in ways Ben-jamin understood, analyzed, and observed as related to technology and media; for example via photography, recordings, newspapers, advertising, and cinema. From similar flneur/drive/uDrift sources, we instill a new methodol-ogy for thinking of our research as gen-erative and emergent, as technologically fused and extended into the environment with the apps and software we employ to mediate places, plants, situations, organisms, and environments. Over the course of the next several weeks the emer-gence of ideas, nature, and design may be targeted in order to develop new design-in-the-environment.

Complexity, Emergence, & uDrift Complejidad, Aparicin, y uDrift

. porque [ las ciudades ] han hecho un buen trabajo de replicarse a s mismos tal , el dibujo en las poblaciones migrantes de todo el mundo , y alentando - en su mayora - . altas tasas de natalidad y una vida ms larga se extiende por dentro de sus confines (99 )

Reconociendo la ciudad como un organ-ismo, como parte de una dinmica cultural vivo , por su complejidad inmensa impulsa la emergencia, luego nos dan algunas pautas para el estudio y la experimentacin con los sistemas de diseo generativo donde se emplea la ciudad para aportar ideas de diseo alternativas y datos. A partir de aqu podramos rastrear definicin de Wilson : la emergencia [ es ] la aparicin de fen-menos complejos no predecibles a partir de los elementos y procesos solos bsicas ( Consilience 94) y se hibridan con las palabras de Johnson haciendo hincapi en que las leyes de la entropa se superan tem-poralmente, y superior orden de nivel puede surgir espontneamente del caos subyacente (emergencia 52 ) . En tal emergencia , buscamos las ideas generativas y situaciones de investigacin para impulsar enfoques de nuestros proyectos.De este modo , la investigacin a travs de la investigacin mvil nos presenta la cuestin de cmo implementar la emer-gencia como mtodo de investigacin . Aqu, vemos a Walter Benjamin como una perspectiva en la bsqueda de datos en un paisaje urbano : Tal vez la vista diaria de una multitud en movimiento , una vez presentado el ojo con un espectculo al que primero tuvo que adaptarse . . . . [T ] uando el supuesto no es imposible que , despus de haber dominado esta tarea , el ojo dio la bienvenida a la oportunidad de confirmar su posesin de su nueva habilidad . El mtodo

de la pintura impresionista , en el que la imagen se monta a travs de un derroche de manchas de color, entonces sera un reflejo de la experiencia con la que el ojo de un ha-bitante de la gran ciudad se ha convertido en familiar ( El Libro de los Pasajes , 1999).A travs de Benjamin somos llevados a entender que se mueve en una ciudad - a pie o en bicicleta - presentar una accin poltica de anlisis que afecta a la biologa y la cultura. Podemos fusionar ideas y datos de la ciudad, entonces en formas Benja-min entenda , analizado y observado en relacin con la tecnologa y los medios de comunicacin , por ejemplo a travs de la fotografa, grabaciones , los peridicos , la publicidad y el cine.Desde / fuentes similares flneur / drive / uDrift, inculcamos una nueva metodologa para el pensamiento de nuestra investig-acin como generadora y emergente , como tecnolgicamente fundido y extendido en el medio ambiente con las aplicaciones y el software que empleamos para mediar en los lugares, las plantas, las situaciones, los organismos y entornos . En el transcurso de las prximas semanas, la aparicin de las ideas , la naturaleza y el diseo puede ser dirigido con el fin de desarrollar un nuevo diseo - en-el- medio ambiente.


Flneur to Drive to uDrift: A Means of Doing Research

I. Visualization and spatial history are not about producing illustrations or maps to communicate things that you have discovered by other means. It is a means of doing research: it generates questions that might otherwise go unasked: it reveals historical relations that might otherwise go unnoticed, and it undermines, or substantiates, stories upon which we build our own versions of the past. (Richard White 2010 Para 36 Boldface original. Quoted in Hayles 2012 197).

