Hypersurface theory

Architecture is approaching an unprecedented juncture as the complexities of contemporary culture
become increasing saturated with digital technology. Hypersurface is a new architectural concept that
promotes broader interfaces and interactivity between cyberspace and the build environment. Hypersurface
theory promotes increased accessibility to the Internet, initiates new ideas regarding architectural
ornament and instigates new explorations of architectural surfaces and materials.

Over the last decade or so, the electronic era is transforming these two polarities: image and form,
each within its own context. While new technology is taking media into and unbound zone we know as
cyberspace, architectural form is also coming to question is Cartesian foundations. These two simultaneous
trends, what nay be called 'hyper' (media) and 'surface' (topological architecture), have not been considered
in relation to one another. If each dimension, image and form comes with its own disciplinary logic, for
example two-D and three-D, then when each questions the other, neither two-D or three-D are adequate
concepts to explain the new inter-dynamic.

Architectural Design - Hyper Architecture II

Rafael Lozano-Hemmer - Positioning fear

During the third international Film + Arc Biennale in Graz, Austria, a Relational Architecture piece
transformed the courtyard façade of one of Europe's largest military arsenals, the 350 year old Landeszeughaus.
"Re:Positioning Fear" used a web site, webcam, 3D trackers, and customized projection technology to
connect a very specific instance of Austrian history and architecture with remote and local participants.

The piece was loosely based on the Cathedral's fresco "the Scourges of God", which depicts the three Medieval
fears of the people of Graz: the locust plague (which destroyed the fields in 1477), the Black Death (an epidemic
that fortunately never had a devastating outbreak in Graz), and the fall of the city to Turkish invaders (which never
happened). The fresco, which shows the oldest view of the city, has been ruined by inclement weather and incompetent
restoration attempts, but is survived by a reproduction which can be seen at the Landeszeughaus.

Using the fresco as a departure point, "RE:Positioning Fear" related several historical transformations and displacements
of Fear, particularly as parts of the world enter a post-industrial, post humanist era.

http://xarch.tu-graz.ac.at/home/rafael/fear

Steven Perrella

Stephen Perrella is an architect and editor/designer at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture Planning
and Preservation (GSAP) with Bernard Tschumi. There he produces both NEWSLINE and COLUMBIA DOCUMENTS OF
ARHITECTURE AND THEORY. He has taught architecture and theory at various universities in the United States and has
lectured internationally. He is President of Hyper Surface Systems, Inc., a 3d world wide web site design firm. Stephen
Perrella began exploring the relationship between architecture and information in 1991 on Silicon Graphics workstations.
In the context of that speculation he focused on the dynamics of incommensurate relations between form and image as
a formative method for a critique of representation that he has developed into a discourse called "hypersurface." Among
the facets of this theoretical construct include topologies that emerge from interstitial, ambiguous relations between sign
and form. Since that time, topological strategies in architecture have become a dominant trend stemming from both a rising,
general interest in the discourse of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, but also through new forms made possible by
animation and particle based computer software.

http://www.asa-art.com/bnl/13.htm

• The Haptic Horizon

These images are taken from the series of articles from Charlie Watson's 'Cool World' commerial for the Mazda Protege.

Nox

Nox has been working on developing the possibilities of an interactive architectural territory for a number of years. His
analysis of the relational transformations provoked by the multiplication of the information media serves as the embryo
to an approach which sees in the "world's extreme liquation" as a means of designing spaces where the fusion of matter
and information -- and of subject and object -- is possible. Nox frees his areas of a certain architectural logic to adapt
architecture to evolution in our perception modes. More than mere adaptation, however, he synthesises existing and
emerging technologies. An embodiment of this research is the Fresh Water Pavilion, at FreshH2O^? eXPO, which becomes
emblematic of a "liquid" architecture, as defined by the American Markos Novak. In a simultaneous fusion of the walls,
ground, and ceiling, the "architecture-body" spreads out in a wave-like effect to absorb the territory. Non-aggressive,
Nox' architecture becomes the interface for an active organisation of space where visitors act upon a reactive architecture.
The most recent projects touch on the notion of a cognitive architecture achieving a reactive "expert system" which mutates
according to needs and functions.

NOX is a design office that has produced videos, installations, a magazine, texts, and architecture. This hybrid production
was guided by their unease with the limited possibilities for development within the field of architecture and the notion that
it had got stuck within the territory architecture had created for itself in the early nineties.

NOX has, by a sort of genetic engineering where architecture has been crossbred with other media, been able to generate
a supple architecture that has nestled itself in the transitional area of two, often thought of as parallel, worlds: one of
biological organisms and the other, as diverse as the first, the metallic and electronic fauna of modern technologies. NOX
operates in that ever growing twilight zone of blurring and fluidity.

http://www.archilab.org/public/1999/artistes/noxa01en.htm

• Water Pavilion

http://spazioinwind.libero.it

• V2 building

The V2 lab is an office space for the V2 organization which produces and exhibits interactive electronic art. the design was
based on a technique that integrated the organization of work and movement of people. the cross mapping of the two
resulted in a wave-like structure that facilitates both the typical office program and the extra in-between spaces of which
the usage is undetermined. informal spaces interact with formal spaces in a slight but continuously present tension that
allows routine like work to slip more easily into creative work and visa versa.

http://www.noxarch.com

Aegis

Aegis is the name given to an innovative range of physically reconfigurable 3D screens, where the screen surface itself
physically moves, producing precise and high-speed deformation across a "fluid" surface. It is enabled by a high-speed
information bus that we have called Hyposurface technology.

