Horizon

Roberto Masiero

Another journey has begun. Another journey, not the same one; not the one Christopher Columbus did from West to West transforming Modernity, the european one, in a planetary device. As we know, once a journey has started all changes. We felt it then (a "then" which some think is an "always" or an "again"). The journey takes body and mind, space and time. Transmutations, hybridisation and metamorphoses happen; in the way of living in the world and therefore in its architecture and ours; within ourselves: everyone on the journey discovers something of themselves, sometimes even discovering another self. Literature knows this well, even better still the novel, which since its beginning (with modernity) it found itself in a continual journey inside subjectivity and the brain (also when believing to meet the total other being, as in science fiction novels), and involves the arts, artifices, astuteness, resourcefulness, systems, stratagems, tricks and techniques.

Let’s try to understand what type of journey we are talking about and pick up the signs of change. The journey is the one from the earth to the skies and from this towards infinite starry space and towards the synaptic, rhizomatic neurones of our mind-brain. What then changes by penetrating this space? One change, for example, there is no longer a horizon. And this is no small matter. With the horizon we feel order, above and below, the high and low, the sky and the earth; we know equilibrium, we can feel "the earth under our feet"; we even evaluate the distance as the horizon contains all that, which from a set point, is visible. Where the earth is just a point among infinite points, where, there are only artificial horizons, legible by strange simulator machines, gyroscopes which have no other centre but their own. Is that simulated centre corporal, optic, physical, mental, virtual? Anyway it’s dynamic, never still.

Remember what H. Lefevbre taught us: "... every living body is a space and has its space: it produces the space and is produced". Every living body interacts with space and thus is determined, symmetry as dissymmetry, closeness as distance. In animals of bilateral symmetry, as humans, indicators of space, left and right, high and low, central and periferic, are qualified by the body and derive from the body. The body extends into space its own properties and spatial definitions which are carried within. In this way double definitions are introduced into space: the axis and the quadrant, direction, orientation, and the perception of left and right are projected on things. The conditions and principles of lateralization of space, are in the body: it needs to be made because right and left, high and low, can be indicated, marked down and allowed choice. Now, if the body is produced and produces space, if it interacts adapting itself and transforming itself in space, what will become of the body and its interactions, there, where the horizon is no more, where eventually it will always and inevitably be simulated, where, at the most (and the least) it may only be imagined (again virtual), is it like the inexpiable black hole, an experience of dragging gravity from horizons.

Before proceeding, let’s ask another question: that horizon which has always been in our perception, as on our earth, hasn’t it become an object of analytical "reflection", paradigmatic, constructive, with Humanism and with the "invention" of prospective? Perhaps the horizon that we draw when we want to order graphically our "perspective", that horizon marked by a straight line "levelled" on our sheet of paper, that horizon which allows us to place in space the representation of objects and to geometrically control its metamorphoses in relation to our own dynamic perceptions. Didn’t it exist before we used it as a stratagem to reproduce the perspective of things? Sure it has always existed, on earth the horizon is a "fact", phenomenal, anthropological, and logical, but only with Humanism - when the generation journey started which proceeded us and generated us. It has become a paradigm, that is a reproducing measure for the world, an analytical instrument and not just phenomena. So a new way of being and living in the world began, in fact the so called Modernity began. The very idea of artistry, the same as that still presented in our text books, in our museums and in our collective imaginary.

The world changed with that journey, with our "other" journey will the world change again? Where the horizon has become multiple, virtual, potential, collapsed in one of the possible black holes, what can become of art and the arts? what can become of the representation of the world? Can it still be the horizon which makes the world, world for men, for their projects as for their own perceptive system, for their essential interaction with space? Are we still in the era of representation of the world? Do we still need the arts to accept or deny the world? To give it "structure"? To destroy and rebuild it? Not only to make things exist, but also to make them possible and potent?

Le Corbusier designed his study in such a way that, everything could be reached from a sitting position. The body (his famous modulor), such as arm and hand, "designed" and built his own space. The inside appeared like a fitted suit, the surfaces adapted to the body’s movements and needs. It was the result of a project (and of a philosophy-ideology) which couldn’t recognise that the living body in rapport with space, dispels energy and this squander is productive, generative, erotic, aesthetic. It was the result of a principle, the best result with the least effort, which is biologically insufficient if not to say castrating, for humankind, the species which made squander its biological as well as ethnological "strength" and "superiority", and in this waste first discovered the sacred and then beauty fighting with the throbbing of Eros. To experience superfluity both anthropologically and conceptually has a primary importance.

