Abstract
Philosopher Gilbert Simondon claims that what one perceives is neither outlines nor shapes, but thresholds of intensity. Therefore, Simondon points out that sensation is nothing but intensive and differential; it is the ‘seizure of a direction, not of an object.’ However, the issue is how one can examine the sensation of a direction that does not address the present but rather that which is yet to come. To do so, one can approach it as an issue of synapses. A synapse is a junction, an almost imperceptible gap through which an impulse of intensity passes by. As such, synapses manage to capture both the passage of an intensity (as a synaptic moment) and the formation of an extensity (as a synaptic location). In other words, synapses can be understood as constraints and for this reason, as information; after all, information is nothing but the reduction of potentials.
In this paper, I will examine how architecture, in its technicities, operates as a synapse: how it allows for both the formation of an extensive space as well as for the very possibility of intuiting a space yet to come, and consequently, a subject yet to individuate. To do so, I will focus on how architectural technicities allow for a certain degree of indeterminacy due to their metastability and auto-normativity. With the help of goddess Ananke and her spindle, architecture will be understood as an intensive exercise on the indeterminate, on a figure that is not yet figured out, but does so on the basis of synaptic passages.
In this paper, I will examine how architecture, in its technicities, operates as a synapse: how it allows for both the formation of an extensive space as well as for the very possibility of intuiting a space yet to come, and consequently, a subject yet to individuate. To do so, I will focus on how architectural technicities allow for a certain degree of indeterminacy due to their metastability and auto-normativity. With the help of goddess Ananke and her spindle, architecture will be understood as an intensive exercise on the indeterminate, on a figure that is not yet figured out, but does so on the basis of synaptic passages.
Original language | English |
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Title of host publication | Contingency and Plasticity in Everyday Technologies |
Editors | Natasha Lushetich, Iain Campbell, Dominic Smith |
Publisher | Rowman & Littlefield |
Chapter | 10 |
Pages | 163-179 |
Number of pages | 17 |
ISBN (Electronic) | 978-1-5381-7159-2 |
ISBN (Print) | 978-1-5381-7157-8 |
Publication status | Published - 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Green Open Access added to TU Delft Institutional Repository 'You share, we take care!' - Taverne project https://www.openaccess.nl/en/you-share-we-take-careOtherwise as indicated in the copyright section: the publisher is the copyright holder of this work and the author uses the Dutch legislation to make this work public.
Keywords
- architecture
- constraints
- Gilbert Simondon
- Gilles Deleuze
- individuation
- information
- Metastability
- necessity
- Negentropy
- Raymond Ruyer
- synapses
- technicity
- Terrence Deacon