Manifold Spaces and Patterned Potentialities

The research aims at providing a new perspective and methodology to dynamic space setting as a mode articulation for intensity, transformation, and change pointing to more versatile, resilient, and ecological urban assemblages. The anticipation apparatus proposed for architecture and the city is a landscape of Alexandrian Design Patterns and intensive variables that simulates spatial contingencies and connects them with actual bodies as an extended mode of prediction and design. The city is represented as an N-dimensional manifold, a plane of variable dimensionality where its dimensions are used to represent its sociospatial becomings. At the same time, the manifold itself becomes the space of possible states that city can have, an apparatus that structures the city’s sociospatial potentialities and dynamically patterns its material reality

De-coding the possibilities of spatial asssemblages: a design methodology of topologizing architectural morphology

While the continuous flow of events seems to be a given, we still cannot either perceive or design space which is organized and has the capacity to reorganize itself in order to cope with major changes. In this framework, the research aims to establish a codefor space, as a semantic system that monitors its sociospatial metabolism while at the same time being directly connected to its material reality. In this framework, the research attempts to establish a design methodologyaiming at a generative system for architecture and the city. The material agency of this productive process is described as a bifold process which constantly informs itself, including a "convergent phase of selection"and a "divergent phase of design" (Spuybroek 2008: 189). The first one focuses on the code's organization, introducing Christopher Alexander's 253 Design Patterns (Alexander et al. 1977) as its elementary units in order to postulate on its topological structure as a network of relations between interacting, active parts. In the next phase, while theorizing the code's structure, Design Patterns are substituted by their A-signifying signs counterparts, mechanisms able to stabilize or destabilize the assemblage and thus allow for its contingency to remain immanent

Works of Prose by Ján Rozner and Bratislava (The Writer – the Autobiography – the Town)

The research into the spacial categories is enjoying a lot of attention in contemporary literary theory as well as in interdisciplinary research. In the introduction the author of the paper offers an overview of certain theoretical and practical approaches to the phenomenon of town in Central Europe. Then he deals with the autobiographical works of prose written by Ján Rozner (1922 – 2006), especially the books Noc po fronte (The Night after the Front, 2010) and Výlet na Devín (The Trip to the Devín Castle, 2011). The attention is mainly paid to the analysis of the relationships between: 1.) the literary representation of the urban space 2.) the autobiographical genre and 3.) the writer´s personality. He arrives at the conclusion that in case of J. Rozner´s prosaic work the three theoretical issues are inseparably connected. „Rozner´s“ Bratislava is not only the background in his works of prose, the space effectively contributes to the way the writer artistically captures the basic subject, which is the relationship between the Central European intellectual and the complicated cultural and political history of the region in the 20th century. J. Rozner uses retrospective narration in order to come to terms with his own problematic past and the literary representation of Bratislava serves as part of the process of intellectual „reanimation“ of the writer in contemporary Slovak culture

Stranger on the border (The Eastern Carpathians as ideological space in the Central European literatures of the 20th century

The study focuses on selected texts by Central European writers which are thematically set in the Eastern Carpathians. This radically multiethnic and multinational region is considered by the author to be one of the relatively independent cultural areas of Central Europe. Using examples such as Ivan Olbracht, Karel Čapek or Sándor Márai, the author shows that the narrative perspectives of a stranger, outcast, migrant in combination with the themes of border and conflict between vernacular and alien are characteristic for the literary image of the Eastern Carpathian border region in the 20th century. The author looks at the way the literary appearance of this area is ideologically deformed in the works of individual authors. The Eastern European writers who do not come from the Eastern Carpathian border region use characters of strangers to reflect on the relationship between the modern and the traditional. Autochthonous authors often make use of the stranger characters to depict the area´s self-colonial efforts (Kiossev) in relation to the referential dominant cultures. We can follow how this cultural referentiality has been changing during the region´s history from the original Austrian-Hungarian cultural framework through the frameworks of individual national cultures to Central European or European cultural framework accented by the current cultural policy

