Ben van Berkel, Caroline Bos (eds.): ANY, 23: Diagram Work: Data Mechanics for a Topological Age (1998)

A special issue of the magazine ANY (Architecture New York) focusing on the diagram and diagrammatics (page 14 onwards).

With contributions by Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos, Stan Allen, R.E. Somol, Peter Eisenman, Manuel De Landa, Christine Buci-Glucksman, Andrew Benjamin, Karl Chu, Brian Massumi, Greg Lynn, Mark Rakatansky, Sanford Kwinter, and Wes Jones.

Publisher Anyone Corporation, June 1998
ISSN 10684220
62 pages
via waskleist

Commentary: Hélène Frichot (2011).

Publisher

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Luciana Parisi: Contagious Architecture: Computation, Aesthetics, and Space (2013)

“In Contagious Architecture, Luciana Parisi offers a philosophical inquiry into the status of the algorithm in architectural and interaction design. Her thesis is that algorithmic computation is not simply an abstract mathematical tool but constitutes a mode of thought in its own right, in that its operation extends into forms of abstraction that lie beyond direct human cognition and control. These include modes of infinity, contingency, and indeterminacy, as well as incomputable quantities underlying the iterative process of algorithmic processing.

The main philosophical source for the project is Alfred North Whitehead, whose process philosophy is specifically designed to provide a vocabulary for “modes of thought” exhibiting various degrees of autonomy from human agency even as they are mobilized by it. Because algorithmic processing lies at the heart of the design practices now reshaping our world—from the physical spaces of our built environment to the networked spaces of digital culture—the nature of algorithmic thought is a topic of pressing importance that reraises questions of control and, ultimately, power. Contagious Architecture revisits cybernetic theories of control and information theory’s notion of the incomputable in light of this rethinking of the role of algorithmic thought. Informed by recent debates in political and cultural theory around the changing landscape of power, it links the nature of abstraction to a new theory of power adequate to the complexities of the digital world.”

Publisher MIT Press, 2013
Technologies of Lived Abstraction series
ISBN 0262018632, 9780262018630
392 pages

For a New Computational Aesthetics: Algorithmic Environments as Actual Objects lecture by Parisi (2012, video, 72 min).

Reviews: Lecomte (Mute, 2013), Ikoniadou (Computational Culture, 2014).

Publisher
WorldCat

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Theory, Culture & Society 29(4-5): Topologies of Culture (2012)

“In social and cultural theory, topology has been used to articulate changes in structures and spaces of power. In this introduction, we argue that culture itself is becoming topological. In particular, this ‘becoming topological’ can be identified in the significance of a new order of spatio-temporal continuity for forms of economic, political and cultural life today. This ordering emerges, sometimes without explicit coordination, in practices of sorting, naming, numbering, comparing, listing, and calculating. We show that the effect of these practices is both to introduce new continuities into a discontinuous world by establishing equivalences or similitudes, and to make and mark discontinuities through repeated contrasts. In this multiplication of relations, topological change is established as being constant, normal and immanent, rather than being an exceptional form, which is externally produced; that is, forms of economic, political and cultural life are identified and made legible in terms of their capacities for continuous change. Outlining the contributions to this Special Issue, the introduction discusses the meaning of topological culture and provides an analytic framework through which to understand its implications.” (from the Abstract)

With contributions by Celia Lury, Luciana Parisi, and Tiziana Terranova, Peter Sloterdijk, Rob Shields, Sandro Mezzadra and Brett Neilson, Penelope Harvey, Mike Michael and Marsha Rosengarten, Evelyn Ruppert, Steven D. Brown, Luciana Parisi, Richard Rogers, Xin Wei Sha, Brian Rotman, Scott Lash, Noortje Marres, Matthew Fuller and Andrew Goffey, Julian Henriques.

Publisher Sage
ISSN 0263-2764
342 pages

Publisher

PDF (6 MB, updated on 2016-12-12)