toward the development of a Hyperobjective master plan to transform McMurdo Station, a research colony in West Antarctica, into the Vanguard Capital Of The Anthropocene; With the intention of resolving the melancholy of the Holocene Fin de Siècle; exploring paths through the Epistemological Apocalypse following the death of nature; and speculating on the possible character of Authentic Anthropocene Culture.
axiom_1::Hyperobjective_mediation
axiom_2::Van_der_Laanian_mediation
axiom_3::embodied_intelligence
icy_messenger::two_parts
methodological_steps
the first stage in the methodology is the construction of a sensitive object—a virtual-physical hybrid with the capacity to produce surprising emergent behaviors and evocative of certain qualities of the Hyperobject.
the sensitive object—grounded in the frameworks of embodied intelligence developed by Ian Bogost, Rachel Armstrong, and others—becomes the starting point for a new design process grounded neither in formal autonomy, outdated philosophies of becoming, or scientistic modeling. the sensitive object exists in four dimensions: physical sensors, effectors and machinery; an inaccessible core of scripted behavioral logic; interrelated virtual geometry, visible to the observer through a heads-up display; and the environmental conditions themselves, which the object both modifies and responds to.
the second stage in the methodology is the application of the sensitive object as a lens through which to investigate a series of case studies in sensitive infrastructures—built environments that evoke some sort of metaphysical mediation on their inhabitant. the first case study is the Roosenberg Abbey by Hans van der Laan.
the mediative technique developed from the study of Roosenberg Abbey is that of using nested, variably permeable boundaries to lengthen the transition from the boundless space of nature to the intimate space of human contemplation, thus synthesizing the opposition universe|human into the dyad inside-outside.
the second case study is the Teshima Art Museum by Naito Rei and Nishizawa Ryūe
the mediative technique associated with the Teshima Art Museum is that of enveloping the inhabitant in what feels like a mechanism of intederminate scale and illegible function and origin—illegible in the way that it would be impossible to tell the time from within a mechanical clock (or, even more so, a digital clock).