Interpretation, demestication, manipulation (DAVists and R X. Šalda)

The study deals with the relationship between the critics from the magazine DAV´s circle and the Czech critic F. X. Šalda. There seem to be three complementary ways of relating to Šalda that can be tracked in the Davists´ approach to him from 1937 (F. X. Šalda´s death), and especially after 1948: they are called domestication, interpretation and manipulation. Šalda´s critical methods were well received and applied by Slovak marxist critics from the magazine DAV in order to solve Slovak culture problems, however his opinions were also significantly reshaped under the influence of ideology. Vladimír Clementis is used as an example to prove the fact. The study also deals with the influence of Šalda´s personalistic criticism as a model and pattern on Slovak cultural enviroment before World War II. and is concerned with opinion adjustments made by some of the Slovak promoters of Šaldaesque criticism after the rise of Communist dictatorship (Alexander Matuška). In conclusion there is given evidence that Šalda as a representative of a certain approach to cultural issues is to some extent still present in the current Slovak literary discussions, e.g. in Július Vanovič´s works

Змішана ідентичність. Деякі теоретичні аспекти дослідження Східнокарпатської прикордонної області

The paper deals with relationship between Slovak and Ukrainian literatures and cultures of the 19th and 20th centuries in the Eastern Carpathian border area. The author considers this particularly multiethnic region as one of the relatively independent cultural areas of the Central Europe. The Slovak literature since the mid-19th century shows this space as a heterotopia. Narrative perspectives of a stranger, outcast, migrant in combination with the themes of border and conflict between local and strangers are characteristic for the literary image of the Eastern Carpathian border area in the 20th century. The paper explores the issue of parallel processes of ‘national revival’ (such as Slovak, Ruthenian, Ukrainian, Hungarian) in the ethnically heterogeneous area of eastern Slovakia where the process of cultural and ethnic self-identification followed a much more complex trajectory compared to the ‘core’ areas inhabited by the respective ethnic groups. The Slavonic ethnic groups failed to conclude this process in the course of the 19th century or, indeed, even in the first half of the 20th century. Following the breakup of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the establishment of Czechoslovakia, the new state’s liberal national policies encouraged greater competition between certain cultural and linguistic orientations among the inhabitants of eastern Slovakia (pro-Ukrainian, pro-Russian and pro-Ruthenian orientation). This situation was also reflected in works of Slovak and especially Czech literature. Slovak-Ukrainian cultural contacts are currently receiving many new ideas and their research can be based on theoretical background of postcolonialism, selfcolonization theory and geopoetics.У статті розглянуто взаємозв’язок між словацькою й українською літературами та культурами ХІХ – ХХ ст. у Східнокарпатській прикордонній області. Цю виразно багатонаціональну зону автор уважає одним із найбільш незалежних ультурних регіонів у Центральній Європі. Словацька література, починаючи із середини ХІХ ст., показує, що цей простір – гетеротопний. Наративні перспективи чужинця, вигнанця, мігранта в поєднанні з темами кордону та конфлікту між місцевими і чужинцями характерні для літературних образів Східнокарпатського прикордонного регіону у ХХ ст

The contingent city: De-coding the possibilities of the city’s sociospatial metabolism

