“From Models to Mirror Worlds”
Cultural Politics 18, forthcoming
Cultural Politics 18, forthcoming
This essay contemplates the
media histories and politics of the digital twin: an accurate three-dimensional
model designed to offer data-based simulation, predictive capability, and
remote control over a material entity. Currently being developed across the spheres
of industry, design, and “smart city” governance, digital twins are “digital-physical” databases purporting not only to represent
the appearance of an object, but also to capture or simulate all changes to its
physical and informatic state, down to the bolt or data point. What are the
media histories and stakes of a real-time digital simulation of the world? What
of the desire to imitate the physical world in fully machine-readable form?
Through three episodes that contribute to the technological imaginary of the twin — the digital factory, the “smart” building model, and the 3D “dashboard” city — it shows how contemporary simulations do not simply reflect reality nor create fictional ones, but are committed to remaking reality over and over again — each time with greater efficiency, oversight, and predictability.
Illustrations produced by Madaleine Ackerman and Amelyn Ng.
Through three episodes that contribute to the technological imaginary of the twin — the digital factory, the “smart” building model, and the 3D “dashboard” city — it shows how contemporary simulations do not simply reflect reality nor create fictional ones, but are committed to remaking reality over and over again — each time with greater efficiency, oversight, and predictability.
Illustrations produced by Madaleine Ackerman and Amelyn Ng.
“HOW-TO: Instructional Videos and the Ends of Technicity”
Disc Journal, no. 1, forthcoming
Disc Journal, no. 1, forthcoming
This is an exegesis of the instructional video—a primary means of architectural upskilling in an age of software. Gone are the days of technical textbooks and user’s guides; while these formats still exist, they are no longer the main source of procedural knowledge. In a post-D. K. Ching modality of troubleshooting over full training, users gain drawing skills by searching for solutions mid-workflow—YouTube demos, in-app tours, and user forums are the new bottomless currency of technical self-help. These new media artifacts have become quintessential postmodern resources for the hobbyist, text-weary design student, and time-poor practitioner alike.
As individuated online learning and task-based employment become more prevalent, the learn-it-yourself media interface (and its promises of immaterial productivity and future work) becomes a site of quantified subjectivity which warrants further scrutiny.
As individuated online learning and task-based employment become more prevalent, the learn-it-yourself media interface (and its promises of immaterial productivity and future work) becomes a site of quantified subjectivity which warrants further scrutiny.
“Models, Technicity, Labor: In Conversation with Amelyn Ng”
PLAT Journal 9.5: Leave Space, September 2021
PLAT Journal 9.5: Leave Space, September 2021
A conversation with PLAT 9.5 editor Jimmy Bullis about models, databases, resolution, and subscription labor in an era where form (and their sites of power) ostensibly follows information.
Related work:
FRM_2021_DEEPCITY
Related work:
FRM_2021_DEEPCITY
“Stories from the Pandemic: A Spatial Survey of Stay-at-home Stress”
Journal of Architectural Education 75:2, Building Stories (September 2021)
Journal of Architectural Education 75:2, Building Stories (September 2021)
In “Figures, Doors and Passages,” Robin Evans contends: “If anything is described by the architectural plan, it is the nature of human relationships... But what is generally absent in even the most elaborately illustrated building is the way human figures will occupy it.” More than a medium for architectural design, how might the plan drawing serve to tell stories of lives actually lived?
Developed over the Fall of 2020 with a grant from Rice University, this project tests a graphical method for interview transcriptions and surveying-bydrawing. Its purpose is to shift the relentless statistical gaze of COVID-19 toward the granular scale of the domestic body, and lend nuance and voice to oft-invisible, unequally felt interior spaces of the pandemic.
Related work:
PRJ_2021_SAHS
PUB_20210329_UE
Developed over the Fall of 2020 with a grant from Rice University, this project tests a graphical method for interview transcriptions and surveying-bydrawing. Its purpose is to shift the relentless statistical gaze of COVID-19 toward the granular scale of the domestic body, and lend nuance and voice to oft-invisible, unequally felt interior spaces of the pandemic.
Related work:
PRJ_2021_SAHS
PUB_20210329_UE
“Book (Medium Design by Keller Easterling)”
Journal of Architecture vol. 26, no. 4 (June 2021)
Journal of Architecture vol. 26, no. 4 (June 2021)
Book review of Keller Easterling, Medium Design: Knowing how to work on the world (London and New York: Verso, 2021).