Also in the space shuttles - our Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria - it is so. The capsule has everything within hand’s reach, and from this position, as well as controlling its own biological functioning, controls other space, diverse and far away, communication, energy, mechanics, digital which irritates the system inside and beyond, that of one’s own brain, able now to see clearly and distinctly way beyond eyesight, well beyond each horizon. That capsule, with that body, is concentrated energy ready to dissipate everywhere, erotic and beautiful, a work of art. A bigger dispelling than ever, as it is leashed, controlled into a technical-scientific body, artificial and volitive. A spatial body made of many "skins" and "gaps" which make the biological, mechanical and bitic, interact in symbiosis.

This spatial body will no longer have a bilateral symmetry; it will not be an armour fitting the human body, covering and defending it. It is the human body which will have to adapt progressively (perhaps) to a new rapport with space, with machines and with artificial intelligence, to become a factorial dimensional symmetry, able to see contemporaneously everywhere, indifferent to movement whether up or down, never impeded by dizziness, conceptually spherical, as the human brain tends to be, when it imagines itself.

What happens to the senses, to sensitive perception and thus to aesthetics? Touch will be activated as well as by "nearness", beyond the size of parts of the body, and, at the same time, it will be able to penetrate where never before it had "felt"; the sense of smell - the most primitive of the senses can not be used to mark and remember our territory any more, to individuate partners, to recognise what taste it likes or doesn’t like. It will become atrophied, black and it will specialise (perhaps) on hygiene; hearing will learn annihilation from the absolute silence; taste will abandon any natural memory to discover the perversion and fascination of the artificial and sight will dream, day after day, generation after generation, of not having the support of human eyes any more but those of an insect able to see in all directions.

What will be into that sidereal depth, colour? What is black? What is white? And what is light? That light which on our earth designs things, it puts them on show with all their "qualities" with all their "forms"; that light which gives perception of time passing, coming and going, with day and night, that light which makes a difference between inside and outside of our architecture and which plays showing itself and then hiding; could that light still have something domestic, habitual and reassuring? How would it feel to have the light of day in front of you, and immediately behind your shoulder, the dark of night? Because this may happen in starry space: to discover that there could be no time between day and night.

What will it mean to look around us, see a flash of lightening in space and think: there - is that it? - the universe is born! The human body which, since culture started the battle against nature, is no longer only a natural and physiological fact, it is trying out the most radical of metamorphosis (and conjuring): like an organism wanting to take over the inorganic; animal invading vegetable and mineral; from limited to unlimited. It wants to become proteiform engineering the bios, governing every throb becoming pure social energy. That social which has become a great superfluous mass of surplus, desired because in turn desiring, and for this reason wasteful and erotic in a aesthetic totality. All art-merchandise filled with added values, designed to make the sublime emerge; no longer made by hand or for the hand; no apparent use or to be used, but above all mental, ideographic objects.

The body may change meaning. We also learned this in the in the previous journey, when we learned we could be both nature and culture. A change in the epistomological statute in the weaving of knowledge (together knowledge, the space where it is distributed and the conformation of that space), perception (the eye, the modification of the glance and the rapport with other senses), language (the known code and its ability to translate the perceived) and ideology (to bind all these elements and as a manifestation of power).

Humankind has survived its own animal self in deficiency specialising in the mind in respect to the body, cognitive intelligence in respect to instinct, now wanting to specialise, not only in its own cognitive system, but also in the base material of the same body. On one hand bringing out intelligence from itself, materialising it in chip, in silicon, in the raw material most common in the world; on the other hand specialising in its own body, hybridising it, transplanting it, applying prosthesis, acting on genetic engineering, interfacing with cybernetics. In doing so reunifying with what has become outside, artificial intelligence, with that which can only be residual, and that which cannot be other than the material body. In this way finding itself in cyberspace, in the posthuman, in the network which is transforming the earth in one large synaptic, rhizomatic, throbbing, brain, never tired, spasmodic, hallucinating but not onoric.

The journey before, that of Modernity, had as its aim the planet itself - still not a collective brain, because it was tied to necessity as to places. It was an Imperialistic journey, even if it was not imperial, and it had Western scientific thought, as its great "director". The new journey still has science as its "director", but now it is one with technology and seems to have infinite space as its aim. In reality the aim is that same mind and that nature we call intelligence. The mind in this way becomes a universal, operational system while acting on virtual "fields". Increasing spasmodically the capacity of imagination like that in calculus. Ancient and modern distinctions between art and science, between sentiment and reason, between the means and ends and between science and technology become completely out of date.

