V H
First of all, could you say a few words about the last large exhibition which you had at the Royal Institute of British Architects in London – what did you exhibit, and how, in brief, would you describe the E AREA project which you are currently working on to people who are not familiar with it?
F D
At RIBA we exhibited visualizations of a project created on Silicon Graphics computers, i.e. a sectional view of a building, a sectional view of a holophonic area, a six-minute computer animation, a stereolithographic model of a construction of a holophonic area, and in the RIBA bookshop we presented the E AREA catalogue (which, by the way, was awarded the first prize of the Ministry of Culture). In brief, E AREA is a prototype of a cultural and scientific education centre for art and science. It runs on the basis of renewable sources of energy and uses new information technologies.
2002: One year on, I look back at this event with pleasure. The E AREA team, which has architects at its core, managed naturally to break through the barrier of conservative England and exhibit at a prestigious venue, where top world architects exhibit. We are proud of this. In retrospect we are not so proud of the actual content of the presentation – it was an unrealizable ‘Titanic’. Investors from Taiwan are interested in our work, but I would never allow anything like this to be built. The project was fundamentally very self-contradictory. Such a monstrosity cannot be ecological. Nonetheless, our naivety gave us immense strength and continues to do so. Most important of all was the actual preparatory process, which taught us a lot.
The age of transporting our bodies and minds with stored information from place to place is long gone. Human expansion must respond to an immaterial and ecological mode of information transfer.
It occurs to me whether biotechnologies, which are and will be made from biological matter, which perceives and feels, will create the network of an artificial organism spread out over our planet, which will become a kind of extended sensor of ours, through which we will be able to sense the incredible living organism that is our planet. It is a way of transferring information without delay, without an intermediary, without any insensitive intrusion into the Earth’s ecosystem. Or is it more natural for us to have information mediated and processed for individual areas of intellectual levels? E AREA should provide an impetus for discussions on the theme of the negative or positive influences of these technologies on man and nature.
V H
What is in the E AREA centre? What will a visitor see and experience there?
F D
Our goal is for centers throughout the planet to create a network, a living organism. A concrete example: when a person enters, the building perceives him as its own particle, the way you feel your blood coursing. We will develop software to respond to your knowledge and feelings. For instance, when you read a text, it will record your feelings in real time, affecting the colors and motion of an object or room you’re in. Your eyes stop (they are observed) on a concept you don’t understand, and you confirm it with your voice. Based on the info about your level of knowledge, the intelligence network will explain the problem to you, not only with text. You can converse with it.
Of course you could argue that man will become lazy. But is not our immense activity (running back and forth around town) active laziness? A new type of man will be born. Instead of thinking, he will live in the present, freed from mechanical filing by his brain. Why not teach orientation in the multitude and chaos of information we gather in the network? If I cannot perfect them, why deform them? Why not create a new form of net education? Why rely on one person leading students, when I can connect in real time to a stream of presently happening information of net intelligence?
People often waste their time with absolutely routine contacts thus depreciating human communication which could be, and truly is, unbelievably creative and wonderful. Why couldn’t artificial intelligence, let’s call it Insider, communicate on our behalf using our voice, passing on this routine information? Of course there might be another Insider on the other side. Humans thus may be duplicated several times as they wouldn’t be hampered by their bodily limitations (i.e. speaking with several people at one time). Many people would object: we would be controlled by a kind of device. We fear that it will run out of control not allowing for any verification of information. This is not the case however.
Why not live in the present? As it is, we live in the past or in the future. Observe how many families break up just because many people leave for work in the morning and only return late in the evening. They do not live together, do not communicate. New communication technologies will create brand new workplaces, not tied to any particular place. E AREA designs such settings. We have to educate ourselves in the area of human feelings and intuition, and emphasize the undiscovered potential of the human body, thought and universe.
(2002) Today I would add that process is critical. I don’t mean construction but communication between people during process. Plus I do not trust the present official establishment. I don’t like to think that the construction and its mission will later be tinkered with. It is much more important to create global citizen communities that will self-generate intraspherical cells, independent of the official system. The official will lose its purpose. We will become a part of liquid architecture.
V H
At what stage are preparations for the construction of E AREA right now?
