Simon Herron is one of our speakers at LAS*12
In
February 1967 Architectural Design magazine published a special issue exploring
the future “2000+”, the cover art a high contrast image originally produced for
Cutler and Hammer an aerospace tech company from Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The
image a headshot of Rocket Man, in uniform white, opaque reflective black
visor, set against a brilliant red background.
Guest
edited by John McHale, the issue opens with an edited address by Buckminster
Fuller, confronting the difficulties predicting 35 years into the future with
any degree of confidence or accuracy. Sandwiched between adverts for everyday
building materials, RAWPLUGS, aluminium profiles, sectional doors, and the
latest from Lea Valley Kitchens, were articles examining the latest in outer
and inner space hardware with this seasons must have in Life Support System
from General Dynamic to the ultimate in integrated augmented technologies in
Man+.
Fast forward to 2012. Don’t you get that curious and unnerving feeling
that we are all somehow unwittingly working for Google or Facebook?
Increasingly we inhabit a world living vicariously through the encrypted pseudo
personalities of our on screen in-world micro personas . . . unconsciously
drifting through hypertext paradigms. A world in which we practice living our
life, detached, seamlessly switching through various mediated context specific
selves Instant Messaging, Twittering, curiously making ourselves up as we go
along.
Mashing of context, deliciously devoid of any true content, enacting
genres, adopting alternate personalities, role-playing, outsourcing our
emotions, whilst exhibiting those of others. Wondering, whose personality is
this anyhow? A fragmented psychosis, unconsciously and collectively dreamt up,
left over from some discarded marketing campaign? With such shared interrelated
experiences, a world in which everyone is so profoundly involved, the self
becomes somewhat shapeless and hard to pin down.
Boundaries have traditionally defined the physical geographical limits
of the tribe. The machines and technologies of mass observation and
communication blur and dissolve our Cartesian certainty. This detached observer
systematically distanced outside of the frame of experience.
We will consider the utopian dreams of the 20th Century, from the counter
culture of the 50’s and 60’s through the nihilistic disillusionment of Punk,
the ambivalence of Generation X to the Anti–Globalization alliance and
environmental activism of 10:10?
Simon
Herron
Academic Leader in Architecture
School of Architecture Design and Construction
University of Greenwich
Referance:
Velvet Air projects: Home to a selection of images from our
archive of student work.