SOTIRIOS KOTOULAS: Emission Architecture (updated)

Following on two previous posts (1, 2) concerned with the structure of fluid dynamic bodies, the following research by Sotirios Kotoulas is presented.

LW

EMISSION ARCHITECTURE

SIXTY CONDITIONS AND CONCEPTS OF A HALLUCINATORY ARCHITECTURE

Manual for the Circumpolar City diagram

When one swims in ocean water between the break of a powerful wave and the shore, the currents pull the swimmer to and fro. When the intensities of the break and backwash, the push and pull, cancel each other out, the swimmer becomes trapped. He will not be pushed to shore because the pull away is too strong. In this moment the swimmer has to invent new strokes to navigate the resistant currents while expending the least energy. The currents will quickly exhaust a swimmer who does not tune into micro currents that could help him reach the shore. Feeling the force of the oncoming currents the swimmer thinks of her or his surroundings in terms of energy.

1.     Forces are energies that pulsate between bodies.

2.     The environment and its inhabitants interact through energy transfers.

3.     All organic and inorganic matter metabolizes on frequencies that are both visible and invisible.

The trapped swimmer trying to reach shore must consider how a wave recedes, how much water it can lift depending on current fluctuations, and therefore how much energy to expend. The swimmer disturbs the currents, creating other bodies of force. New eddies take shape, new forms with which the swimmer travels. The currents of energy define the structure of hallucinatory architecture.

4.     Electromagnetic activity is particularly intense at the North Magnetic Pole. The Arctic is prone to powerful solar electric storms attracted to the region by the immense pull of the magnetic north, the same magnet that provides us with cartographic and navigational orientation.

5.     Electromagnetic storms can disrupt orientation and communications systems. They can trip generators and cause blackouts to major cities in the South. The exchange of forces between solar/geo-magnetic activity and the body’s electrical field induces apparitions.

6.     This hallucinatory state is produced when the body makes direct contact with electromagnetic activity.

7.     What results is a space within a space, what we might call emission space, where the conditions, forms, dimensions, qualities, proportions, and narratives are authored by an effected body.

8.     Mild electrical currents can trigger hallucinations and immerse the hallucinator in a series of intense somatic environments. Some are audible, others spatial, atmospheric, and tactile.

9.     Hallucinatory space exists in measurable space. We carry it with us as a spatial extension of our contact with the external world.

10.   When hallucinating, one usually knows where the experience takes place, and thus the event is somewhat framed.

11.   Between bodies and electromagnetism immeasurable space is produced within measurable space.

12.   Moving through the range of charged electromagnetic frequencies, one’s cognitive faculties are disturbed and the physical conditions of the place transform. Spaces mutate differently as the body contacts x-rays, gamma rays, microwaves, visible light, or infrared radiation. Electromagnetic radiation triggers hallucinations that envelop the inhabitant. If the space is audible and tactile, the more excited parts of the body may define the inhabitant, perhaps a network of organs and the nervous system .

13.   The blend of emissions stimulates other hallucinations in nearby bodies.

14.   Emissions may be thought of as machines since they act on the environment around them.

15.   Unlike machines, emissions cannot be precisely programmed.

16.   As emissions integrate with the surrounding environment, their levels and intensities adjust, sometimes very unevenly.

17.   The architect programs energy. She or he identifies and relates the variety of intensities from the cosmic scale to the quantum: from the force of an ocean current to the intensity of an x-ray shower, from a man-made electromagnetic climate to the energy of labor.

18.   The body has little control as an active contributor. It does not oversee energy transfers.

19.   The architect adjusts the atmospheric charges to induce hallucinations and enhance perceptual cognition.

20.   In some sectors the architect creates gardens with different species of stimulating frequency waves. In other areas the city may have to regulate the flows.

21.   Traditional tectonics, which have held architecture together until now, are no longer sufficiently explanatory. In the x-ray, walls are no longer barriers but thresholds, gamma waves host the neural systems of bodies, and brain waves rapidly change the scenery and scramble scale.

