An Artificial Life Approach to Configuring Architectural Space

This paper presents a method of configuring architectural space that articulates the coupling of an organism with its environment; expressing the spatiality of unfolding engagement in the world. The premise is that space is a consequence of cohesion, effected through constraints and processes of enaction. An Artificial Life model is presented as an analogue of a bottom-up approach to architectural design that takes into account that we as organisms interact with our ever present changing environment and redefine our spatial domain depending on our sensory interaction with said environment

The Spatiality of Being

Space is a product of semiosis. It is a condition pertinent to an organism’s semiotic freedom, which is articulated by the organism as a consequence of its capacity to manipulate the world in the course of its unfolding interaction with its environment. Spatial configuration is thus the result of agency inherent in the organism-in-itsenvironment. Space, a consequence of social cohesion, is effected through constraints and processes of enaction which are semiotic. These processes are productive and offer architects a novel means by which to configure space, which they should embrace to articulate the nature of inhabitation. The model presented identifies activity as the essential building block to the generation of form. Modelled as a form of artificial life, swarm-like components, referred to as ‘actants’, represent discrete activities and selfconfigure according to differences in the environment they detect, to form a body-ofswarms. Thus, depicting the spatiality of being

Actuating (Auto)Poiesis

This paper claims that the use of the computer as generative methodological tool for designing urban and building scenarios (when perceived systematically) is a misnomer, because the typical approach does not account for the incompleteness of computational processes. We will argue that the computerisation of architectural and urban scenarios with autopoietic and/or artificial life simulations does not account for what Edsger W. Dijkstra called “radical novelty”; and Gilles Deleuze termed “line of flight”. Typical computational methods do not open up genuine alternatives that produce radical morphologies. Our argument is predicated on the dominant notion of computation as opposed to a critique of computation per se. A critical analysis of the perception of novelty is made to support our view, and its connection with the incompleteness of axiomatic systems is explored in relation to three phases of cybernetic enquiry. Our argument draws on the ontologies of Alfred North Whitehead and Gilles Deleuze, which we utilise to reorient computational design to emphasise the potential of generating radical novelty and identify the inherent locus therein a matter of nonhuman decision-making

Alcohol use, alcohol-related aggression and intimate partner abuse: a cross-sectional survey of convicted versus general population men in Scotland

Introduction and Aims. Scotland has a particular problem with alcohol, and the links between intimate partner abuse (IPA) and alcohol appear stronger here than elsewhere across Europe. This study explored differences in alcohol use, related aggression and relationship conflict across a number of groups: men convicted for intimate partner abuse, men convicted of general offences and men recruited from community sports teams. Design and Methods. Participants (n = 64) completed three questionnaires exploring their experiences of alcohol use (Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test, AUDIT); alcohol and aggression (Alcohol Related Aggression Questionnaire, ARAQ-28), and relationship conflict (Revised Conflict Tactics Scale, CTS-2). Results. There were significant differences across the groups in terms of AUDIT and ARAQ-28 scores, IPA and general offenders scored higher than the community sample. CTS-2 scores showed significant differences: both offender groups reported more use of negotiation and psychological abuse, than the community men, and IPA offenders reported causing more physical harm than either general offenders or the community sample. ARAQ-28 scores correlated with psychological abuse for general offenders. Alcohol use was very high across all groups, but the community group did not endorse an aggression-precipitating view of alcohol and did not report high IPA. Discussion and Conclusions. Discussed is the need for cross-cultural research to explore putative mediators and moderators in the relationship between alcohol, aggressiveness and IPA. [Gilchrist EA, Ireland L, Forsyth A, Godwin J, Laxton T. Alcohol use, alcohol-related aggression and intimate partner abuse: A cross-sectional survey of convicted versus general population men in Scotland. Drug Alcohol Rev 2017;36:20-23

Bateson Information Revisited: A New Paradigm

The goal of this work is to explain a novel information paradigm claiming that all information results from a process, intrinsic to living beings, of self-production; a sensory commensurable, self-referential feedback process immanent to Bateson’s difference that makes a difference. To highlight and illustrate this fundamental process, a simulation based on one-parameter feedback is presented. It simulates a homeorhetic process, innate to organisms, illustrating a self-referenced, autonomous system. The illustrated recursive process is sufficiently generic to be the only basis for information in nature: from the single cell, to multi-cellular organisms, to consideration of all types of natural and non-natural phenomena, including tools and artificial constructions

The Fundamental Problem of the Science of Information

The concept of information has been extensively studied and written about, yet no consensus on a unified definition of information has to date been reached. This paper seeks to establish the basis for a unified definition of information. We claim a biosemiotics perspective, based on Gregory Bateson’s definition of information, provides a footing on which to build because the frame this provides has applicability to both the sciences and humanities. A key issue in reaching a unified definition of information is the fundamental problem of identify ing how a human o rgan ism, in a self-referential process, develops from a state in which its knowledge of the h uman-organism-in-its-environment is almost non-existent to a state in which the human organism not only recognizes the existence of the environment but also sees itself as part of the human-organism-in-its-environment system. This allows a human organism not only to self-referentially engage with the environment and navigate through it, but also to transform it i n its own image and likeness. In other words, the Fundamental Problem of the Science of Information concerns the phylogenetic development process, as well as the ontogenetic development process of Homo sapiens sapiens from a single cell to our current multicellular selves, all in a changing long-term and short-term environment, respectively

An analysis of the Poly-dimensionality of living: an experiment in the application of 3-dimensional self-organising maps to evolve form.

The architect and sculptor Fredrick Kiesler opposed the linear mechanics of modernity. As so efficiently defined in Margarette Shutte Lihotsky’s Frankfurt kitchen, his work expressed the ‘act of body motion’, in the view that people inhabit buildings in a dynamic and vicissitudinous way. Representative of a world essentially understood to be deterministic and ordered, the Frankfurt Kitchen encapsulated the dweller in a standardised, industrial environment. Opposed to the scientific ordering of task management, Kiesler argued that the linearly devised two-dimensional methodology of architectural design is out of context with the dynamic of living and developed his ideas in the endless house; a form in which its inhabitants could live in a poly-dimensional way. This work focuses on the development of a design process, which may reflect the character and sinuous properties of an individual’s pattern of living. The study will develop a process, investigating the application of self-organising maps as a tool for the definition of space, towards a result which is emergent. The parameters that define an individual’s pattern of living, will be instigated in an array of three-dimensional self-organising activity maps, towards the development of form

Naturalising Space

Taking the basic unit of existence to be the organism-in-its-environment, which is coupled to the world through its capacity to sense, and thus interpret its surroundings, this paper argues (from an evolutionary perspective) that ‘human-space’ may be comprehended by extending the issue downwards to the pattern recognition and control processes of simpler organisms; on the premise that the mechanisms we see at play in single celled organisms lead to higher and higher degrees of sign processing in humans. The spatiality of an organism is affected through its capacity to sense, which underpins perception and capacity to engage with the world. This ability (stemming from our cells) is ambient and distributed, and from this perspective space is ‘lived’. Effected through the ability to feel or perceive and affect the environment, space is a (habitual) state of fluidity and perpetual readjustment articulated through an organism’s activity and interaction. A living-cell is, fundamentally, a semiotic-niche; meaning it must master a set of signs by which it can control – or maintain – itself, and like all living things acts according to physiological and social needs. Having the capacity to distinguish self-from nonself a cell is, thus, a model of the ontology of ‘self’. The spatiality of an organism and its engagement with its surroundings may thus be extrapolated on the basis of cell/niche (inter)action – after all an organism is, at base, an ecosystem of cohabitating cell formations