Aegis Hyposurface effectively links information systems with physical form to produce dynamically variable, tactile
"informatic" surfaces. Information translates into form. Most effectively it allows interactive systems to be physically
articulate in their capacity for spatial reconfiguration. Aegis Hyposurface is then a latent surface, its "pixels" given vectorial
potential: a scriptual surface become spatial and dynamic!

Such info/form device addresses the fundamental notion of "media", since it is the moment at which a surface becomes
articulate – that its mute materiality differentiates with/in itself – that notions of pattern, decoration or writing emerge.
Aegis opens a digital horizon that extends back to the very origins of "writing". As a dynamically reconfigurable surface,
Aegis then operates from the most prosaic architectural register to that of the most sophisticated screen: activity (sound,
movement, etc) registers directly as/in form!

The Aegis Hyposurface is a device whose surface topology is infinitely variable, allowing a continual emergence and dissipation
of dynamic 3D motif (as rhythm, graphism or alphabetism). It releases the surface of inscription from 2 to 3 dimensions, but
also acts as a temporal medium, Aegis as a now evolutive multi-dimensional medium. It ranges in its effect from hieroglyphics
– a decorative/signifying 3D inscription – to nanotechnics – a premonition of reconfigurable form. Most compelling is that Aegis
communicates viscerally, alternating between a bass architectonic registration (sensed bodily), and a semoitic digital "sea"
(registered cerebrally): the virtual given mass!

Developed as a series of evolving prototypes, Aegis links a powerful generative computer to a vast matrix of actuators via a high-
performance information bus. Prototype VI attains high-speed fluidity, deploying 1000 pneumatic actuators at frequencies of up
to 3Hz, information fed at 0.01sec. It deploys sophisticated 3D patterning-in-time, running text, graphics or video images in relief,
using a generative algorithmic program.

As a digital matrix, the Hyposurface is inherently interactive: any digital input can be linked to any digital output - to surface effect.
It allows interactivity with dancers’ or with musicians’ (movement and sound interactivity), video- and sound-recognition systems
offering a programmed responsiveness. But as a now dynamic medium it also allows direct DJ/VJ operation, a form of visual musical
instrument that fulfills the dream of Archimboldo who developed a "colour piano" back in the Renaissance or Brewster’s delerious
prophesy of the effect of the kaleidoscope on the kinetic arts.

http://www.aec.at/en/archives/prix_archive/prix_projekt.asp?iProjectID=12452#

http://www.sial.rmit.edu.au/Projects/Aegis_Hyposurface.php

Kas Oosterhuis - Founder of ONL

ONL is a multidisciplinary design studio, where architects, visual artists, web designers and programmers work together and join
forces · ONL is an office where reality and virtuality meet · The portfolio of ONL exists of a variety of projects in divergent fields of
experience · This includes housing projects, exhibition pavilions, corporate business buildings, city planning tools, online experiences,
interactive installations, theoretical studies.

• Saltwater Pavilion

The water pavilion represents water in all its manifestations · sometimes water is a glacier, sometimes mist, sometimes a stream,
sometimes running water, sometimes fresh, sometimes salt, sometimes sea, sometimes a wave, sometimes a pool, sometimes
h2o, sometimes clear, sometimes polluted, but always endless and on the move · water never disappears, it only metamorphoses
in a continuous state of recycling · the route through the water pavilion describes a vast loop · it takes the shape of a giant lemniscate,
the mathematical symbol for infinity · the lemniscate is visible against the flanks of the body, both on the exterior and on the
interior skin · it pushes the sharp edge of the undulating movement of the torsive membrane into the malleable shell of the body ·
you enter the salt-water pavilion under a giant wave · the 6 foot long wave floods the underbelly, called the wetlab, of the body ·
the wetlab is a dark, moist environment that is abundant with real water · water is dripping from the walls and the tides rise and fall ·
the changing colours of the dimmable lights reflect on the wet surfaces creating an immersive underwater experience · in this wet
atmosphere the glowing hydra thrives like a giant seaweed · you get tangled in the many loops of the hydra · the hydra is constantly
changing colour and brightness, sounds travel through it.

• Space station module

For our thought exercise the outside shape and destined functioning of the Space Station Module are assumed to be existing and final ·
This study concentrates exclusively on the interior skin · The concept for the active interior skin looks at first sight futuristic and not yet
realisable ·

It is imaginable and thus realisable to regard the interior skin as a flexible membrane which shape can actively be adjusted by the astronauts ·
Here is how it works · In between inner and outer skin a highresolution spaceframe is inserted of which all individual members are pneumatic bars ·
Each of these cylindric bars can become longer or shorter · Each change is calculated in realtime by a computerprogramme · The programme
resets the lengths of all members of the spaceframe within seconds · The calculation program sends fresh data to the pneumatic cylinders
and orders them to adjust their lengths · The active data-driven structure works like a bundle of muscles · The muscle contracts and relaxes
after coordinated instructions of the brain ·

The interior skin is immersed with innumerable led and lcd panels · The seperate panels work together to form a large overall image or text ·
The astronauts can build a text-environments or an image-cave according to their momentarily needs · This could be a working environment
where a group of people works on a 3d model, or where they analyse data from scientific experiments · The facts and figures are projected
coordinatedly through the lcd panels immersed in the flexible skin ·

http://www.oosterhuis.nl

-- JaynePotter^? - 21 Jun 2005
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