mental gum
Future-Present: Historical Attitudes to the Past-Now
or, Science as fiction: the Boredom of Knowing
“... first, we are telling stories, and we promote stories. The architect has to understand this kind of boundary between telling stories that are partly reality and partly a fiction of reality, and about the fiction that happens everywhere, all the time.”
(Francoise Roche, excerpt from interview with C-Lab. Nov 2008)
In the Biosphere 2 project, three english sparrows flew in, uninvited. Sealed in for the duration of the experiment, they thrived in this biome. On the other hand, all the cordon bleu finches, which were explicitly included in this experiment, died.
“The sparrows were brash and noisy, even vulgar in their pushiness, while the finches were elegant, peaceful and melodious singers”, complained Lynda Leigh, the in-house biologist.
Why complain? Why not go with what works, with what it wants to be. Accept chaos.
The myth of modernity was built on the rationalism of quantitative proof. x% more efficient, therefore, better. Control. But the fallacy of logic is that it carries with it a political text: what is better? And how is better always better.
With the illusion of control comes the anxiety of failure.
It used to be where science would follow fiction.
In this, science was an excuse for the imagination to gain a semblance of reality. When did science become a religion? When did reality become so boring.
Within the canons of science fiction cinema, one can regard two canoical films by the same director: “2001: A Space Odyssey” (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) and “A Clockwork Orange” (Stanley Kubrick, 1972) as conceptual poles vis a vis attitudes toward present-future.
In one, a utopic white space: the modern desire for order, to start anew and build a better world. The latter about another kind of dystopic future. Nostalgic idealization versus moral presuppositions.
Assuming we are in a paradigmatic shift, from the age of mechanical reproduction to the singularity, where electronic reproduction puts into question the authenticity of the moment. At the same time, where is progress in our state of the forever-now?
or, Science as fiction: the Boredom of Knowing
“... first, we are telling stories, and we promote stories. The architect has to understand this kind of boundary between telling stories that are partly reality and partly a fiction of reality, and about the fiction that happens everywhere, all the time.”
(Francoise Roche, excerpt from interview with C-Lab. Nov 2008)
In the Biosphere 2 project, three english sparrows flew in, uninvited. Sealed in for the duration of the experiment, they thrived in this biome. On the other hand, all the cordon bleu finches, which were explicitly included in this experiment, died.
“The sparrows were brash and noisy, even vulgar in their pushiness, while the finches were elegant, peaceful and melodious singers”, complained Lynda Leigh, the in-house biologist.
Why complain? Why not go with what works, with what it wants to be. Accept chaos.
The myth of modernity was built on the rationalism of quantitative proof. x% more efficient, therefore, better. Control. But the fallacy of logic is that it carries with it a political text: what is better? And how is better always better.
With the illusion of control comes the anxiety of failure.
It used to be where science would follow fiction.
In this, science was an excuse for the imagination to gain a semblance of reality. When did science become a religion? When did reality become so boring.
Within the canons of science fiction cinema, one can regard two canoical films by the same director: “2001: A Space Odyssey” (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) and “A Clockwork Orange” (Stanley Kubrick, 1972) as conceptual poles vis a vis attitudes toward present-future.
In one, a utopic white space: the modern desire for order, to start anew and build a better world. The latter about another kind of dystopic future. Nostalgic idealization versus moral presuppositions.
Assuming we are in a paradigmatic shift, from the age of mechanical reproduction to the singularity, where electronic reproduction puts into question the authenticity of the moment. At the same time, where is progress in our state of the forever-now?