Irreducible Vagueness: Mixed Worldmaking in Diller & Scofidio’s Blur Building
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Irreducible Vagueness : Mixed Worldmaking in Diller & Scofidio’s Blur Building. / Ekman, Ulrik.
In: Postmodern Culture, Vol. 19, No. 2, 2009.Research output: Contribution to journal › Journal article › Research › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Irreducible Vagueness
T2 - Mixed Worldmaking in Diller & Scofidio’s Blur Building
AU - Ekman, Ulrik
PY - 2009
Y1 - 2009
N2 - This article argues that Blur Building, Diller & Scofidio's architectural project for the Swiss Expo 2002, demonstrated performatively and interactively how contemporary worldmaking involves cultural and technological invention and construction both, implying our cultural co-evolution with ubiquitous computing and media such that "worlding" must today be approached and approximated as a question of realities that mix virtuality and actuality. This article not only touches upon the actual inventions produced in this project--with its atmospheric architecture of tensegrity structures, its vast artifactual mist-cloud, its bio-genetic pumping system, its smart weather system, and its complex systems for ubicomp surveillance and wearable computing--but also goes on to problematize the implications of mixed realities for existing notions of practical contextuality or the "life world." Specifically, it is argued that mixed worlding in an epoch of calm ubiquitous computing necessarily confronts us with a lived experience (Erlebnis) of embodiment whose irreducible vagueness stems from a transduction of the imperceptible and the unimaginable, i.e., from a being-among in originary tactility as that which affects and animates us and remains structurally earlier than or ahead of any commonsensical hermeneutic horizon of conscious, linguistic, or discursive meaning.
AB - This article argues that Blur Building, Diller & Scofidio's architectural project for the Swiss Expo 2002, demonstrated performatively and interactively how contemporary worldmaking involves cultural and technological invention and construction both, implying our cultural co-evolution with ubiquitous computing and media such that "worlding" must today be approached and approximated as a question of realities that mix virtuality and actuality. This article not only touches upon the actual inventions produced in this project--with its atmospheric architecture of tensegrity structures, its vast artifactual mist-cloud, its bio-genetic pumping system, its smart weather system, and its complex systems for ubicomp surveillance and wearable computing--but also goes on to problematize the implications of mixed realities for existing notions of practical contextuality or the "life world." Specifically, it is argued that mixed worlding in an epoch of calm ubiquitous computing necessarily confronts us with a lived experience (Erlebnis) of embodiment whose irreducible vagueness stems from a transduction of the imperceptible and the unimaginable, i.e., from a being-among in originary tactility as that which affects and animates us and remains structurally earlier than or ahead of any commonsensical hermeneutic horizon of conscious, linguistic, or discursive meaning.
KW - Faculty of Humanities
KW - Diller and Scofidio
KW - Blur Building
KW - arkitektur
KW - verdensanskuelse
KW - nye medier
KW - ubiquitous computing
KW - Diller and Scofidio
KW - Blur Building
KW - architecture
KW - worldmaking
KW - new media
KW - ubiquitous computing
U2 - 10.1353/pmc.0.0047
DO - 10.1353/pmc.0.0047
M3 - Journal article
VL - 19
JO - Postmodern Culture
JF - Postmodern Culture
SN - 1053-1920
IS - 2
ER -
ID: 13811217