# Veilhan Versailles

Xavier Veilhan is opening today an exhibition in the Chateau de Versailles. After Jeff Koons, (see former post) this is now Veilhan who is investing the palace with his contemporary art pieces like this wonderful horse-drawn coach. The exhibition will run until december 13rd.

Thanks Francois !

# Gilles Deleuze and the Baker Transformation

I had to transcript then translate this video from the ABCD of Gilles Deleuze for my fellow studiomates so I thought it could be useful to publish it here as well...

N for neurology

Claire Parnet : N c’est neurologie et cerveau

Gilles Deleuze : Ca c’est très dur, neurologie. C’est vrai que la neurologie m’a toujours fascine. Mais pourquoi ? C’est qu’est ce qui se passe dans la tète de quelqu’un quand il a une idée. Je préfère quand il a une idée, parce que quand il n’a pas d’idée ca se passe un peu comme dans un billard électrique. Mais qu’est ce qui se passe ? Comment ca communique a l’intérieur de la tète ? Parce qu’avant de parler de communication etc. comment ca communique dans la tète. Ou bien dans la tète d’un idiot, je veux dire, c’est la même chose quelqu’un qui a une idée ou un idiot. De toutes façons il ne procède pas par chemin préforme, par associations toutes faites. Eh bien qu’est ce qui se passe…ah si on savait, moi j’ai l’impression qu’on comprendrait tout. Alors ca m’intéresse ; par exemple…et les solutions peuvent être extrêmement variées, je veux dire…Deux extrémités nerveuses dans le cerveau peuvent très bien se mettre en contact, c’est même ca qu’on appelle des processus électriques, les synapses…Et puis il y a d’autres cas, beaucoup plus complexes peut être, ou c’est discontinu et il y a une faille à sauter. Et moi j’ai l’impression que le cerveau est plein de fentes, et que ca saute dans un régime probabiliste, qu’il y a des rapports de probabilités entre deux enchainements, que c’est beaucoup plus incertain…très très incertain. Les communications a l’intérieur d’un même cerveau sont fondamentalement incertaines, soumises a des lois de probabilités. Qu’est ce qui me fait penser à quelque chose ?

Alors il faudrait presque se demander lorsque, par exemple, un concept est donne, ou un tableau, une œuvre d’art est contemplée, regardée, il faudrait presque essayer de faire la carte cérébrale qui y correspond. Quelles seraient les communications continues, les communications discontinues d’un point à un autre. Moi il y a quelque chose qui m’a beaucoup frappe, c’est une histoire dont les physiciens se servent beaucoup sous le nom de la transformation du boulanger. Tu prends comme un carre de pétrin, tu l’étires en rectangle, et puis tu rabats, tu fais un ré-étirage etc. Tu fais tes transformations. Et, a limite de x transformations, deux points tout a fait contigus, forcement seront amenés à être au contraire, très distants. Et, il n’y a pas de points distants qui, a l’issue de x transformations, ne se trouveront pas des points contigus. Je me dis, lorsque l’on cherche quelque chose dans sa tète, est ce qu’il n’y a pas des brassages de ce type ? Est qu’il n’y a pas des trucs ou deux points, a untel moment de mon idée, je ne vois pas comment les rapprocher, les faire communiquer ; et puis au bout d’un certain nombre de transformations, les voila qui se retrouvent l’un a cote de l’autre. Je dirais presque que entre un concept ou une œuvre d’art - c'est-à-dire entre un produit de l’esprit - et un mécanisme cérébral, il y a des ressemblances qui sont tellement émouvantes, et moi j’ai le sentiment que la question « Comment pense-t-on ? », « Qu’est ce que signifie penser ? », les question a la fois de penser et du cerveau sont absolument mêlées.

English version

Claire Parnet: N is for neurology and brain

Gilles Deleuze: That is a though one, neurology. What is true is that neurology always fascinated me. But why? I am interested about what is happening in somebody’s head when he has an idea. I prefer when he has idea, otherwise when he does not have an idea, it happens a bit what happens in a pinball machine. But what is happening ? How does that communicate within the head ? Or even, in a dummy’s head, I mean, that is the same thing somebody who has an idea or a dummy. Anyway, he does not proceed by preformed ways, by already done associations. Well, what is happening…ah if we would know, I feel we would understand everything. So I am interested, for example…and solutions could be extremely various, I mean…Two nervous extremities in the brain could very much be in contact, that is even what we call electrical processes, synapses…And then there are a lot of cases, more complex maybe, where it is discontinuous and there is a fault to jump. I personally think that the brain is full of slits and that it jumps into a probabilistic system, that there are probabilities relationships between two sequences, that it is much more uncertain…very very uncertain. Inside brain communications are fundamentally uncertain, subjected to laws of probabilities. What is making me think of something ?

So we could almost wonder when, for example, a concept is given, or a painting, a piece of art is contemplated, looked at, we could almost try to do the cerebral map which matches with it. What would be the continuous communications, uncontinuous communications from a node to another. There has always been something which really moves me, it is a story that physicians are using a lot under the name of the baker transformation. You take a square of dough, you stretch it as a rectangle, then you fold it, you do a re-stretching etc. You accomplish transformations. And, after x transformations, two absolutely contiguous points, would be necessarily brought away from each other on the contrary. And, there is no distant points which would not be contiguous after x transformations. So I say for myself, when we are looking for something in our head, isn’t there some intermingling of this kind ? Isn’t there some stuffs where two points at one moment of my idea, I cannot see how to move them closer from each other, to make them communicate; and, after a certain amount of transformations, here are they are, meeting each other. I would almost say that between a concept, or a piece of art – therefore a product of the mind – and a cerebral mechanism, there are some similarities which are for me, so affecting, and I do feel that the question “How do we think ?”, “What does that mean, to think ?”, questions of thinking and of the brain are absolutely intermingling.

