so yeah this one phrase from this article made everything crystal-clear to me: PROGRAM DRIVEN ARCHITECTURE. or rather ‘programme driven’ as the author would have it. when formulating your aesthetic, let the data do the dirty work. mr. koolhaas gets it, mr. boyer gets it, there’s an army of clerks who know what’s what. I love the architect-speak definition of the word ‘program’; I find it to be a very handy term when discussing this recent rash of data visualization projects out there that have been sprouting up faster than you can namedrop edward tufte.

sarcastic I may be, yes, but fo’real I believe in this shit, and hey I’m guilty too of glibly invoking the trend. and why not? koolhaas baldly says that architecture has become some seriously expensive shit, “serving at best an enlightened private entity,” and at worst a bunch of rich fucks, no doubt. but for the price of a laptop on ebay, you too can create program-based data-driven bullshit systems that look hot.

koolhaas also says, in that hideously-jacketed new book of his, that “architecture” is an excellent sort of postmodern intellectual lens for looking at anything. of course you’d expect a card-carrying architect to spout off some pullquote nonsense like that, but let’s take it literally for a moment. go have a look at the del.icio.us results for ‘architecture’… you get just as many nifty-looking flash visualization thingees as you do actual buildings. you also get a fuckton of computer science geek blogs (as in real geeks, like the combo-munching bearded slashdot types) talking about software architecture. I am seriously blown away by how useful the archi-term “program” could be, in both of these new virtual “architectures”… it gets confusing cuz there is probably no way to detangle the meanings and connotations of the word “program”, as regards computers and so forth, if you happen to be a serious geek. hrm. but I digress.

so yeah data. if you let the data speak for itself, you’re golden. if you try to complicate it with your big aesthetic ideas, you might fuck it all up badly. is this just another facet in the swirling maelstrom of navelgazery that is the postmodern malaise? you betcha. but can it be used for good, and not evil? hells yeah. I wonder if venturi/scottbrown had any idea that their idea of the “duck” would win out against the decorated shed in the fantastic new virtual universe… maybe I would know for sure if I read more books by them and their contemporaries, instead of compulsively blogging up every idea that happens into my head while walking down the motherfucking street and/or reading a magazine article. but I am nothing if not naive, yo, and damn proud.

ok now I’m going to watch “bring me the head of alfredo garcia”. enough of this babble. love ya.

-fish

(btw, the title of this entry is a JANE JACOBS QUOTE, suckas!!!!!!!! from “dark age ahead.” word.)

also yeah: maya lin had this hot data program shit super-mega-together with her modernist styles way back in the days. I think every single piece in her “topographies” show back in 96 was based on some high-concept abstracted datum.

this, in essence, was also what was so revolutionary about the vietnam veteran’s memorial as well: it let the information speak for itself, and in doing so it’ll move you to tears, even if you weren’t born yet during that war… vis a vis memorials before that, which tended to be strictly representational and not so evocative. yeah.

ok yes and now I will retitle this blog “STATING THE BLOODY OBVIOUS.” bleah.

-fish

that title is a hot title. wasn’t the early wittgenstein all about reducing everything to a tautology? anyways, obvious needs to be stated over and over.

that’s a really nice photo btw.

reminds me of my current work on actor model / flow-based programming (in ruby), the emphasis is on ‘data flow’ rather than ‘control flow’; as well as on concurrency/parallelization (bounded buffers) and petri nets. (which i find amazingly cool when this can be brought back to cybernetics in both the norbert wiener and sci-fi sense.)

yes, let the data tell the medium what to do; otherwise you’ll waste your time over-engineering and micro-managing your project. your project should work for you, not the inverse.

peace,
-z