",

~ g: Cl
~ 0~
~
.. e
""~ ..z
S' ~
g~~SZb'l _ "..~
~
~~ ;".. "
-
o..Wc.o. C ' --
s- g; ~ li -e < '"
g f;; = 5e.::r ~ c 0 ~ ! :'
I ~"
c ~ - O. ~ 0
c: +
:l;O~Cl~W". :I: ~ ~ ~
~ N ~ ~.
() a ~.Z~ ~ !?a
"6' 0' ~ ~
,. N .... (I)
2 . c- ~ <
0 tI'.c _ '"
~~ ~ ~ o 00
.P"c:
c.,..Go ... 8 (r... ~ UI
tn ';;' ::!. ~ ~ ~
~
8" ~~ Ot:l~"8~::I",a.
. '"g -, . .. ..
tl oo .. ,..,I::/,A e ~ ~ ..., ni ~ .... ... 3 "- ~ 3' ~. ~ o
~
5i ~~ ~'[~~ C ~ ~!"g' ..... O' C'" g. 3 ~~ ~ .... l:l ; ' g ~ 00 _
", ,,, El,,, ,,; ~" g::I: ..~.~:.;}e s:g
:;. 8' ~ go
,,0 "'C Cl 0 ... lA N
~ g
'" V> ~ N .... >:c< ~ a. .... .... ... lig:' ~t;!~6" ~
~3: ",;.,g.~~ ","~~~
_. _ "_ " ~ _. o ,. n
t:l
- ..8 El.!l0 "~0:;. ..< ~ ~ - , , " ' ' ' ' , . . . .. ", , , = . '< . . ;: . . "- ." ~
H .,,~;:'S Q.o.. e:]"'o...
1i' ... O'5' .g"
~ ~... ;::; ;:; Q rl a- ~ g."8
OQ,l"Cr-
~ CL.OU'tlno-. :::I tI' ;; 0
~ g.
~ g ~ . . . I""l S' 'i1- :,.. S \O \O ~ ~ ~ -, ';' ;;l s a ss s s 0 ... ,,0 - - .. ,,- 0 e
j;l ~ ~ "g. ~ ,. \1.1
... 3-'~ " ~
I:l ""
" ' . -
O' ""' S.~ o g'-<ooooZ ..... S" Z "t:I c. _ 0 00
'<
lJo. lIiP.a. ~ P'o ,, =v:nl;i .. o!;.~ :;."''' ~ - o--g ~
0:;.-3 c,
~ P if~~ if o ... n 0 :;d 0 't:l ~ ! . .. .. "o- ~g
V> <"I ...
n
0~
$" S-
~ c: t;:=" Q,I
:::I I'D 3
ID
~ ~. w : ~ g. ~~g, P rIs- '~ rI~ ~"<-:1
~ (5 ~
~ 3 _.
s.e:~~
.... ... ~ I'D ...
~s ~ ~~ oo~ e; eg2~ ::: -'! ~ ::: o< ~ ~ .. ~ ~
~ ~
~
- VI ,.... . 0 Q:. t:l ~ . ~ < ~ og. '< 0
s : s~~ ..
~ ? q ,,!" " e. ~ .il. g. ~ ~
- cr- ~ ~. -g
'<
~ -cQ ~ - ~- ?-:: ~~ S-;l "< s-~ 'o O
"8 :5 s- ri g. ~ a. ~ a. ':0
~ ! i B 3 t .. ~ w
(l 0 0
~ ~
S -<
~8.,~" ~
rI
s- i\"
-< o S-.
0
~n~ ~'~
o 0
S '"
g
E

Dear Reader 2 Cynt hia C. Davidson

Lett er from Ath ens !> Christian Hubert
Le tte r from Naples a Karen Bermann
Booll Review, Space Calculated in Seconds JJI Alien S. Weiss
Critic @ Large : The American Lawn II Paul Henninger
The Nelsons sa Wes Jone s

ATA MECHANICS FOR A TOP 0 LOG I C A LA GE

l! Ben van Berkel & Caroline Bos Diagram Work 12 Stan Alien Diagrams Matter 12. Ben van Berke! & Caroline Bos Diagrams : Interactive Ins tr um ents in Opera tio n 23 R.E. Somol Th e Diagrams of Man er
II Pete r Eisenman Diagram: An O riginal Scene o f'Wn nng ~ Manuel De Landa Deleuze, Diagrams . and the Gene sis of For m ~ Christ ine Buci-Glucl<sman Of the Diagr am In An 26 Andrew Benja min Lines of Work: Not es on Diagram s
3..2. Karl Chu The Cone of'Immanenscendeuce R Brian Massumi The Diagram asTech nique of Existence iZ Greg Lynn Embry ological Housing
5!l Marl< Rakatansky Monvations of Animation 21. Sanford Kwinter The Genealogy of Models:The Hammer and the Song
-
In Sep tember. as everyone in
America bu t m e seem ed to plan
th eir lives around th e televised
home-run-reco rd race between
Mark McGwire and Sammy
Sosa, a sm all it em appeared in
the New York Times TV Notes col-
UIIUlabout ba seball wreaking
havoc with the networks' new
l[ pri me time season. Apparen tly
Fox h ad canc e1ed a hi ghly pro-
moted "King of the Hill " in
order to air a b aseball game
that became uneven tful w hen
McGwire failed to hit a home
run .The Times quoted David
Hill , ch air m an of Fox
Broad casting, as saying .
" Network television has
becom e all abo ut evenr-izing
programming" [i talics mine] .
In other wo rds. the event and
the potential of the event to
pr oduce the unexpected, that
is, the "never-seen-befo re,"
attracts viewers to a medium
Dear Reader
th at, w ith the prolifer ati on of
choice made possible by cable
and satelli te TV; is str uggling
[Q keep its traditionally large
audiences.
Hill also claimed tha t NBC
"adde d an h our to the [Emmy
Awards] telecast to make it
more of an event." Thi s raises
questions about just what con -
stitu tes the idea of event today,
and makes apparent television's
manipulative aggrandizement
of an event in order to attra ct
viewers with its seemin g
importance. Of cour se ABC
television has made an event
out of "Monday Night
Football " for years , wi th a
bearded country an d wes tern
sin ger bellowing, "Are yo u
ready for some football!"!" as if
the battery of games th at played
across the set on Sunday n ever
took place. The event struc ture
of the Monday nig ht game,
w hich weekly attracts more
television viewers than any
other sp orts program, seems to
erase th e valu e of th e games
tha t preceded it.
"Bven t-I zmg." to be tr ut h -
ful, is so m eth in g ANY w as
.~
I predicated on w hen we began
I
p ublica tio n in 19 9 3 , althoug h
we d idn' t u se tha t term . ANY
wasn' t ju st any magazine bu t a
magazin e that produced live
events in order to be per-
ceived as an event itself, w ith
sing ula rly fo cu sed, th ematic
investigations of architecture.
The staged event w as a w ay to
attract attention an d, in pub -
lishing. a way to establish
difference from other journals.
In late Sep tember, the theo-
rist (an d former football player)
K. Michael Hays led a Wed-
nesday night even t called
"Architecture Th eory" to intro-
duce the book Architecture!
Theory! since1968 at Columbia
University. The evenin g was a
sprawl of personal reminis-
cences punctuated with random
statements on theory. all of
which serve d to herald release
of th e 808 -page tome. Most of
the spe akers were represented in
the book, h ence for the audi -
ence, the even t was a little like
seeing history in the making.
The event o f th e book itself is
its own kind ofhistary, one that
n ot only suggests a critical path
for reading archi tecture th eory
since 19 68 but that also b egi n s
to carve out a history for the
journal assemblage.
Coincidentally, if n ot ironi-
cally, th e "end" of assemblage, the
cr itical theory journal that H ays
has edited since its founding in
19 87, was also "announced "
th is fall. No t with an even t or
any kin d offanfare, but
through th e gra pevine. Yes,
H ays told me, th e edi tors h ad
agreed to end publicatio n with
number 41 , w hic h will occur
sometime in 2000 .As je an
O ckman writes in Architecture
Culture 1943-1 968 , th e com-
panion vo lume to AIcbiteeturel
Theory. "History is as much a
matter o f arrivals as depar-
tu res." In our fast moving cul -
ture, even a pending dep ar ture
two yea rs hence sign als the
b eginnin g of a histo ry. Since
n early every assemblage ed ito r is
in clud ed in th e book , th e
jo urna l' s val ue as an even t is
est ablish ed even before
i ts d emi se.
In his introduction to
Architecture/Theory, Hays, as
Ockman before him, is clearly
aware of th e place of suc h an
antholo gy in hi story. He writes :
"Thoug h I believe tha t the most
important texts of architecture
th eory are included here, I have
not tried to repro d uce th e m ost
use d texts , or anthologize hi s-
tory 'as it really happ ened :
Rath er I have rationally recon-
struc ted the history of archi tec-
ture theo ry in an attempt to
pro duce .. . th e concept of that
hi story - w hic h is a quite dif-
ferent matter." Regardless o f
whether Hays produced the
co ncep t or a concept, with his
and Ockman's books, architec-
ture the ory has its own hi story
now, particularly in th e U.S.
The ver y fact of thi s "success"
is causing it to grow increas-
in gly apart from th e bu ilding.
In Architecture Culture, Ockman
en lists Poucaul t's hi storical task
of" qu estioning th e document "
to ask, "Wh at is an architectural
document ?" given th at "the
relatio nship be tween w ritte n,
graphic, an d bu ilt record .. . is
particularly in tricate."
In d eed , the movement
o f arch itecture theory
away from the building
and towar d a practice in
and of its elf, for all of its
valu e, increasingly over -
lo oks the b uild ing itse lf;
th at is, it fo rg ets to see th e
ob jec t/even t tha t is th e cul-
mination o f th e writ ing, rep -
resentation , and pr act ice th at
theory tends to address.
In November, far away from
television. sports, and, I
thought. architecture theory, I
h ad the opportunity 5lt
Brunellescht's S. Lorenzo and S
Spirito church es in Flare ice.
There, Hay's definition of the-
ory as "an appetite for modify-
ing and exp anding reality, a
desire to org anize a new
vision" resonated with the real
live even t of w hat I could phys-
ically see - Brunelleschi 's tele-
scopin g spaces , which force
p ersp ecti ve on the viewing
sub ject. Stan ding on th e cen ter
lin e at the bac k of the nave ofS.
Lorenzo , I witnessed m ath e-
matics in solid and void , pro-
portional systems worked out
to ach ieve perspecn val pe rfec-
tion .Walkin g th ro u gh a side
aisle , the p aired pil aster s and
co lum ns flicker in g in an d out
of my pe ripheral visi on, I
cam e to th e crossing , where
Brunelle schl su dde n ly adds a
rectan gu lar pi ece , a kin d of
slot, to accommodate th e
required number o f ch ape ls
an d suppo rt th e dome above.
This see ming anomaly alerted
m e to the taut rigor of th e
gray sto n e on w hite walls, and
especially to Brunell eschi' s
clea r " de sire to organize a
new vision. "
Then wending through the
vespa-filled streets of Florence
and cro ssing th e Arno one
comes to S. Spirito, one of
Brunelleschi's last works, one
seemingly without anomalies.
Still mathematically p recise, th e
white walls are now lined with
h alf-ro und chapels framed hy
gray stone pilasters that recede
in to each space, creating a per-
spectival depth that fool s the
eye.This is a far rich er work
than S. Lorenzo. th e eye dancing
through the enfi lade of colwnns
that march es continuo usly
around th e sp ace. As th e hi sto -
rian Pet er Murray writes, "The
splen did spatial effect cre ated
by th e great ring of columns
running
round the w hole ch urch is per-
hap s hardly to be appreciated
except by actually walking
through it," to which I wo uld
add , "and by actu ally seeing it:'
Between 14 19, when construc-
tio n ofS. Lor enzo was begun ,
and 1434 , w hen th e plans for S.
Spirito were approved,
Brunelleschi developed his
mathematical proportioning
system to include a spatial com-
plexity eviden t in the later
church. One feels the difference
upon entering S. Spirito ; but it is
important also to see the differ -
ence. As Murray writes,
Renaissance archi tecture does
not evoke the awe of th e Gothic
cathe drals; in Renaissance
churches, one has to know what
one is looking at "Renaissance
architecture m ust be experi-
enced as architecture."
As busloads of tourists wo uld
testify, however, viewing archi-
tecrur e as architecture is not an
event in a media age; it's seeing
a Donatello or a Michelangelo,
anything by the A-hst o f his toric
architects and artists. These sam e
tourists are the audience for the
20 th -cen rury TV stars who
str u ggle to maintain th eir
prime- time ratings against
television 's event-izing
(unless, like Jerry Seinfe ld ,
yo ur sh ow becomes an event) .
For to day, n ot only arc hi tec tu re
but even media is viewed in a
state of di stra cti on. It requires
n ot h in g less th an an event to
focu s our attentio n, an even t to
23.5
re gister
th e fleeting m oment between
pa st and future. Architecture
bas traditionally provided a
stage for even ts, but with media
constantly lookin g to even t-ize,
archi tecture is on th e verg e of
becoming th e event itself, that
is, th e spectacle.
This cannot be w hat Bernard
Tschurni h ad in mind when h e
wrote Event-Cities ( 1994), w here
"Architecture is as much about
the even ts that take p lace in
spaces as about the spaces them-
selves." Archi tecture's response
to media event-izing has been to
turn away from the ories like
Tsch umi 's and toward the spec-
tacle.This is archit ecture not
with a desire for a new vision,
not the architecture as archi tec-
ture of th e Renaissance, but
archi tecture made to seize the
m oment. Histo ry wi ll ju dge
th e legacy of the building as
spectacle, but w hether or not
archi tecture is now playing to
th e m ediatic din is a pressing
question for today.
 guilt - th at he. the son of a rela- mytholo gy as a complex projec-
As a boy, I sometimes wondere d
tively uns uccessful Jewish trade r, tion of the hum an psyche. in
whether just lookin g at an object
arrived where his father could Athens one senses the social
could wear it down.Was the
only have dreamt of being, a place "imagin ary" of myth at work and
decay of old buildin gs due in part
associated with th e Aryan his tort- observes its historical dim en -
to the fact that people had been
cal me m or y of Hegeliani sm and sions. The Acropolis, the thearers
lookin g at them for so lon g? If
neoclassicism rather than the at its base. and the kemmikcs are
Superman's vision was the exalta-
more tribal forms of his upbrlng - concretizations of social memory,
tion of ma sculin e ocular power.
ing. In this way.Freud 's visits to of the emergence of history from
mine was melanch oly.
the classical world constituted an myth .They articulat e th e myth of
Befo re visiting th e Acro polis
oedi pal transgression, both a the autochth onous, of being born
for th e first time. I wondere d :
repudiation of his origins and an of the earth. But like the hill that
Has th e Acropo lis, like so many
occasion for self-examination. tells a story of the emergen ce of
other tourist destin ations, been
The worl d of antiqu ity pro- human civilization from nature,
so utterly transfor med int o a
vided Freud wi th " images of the m ovem ent from myth to his-
" photo o pportun ity" that it can-
tho ugh t" th at he would synthe- tory now loo ks more like a rwo-
no t possibly live up to the rep ro -
size into a philosop hical anthro- way street.
du ctions of its image? Wo uld I be
pology based on a close identifi- If im ages of the Partheno n cir-
underwh elm ed by the actual
cation between the ontogeny of culate comfortably in th e po st-
exper ience of seeing the
the individual and the phylogen y modern iconogra phic economy
Parth eno n and require an elabo-
of species . He som etim es epitomiz ed by the New York cof-
describe d civilization as "a pecu- fee cup, the connections between
liar process which mankind the building s and the hill of the
undergoes . .. comparable to the Acropolis resist all derealizations
normal maturati on of the indi- of the image. Like the building s,
vidual " (Civilization and its Disconte:nts the hill itself seems both built up
96, 98) . In later years, Freud rec- and eroded. It resists facile dis-
ognize d that his desire to visit tinctions that woul d draw clear
Rome had been sparked by a boundar ies between natural for m