What happens to art on this journey? Some believe it will die or that it is already dead (they may be right). In the space shuttle will there be a place to hang a picture? The new world (without territories) couldn’t bear frames, it couldn’t bear something imposing itself from another world. We know, what the frame does: shows the possible existence of a world different from the one where it is placed; it cuts out a space as a possibility, different from the existing one. But the new world will not admit that because its own existence is infinite by nature (without borders) and "extreme" like art. It would expect itself to be considered an enormous art object. It could not accept that certain techniques (pictorial, sculptural, architectural, or whatever) can affirm their superiority in the name of a supposed ability to represent, reproduce or interpret the world, or in the name of some idea of the sublime. The new world is technology a sum which does not accept any surrogate, let alone aesthetics. On the other hand where no horizon lies, think of a paradigm to measure the world, could there possibly be frames?

Maybe, we should believe in the priests, idealistic and nostalgic about the death of art. I don't think so! Actually I believe the contrary. We will discover that art no longer holds a privileged position, the museum with its rituals but, as a common phenomenon, throbbing and vital. We will discover that it is not an instrument to interpret the world but to produce-build the world. We will discover that the glance of an artist, is no different from a glance by any of us: it only has the courage to make itself world.

On the other hand an enormous collective internet brain will make sure that the world will no longer have hidden places and thoughts and therefore the work of an artist is no longer that of an explorer; permits however to the artist and to all of us, to see, feel, hear, touch in another way, gives us the freedom of many lives, not only one; it is a great privilege to rename all the things in the world with other names, that is, create the world. Where all is information, in the bitic poliverse, simultaneously, all is the same and different, even art.

Art which has represented the world, from ancient times, then used as artifice to construct the self and the others, and the foundation for egothic subjectivity, with modernity, which tried to be a moment of freedom and creation of the "other" world with two great opposites, spiritualist and emancipatory with contemporaneousness, (perhaps) it will try, with this journey, to finally recognise as "crucial" not as a representation of the world and neither as existence (the world can live quite well without art), but for humankind (who cannot live without the world). Humankind cannot live without art because it is a bridge between thought and matter, between existing and the possible, between that which is and that which could be, Heideggerianly between being and to be. And it is always a mental question, like the possible is.

Perhaps the crucial question is the following: "what has become of nature?" Nature was first mother or stepmother. Everything recognised itself in her, crouching within, hiding within. Above all humankind, who imagined it was his duty to care for her. All laws "rested" in nature. Necessary thought was then a metaphysical one which searched for these laws and tried to submit itself, even in the supreme duty of having custody of her. Then man thought and made out (how many questions in this way) that nature had become a raw material container, a mine to exploit. Even that which she offered as "compost" was "divided" violating ties which nature had made as a seal of "her" power; those ties the ancient ones called simnoton (composite strength) and which had the job of justifying the difficult union between material and form. Or a union even more difficult between materials and substances. This was in Modernity. Where ties, metaphysical justification, crumbles, nature no longer appears a friend or enemy, but like someone "at disposal". She was put in a cage.

Man founded his own modern subjectivity to "govern" this "at disposal". Or, maybe, this emerging from the network full of modern epistemology of a nature like a "container", made the actual idea of subjectivity able to smash values (beyond natural or divine ones) to stir in economy, to impose science as universal, to transform primary and pleasure products in "works of art", that is, in something more than just being products.

With our new journey, nature is not the reference point. It continues to be a "mine", an existence, but not a place of law. These laws now, the subject can find in his own thoughts, language, in linguistic logic before being computerised, in bitic. Nature herself has become "information". This doesn’t mean that she doesn’t exist anymore, it simply means first she has been made artificial (with industrial production) and now is transformed in messages or signals, analogous to all the other signals and messages. Even the distinction between nature and culture is senseless todays. This means the fall of the metaphysic: not being able to find laws in the divine or natural, near or far, unless it is intelligence itself and its ability to spread. It means intelligence has got rid of the need for idealism (idealism which came before us), from archaeology distinctions between theory and practical or between thought and action, to become operational in digital knowledge, that is, in a practical thought at the same time universal and singular, abstract and concrete, able to manipulate and make interactive the logic of identity and difference, not only able to identify, but also to submit phenomena under its dominion (to its kybernetiké tékhne), producers of difference and faultiness, at the same time generative and self-registering. In this (beyond nature), and in this matter always expressed as a potential, you get a crisis in metaphysics and the overtaking (I hope playfully) of every humanism-humanist, that is, every knowledge based on the principle that humankind is the measure for all things. Humans are only matter among matter, form among forms, generative system among generative systems, at the most one could have a pride in being the place where "grey matter" is situated, destined to be an intelligence once called collective and now can be defined nootechnical (thought-based).

