# UTOPIA TODAY : INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE 22 - 23 - 24 OCTOBER 2010

Following is the programme of an upcoming event I really invite you to join !
I'll be around for an installation, and I'll try to do a report for the unlucky ones that won't be able to come. See you there!

Utopia today?

Saline Royale Arc-et-senans, 22-24.10.2010

friday 22.10.2010

14:00 – 14:30 Andri Gerber, Brent Patterson (ESA Paris)

introduction

14:30 – 14:50 Michel Pierre, Director Saline Royale

welcome

14:50 – 15:00 Martial Marquet, Paris

Rise above

15:00 – 15:30 break

15:30 – 16:00 Ole W. Fischer (Harvard)

After Modernity – architecture between utopia, nostalgia and dirty reality?

Comments on the uncertain state of an ancient profession…

16:00 – 16:30 Michel Pregardien (Université de Liège)

Il n’y a plus de place pour l’utopie

16:30 – 17:00 break

17:00 – 18:00 David Harvey (New York)

18:00 – 19:00 round table discussion, moderators Odile Decq, Andri Gerber, Brent Patterson

19:00 – 20:30 dinner

20:30 movie projection

saturday 23.10.2010

8:00 – 9:00 breakfast

9:30 – 9:50 resumé Andri Gerber

9:50 – 10:30 Philippe Morel (EZCT, Paris)

10:30 – 11:10 Matthias Pauwels (BAVO, Rotterdam)

From urban laboratories to utopian NGOism. Recent mutations in architectural utopianism

11:10 – 11:30 break

11:30 – 12:00 Karin Bradley (The Royal Institute of Technology – KTH, Stockholm)

Freegans, squatters and urban farmers – Radical political ecology in the making

12:00 – 12:30 Katia Frey, Eliana Perrotti (ETH Zürich)

Women’s utopia. Tradition and future opportunities of a gender oriented town planning

12:30 – 14:00 lunch

14:00 – 14:30 Julia Ramírez Blanco (Complutense University of Madrid)

The ideal city of AVL-Ville

14:30 – 15:00 Hendrik Tieben (The Chinese University of Hong Kong)

Gordon Wu - Hong Kong’s empirical utopist

15:00 – 15:30 break

15:30 – 16:00 Stefan Kurath (Urbanplus, Zürich)

Imagine grison, the meaning of working with architectural utopies and dystopies in the daily practice

16:00 – 16:40 Peter Eisenman, interview by Emmanuel Petit (Yale University)

16:40 – 17:30 Winy Maas (MVRDV, Rotterdam)

What’s next?

17:30 – 18:00 break

18:00 – 19:00 roundtable, moderators Andri Gerber, Johannes

Käferstein, Brent Patterson

19:00 – 20:30 dinner

20:30 movie projection

sunday 24.10.2010

8:00 – 9:30 breakfast

9:30 – 9:50 resumé (Brent Patterson)

9:50 – 10:20 Jae Emerling / Ronna Gardner (University of North Carolina)

Prosthetic Architecture as Heterotopia

10:20 – 10:50 Hanspeter Bürgi (HSLU, Luzern)

Gross National Happiness: The Bhutanese concept and a focus on space, energy and culture

10:50 – 11:10 break

11:10 – 12:00 Final discussion with all speakers

12:00 – 13:30 lunch

# PALESTINIAN CHRONICLES /// Interview of Raja Shehadeh

Thanks to Romaric, my friend who works at French publisher Galaade, I had the chance to meet Raja Shehadeh for an interview he kindly accepted.

Raja is a lawyer in Ramallah since the end of the 70's and has dedicated his carrier to cases of expropriation of Palestinian lands by the Israeli.

He wrote several books, including Occupier's Law and Palestinian walks.

Ramallah. 21st July 2010

Leopold Lambert: The particularity of your actions is that you are a lawyer. Despite the fact that law is violated every day by the State of Israel, what may be some naivety from me makes me think that it is the one domain that can save Palestinians from oppression. Would your expertise agree with that?

