Cyberspace

"A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights receding."

W. Gibson. 1988

First Steps, ed M. Benedikt. MIT Press

Liquid Architecture. Marcus Novak

The appearance does not hide the essence, it reveals it; it is the essence. The essence of an existent is no longer a property sunk in the cavity of this existent; it is the manifest law which presides over the succession of its appearances, it is the principle of the series.

...But essence, as the principle of the series is definitely only the concatenation of appearances; that is, itself an appearance.

. . . The reality of a cup is that it is there and that it is not me. We shall interpret this by saying that the series of its appearances is bound by a principle which does not depend on my whim.

Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness

The relationship established between architecture and cyberspace so far is not yet complete. It is not enough to say that there is architecture in cyberspace, nor that that architecture is animistic or animated. Cyberspace calls us to consider the difference between animism and animation, and animation and metamorphosis. Animism suggests that entities have a "spirit" that guides their behaviour. Animation adds the capability of change in location, through time. Metamorphosis is change in form, through time or space. More broadly, metamorphosis implies changes in one aspect of an entity as a function of other aspects, continuously or discontinuously. I use the term liquid to mean animistic, animated, metamorphic, as well as crossing categorical boundaries, applying the cognitively supercharged operations of poetic thinking.

Cyberspace is liquid. Liquid cyberspace, liquid architecture, liquid cities. Liquid architecture is more than kinetic architecture, robotic architecture, an 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, where 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 neighbourhoods vary with ideas held in common, and evolve as the ideas mature or dissolve.

 

Liquid Space