How can one live beyond the metaphysical and within this "astronautical" journey? How can one live without the metaphysical? Certainly becoming responsible about the little nature left, of its total immensity and residual, but also of the same subjective transmutations, of politics and physics.

What happens to that thing we continue to call architecture? Above all in this "collapsed" primitive triad . Horizontal and vertical (ceiling-architrave and wall-columns) have not got a paradigmatic value if the order of the horizon is lost and one no longer believes (metaphysically) that "stability" resides in equilibrium and symmetry. Only in an Aristotle-like metaphysical vision one could think that building the world was transporting modified material (for example a block of marble for a column) from one equilibrium to another, from order to another order, the second an artificial one, analogy of the first, natural one. In sidereal space all floats in a void, and each small part encloses a micro-world which can be attached to others, due to tensions, burdens, taught cables, jointed surfaces which always being in tension can only be "curved" at the same time "fluid".

The structure tends to become body. Refusing to become endoscheletic and thus owe something to the analogy of humans or vertebrates in general. Refusing to be "at the service" and have to become uniform. Try the esoscheleton as if dreaming of being mineral. Perhaps trying to think of what was in the original: "monuments" its humans who need architecture not architecture that needs humans. Perhaps wanting its own life, own conception, totally controlling matter. In its history, first control of the "rigid" then of elastic, (in tension), now wanting to govern "fluid", wanting to feel its own vitality searching to self-generate. Man in this fluidity, feels rigid or in this rigidity shows how fluid it is, constricted to adapt to the intrinsic mineral vitality of the architecture becoming somehow amoebic, inhabitant of fluid as of the digital and virtual, cyborg, himself the interface, frustrating humanistic pride.

The form of this architecture will look for rules within itself, not in nature, nor culture nor in the amazing variety in the kingdom of nature, mineral, vegetable, animal, nor in history’s pot full of figures. It will try to be logomorphic, self-formative, concretional indifferent not to functions, but to the pretence that rationalist, idealist and positivist thought conceded them: to represent the world in all its economy. The tendency will be as the interface between matter, form, functions, environments, meanings, ideographs, those are ideas immediately becoming signs.

Abandoned to itself, function becomes residual reason in the poliverse of bits, of digitals, communicational, handed to hedonism of energetic-semiologic squander. Thus what could be object of "reflection" for architecture, can no longer be the origin (primitive hut), the classics with their rules (that which is never missing) or the refrain of rationalism and functionalism typical of the Contemporary world, form follows function or less is more, but biomorhpic. Not anthropomorphic. A biomorphism coming from fractional generative procedures with a high number of preformed indecision. And "the case" put to the regime without losing potential. It’s the technical that wants to occupy the imponderable space as it was denied by the mechanical and presents itself now as territory to conquest, thanks to the digital. The technical wants to occupy the unforeseen space.

Inside these dynamics, architecture loses the antithesis between structure and detail. Nothing can be in the generative logic if it is not within the beginning. This architecture, as mentioned before, tends towards the biomorphic and thus to the organic, without having metaphysics or ideology from nature as in the organics of the twentieth Century. This organic is transnatural, generative, dispersible, amimetical.

Refusing detail, also decoration, not for ethic or aesthetic reasons, but for logical ones. Nature and culture together generate an infinite world of differences. In the age of metaphysics, humans had to imitate nature, searching for laws; in the age beyond the metaphysical, post-humanist, humankind can no longer imitate nature and finds itself producing needs and things in full autonomy, with all its intelligence at its disposal, now artificial, searching for a third (the second nature is the one searched for and produced by Modernity and by industrial production), fourth, fifth nature; maybe looking for a different nature. The forms free themselves like this in space following and followed by the technology of construction, ever more influent in planning decisions, ever more, in service, case by case. Impossible is an unknown adjective (not essential) to this logic.

The result is paradoxical: freedom of imitation permits the production of form in total fluidity, lightness, and naturalness (sic!) as if the new journey had a destiny, a last journey still to begin which (maybe) would bring us back, to the flabby belly of all things, that which is before any origin, any reason, any monument, where humankind could finally discover the ability to produce their own forms, own world, own space as the horse finds its noble movements and fine fetlocks, or the peacock its imperious fan of multicoloured feathers. As if all his technicality, now become a planetary brain and had as a duty to bring humankind back to nature, that humankind who proudly dared put her in a cage, to use her for their own ends, and finally to transform her, in a totally abstract, immaterial, unnatural entity, the bit. This immense nostalgia of the original, of the vital, of the unconsciousness of creativity, is that thing which lies deep in the eyes of every work of art, but also that same thing which holds art and architecture together.