the feeds_ extended representation_ a rant

After our meeting at Terroir today, the nature of representation comes back into question as a key question for our city vision. Not so much what is our critical vision, but how will we see critically in 2050. We speculated on the possibility of slowly evolving animated/filmed posters, some thing like a cross between slow cinematography and a gursky image. Think of a evolving or unfolding image. Also reminds me now that I think about it of a beautiful Bill Viola exhibition I saw in LA at the Getty called the Passions. Portraits of people presented mostly in portrait hung flat panel monitors maybe 60" high, with a super slow unfolding of emotions playing out across the subjects face. Titles that linked the subjects to biblical scenes, and the slow change of mood on a persons body from tranquility to anger.
http://www.getty.edu/art/exhibitions/viola/
probably worth watching the short film on the exhibition pages on Viola talking about his work in this series.

So we have an initial set now of animated panels to produce. I think we need to speak to the Customs house people and get four large LCD monitors mounted like A1 panels in the line up. Not submit still's but submit four looping videos/photograph/animation/collage/info panels.

So thinking about this a little more as I cant sleep and I'm not thinking terribly clearly but...

I start thinking about what we are really presenting in 2050. How will we represent and what will we represent.

The Feeds
2050 architects no longer draw. The drawing itself is a fine art, something of a craft, architects dont draw. Rather architects manipulate symbols, and organize flows. Drawings in 2050 are calculations, algorithms continuously updating and feeding from live "public" and specialist information flows that have different levels of professional access, much the same as military grade GPS information now vs public information. Its a question of access and resolution (fidelity). Architects will have a level 3 access. So we construct simulations based on organization of flows of information, through manipulating symbolic elements which stand in for chunks of code, perhaps a bit more like the symbolic view of GC or the symbolic view of Max/MSP, which can be visualized in a host of ways, from photo real/real time to the abstractions of the flows of information themselves. There will be several main flows to tap into, all overlapping to any degree.

Bio.
Every human on the planet and off, will have their DNA mapped and stored. We will be monitored through the things we touch, and the chemicals we take. Our bio-states (bio histories and bio futures) will be the next big flow of real time information that we began mapping in 2008 (the first 1000 people have their entire DNA mapped) (see the link http://www.1000genomes.org/ ) each newborn has their DNA taken at birth while the rest of us get updated into the system whenever we pass through a security barrier http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23385864-details/EU+police+will+access+our+DNA+database/article.do The real consequence of which we are only now feeling in 2050, as bio data is both temporalized and spatialized (integrated with databases of past activities and with GIS) and searchable in real time from the office or the windshield of my car. Looking at this information for groups of people is the work of demographers and also available. This is the first flow.
Geo.
An obvious one perhaps, but in 2050, Google earth will seem like a quaint pioneering moment when access to the GIS became feasible. In 2050, the entire globe will be mapped in detail down to the mm. We will not require surveyors to do surveys, that information will be available to us in real time as overlays on any form of representation we choose to view. Surveyors will do different work, they will survey different landscapes, the physical earth will be a completed project by 2020. The impact of this is that in any photograph, video, analytical drawing etc, every level, every distance every dimension will be accessible to us. (http://www.ogleearth.com/2006/03/future_earth_ii.html) (http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v440/n7083/full/440402a.html) This is the second flow.
Fin and Stat
The financial and statutory landscapes. The flow of money, loans, contracts, legal structures, bank balances, the economic health of streets, neighborhoods, shopping centers, voting districts, states, etc the color of the vote (blue, red or green) are all part of this third flow. (Cant think of a good name for this group yet). All this information again visualizable on top of a geo and bio feed make for a complex understanding of our environment. If we are browsing in our cars for a house to buy for example, it will be easy to use a color filter to overlay our view to show voting patters, and 5 yr histories of sale prices combined with current valuations of properties up and down a street, moving over your field of view as you look around. These are the next two flows.
Eco
State of the environment. Another obvious one. Linking all real time information through environmental monitoring to your desktop (windshield). This is the 5th flow.

Think of viewing these flows overlapping each other on top of your view of the world as you see it right now, (not through a screen or a window) and browsing these flows and the links the provide to the next levels of information, contacts, all that stuff. Context sensitive navigation systems linked to retinal movement (and brain activity?) will allow us to navigate through the complexity of all this. A particular way of navigating these flows and levels of access will be what defines what we think of today as a discipline.

Scale
The interesting thing about these flows is the issue of scale. Like Google earth now, you can zoom in to local high fidelity info, or link local to global flows easily. This means it will be possible to monitor for example global impact of local decisions, making our choices about say what species of timber substitute to use for the floor boards a globally conscious choice. It is questionable whether this information will give us more choice or create more opportunities for regulation. Imagine pop up warnings telling you about choices you want to make but aren't allowed to make like "sorry, your selection is illegal under the world environment court provision feg/reg/rerehh/2ddd.cet banning the use of any natural materials in new dwellings"

Another link that is great is the video artist Chris Oakley, and his work the catalogue. I have the download on my laptop but there are stills of the work at http://www.chrisoakley.com/gallery.html

This all started with the idea that we dont draw in 2050. We manipulate flows of this kind of information in order to shape simulations that run in real time. We wont be creating new simulations, we will be editing and extending (professionally hacking) existing ones, overlaying public information systems with personal, professional (as in the discipline of architecture) and business (as in my practices specific preferences and collections) databases.

So combine this with the idea of PlanSys Pty Ltd, the privatized planning company that runs the Sydney simulation and controls its connection to the GlobeSys simulation. There will be simulations of current information (ie what does a place look like right now) and then there will be a host of possible futures from these current situations that can be forecast. The intelligent planning agent will, like a global weather simulation, determine the most appropriate types of developments for any place and essentially design the default version. Morality will be embedded into the structure of the system. It will be architects jobs to manipulate and stretch the edges of this default (collectively projected) reality (common denominator reality) to make something unique. The planning AI runs on the assumption that collective intelligence will determine a publicly acceptable set of constraints, then the architect must be able to work past that type of default design position. To do this they must be able to work within the flows of information.
Our context will be networks of information. We will all be hackers.

Need to work more on this as it ties a role for architects (agency) in here to visualization and not what we will see but how we will see. The drawing will be the least helpful form of visual communication in this situation.