DEMATERIALIZED ARCHITECTURE
IMMERSION CYBERSPACE LIQUID ARCHITECTURE
EVERSION
MARCOS NOVAK HYBRID INTELLIGENT ENVIRONMENT TRANS ARCHITECTURE ROBOTICS
CONTENT MARCOS NOVAK - WHO IS HE? HIS APPROACHES EMERGENCE OF VIRTUAL SPACE CYPERSPACE TRANS ARCHITECTURE LIQUID ARCHITECTURE AS HE SAYS – LIQUID ARCHITECTURE VARIABLE DATA FORMS PARACUBE DATA DRIVEN FORMS HOW NOVAK’S “LIQUID ARCHITECTURES” ARE GENERATED. EXAMPLES
WHO IS HE? •
Marcos Novak is an architect, artist, composer, and theorist who employs algorithmic techniques to
design actual, virtual and hybrid intelligent environments. The self-described trans- architect is seeking to expand the definition of architecture by including electronic space, and originated the concept of liquid architectures in cyberspace and the study of a dematerialized architecture for the new, virtual public domain, the immersive virtual worlds. WRITINGS: Liquid Architectures in Cyberspace (1991)
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TransArchitecture: Against the Collapsing
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Radius of Fiction Transmitting Architecture: The
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transPhysical City (1996)
His approach: we conceive algorithmically (morphogenesis); we model numerically (rapid prototyping); we build robotically (new tectonics); we inhabit interactively (intelligent space); we telecommunicate instantly (pantopicon); we are informed immersively (liquid architectures); we socialise nonlocally (non- local public domain); we evert virtuality (transarchitectures)."
Transvergence
EMERGENCE OF VIRTUAL SPACES:
Transarchitectures
Once predicated on qualities such as enclosure, form, and , architectural
Transmodernity
space is finally getting rid of its physicality and is now giving way to virtual
Liquid architecture
spaces, where digital technology emerges in the form of data and
Navigable music
information. Digital media are responsible for creating a new territory
Habitable cinema
where stability and actuality are tempered by this indescribable reality: a
Archimusic
reality where variations of visual qualities, internal contents, and social
Eversion
expressions are influencing the creation of new spaces. However, this is
Allogenesis
not an imperious assumption. The emergence of new virtual spaces does not always mean the end of physical space. By, "...placing the human within the information space, it is an architectural problem; but beyond this, cyberspace has an architecture of its own and, furthermore, can contain architecture “cyberspace is architecture, cyberspace has an architecture, and cyberspace contains architecture"
CYBERSPACE:
But what does it mean literally? ‘Cyber’ connotes automation, artificial control, and computerisation. In the context of artificially generated imaginable environments, ‘space’, of course, means a multidimensional place, most often used in relation with Electronic spaces created by computer-based media. Cyberspace relate to ‘virtual reality (VR)’, ‘data visualisation’, ‘graphic user interfaces (GUIs)’, ‘networks’, ‘multimedia’, ‘hyper-graphics’.
TRANS ARCHITECTURE:
A new domain extended to include intelligent local, remote, and virtual space as a new continuum; … the techniques for designing in this new continuum involve conceiving architecture algorithmically, modeling it directly from data via new techniques such as rapid prototyping, building it robotically, inhabiting it interactively, occupying it telepresently, and connecting it seamlessly to virtual space, where a parallel conceptual and poetic structure applies In short, “transarchitecture” is The intersection of information, in the form of algorithms, and the material world, as robotic prototypes. It is the intermingling of architecture and media, the combination of design and machine/computer.
LIQUID ARCHITECTURE
Cyberspace is liquid. Liquid cyberspace, liquid architecture, liquid cities. Liquid architecture is more than kinetic architecture, robotic architecture, and architecture of fixed parts and variable links. Liquid architecture is an architecture that breathes, pulses, leaps as one form and lands as another. Liquid architecture is an architecture whose form is contingent on the interests of the beholder; It is an architecture that opens to welcome me and closes to defend me; It is an architecture without doors and hallways, the next room is always where I need it to be and what I need it to be. Liquid architecture makes liquid cities, cities that change at the shift of a value, where visitors with different backgrounds see different landmarks, where neighborhoods vary with ideas held in common, and evolve as ideas mature or dissolve. Marcos Novak, Cyberspace: First Steps .
AS HE SAYS – LIQUID ARCHITECTURE
Space is no longer innocent. Under the impact of science and technology, ordinary space has become just a subset of a composite "newspace" that interweaves local, remote, telepresent, interactivated, and virtual spacetime into the new spatial continuum that is the focus of emerging transarchitectures.
Physically, this installation consists of four interrelated parts : a)a large scale video projection of liquid forms derived from mathematical explorations of virtuality ; b) a physical model captured from the fluctuating projected virtual forms ; c) a sensor-created, invisible, interactive sculptural form, and ; d) a generative, interactive soundscape that weaves the previous three together
The video projection consists entirely of liquid, animated mathematical forms
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derived from the manipulation of mathematical fields. Various kinds are shown in rapid succession.