Occupation of space, generation of ideas, and stewardship of movement through environments involves levels and layers of perceptual selection. And selection, as in evolution and complexity theory, alters not only behavior and artistic, mechanical production, but establishes narrative feedback. The flneur, as evolved in critical theory from Baudelaire by Benjamin, exemplifies one of many types of urban occupation and peripatetic perception. Considered as programmatic attributes, the movements of evolutionary descent through flneur, drive, and uDrift may be deployed as means of doing research (White 2010).

The gaze of the allegorist, as it falls on the city, is the gaze of the alienated man. It is the gaze of the flneur, whose way of life still conceals behind a mitigating nimbus the coming desolation of the big-city dweller. The flneur still stands on the threshold of the metropolis as of

the middle class . . . The crowd is the veil through which the familiar city beckons to the flneur as phantasmagoria now a landscape, now a room. (Benjamin 2006 40)

But for uDrift, the historical trope is not what we seek our goal is to map and extrapolate from flneur into present spatial occupation, data, and movement. In the age of digital propagation, movement and electronic (smartphone) mediation are ubiquitous and emergent; factors in the gestation of new roles, cartography, and techniques for m-learning.

We are looking toward a strategy where the flneur melds into the drivist and both fuse in uDrift. Benjamin used flneur in various contexts and for widely divergent goals ranging from the person-about-town (frequently viewed as a dandy), to an engaged analytical figure embodying Marxist critique. Interestingly, he locates the flneur in time and space.

Benjamin establishes the flneur as simultaneous (almost symbiotic) with the capitalist expression in real estate and architecture synonymous with the architectural and social height of the Parisian Arcades (Benjamin 2006). While this is a fleeting conceptual frame, it strongly established lasting critical links to fashion, trend, place, advertisement, traffic, spectacle, crowds, and architectural power all components of emergent phantasmagoria and the uncanny

and all alive in todays city. I think Benjamins flneur is a powerful dialectical tool needing to be evolved through newer technologies than arcades. While beautifully theorized, the historical flneur, as witness to commodification and spectacle, is nevertheless inadequate to contemporary narrative, notions of speed, virtual space, and mobilephone-mediated urban life. These are areas the Situationists manifestos, critique agenda, and notion of psychogeography offers the flneur evolutionary upgrading. Here we can almost dissolve Benjamins phantasmagoric in Situationist psychogeography and end up near Whites visualization and spatial history (White 2010).

Situationist psychogeography, linking cognitive and emotional states, is attuned with todays hacker, cyclist, and urban walker. It conceivably hosts the doing research aspect of walking/drifting/cycling through physical, technologically mediated spaces, as inflected with different sets of performative values. It supports hybridizing ideas flowing form flneur to drivist to uDrifter occasioning the possibility to seek and cultivate emergent learning situations embedded in urban chaos and simultaneously enacted by natural systems.

What Im arriving at is that the city and the walker cannot be separated from natural systems, and therefore uDrift functions for tactical discovery open to potential social analysis, aesthetic inspiration, and learning construction. Mediated discovery then incorporates formal, spatial, and morphological discoveries/

observations possible in the cracks and crannies where urban and social systems interface nature. And, this interface is at a physical and technological scale students equipped with a smartphone can monitor for various types of technologically interfaced data. This is then a territory of mediation where the connectivity to, and facilities of apps, aid mobile research, drawing, notation, mapping, and image coordination to fundamentally complete the reconfiguration of flneur/drivist as uDrift, mobile researcher.

II. In Katherine Hayless How We Think (2012), she establishes narrative as a technology (180). In the Narrative and Database chapter she builds on Doreen Masseys theories of spatial geography. Hayles notes that Massey:

has a dream: to replace the idea of space as an inert container with a conceptualization of it as an emergent property constructed through interrelations and containing diverse simultaneous trajectories. (Hayles 2012 183).

I think this is raw material for the hybridization and reconceptualization of nature/space/learning thus underpinning, for m-learning, the cultivation of emergence as a practice assisting the growth of generative knowledge.

