Antonino Saggio  I Quaderni

Talks

Space is Information

Listen Conference Audio 1:41:00

An intellectual walk

1. Industrial city / versus Information city key differences

2. The Changing Notion of Time | 3. The Changing Notion of Space

4. The Prothesis | 5. Looking Inside | 6. Time to Define Space |

7. What Is Space | 8. Space as Information | 9. Crisis Modernity and Information Technology | 10. Works

1. Industrial city / versus Information city key differences

Assembly Line vs Network

i.e. zoning vs anti zoning

Piet Mondrian -Broadway Boogie Woogie 1942-43; Oil on canvas, 127 x 127 cm; The Museum of Modern Art, New York
Rauschenberg, Persimon, 1964

Chain vs nets

Le Corbusier, Plan Voisin, paris 1935 Michael Najjar "The Invisible citry" 2004. Video Clip della serie Netropolis 2003-2006

in front versus in between

Mies | Eisenman

the far west versus nature and "ecotechnics"

Zbigniew Oksiuta Breeding space >>

Towards Emotional interactive enviroments in the city

RAD Oma consultant ,Sk Building Seoul See Building Movie Local >YoTu..be >

Jam Frequency Olivieri Marco,Pitzalis Federico, Janni Gordon, Marinelli Alessandro, Saggio Course La Sapienza Local > Web >

all the works of Texpo >

2. The Changing Notion of Time

Gropius, Bauhaus, Mark Goulthorpe Decoi, >The wall

Latina Frezzotti | Visual device 2005 Choi, Byoung-li

3. The Changing Notion of Space

See Mathland preface >

4. The Prothesis

Francesco Borromini, S. Ivo alla Sapienza, (1643-1660) ; Caravaggio, Madonna di Loreto (1603-1606)

Saggio Sindrome on Borromini See movie >, Read articleIl Motivo di Sant'ivo > on Caravaggio read article 1 Il motivo di Caravaggio >, article 2 Lo strumento di Caravaggio >

5. Looking Inside

Steve (Jobs) looking inside a chip in 1976

refer also to James James Hockney "Secret Knowledge" Thames and Hudson and to two serious AS's Sindromes Borromini >, video > Caravaggio >

6. Time to Define Space

1. The Extrusion process

2. the different sub systems

3 an experiment

4. Jump

"Time is a property Created by God together with the Universe" Saint Agustin (Sant'Agostino)

7. What Is Space

Choi, Won-Jung, "Why not here: murung dowan", 2006 >

8. Space as Information

Marcos Novak, Invisible space, Venice Biennale >

Does color really exists?

a. perception of colour. Psycology of perception

CONTEXTUAL

this refers also to transparency

Walte Gropius Bauhaus, Dessau | Jean Nouvel, Cartier Foundation, Paris

2. Physiological

Picture by Andrew Davidhazy

3. Cognitive.

What colour is the ice?

What color is the sky?

To Italy

Who knows the land where the sky
of inexpressible blue colours itself? ....

Inexpressible blue!

All’Italia

Chi conosce la terra dove il cielo
d’indicibile azzurro si colora?
dove tranquillo il mar con l’onda sfiora
rovine del passato?
dove l’alloro eterno ed il cipresso
crescon superbi? dove il gran Torquato
cantò? dove anche adesso
ne la notte profonda
i canti suoi va ripetendo l’onda?
la terra ove dipinse Raffaello,
dove gli ultimi marmi
animò di Canova lo scalpello
e Byron rude martire ne’ carmi
dolore, amore effuse e imprecazione?
Italia, terra magica, gioconda
terra d’ispirazione!

Aleksandr Puskin

Now let's make a decisive step: but if the colour does not exist in reality and it exists only contextually, we should   understand that the colour is one type of "information". True information!, as we have already defined that is: "application of a convention to one data". In this case the data is the electromagnetic radiation, while colour is nothing more than a psychological, physical and conventional use of information! Red wants to say stop, green go, but only in some contexts and some conventions.