# Book + Exhibition / Biothing [Alisa Andrasek]

An exhibition called a_maze about Biothing's work have now started in Orleans' Frac Centre commissioned by Marie-Ange Brayer (thanks to who, architectural research is not completely dead in France) and at the same time is released a book by Frederic Migayrou published on excellent HYX (all their books are both in French and English). You can download two little essays about Biothing written by Migayrou and Lambros.

The exhibition will run until november 22nd.

# Tribute to Willy Ronis

French photographer Wily Ronis who was 99 years old died this morning.

# Vrac / Under parts / Mushroom tunnel farm / Truffaut vs Hitchcock

People are on fire today ! Three great articles to read on three great blogs.

First one is written by Alexander Trevi for Pruned about those incredible territories created by the bridges and infrastructures which usually leave a non-planned under part.

Second one is written by Geoff Manaugh for BLDGBLOG about an incredible tunnel in Australia constituting an underground mushroom farm.

Third one is written by Flavien Menu on NDLR about an incredible thirty hours conversations between Francois Truffaut and Alfred Hitchcock available online as mp3s.

# Toward the Sentient City

Next thursday (sept 17th), a new exhibition called Toward the Sentient City will be opening in NYC commissioned by The Architectural League of New York with the presentation of five new interactive projects including one by Usman Haque (see this former post here).

The five projects are:
Natural Fuse by Usman Haque, creative director, Nitipak ‘Dot’ Samsen, designer, Ai Hasegawa, designer, Cesar Harada, designer. Barbara Jasinowicz, producer
Too Smart City by JooYoun Paek, David Jimison | Engineers: Daniel Bauen, Aaron Gilbert, Bill Washabaugh
Amphibious Architecture by The Living Architecture Lab at Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (Directors David Benjamin and Soo-in Yang) and xdesign Environmental Health Clinic at New York University (Director Natalie Jeremijenko)
Trash Track by SENSEable City Laboratory, MIT | Carlo Ratti: Director, Assaf Biderman: Associate Director, Rex Britter: Advisor, Stephen Miles: Advisor, Kristian Kloeckl Project Leader, Musstanser Tinauli, E Roon Kang, Alan Anderson, Avid Boustani, Natalia Duque Ciceri, Lorenzo Davolli, Samantha Earl, Lewis Girod, Sarabjit Kaur, Armin Linke, Eugenio Morello, Sarah Neilson, Giovanni de Niederhausern, Jill Passano, Renato Rinaldi, Francisca Rojas, Louis Sirota, Malima Wolf
Breakout! by Anthony Townsend (Institute for the Future), Georgia Borden, Amanda Kross, Jung Hoon Kim, Antonina Simeti (DEGW), Dana Spiegel (NYCwireless), Laura Forlano (Parsons The New School for Design), Tony Bacigalupo (New Work City), Sean Savage (PariSoMa), Elysse Preposi (Sarah Lawrence College)

This exhibition will last until November 7th at the Architectural League on 457 Madison Avenue in Manhattan.
Don't miss the 'Initial Selection' on the website which presents other various interactive project dealing with the same topic.

# SWARM /// Cartoon

...because being too serious can be lethal ! (start to watch up to the eighth minute)

# SWARM /// The Brooklyn Pigeon Project

In 2004, the young architects Ben Aranda and Chris Lasch have realized a research on the swarm phenomenon of homing pigeon flight the " brooklyn pigeon project, a terraswarm project".
They used small localization devices that were carried individually by each Pigeon.
They measure and observed the flight of each pigeon and then they have done a modelisation/visualization like maps and diagrams of the itinerary of the birds that is linked to the atmosphere of the neighborhood.

More in their book Tooling (Pamphlet Architecture 27)
More on the Aranda/Lasch Flickr account

PHOTO CREDIT:
Peter Hall

# SWARM /// Ants, termites, bees, birds, fishes etc.

Here are two articles to introduce the swarm as an intelligent animal group. One is from the National Geographic, it is very complete and tries to see very much the human application (see also the photographs gallery) and the other is from the New York Times and even if it more concise, it proposes those two diagrams which are very important to understand how those colonies of ants and other animals evolves as swarm to create a collective intelligence.

# New Israeli colonization plan in Palestine

Israel is continuing its colonization policy in Palestine (West Bank) by authorizing yesterday the construction of 455 new housing units, once again transgressing every current international laws.
Read more in todays' New York Times

# Contemporary relics

September 11th attacks' eighth anniversary is approaching and the New York Times is today releasing an interesting article about those relics from the World Trade Center which are being conserved in a 80000 square foot hangar in JFK airport and in another one in the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.
Those symbols of collective unconscious are apparently requested by a lot of towns in US which would like to create memorials. One of these steel trident will be for sure held in the future transportation station on ground zero.
It is interesting to understand that this country has the abitlity to charge objects in an almost religiously way of collective history, emotion and pride...

# SWARM /// Introduction

For the purpose of Ferda Kolatan Pratt's course called Design by Nature, I have to prepare a presentation for September 28th about Networks intelligence and I thought it could be interesting to report my research on boiteaoutils then readers might comment on it and give some ideas !
Swarm intelligence is interesting in its absence of hierarchy and its greater production as a group than as the sum of individualities composing it. This topic is widely tackled by biologists, programmers/architects and their work may appear in this research, but I would like to also link it to its political potential.

To begin, here are two formers articles on boiteaoutils (here and here)and a recent one on Pruned about birds migrations (and some more pictures from Richard Barnes)