[ISEA2011] Panel: Sana Mur­rani – World­mak­ing be­tween Hu­man­ism and Ma­chin­ism

Panel Statement

Panel: The Volatility and Stability of WorldMaking as Techné

In a hy­per-cul­ture of change in­flu­enced by phys­i­cal and cyber com­mu­ni­ties, worlds and net­works, fur­ther spec­u­la­tions for the fu­ture of the field of ar­chi­tec­ture will nec­es­sar­ily be di­rectly linked to this cul­tural and tech­no­log­i­cal change. This change starts with the mul­ti­ple iden­ti­ties of one’s rep­re­sen­ta­tion as seen in Face­book, Twit­ter, or­di­nary e-mail ac­counts and highly in­ter­ac­tive mo­bile phone and other dig­i­tal de­vices as well as avatars on Sec­ond Life, Cy­ber­Town and Ac­tive Worlds. The body is no longer seen as a phys­i­cal en­tity com­posed of mat­ter and en­ergy but rather a volatile ex­ten­sion of our con­scious­ness and ex­pe­ri­en­tial worlds of hy­brids of phys­i­cal, dig­i­tal and aug­mented re­al­i­ties and vir­tu­al­i­ties. Im­pli­ca­tions of such worlds are al­ready ev­i­dent in the par­tic­i­pa­tory art prac­tice, in­ter­ac­tive ar­chi­tec­ture, cy­ber­space, mul­ti­ple re­al­i­ties and neo­plas­matic de­signs; all have con­tributed a great deal to cre­at­ing par­al­lel selves and other ar­chi­tec­tures where tech­nol­ogy was and will al­ways be at the heart of their world­mak­ing. Two decades ago or so, with the start of the age of in­for­ma­tion tech­nol­ogy, ar­chi­tec­ture started al­low­ing for col­lab­o­ra­tions with other fields such as com­puter sci­ence and par­tic­i­pa­tory art prac­tice in­flu­enced by the cy­ber­netic method­ol­ogy. Such tech­no­log­i­cal ex­per­i­men­ta­tions cre­ate con­stant di­a­logues be­tween hu­man­ism (through par­tic­i­pa­tion and in­ter­ac­tiv­ity), ma­chin­ism (through ex­per­i­men­ta­tions and trans­dis­ci­pli­nar­ity) and tech­nol­ogy, to heighten the human ex­pe­ri­ence. The paper will ex­plore no­tions of techné and world­mak­ing as praxis for de­sign ex­pressed through a par­tic­i­pa­tory in­ter­ac­tive spa­tial in­stal­la­tion.

  • Dr. Sana Mur­rani is an ex­per­i­men­tal ar­chi­tect, and cur­rently holds the po­si­tion of Lec­turer in Ar­chi­tec­ture at the Uni­ver­sity of Ply­mouth, UK. She stud­ied Ar­chi­tec­ture in Bagh­dad Uni­ver­sity School of Ar­chi­tec­ture, grad­u­at­ing in 2000, and ob­tained her mas­ters de­gree from the same school in 2003. She is a mem­ber of the Plan­e­tary Col­legium’s CAiiA-Hub in Ply­mouth, UK where she un­der­took her PhD under the su­per­vi­sion of Roy As­cott (Pres­i­dent of Plan­e­tary Col­legium). Mur­rani has a in­ter­est in ar­chi­tec­tural the­ory of trans­dis­ci­pli­nary re­search par­tic­u­larly ex­per­i­men­tal and in­ter­ac­tive work be­tween the fields of techno­science and art/ar­chi­tec­ture. Her work in­ves­ti­gates the im­pact of im­ple­ment­ing sec­ond-or­der cy­ber­net­ics and in­ter­ac­tive tech­nolo­gies on the cre­ation of tem­po­rary and gen­er­a­tive sit­u­a­tions in ar­chi­tec­ture through ex­plo­rations of de­sign processes de­rived from bi­o­log­i­cal sys­tems, dif­fer­ent media of rep­re­sen­ta­tion and per­cep­tual ex­pe­ri­ences that chal­lenge our con­scious­ness.