Introduction While the continuous flow of events – within the complexity and dynamic systems theory – seems to be a given, we still cannot tell the exact nature of future events, prior to their emergence. This research aims to establish a code for the city as a semantic system that models cities and monitors their sociospatial metabolism. In setting the general schema for its ontology, the research disregards the difference between the observable and the nonobservable as well as the anthropocentrism this distinction implies (DeLanda 2013). In this context the city is composed of both the actual and the virtual, the “city as is” and the “city as it could be”, respectively. As they both inform and enhance the city’s identity, its production is to be explained through a process ontology format without the need for a designing author. Such an autopoietic system Humberto Matura and Fransisco Varela classified as a ‘machine’ which is ‘organized as a network of processes of production of components, continuously realizing the network of processes that produced them’ (Maturana and Varela 1980) thus able to process information over time. As this information is both actual and virtual, the concept of a code is introduced as a mediator mechanism. The material agency of this productive process, key to Deleuzian ontology, is described as a bifold process which constantly informs itself, including a “convergent phase of selection” and a “divergent phase of design” (Spuybroek 2008: 189). For the convergence phase – one to inhabit the virtual domain – a code of Design Patterns (Passia, 2016) is organized by gathering information that is relevant and providing its topological structure, one that concentrates on the relations instead of the components. A movement towards quality, order and organization. In the divergent phase – one to inhabit the actual domain – an affective mechanisms’ index (Roupas, 2016) is organized to guide the actualization as the code germinates and transforms into actual spatial structures with geometric and qualitative properties. (Spuybroek 2008: 189) A movement towards quantity, matter and structure. Convergent phase: the code’s organization To propose a framework for the code’s organization, we introduce Christopher Alexander’s (Alexander et all. 1977) 253 Design Patterns as the code’s elementary units. Each Design Pattern is a diagram that describes form through a set of rules or criteria, expressing a relation amongst a particular context, a particular system of forces that is repeated within the context, and a spatial configuration that allows these forces to balance. Design Patterns’ internal structure, already quite fluid and dynamic, is essential for the code to simulate two important processes: the process of representation – that is to gather and store information about the city – and the process of self-organization – that is to develop organized structure and adapt it to cope with the changing fields of information (Cilliers 1998). In that respect, Design Patterns are introduced onto a surface in space as assemblages pointing to modes of information transmission (Wilden 2011: 220). On that surface they are free to assemble and reassemble anew, as they use their ability to communicate at different spaces, levels and scales. Through a two part population-thinking process their regularities and tendencies are documented and protocols of interconnected networks of communication are established. (image 01) These two parts of the populationthinking process agree with Henri Bergson’s distinction between difference in kind and difference in degree (Bergson 2014: 23). Mapping their difference in kind describes the city’s dimensions as Design Patterns’ assemblages while mapping their difference in degree defines its dimensional gradients as degrees of Design Patterns. As Design Patterns start populating this autonomous surface, the manifold gets activated and energized. At the end of the first part of the process, the manifold will have four spaces of possibilities pointing them as the city’s four dimensions, each inhabited by specific Design Patterns: interiority vs. exteriority integration vs. separation concentration vs. decentralization similarity vs. heterogeneity After the second part, each dimensional space will be organized according to four varying degrees of intensity called dimensional types, where the same Design Patterns will be employed to produce the full array of all degrees. (image 02) Through this bifold process, we have defined a number of attractors for the city’s code: its four dimensions as the genera of exteriority, cohesion, integration and differentiation, and also the intensive boundaries of their internal variation. Through the attractors, it is possible to explain the city’s identity in relation to networked patterns of communication between its elementary units, themselves consisting of degrees of intensity (Passia, 2016). Divergent phase: the code’s structure Entering the divergent phase and while the code maintains in full its topological organization, it transforms its structure to become formative by replacing its elementary units. To allow for the material structures to remain open and thus able to create variations of oneself, an affective mechanisms’ index is created, a map of the affective capacity of spatial objects at different scales, from design objects to buildings and urban configurations. Those spatial structures are theorized as assemblages, that is systems composed of interacting parts. And since all assemblages are parts of larger assemblages, their components’ ability to engage is contingent. (Meillassoux 2012:10) In order to analyze and produce spatial assemblages of that kind, we point to their more stable