Luis Fernando Odiaga [IaaC]

Trying to understand and be able to explain the most common phenomena needs a hard mind-work. In order to do so, De Landa appeal to the term Machinic-phylum. Coined by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, a hybrid-term that describes something between a machine and living being.

For the last decades, an extreme confidence in the “purity” of things has been the vector for design. The belief in a kind of moral integrity inside the object of design, and of course in the understanding of the whole reality, has been the path for many interventions and essays about the reality, translated in Urban proposals, Manifestos, Political plans, etc. This kind of approach forgets —in a way— the wrapped condition of contradiction that reality is. Is well known for the metal artisans, that the alloy is the best way to make a soft metal stronger and at the same time give flexibility to a non-flexible metal. These two properties breed a new metal. A metal with an improvement in the properties of the raw metals is more valuable in terms of its machinery for the manufacture of tools and weapons. It’s more about a state of “a-kind-of-impurity” in the alloy which gives in back a more reach-metal than the predecessors. “The point here is that a key ingredient for combinatorial richness, and hence, for an essentially open future, is heterogeneity of components.”—machinic phylum on the Web by De Landa—

Bringing up this machinery-system, embedded inside many natural behaviors, clear in
That is not an organic behavior, is a very healthy-approach to decode the apparent chaotic systems, which in fact are no more than a combinatorial-richness. Sometimes the effect of this combinatory may be a very destructive phenomenon like the storms or the tsunamis.

“The world hurricane is the name given to natures strongest storm.
A hurricane occurs when high pressure and low pressure masses of air come in contact with one another.
There is often a significant difference in temperature between the two masses.
One mass is warm, while the other is cold.
The warmer air rises, and the cooler air falls.
Likewise, the low pressure area slides down the sides of the high pressure area.
They swirl in and around one another, creating the beginnings of the storm.”— AIR, “The virgin suicides ”, track 06 : The World hurricane,  Astralwerks,  29 Feb 2000—

The “Machinic” part of the term reveals existing kind-of gears or machinery [a process in any case] that works inside many natural systems on a synergy. Is a kind of articulation that works and develops a novel state which is also expected to bring newer one if the present conditions are modified.

By the other hand the “Phylum” Calls the attention in the biological approach to life, this is the different lineages, families, or phylogenies in which the diverse living-beings evolved.

“The idea of a machinic phylum would then be that, beyond biological lineages, we are also related to non-living creatures (winds and flames, lava and rocks) through common “body-plans” involving similar self-organizing and combinatorial processes. As if one and the same material “phylum” could be “folded and stretched” to yield all the different structures that inhabit our universe.”— machinic phylum on the Web by De Landa—

…the journal Scientific American recently reported that a mathematical model, developed by Alvin Saperstein and later refined by Gottfried mayer-kress, “suggested that the same mathematics that described the transition of a jet of water from laminar to turbulent might be employed to describe the outbreak of war between nations…—De Landa M., “War in the Age of Intelligent Machines”.1999—

Nevertheless, the approach to the Machinic phylum of war systems, meaning: Weapons, Tactics, Strategy and logistics is the main subject of the book, hits was more used as pretext to explain with a very close example the way this combinatorial-richness of self-organization works in nature, going further biological explanations. The Machinic phylum which in fact is  an emerge of order within the chaos, is also used to explain the way the computers from their very first beginning were a new “phylum” with their own evolving systems and how this technology at one point cross with the human-machinic-phylum in the form of interactivity. This is: …from the moment that the “mouse” appeared as an interface between the user and the computer, it may be said that the “machinic phylum” cross between humans and computers for the very first time. This cross is: interactivity, transforming the screen in the “information space” where humans can see correspondence between the movements of the “mouse” and the pointer displayed on the screen.