23.6 --
."'l... ".- -
ens
.... - --
__ ....... ~ .,
.:. ~ ~

-, descript ion of his father as the and the work of cultur e. It is this
. ~
bu tt of an ti- Sem itic bullying .The relation to the rock of the
tr ip itself was repe atedly pos t- Acropolis that m akes the
pone d, but Rom e appeared Partheno n effect a link between
repeatedly in Freud's dreams. If earth and sky, be tween cultural
the prospect of a trip to Athens ideal and primord ial geni us loci,
was not the explicit subject of and which links its prese nt condi-
dream s, like th e trip to Rome . it tion to the abyssal tim e of myth .
The author at the Acropolis. rate array of compens atio ns -
Yet even while retaining its ties to
postcards , pictures, narratives? still disturbed his psychi c equi -
librium. Freud descr ibed h ow he the earth , th e Acrop olis gives a
During the past year I have
and his broth er experienced a most powe rful experien ce of the
repeatedly stoo d on the Acropolis.
world of art. Passing thr ough the
Every tim e it has seemed intensely m om ent of depression in Tn este
prior to taking the bo at to propylae a. one en ters into a world
real, not less than real.Yet, when-
Ath ens , and Freud's episode of of stone, sky,distant mountains,
ever I return to Athens. I seek a
derealiza tion , like dream s. para- and water.This is the power of the
reassurance that the Acropo lis is
praxes. and th e experien ce of the archi tectur al experience - no t
still there.W hat doubts do I seek
un canny, presen ted him wi th mer ely the in terior of a bu ilding
to calm when I check to see if the
symptom s of un consciou s. "p rt - or an ur ban space, but a whole
Partheno n is standing undimin -
mary" thought processes, thus landscap e m onumen talized and
ished since I last saw it. or if the
providing Freu d with the stuff of giving coherenc e to myth and
hill of the Acropolis has finally
his own self-analysis . memor y. Even in th e postmod ern
given way?
In recen t years. the issue of m om ent, the Partheno n effective-
This anxiety in relation to th e
m emory has become a con- ly symbo lizes the hi ghest am bi-
Acropolis has its own elaborate
tentious one for psychoa nalysis. tions of human culture and marks
lineage. In "A Distur bance of
renunci- a decisive step in its evolutio n.
Memory on th e Acropolis," wr it- Controversy over Freud's
These days, the Partheno n is
ten in 1936, Sigmund Freud atio n of the seductio n th eory.
ed in a perpetua l state of what th e
described an episode of "d ereal- with claim s that he suppress
evidence of children 's sexual Italians call in resmurc. a kind of
izarion " - of Entfremdung. or
episodes. has coin cided with bo th bureaucr atic and techn ological
estrange m en t - that he expe ri-
publi c fascination with child limbo. Cranes, scaffolds , and
enced upon arr iving at the hill in
abuse and an increased skepticis m a few yards of track attest to
1904 at the age of 48. Standing
about th e accuracy of repr essed grandios e claims of and listless
on its heights. Freud felt for a
pre- efforts at reconstr uction, to a
mo ment that he had never fully mem ories.Th e postmod em
occu pation wi th telling stories process wh ose pace barely
believed the Acropolis really exist-
ed.Yet he did no t rememb er actu- has m ade it difficul t to separate exceeds the enrrop ic effects of
historical truth from narrative tim e, decay, and polluti on, and
ally doubting its existenc e, so
tr uth in psycho analysis. and a whose com pletion is in more
where did this feeling of repudia-
more pragmat ic. rather than rep- th an one way unthinkable.
tion come from?
resent ational. approach to per son- More than anything else, the
Freu d's reaction to this expert-
al memo ry suggests that whateve r Acropoli s expresses the struggle
ence took the for m of a split in
"works for you" is all you sho uld to endure in time .What was so
his sense of self - between one
ho pe for. The elaborate "work" of quickly buil t in the Sth century
who felt the residu e of disbelief
myth in ancient Greece takes on a has glorious ly endure d what
and a second who wondere d
greater fascination in an era when might with some irony be called a
where this feeling came from .
representation and truth have lost series of ..strong mi sreading s"
Freud's analytic "second self"
some of their purchase .While it is through history. The Parth enon
concluded that this disbelief w as
common place to think. of Greek shows the scars of war, of deface-
an expression of his feelings of
 ment in the name of reli gion , of
van dali sm in the name o f nation al
culture, the effects of w eath er,
and , more rec entl y. of po llution .
Yet some how it still radiates "th e
bloom of per petual n ewness,"
which, Plurarch n o ted of the
buildings, " makes them ever to
loo k untouche d by tim e, as
thou gh th e unfaltering br eath of
an ageless spiri t h ad been infused
f in to the m." Iron ically, the in tense
w hi teness o f its marbles tod ay is
an effect of aging, no t of newness.
While it is hard to say that the
Acro polis looks untouched by
time, it is not really a ruin, n ot a
shadow of a form er self The
presen ce of th e Par thenon in the
present is w hat is so striking.
Insofar as the Parthenon h as
become a cul tur al sym bo l, th is
presence may be an idealized o ne ,
but its power today is stran gely
caught u p in its mai nten ance of
presen ce in tim e.
Th e stru ggle again st tim e and
in time has always been the su b -
ject m atter of the site an d its
buildings an d in fact lies at the
heart of any idea of m onumen t.
The frieze of the Parthenon rep re-
sents scen es of a90n. or str uggle,
that even in Sth century BC wer e
meant to stim ulate his to ri c mem -
ory and to mark the contin uity
between men and their gods, as
connected by the h eroes. Th e act
of buildin g itself sym bolized the
victory ove r the Persians, w hile
the iconog raph y o f the building
connected that str u ggle to the
Greek assertion o f humanity The
metopes of the Parthen on (ch is-
eled off, for the m ost par t, in the
early Christian era, w he n the
Temple of Athena was converted
into a church of Our Lady) devel-
oped a narrative that est abli shed
th e sup rem acy ofAthenian
democracy and p rovided the
source of th e Pana thenaeic
Festival. It start s w ith the bat tle
of th e go d s agai ns t th e giant s,
~ con tinues through the ba ttles of
the Lapiths and Centaurs - a con-
frontarion b etween human valu es
and the bestial power of violence
. ...'" ...
wi thout reason - and en ds with
\ the battle of th e Atheni ans against
the Amazons, a story halfway
berween hi stor y and myth .
Harold Bloom has developed a
theory of poetic ogon to describe
, the struggles of poet-heroes
!
against their father/rivals. For
... Bloo m , every mod ern poe t m ust
confront the discover y that poetry
::] is b oth extern al an d int ernal to
, him self. He mu st expe rience the
A
04
shame and "ter rible splen dor of
in
11=
cultural h er itage." Cons tructing
his own macho-Freudian mythol-
og y. Bloom descr ibes how
"strong" p oe ts wrestle wi th their
precur sors, even to th e dea th,
after glimpsing the "primal
scene" of th e poetic father's co itus
with the m use. For Bloom , th e
m od ern cultu re of revisionism is
based on creative or "stron g" m is-
readings, on mis prision , swerve,
or clincmen. an d th e stron g poet is
the one most succes sful at readi n g
himself in the text s o f his fathers .
Small wonder tha t these theories
ho ld a par ticular fascination for
those w h o would set themselves
up as " Big Daddies" in contempo -
rary architecrure .
H istorical genre paintings o f
the Acropolis always show Athens
as pun y,dis or dered, an d dirty in
comparison to the Partheno n.
Today Athens appears from the
Acrop oli s like a vast field of bro -
ken stones - instan t ru bbl e, a
field o f debris with its own dir ty
carpet o f brown air. In many
wa ys, modern Athe ns is like Los
Angeles - an au tomobile city
w h ose p ublic space has im plod ed
int o the space of the car an d th e
cellular phone - leavin g th e
Acro po lis to the tourists. In the
city 's vast and sprawlin g extension ,
taxis fun ction as an in termediary
form o f transit, neither public nor
p rivate. carrying several passen ~
gers at once. Taking a taxi is some-
what like being held hos tage. Each
trip follows a kind of "do nkey 's
path ," w hich eventually takes you
to your destin ation accor din g to
th e driver 's own idi osyn cr asies
and th e des tinations o f the o th er
passengers.The road s are con-
gested with cars, while scooter
and m otorbike traffic flows
th ro u gh a different dynamical
space altog ether, glidin g in and
out of th e lan es of cars like sm all
pr ed ators movin g thr o ugh a he rd
of gra..z.ing animals. I spen t m o st
of last summer in Athens , work-
ing primarily at my job site. After
a few weeks wi th a ren tal car, I
tri ed joinin g the two- w heel pack.
It wa s exhil ar atin g and far more
aggressive th an dr ivin g a car. At
the end of th e day I wo uld return
from the job site cove red wi th the
oily film of pollution, eager to
swim in the ho tel pool. filled with
a Futur ist's sense of satisfaction.
Most ofAthens seems to have
been bu ilt in the 19 60s and .' 70s.
The archi tecture is, for the m ost
part, a bureaucra tic modern style,
datin g fro m the regim e of the
colonels.Th e buil dings are gener-
ally a dirty whi te. Perhaps on e day
th ey wi ll be recu per ated in to new
narratives an d gain his torical
credibility as ur ban " texture," but
for the most p art they give mod-
ern ar chitecture a bad name. Of
course there are exceptions.The
area aro und the central markets
gives a 19th -century flavo r to
downtown and still reminds o ne
of the depe n den ce of the city on
fanning . fishing. and the slau gh-
ter of animals.The his to ricist style
of government institut ions and
museum s asserts a link to classical
Athe ns , even thou gh thi s style is a
pro jection of German neoclassi-
cism . One can understand w hy
pos tmodem Greek architects are
so little to n gue-in-cheek abo u t
the polities of classicism as tradi-
tional building. On th e flank of
the Acro polis is a m iniature
Cycladic village called Anafiorika .
built in the J9th cen tury by the
workers employed in the con-
struc tion o f th ose same institu-
tion al bu ildings. Anafiorika is a
site of cultural and soci al conflict:
an eyesore for those who wou ld
monumentalize th e Acro po lis,
an d a squatters' enclave that is
n ow gaining some legitimacy
while the politics of vernacular
an d local buil ding is rising. To
explore th ose p olitics would lead
into the com plexities of national -
ist con flicts in a contem p orar y
societ y still more marked by
Turkish Influence than most
Greeks wo uld care to admit.A
gian t Greek flag flies on the
" prow " o f the Acropo lis, markin g
it as a site o f na tio nal identity.
My favortte time [Q go up on
the Acropolis is first thing in the
morning , when it is nearly desert-
ed , but the most beau tiful
moment is still th e last h our
before sunset, when th e gleam of
the setting sun is reflected in the
Aegean .Then , the temples seem
to give human measure to the
rh ythms of nature. for their bea u -
ty is on ly he igh tened by the dra -
ma s of sunrise, suns et, full m oon,
rain , and sh adow.To the m odern
eye, the play between the m on o -
chrome sto ne and the changing
light seems so integral to the
bea uty of the tem ples th at it is
hard to im agine th em colored ,
complete, and n ew.
On to p of the Acrop olis, I
som etim es think of the seeming-
ly Interminable co ns truction of
the Getty Center, that "wannabe "
tem ple in th e neo-Mediter-
ran ean . Perha ps a course of accel-
era ted aging wou ld brin g th e
Geny into a mor e sym biotic rela-
tion w ith its n atur al con text , has -
tening th e in evitable erosio n o f
the ar chitect's will to dominance.
Perh aps this is th e source of m y
own anxieties ab out the
Acropolis - the discomfort o f
ackn ow led ging th e pa tri ar ch al
str u ctur es o f co ntem p orar y
architecture an d the o edip al
ha tred embed de d in th e str uc -
tu res o f "strong misreading." My
own p rivate p atriarch al loop
connects the Get ty to the
Acropolis: befor e retu rnin g to
New York a few years a.go , I
worked on the Getty for su pe r-
ego Richa rd Meier, himself a tr u -
ant so n o f Le Corbusier, damnin g
h im thr ough sterile praise.
Th e youn g Le Corbusier used
his visit to the Acropolis to co n-
firm hi s own architec tural ambi-
tions. In Voyage d'Or ient o f 191 I .
h e d escr ibed the beau ties of
mono chr o my. the precisio n o f a
con struction witho u t appar en t
joints, and th e terrib le powe r of
the Parthen on as "a mach ine
w hic h grin ds an d dominates." Le
Corb usier exp erienced a cer tain
tyranny in the Parthenon, refer-
ences to which he su bd ued in
later drafts o f his tr avel nar rative.
He described hi s visit as a com-
b at from w h ich h e emerged in
som e sense th e lo ser, for ced to
co nce de to the mas tery o f its
harsh poe try. In compensation ,
he so ught to conceive of it out-
side reali ty, as the "hero ic visio n
o f a creative mind :' And as a pr e-
lude to an announcem en t of h is
own am bi tion. h e addressed
himself to " those w h o , w h ile
p racticing the art of ar chitecture,
find th em selves at a m omen t in
the ir caree r somewhat em pty-
he ade d, their co nfidence depl et-
ed by doubt before that task of
giving a living form to inert mat-
ter." These kindred souls , he
claimed , would "un derstan d the
m elan ch ol y o f m y solilo qu ies Gender Trouble for the Doric order.
am id ru ins - an d my chillin g
di alogues w ith silen t sto nes ."
like Fre ud, Le Corbusier
expe rien ced a listlessn ess before
his first visit. H e put off the
climb until the end of his first
d ay in Athens, m aki n g a th ou- ;:-
san d excu ses to hi s frie n d as to .~
why he wo ul d n o t go u p jus t a
e
yet. Years later, Le Corbusier
in ven ted his own d isturb an ce o f
:s c
."
Q
"0 ;l
mem ory on th e Acrop olis. u s
Arriving late to the 193 3 CAM ,
-e ~
~
co n ference in Athens, he dis-
armed his co lleagues th us: "Oh
Q
C
~ ,5
~.
dear, I forgot all about you . I'v e '0
been on th e Acropoli s.
. ~
." ...l 0
~
a
e
8
l
.. .s~
.g
~
c
:g
:> .;
P.S. In my vast igno rance of Gree k
civilizatio n, I realize tha t these .
..." ~
]
thou gh ts are more like rumina- .s
-
:J:
s
tions on a Rorschach pattern. "'"
a:
Q
When I wa s about twelve. I wa s Q
..
Q
given a Rorschach test , and to the '" ~ Q
..... .s"
C
visible surprise of the sch ool psy- :J:
"
cho lo gist, I recogni zed the New
York Pub lic Librar y wi th its I.ank-
t
-e
....'"'" ],
ing lions in on e image after vis-
u alizin g the henchmen of dea th ~
and o ther fearful symmetries on :>
:J: 'f
.
pr evious pages. What seem ed a
shocking change of register,
be tween primal fears , arc hive ,
z
.
... ~
-e
C
and m onument , n ow no long er '" .0x
seems so stran ge. '"
:J:
"
 23.8
K.a.ren Bernu.nn
Letter from Nap es
Saint Vesu ius, or the olcanic aroqu
 ~--.....~---
~ ---~-------
~~
.. ( !
We now return and ascend the Via del
Duomo to the main entrance ofthe
Cathedral of SanGeInlUo (St.]mua rius),
built in 1294-13 23. It has beenrenovate d
seven! times since the earthqua ke of I ~26.
The side-entrance, in the Vu. Tribunali. hasa.
cohrmn in front ofit recalling the aid ren-
dered by St.]mua rius during the eruption
olVesuvius in 163 1. On the chief altar are.
siber bustwith the headofSt.]m uarius,
Bishop ofBen.. ...tum, who suffered mar-
tyrdom under Diocleti m in 305 and, in
the tabernacle, two....e Js with his blood
The liquef.u:tion ofthe blood which,
accordtn g to the legend, first occurred when
the bodywas brought to Naples by Bishop
St. Severus in the time ofConst mtine, takes
place twice ilIlIUJally (in the .....mgo fthe
1st s.t. in M")' and on Sept. 19th; reserra-
tion of seats in the so.cristy). According as
the liquef.u:tion is rapid or slow, it is a good
or evil omen fur the year.
-IWI Baedeker, IllI1y from thtAlps toNaples.
Abridged!I<mdbook Ior_ (New York: Chas
Scnbner's Sons, 1928), ~O .
Thi s city is CArbonized . It smells of fire.
it ha s pa ssed throu gh war.A slick black
powder coats everythi ng: the fore sts of
scaffold ing, th e stones of the street, th e
do orknob s . th e fish bones pil ed up
against a wall, the n ewspap ers and
can dy wrappe rs th at tb e wind h as
wrap pe d around our legs. Our eyes are
streami ng. Insi de our m ouths, grit. Th e
blac ken ed faces of the ch urches are like
teneme nt building s after a fire. Inside ,
the baroque is seething: a liquid geode,
an animal god.
Yesterda y Naples wa s amazing ly
quiet. a beau tiful but ominous absenc e
of street life as we walked through th e
cen ter, metal shop grates pulled down
tigh t.Th e sp ecific silence of Sun day in a
city. We walked up stree ts between ver-
tiginous walls that enclose d us on either
side . Hi gh above the street, laundry was
drying on hundred s of clotheslines.
releasin g a faint steam. A metallic gold
light fell - in some pla ces th e air was so
thi ck with dust that the light materia l-
ized into rays, yo u coul d almost take it
in to your mourn .The stre ets were so
den sely packed with scaffold ing that it
could have been night. Nigh t without
streetlig h ts. We couldn' t underst and th e
d en sity of th e scaffold ing - a tigh t,
three-di mension al w eave that ran the
len gth of a street and filled its twelve-
foot wi dth . pressing against the oppos-
ing walls as if it were buttress ing the
buildings. Or had it simp ly been aban-
doned long ago and so mehow prolifer -
ated, like vines?Vine s grew over and
around it , wrappin g th emselves around
th e m etal str u ctur e, a blackish veil.
The baroque : a hallucin ation that
eru pts fro m th e cen ter of th e dark. As
soon as yo u leave th e train station it
begins to conjure itself up. to splay itself pushing through th e narrow
out, to m ake its fabulou s appe arance.
The p orn video stan d outside the train
station is a go ld , white, black eru ption
of flesh. a mostlll o f body parts emergin g
into light, at once su bstan tial and
cloudlik e.The pile s o f mering ue in a
pastry sho p are brilliantly w hi te,
painfull y sweet. gri tty. changin g in an
ins tan t from volup tu ous form to vapor.
th e cloudlike
Th e illumin ated flesh .
sugar, are all fragmen ts of de sire stolen
from a baroque church to be eaten or
sold as contrab and o n th e street.
Overhea d, the clouds th em selves parade
across th e sky. glitter in g and joyful like
m ovi e stars emergin g from limousin es
on opening night.T hey roll . they slid e.
th ey revolve. Th ey to o are signs,
escapee s from the pla ce to w hich the
baroque aspires.
A man walked in frighteni n g m ari-
onette fashion up and down in th e
Piazza Gesu Nuovo, speakin g repetitive
rh ythmic nonsens e in a loud , m echani-
cal voice. He swung toward people as
th ey w alked by. followed them, called
after them until they were o ut of range.
It wa s a perform ance of orn ate control
and orn ate wrongness.Whe n we passed
close by him, I heard a h orrid, mech an -
ical creaking , like wooden joints, relent- pillars of white steam
less and forlorn. Was it a prosth eti c
limb, perhaps a wooden arm? He was
swingin g one arm in a deliberat e w ay,
as .if to make noise our of it. Thi s
thought frighten ed m e. Mark thought
that he wa s making th e noise with hi s
jaw.Tha t frightened me m or e. It was n ot
sp eec h that errupre d from his mouth
but so mething involuntary, like a vapor;
1 0
1 ,
th e mouth an opening like any other, a
paint of release.
In the Church ofGesu NuDVo, there is a
wall filled wi th busts of saints, each paint- . Th en all o f a su dden,
ed, each gesturing, each resting on a glass-
faced reliquary box packed with bones.
My guidebo ok says. "See Naples and
die." I have my own sense of w ha t that
might mean. Someth ing here exerts a
force - like hunger an d its opposit e, a
simul taneous constr ictio n and en gorge- Vesuvius in th e middle
m ent.A struggle is taking place. I feel as
if my blood ha s changed into some-
thing thi cker and darker, a co nc en trate
ness o f m y
veins, lookin g for a way out.
Cigarette butts and condom s fit so
n eatly into the spaces b etween the cob-
blestones, as if th ey were alwa ys m eant
to be there. Space is relentle ssly filled
up . Cobbles tones pa cked with garbage . Th e flam es shot up around th eir backs
streets stu ffed wi th scaffold ing and
laundry. Thi s density puts th e body
under pressur e.Veins and muscles are in
com pression . Breath is forced out of
lungs. Just before it stran gles, the street
er up ts, gasping, into th e delirious space
o f th e pia zza.
Mark said, "The garbage in Naples
h as a job to do. In Florence, the garbage
ha s no job. In Rome, th e garbage is
orn am en tal, that's its job. In Naples, th e
garbag e is str uc tural. It holds things up,
it coheres , it becomes ri gid, it expands
to fill every join t, it reinforces every
crack, it exerts a force.Th e w alls would
bage."
fall down if th ey removed th e gar
The baroque appears like the great
ou tpour in gs of white steam that used to approaching satisfactory
wake me up in the middle of th e night
on East 11rh Stree t in New York. It wa s
th e Con Ed plant let ting ou t steam. Ir
happen ed in winter, an en ormous rush-
ing sound all at once ; I'd sit u p in bed
and through the icy window see the
sh oot in g fro m
th e pillars of the stacks. Erupting in
great boiling clo uds. In Vienna in a high
baroque ch urch there were angels and
clouds , enormo us white sp he res, pour-
ing from the tops o f colwnn s. An exten - by the clelg)t
sio n of the idea of the capital - an
organic explosio n at th e top o f th e col-
umn , a vertical thing seekin g th e light.
the flower er upting from the stalk , th e
r
blood flow ering from the vein. White
column s, white steam, angels and
clouds, an exp losive heaven em ergin g.
in a m oment that
felt hallucin atory in its clarity, I saw th e
gas chambe rs and the souls that ent ere d
the sky by way of th e smokes tacks.
Saint bones, fish bones, in cense. th e
ch urch es eruptin g like flowers or
storms , like flesh or clouds,l ike
o f th e night, th e 23.9
rolling ecstati c presenc e of so m ething
so alive that drives and pounds its wa y
up through the ground; the presen ce of
so me thing de ad that. released from
gravity, ascends . windin g its way up to
the light.
We saw stree t shr in es with tiny
ceramic figures burning in hell. red -
painted clay flames surroun ding them.
so that th ey looke d like wings co m ing
out of their sho ulders.
The mystery of the melting ofthe liquid is
not to be disposed of as airily as some peo-
ple imagine A Professor ofOtern istry at
t-
the Um..m ty of'Naples not long ago o
(1925), placed. thermom eter on the altar, .~
first without , then with, the permission of "
the priests, and a friend ofmine ,.t that
~
]
time student, helped him with his exper~
iments. The mdting took place sometimes ~
at. tempera ture of 111--20 Cent. (65-<;8 ~
:E
Fahr.), sometimes at 15-17 Cent. (5_3
Fahr.) , once at 3 Cent. (38 Fahr.). Together
'0
they tried every chemica l formula and '"
'"
found only one that gave mything
results, but it
..
'"'"
...
wonld work only at blood heat.a tempera~
ture never to be found iD the church or OD
.....
'"
'"
the altar. The liquid often continnes to boil .....
z
after the mincle. My friend has himself '"
touched the silver stand and found it quite
cold after the boilinl} Then there is the dif~
.
'"
'"
ference oftime required fur the melting ..
z
and the diference ofthe color of the Ilq- '"
uid, which rmges on difl'<ren t occasions z
from rich chocolate to blood red, to be
z
.
explaine d. There is no conscious trickery "..'"
'"
- LacyCollison-Morley; NaplesThrough the
C<ntmy ( 192 5) , quoted inH.Y. Morton, A
z
....'"
lmdlain SouthtmIllI1y (New York: Dodd,
Mead & Compmy . 1969), 237.
'"
 As Ma rc Treib reminds us in his
superbly docum ent ed study,
Space Calculated in Seconds, Le
Ccrbuster proposed in 19 50 a
" Synthesis of the Major Arts"
pavilion for th e Porte Mai llot in
Paris , which would have con-
cret ized his newfound concern
for the integration of th e arts,
stating that " the ma jor arts a re
empty, divided an d isolated; the
worl d is wa iting: in fifty yea rs
a rchitecture has left the stage of
regeneration; a desir e for synt he-
sis is appa rent, a desire for har-
mony." (xv-xvi) Such synthes is is
an age-o ld quest , an d certain
subsequent projects, notabl y the
195 8 Philips Pavilion collabora-
tion, ca n be placed withi n the
trad ition of the tota l work of a rt,
the Gesamt kunstwerk. The earl y
period of this genre is exempli-
fied by Monteverdi' s opera,
t:incoronaz ione di Poppea
(Venice, 164 2), and by th e great ga rden fest iva ls of the Fre nch
court, such as La fete de Versailles du 18 juiliet 1668, which com-
bined music, theater, cuisine, wa te rworks, and fireworks into a uni-
fied, and indeed narrati vized, whole; it was given its generic name,