Raja Shehadeh: When I started as a lawyer, I had an exaggerated view of the importance of law. I took very seriously that law was a weapon. I still consider seriously that law is a way of preserving civilization. I have great respect for and belief in International Law, because it came as a result of wars, terrible devastating wars. In the beginning, the International Law for the protection of civilians came from people who did not think that they could stop wars with law but that within the reality of war and hostilities, there could be some protection for civilians and that there could be limitations on conquest the acquisition of territories. So something as basic as the Geneva Convention and the Hague regulations say very simply that no gain should be made through belligerency. So if a war takes place, regardless why and who started it, and territories are occupied, the occupier may transfer its civilian population to the occupied territories. It's very logical. It does make sense and it should be preserved, this is a very important principle.

At the same time, there are things that derived from this principles. If the situation lasts, the occupier may do certain things and may not do other things: he may not change the law, he has to care for the welfare of the occupied population and so on. When I came back from my legal studies, I saw that the basis of these principles were being violated and that no work was being on done on this in the late 70's. Very little work was being done. Verbal condemnations of Israel were being made but not real studies which were really important to do.

So, yes, I do believe in law. And I also believe in taking legal actions to test the possibility of how far you can go and what was the legality of the Israeli actions. The Israeli government and politics were telling the Israeli settlers that they were not taking anybody's land because this was state's land. Of course we must not forget that even if it were state land, the occupier may not take it to use to established settlements for its own population. The whole project is wrong. The Israeli supporters of settlements tried to show it is done through proper legal means, I and my colleagues showed there was no legal basis for taking Palestinian land. It was tantamount to stealing land.

At the same time, it was not really clear to me how the Israeli legal apologists were thinking and what was the nature of the legal arguments they were employing to justify their other policies in the Occupied Territories. So it was a process of discovery in a sense. Then, after going through quite a lot of case work, in court, by thinking, by reading and exploring the legal aspects, I began to understand that what underlies the Israeli position is religious ideology. Ultimately, what they are saying is: "This land belongs to us. God gave it to us". How do we get to appropriate it, is a mere detail." In furthering this the Israeli High Court played an important role. For example in the very first challenge to the High Court, the military had used the method of expropriating the land near Ramallah. When the Palestinian owner of the land challenged this order, the Court said: "Expropriation is not a proper way of taking the land because expropriation implies long term and the occupation can not be for a long term..." They didn’t say taking the land of the occupied population for building settlements for the occupier’s population is wrong. Just that this way of doing it is not right. What they were also saying was that if you use expropriation to take the land, the implication is that the land is not yours because you can only expropriate other people's land.

Later on, in another challenge, which was in Nablus where there is now the settlement of Elon Moreh, they said that expropriating private property was illegal but also that if the land were to be declared “State's Land,” then that it would be possible to take it for establishing a settlement. So since that case, the Israeli military government has been “expropriating” the land by declaring it State's land. To carry this out they changed the local law. One of the principles of the International Law is that you cannot change the local laws and there are local laws about what constitutes State land and who can make such a claim and who has the burden of proof and what it takes to lift it. They changed all of this and reversed it. They said: "Anybody who claims that it is not State's land (that is challenges an order the military makes that a certain land is State Land) has the burden to prove this." So instead of the takers proving that the land belonged to the State, it was to the other party who had to prove otherwise. The burden of proof was shifted. And they went further by restricting the definition of private land to land which is actually used continuously for ten years and so on. They made it more and more difficult for Palestinians to succeed in holding on to their land and protecting it from being taken by the settlers. Every time we managed to break through, they raised the bar and made it yet more difficult.

In the beginning, we thought that we could burden the system by bringing many cases and through applying moral and psychologically pressure by essentially proving that it was but a process of large scale theft of the land. But we were dealing with a government with seemingly unlimited resources and they started to make it more difficult and more expensive for us to pursue these cases. For example they made it necessary that we had to submit along with the case, survey maps of the entire area under consideration which sometimes included scores of acres, What the government making the claim should have done was shifted to the private owners.

It became clear to me that the basis for the actions of the Israeli government was not legal but ideological, namely that the whole of the land in their view was public, that the only legitimate public was the Jewish public, that the Jewish public had this land 2000 years ago then they left, and meanwhile other people, non Jewish, came and used the land, now those people are on parts of the land so the part where they actually using will for the time being be left to them, but only these areas, all the rest will be “returned” to its rightful Jewish owners.