Now look at this picture

Santa Sofia

Space is information we can design and change its properties, values and characteristics, and we can also manipulate it to have some kind of projction of other dimensions

Steven Spilberg, Minority report

Anticipation of a portion of AS speech at University of Kuwait conference. Sourece of Architectural forms >

Finally space

And now we are ready to directly discuss the issue of space. Does space   really exist? At this point in our discussion, the answer is obvious: it exists and it does not exist. Matter exists, not space. Space is absolutely dependent on the context and on the physical characteristics of the receiver. Perhaps the space that is known to a bat is "equal" to ours? A bat does not see but it sends sonorous waves like a radar. Is the space that the bat lives in like ours? Or it is effectively a different one?. Imagine   a small worm that goes around our same room. The worm knows only two dimensions   because it just "strips" (slivers?). Is it's space equal to the space that we see from our third dimension? And naturally let's think of fish that only live in aquatic space.   How can they conceive, from the depths of the sea,   the notion of mountains elevated so high to the point of snowfall?

In summary, if with Copernico we have understood that   the earth is not at all the center of the universe, even though it appears to be our our point of view,, it must also be understood that the three dimensions that men experience are NOT the center of anything. We do not live at all in a kind of three-dimensional bubble in which everything is located   and that we and our bodies watch and control. On the contrary, other spaces exist- other informative worlds! They are a series of parallel worlds that coexist although there are some channels, some passages, some small openings and some "projections" between these various worlds.

However, also the man when is put in a different conditions "sees" and experience space in completely different way. Lately I have spoken with the Italian astronaut, the colonel Roberto Vittori. Vittori describes space in the conditions of microgravity as completely different from the space we are accustomed to. A space in which one floats is a radically different one: it is a space full of possibility and of gorges and above all   it is a space to be used physically and therefore cognitively differently.

For this reason I refer as a key image of this text (fig. 0) the Church of Saint Sofia in Istanbul. One can see in the image the large room under the main cupola as it was designed in half of the picture and in the remaining   half occupied by an enormous scaffolding. The scaffolding can be read as an enormous matrix. In this case the matrix is physical, but imagine it as a virtual and electronic one. Sensors can in fact describe the points of the matrix-scaffolding and, activating these hidden but existing points of the space, various information can be placed (as Tom Cruise made Minority report). Imagine being able to experience   (?) space floating like an astronaut. Or think,   more simply, how space is experienced by a pigeon that enters that basilica and knows the gorges, the hidden places. It should be clear that space is a space-information absolutely dependent on the contextual, physical and cognitive principles we described above. Space exists only in the measure in which these three levels are effectively practicable by the receiver.

As Einstein wrote - (2) the most sensitive thing to say something about space it is time (I don't understand this sentence) (the most sensitive topic is that of space and time?)(and on this aspect much we have constructed). Einstein refers to physics, if we must approach space from our human point of view and to dare to add something to the concept of space, it is that "space is information'. Among other things space changes continuously and it is, even literally,   " in   formation".

Space does not exist as such. It is the application of a convention to the data of the matter. On the other side, the historical and scientific mutations of the concepts of space on which in other occasions we have written, is further evidence of the same argument (3).

Here we would like stop ourselves because it seems to us to have reached the point. It follows some obvious consequence for the architects who are interested in the research of Information technology. If the information is the raw material of this historical phase, and if the space itself is information, how can one design this new conscience? The first aspect of the answer is: "increasing its cognitive and contextual" characteristic. As we know,   technology can be used like as a tool to augment reality. How can one design to render a way to perceive dimensions that are beyond our normal 3 dimensions and our limits?. The entire history of   technology points in this direction with the artificial prosthesis that creates and expands our cognition and physical limits. As it is known, in the last physical elaborations of micro particles and in new molecular reactors,   time goes   backwords, but also the Internet is an incredible prosthesis, i.e. an incredible example of amplification to cognitive and experiential knowledge. The future development of architecture will be part of this process. The prostheses most powerful today, from the Internet to the nano technologies that concurs with the materials to the change of colour, density, characteristics go in this direction. And then, as always, there is the great topic of the interactivity and of the dynamic interconnections to which we often return and to which we have briefly fore mentioned.. The interactivity of architecture, is the natural catalyst because if space is information it most also hold true that with the exact dynamics of interconnections of   electronics this consciousness may move far beyond our presently known dimensions and limits.