23.10
AlIen S. Weiss
Bool< Review Marc Treib
Gesamtkunstwer k, at its moment of apogee in Wagnerian opera; an d
itfound a new for m in the cinema, whic h in the 19205 was ha iled by
numerou s members of the avant-garde as potentially offering the
ultimate synth es is of the arts. The Philips Pavilion, conceived for the
Space Calculated in Seconds:
19 58 Brusse ls Wor ld's Fai r, was to have been a culmination of th is
The Philips Pavilion, l e Corbusier, Edgar d varese
Princeton, NJ : Princeton University Press, 1996 tradit ion, bringing it into the new elect ronic rea lm. The Poerne elec-
$49.95hard cover tronique, as Le Corbusier nam ed the work, was a colla borat ion
between a rchitects (Le Corbusier and his ass ista nt, Ian nis Xena kis),
composers (Edqa rd Varese and Xena kis, in a second ro le), filmmak -
ers (Jean Pet it for the scena rio, Philippe Agost ini for the monta ge),
and an eng ineer (Hoyte Duyster of the Strab ed Company).
Le Corbusier had a lways been concerned a bout relationships of
space-t ime, spa ce-sound, and slte-specificity in a rchite ctu re, as is
atteste d to in particular by the " space activate d by light" noO) that
motivated th e design of his 195 2 church of Not re-Dame-du-Haut at
Ronchamp, where - as he wrote ea rlier of a new architectural idea l-
" a boundless depth opens up, effaces th e walls, drives away contin-
gent prese nces, accompl ishes the mirac le of ineffabl e space ." (l OO)
The Poerne electronlque was conceived as suc h a new for m of specta-
cle, inspired by Le Corbusier's idea ls and motivated by the Philips
company' s desire to va lorize its state-of-the -art electronic equip-
ment Le Corbusier conceived the ground plan of th is building on the
model of a human stoma ch, a conceit evoking a probably unintended
Rabelais ian element concerning the flow of people who would expe-
rience th is mu ltimedia invention. Yet, unlike Frederick Kiesler/s
Endless House, which was planned as a surreal, orga nic, amb iguous-
ly zoomorph ic form inside and out, Le Corbusier's pavilion was to
combine th e organic a nd the geomet ric, for upon the curves of the
gro und pla n Xenak is was given the challe nging yet tha nkiess ta sk of
plannin g a via ble str uct ure coherent with Le Corbusier' s sty le. The
solut ion was a lso found t hrough curves, in the regula r, mathematica l
forms of the hyper bolic paraboloid, a n a rchetypically modern con-
st ruct ion form, based on the possibilities of steel and poured con-
crete, fami liar for over a centu ry in the catenary cur ves of suspen-
sion bridges. For Xenak is, the reso lution of this problem stemmed
from an inspir ed melange of his architectura l, mathematica l, an d
musica l trainin g. Xena kis had studied in Olivier Messiaen's fa med
composit ion class, and his f rst published piece of music, Metastasis
n 953-54) was scored for 61 instruments, eac h playing a different
part. It is notabl e in the present context that not only did each mem-
ber of the st ring sect ion play individua l glissa ndi, but a ll of the musi-
ca l parameters - the st ruct ures of interva ls, duration, dyna mics,
and t imbres - were determined by the application of geometrical
proqresslons, especially the go lden sect ion. Indeed, the graph ing of
the se glissandi in the score prefig ures the architectura l drawings
fo r t he pavilion. Though it might be suggest ed th at th e design limi-
tations of th e building were in some part due t o the disc repan cies
between orga nic ground pla n and math ematical elevation, the
homo logies esta blished by Xena kis between sound a nd spac e,
music and a rchitect u re, visibility, mobility, an d mat hematics, were
a ma jor accompl ishme nt.
 The glissando had a very specific role in modern ist music: its con-
certed an d exagge rated use served as one of the st rateg ies - a long
with microtonal composition , non- European instrumentation, the
inclusion of noise, the use of earl y electroni c instruments such as the
Theremin and the Ondes Martenot, etc. - to circumvent the limita -
tions of the tem pered scale that had ruled severa l centu ries of
European music. For th e glissando in its purest form - an ascending
or descending sound of unbroken pitch, possible on certain instru-
ments such as st r ings and th e sli de t romb one - conta ins a ll frequen-
cies in its range. One of Va reses ear li est composi t ions, t he 1922- 23
Hyperp r ism - t he t itle of w hich indicat es his interes t in t he spat ial-
abb reviating pa rab oloide hyper bolique), wh ich served as a sort of
ambient music to ma rk the ver ba l intr oduction to the piece, was an
example of musique concrete . This work, derived from electronically
reconst ituted recordings of burning charcoal- creating an aleatory
pattern of tingling sounds, as in other stochastic systems, such as the
grouped tones of crickets or raind rops - was an important composi-
tion in its own right
This leads me to a minor criticism of th is othe rwise exemplary
st udy. Treib unerr ingly deta ils Xena kis's contri but ions to t he project;
indeed, t here a re many more pages on Xena kis tha n on Le Corbusier
rega rding t he Poerne elect ronique. Even given Treib's acc urate

-
I
I
izatio n of music -was for an ensemble of woodwind a nd per cussion,
including a siren to add what he refer red to as " bea ut iful pa ra bolic
and hyperbolic curves." More ra dica lly, he composed Ionisation in
19 3 1, which called for 37 mixed percu ssion inst ruments a nd two
sirens for 13 players. It was the first Europea n piece composed
ac cord ing to indeterminate pitch (or wha t, in that epoch, was
deemed noise), and the sirens produced dist inct and striki ng glissandi .
These concerns led Va rese to imagine a musical instrument in tune
with his aura l imaqlnatlon, especially his fascination with the spatial
tr ajectories of-sound, and a musica l st ructure as pure as the rock
crysta ls th at always fascinated him . For decades he had dreamt of,
and his compositions prefigured - in th eir pa rt icula r use of t imbre,
ext reme play of a mplitude, and indeter minate pitch - what would
become elect ronic, concrete, and elect roaco ust ic music. Le
Corbuslers insistence t hat he compose t he music for t he Philips
Pavi lion fina lly gave him the mate rial possibilities to compose his
only piece in this genre, t he Poerne elect ronlque, a site-spec ific,
hybrid, multitrack work on tape that included elect ronica lly genera t-
ed melodies, distorted organ music (the organ being symbolica lly
ap prop riate, as it was a sort of pre-ele ctro nic " sound synthesize r") ,
indust rial noise, human chant, and even fragments of his Etude pour
espace, a ll emitted from a series of " sound routes" from severa l
hundred speakers attached to the cur ves of Xenak is' s hyperbolic
parabo loid she lls. Rarely has the metaphor of architecture as
" frozen mus ic" more accu ra tely desc ribed a building.
The visua l components of the pavilion were fourfold: a film, col-
ored lighting effects, projected ste nciled forms, and three-dimen-
siona l forms lit by ultra violet light . The film, whose images were
chosen by Le Corbusler, consisted of a series of sti lls: that begin by
evoking the progress of human civilizat ion, a sort of cinemat ic
"m useum with out wa lls," inspired by Ma lraux's recent theorizati on
of th e effects of photo graph ic reproducti on on art history and aes-
sta tement of t he rea lity of a rchitect ura l fi rms - where pa rtners often
t ake cr edit f or th e wo rk of assista nts, a f act tha t created gre at ten -
sion betwee n Le Corbusier a nd Xehakis - a crit ica l study should
exte nd beyond th e li m its of arc hitect ura l rea lpolit ik . W hi le
Xena kis' s role is completely resuscita ted in the body of t he text, why
is it that the subt itle of the book does not bea r his name ? And, given
the pert inence of his musical theories, as well as their obvious inter -
est for architecture, why is Concrete P.H . underana lyzed and denied
- .
its specifica lly mus ical existence? Indeed, the dust ja cket
an nounces, " This totally automated bombardment of color, voice,
sound, and images was broadcast within a space of wa rped concrete
shells, orchestrated by Le Corbusier and his colleagues into a cohe-
sive 480-second program." Elementary a rithm etic would have led
to t he sum of 6 00 seconds, given the additio n of Varese's eight-
minute piece a nd Xena kis's two-minute composit ion. Though these
a re relati vely minor points, it is true t hat th e music of this collabora-
ti on, rath er th an th e arc hitecture (m uch less t he fi lm), has had t he
greatest reverbera tions and thus deserves closer scrut iny.
Furt hermore, given the concertedly multimedia nature of th e work,
it would seem th at the profound inte r relations between mat hemat-
ics, music, and a rchitectu re estab lished by Xenakis - who, afte r th is
23.11
project, was to nea rly abandon a rchitecture in orde r to concentrate
on mus ical composition - might have been anal yzed somewhat more
pre cisely i f greater attention had been pa id to Concre te P H.
The Poerne elect ronlque was a belated Gesamt kunstwer k. For at
the very moment that Le Corbus ier bega n, after World Wa r III to be
concerned with such aesthetic synthes is, a radically new pa radi gm
was being esta blishe d, by J ohn Cage and ot hers, t hat would offer a
new model of a rtistic collaboration : detotaliz inq, disjunct ive, decen-
tered, unhiera rchica l, a leatory. One ofthe inaugura l events ofth is
tendency was t he famed 19 52 Black Mountain College "concerted '" ~
actio n," co-orga nized by Cage, in which dispa rate a rtistic events '" ~

~
"...=>
thetic percept ion; it cont inues with a representa t ion of apoca lyptic occur red (music, poetr y, palntlnc ), sometimes simulta neously, some-
~
threats to humanity and culminates by proffering the ultimate solu-
tion to the world' s problems, pred icta bly following Le Corbusier 's
times successively - encounters ru led by unhiera rchized cha nce.
Produced six yea rs afterward, the Poerne electronlque was an .. .,
'"
:E
.
own theories of urba n pianning. T hough t he fi lm (which no longer
exists ) was not a notable event in cinemat ic history, it does bea r pa r-
anac hronism, of greater interest for some of its pa rts t han for t he
sum of its parts . T hough the Phillps Pavil ion as Gesamt kunstwe rk
'"
z
u
.
~

ticu lar if oblique intere st in its relation (or rather nonrelation) to may have ma rked the end of a tradition, severa l of its elements were "'~"'
Varese' s music. While the ra pport between music and architecture
in th is pavilion is one of structural homology, the film is totally asyn-
sources of furthe r aesth etic invest igations: Varese' s Poerne elect ron-
ique, which remains a key work of early electron ic music, is consid-
.~
"z
'" ~

chronous with Va rese's composition, except that they both have the ered the culm inat ion of the composer 's lifelong musica l quest to cre- '" ~
..."=> 1
same duration. Thus the specific relati ons between the visua l a nd the a te new sounds in rnus!c, thus the fulfillment of the musica l strate-
au ra l in this multimedia " collaqe" were totally fortu itous. The role gies prefigured in his ea rlier compositions; Xenakis's use of mathe- ~

of chan cel controlled an d otherwise, had been a cr ucial facto r in matica l models in music led to his becoming one of t he maj or experi- '" -aE
'"
u 'a
modernist aesthetics ever since Ducham p's readymades a nd Bretort's
theory of objective chance; with t he postwa r avai labiIity of ta pe and
menta l composers of t he second half of t he centu ry; th e saga of t he
glissan do was to have ma ny other insta nt iations, nota bly Michae l . e.
z
:E
0
~
~
~