Then, a very important process started at the beginning of the 1980's, which is the land use planning. The British had made statutory regional plans for the central and southern region of the West Bank; and the Israelis decided to revive these plans which were done in the Mandate times and were still being enforced in Jordan. Jordan had also passed a Planning Law in 1966. Through military orders this law was basically massacred. Where the law had involved the community in the course the planning, this was canceled and all the members of the Supreme Planning Committee became Israeli military personnel. Most of the lower committees were cancelled. Then they took those original plans and they simply unilaterally amended them. Of course those plans did not include any settlements because they were created before 1967. So the Israeli military planners placed settlements in the middle of these region and started making local zoning plans, town and village plans for all the Palestinian villages in the West Bank. The just drew a circle around the built up areas and declared this to be the border of the village for the next forty years. When negotiations seemed to be on the horizon this process was speeded up so that by the time that the Oslo Accords were signed statutory zoning plans for all the villages had been completed which the Palestinian Authority is not allowed to amend. The confinement of the Palestinians was achieved and the bulk of the land was left for the establishment and expansion of the Jewish settlements.
Again, I and other lawyers and planners started in the late eighties to take objections against these plans. A good number of objections were submitted. Sometimes they accepted to revise the plans but it was very difficult. This is why now, when you travel in the West Bank, you notice how the villages do not look so much like villages anymore. Traditionally the villagers built one floor with a garden and there was a sense of space because villages like cultivating the land around their house. Now, most villages have houses of several floors and they look cramped. That is because they are not allowed to go beyond the set borders. When they do the Israeli army come with their bulldozers and demolish this “illegal” homes.

Not only was Israel taking Palestinian land, they were denying the Palestinians from expanding on what was left for them. The process, interestingly enough, follows that of Israel; of Galilee mainly. In Galilee, you notice the exact same phenomenon. The Arabs' villages, towns and cities (Nazareth for example) are all very cramped. The villages would own land, outside of these, but they would not be allowed to build on it. Same process here. Not as severe as in Israel but with the same pattern.

And there was also a plan for the roads which was published in 1984. Not only did they plan for the settlements but also how the settlements would relate to Israel and how they would be connected to each other; connected in such a way as to disconnect the Palestinians from each others. It is all part of a total vision. It actually started very early on and that is why I felt it was very important to work on the legal aspect. Through the legal aspect, you can explain, reveal, describe, expose how this works.

Leopold Lambert: Even if the suspect is pretty much the same person than the Judge?

Raja Shehadeh: Yes; because as long as they say: "You have the means to appeal, to object.", then you have to use it in order to use all your options. Your case will be a very much stronger case if you have done this. I was able in 1985 to publish my book Occupier's Law in which I was saying that I, not only know that it is a case, but I have tried to go through the Israeli set channels to object and to challenge. The result was that the case became stronger by going through those processes.

Leopold Lambert: If we attempt to focus a little bit on architecture itself; as Eyal Weizman wrote about the notion of urbicide as being not included enough within the International Law which is not specific enough to architecture; maybe an extremely useful project here would be to redact a law that focus very precisely on architecture: its construction but also its destruction.

Raja Shehadeh: Actually, a good case to compare with would be South Africa. Also there they used architecture and town planning to implement their apartheid laws. It was very much part of the policy. I don't know how it all looks now but it is not easy to undo.

Leopold Lambert: But in this hypothesis of a new law, architects and lawyer should work together to make it happen. Do you believe yourself that there would exist any way to implement it on the international scene?

Raja Shehadeh: We have to distinguish between a situation where the state has sovereignty and one where there is occupation. In the case of the Occupied Territories international law says that: "Regardless of how the building takes place or how the appropriation of land takes place, it is illegal."

In the case of South Africa, it was also covered because apartheid was a crime against humanity. Perhaps in the Israel of 1948 it would be more appropriate in the sense that the Palestinians were Israeli citizens, and as such they were subjected to a process in which urban centers are done in such a way as to oppress them. It might work better in the framework of a sovereign country in which one group of the population is submitted to urbicide. In the case of Gaza and the West Bank it is already illegal.

Leopold Lambert: So does that mean that you don't believe so much in this architectural international law?

Raja Shehadeh: I would not be against it as such. I would not say it is a bad thing for example to describe the situation here as one akin to apartheid because it helps people to understand the situation. If there is an international law that looks at architecture, that's a plus! But it is just an addition to an illegality that is already implied.

Leopold Lambert: My point would be that if one observes the current situation in which Israel violates the law on a daily basis but the International Community do not take the measures against that, then one could think that fragmenting the law into series of very precisely described cases of violation through architecture that could ultimately lead to several recognition of these situations.