From this point onwards the novel man-machine-system has been developing different social-products in a shift towards a heterogeneous-union of this two “phylum”. The cell-phones are becoming little and with lots of functions that allow humans to communicate in different ways, also becoming a kind of ear-eye-speak-prosthesis. Is an everyday matter that most of the day-work is done by “remote-control”. By the other hand, the computer-processors are becoming smaller and powerful in order to let users deal with wider amount of information. The wireless connections are letting the transference of information without physical limits. And of course, the Internet, in its phase 2.0 permits the share and develops of knowledge in a self-organization system.

All this developments are the result of friction inside the man-machine-system, understanding friction as any condition where two or more, known or unknown components of a system converges in a state-of-flow, therefore is not an impact, neither a single approach. The reaction on each one of the components of this system is a loose and a gain on the same time —Nevertheless the friction can trigger a stop on the trajectory of components, this stop condition depends more on the previous behavior of the components than the friction per se.—

Nevertheless this two “phylum” are by now working on a novel system, it cannot be said that technology is going to give solutions to human problems. Because of the friction, there are many points in which the human side is going to loose some things. Paraphrasing De Landa… “Computer screens can become narcotic mirrors, trapping users by feeding them amplified images of their narcissistic selves. The same interface that can allow users to control the machine, can also give them a false and intoxicating sense of their own power… At every step we will find a similar mixture of new roads to explore and new dangers to avoid. And at all times we will have to play it by ear, since there is no way to predict in advance where those roads will lead, or what kinds of dangers they will present us with”

Work It Harder Make It Better
Do It Faster, Makes Us stronger

More Than Ever Hour After
Our Work Is Never Over

[sheet #4 intellectual property of Daniel Castro-Cordano] 

GORDUGA, f (zool): Entiendase, una Oruga que ha comido, al punto de engordar tando que no puede moverse para volver a casa, menos aun continuar comiendo pues sus extremidades ya no tienen contacto con el suelo. En consecuencia, no es más una simple Oruga pues su volumen ha modificado su escencia y su funcion, es en cambio y por consecuencia una GORDUGA.

Male Voice1—Why, to measure something?
Male Voice2—forget measuring, to measure is just a step in the way of understanding something new… use the measurments.
MV1—Why to try to understand something that you can not handle?
MV2—In order to learn from it, the “repellors” and the “attractors” that describes its behavior.
MV1—Why to learn from the behavior of something?
Female voice—To reproduce that.
MV1—Why?
FV—To make a leap on the machinic phylum.
MV1—Is that possible?
FV—Not in fact.
MV1—Then, why to try to do something that is not possible?
FV—To bring flux into the process of forgetting, in order to re-learn with a balanced clear mind.
MV1—Why?
FV—To make a leap on the machinic phylum.
MV1 [whispering in a disappointed mood]— this is a non sense loop, this is not logic.
FV—exactly, take a look on this:

“the turbulent behavior of liquids, for example, with its exquisite structure of nested vortices and eddies, each contained in or containing the next, has come to be seen as a wonderfully ordered process. But as the previous quote indicates, more important than turbulent behavior itself is that special, singular moment at the onset of turbulence. A liquid sitting still or moving at a slow speed is in a relatively disordered state: its component molecules move aimlessly, bumping into each other at random. But when a certain threshold of speed is reached, a flowing liquid undergoes a process of self-organization: its component molecules begin to move in concert to produce highly intricate patterns. Transition points like these, called “singularities,” where order spontaneously emerges out of chaos, have been the subject of intense scientific analysis over the last three decades. These points or thresholds in the rate of flow of matter and energy are referred to as “singular” because they are rare and special.” (De Landa M., “War in the Age of Intelligent Machines”, p. 15., 1991)

FV—Now you can see…

Organic waste now can be used for two main very productive matters… soil fertilizer and energy supplier. With the use of a BIO-DIGESTOR Methane-gas can be extracted from a big amount of organic waste, also the remainder of this process is a fertilizer very rich in nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium.