~
electro nic media, new dimensions would be a dded to the aest het ic of
the fortuitous. Though the role of asynchronic discrepa ncies had
Snow's ext ra ordinary comb inat ion of sound and image in his
1966-67 fi lm Wavelength , a conti nuous 4 5-min ut e zoom syn- "'" .~~
~
!..
al ready been profoundly invest igated in experimenta l cinema
(notably th at of the Lettr ists, as in Ma ur ice Lema! t re's 19 51 Le fi lm
chronized to a soundtrack consisting of a regularly ascending
sine wave (a soundtrac k that most interpreters of the film, one .
'" ~ :E~
'"
~ -e ~
est deja commencer ), the a leatory was then becoming central t o of the pivota l works of postwar avant-garde cinema, have
" -5:a <Ec
contemporary avant-garde musica l theo ry. The te rms of the debate yet to consider in its full mus ica l implicati ons);
a num be r of new mode ls of mixed- and mu l-
...'"z e ..
0

'" " ~
were set by the increasing musicologica l conflict between J ohn ~

.....'" ;:~ i
Cage 's globa l use of chance operations - with the goal of incorporat - t imedia wo r ks, from ha ppenings, envi- :E
ing all sounds previously considered noise into music, thus dissolving ronmental art, an d insta lla tion art to
the ba r riers between art and life - and Pier re Boulez's more restrict- virt ua l real ity, ha ve expa nded the ~ <
~
ed use of th e a leato ry, rema ining firmly with in the rubric of the
Europea n musica l tradition, to radica lly transform seria l, dodeca-
not ion of the now deconstr ucted
Gesamtku nst wer k; and fina l ly, th e hi s-
'"
"
.~
2
0
t
~
...'"'" .s
~
phonic music, such that a ll the musica l pa ra meters of the tone t ory of a rchitec t ure itse lf, where t he
~ .~
- (pitch, durat ion, amp litude, timbre) a re deter mined by a mode of
cont rolled chance. A t hird model of cha nce operatio ns, one t hat
rar ely entered t he debate, was conceived by Xenak is: t he applicat ion
organic an d th e mathematica l have often joined
in postmode rn com pl icity, has bee n en r iched.
Per haps th e best sum mat io n of t he her it age of
z

'"
'"
~
.!'"
of mathe mat ical mode ls to musical composit ion, notably a method
of composition based on the plotti ng of ran dom events, enta iling a
Poerne e lect ronique was offered, eit her sarcasti-
ca lly or in per plexed ad miration, by one jour-
....
"'" j
"stochastic" or probab ilist ic mode of music. Xenaki s integrated the
diverse moda lities of ma themat ics, music an d a rchitecture into a ll
na list com me nti ng on t he work: " Is this art,
where so many volts are requ ired? " (2 17) The
'"
'"

.~
~
'"
aspects of his work; in a sense, one might cla im that his ea rly music
was in fa ct " frozen a rchitectu re" or " frozen mathematics. " His
a nswer t oday is obvious, an d Tre ib b rillian t ly
revea ls the histo ric, aesthet ic, and structu ra l
'"
;: 1
~
-e
composit ion for t he Phi lips Pavilion, t itled Concrete P H. ( P H. reasons why this is so. '"
z
'"
....
..
....
 "The Am erican Lawn: Surf ace of Everyday
Life" was exhibited at th e Canadian Centre for
Architecture, in Montreal from June 16 to
November 8,1998. It was curat ed by Georges
Teyssot, Ricardo Scofidio, Elizabeth Diller,
Beatriz Colomina, Al essandra Ponte, Marl<
Wigl ey, and Marl< Wasuita and will be on view
at th e Contemporary Arts Center in
Cincinnati, Ohio, from April 4 to Jun e 7, 1999.
:Critic @ Large:
RobertAdams,Ext erior View of Empty Wooden House in Housing
Development, Denver, Colorado, 1973- 1977. Gelatinsilverprint, 15 x
19.5 cm. Fromthe series Denver. Collection Centre canacren d' Architecture
I Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal.
Courtesy Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco. RobertAdams
Upon enter ing th e hal ls of " The American l.awn " exhibitio n, it
appears as though someone has pul led an enormo us pr ank on t he
Canad ian Centre f or A rchitecture . The odd assemb lage of artifacts
and instal lations t hat constitute the show is a bit hard to make
sense of, especia lly in t he context of an insti t ut ion t hat boldl y
asserts it s fi r ms roots in the venerab le tecton ic hi st ory of arc hitec-
tu re. Yet t here is a sense/ a lbeit a somewhat per verse one/ tha t this
final inst all ment of the CCA:'s fiv e-par t A merican Centu ry series is
somewhat mo re in line w ith t he classica lly modern inclin ati ons of
t he M ontreal -based architecture m useum and research cente r t han
t he previous one, w hich surveyed t he act ivi ty of Disney' s irnaqi-
neers and t heme park designers, bast ard sons of arch itecture to say
t he least. For here, among t he vi t r lnes fi lle d w ith miniatu re law n
furn itu re, pink flam ingos/ and law n dwa rves/ among t he stereo-
scopic photo graphs and samples of Astrotu rf, we find t he results of
a type, one m ight even say ft avor, of research tha t has more in
commo n wi th t he ar t- meets-commerce col lect ions that graced the
cryst al hal ls of gr and exhi bitio ns in the lat e-19th centu ry than w it h
t he hagiog rap hic
incli nat ions of a
great deal of
recent a rchitec-
t ura l curating.
Thi s is not t o
suggest t hat
underneath t he
very t hick sur-
face of "The
American Law n"
there is not a
polemic on a par
w ith t hose of
shows at the
M useum of
M odern A rt and
elsewhere. Led
by Georges
Teyssot and Robert Sansone, College St ation, Texas, 1997. Stereorealisttransparencies,35mm
assisted by M ark From th~ series Neighbors. CollectionCentreCanadiend'Architecture/ Canadian Cl:
for Architecture, Montreal. RobertSanscne
Wasui ta, t he curators inc lude Beatriz Colomi na, Elizabeth OilIer,
A lessandra Pont e, Ricardo Scofidio, and Ma rk W igley. A ll, save
Scofi dio, hai l f rom another venera ble inst itu t ion whi ch, and t hi s is
not insignificant/ is almost as f a r off t he beat en track as is
M ont real : Pri nceton University'S School of A rch itecture. From
tha t campus of law ns/ th e Pr inceton team has slowly but surely
fi red off a steady barrage of essays, books, and other wo r ks wh ich
pr opose a sign ificant modification of w hat is common ly understood
as arc hitectura l "practice." " The A merican Law n" is in many
ways t he most v isible, if not voca l (the accompanying " majo r
schola r ly" book w ill not be ava ilab le until ear ly 19 99 ) versio n of
thei r a rgument t hat t he pr act ice of a rchitect ure is/ wh i le not pr op-
er ly, at least m uch mo re interestingl y (and maybe even more pro-
duct ively) one w hic h explo res t he socia l and aesthet ic implicat ions
of t he every day. W hi le t his is almo st certa in ly a g ross oversimp li fi -
cat ion of a relatively com plex agenda (bot h in te rms of conte nt and
int ent ), " The American Lawn " does seem t o pr opose a mode of
pr act ice t hat hardly fi ts into t he models of critic/ t heor ist, or archi -
tect fam il iar to t hose not party t o t he Pri ncet on pr oject.
For t he durati on of t he show, t his pr act ice dons t he guise of the
cur ato r : a fa mi liar ro le t hat a llows t he perpet rato r of an idea to
stay at a studied dist ance w hile the exh ibite d object s perfo rm. In
t his case the "major schola r ly book " has been excised - by coinci-
dence, no doubt - from the fi rst run of t he show, ampli fy ing t he
sense in which t he "wo r k" of t he exhibition appears t o ema nate
fro m t he auratic col lectio n of objects rather tha n from t he resear ch
and selectio n done by th ose connected w ith the show. W hile .it is
t r ue t hat t he encyclopedic r igor of t he curato rs and of Oil ier +
Scofid ic's laser-guided inst all ati on cum cr itique-of- t he-m useum-
and-viewing-subject are inst rumen ta l in maki ng visitors regard t he
r ot ati ng/ 19 5 0s showroom-s ty le display of high-tech law n mowe rs
w it h a grav ity nor mall y reserved f or t he work of modern masters/
somehow th at effect seems to come f rom t he machi nery itself.
As a result, in t ry ing t o read "The Ame rican Lawn " it is
t empting t o regard t he collec ted objec ts as clues t o some in im -
 itab ly mo dern mystery. If th is is in deed a whodun it, th e most
interesting focus of our inquiry is perhaps t he phantom curator.
In t he spirit of the gree n pastu res of subur bia, let' s engage in a
little idle speculation a la the neighbor who peers over a fence,
across a lawn , w onder ing what th at noise coming from next door
mig ht be, in order to better form a pictu re of t he practic e of
ar chitectu re at wor k here.
1 1
CU RATOR AS PERSO NAL S HOPPER
1 Personal shoppers peddle their services at up-scale ret ail out lets
all over the world. Consumers on a mission, and with the currency
i-
to finance it, hire an expert consumer to guidet hem t hrough the
laby r int hs of fet ish obj ect s t hat populat e our most fam ous monu-
ments t o commodity in order to ensure t he best se lect ions from the
voluminous offerings. There is definitelya sense in which the cura-
t or-t ype suggested by t he Law n show can be understo od as t hi s same
kind of expert consumer. The CCA esse nt ia lly hired a crack t eam of
experts on moder nity to comb t hrough m iles and miles of documents
and objects, fi l-
t er out t he most
provocat ive
items, and spin
t he whole thin g
int o a coherent,
themat ic bundle.
Ma ny of t he
y to Go
objects in the
show are
unabashedly part
of t he consumer
culture that
A merica has
produced in t he
20th centu ry.
The lawn mowers and im plements, t he inst allat ion of sports shoes
with innovat ive cleat designs, th e blimp-shot photo graphy of spor ts
arenas, and th e patent documents that accompany strai ns of geneti-
cally engineered grasses all connect t he exhibit ion to t he tradit ion of
product launches and w indow displays. The project ions of movies
like Halloween and The I nvasion of the Body Snatc hers, whic h per-
fect iy fil l a suspended screen in t he mid dle of t he most eeri ly lit
gallery, effectively transfo r m t he space of enterta inment A mer ican-
style into an object of academic contemplati on wh ile mainta ining
the guilty, spectac ular pleasure ofthe Hollywood movie. You'v e
heard of t he author as producer, now get ready f or t he auth or as
consumer, a bargain hunter combing t he debris of decade upon
decade of modern ity and its vario us precursors for what tr uly are
ext raordi nary "fi nds."
CURATOR AS HUM PHR EY BOGART
In The Malte se Falco n, Hum ph rey Bo gart and h is suppo rti ng
cast tumbl e th roug h chases, decept ions, an d omino us con-
f ro nta t ions all of wh ich revolve around what is call ed a
McGu f fin. Th e M cGuf fin, in th is case t he fa lco n it self, is al most
always t he conte nts of a box or suitcase, the specific nat ure of
wh ic h is almos t com ple te ly incid ental t o t he events and sus-
pense it produces . I n " The A merican Lawn , " th e lawn is th e
McG uf fin pa r exce llence. I am hard -p r essed t o imagine a p ro d-
uct of A merica n cu lt ure, save perhaps alumi num sid ing, that is
mo re ba na l, more na ively neutral, or, in othe r w ords, m ore
ready a surface on whi ch to pr oj ect t he subter ra nean sto ry of
th e A me r ican everyd ay. This is not t o suggest t hat the selec t ion
of th e lawn as object of st udy ap pears ar bitra ry. In f act, it
invokes an acute sense of al l t hat has been om itted f ro m archi-
tec t ura l discour se in th e last century. Th e lawn is an effect ive
objec t in asm uch as it is j ust shy of ar bi t rary an d can stil l be
ma de to open a very r ic h space f or discour se.
The show surpasses even t he perversity of medical oddity muse-
ums, which featu re form aldehyde-born e mutants and freaks of
human biology, by enlistin g t he absolute banality of much of
Am er ican lif e in the service of a t hesis, or th eses, that gent ly turns
moder nity on its head by laying bare t he negot iat ion, competit ion,
and legislat ion t hat stratif y and somet imes mar our placid pat ches of
green. These cor r upt ions and complications fi nd a hort icultu ral anal-
ogy in the show's photo cata logue of lawn fungi and other ailments.
Opposit ions and borders are put to wo rk t o il lustrate a differentlype
of degradat ion - the mediat ic ki nd, for example, when video footage
of protests in fro nt of t he White House lawn and on t he Washingt on
Ma ll is j uxt aposed w it h f ootage of presidents greet ing fo reign digni-
ta ries and leaving and arriving in helicopters. Here, imp ort ant ly, the
lawn is understo od as a surface th at registers th e compet it ions and
machinat ions of the social, be t hey barbecues or legal disput es, sub-
urban development or corporate image. That surface is seen as
someth ing inclined t o record and react to social stru ggles, f rom the
obvious t o t he invisible. The wo r k done t oward that end - on th e
viewer, by the exh ibit ion, set in mot ion by the curato rs - seems to be
t he real message here. A rchit ect ure, tradit ionally underst ood as
buiIdings and designs for bui Idings, is now forced t o compete with
sports equipment and men who mow lawns. The act of cata loguing,
of consumptive curat ing, uses t he McGufftn like lawn to show how
t he multiple infl uencesthat cult ure has on its mi nions (i.e., on any-
one or even everyone) can produce a spectacle of a complexity and
intensity tha t exceeds the lawn's more st oic tenant: architect ure
(proper, if you wi lD. In th is sense t he green grasses of Americana are
t he subject of the exhibit ion only to the extent tha t Cit izen Kane is a
movie about a sled.
CURATOR AS JOE PUBLI C
I n the end it's sti ll a litt le hard t o fig ure wha t w e
are to make of th is shrew d foray into t he every day.
Th is is due, perh aps, t o a schi zoph renia wi t hin t he show itself . As
much as t he show is concerne d w ith t he artifacts of everyday l ife,
its posit ion vls-a-vis t he social is hi ghly ambiguo us. Wh i le one
never gets th e sense that t he show's curators p reten d t o any kin d
of objectivity, th e distance t hey have from the i r subject matter
becomes mor e and mor e acute th e fu rth er we descend int o the
fr uits of the ir labor. Th at labor, f urt her more, seems less and less Joe Deal, Backyard, Diamond Bar, California, 1980. Gelatlnsilver
pedestrian, more and mo re expert, as the curators adhere mor e print, 28.5 x 28.5 cm. From the seriesDiamondBar. Collection Centre
Canadiend' Architecture I Canadian Centre for Architecture, Montreal.
and mo re r igorously to t hei r concern w ith t he every day. Th is pr o- Joe Deal
duces an ef fect as ir onic as it is puzzl ing. Ironic, because despite
t he f act th at t he show is high ly accessible and hi gh ly progressive
in te r ms of what t he subject and pr act ice of arc hitectura l schol-
arshi p is or could be, th e insti t ut ion t hat made it possib le is as
specia lize d as it gets . W hereas arc hitec t ure is a pr actice inext r i-
cably linked t o t he every day, ar chitecture scholarship t ends t o
remain high above th at pedest rian f ray. The CCA, t hr ough t he
wor k it has sponsored and t he shows it has in it iat ed, has dist in -
guished itse lf, especially on its side of t he At lantic, t hro ugh a
wi ll ingness to expa nd t he boundaries of what is considere d p rop-
er to t he stu dy of arc hitectu re and t he culture wh ich sur rounds it .
As t he curato rs of " The A merican Lawn" have shown, insert ing a
swerve i nto th e histo ric limi ts t hat arc hi tectu re te nds to impose
on itself is not only possib le but sta rtl in gly pr oduct ive.
Given this, it is impo rtan t to t ry t o fig ure t he nat ure and
exte nt of wh at th er e is t o gain by peel ing back t he many layers of
all thi ngs pedest r ian wh ich have bui lt up aroun d th e base of
archi tecture over t he last 200 some years. Here such an ef fo rt
has pr oven it self t o be th ought-pro vok ing w hen done t horoughly,
although the show beli es an uncertaint y as to whether it is
enoug h f or someth ing to be ente rta ini ng and int ell ige nt f or its
ow n sake - in orde r t o keep th e ether of th e intellect sti rri ng - or
wheth er ou r concern w ith th e every day might not beg a f ew ques-
t ions conta ini ng much demonized w ords li ke poli t ic al and ideolo-
gy. Ter ms li ke tha t, now more or less banished f ro m arc hitectura l
hist or y and t heory in pa rtic ula r, persist wi th both rhe torica l and
concept ual f or ce in local and nati onal poli t ics, and in th e inst it u-
t ions, f ai ling or not, th at st itch to gether w hat passes for th e
everyday of our socia l fab ri c. Perhaps if " The A mer ican Lawn "
fo und it self imm ersed in th e pedest rian wor ld tha t is the object of
it s desire - in t he lobby of the Seagra m buildi ng, or as w indow
displa ys at Macy's, or even at one of th e science museum s it
pokes fu n at - we might be surp rise d by the resonances it w oul d
have with t he st uff from whic h it spri ngs.