Raja Shehadeh: Yes, that's true. I also think that when you are developing an international law, you obviously do it for more than one case, for more than Palestine and Israel; so perhaps, by focusing on this case and showing how an aggressor implements policies, you can also prevent it from happening in less typical cases; in urban centers for example or with gated communities.
I think it is an important development, it is a departure. The International Law has not moved in this direction, it is a good direction to move to.

# Relationship between engineering and architecture / interview by Francesco Cingolani

Francesco Cingolani is one of the associate of CTRLZ architectures we already published here; he also works for Hugh Dutton Associes in Paris and take part of the blog Complexitys related to this office. He recently asked me to answer to a short interview concerning the relationship between engineering and architecture. The original version in French follows the translated one.
(nb there are four other interviews on Complexitys with people coming from very various backgrounds)

Francesco Cingolani: In your vision, what is the relationship between architecture and engineering?

Léopold Lambert: In order to answer to this question, it is important to define what we understand by engineering. If I define here engineering as the discipline that tend to rationalize, diagrammatize, optimize space so then, in my vision, architecture has to try to evolve to the opposite side of this discipline.
Of course, architects would always have to do concessions to technocracy, however to resist to it -and probably resist it with its own language, its own symbols- seems to me as a important attitude.
Last week, one of my teachers, Catherine Ingraham, was evoking the hypothesis that English architects might have an important part of their education dedicated to engineering for reasons that were relative to colonization. In fact, she had the intuition that such an association of architecture and engineering had for goal to materialize and organize in an optimal way the English presence in colonized land. To associate this way Norman Foster and the colonial Bombay's organization is certainly a bold thing to do, nevertheless, even if this hypothesis would be proved to be wrong, I remain convinced that when architecture and engineering are too closely associated, it leads to a space of control. Obviously, I speak here of disciplines in their definitions; by no means I would like to praise architects and speak out against engineers. Actually the important word here is the notion of control. I like this word because it is not connoted and can thus develop an interesting ambiguity. It is not about completely refuse control and engineering, at least for some obvious physical issues; what, in my opinion, should be done is to resist a transcendental absolute control whether the latter comes from the architect or the encompassing institutional system.

FC: We are in an era of great changes: how do you imagine the architect of the future?

LL: I am a bit cautious about this attitude that consist in considering the present era as special. I think we have to work to gather all the circumstances that would make it become this way, but I don't feel it is really the case right now. What I see hidden behind this question is the question of the "green" architecture, but once again, I am cautious about his unique thought that acts like a new religious moral that capitalism did not have too much problem to appropriate.

FC: Nowadays, digital technologies multiply our possibilities and our conception tools: in your job what is your relationship with this complexity that seems to characterize the contemporary world?

LL: I just wrote a short paper for Pratt's journal that illustrate how parametric design allows us to physically access to the spatial complexity depicted in Jorge Luis Borges' short stories.
Previously, the labyrinth was described in two dimensions and was thus controlled in a transcendental way by its author. Borges, by introducing chance and infinite as generative elements of a space, invented uncontrollable architecture in which everybody can get lost.
Those literary spaces, we can now generates them with the help of computation. Using scientific terminology, architecture mostly belongs to the world of physics. Computer allows it to enter in the world of mathematics, and thus, as far as Borges is concerned, to investigate notions of randomness and infinite.
To make an architecture dependent on an equation is yet a vertiginous thing and that is why too many architects and students let themselves go towards a tool idolatry, what we could call an ergaleiophilie (ergaleio in greek means the tool). One should thus use this tool for goals that are external of itself.

original version:
Francesco Cingolani: Quel est, dans ta vision, le rapport entre l’architecture et l’ingénierie?

Léopold Lambert: Afin de répondre a cette question, il convient de définir ce que l’on entend par ingénierie. Si je définis ici l’ingénierie comme la discipline qui tente à rationaliser, diagrammatiser, optimiser l’espace alors, dans ma vision, l’architecture se doit de tenter d’évoluer a l’opposé de cette discipline.