22.   The intersection of cosmic, terrestrial and bodily orders orients emission architecture. New modes of orientation and language are required.

23.   This dimension of architecture goes beyond the tired subject-object dichotomy.

24.   Matter, body, and electromagnetic frequencies band together and form an interdependent environment hovering between the visible and invisible.

25.   Emission architecture reorients the invisible, palpable electromagnetic activity between bodies, materials and landscapes.

26.   The space of emission architecture is not defined by four walls. The vertical axis is bent.

27.   Emission space is a constructed discharge involving bodily organs gently electrocuted by their host environments.

28.   Emission space is unhinged from the horizontal datum and assaults habit.

29.   Repetitive, ordinary, and familiar environments breed habits that over time conceal and numb perception.

30.   Hallucinatory environments pull the inhabitant from his areas of comforts. Hallucinatory space is seductive.

31.   Hallucinatory space is not necessarily three-dimensional and it is not always visual.

32.   The exact kind of space this exchange produces remains in question, as does its materiality.

33.   Who are the inhabitants of this space and how do they inhabit it?

34.   How is turbulence absorbed by emission space and how does one enter and exit it?

35.   Can the architect fully program the electromagnetic transmissions between bodies and matter?

36.   What effects do intensities have on different people?

37.   How do memories of hallucinatory space re-inform the construction of emission architecture?

38.   How will this architecture bind itself to the organs of the body?

39.   It is possible to spread electronically charged particles across a large geographic region. Charges can be turned into weapons when fired from high altitudes and carried along ionization belts down to the lower elevations where the activity can burn through electrical transmission systems and black out a city.

40.   The survey is a diagram of a section of forces across different frequencies of electrical and corporeal activity around the Arctic Circle.

41.   The survey is a diagram of the Circumpolar City

42.   The survey maps the ionized network of Circumpolar City

43.   The survey records the energy transfers of a Circumpolar City

44.   The circumference of the circle spans the 60°- 75° degree North bands of latitude.

45.   The Circumpolar City connects Arctic settlements.

46.   The underlying diagrams, rendered with a marker, map the higher intensity electric flows.

47.   The ionized activity is engraved in glass with a diamond tip.

48.   Lines of various intensities notate the fields. The marks inscribe the force traveling through the line.

49.   Data must be processed in order to create something from it.

50.   In this model the data are processed to create a sectional survey of a hallucination.

51.   The lines are engraved into the glass surface. These appear when they are illuminated.

52.   The drawing is a light membrane.

53.   Light intensities are photographed. They map the survey.

54.   The survey adjusts to the intensity and type of light.

55.   This survey tracks data whose intensities are strong enough to induce hallucinations in people.

56.   The survey materializes. Drawing electromagnetic activity as water.

57.   The wave cycle meets electromagnetic light.

58.   The electromagnetic fields are captured in 3 states: liquid, solid, vapor.

59.   Lines cycling between magnets and ice jams.

60.   Lines that explore, wander, burn out.

Wave 01:

Wave03:

WAVE 06:

SOTIRIOS KOTOULAS

LW: And the next wave is on the way….

Sotirios Kotoulas continues his adventures in electromagnetic wave worlds, back at the Wuskwatim Dam. He writes:

“It is incredible, the dam has progressed so much. They were detonating the landscape today, I saw them set up dynamite all over, the explosion sends a shock wave. The last course of freshly laid concrete blocks shook out of place ! The site is totally sealed and it is very warm so you can work in your t shirt. The winds outside are nasty, they have teeth. The dam is a little city, I have been exploring it every day. It is an Italian futurist city, been thinking of Antonio Sant’ Elia.
There are all these mysterious electronic machines all over the place, men and women soldering parts together, copper wires all over, and panels that look like parts from a space craft.
The river that was next to the dam is no longer there, it has been rerouted through the structure. Man-made magic!”