1 HOLD WEAK SIDE BACKER

2 3

v
OL
v ._____- - -
o

23.14 5 STEP

Diagram Worl<
1 BEATING WEAK SIDE BACKER

3
OL

d%\l
QB ~ - -0
~o
7 STEP
 r

It seems we all know the same things these days. All news is world-
wide; philosophy, economy, and culture have been denationalized. We
all have the same experiences, all have access to the exact same
information, and every little new discovery is immediately dissem-
inated so widely that there are no surprises left for anyone. Sweeping
trends encroach on individual consciousness like so many positron
waves. No one is left untouched. The pursuit of fascination that marks
the postmodern mentality has culminated in fascination itself
becoming a subject of reflection.
The point of departure for this work on the diagram is the ob-
servation that the repetitive process of verifying knowledge
deeply inhibits the practice of architecture. In order to avoid total
disillusionment and exhaustion, architecture must continue to evolve 23.15
its internal discourse, to adapt in specific ways to new material and
technological innovations, and to engage in constant self-analysis. A
denationalized world is not necessarily one of sameness. Connectivity

I does not imply the loss of topological difference. The end of the grand
narrative does not mean that architects no longer dream their own
dreams, different from anyone else's.
The essays collected here, various and exploratory as they are, offer
relief from the mediated world condition by enabling and stimulating
the imagination through the use of diagrams. They speak of individual
fascinations that are deliberately outside the well-trod terrain of global
information. As a professional strategy, engaging with even the smallest
particle of the physical world offers infinitely more stimulus than any
general, contemporary ontological conceptualization. These tiny pack-
ets of knowledge, separated from other processes and mechanisms,
function like a valve connecting one system to another. The diagram is
a loophole in global information space that allows for endlessly
J.
expansive, unpredictable, and liberating pathways for architecture.
- Ben van Berkel & Caroline Bos
*- -
r
I
stealth diagrams
DIAGRAMS MATTER
Stan Allen
An abstract machine in itself is not physical or corporeal, any
more than it is semiotic; it is diagrammatic... . It operates by
matter, not by substance; by function, not by form. . . .Th e dia -
grammatic or abstract machine do es not function to represent.
even something real, hut rather cons tr ucts a real th at is yet to
com e, a new type of reality.
- Gilles Deleuze and Pellx Guanari, AThousand Plcreeus ( 14 1-42)
Although diagrams can serve an explanatory function, clarifying
form, struc ture . or program to the designer and to others, and
nota tio ns map program in tim e and space. the primary utility of
the diagram is as an abstrac t m eans of thinking abo ut organization.
The variables in an organizational diagram include both formal
and programmatic con figurations : space and event, force and
resistance, density, distribution , and direction. In an architectur al
context, organization implies both program and its distribut ion
in space, bypassing conventional dichotomies of functi on versus
form or form versus content. Multiple functions and actio n over
time are imp licit in the diagram. The configuratio ns it develops
23.16 are momentar y clusters of matter in space, subject to con tinual
modification. A diagram is therefore not a thing in itself but a
description of pot ential relationships among elements, not only
an abstract model of the way thing s behave in the world but a
map of possible worlds.
Unlike classical theories based on imi tation, diagrams do not
map or represent already existing ob jects or systems bu t antici-
pate new organization s and specify yet to be realized relation -
ships. The diagram is not simply a redu ction from an existing
order. Its abstraction is instrumental, not an end in itself. Con-
tent is not embedded or embodied but outlin ed and multiplied .
Simplified and hi ghly graphic. diagrams support multiple
interpretations. Diagrams are not schemas, types, formal para-
digms, or other regulatin g devices, but simply place-hol ders,
instructions for action , or con tingent descri ptions of possible
formal configuration s. They wor k as abstract machines and do
not resemble what they produce.
STEALTH DIAGRAM S
You won't see us but you will see w h at we do .
- IBM advertising copy for 1998 Nagana Winter Olympics
IBM's anno uncement of its own invisibility, appe arin g peri-
odically out of the image saturated field of the Olympic br oad-
cast, send s a curio us sign al. Curi ous, because a complex game
of power, and its visible and invisible work ings, is being played
out in public. To point out that power no longer reside s exclu-
sively in the realm o f the visible is, of cou rse, no longer news.
What doe s seem new here is the forthright manne r of thi s
advert ising strategy, which locates pu blicit y value in the fugi-
tive character of information technologies.The suggestion he re
is that hardware - including all of the weighty apparatus of the
multinational corporatio n - could be profitably dissolved into
invisible codes of information and fluid media effects. For archi -
tecture, which still belongs to appearance (if no longer enti rely
to presence) , thi s posstbiltry triggers pro fou nd un easiness. At a
Ali en
transcoding
tim e when the dynamism of images and info rmation domi-
nates everyday life, the tr adit ional association of archi tectur e
with permanence and du rability has become suspect. Some
prac titioners have proposed a retreat, suggesting th at architec-
ture mu st once again define itself as stable and grounded in
contrast to the fluidity of information . Others have pr oposed
that architectur e's soli dity cou ld (or sho uld) be dissolved int o
these streams of info rm ation .
This is, in my view, a false dil emma trigge red by a dimin-
ish ed - or mi sdi rec ted - conc eptio n of architec ture's capaci-
ties. If one of the things challenged by new media technologies
is archi tecture's mat erial presence, it is Simply reactionary to
reassert architecture 's materia l condition. On the other hand ,
the more "radical " strategies (which have consisted , alterna -
tively, in represent ing new technologies in me taphorical
term s, or in grafting multime dia im ages onto a conventional
architec tural scaffold) have been no more productive. The
eme rge nce o f new informat ion-based technologies has pro -
voked an understandable d esire for a light er and mor e respon-
sive architec tur e.The pr actice of archit ectu re today is mea sur ed
by its performative effects as mu ch as by it s durable pr esen ce.
It mu st negotiate a field in which the actual and the virtual
assum e ever mo re complex confi gur ations: a field in whic h
diagram s matte r.
A diagrammatic practice begins with the assum ption that
simply to op pose the rnaterialiry of building to the immateriality
of info rm atio n is to ignore archi tecture's own ric h history as a
technique for actualizing the virtual. Architecture is already
implicated in a number of media, and the archi tect is out of
necessity constantl y moving from one medium to another,
transcoding from virtua l to actu al and vice versa. To move from
dr awing or writing to bui ldin g (and back again) is only one
example of this: architecture 's constant transactions with and
actualizatio ns of social, technical, and urb anistic variabl es are
perhaps m ore significant. Historica lly, architecture has deployed
a lim ited catalogue of techniques to negotiate the actu al and vir-
tual: techniques of pro jection, calculatio n, or notation, for
exam ple. In recen t practice , this catalogue has been incremen-
tally expanded by the appro pr iation of techniq ues from film.
video , or performance, and by the simulation and visualization
capacities of the computer. Nevertheless, the conceptual appara-
tus of conversion (transcoding, tran slation , or transposition. as
proposed below) is left unexamined.
A diagrammatic practice, on the othe r hand, locates itself
between the actual and the virtual, and foregrounds architectu re's
tran sactio nal character. It works in the midst of arch itectur e's
cons tant int erface w ith human activity, and its ow n internal
negotiations of actual and virt ual. A diagrammatic pra ctice is
relatively indifferent to the specifics of individ ual medi a. It
pr ivileges neither the durability of architecture 's material
effects nor the fluidity of its infor mational effects. Inasmu ch as
it does not insist on histor ically sanctioned defimnons o f
architectu re's disciplinary int egrity, it is, in pr inciple, open to
information fro m architecture's outside . Inasmuch as it is skep-
tical abo ut the promise of new technologies, it remains free to
take full advantage of archi tecture's traditional techniques to
organize matte r and space. A diagrammatic prac tice extends the
horizont al, affiliative character of the diagram direc tly into the
field of construction itself, engendering an architectu re of
minimal means and maxim al effects.You won' t see us, but you
will see what we do.
 t ranspos ition diagram architecture

TRANSPOSITIONS : TRANSACTIO NS points out, the mechanism of interpretation here does no t consist in
WITH ARC HIT ECTURE'S OU TSIOE constructing a series of sym bolic equivalents (shteld > city; satyr ;::;
A diag ram is a graphic assemblage that spec ifies relation- desire , ete.). Instead, Aristander has performed a material operation
sh ips between activity and form , organizing the structure an d (cutting, separating) on the actual linguistic stuff of the dream. The
distribution o f func tions . As su ch , diagrams are ar chitecture' s result is immediate, an d the sense clear, a way out of the abyss of asso-
b est means to engage the complexit y of th e real. The diagr am ciative meaning. Further, inasmuch as these operations cannot be per-
does n ot point toward arc hi tec ture's internal hi story as a dis ci- formed in transla tion, no overriding, unive rsal sense is claimed, only
pline, but rather turns ou tw ard, signaling possible re lations of the local and specific possibilities of manipula tion. In this sense,
m atter and in form ation . But since n o th in g can enter ar chitec - words are made to behave like architecture rather than architecture
tu r e with out having been first converted into graphic form, th e being made to behave like discourse.
actual mechanism of graphic co nver sion is fundamental. The
diagram may b e the channel through which any communica -
ti on wi th architecture's outsid e must travel, but the flow of
information alon g these channels w ill n ever b e smooth and
faul tless. Th e r esistance of eac h m ed ium - in the li teral , physi-
cal sense - n eeds to be taken in to account. Stati c and in ter fer-
ence are never ab sent . In this regard , the formulations of m edia
th eorist Friedrich Kittler are particularly suggestiv e. "A medi-
um is a m edium is a m ed ium ," writes Kittler, "therefore it can-
n ot be tra nsl ate d ." Against th e inevitable linguis tic ove rtones of
"translatio n," Kittler elaborates an alternative model , a concep t
of "transpositio n" that has particular relevance to th e fun ction-
in g 'of th e diagram:

In a discourse ne twork .. . transposition necessarily takes the

place of translation. Whereas trans latio n excludes all particu- 23. 17
lars in favor ofa general equ ivalent, the transposition of media
is accomplished serially; at discrete points. . . . Because the
number of elements . .. and the rules of association are hardly
ever identical, every transposition is to a degree arbit rary, a
manipulation. It can appea l to nothing unive rsal and must
therefore leave gaps.1

In operations of transposition, conversions from one sign system

to another are performed m echanically, on the b asis of par t-to -part
relationships without regard for the whole. In th e same way, dia-
e- o
grams are not "decoded" according to unive rsal conventions, rather .~
'a .?

the internal relationships are trans pos ed , moved par t by part from the
graphic to the material or the spatial, by means of operations that are ""'' ' .
t>
:B
Q

.ei:l
~

~u ."e
+
always par tial, arbitrary, and incomplete.The impersonal ch aracter of
0;-
Toyo Ito, Sendai Mediatheque (1995); structural diagrams. ~
these transpositions shifts attention away from the ambiguous, pe r-
sonal poetics of translation and its associations with the weighty
.s ~
0
0
~

"~
~
~
~
DIAGRAM ARCHITECTURE .:
institutions of literature, langu age, and herrneneutics. ~
A diagram in this sense is like a rebus.To cite Kittler again : "Inter-
The term diagram architecture comes fro m Toyo Ito. He writes about '"[ =
0
~

pretive techniques that treat texts as chara des or dreams as pictures

have nothing to do with h ermeneutics, bec ause they do no t trans -
th e wo rk of Kazuyo Sejima, but the passage has the for ce of a gener-
al statement. His critique of the assumptions underlying conven- ~
.~ I, i
~
-e
~
B
late."The diagram brings the logic of ma tter and instrumentality into
tion al design procedures is worth citing at len gth :
~
... .. ~
the realm of meaning and representation and not vice versa : "Rebus
is the instrumental case of res: things can be used like words , words
Most architects find this a complicated process: the conversion
...""'
,
Z
0:
~
0
B
~
ofa diagram , one which describes how a multitude offunction-
like things:'2 Slave] Zizek provides another example: "Remember :I:
~ ~
Anstander 's famous interpretation of the dream of Alexander of
al conditions must be read in spatial terms, into an actual struc-
ture. A spatial scheme is transformed into architectura l symbols .
"'" :a~
~
ee
0
6
Macedon, repor ted by Artemidorus? Alexander 'had sur ro un ded Tyre
and was b esiegin g it but was feeling uneasy and disturbed be cause of
by the customary planning method, and from this a three-
dimensional change is brought int o effect, one which depends
.
z ~
0
'0
~
.s
the len gth of tim e the siege was taking. Alexander dreamt he saw a
on the individual's self-expression. In this process, a great deal
'" ~
0
."a
z
"'-'-' ~ .s
satyr dancing on his shield. Aristander happened to be in the neigh-

. & l..
depends on the psychological weight of preconceived ideas
borhood ofTyre.... By dividing the word for satyT into saand tyros he
attached to the social insti tution known as 'architecture.' .. .
encouraged th e king to press home the siege so that he became the
mas ter of the City' As we can see, Aristander was quite uninterested in
th e possible 'symbolic meaning ' of a dancing satyr (ard ent desire?
Th erefore, to position architecture's place in our society would
be to describe it on the one hand as an individualized artistic
....
z ~

intent based on self-willed expression, or on the oth er hand, to '"

1 joviality?) ; ins tead he focused on the word and divided it, thus
place it within the framework of public order we recognize as a
obtaining the m essage of the dream : sa Tyros = Tyre is thine."3 As ZUek
social system , the latter based on mere commonplace habits that

1 Friedrkh A. Kittler, Discourse Networks, 1800/1900, t -ans. Michael Mett eer and cn ro Cunens (Sta otcrd: St<>nford University Press, 1992 ), 265.
2 l bld, 274 .
3 S lavoj Z;Zek, Looking Awry: An lntrodu~lion to Jaccues Lacan through Popular Culture (C~mbridge , Mas$.ach usetts: MIT press, 1 ~91). 51-52.

Ali en
 index abstract machine

have become the established archetype. When yo u stop to think sure in the immediacy and dire ctn ess of proce du res th at often
about it . the fact that almost all architecture has emerged from short-circuit convent ional design sche mas. It is an archi tecture
the confines of these two antagonistic. completely op posite tha t frankly and openly displays its constraints and is com fort -
poles is vir tually incomprehensible. It is almost in credible (0 able wi th the limitations imposed by forces of market econ omy,
think that m ost architects have no serious doubts w hen faced codes, or the shifting field of the conte mporary City. The com -
with this contradiction th at architecture ha s nurtured within plexity of these real worl d constrai nts is neither held at arm s
itself. 4 length nor lit erally incorpor ated , bu t reformed as architectural
material thro ugh the vehicle of the diagram . It is an architecture
The arch itect's conventional m eans of working - the "cus- that travels ligh t, leaving the heavy stuff behind. At one level,
tomary plann ing method" that Iro describ es - can be classified not hing mo re (or less) is claim ed for the diagram than this: J.
acco rding to the well-known categories of sign established by diagr am architectu re is pan of a new sensib ility character ized
C.S. Peirce at the beginning of this cen tury. P Plans and eleva- by a disinte rest in the allied pro jects of cri tique or the produc-
tions functio n like icons (accord ing to simili tude), while the tio n of meaning, preferring instead immediacy, dryness, and
not ations that accom pany them are symbols (based on the rule the pleasures of the literal.
of convention) . In recent pr actice, the conce pt of the ind ex has A diagram architecture is not necessarily an archi tecture pro-
been bro ugh t into play as a means of encoding information duced through diagrams. Altho ugh diagrams figure in the wo rk
about the site or its histor y ("site forces") thro ugh pro cess- of the archi tects menti on ed, the idea that the working proce-
based operations of tracing or geometri c transformation (conti- dures of the architect imprint themselves on the realized build-
gui ty) . Interp retation and tran slation figure deep ly in all of ing is for eign to [he logic of the diagram. Instead, a diagram
these pro cedures. By con trast, the m ove away from translation architecture is an archi tecture that behoves like a diagram , indif-
to a diagrammatic practice based on transposition , and the feren t to the specific mea ns of its realization . It is an arch itec-
resulting bypass of the int erpretive me chanism, is consistent ture that establishes a loose fit of program and form, a dire cted
with Deleuz e and Guattan's description of the functio ning of field within whic h mul tiple activities un fold, ch anneled but not
the diagram, which also evades conven tional semi otic cate- constrained by the architectural envelope. It is an architecture of
gories: "Diagrams mus t be distin guished from indexes, whic h are maximum perform ative effects with minimal archi tectural
23.18 ter ritorial signs, but also from icons, w hic h perta in (Q reterritort- means , character ized at times by indifference (MVRDV) and at
aliz ation. and from symbols, which pertain to relative or negative times by exquis ite restraint (Sejima}, but always by deference
deterrttor taltzatton." 6 A diagram architecture does not justify itself on the part of its author to the impersonal force of the diagram.
on the basis of embedded content, but by its ability to multiply An imp ortant poin t of reference in tracing a genealogy of con-
effects and scenarios. Diagrams function through matter/matter temporary diagram architecture is K. Michael Hays's description
relationships, not matt er /content relationship s. They turn away of Hannes Meyer's Perersschule project as an abstract m achine.
from questions of meaning and in terp retation , and reassert Working from the 1927 present ation of Meyer's pro ject as a sin-
function as a legitimate pr oble m , without the do gmas of fun c- gle-page layout dominated by diagrams and calculations , Hays
tionalism. The shift from tran slation to transpo sition doe s not notes that the form and substance of the dep icted building "is
so mu ch fun ction to shu t down m eaning as to collapse the only one component of the total architectural apparatus that
process of in terp retation . Meaning is located on the surface of includes these diagram s." In thi s way, he is able to extri cate
things and in the materiali ty of discourse. What is lost in dep th Meyer fro m the con ventions of functionalist logic. Instead of
is gaine d in immediacy. Diagram archi tecture looks for effects seeing the ind ividua l buildin g as the result of generic calcula-
on the surface, but by layering surface on surface, a new kind of tion s (the application of techn ical norm s) , Hays suggests that it
depth-effect is created. is possible to see the Petersschule as only one o f many po ssible
The diagram architecture described by Ito is critical bot h of instances of the diagrams presented , "p art of a larger machine
the social insti tutions of archit ectur e and of exaggerated for the production of desired effects of ligh t. occupation , and
mythologies of perso nal expression. sensuous expenence."? The abstract machine at work here is an
Ito imagines an architecture in assemblage of social and techni cal forces that are actualized in
which the process of conversion is mu ltiple forms by multiple agen ts, amo ng them the specific
-. --~_ :::~_:::- = minimized; consequently, architec- instance of Meyer's project. In the realized pro ject, these for ces
---,
5':::::'-===:-"':'0:.=:.-::
::.:.:=~ --
=:,_"':.--_ ...-
.- " ~
~ : ';~:
ture's traditional claim to transform
its ma terial (the last vestig e of
in turn wou ld couple with others to activate the life of the
buil ding and to keep it in play over time. As oppos ed to a func-
....;.....;..::_.,..;",. i:;;; .....
.. -- ( - ' ~ - J1;l::;'(~ "' -' h:~A ... archit ectur e's con nection to magic tionalist logic that wou ld describe a fixed set of action s to be
"._- {'- '~;'1- ..-t";'?1 ...