Bien sûr, les architectes auront sans doute toujours à faire des concessions a la technocratie, néanmoins, lui résister –et sans doute lui résister avec son propre langage, ses propres symboles- me semble être une attitude libératrice.Une de mes professeurs, Catherine Ingraham, la semaine dernière, évoquait l’hypothèse selon laquelle les architectes anglais avaient une formation approfondie en ingénierie dont les raisons dataient de la colonisation. En effet, elle avait l’intuition qu’une telle association de l’architecture et de l’ingénierie avait pour but de matérialiser et organiser de manière optimale la présence anglaise en terres colonisée. Associer de la sorte Norman Foster et l’aménagement du Bombay colonial est certes une chose audacieuse mais quand bien même cette hypothèse se révélerait fausse pour une raison ou pour une autre, je reste persuadé que l’architecture et l’ingénierie lorsqu’associées de trop près mènent inexorablement a un espace de contrôle. Bien évidemment, je parle ici de disciplines dans leurs définitions, il ne s’agit en aucun cas de faire l’apologie des architectes et de conspuer les ingénieurs. D’ailleurs, le mot important ici, est la notion de contrôle. J’aime ce mot car il n’est pas connoté et peut donc ainsi développer une ambigüité intéressante. Il ne s’agit pas de refuser le contrôle et l’ingénierie, ne serait-ce que pour des problèmes évidents de physique ; ce qui selon moi convient de faire, est de résister a un contrôle transcendantal absolu que celui-ci provienne de l’architecte ou du système institutionnel environnant.

FC: Nous sommes dans un moment de grands changements: comment imagines-tu la figure de l’architecte dans le futur?

LL: Je me méfie un peu de cette attitude qui consiste à considérer la période présente comme spéciale. Je pense qu’il faut œuvrer à réunir toutes les circonstances pour qu’elle le devienne mais je n’ai pas le sentiment que cela soit le cas en ce moment. Ce que je vois caché derrière cette question est la question de l’architecture « verte » mais là encore, je me méfie de cette pensée unique qui agit comme une nouvelle morale a tendance franchement religieuse que le capitalisme n’a pas eu trop de mal a s’approprier.

FC: Aujourd’hui, les technologies numériques multiplient nos possibilités ainsi que les outils de conception: dans ta profession, quel est ton rapport à cette complexité qui semble caractériser le monde contemporain?

LL: Je viens d’écrire un court papier pour le journal de Pratt qui raconte comment le design paramétrique nous permet d’accéder physiquement à la complexité spatiale décrite dans les nouvelles de Jorge Luis Borges.
Auparavant, le labyrinthe était décrit en deux dimensions et était ainsi contrôlé de manière transcendantale par son auteur. Borges, en introduisant le hasard et l’infini comme éléments générateurs d’un espace a inventé des architectures incontrôlables au sein desquelles, chacun peut se perdre.
Ces espaces littéraires nous pouvons désormais les générer à l’aide de la computation. En termes scientifiques, l’architecture appartient plutôt au monde la physique. L’ordinateur lui permet d’entrer dans le monde des mathématiques, et ainsi, en ce qui concerne Borges, d’envisager les notions d’aléatoire et d’infini.
Faire dépendre une architecture d’une équation est cependant quelque chose de vertigineux et c’est aussi pourquoi trop d’architectes ou d’étudiants en architecture se laisse aller à une idolâtrie de l’outil, ce que l’on pourrait appeler une ergaleiophilie (ergaleio en grec désigne l’instrument) aigue ! Il s’agit donc de se servir de cet outil à des fins qui lui sont extérieures.

# Wes Jones / Four projects and an interview

Yaohua Wang, our hyperactive (!) friend from Sci-Arc (see his Carbon project) recently sent me the interview he just released with Lennard Ong of Wes Jones. It seemed thus appropriate to recall some projects of what might be the most interesting architect of the US West Coast...
I am not uninterested by the current projects developed by his office but I think that more radical ideas have been expressed during the 80's on the paper and in the 90's as a built work. Jones, with an accepted naivety, followed Le Corbusier to the word when he said that architecture is a machine for living.
The comic created in 1988 for the California Lifeguard Tower is pretty illustrative of Jones' architectural interpretation of Heidegger and Derrida's conceptualization of the machine -he even evokes Hitchcock's McGuffin which I think is pretty funny. The interview itself seems to me as pretty irregular as far as interest is concerned but is definitely worth it to listen (the part about regulation is pretty interesting for example).

Housing for the Homeless 1985
Robotics Reasearch and Development Facility 1982
California Lifeguard Tower 1988
Rob Brill Residence 1999

Archinterview_WesJones from Foral on Vimeo.