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An interactive, generative musical algorithm drives the video, intercutting among
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various sources at a high rate, producing a large number of new variants by multiplexing the sources in time. Each strand of video is thought of as a separate reality, and the rapid intercutting
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suggests the coexistence of multiple superimposed realities in the same instance.
VARIABLE DATA FORMS (1999)
This investigation seeked to create architectonic propositions that are liquid, algorithmic, transmissible and derived from the geometries of higher dimensionality. By "liquid", Novak intends a total but rigorous variability driven by data shifts in cyberspace that can be transformed into physical world. By "algorithm" Novak means that the forms are never manipulated through manual corrections : rather, the mathematical formula that generate them are adjusted to produce different results. By "transmissible" Novak means that his data-forms can be compressed into algorithmic codes for transmission to fabrication sites, machines or to virtual environments.
PARA CUBE (1997 – 1998)
For this project, a cuboid was defined by six parametric surfaces, each with its own coordinate system. The parametric equations governing each surface were arranged so that a variation on a particular surface would cause reactions or permutations on adjoining surfaces, effectively creating a topological cube. The parametric cuboid was manipulated to create two forms : a skeletal frame and a smooth skin. Parametrization allowed the smoothness of each element to be defined and manipulated through computational formulas the frame was derived from the same process, where the skin was computed at high smoothness and the skeleton at low smoothness. •
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PARA CUBE (1997 – 1998)
The skeleton was then mathematically extruded into the fourth dimension by adding a fourth coordinate to every three-dimensional point. Thus, points became lines, lines became polygons, polygons became cubes and cubes became hypercubes. The resulting four-dimensional object was rotated about a plane in four-dimensional space according to the appropriate matrix transformations. The transformed object, projected back into threedimension space, became a space-frame of variant dimensions. The skin was not extruded into the fourth dimension but instead remapped to create a rippling, non-homogeneous
DATA-DRIVEN FORMS (1997 -1998)
These images are the result of deriving forms from fields of found data. As spatial models, the forms explore two concepts : the delamination of passage from one data set to another and arbitrary cross-fade (between data sets). In the examples shown here, an algorithmic function extracted from linked Web pages as two sets of points in the three dimensional matrix. Using spline-based interpolation, two sets of curves were generated. From further functions, the two sets of intertwined surfaces, or "lamina", were formed. A series of crossing links (cross-fades) were then enframed between the conjoined surface-forms, producing a rich enmeshing of distorded frames and surface modulations.
HOW NOVAK’S “LIQUID ARCHITECTURES” ARE GENERATED
Composition created by a genetic algorithm. This image forms the basis of the following investigation of the spatialization of information
New composition derived from previous one by processes of superimposition, masking, and filtering, Information implicit in the original composition is now visible as color variation.
Merging of algorithmic composition with scanned data, Image processing reveals hidden patterns implicit in the structures of the component images.
Variation of the image in previous stage produced by further image processing. Although it is simply a transformation of the previous image, for the viewer this image constitutes, in effect, new information.
Three dimensional algorithmic composition, with the composition shown in image 1 mapped onto the environment of a cyberspace chamber.
Two algorithmically composed objects in a cyberspace chamber. Dynamically varying algorithmically composed textures combining computed and scanned information are displayed on both objects and environment.
Dynamically varying three-dimenional composition comprising a liquid architecture. The number and dind of its component parts vary according to factors such as position, size, and proximity to other component parts.
Visualization of a liquid architecture in cyberspace.
Mapping information onto object and environment, varying it in place, time, and attribute, focusing attention through filters and masks, and inhabiting it allows hidden patterns to become visible, and therefore knowable.
The information content of computed and digitized data is used to create the perceptual character of this space, the "place" of cyberspace.
A MULTIMEDIA CYPERSPACE PROJECT AT BANFF CENTER FOR ARTS IN 1991 the first example of a new virtual space created through the themes of liquid architecture. The project was to join inner and outer worlds, moving into and out of virtual space.
“in shell” VIEW OF THE MODEL
CLOSE UP “in shell” VIEW OF THE MODEL
“ex shell” VIEW OF THE MODEL
ZEICHENBAU 2000
It originally consisted of five elements: a video projection of forms generated by mathematical algorithms, a physical model, fixing the fluctuating projected virtual forms, a sculptural form created by an infrared sensor, an interactive and generative soundscapes weaving the three elements, and finally the visitor himself. The space is constantly reformulated evanescent environment according to the information exchange between the elements.The sculptural form that remains one of this facility symbolizes Marcos Novak phenomenon eversion, the transition from virtual to reality, that of a digital architecture with built architecture. It was conducted through a manufacturing process called "rapid prototyping" called LOM (Laminated Object Manufacturing), laser cutting and overlapping layers of material.