F D
We have completed visual plans for the pilot project, Introsphere. We would like it to stand at the location of the former student dorms at Špejchar, at the streetcar’s terminus, a spot set aside by the City of Prague for culture and education. The building could be built within the next two or three years. By the end of 2000 our plans will be finished, and in the two years after that we will finish erecting the pilot project. This also depends on the investor. We have the support of the municipal authority.
(2002) In November 2001 the E AREA group received a blow it hasn’t recovered from yet: we lost all our files from the past three years. That’s why we are striving to continue our discussions without being tied to any one physical space.
(2007) Currently a National Library is being designed for the same location by Jan Kaplický and his Future Systems studio.
Is it not paradoxical to use highly sophisticated technologies that are controlled by global corporations and produce pollution for a return to primal, that is, natural perception? Do you think that contemporary man needs a highly sophisticated setting to become natural?
It is certain that human expansion carried out in virtual reality is much more ecological than the existing effect man has been exerting on the Earth and the universe. We don’t take up physical space, don’t exhaust resources. As for the real wars that sow the worst ecological, moral and ethical calamities wherever they happen, this technology also has a positive aspect: a war takes place in virtual space…
I’m probably one of the few people who think a loss of identity is positive. I have never thought of any particular place as my home, given that I was born in Prague, my native language is Spanish, my mother is Slovak, my father Argentinian, my grandfather a Basque (a Sephardic Jew from Asturias), my grandmother a South American Indian, etc. I feel responsibility toward the entire planet.
E AREA is a counterbalance to the exclusively economic view. I would present my view on the E-forum which we organize. Participants, who are to deliver a speech here in Prague, will use a car using up 40 litres of fuel, then a plane using up another 40 thousand litres of fuel, etc. During E-forum these participants will be transported using teleconferencing without the need to leave their homes. They may be poor or handicapped and yet they may take part.
Let’s say I am confronted with someone whose attitude is perfectly ecological, their approach is based on zen and in harmony with nature and the cosmos, they are not materialistic and they live without technology. I contemplate these paths, but there is another argument. They want to build using purely ecological and natural materials such as stone, wood, clay or rushes. If everyone on the entire planet would make this decision, we would end up living in a desert due to deforestation.
(2002): It is up to each individual to choose a means of communication. The natives of Papua, New Guinea can fend off missionaries with the help of the Internet, which is not linear like a book. The greatest defenders of nature know that nature is damaged most by its protection. Embalmment is unattainable; everything is incredibly connected.
A highly sophisticated setting is positive in creating communities that can thus guard themselves from supranational systems. It is a delicate participatory process. Besides, it’s easiest to manipulate an uninformed individual.
Is it not a manipulation for someone to enter the centre, receive this cybernetic service and feel wonderful empathy coming from the machine? Does it not strengthen the barrier separating him from ‘reality’? It is a paradox, but I admit I support a form of a solar log cabin in the woods, connected by a wonderful interactive optical net with the entire Earth and universe. To view through a telescope something that is not in one’s physical presence—the sky, the galaxy—is not a problem today.
Our project goes one step further. At first glance it seems highly technological, it has carbon construction, but we use more and more recyclable ecological materials and technologies. Maybe one day E AREA will be an uninteresting building of unattractive materials that will work without disturbing its surroundings. The E AREA team strives to create a new vision of urbanism, a nervous system that respects our basic nature, our biology.
Naturally, I am also considering the issue of a person who visits the E AREA centre becoming extremely enthusiastic about the interactive approach of this artificial intelligence, as he will experience something which he will not experience in his urban world, as he has become lazy because he himself did not search actively. His observational and perceptional senses are numbed by contemporary urban life. People are weakened by the passive reception of information from television.
Indeed, you could argue that one can become addicted to this cybernetic service, but in just the same way people in the past were afraid of films screened in the cinema when they first saw this technology, and they do not sit in the cinema all day long, even though for two hours they forget that they are sitting there surrounded by a hall and they become actors. Similarly, people were afraid of the telephone, electricity, etc. For a long time people thought the Earth was flat, unaware of its roundness. Perhaps, in the same way, some time in the future we will discover that the Earth is not round. 🙂