# Interview of R&Sie(n) - re-edition on New-Territories

R&Sie(n) just released on its blog, an interview of Francois Roche and Stephanie Lavaux that Martin Le Bourgeois and myself recorded in February 2008. This interview has never been translated in English unfortunately but French readers could appreciate the answers of our questions about uncertainty, death of architecture, human participation and Faustian/Social contract.

# Interview of Teddy Cruz on Archinect

Power and powerlessness is the title of Archinect's interview of Teddy Cruz I recommend you to read for its description of the Estudio Cruz' s archi-political work on San Diego/Tijuana's border zone. Teddy Cruz was participating to November conference of Oppositional Architecture and declared that he believe in a long term work to make institutions evolve rather than a resistance based on the non-respect of established rules.

# SWARM /// Interview of Roland Snooks

Third and last interview for this SWARM thematic. This one is of Roland Snooks from Kokkugia. Roland speaks about his research about multi-agent strategies in his studio and in the schools he is teaching (Columbia, Pratt, Sci-Arc, UPenn, RMIT...)

You are using swarm/network intelligence as a process of creation. Would you say that it is a form of loss of control from the architect ? If it is the case why would you think it is relevant in our era ?

Designing through complex systems, in particular through multi-agent design methodologies, does not represent a loss of control in the design process, however the nature of design and authorship changes. It is a shift from invention of form to the orchestration of processes. Within highly volatile algorithmic design processes topology and dimension are not directly controlled, however the formal and organisational characteristics, which are tied to the internal behavior of the algorithm are controlled through an iterative design process.

Swarm intelligence is based on a neighborhood negotiation; how do you make that happen as a designer ?

Swarm Intelligence involves the encoding of design intent at the local level through seeding agents with behaviors. It is the interaction of these behaviors that generates a collective intelligence and complex order. Consequently it shifts not only the operation of the design process, but also the design intent to the micro scale.

What are the political impacts of such a process ?

Agent based systems do not have any a priori political bias, however the distributed nature of the process offers the opportunity to use this design methodology in a more inclusive or democratic way. The interaction of a diverse set of individual desires are capable of self-organising into a coherent whole without homogenizing its constitutate parts.

Would you say that we are heading towards an interactive ubiquity ? May you tell us a short story about it ?

It is not the interactive aspect of swarm algorithms that are the focus of Kokkugia’s projects or academic research. We are less interested in applying these algorithms for their real-time interactive possibility or for the simulation of reality. Instead we are intrigued by the possibilities these techniques offer for generating new situations and emergent order.

# SWARM /// Interview of Francois Roche

This is the second interview of the Swarm thematic about R&Sie(n)'s work and research.

Interview Leopold Lambert / september 17th

Short stories from an acephala body / f. Roche

You are using swarm/network intelligence as a process of creation. Would you say that it is a form of loss of control from the architect ? If it is the case why would you think it is relevant in our era ?

This notion has to be used carefully, to avoid a direct and reductive analogy between bird, ants and humans. The swarm intelligences work in the nature at the condition to reduce and limit the inputs, but contradictorily, humans are known to de-multiply inputs and outputs, between their perception and the illusion of their perception and the paranoia of the both…

The first who introduce for me the politic hypothesis of Swarm intelligences was Ilya Prigogine in his book ''the end of certainty’, where his thermodynamic analyze showed the opposition between Newtonian and Entropic scientific approach.

- In the Newtonian one, people consider the trajectories of particles as the way to describe a system, where everything has to be in the spectrum of predictability and forecast.

- In the thermodynamic one, people consider the whole system as a permanent and endlessness research of equilibrium and disequilibrium. The knowledge of its disorder, with the calculation of the value of entropy is not only describing it’s convulsively and the dynamic exchange, but it s integrating the non reversibility of the movement as the acceptation of the arrow of time. In this case each particle cannot be entirely predictable in their individual trajectories, and their relationship, their contingent and reciprocity behavior are able to be analyzed and described as a protocol of transformation, of dynamic metamorphosis. By this way the freedom of the system has to be qualified in his mutation with the criteria of exchange linked to internal and external environnement.

In the first case we are talking about determinism and master-planning, where everything has to be fixed, predicted and redacted, and in the second we are manipulating uncertainties, permanent adaptation, and reactive mutation according to the inputs within and around the system.