Re-thinking architecture in terms of organic architecture —always with clear mind about the differences between design process and final result— as thinking of an organic design process —very much related with growth than with simply aggregation of parts— is also allowed to think on a decomposed organic design process which will be mostly all the design methods that were used only in one project or just used.  But, as the organic waste is more richer with a great variety of organic sources, then what will be encouraged in the compost architecture will be the mix of decomposed organic design process to forge a new way of thinking, taking advantage of what other architects already developed but with the compromise of making a big leap from the initial state.

This is also very simple and difficult at the same time… by this days is very simple to copy and paste pictures, mp3, dwg, etc… is even very simple to copy a complete script, the difficulty is about being able to consider all the actual knowledge as raw material, also decomposed organic design process, just to be able to look after a more global and complete phase of design, which in all ways will be considered as a never ending process. And oviously to get a GOD result/process.

Male Voice1— Ok…
Male Voice2— Ok… [interference sounds]
MV1— It’s Bad.
[interference sounds]
MV2— Are you sure we got the right information.
Female Voice—Yes.
MV1— Remember, we need a full examination of the procedures…
FV— The procedures…
[interference sounds]
[bips from a machine]
MV1— Request examination of every instrument onboard…
MV2— OK, good night.
FV— good night.
[electronic wave sounds]
[silence]
[door shuts]
MV1[Voice processed by an electronic device]— Hi,  This is Andrews…Knoledge.
[electronic wave sounds]
MV1—Where are you?
[electronic wave sounds]
MV1— Yes… Yes…
[electronic wave sounds]
MV1— It’s true… I am your only friend nobody else even knows you exist.
[electronic wave sounds]
MV1— They will… this will be the greatest day in the history of humankind.
[electronic wave sounds]
FV— Come to Bed Tom…

[GO TO: Digital Technologies in Architecture’s Blog: G01 Maite Bravo / Javier Olmeda / Luis Odiaga]

Plato wrote about how un-real are the forms that our eyes can see —the world of the changing physical objects—, because they are just a shadow of the idea(eidos)—which he described as the light of the truth… the world of unchanging ideas —. In the other hand Jean Baudrillard introduced the logic of the symbolic exchange; the simulation of the whole reality as a characteristic of the contemporary society—or maybe [the copy/paste culture], always emergent culture— this two ideas of the form have in common the comprehension that the human mind is always misunderstanding something about the relation between the container, the content, and obviously the symbol(ic) meaning of the objects. 

The form of the buildings no matter how strange they seem to be at first sight and how indecipherable appears to be their meaning, always receive a nickname that reveals the impossibility of being out-of-this-world in design matters, just think about the “the fish” of Gehry; “The lightning (blitz)” of Libeskind; “El supositori” of Jean Nouvel…and so on. It doesn’t matter what the architect says about his project but what people understands about it and how this strange forms appear to them on their minds, more specific…on their memory.

Exploring the idea of complex geometries necessarily looks after this misunderstanding; this is just to blur the boundaries and think of the object, the shape, the content and the meaning as a unit that is in a constant flux inside, interchanging places or even avoiding them, always remembering that the human mind is guilty of naming and classifying things just to be sure and proud of the acquired knowledge, leading the conciseness of people to try to tag everything… and then becomes the eternal question of which came first: the EGGstructure or the sHapEN?

1.- Measurement is the estimation of the magnitude of some attribute of an object…Relative to a unit of measurement…
2.- Motion means a continuous change in the position of a body (might be a part of a body) relative to a reference point, as measured by a particular observer in a particular frame of reference… 

Trees are constantly moving,—growing, changing, breathing, eating— but on a different Tempo, so different from human tempo that some times is imperceptible by simple sight—for people— . Time is the less accidental dimension of all, and measuring a tree is more about lingering seconds than counting meters… The tree that we are measuring today—if this is possible— is not the same tree that was there yesterday neither the tree that is going to be there tomorrow—if it is allowed to be there—.