--_ _
..... -_
r.-=~ ::=:.:.; ..-...

... _-----
==~.,':::::=-..

-- ----
"'-"' -~""----- ...
....
~::-
and alchemy) is underm ined as
well. No complex mysteries to
completed wi thin a fixed architectural envelope (and risk obso-
lescence if those functions change ) , the noti on of an abstract

=:. .
_-
unt angle, no hidden messages to machine sees the building as a component in a larger assem -

--_- --
...._---- ;;~~:i
... translate, no elaborate tran sforma- blage that can be recon textualized according to the progressive
------
.,_ ... ..
tional process to decode . On the rearrangeme n ts of the other components in this socialltechn i-
Z::-~:..=- basis of this and ot her examples, it cal/ ur banisti c machin e.
---
-------
=..=:r-=...:-. .~ might be possible to identify a dta-
grammatic sensibil ity, exem plified
In func tionalist disco urse, any formal elaboration that cannot
be accounted for by programmatic or technical criteria is an
--r-.... -.;.--.. . in conte mporary architecture by embarrassmen t. By contrast. in Hays's readin g. the pr ecise for-
=''''EE:?=--=-"':"..=.:;.:::= (amo ng others) the wor k of OMA,
--_ - .....
mal character of the building is key to its functio ning.The spare.

-- __
-:-~~ :1:1 : .~:'E::~ lto , Sejima, or MVRDV. This wo uld linear character of the archi tecture itself creates a kind of di rect-

,-_ . _-_.. _--

-~ .- 7 : ~~ :!:::.I, :=~
--,
----_
_. ---_
be an architecture that takes plea- ed scaffold, a sharply defined ground for multiple activities. It
_-. - - ----1 --, -- . _-------_
.. _-, ... - --- .,- _
. . . .=_....-.. ===~t=:::=-=
. _ .-_--_.. . ... 4 Toy ~ ne, "D iagram Ar,hiuclure," in El CroQuls nw (Madrid, 1996), 19

--, .... - -_._,"' ...-

.... -........"---
----_
in de ~ ,

... _ ---
S "A sign Is eithe, an icon, and or a symbol. An icon is a lil9n which would possess the rharacter Whichrenders It significant , even thQugh its obje,t had no existence; such as a
=..."":--:.. ~- _
=...-::":":::::-
.. ----------------
_ ~_-:::::"'...=-.: lead pencil st reak as ""prnen t lng a geometrica i line. An Index ls a sign which would, at once, lose that cllaraeter whIch ma kes it a sign if its object were removed. but would not lose
=::= t=~- ~_
---_
_-_
',h
':!:io~~
_- _. - - _- _ _ :::' J::: that cnaracte- if the"" were no interJ)relanL Such, for Instance, is it piece 01mould with a tl\Illetho le In ltas the sign 01a shot; fo, without the lillot there would have been no hole; but

... - .. _------
=--_
--' ..__.._ . . . _--- --
-_ .- t=..
~-;' - . ~"=,:':
~~ there is a hole there, whether anybody has th<!sense to attribute It 10it sl10tor oet, A symbol Is it sign wIllehwouid lose the character which renders It a s\<)n if there Wet1l no !nlerp,."tant

.. _
-. _--_._-----_
----- -
..
... _---- ... _ -s::::."; Sum Is any ~rance of speech wtl\ch signified wh.lt n eees only by virtue of its !)flng understood to have that signification ." Charles Sanders Pei"e, Philosophica l Wri tings of Peiru,

----- -::.:.------
- - _..,_... _ - -
....
-- = =-
~"':" --:-"":""" -=.. =J::

- ee. Justus Buehler, <New- York: D~r PUbllCil-tions, 1955), 104 .

--_
_
~ ..- .:
- ... ...
El G\UesOeleuIt..-d Hlix GUiltUl.i,A Thou~ Plateaus, trilns. Brlan Massumi CMlnneapoli~, unive'"1ity of Minnesota PrM~, 1987), 142.
::.:::-- =- ....... .
::=-:;i.:::..... .;. ..'::""...;.:;,
._.... 7 K. Mlthael Ha1S, Modtmism and the Post/lumanisl Subjt CC..,DnClge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 1'l"l2l, 111.

=---_._------ ...----
... _ ... ..
-:-=.= ~.;.: ~ =.=:~=.:..-:-::

... ....
= : "":"i..o:=t::':"'"-_..
-
Nannes Mt)'l!r, Pt h rsschult (1927).

Alien
II
materiality after-theory

performs much information , which would qu ickly exhaust and the particular ly 20th-century dilemma of confronting a real-
itself. The asserti ve verticality of the classroom block (empha- ity that is itself in creasing ly char acterized by the arbitrary and
sized by a str uctural expressio n that ha s little to do with the the incomplete, by false starts, dead ends, indifference , and
actual stacking of classrooms within) establishes a strong formal unce rtainty. (As Kittler concludes, "The eleme ntary, unavoidable
tension to th e layered . cann levered play decks. which are them- act of EXHAUSTION is an en counter with the lim its of media."9)
selves a star din g and sligh tly disorien tin g dis- A diagram archi tectu re does not
pla cement of the horizontal groun d plane .This pretend to be able to stand out-
formal tension is on ly partially softene d by the side of this reality to offer cri-
elaborate series of circulation eleme n ts, the tique or correction, nor does it
w alkways, stairs , and platforms that weave ho ld out for some impos sible
through and arou nd the building pan s. These notion of coherence. Instead , it
multiple routes and unexpe cted connections accepts archi tecture's place in
laced through a generic functional diagram this flawed reality, not cynically,
(h ori zon tal decks and vertical classrooms) but wi th cautious optim ism ,
pr oduce com plex performative effects. Unlike inasmuch as these contingent
Le Corbusier, Meyer is indifferent as to the ori- diagrams of matter can some -
gin (semio tic, social, or techn ical) of the se times be reconfig ured.
effects.The displaced ground plan e braced back ~~u=~ ~so~~~~~rw~=au, Arnhem project.
to the building by elegan t cable struts doe s not call forth associ-
atio ns with aircraft technology or memories of the garden; no r
is h e interested in transforming this material in to a new whole.
Rather, the force of the abstract machine as deployed here is to DIAGRAM S -
address precise problem s with pr ecise solu tions, w hile main- INTERACTIVE INSTRUMENTS IN OPERATION
taining fiuidir y amon g the parts - a disjointedness that keeps Ben van Berkel and Caroline Bos
the elements in play and allows for their cons tant recontextual-
ization wit h changing extern al force s.
23.19
This reading, first elabo rated in the late 1980s and early
1990s, worked against the grain of the Derr idian / decon stru c- Architecture still articulates its concepts, design decisions, and
tivist theor y dominant at that time, which sought to rein scribe processes almost exclusively by means of a posteriori rationaliza-
archit ecture wi thin an abstract logic of discou rse and representa- tions. The compulsive force of legitimizin g arguments still domi -
tion . Offering a way out of the facile opposition of the semiotic nates contemporary debate, even though it only represents a limited
to the material, Hays identifies a radical materialism in Meyer 's interpretation of the complex web of considerations that surrounds
architecture. But the reference to materiality here is not in service each project. Yet for the most part we cannot bear to analyze our
of the recovery of tectonics or an ontology of materials, as was own internal discourse for fear of disruptin g the notion of the emi-
typical of othe r critiques of decon stru ctivism . Instead , it draws n ent utility of our pro jects and thus precipitating their disappear-
on certain aspects of the Derridian program to descr ibe potential ance. The dependence of archite cts on being selected for work
social and political effects resulting from the disruption and sho uld not be un derestima ted . Inevitably, our strategies, our for -
renewal of percepti on in Meyer's archi tecture: "[ Meyer 's] materi- mulations, and the ways in whic h our interests evolve are related
alism emphasizes the heterogeneous properties of things and to this de pendence. Sin ct: architecture - at least in the open,
their effects in real space and real time, and induces a play of sen- democratic, Western socie ty in which we work - now results
suous energies in the viewer, a com pulsive pleasure taken in the from a highl y institutionalized, cooperative process in which
quiddity of building part s, but also in the contradiction s, the dis- clients, investors, users, and tech nical consultants all take part , it
rup tions, the gaps and silences, all of whic h explodes the is natural and righ t that architects strive to be reasonable, respon-
received social meanin gs of things."a Hen ce the radi cal force of sible partn ers in this process , and condition themselves to think

, Hays's reading lies in the fact that the materialiry he refers to is and to present themselves in a way that will persuade others that
not a primitive or "natural" materialiry that looks back to archi - large investments can be safely entrusted to them. The fru strating
tectur e's origins (as, for example, in the architecture of Louis result is that there is hardly any real architectural theory to be
Kahn) . It is instead a physical reality that is itself entirely per me- found, despite the diversity of practices at work today, and
I ated by all the artificiality and abstraction of 20th-century urban despite a hugely expanded volum e of architectural publtcan ons.
life: a reality that is already diagramm atic. By collapsing the mate- There is only after-theo ry,
rial and the abstract in this way, he locates architecture between The pressure of rationality is such that architectural theor y is
the real and the virtual, capable of inte rvening in both, yet fully streamlined toward a moment of compellin g logi c, in which fac-
committed to neith er. tors of location . program , routing, const ruction , and anything
My moti vation for examining in some dep th thi s one exam ple else that plays a role in the origination of a design are direc ted
from a po tent ial gene alogy of a diagram architecture is not so toward the tri umpha nt con clusion that the particular design
mu ch to legitimate the prese nt by me ans of reference to the past under discussion is the only ob jectively justifiable one. The
as it is to suggest that the workings of the diagram belong prop - demand to present the "r ight " solution, even when the con tents
erly to architectur e's hi stor y and its own understanding of itself of that concept have become very uncertain , propagates architec-
as a discipline. It would no t be difficult to outline a more com - ture's dual claim s of ob jectivity and rationali ty. Like a door slam-
plete genealogy of the diagram in archi tectu re.That having been ming shut, the barricade of retrospective justification rou ghly
said, the radical force of the di agram belon gs to its recent p ast, blocks the view of what went on behind it.
a Ibid., 1111].
9 Kit"J~r. 2b5.
For lht ti tlt I' 91_ (111 ~Tht Oill9ranTS CIf Ma~r, ~ ee t 'tl t cftt>t!art dl a;ltt r C1fllis (lClctClra l tiles;$) iUId other
borrowings u"t nOdoubt found lJ1~ir ..ay into this ttX'~ [,m indebt~ to Sob Somol.

van Berkel & Bos

 social-discursive practice
ARCHITECTUR E AS SOCIA L-OISCURSIVE PRACTICE
Looking into diagrammatic procedures is one way to partially
open that door and to dis locate the protective and con strictive
barriers that architecture has raised to hide its vulnerable center.
As one of many techniques used by architects to advance their
ideas w ithin the development of
a design, a diagrammatic tech-
nique presents an opportunity
to examine th e social-discursive
aspect of architectural practice
from wi thin. Discourse analysis
is a relatively new approach
being used in the humanities. As
a method it combines ins ights
from text analysis, argumenta-
tion ana lysis, an d his toric
research. ! Discursive practices
have been defined as persistent
patterns of discourse manage-
ment. Their function is to regu-
late production, consumption,
and distribution of texts within
a particular field of interest. Dis-
cursive practices cannot very
23.20 well be seen as separate from
the social framewo rk in which
th ey take place, which is why
we refer to them as social-dis-
cursive practices. The dependent
position of architecture within
the economic system generally
puts a disproportionate empha-
sis on arguments of persuasio n,
which are only a sma ll, externally
oriented part of the social-dis-
cursive practice of architec ture.
The challenge for the next gen-
eration of architec ts is to
acknowledge an d ana lyze th e
in ternal discour se, which from
a social-discursive viewpoint is
I Van a erket & Bos Architectuur bureau, Arnhem pr oject. Traffic diagra m.
far more comprehensive than
the methodological process that
is the basis of current d esign practice, and to find a theory of the
real in that.
Dismantling the scaffolding of ration ality and objectivity is risky.
The process might appear to im ply a renunciation of all claims to
any measurable, quantifiable worth. If we re ject th e predictable,
rational in terp retations of "winning schemes" as competitive fic-
tions, what stan dards do we the n apply to judge archi tecture if we
don't want to end up with a lam e, "any thing goes" conclusion? The
answer must lie somewhere in the vast field between th e poles of
ob jectivity and subjectivity, be tween relativi ty and rigidit y. The
method by which architecture makes use of th e intense fusion of
in form ation within a diagram is loca ted somewhere between
these p oles. It would seem that it is not even fixed in one specific
place, as the meaning of th e diagram itself is not unequivocal.
Th er e are different interpretations of th e diagram, which occupy
different positions on the sliding scale be tween su bjectivity and
objectivity. Some of the interpretations explored most thoroughly
in recent times have b een the philosophical implications of the
1 Weare indebtedto Jaao 60Sfor drawin ~ our attention to the socia l-discursive approach in his doctoral thesis Authorized Know ledge (Utrecht, 1997), which deals with the discursive history of Freudian psychology. See anc N. Fair-
clough, Discourseand Social Change (Carnbeldqe: Polity Press, 1992).
2 El<a mples: cutes Deteure, Fcucault, t-ans. seen Hand(Minroeapo lis: University of Minnesota Press, 19881.; Gilles neiecee, Francis Bacon:l ogique de la Sensation (Paris: Edition de la Difference, 1981); Greg Lynn, "Forms of
expression", El trocurs no. 72W, 1995
3 J . Krausse, "Information at a glanceOn the historyof the diagram", oese. SUN Nijmegen. 1998. xracsse here quotesWilliam Playfair,architect ofthe contemporary diagram, whose book TheCommercial and Political Atlas
(1786) Introduced economic curve diagrams and bar charts.
van Berkel & Bos
reductive machine
diagram, its imagery, and the ways in which it instrumentalizes
concepts of organizatio n. 2
TH E MEA NING OF TH E OIAGRAM
The spec ific meaning of the diagram in relation to architec-
ture has bee n colored by our knowledge ofBauhaus methods. But
let's forget abo u t this; th e modernis t diagram has nothing to do
with our subject, as a quick glance at the diagrammatic practices
of Gropius, Mies van der Rohe, and the ir students makes clear. To
see architecture as a built lin e diagram is practically the reve rse of
our position. More to the point is th e general understanding of
the diagram as a statistical or schematic image. In its most b asic
and historical definition, the diagram is understood as a visual
tool designed to convey "as m uch information in five mi n u tes as
would re quire whole days to imprint on the mcmorv'O Dia-
grams are best known and un dersto od as reducttve machines for
the compression of in for m ation .When th e informed reader con-
sumes a specialist diagram , the effect is like th at of a self-inflating
life jacket: a small package grows to fu ll size in the time it takes to
exhale a breath of air. But diagrams can also be used as proliferat-
ing machines. This is how architecture today in terprets their use,
thus transforming the diagram's conventional significance. When
read architecturally, the diag ram, which is often a bland, blank,
blinding image, is never fully understood, or ra ther, its fu ll
meaning is not allowed to break through. A diagrammatic prac-
tice pursues a proliferating, generating, and open instrumental-
ization in architecture.
Architecture focuses m ore on the reading and consumption of
diagrams than on th eir lab or-int en sive production. The condensa-
tion of knowledge that is incorporated into a diagram can be
extracted from it regardless of the significance wi th which th e dia -
gram itself was originally invested . Th e specific in form ation con-
tained in the diagram is discarded ; th at is no t what architecture is
after. For architect ure , the diagram conveys an unspoken essence,
disconnected from an id eal or an ideology, that is random, intu-
itive, subjective, not bound to a linear logic, that can be physical,
structural, spatial, or technical. In th is regard, architecture has been
encouraged by the writings of Gilles Deleuze, who described the
virtual organization of the diag ram as an abstrac t machine.
DELEU ZE'S ABSTRACT MACHINE
Dele uze hel ps u s un d er stan d ideas by giving examples , thou-
sands of th em , so that our minds continuously swing back and
forth be tween the abs tract and the rea l. Architecture similarly
osc illates between the world of ideas and the physical world, thus
h is writings seem to hold a highly specific meaning for architec -
tur e. We make extensive use of some of Deleuze's writings for
this text, but we are not out and out Deleuzians; our reading is
specifically architectural. Deleuze offers at least three versions of
the diagram: via Michel Foucault, via Francis Bacon, and via Mar -
eel Proust. We do not make a distinction between the three dia -
grams in order to demonstrate some disparity between them, for
there is none. Instead of recognizing three "ver sion s" of th e dia-
gram, we should instead speak of moods or tonalities, for what
strikes us is tha t three deeply significant aspects of the di agram
are conveyed in three very different modes. In each case, the di a-
gram has a different meaning and corresponds to a differen t stage
in the process of understanding, selecting. app lying, and tri gger -
ing Deleuze's abstract machine.
The first stage of the diagram is associated with Foucault,
thro u gh whom we learn to understand how the figure of th e dia -
Panopticon tools against typologies