The swarm intelligences notion could be linked as the second law of thermodynamic > While a system can undergo some physical process that decreases its own entropy, the entropy of the universe (which includes the system and its surroundings) must increase overall.

If we consider the swarm as a pure protocol of neighborhood exchanges, we are reproducing again a new version of closed biotopes, with more complexity, but without entropy. At the contrary, if swarm intelligences become a strategy, a vector to resolve a dynamic conflict (as obstacle for bird), its internal logic will be intrinsically embedded in the reason of the confrontation and the agents of disequilibrium will force the system to react.

We cannot, by this way dissociate swarm intelligences to the final purpose (to avoid the obstacle). We cannot dissociate the emerging aesthetic to the recognition of ‘’causalities and dependencies’’ inputs and outputs. That is for us the first point. Swarm intelligences as to be contradictorily functionalized, or more targeted…

Ilya Prigogine demonstrated not only the importance of this permanent entropy as a factor of knowledge, he also compared the policies, the politic of the both system. On one way, the permanent research of equilibrium and disequilibrium could be compared to a democratic situation, and on the other, at the opposite, the determinism of positioning of each particle (each citizen) can be the expression of a frozen situation, as monarchy or autocracy, or the worst fascism.

But it s not innocent if Antonio Negri, in the Multitudes reactivated this notion, in it s political and social organization term, but he never tried to define the toolings, the protocols which could be able to apply this physiological and ideological approach in a human social contract and organization…

------------------

Swarm intelligence is based on a neighborhood negotiation; how do you make that happen as a designer ?

That is the unknown path we tried to borrow. What could be the data, the inputs we could used to define this individual and neighborhood protocols of exchanges. Could we use naively some cellular automata process and justify that this logic of life and death could be a mimesis of swarm intelligences social meanings. Of course not. That is tricky, naïve and ridiculous.

To take an example: Lsystem describe the mimicry of the branching of the nature but it s never describe the permanent logic of re-adaptation of the growing, of the photosynthesis exchanges and the research of the equilibrium of trees, as incremental and recursive process. We are exactly on the same borderline. Swarm intelligences cannot be reduced to a morphological toolings or computational exercises. It has to be a part of the research, but it cannot be the core of it, still less its technoid alibi. Swarm intelligences is a tool for political and social transformation, its voluntary reduction to a ‘’geek’’ attitude will burn its potential.

For example, in the ‘’Ive heard about’’ experiment, we have first tried to re-question the emission of the desires and own the desires is able to be collected to start in a second step a neighborhood protocol.

We know that the human pheromones (vector of sharing knowledge) are missing or so weak, that we cannot distribute an instantaneous and collective informational network so easily. On another way, we could suspect the language and the notion of ‘’libre arbitre’’ to be too easily influenced and manipulated (Spinoza show us how this notion could become, contradictorily our own lever of slaveness).

To start a protocol of swarm intelligences, we have first to develop the factor and vector of exchanges from something which could be shared…

One way we tried was to analyze the multiple disorder of the human secretion, the body chemical emission, and to introduce a balance between language as the expression of our personal contradictions in the public space and the neuro-biology as a direct analyze our chemical body…Some things between consciousness and pre- consciousness…negotiating the schizophrenia between the vector of the emission of ‘’ libre arbitre’’ (free will) and the chemical secretion of ’’le corps acéphale’’ (body acephala), ‘’le corps chimique, neurobiologique’’. (Concentration of Cortisol, Dopamine, Adrenaline, Melatonin…).

We have developed a nano-particle interface (see pictures) to re-read this chemical aspect with a safe intrusive system (without syringe and blood collect) by analyzing the composition of the air coming from the breathing.

The protocol is:

NANOCAPTEURS INTERFACE – Nanoreceptors, n. (physics, from nanos, 1nm = 10-9 m) -1. Nanoparticles (NP) used to capture and detect the presence of a chemical substance in a particular atmosphere. -2A. Nanoreceptors can be inhaled, making it possible to “sniff” the chemical state of the human body. -2B. Functioning: Like pollens, they are concentrated in the bronchia and attach themselves to the blood vessels. This location makes it possible for them to detect traces of stress hormones (hydrocortisone) carried by the haemoglobin. As soon as they come into contact with this substance, the phospholipidic membrane of the NP dissolves and releases several molecules, including formaldehyde (H2CO) in a gaseous state. The molecules rejected by the respiratory tract are detected using cavity ring-down spectroscopy (C.R.D.S.). This is a method of optical analysis using laser beams programmed to a particular frequency, making it possible to measure the density of air-borne molecules. The wavelength used for the detection of formaldehyde is around 350 nanometres. -3. Consequently, the nanoreceptors are becoming the pheromonal re-reading of the chemical body, as one of the vectors of the negociation between neighbourhood.

