Liquid architectures in cyberspace

Novak, M. 1991. Liquid architectures in cyberspace. In Cyberspace: First Steps, M. Benedikt, Ed. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 225-254.

Novak’s chapter is very interesting. It begins with the assertion that, “Our interaction with computers so far has primarily been one of clear, linear thinking. Poetic thinking is of an entirely different order” (225-6). The mission is laid out as such: “The greater task will not be to impose science on poetry, but to restore poetry to science” (226).

Novak indulges in some poetic writing about the experience of cyberspace:
“Every paragraph an idea, every idea an image, every image an index, indices strung together along dimensions of my choosing, and I travel through them, sometimes with them, sometimes across them. I produce new sense, nonsense, and nuisance by combination and variation, and I follow the scent of a quality through sand dunes of information. Hints of an attribute attach themselves to my sensors and guide me past the irrelevant, into the company of the important; or I choose to browse the unfamiliar and tumble through volumes and volumes of knowledge still in the making. Sometimes I linger on a pattern for the sake of its strangeness, and as it becomes familiar, I grow into another self. I wonder how much richer the patterns I can recognize can become, and surprise myself by scanning vaster and vaster regions in times shorter and shorter. Like a bird of prey my acuity allows me to glide high above the planes of information, seeking jewels among the grains, seeking knowledge” (230).

That’s lovely. But it’s probably complete BS. Does anyone experience the Internet like this??? The lesson from Novak’s creative writing exercise is that all sorts of not-so-great things can be justified and sold on the poetry of its description. So poetry can be “restored to science” if we’re going to force it on cyberspace thusly; but perhaps we should stop kidding ourselves, rely less on the eloquence of our optimistic dreaming about cyberspace, and actually make it, itself, inherently poetic. In other words, let’s not just describe it more poetically; let’s build it on a more poetic logic.

Then the chapter turns utopian as Novak hails cyberspace as being this turn to the poetic: “Cyberspace is poetry inhabited, and to navigate through it is to become a leaf on the wind of a dream” (229). He introduces the concept of liquidity by stating that, “Poetry is liquid language” (229) – i.e. embodied fiction, which we can rewrite, changing its meaning according to our whims. Then, he argues further:

“Cyberspace is liquid. Liquid cyberspace, liquid architecture, liquid cities. Liquid architecture is more than kinetic architecture, robotic architecture, an architecture of fixed parts and variable links. Liquid architecture is an architecture whose form is contingent on the interests of the beholder; it is an architecture that opens to welcome me and closes to defend me; it is an architecture without doors and hallways, where the next room is always where I need it to be and what I need it to be. Liquid architecture makes liquid cities, cities that change at the shift of a value, where visitors with different backgrounds see different landmarks, where neighborhoods vary with ideas held in common, and evolve as the ideas mature or dissolve” (251).

This is a great example of the libertarian vision of the Internet: liquid equals free! The problem with liquid is that when you try to grasp it, it slips through your fingers. How desirable is liquidity, really? For example, who would choose liquid friendships over solid ones? Could we not, rather, benefit from some concreteness? Further, consider the implications: “It is a symphony in space, but a symphony that never repeats and continues to develop. If architecture is an extension of our bodies, shelter and actor for the fragile self, a liquid architecture is that self in the act of becoming its own changing shelter. Like us, it has an identity; but this identity is only revealed fully during the course of its lifetime” (251). How are we to comprehend a reality that is constantly morphing? – constantly vanishing at the moment we reach out to touch it? Again, is this libertarian vision really desirable?

Novak also makes a sort of aside about the nature of our lived reality: “Cyberspace, as a world of our creation, makes us contemplate the possibility that the reality we exist in is already a sort of ‘cyberspace,’ and the difficulties we would have in understanding what is real if such were the case. Architecture, in its strategies for dealing with a constraining reality suggests ways in which the limitations of a fictional reality may be surmounted” (243). This is something that I will come back to when I write about Ryan’s book Narrative as Virtual Reality.

A more useful invocation of poetry in this cyberspace discourse has to do with the ways in which poetry forces us to stretch our imaginations, thus allowing us to see beyond what we might have before. Novak discusses what this means to architecture:

“Just as poetry differs from prose in its controlled intoxication with meanings to be found beyond the limits of ordinary language, so visionary architecture exceeds ordinary architecture in its search for the conceivable. Visionary architecture, like poetry, seeks an extreme, any extreme: beauty, awe, structure, or the lack of structure, enormous weight, lightness, expense, economy, detail, complexity, universality, uniqueness. In this search for that which is beyond the immediate, it proposes embodiments of ideas that are well beyond what can be built. This is not a weakness: in this precisely is to be found the poignancy of vision” (244).

This has become a recognized design technique: “Piranesi’s series of etchings entitled Carceri, or Prisons, marks the beginning of an architectural discourse of the purposefully unbuildable” (245). How freeing this is! I was thinking that my PhD would require that I design something that could work; but now I’m realizing the contribution that I could make by suggesting alternatives that – at least for now – are purposefully unbuildable. This might then compel people to begin to develop their thinking in a new direction, i.e. towards realizing these ‘unbuildable’ designs. Novak includes this great quote from Gropius (New Ideas on Architecture, 1919): “… build in the imagination, unconcerned about technical difficulties” (247). I shall make this my new motto.

Lastly, I was particularly intrigued by this passage: “Against the increasing constriction of architectural practice, Piranesi drew an imagined world of complex, evocative architecture. His title recalls a phrase by George Bataille: ‘Man will escape his head as a convict escapes his prison’” (245). The reason I like this phrasing is because it harkens back to the Weberian “iron cage” by which we have become imprisoned. Should we ever break out of this cage, we’re going to need to bend our minds a bit. It’s like the moment that the boy explains to Neo in the Matrix that “There is no spoon.” The cage is an illusion; to see this, you have to bend your mind (not the spoon, as it were).

Novak even suggests some good thought experiments for getting us to break out of our caged thinking: “What would it be like to be inside a cubist universe? a hieroglyphic universe? a universe of cave drawings or Magritte paintings? Just as alternative renditions of the same reality by different artists, each with a particular style, can bring to our attention otherwise invisible aspects of that reality, so too can different modes of cyberspace provide new ways of interrogating the world” (244). There are a few artists in particular that I would love to use as inspiration for the building of alternative cyber-worlds: e.g. Matta, Blake, Malevich, and my favorite architect, Zaha Hadid (and I can finally – happily – put that MFA degree to some use!).