characteristic: which is their ability to affect and to be affected. (Deleuze & Guattari 1987:xvi) In mapping the assemblages’ affective ability, spatial objects are analyzed in two axes. (Delanda 2006: 13) The first axis focuses on the relations that the assemblage’s material and expressive components develop in order to enter the assemblages. The second axis records the processes known as A-signifying signs or A-signs, (Guattari 1995: 54) which are the triggering mechanisms able to stabilize or destabilize the assemblage and thus allow its parts to assemble anew. These mechanisms are introduced as intensities that transform the object beyond meaning, beyond fixed or known cognitive procedures. They belong to a molecular level which is populated by modulations, movements, speeds, rhythms and spasms. (Lazzarato & Melitopoulos 2012: 240) As a-signs cannot be isolated from matter, we thus point to affects as the result of the a-signs’ capacity to trigger the selection of one action possibility – affordance – among many. To that end, approximately 100 a-signs have been mapped via the analysis of numerous contemporary spatial objects of various scales, including works of art and installations. In that respect an affective mechanisms’ index is created (image 03), one where all the a-signs are listed as an index of techniques that could enhance the affective capacity of the final design object. Each a-sign is now connected with the list of affects it triggers and which thoroughly defines it. And vice versa, as the same affect can be triggered by different a-signs, the design object is allowed to lie in a perpetual state of becoming. Through the affective mechanisms index we are now able to analyze and direct the design objects’s final form while at the same time establishing the mechanism to measure its continuous transformation. To define spatial objects, A-signs are categorized in terms of their aesthetic power to affect and to be affected and are placed onto the respective dimensional areas of exteriority, cohesion, integration and differentiation. On the basis of the general categories of form, structure and surface, different part’s degree of contingency are evaluated and measured. (image 03) By replacing Design Patterns with A-signs we introduce affects as material information that is immanent in the spatial object while at the same time they confer no meaning; they only convey some information without semantic content. The affects’ ability to merge with the material world without mediation allows them to avoid the realm of representation. With this codification we are able to control the final form of the design object while at the same time establishing the mechanism to measure its continuous transformation. Conclusions Having the same code with different components – Design Patterns and A-signs – we are able to construct a machine that connects the convergent phase of selection with the divergent phase of design. Through this bifold process, we have defined a number of attractors for the city: its four dimensions as the genera of exteriority, cohesion, integration and differentiation, and also the intensive boundaries of their internal variation. Through the attractors, it is possible to explain the city’s identity in relation to networked patterns of communication between its elements, themselves consisting of degrees of factors. At the same time, through the a-signs we have actively connected the convergent and divergent phase. In the code we organize for the city, the elements and the relationships exist in the same continuum thus effectively bridging the gap between the actual and the virtual city. The code we have organized for the city resembles Deleuze’s abstract machine : ‘a map of relations between forces, a map of destiny, or intensity, which proceeds by primary non-localizable relations and at every moment passes through every point, ‘or rather in every relation from one point to another’.’’(Deleuze 2016: 36). Appendix of images Work in progress: Map of Communication 03_12 criteria list Work in progress: Map of Communication 04_the city’s 4 dimensions Work in progress: Extract of Affective Mechanism Index Work in progress: Code table with A-sign

The Affective City: Cartography of Machinic Urban Assemblages

While the city is generally perceived -within complexity theory and dynamic systems theory as a changing field of dense interactions that occur in a range of spatial and temporal scales, we are unable to perceive it or describe it in these terms. The main goal of our work is to redefine space - ontologically and epistemologically- in order to reveal the invisible system of its interactions. Thus, the city is represented via a connectionist model, by means of the representation of the interconnections of its various parts. The project theorizes the city as a multiplicity, a structure of spaces of possibilities while at the same time trying to establish a liaison between the city's properties, tendencies and capacities. While properties are actual and can be observed, tendencies and capacities lie in the virtual level and become actual once exercised. Their intensive cartographies map zones of varying degrees regarding the density and intensity of information that is available pointing them as the city's islands of affordances. In this framework, Hecate becomes the city's virtual map, an interactive mechanism able to decipher, map and connect the superimposed layers of significance informing the city's layout and behavior, in real time. Visualized as a network of richly interconnected nodes of varying intensities, each representing information flows between the system and the city, Hecate is introduced as a visual thinking tool to perceive them in real time