This chemical aspect in real time, could work as a substitute of the missing pheromone….

What are the political impacts of such a process ?

We will see…. First it s how this work of three year ago, in a lost territories of Paris, is becoming a subject of research in US as Pratt…I could be afraid if you are not going further, beyond of post-parametric process…

Would you say that we are heading towards an interactive ubiquity ? May you tell us a short story about it ?

Interactive is a word I try to never use. What interest us is to increase the possibility of MPD (multiple psycho disorders) to deliver an other negotiation between fiction and reality. As Alice in Wonderland, where mathematic become the support of illogic, or which appears as illogic (Lewis Carroll as mathematician)

In this case ‘’interactive’’ is something which articulate our paranoia (psycho production) with our biology (physio production)

# SWARM /// Interview of Valerie Chatelet

Valerie Chatelet is the publication director of Interactive Cities, published in 2007 by HYX. You can download her own article from HYX website.

You are using swarm/network intelligence as a process of creation. Would you say that it is a form of loss of control from the architect ? If it is the case why would you think it is relevant in our era ?

Valerie Chatelet: What is pretty fascinating in emergent processes in human situations without any centralized or voluntary organization, is not really their intelligence, but much more their absurdity. We keep calling intelligence patterns which emerges at a superior level from the one where were taken the decisions, even when those patterns are fatal. We are the heir of a fascination for emergent processes which take their roots in the origins of computer science and simulation possibilities. This fascination is still persisting nowadays, in particular for the architects, by the omnipotence that provides the enormity of flux we potentially succeed to manipulate.
Although if anthill are magic/intelligent in their mechanism despite its composing individuals’ simplicity, what emerges from human society is more about traffic jams, congestion phenomena, pollution, resources waste, stock exchange crisis, public space privatization, urban spreading or scattering.
The point is not to simulate those processes, neither to reproduce them but on the contrary to come out of those emergent absurdity. There are thus two intervention hypothesis: the structure or the awareness. Structures which could be architecture works are imposing themselves in a centralized way and find their legitimacy in the fact that they allow to go beyond the emergent phenomena’s insufficiency. What is new nowadays is the move offered to architecture to design, not anymore structures which organize and solve emergence’s anomalies, but to design devices allowing people to become collectively aware of these phenomena and to modify their behaviors in order to avoid their absurdity.

Swarm intelligence is based on a neighborhood negotiation; how do you make that happen as a designer ?

Valerie Chatelet: I struggle to allow people to go beyond the neighboring negotiation and to establish tools which allow them to choose depending on their interests on the one hand, and on the other hand, depending on a sharp awareness of aggregation of behaviors, not only of their neighbors, but of further away people as well.

What are the political impacts of such a process ?

Valerie Chatelet: Huge! In a first time, it surely is a re-legitimacy of politic but which should on a longer time basis, make the representation politic as we know it disappear. However, I prefer not to anticipate too much since it is nowadays too difficult to get those impacts.

Would you say that we are heading towards an interactive ubiquity ? May you tell us a short story about it ?

Valerie Chatelet: Sure! It seems to me that ubiquitous interactivity is ineluctable. Nevertheless, it won’t universal, neither in its geographical and spatial diffusion, nor in its shapes, on the contrary of what seems to think most of ubiquity thinkers and apostles. There will be as many ubiquitous interactivities that we have cultures and societies nowadays.
The story I am thinking about is the one which was recounted in an old Wired magazine about the traffic management in Singapore. Everything is perfectly controlled there, space is full of sensors and technology and traffic jams have disappeared which makes the inhabitants very satisfied. This article’s author was concluding that Singapore’s most important achievement was not so much in the technologies which have been developed and which was existing in the same way in the United States, but more in the administration’s power and its capacity of coordinate itself which was totally unimaginable at this time in the States, for technical issues just as much as its social status.
Two big directions are growing: the decisions’ automation starting from live captured data depending on the experts’ knowledge or the devices development allowing a collective awareness to emerge and to modify behaviors without controlling them.
I believe in mirrors, not in automatism.