Through Hayless referencing Google Earth, GPS, and citing Manuel Castellss spaces of flows (185) we may appropriate the spaces of flows


mapped via our evolution through flnerie, drive, and uDrift as layers and levels of learning data. From Hayles quoting Massey on place, we hear: not from some long internalized history but the fact that it [place] is constructed out of a particular constellation of social relations, meetings, and weavings together at a particular locus (Massey in Hayles 2012 185), we are confronted with space/location mapped and layered differently than in established learning cartographies.

These new cartographic layers are factored into uDrift as a necessary consequence that space is emergent (185), from this we may extrapolate m-learning protocols as consequent with complexity. If we then trace, map, and construct research sites and locations as tiered, interrelated data we may translate our uDrifts as data documenting performative thinking, walking, and discovery in time and space.

In aggregate, the layers, like the folios of a bound book, construct and/or support narrative, ideas, images, and design. Narrative here is inseparable from technological discovery and articulation and we recursively loop back to the epigraph from which I contend that uDrift is a means of doing research (White 2010. Hayles 2012). The evolutionary descent of todays walker/cyclist from flneur or drivist into uDrifter could itself be traced through various recent formulations. For a theoretical reading we could visualize rhizomic and nomadic as scaffolding via Deleuze and Guattari (1989). Mobile learning with engaged technologically mediated

reality as a serious pedagogical tool then addresses urban and environmental observation and data sourcing for research. Technology and science are then in ontological positions to influence new learning and visualization and may be of specific interest within the context of uDrift projects.

If we were looking to skirt (but not totally skip) theory we might riff-off urban hacking as sounded by Iain Sinclairs London Orbital (2002) or Will Self on Walking is Political. http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/mar/30/will-self-walking-cities-foot?CMP=twt_gu Both offer insights where development and infrastructure collide with the authors POV, and in doing so become models for textual uDrifting. In the field of badland drives, we might look to Savage Messiah by Laura Oldfield Ford as it establishes a political commentary as well as a graphic style set in the romance of 1980s zine culture: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/22/savage-messiah-laura-oldfield-ford-review

These three titles (and many others) illustrate for us perspectives on uDrifting and possibilities of in-field urban research. In most cases, our uDrifts will evolve digitally with influences looking back to print culture and forward through social media. Expression could be constructed as feedback loops in a series of blog posts, Tweets, videos, or drawings referencing and taking into consideration emergent ideas mediated by GPS, mapping, and apps as interchanges of exploration and

documentation. Mobile uDrift, to recap from Richard White is is a means of doing research (White 2010), but the research documentation is open to selection, adaptation, and evolution.

Benjamin, Walter. Ed: Jennings, Michael W. Tr: Eiland, Howard; Jephcott, Edmund; Livingston, Rodney; Zohn, Harry. (2006) The Writer of Modern Life: Essays on Charles Baudelaire. MA. Belknap/Harvard University Press.

Hayles, Katherine, N. (2012) How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis. Chicago. The University of Chicago Press.

McDonough, Tom. (2009) The Situationist and the City. New York. Verso.

Sinclair, Iain. (2002) London Orbital. London. Penguin Books.

Wark, McKenzie. (2011) The Beach Beneath the Street: The Everyday Life and Glorious Times of the Situationist International. New York. Verso.

White, Richard. 2010. What is Spatial History? The Spatial History Project. Stanford. Stanford University. . http://stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/cgi-bin/site/pub.php?id=29
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/mar/30/will-self-walking-cities-foot?CMP=twt_guhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/mar/30/will-self-walking-cities-foot?CMP=twt_guhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/mar/30/will-self-walking-cities-foot?CMP=twt_guhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/mar/30/will-self-walking-cities-foot?CMP=twt_guhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/22/savage-messiah-laura-oldfield-ford-reviewhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/22/savage-messiah-laura-oldfield-ford-reviewhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/22/savage-messiah-laura-oldfield-ford-reviewhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/dec/22/savage-messiah-laura-oldfield-ford-reviewhttp://stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/cgi-bin/site/pub.php?id=29http://stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/cgi-bin/site/pub.php?id=29http://stanford.edu/group/spatialhistory/cgi-bin/site/pub.php?id=29


What is the necessary and sufficient organization for a given system to be a living unity? In other words, instead of asking what makes a living system reproduce, we ask what is the organization reproduced when a living system gives origin to another living unity? . . . Every unity can be treated . . . as a complex system that is realized as a unity through its components and their mutual relations. . . . [I]ts properties as a unity are determined by the way this unity is defined, and not by particular properties of its components. It is these relations which define a complex system as a unity and constitute its organization (p187-88).