gram is not representational; this is the crisp. dry, intellectual argu- has to be a m edi ator. The forward-lo~k.ing ten dency of diagram -
ment. In the second stage. through Bacon, we live thro ugh an artistic matic practice is an in dispensable ing redient for understanding its
struggle; as we mentally take up the pain tbrush we simultaneously function ; it is about the "real that is yet to come: '
engage in an earthy and lighthearted, playful debate about the
select ion and appli catio n of the diagram . In the third stage of the TOO LS AGAINSTTYPOlOGIES
diagram, through Proust, th e int eraction of time and matter is Deleuze has con tribu ted to the in sigh t that the relentl ess intru-
introduced, wi thout which th ere can be no tran sformation. Here sion of signs and sigmficano ns can be delayed by th e diagram ,
th e argument takes a literary and m usical tur n; refrains in music, w hich the reby allows architecture to arti cula te an alternative to a
literature. and psychology are taken to create a lengthy and intr i- represen tational design techniqu e. Previously, if the concepts of
cate narration culminating in the inven tion of faciality. repression or liberation , for example, were introduced into archi-
For Poucaulr , Jeremy Ben tham's 1791 plan for the Panopucon tectur e, a complex formal exp ression o f this concept woul d be
is "t he dia gram of a mech ani sm o f power redu ced to its ideal form reduce d to a sign with one clear meaning, w hic h wo ul d subse -
... a figure of political technolog yv'' It conveys th e spatial organi- qu ent ly be translated back into a project.
zatio n of a specific form of state
power and disci pline. The
arran gement o f the Panopti con
is the expression of a number of
cultural and political condit ions
th at culminate in a di stin ctive
manifestation of surveillance. It
inc orporates several levels of
significance and can not be re-
duced [Q a singular reading; like
all diag rams , the Panopticon is a
manifold .Typically, when a dia-
gram breed s new m ean in gs
23.21
these are still directly related to
its substance, its tangible m ani -
festation . Critical readings of
previou s interpretatio ns are no t
di agramma tic. Put in the sim -
plest possi ble ter m s, a diagram
is a diagram beca use it is
stronger th an its in terp reta-
tions. Although Foucault in tro - Van Berkel & 60S archttecuer bureau, Arnhem project. Locating a public space between t raffic networks.
duced the n ot ion of the di agram as an assemblage o f situatio ns , Thi s reductive app roach excludes many possibilities in architec-
techniqu es, tactics, an d functionings m ade solid, he pu t the cure. While concep ts are formulated loud an d clear, archi tecture
emphasis m ore on th e stra tegies that form the diag ram than o n its itself wai ts passively, as it were , until it is poun ced upon by a con-
actual format. He iso lated the" explicit program" of the Panopti- cept .A representational technique implies that we converge on real-
con in the co ntext o f hi s concept of the repressive hypo thes is; the ity from a conceprnal po sition and in th at way fix the relationship
conce pt o f repression w as hi s rea l pr otagonist. Deleu ze reverses between idea and form, be twe en cont ent and struc ture .W hen form
the agenda and zo oms in on the configuration and working of th e and cont en t are supe rim posed in this way, a type emerges.This is th e
di agram itself. problem with an architecture that is based on a represen tational
Deleuze recommends th at Foucaul t be read not as a historian concept ; it cannot escape existing rypologies.
but as a new kind of mapmaker. For him , the diag ram is interestin g An instrumen talizin g technique such as the diagram delays typo -
not as a paradigmatic exam ple of a di sciplin ary technology bu t as logical fixation. An experimental or instrumental technique does
an abstract m achine that ..[m akes no] distinctio n wit hi n itsel f not procee d as literally from signs. If aspects such as routing , tim e,
between a plan e o f expressio n and a plan e of con ten r.vf Diagrams and organization are inc orporated into th e struc ture using an
are di stinguished from indexes, icons, and symbols. Their m ean - instrumemalizing technique, concepts external to arch itecture are
in gs are not fixed. "The diagrammatic or abstract m achine does no t introduced into it rather than super imposed. Instances of specific
function to represent , even some thing real, but rather constr uc ts a in terpretation, utili zatio n, percepti on, construc tion, and so on
real th at is yet to come." b Without this cr ucial interven tion, Pou- unfold and prolifer ate applica tions on vario us levels of abstraction ,
caul t's di agram quickly deflates under pressur e. The explici t pro- liber ating the design from a tenden cy toward fixed typologies.
grams selected by Foucault were never dir ectly or com pletely real - How this is don e is a trivial qu estion for many techn iqu es, but a
ized as ins titu tions because th e diagram is not a blueprint. It is not vital one for what we call an instrumentalizing technique.The role
the working drawing of an actual construction, recognizable in all of the diagram is to delay typo logy and advance a design by bring-
its details and with a proper scale. No condition will let itself be ing in external concepts in a specific shap e: as figure , not as ima ge
directly translated in to a fitting or completely corresponding con- or sign. How do we select , in sert, and in terpret diag rams ? This is
cep tu alizatio n of that condition. There will always be a gap where Deleuze's second diagram comes in, the di agram of the
between the two. For thi s same reason, concep ts suc h as repression pain ter tha t "is a violent chaos in relati on to figurative gtvens . but is
and liberation can never be directly applied to archit ecture. There a germ of rhythm in relation to the new order of th e painting." 7

4 Mkt>el Foucault, Discipline and Punish; The Birth of the Prison (NewYorl<; VinLlge Books, 1979).
5 Gilles Deleuee, AThousand Plateaus, t-ans. arra n Massuml (Minneapolis: University of MinneSOta Press,1987), 141.
c lbid.,14l .
1 ames Deleuzt, Francls Baton: The Logic of Smsatlon, trans. Daniel W. Smith (unpublished manuscript), 55.

Van Berkel & 80s Arthitectuur bureau, Amhem project. Traffic flowmap.
van Berkel & Bos
iL

instrumental izing I<l ein bottle

Whe re architecture seeks to resist building typology, painting con- it impo ssible for the hero , whose character and adventures are
fronts the perpetual fight against "cliches, cliches!" as Deleuze formed by thi s landscape, to evolve.The lands cape o f th e story, the
exclaims, seeming ly as desperate as any of us at the ludicrous black holes, and the character becom e one - nei ther completely
inevitability of trit eness. " No t only has th ere been a multiplicatio n subjective nor objective - in order for the story to m ove forward.
of images of every kind, around us and in our heads, but even the The narrative is constructed and read like a face, its in tensity, pas-
reactions against cliches are creatin g cliches: ' 8 Deleuze describes sion, and expressiveness fused into an in dissoluble composition.
how, to escape this, Bacon works ran dom smears into his paintings , Together, the black holes and the landscape form the abstract
blind m arks that insert into th e wo rk ano the r wo rld: a zone of the machine of factality.
Sahara in a mo uth , som ewhere else th e text ure of rhinoceros skin
foun d in a ph otograph. FACIALITY: THE OPERATIO NAL DIAGRA M
The selection and application of a diagram has a certain direct- The que stion is, how could this novelistic devic e to pro pel
ness. It involves th e in serti on of an element tha t con tains within things in to m oti on be m eanin gful in arc hitectu ral practice? Can
de nse inform ation some thin g th at we can latch onto, that distracts arc hi tecture also use the concept of black ho le/ surface to develop
us from spiraling into clich e. some thing th at is "s ugges tive." In an appara tus for tri ggering the effec t o f tran sitions in time ? On e
o f our cu rr ent projects is str uc tu red as a diagram of factaliry The
m aster plan for th e statio n area o f Arn he m consis ts of bu s termi-
nals, undergrou nd car parkin g, o ffice buildings, and a train sta-
tion , all parceled out to different ow ne rs . Previous urban de signs
for the lo cation have proved the imp ossibility of accommodatin g
all of the programmatic needs in a cu m ul ative manner. Our
research therefore focu ses on finding the holes, that is, the over -
lapping are as of shared int erests where on e layer of the land scape
falls int o another one. In th e Arnh em proj ect , pede strian mo ve-
m ent, which is th e one elemen t share d by every parry, forms the se
holes. Movement studi es form a corne rstone of the proposaL The
23.22 analysis of th e types o f m ovemen t includes the directions o f the
various tr ajectories, the ir pr ominence in relation to other forms
of transportation on th e site, their duration, th eir links to different
programs, and th eir in terco nnections.
Fro m the se motio n studies the station area gradually begins to
emerge as a landscape of interrelated movements.Th e hol es in thi s
lands cape create a system of sho rrcurs between pro grams, a hybr id
of a cen tralized system and an exhaustive pattern of all possible
Klein bottle d j ~ra m. connections .A year int o th e project, th e topology of relations finally
.. architecture , ins tead of a sm ear of paint we use technical manuals, demands the in troduction of a di agram that enc apsulates th e tech-
,~
,
~
,e~ ,.'"<z photocopies of paintings, or random images tha t we collect to sug -
gest a possible, virtual organization. These diagrams are essenti ally
nical / spatial organiza tion . A diagram is never a totally serendipi-
tous find ; as part of our searc h for a new way of understanding the
0
..
5- z station area, we had begun to study m athematical knots with the
0 e- tnfrastrucrural : they can always be read as map s of m ovem en ts, irre-
SO ~ spective o f their origins. The diagram is not selected on th e basis of ide a that a landscape wi th holes co uld also be perceived as a knot of
3 ;- c
'"
5
""'".---
> specific representa tional information. It is essen tially used as a pro- plan es. The diagrammatic ou tcome of this is a Klein bo ttle, whic h
=
e. il lifera tor in a pro cess of unfolding. connects the differen t levels o f th e statio n area in a herm etic w ay.
~

a ,.
I
\l
5- The Klein bottle is as d eeply ambiguous as it is com prehe nsive; it
=
5
3
~
z
c INSTRUMENTALI ZING TH E DIAGRAM stays continuous throughout th e spatial transformation that it
[ if
~
.- ,.n It is significant that Bacon did not app ly his diagrams to his m akes to go from being a surface to a ho le and back again . As th e
~
if
~
e-
]
~.
,
e-
.."
e-
paintings in an unmediared way, as in the collage, but rath er instr u-
me nealtzed. or effectuated , them in th e medium of pain t. At thi s
ultimate outco me of shared , m oti on -b ased relations, the Klein bot -
tle is an infra structural element in two respects: pragmatically and
l
~ z

. , ,...
-e
z
c

e-
0
' ~

'"
point the third m eaning of the diagram, which confirms and facili-
tates the previous two, eme rges : the triggering of th e abstract
ma chine.The abstract machine must be set in mo tion for the trans -
diagrammatically. As a concep t, the Klein bottle has com e about as a
resul t of studie s of shared , interactive, local conditions. As a dia -
gram, the Klein bot tle becomes an actor in the interactive pro cess as
~
c, V>
formative process to begin, but where doe s thi s mo tion originate? it begin s to evoke new, mo re specific meanings at, for instance,
~ "'" structural and spatial levels.
How is the ma chine triggered? What exactly is th e principle that
~ g,
,a: ].a "-ez
0
~ effectuates th e chang es and transfor m ations that we find in real life
and in real tim e? Furthermore, how can we is? late thi s principle
Focusing the de sign on shared concer ns means that relations
form the parameters of th e project, instead of the optimization of
E. n
, ~ and render it to the dimensions that make it possible to grasp and individual data .This generates new possibilities that no sin gle, indi-
~

5- 5- ,.
-e
use at wi ll? Deleuze offers an indication by po inting at the novelistic vidual in terest could have engendere d. The project is pragmatic in
0 ~ r-
0
5-
a 0
V>
0
treatment of tim e. Through Proust's novel run, for in stan ce, long the sense tha t it deal s em phatically with real social, econo mic, and
[ ~ ? lines of musicality, passion, picrur aljry and other narrative lines that public conditions, but , crucially, thi s is an int eractive pragmatism .

.a =~
0

F
e c
coil aro un d black holes wi thin the story. The black holes are a liter-
ary cons truction that enables change . If th ere were no black holes
Utili tarian needs are not met in a reactive way but are drawn to geth-
er and tran sformed , w hich inevitably leads to the renegotiation of
.- ==
~.
for the protagonist to fall in to , the landscape of the nar rative would the relations be tween the parties.This approach implicitly en dorses
3
be an unrealistically smooth and timel ess plan e, whic h would m ake a cer tain policy by centering on collective int erests. The project is

8 Ibid., 4'1.

van Berkel & Bos

 -- -- g --

"the real" neo-avant-garde

not an unprinci pled opportunist response to wha t is being asked, project - has been guided by a specific attitude toward the dia-
which in any case is imp ossible in a large-scale, multiclient project gram. This unfolding of a diagrammatic approach constitutes
of considerable com plexity. Neither, however, is there a precon- the neo-avant-garde's contribution to t he theory and practice
ceived id ea of urbarusm that precedes the speci ficities o f location , of an alternative mode of repetition, one founded not on
program, or users. Instead, the project eme rges interactively. resemblance and a return to orig ins but on modes of becoming
The abs tract m achine in motion is a discur sive ins trum en t; it is and t he emergence of difference. For these contempora ry
both a pr oduct and a generator of dialogi cal actions which serve to practices, t he diagram has achieved t he stat us th at since t he
bring for th new, unplanned. inte ractive meanings. Discourse Renaissance had been reserved for the drawing as the defining
theo ry introdu ces the notion that meanings are not transferr ed trait of the architectural discip line. W itho ut the burdens of
from one agent to ano ther but are constitu ted in th e in teraction virtuosity or rational ity, the diag ram is the product neither of
between the two agent s. likewise, the arch itectural project is creat- craft-art (t he single hand) nor of industrialized mechanization
ed in this in tersubjective field. Diagrams, rich in meaning. full of (corporate production): it is a function of the virtual. In this
potential movement, and loaded with structure . turn out to be way, it serves as a technique to overcome the classical <liberal
located in a specific place after all. Understood as activa tors that and modernist) antinomies of postwar formalism, not the least
help trigger construction s that are nei ther objective nor su bjective, of which is that between "the real"
neither before-theory no r after-theory. ne ither conceptual nor and "the representation."
opportun ist . the locatio n of the di agr am is in th e tnt ersubj ecuve. In extend ing and deviati ng the pro-
duration al, and opera tio nal field w here meanin gs are formed and ject of t he historica l avant-ga rde, con-
tran sformed int eractively. tempora ry practices have disp layed a
diagrammatic concept ion of the possi-
bilities advanced in t he work of their pr edeces-
sors. Thi s, too, is how Rosalind Kra uss has
THE DIAGRAMS OF MATTER come to frame and actua lize t he modernist
R. E. Somol project: t hat is, exactly via t he diagram,
by rewri t ing the dual programs
of modernist opticality and its
23.23
material discontents through an
The diagram ... never functions in order to represent a persist- writing" of the structuralist Klein diagram
ing world but produces a new kind of reality. a new model of and Lacan's L schema, respectively. "It
truth. struck me one day," Krauss recalls, "that it
- Gilles Deleuze. Fourcuh (35) was more inte resting to t hink of modernism as a
grap h or table t han as a hi st ory ... that t here was
In react ion t o a presumed preoccupati on w ith issues of repre- something to be gai ned from explori ng its logic as a topog ra-
sentation and image over t he last forty years, professional phy rath er tha n fo llowing the t hreads of it as a narr at ive.,,3
organizations and publicat ions within arc hitect ure, along with I< rauss, of course, is in many ways a fel low t ravele r to t he
vario us educat ional institutions and academics, have recent ly arch itectura l neo-avant-garde, and her diagrammatic under-
come to call for '8 return to "the real, " variously defined as a standing of modernism is isomorp hic with the mapping of t he
return to marketab le office ski lls, to essential typologies, to modernist avant-ca rde by the contemporary vanguards, as is
fu ll-scale fab r ication, to building tectonics, to t he "everyday," her specific pr eoccupat ion with diagrams as a device of t hat
or to a presumably stable referent such as the community or repet iti on, employed in a projective, and not simply analytical
the environment. In this context, even Robert Venturi - or descriptive, manner. The nonnarrative aspect of the dia-
arguably the first "Information architect" of the postwar peri- gram suggests, too, that it is a postrepresentational device.
od - has come to protest that he and his partners have been Still, there have been several recent attempts to revise mod-
misunderstood: "We did not promote a theory of architecture ernism from a narratologica l basis, an orientation which
that substitutes itself for architecture, replacing arch itecture returns to architecture's imag ined reality principle. Two of
with arconcepture and bui ldings with diagrams and words .,, 1 t hese revisions develop from either a technol ogi cal (tectonic)
Nevert heless, it is precisely "diaqrarns and words" that have or aesthetic (minirna list) extension of modern ism, and t heir
been central to Venturi Scott Brown's production and t hat is development can be seen in disti nct contrast to t he diagram-
const it ut ive of t he neo-avant-ga rde project in general. mat ic swerve imp li cit in t he var ious mis readings offe red by
Exist ing more as a series of documents than monuments, an th e neo-avant- gar des.
image bank of late-20th-centu ry architecture would inevitably In the writings of hist orians and critics such as David
reveal t his secret histo ry, a st range assemblage of formu las, Leatherbarrow and Kenneth Frampton, the tectonic reconstruc-
cartoons, and diagrams: machines both abstract and concrete. tio n of the architectural discipline is directed against t he seem-
Pieces of t his collection sometimes simply are "found" and ingly exclusive concern with image or style that they perceive
other tim es "assisted" or manipulated; a partial list of this equally in postmodern-historicist and neo-avant-garde work.
invis ible canon includes the nine-square and the panopticon, Largely associating the former with an excess of fashion or
the domino and the skyscraper, the face/vase and duck/shed, scenography and the latter with the inappropriate importation of
the paranoid-critical diag ram and the fold, dance notation and external theories and sources, Leatherbarrow and Frampton
cinemat ic storyboa rds, maternal bodies and bachelor desire to ret urn architectu re to its proper historical concerns,
machines. 2 The trajectory of the Am erica n neo-avant-gar de - which would resist tendencies t oward bot h contemporary con-
and their atte mpt since t he 19 60s t o renovate t he moderni st sumption and experimenta l projecti on. They each contend that
1 RO Dert Vtnt uri, Iconogra phy and Electrcnlcs upon a Gene ric An;hitectur e (Ca mbridge, MassaChusetts: MrT P ~5S, 19 9 6), 268 .
2 The latter two moving from Ventur l', woma n-sign hybr id to Koolhaas' s skyscra per, pa rt icularly in th e form of t he Downtown Athlet ic Club, which he has descri bed as "8 maChine fo r metr opolita n baChe lors w-es e ult imate 'peak'
condit ion has lifted them Deyond the reach of ferti le brides." Rem Koolhaas, Delirio us New York (New Yorlc: Oxford University Press, 1978), 133 .
3 Rosallnd Krauss, The Opt ical Unconscious (Cambridge, Massa chusetts : MIT P ress, 19'H), 13.

