Exhibition and publication at the Architectural Association School of Architecture on Architecture & High-Touch and Tech Surfaces.
Hybrid Space: merging digital and physical space.
Exhibition & Publication Hybrid Space @ Architectural Association, Architectural Association School of Architecture, 34-36 Bedford Square, London, 17-21 June 1989
We’re
Talking
City
The state of consuming ‘city’ through its layers of computer graffiti is enticingly alien.
Revert As the monuments of old manufacturing and distribution centres decline and vanish, they are replaced by new service industries where the writing on the wall is a soft consumerism, still malleable in form and with an irreverence to old notions of centre.
Invert stretch Meanwhile, the suburbs, once satellites of the nuclear city, have broken away, realigning themselves with the super mall mini-centres, further decentring the city proper; collapsing the now defunct borders of zoning and hierarchy, and rendering the modern city illegible. Click clear clarify In this decentred city, we collate our experiences, less through a recollection of places than through decoding symbolic doggerel; reading, interpreting and commodifying totemic pieces of urban culture, no longer place specific. The computer, your user-abuser-friendly workmate, speaks an object-oriented language and interprets in this broken tongue. These object fragments are the successors to the bricks and mortar of the unintelligible city. Edit/select all Unit 9 will address the crisis of a hard language for a soft sell lifestyle by an understanding of programmatic build up, starting with cultural icons and extrapolating their operations through narrative structure. Networking between icons and their performance will be an early objective aiming for rapid interchangeability of components between collaborators. The catalogue will be a recurring reference point addressing the • key issues of communication, distribution and transportation and their roles in our urban.
System
Menu
The time capsule Your choice of goodies, to be installed on a London site, BUT THEY MUST fit in a totem tube, because… Crash edit/to Chicago YES, YOU’RE GOING TO AMERICA, with totem tube in hand to reinstall the floppy capsule in an alien context. You’ll compose and produce your video manifesto complete with advertising slogan. With your manifesto commodified, we now have our system menu for the year. Home Satellite The stage coach A double-barrel project. From your accommodation on the frontier, design a Satellite Barter station — your Urban Inn-post along a major transportation route. The stage coach specifies the mode of transport. Choose your preferred location for this post-fab based on a production method.
Cat-a-Loggia A catalogue demo-centre to act as a larger collective structure for the year’s projects to date. You’ll choose your preferred technology: radio 3-D modeling floppy holography CD video Fax satellite telephone cassette smelly old films
Commuting to Europe.
The computer train A visionary feast for the Europe of the 1990s.
Peter W. Thomas, AADip1 (Hons)
Born 2 October 1959, in Devon, England. Work published in AA Files (13). Work with Richard Rogers partnership for four years. Performs with Furious Pig/Het.
Now working with Sabara and others.
Peter Sabara, BES AADip1
Born 7 April 1960, 250 miles from the geographical centre of North America. Work with Branson Coates Architects in London and Tokyo. Now working with Thomas and others.
Unit capacity: 12
related PROJECTS
Today, media networks are influencing and interacting with real places. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is radically changing the way we live, interact and perceive our world.
Politics, economics, warfare, culture are increasingly taking place in the spaces of information-communication, media networks.
Publication Hybrids @ Interior Wor(l)ds, Umberto Allemandi & C., Torino, Italy, September 2010
Politics, economics, warfare, culture are increasingly taking place in the spaces of information-communication, media networks.