9. Crisis Modernity and Information Technology

Special Session Organiser: Prof. Antonino Saggio, La Sapienza University, Italy

One possible definition of Modernity relates it to the concept of Crisis. Thinking along these lines, “Modernity is the effort to answer to crisis and in so doing urges and promotes the necessity of new Aesthetics”

I am putting in words a way of thinking that has different master thinkers, but that motivated the theoretical effort that is behind “IT Revolution in Architecture”. For Crisis, I intend the historical process of transformation from the Industrial Paradigm to an Informational one; for Modernity I intend the positive effort to address the crisis in front of us putting at the center Information Technological, not because we like it but because IT is the propellant of our times. The results bring “Revolutionary” aspects in considering the historical magnitude of the shifts in front of us.

Now, this special session of the conference on Intelligent Environments called “Crisis Modernity and Information Technology” is looking specifically for contributions that address the just described crucial relationships.

In other words, the stress of the papers should be put (a) “In a situation of crisis” (pollution, poverty, emergence for disasters, risks of different nature and sorts, atmospheric or land situation etceteras) and (b) in addressing the crisis situation with an intelligent and creative use of Information Technology.

The case studies and projects can be at a very large territorial scale or at minimum scale of object design. The issue to establish in the paper is how Information Technology is crucial in addressing and solving the issue.

IT has not to be only a toy for the houses of the richest but a crucial tool in the growth of humanity. Right? >>

10. Works

MATTEO ALFONSI
Advisor A. Saggio
MOB Museo dell'opera Boroominiana a Villa Pamphilj, Rome >>

Tecno Primitivo

project by NitroSaggio.net designer in charge Emanuele Tarducci with C. Ampolo built in May 2007 at Giardino Sonoro, Florence experimental Sound Garden by Lorenzo Brusci e S. Passerotti "Il Giardino Sonoro" Florence >

Installation Tecno Primitive >>

on Postural Tecno Primitive You Tube >

Some bibliography

Do You want To read a text with some topics discussed in this conference? Read here >

1. Antonino Saggio, "Informazione Materia Prima dell'Architettura", Op. Cit.,   # 118, September 2003 (pp. 5-10). >

2. _____________, "Tempo. Tempo prima dimensione dello Spazio",Il Progetto, # 19, March 2004 (pp. 64-67). >

3. _____________, The search fro an Information Space, In Kas Oosterhuis Lukas Feireiss (eds), Game set and Martch II . Episode, Rotterdam 2006 (pp. 214-219)

4. Osvaldo Da Pos,   Trasparenze , Icone editore, Padova 1989

5. _____________, "Fenomenologia dei colori trasparenti", in Effetto trasparenza , (eds L. Bortolatto e O. Da Pos), Le Venezie, Treviso 1996

6 Antonino Saggio, "Nuove Soggettivita' L'architettura tra comunicazione e informazione",

(Italian Translation of New Subjectivity in Digital | Real Catalog), Op. Cit. , # 112, September 2001 (pp. 14-21).

7 ____________, "Interactivity at the center of Avant-Garde Architectural Research", Architectura Design   vol 75 #. 1 jan/feb 2005 (pp. 23-29). special Issue 4dspace: Interactive Architecture ed.   L. Bullivant

8 Timothy Goldsmith, The Biological Roots of Human Nature: Forging Links Between Evolution & Behavior , Oxford Univ. Press, 1994

9 _______________, "Come vedono gli uccelli",   Le Scienze, Italian edition of Scientific American, # 460, December 2006.

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