Algorithmic Architecture

An algorithmic design for a Hotel in Wellington, New Zealand, generated in Max Script. This is the first genuinely new movement in architecture that I have seen in the 20 years since I began.

Modern buildings are designed rather like crystals, they are a repetition of components (periodic). Natural things, however, including DNA and medieval towns are more like aperiodic crystals, with variable repetition. To create these structures, requires an algorithm rather than a single equation (that was the premise of Stephen Wolfram’s self-published tome, ‘A New Kind of Science’). Whether this is a new kind of science is debatable, however, it is certainly a new kind of architecture.

Here is a roundup of some other algorithmic architecture on another of my sites, ‘oobject’.

6 comments architecture

Tank Man

A documentary about the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989. A lot has changed since then and one can’t help but wonder if prosperity leads more easily to freedom than protest.

2 comments history, world

Germaine Greer loses it.

Carl Dowse (where I lifted this from) says it better than I ever could:

“a film dating back to 1968 starring the feminist writer Germaine Greer in a rather embarassing parody of herself prior to the publication of her international best-seller, The Female Eunuch”

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The Quran – Channel 4

This feature length (102 mins) documentary shown a couple of weeks ago on the UK’s Channel 4, was watched by a million people – highly unusual for a documentary slot on C4. It was directed by Antony Thomas who also directed the highly controversial “Death of a Princess” that caused a diplomatic storm between Britain and Saudi Arabia, nearly 30 years ago.

Although the program comes with the warning: “contains footage of executions, the aftermath of bombing and female genital mutilations which may upset some viewers”, it is not a sensationalist piece, and, in large part, celebrates Islam. If anything, it shows too little of the dark side that has pervaded all strands: Islamic; Christian and Jewish, of the Abrahamic cult.

That this review in the Financial Times: “For those of us who ground our lives on what we believe to be rationality, the testimony of those who ground theirs on books that reason says must be fantasy attests to the massive power of the imagination of countless millions”, should assume that any reasonable person would reject Abrahamic, or any other, belief fantasy, is testament to the grip on American culture that it has. No mainstream US paper would make such an assumption about secularism, just as no American publication of any significant audience has yet dared to mock the recent, increasingly vapid and self-aggrandizing, evangelical speeches from Barack Obama, that we usually associate with the Republican right, in the manner of this satire in the London Times, yesterday.

What has this got to do with the Quran? Quite a lot, potentially.

8 comments religion

Oliver Sacks, Rage for Order

Part of a series called “Mind Traveller”, the celebrated author and neurologist, Oliver Sacks looks at autism.

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Commercial Break: Communist Era Estonian Meat Commercial

Words… well, they just can’t describe it.

9 comments commercials

Religuous trailer

Off the back of the success of the series of bestselling books lampooning religion, it will shortly be getting the ‘light satire documentary’ treatment. Perhaps the good natured jokeyness of the format is the best way to irritate people who take religion seriously.

8 comments religion

Savile Row

Part 1 of a 3 part documentary about Savile Row, the street in London, where the worlds leading bespoke tailors have made suits for the rich and famous for several centuries. Where Churchill bought his pinstripe and Fred Astaire, his tails. The filming coincides with the arrival of an undesirable element on the street, Abercrombie and Fitch.

Like the $5,000 – $30,000 suits themselves, the subject of this film may not seem worth it at first, but it a quiet, unrushed, dignified and won’t go out of fashion.

1 comment nostalgia, world

Stanley Kubrick’s Boxes

Jon Ronson’s Documentary about Kubrick. What the hell is he talking about at the start?

If an artist painted each picture she did in a different style, we would think her a fraud, or at least derivative. One way of showing you meant something and to demonstrate a style is to repeat it. A single Jackson Pollock might have looked accidental and wouldn’t have made a splash, as it were.

Kubrick set out to create definitive films in different genres and with different styles (Sci Fi: 2001, Horror: The Shining, War: Full Metal Jacket, Epic: Spartacus). Astoundingly, he pulled it off.

5 comments biography

Arab Drifts – video list

Over at our sister site, Oobject:

“Arab drifting is the name given to handbrake slides, perfected in places like Saudi, where Arabian Stallions have been replaced by metal Mustangs. Here it refers not just to the videos of the stunts which are interesting in of themselves, but the cultural drift, as exemplified by the range of music that accompanies the videos, from rock to rap to house.”

“This list is contains not just Arab Drifts but clips of car culture on the Arabian peninsula, proving Youtube’s worth as an anthropological treasure trove.”

Link

1 comment lists