This model is significant in two respects: on the one hand, it permits the observation of the autopoietic organization at work in a system simpler than any know living systems, as well as on the spontaneous generation from components; on the other hand, it may permit the development of formal tools for the analysis and synthesis of autopoietic systems (p189).

The model consists of a two-dimensional universe where numerous elements (substrate), and a few (catalysts) move randomly in the space of a quadratic grid. These elements are endowed with specific properties which determine interactions that may result in the production of other elements (links) with properties of their own and capable of the interactions (bonding) (P189).

Interaction [1] between the catalyst and two substrate elements 2 is responsible for the composition of an unbounded link . These links may be bonded through Interaction [2] which concatenates these bonded links to unbranched chains of . A chain so produced may close upon itself, forming an enclosure which we assume to be penetrable to the s, but not for . Disintegration (Interaction [3]) is assumed to be independent of the state of the links , i.e., whether they are free or bound, and can be viewed either as a spontaneous decay or as a result of a collision with a substrate element (p189-90).

If an -chain closes on itself enclosing an element (Fig 1), the s produced within the enclosure by interaction [1] can replace in the chain, via [2], the elements that decay as a result of [3] (Fig 2). In this manner, a unity is produced which constitutes a network of productions of components that generate and participate in the network of productions that produced these components by effectively realizing the network as a distinguishable entity in the universe where the elements exist. Within this universe these systems satisfy the autopoietic organization (P191).

One defines a space where spatially distinguishable components interact, thus embodying the concatenations of the processes which lead to events among the components. This is of course what happens to the molecular domain, where autopoiesis as we know it takes place. For the purpose of explaining and studying the notion of autopoiesis, however, one may take a more general view as we have done here, and revert to the tessellation domain where physical space is replaced by any space (a two-dimensional one in the model), and molecules by entities endowed with some properties. The phenomenology is unchanged in all cases: the autonomous self-maintenance of

a unity while its organization remains invariant in time. . . . In the present case we required that the components have specificity of interactions, forms of linkage, mobility, and decay. . . . The necessary feature is the presence of a boundary which is produce by a dynamics such that the boundary creates the conditions required for this dynamics (P191-2).

An autopoietic system arises spontaneously from the interaction of otherwise independent elements when these interactions constitute a spatially contiguous network of productions which manifests itself as a unity in the space of its elements (P192).

Varela, Francisco J; Maturana, Humberto R; & Uribe, R. (1974) Autopoiesis: The Organization of Living Systems, its Characterization and a Model. BioSystems. 5: 187-196.

See also:McMulling, Barry & Varela, Francisco J. (1997) Rediscovering Computational Autopoiesis. SFI (Santa Fe Institute) Working Paper 97-02-012. Accessed 26 June 2013. www.santafe.edu/media/workingpapers/97-02-012.pdf

Fig 1. The first seven instants (0-6) of one computer run, showing the spontaneous generation of an autopoietic unity. Interactions between substrate and catalyst produce chains of bonded links , which eventually enclose the catalyst, thus closing a network of interactions which constitutes an autopoietic unity with this universe.

Fig 2. Four successive instants (44-47) along the same computer run (Fig 1), showing compensation in the boundary broken by spontaneous decay of links. Ongoing production of links re-establishes the unity under changes of form and turnover of components.

1974: Autopoiesis as a Cellular Automata

The graphics and text below are from Varela, Maturana, and Uribes implementation of autopoiesis in code. Because they reference Gardners column in Scientific American

we know they knew Conways Game of LIfe from which there are many similarities in the computational model below.

76 Autopoiesis & Generative Architecture

autopoiesis & generative architecture · botanic forms in to the first iteration for a canopy...

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