Today I met a very interesting person. Alexander Rose who is in a project of creating a clock that would last 10,000 years!

Long Now Project Link

Indeed, it is a very interesting project that let’s us think about the future and design. 

Arena For Accountable Predictions Link

I have been seeing so many people talking about Green, Sustained(sustainable) design for the past few years. I had doubt about the term, Sustained Design for quite a while. It didn’t make that much of a sense to me. Perhaps, if we were to change the whole industrial structure to a sustainable system, it might be different. 

Well, Alexander’s presentation today was meaningful to me in the sense that his project actually enables people to think about the future in the long run.

When it come to creating design for longevity, I don’t expect myself to come up with something as mind blowing as ‘the 10,000 year clock ‘. However, I do hope that my research could open a new way of seeing the future.

Exploring meanings of space.

One day when I was in high school, I saw a caterpillar crawling up my knee. That very day, I made my first song, “Caterpillar” which was about a caterpillar who thought it would turn into a butterfly only to learn that it would eventually become a moth. A few weeks later in the same room, I saw a huge praying mantis hanging by the window. I grabbed my guitar again and made my second song. It has been already 11 years since than. Throughout the years, I have begun to realize that I was not meant to be a musician nor was I talented in playing musical instruments. However, today I still play my guitar and try to make music in my new room, 5646 miles away from the place where I used to make songs about insects. 

Imagine being able to return to a place where we can let others understand ourselves. When I share the memory with others, the old room is experienced in the telling of my own story. Indeed, the meaning of a space depends on our memories that tie us to that place. The advantage of being in the world where we live in now is that we become able to handle and share stories about our values, interest, memories instantly using the internet. Similar to the way in which our dwelling-places hold valuable information of former days, our traces in the virtual space leads others to the stories about ourselves. In reality, geographical location is almost meaningless to some people as distant places are connected virtually and instantaneously through the invisible network. For each and one of us, the conceptions and boundaries of our surrounding structure are changing day by day as the pervasive networking technology advances. It may be easy to laugh at the idea of a world where every object and space share their stories in the network cloud and communicate amongst themselves. Yet, in truth, this thought have been thriving over the years not only in science fiction novels from the 1950s but also in Mark Weiser’s essay in ubiquitous computing written in 1988. The cyberspace is no longer considered as merely a parallel universe to the tangible world, rather in a new era of technology, many believe that the physical space will have the aspects of the virtual environment. 

This research focuses on exploring the new meanings of architectural space in a world of pervasive computing environment. My belief is that through computation and technology, space will be more considered as a significant medium for effective communication. The goal of my research is to create examples of using space as an instrument of communication. One of my approach will include identifying possible virtual relationships of tangible objects by using technology. This work will focus on understanding the spatial language created by the way in which people behave, occupy and relate themselves to an environment with virtual characteristics. 

Recently, I’ve been reading an essay, ‘walking in the city’ (Michel De Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, Chapter 7). Also, I’ve been taking lectures from Norman M Klein, a historian in the fields of architecture, media, and culture. Based on Norman M. Klein’s theories on ‘History of Forgetting’ and Michel De Certeau’s essay, ‘walking in the city’, I asked myself a series of questions and threw out my thoughts. 

What is the meaning of space?

The meaning of a space is constantly changing according to our memories that tie us to that place. These memories create myths about the space that would influence people’s behaviors. The forms of behaviors become a pattern which functions as a spatial language that adds pervasive texture to the space. Thus, people share the meanings of a space through their movements. People’s memory and stories of the place also become part of the space.  

What is the relation between people and media?

According to Norman Klein, and many other media theorists, for generations, people have been deeply interested in cyborg theories (an example is Donna Haraway’s cyborg manifesto) and tried to identify themselves with cyborgs. The definition of cyborg in a dictionary is ‘a hypothetical person whose physical abilities are extended beyond normal human limitations by mechanical elements built into the body.’  McLuhan’s description of media and technology as extensions of the human body have been repeatedly articulated by many theorists for a remarkably long time. Today another example that support arguments related to identifying people with cyborgs can be found in studying the way in which people use their cell phones. “People carry it with themselves all the time as if they were part of their body. The behaviors of twittering or text messaging are done so intuitively that it almost feels natural.” (07Oct09 Norman Klein’s lecture)

Private space as a virtual theatre. 

In a world of pervasive networking and computation, the idea of an embodied and interlinked virtuality can be experienced as an extension of human mind. Through online networking, people are able to duplicate and constantly reproduce virtual representations of themselves to the public. In this world, people create visual simulacrum of their minds through virtual space and ironically, they are able to visit their own minds (representation of themselves) through the pervasive networking system. (‘Being John Malkovich’ depicts this idea of one’s mind(brain) being visited by the public and himself.) 

Metaphors of places and gestures.

Even though the virtual environment seems to be a parallel universe to the real world, in reality, the planetary networks are all connected to one another through cables in a physical environment. (OneWilshire building in LA downtown) Even when a person surfs the internet and simulates himself going through a journey in the virtual world, in reality, the person is merely looking at the visual representation of signals that were processed from physical data centers. In this sense, distinguishing the virtuality and the reality seems almost meaningless. What interests me the most is the way in which people’s habits, movements, and behaviors connects the two worlds more closer. What is the meaning of space? Can space become a medium for communications? What are the meanings of  gesture in communications?

In the modern society, people have been obsessed with the idea of defining the relationships between the virtual space and the physical space. Many post structuralist architects, such as Peter Eisenman explored this field. In Elizabeth A. Grosz’s essays on Eisenman’s work, the author openly acknowledges the relation between virtual or cyberspace and the real space as a relation of mind to body1. Now we are living in a world where technology and computation are integrated with the culture so deeply and pervasively that the boundaries between the two worlds (virtual/ physical) are becoming more vague than ever before. This being the case,…

how do we define space in a world like this?

what are meanings of mind and body in a world like this?

what do gestures mean in space? 

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1. Elizbeth A. Grosz, Peter Eisenman, Architecture From The Outside (MIT Press, 2001)