Somol
 diagrammatic practice
ar chitectur e is fu ndamental ly defined by a t ri ad of sim ilar
t er ms: for Frampton, typology (spatial or der), t opogra-
phy (site or context), and t ect oni cs (construction); for
Leat he rba rr ow, spatial enc losure, site, a nd rnater iats. f
For Leathe rba rr ow, th ese "topics" (topoi) are
decidabl e " places" th at ord er both arc hitectur-
al production and classica l rhetori c, w it h
the value being th at t hey are " perm a-
nent," " me mo ra ble, /I a nd p romot e both
stab ili ty and i dent ity; t hey lend t hem-
selves precisely to linear arg umentation
and communal agreement. Frampton
imagines " t ecto nics" as a bal ance or
synth esis of a r hetori cal repr esent ati on
(e.q., the " phenom ena l"
ern ism) and litera l constructi on (e.q., t he
auth entici ty of modernis m), with th e f or mer cast
as a now limited ex p ressio n of t he latte r, an ex pression
of t he "life-wo rld," whe re na rrative is in t he detail s.
This classi cal- Enlightenment reconstructi on of mod-
ernism - one where representational excess has been con-
fin ed with in pr oper limits to express the upri ght and
aut hentic - couid hardl y be f urther fro m t he repetiti on of
modernism provi ded by t he neo-avant- gar de, whose projects
23.24 have consistent ly suspended any possibility f or th e unmediat ed
and fu ll presence of an integrated subject, stable place, proper
enclosure (e.q., inside-outside relations), or genuine materi -
als. As an alt ernat ive to tectonic s, wh ich attempts to subsume
a proje ct ed opposit ion between rhetor ic and construction, a
diagram mati cs may be understood as the proliferation of neo-
avant -qard e initiat ives, a hybrid of the early investigatio n of
I
signifyi ng regimes wi t h the lat er pursuit of new insti t ution al
arrangements. As opposed to t he tecton ic vision of archite c-
t ure as the legib le sign of constru ction , which is intended to
resist its potent ial stat us as either commodity or cultural spec-
ulation, a diagrammatic practi ce (ftow ing around obstac les
yet resist ing nothi ng) muitipi ies signify ing processes (techno-
logica l as well as li nguisti c) within a plenum of matter, recog-
nizing signs as complicit in the const ruction of specific social
I machines. The role of t he architect in this model is dissipat ed,
as he or she becomes an or ganizer and channeler of informa-
I tio n, since rather than being limit ed to the decidedl y vert ical-
th e cont rol and resistance of gr avity, the calculat ion of st at ics
and load - "forces" emerge as horizonta l a nd nonspecific
(economic, political, cultural, local, and global). I t is by
means of t he diagram that t hese new matte rs and activities,
along with th eir diverse ecologies and multipl icities, can be
made visible and related.
Ultimately, the "rnachinic" of the diagram precedes the
machine of th e tecto nic. As Deleuze w r ites:
[M]achines are social before being technical. . . . [lln order for
it to beeven possible, the tools or material machines haveto be
chosen first of all by a diagram and taken up by assemblages.
Historians have often been confronted by this requirement: the
so-called hoplite armies are part of the phalanx assemb lage; the
stirrup is selected by the diagram of feuda lism; the burrowing
stick, the hoe and the plough do not form a linear progression
but refer respectively to collective machines whichvarywith the
density of thepopulation and the time of thefallow. . . . Technol-
ogy is therefore social before it is technical. 5
-..- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - --
4 For Frilmpton, see " Reflections on the AlJtonorny of Architectl.lre; A Crit iq ue of Contempora ry Pr oduct ion," in Out of Si te: A Sotiill Critic ism of Architecture, ee. Dil ne
Culture: The Poetics of Constr uction In Nineteenth and Twentiet h Century Architectur e (Ca mbridge, Massach usetts : MIT Press, 1995). Against the latt er, t he present st udy cou ld be ca lled
leat herba rrQw, see The Roots Qf ArchitKtura l Invent ion: Site, Enclosure and Materials (Cambr idge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), and , wit h Mcshen Mostafavi , On Wea the ring: The Life of Buildings in Time (Cam br idge, Massa
cmsetts: MJT Press, 1'193). For a criti que of thes e positi ons a long similar lines to those bein g developed here, see Greg lynn, "Blobs lor, Why Tectonics is SqlJa re a nd Topology is Groovy)," ANY 14 (1'190), 58-61.
5 GiUesDeleuze, Fouta lJlt, t rans. Sdn Hand IMinneapo lis: University of Minnesota Press, 1'188J, 3'1-40.
SomaI
..
nine-square problem
W ith in th e t raj ector y of postwar f or mal ism - t hough one
can equal ly draw f rom the legacy of f uncti onali sm - th is phe-
nomenon can be observed, for instance, in the case of the nine-
square pro blem. The diag ram (or concrete machin e) of t he
nine-square was necessary before t he essent ial definitio n of
modern ism as the independent arti culation of space and st r uc-
tu re was conceivable, even though thi s was techni cally possib le
by the mid -19th cent ury, or t hat t he geometri c or ganization of
the nine-squar e was itself at least four hundred years old. The
nine-square diag ram provid ed a discip line for postwar archi-
tect ure - a discipline both discursive and nondiscursive, criti-
cal and visual - enabii ng the inst it utio nalizatio n of academic
programs and a 3D -yea r histo ry of archit ect ura l proje ct s, f rom
Vent ur i's first scheme for his mother' s house (1959), through
of post mod- t he ear ly house series of both J ohn Hejduk and Peter Eisen-
man, as well as t he La Vi llette fol li es of Bernard Tschumi, to
the ultimate collapse and inversion of th e diagram with
Rem Koolhaas's entry for t he Nat ional Li brary of
France (1989 ), Wh ile t he pr oduct ion of t he neo-
avant- garde operated with in the nine-square
diagr am in order to undo its basic values and
pri ncip les (as opposed to t he postm odern his-
to ricist s whose work only confi r med t he
framework), there were crit-
ics of th is pedagogi cal and
practi cal paradigm who more direct ly aban-
doned thi s diagram (and all others) ent i rely, a
partial critique of the mechanism that ultimately
invited the " ret urn to the real" program.
The init ial power and beauty of the nine-square
probiem was its immater iali ty, its existence without
function, site, client, body, and, to some extent, scale. Thus,
as a way both to specify and diversify design interests, an inves-
tig at ion into the abstract language or geometry of f orm was
increasingly replaced, since t he mid-197Ds, by its historical
alternates: i.e., an emphasis on materials (or tectonics) and nar-
rat ive (or program). As implemented in the design studio, these
partial critiques deployed new techniques (e.q., f rom collage,
performance, video, etc.), appropriated new discourses (from
post-cubist-aesthetics t o aiternate phil osophical, politi cal, and
scient ific models), celebrated both base and hi-tech materia ls
(metal, wax, found objects and readymades, television screens
and VDTs), and even challenged the "p lace" and format of t he
arch itecture review itself (i.e., aga inst the " neutra lity" of the
pin-up space wall, projects would migrate outdoors and in situ,
ultima tely into the virtual space of t he screen). Those who have
recently call ed for a return t o the real, but who are gener all y
less committed to design, have been able t o absorb many of
these strateg ies of partial critique, as they had always been
motivated by a reinvestment in the supposed " real" substance of
arch itecture: namely, materia ls and program.
Despite these professional, social, and technological cri-
tiques, it is possib le to accelerate the postwar formal project
through an alternativ e logic impli cit (yet unarti culat ed) at t he
core of th e nine-square problem itself, one which might be
called diagrammatic. From this perspective, form can no
longer be imagin ed simply as a sta t ic object or naively under-
st ood as part of a bina ry opposit ion where it s other t erm could
be variously posited as function, matte r, content, or even the
real. This begins to point towar d a new program for wo rk on
form - what might be referred t o as form-en -abyme - an inf er-
Gh i r~ rtlo tseetue: Bly Press, 19 91) and SWdies in Tectonic
"Stud ie~ in Diagrammil t lc Culture ." For
 form-en-abyme
mal project perhaps, and one that reli es on t he initia l prop of
the diagram. This provisional pr oj ect begins with in our cur rent
impasse, wh ich includes t he impossibility of ret urn ing to th e
canonic modernist model of the nine-square and the imp ossi-
- bility of an enthusiastic embrace of its partia l critiques. Rat her
than wish for a prerepresentat iona l consummatio n with an
unmediated " reality," it pursues a postrepr esentati onal poli-
,~
t ics of design and educat ion. For example, again st t he call f or
tecton ic sincer ity and aut hentic ity, t his diag rammatic pract ice
points to the vi rtua l, whic h John Raj chman descr ibes as "a
realit y of whic h we do not yet possess t he conceot.v> In other
words, whereas to dat e t he most rigo rous f ormal isms have
requi red the systemat ic elimination of everyth ing considered
"othe r" (st ructure, prog ra m, site, materia ls, etc.), the ques-
t ion of form today may only be broached by t he simultaneous
and promi scuous solicitation and affi liation of those concerns.
This project condenses and channels a set of forces and
collect ives, some of which may even be (f rom the point
of view of current spatia l politics) impossibilities.
It attempts continua lly to restate and subvert
dominant oppositiona l terms and to suggest the
plasticity of formal-material instances, to reg-
ister that things can become other than they
presently appear to be.
This surprise of otherness, or possibility for the
event, has been the central element of the
design process for the neo-avant-garde . As Gre-
gory UImer suggests in his call for a new peda-
gogy appropriate to the techniques and forms of
knowledge enabled by electronic media, this possibil-
ity involves a heuretics of invention rather than a
hermeneutics of interpretation. A popular instance or
emblem of this heuretic moment can be seen in the movie
Bugsy, in which Warren Beatty, after randomly stopping the
car in a fit of anger, wanders into the desert and has an
epiphany by registering a diverse range of forces, precisely the
kind of "pre-formed" matters and activities that would be col-
lected in the diagram. Th is suggests t hat form is not the static
(and vert ical) repetition of a proper or ig in model (like t he nine-
square) but a horizontal repetition, a provis ional moment in
the condensation of a heterogeneous li ne. The diagram regis-
ters new forces and infrastructures while mak ing evident a
teeming virtuality in what cur rently appears to be only a barre n
desert. Thus, while opposed to t he domesticated and classicized
calls for "eco-humanisrn" or reductive models of "communi-
ty," the pursuit of form-en-abyme is not the enemy of the
social, but simply opens alternative ways to solicit ecologica l
f orces and coll ect ive arrangements.
To rei magine institutional and discipl inary models - which
is bot h a possible and desirable project from a postrepresen-
tationa l or diag rammatic position - requires an alternative
way to thi nk repet ition, a view that conceives repetition as
becom ing oth er, as a swerve, rather than as t he static repro-
duction of a proper or ig inal. As U Imer notes, \\\[EJureka'
results from a repetitio n between quot id ian and disciplinary
experience. fl 7 This is obviously true in those infamous "eureka"
stories - Newton under the apple tree, Archimedes in t he
bathtub, even Jacq ues Derrida shopping for a postcard. In
t his way, designi ng (either an arc hitectural project, t ext , or
studio) fi rst means enabl ing the possibility of an accident; this
is the predesign of the diagram, which arranges the scenario
6Jo h~ R~jc h m~ n, Philosophical Events: Essays ofthe '80 s (New York: Columbia University Press, 19 '11), 16 0.
7 Gregory Ulmer, Heuretir.s: The Logic oOnv ent ion (Baltimore: The Joh ns Hopklru University Press, 1994), 141.
mise en abyme
in which t he sewing machin e and t he umbrella can meet to a
specific and pointe d effect.
For Derrid a and, f oll owing him , Ulme r, t he mise en abyme
(or "p laci nq int o th e abyss") is a fi gur e of dif fe rence, of infi -
nit e regr ess, and is form all y associate d with min iatu ri zation
and repetition, perhaps one could even say "fracta li zation ."
In looki ng f or a way t o recuperat e (at least in a min or idi om)
the di scip linar y coherence pr ovid ed at one point by the nine-
square, one mig ht look t o t he Sierpinsk i carpet, a mathemat i-
cal exercise (li ke t he Ideal Vil la) th at is constructe d by
removing th e cente r ni nth of a nine-square, t hen removi ng the
scaled cente rs of each of t he remainin g eight, ad infinitu m.
The th ree-dime nsional version of t his exerc ise in void ing, t he
Menger sponge, prod uces a solid lookin g lattice, t he surface
area of which approac hes infinity as its volume approaches
zero. Beyond being a means to activate the gap or void, t his
diagram can serve as a contempora ry disciplinary response to
t he modern invention of space, which was reified in the nine-
square problem, an organization that is all surface and event
rather than space and struct ure. Unlike t he ideal Palladian
nine-square, this is no longer a typo logy problem but one of
topology - a repetition as difference rather t han repetition as
identity. This particular citation of the Menger sponge is not
meant to priv ilege the appropriation of this counter-nine-
square as the new universal and exclus ive problem. Rather, it
is intended to suggest t hat the organizing systems of design
23.25
practice need to be reinvented and that it is possible to stimu-
late a continual argument over the terms of the discip line by
placing prevailing oppositions in a state of suspension, initial-
ly through as simple and condensed a schematic as the dia-
gram. In this instance, t he project of form-en-abyme (perhaps
a subcategory of the informs) perverse ly confirms the nine-
square (through a kind of repetit ion twice over - by both its
initial citation and processes of iterat ive sampling - as well as
being truer to t he prob lem than could be imagined by its
authors) while at t he same t ime subverti ng its limited logics,
pr inciples, terms, and effects. In retrospect, a diagram or
activ ity of this kind can be seen to account precisely for 1<001-
haas' s Nat ional Li brary project. Here the desired effect or
criter ia of evaluation is t he surprise that results from a "fa lse
positivism." in whic h cont radictory
evaluative categories are
init iall y confirmed, one
effect of the hyper-Iogic
both and neith er.
If there has been a tectonic
reconstruction of moderni sm that
has often attemp ted to domesticate
the effects of work like t hat of 1<001-
haas, there has also been a parallel
aesthetic-minima l ist
reconstruction of mod-
ern ism that attempts a too li tera l
(tho ugh not "{ iteralist") identification
of these same models with what seems
simp ly to be a monolithic "box," a retu rn to
the purported cla r ity and simp le elegance of
modernis m against t he "tortured" forms of postmodernism
and deconstructiv ism. Yet this construction of minimal ism -
often advanced by t hose associated with the work, e.q., of
Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron - is a ftawed account
Som ol
 minimalism "pure critics"

of the projec t of post-optica l art in the lat e 1960s. As
.:~
............ underst ood by an early critic of minimal ism, Michael
Fried, the work that he referred to as "Iite ralist"
had little to do with an aesthetic preference for
regular or ideal geometries. Instead, minimal-
ism's seriousness is vouched for by the fact that
it is in relation both to modernist
painting and moderni st sculpture
that litera list art defines or locates the posi-
tion it seeks to occupy. Specifically, literalist art
conceives of itself as neither one nor the other; it
aspires to establish itself as an independent art on a
footing with either.
What becomes evident from Fried's description, perhaps
unwittingly, is that the "between " position minimalism stakes
out operates exactly as an instance of the both and neither.
Against the modern ist taxonomy of painting versus sculpture,
minimal ism's between can initially be framed as coming out of
either trajectory, thereby undermining both and suspending a
key modernist opposition. Advancing a performative or the-
atrical attitude toward space, one where form is understood as
the continqent fallout of a force or operation combined with
certain material possibilities (and explicitly not about express-
ing timeless essentials of either construction or aesthetics),
minimalist practices are diaqrammatic in several senses, and pro-
23.26 vide an early instanceof working within and against a categorical
system. Minimalism's repetition of modernism's categories is
horizontal in that it cannot be said to confirm the models of
either painting or sculpture, the two media whose modernist
definition and parity are always meant to point back, vertical-
ly, to an ideal origin: "Art." In contrast to high modern ism's
"only that which is alike differs," minimal ism activates the
namely that between design and criticism, for m and word . This
emergence of the hyb rid "architect-critic" - a figure, or new
professional role, devised to involve t he borders of the visible
and the articu lable - has been accompanied by a diverse series
of diagrams, moving from the "vertical" diagrams of the nine-
square and the panopticon (i.e. , "architecture as wall"), to
more recent horizontal or surface diagrams. Alongside these
practices, however, there have remained a series of "pure crit-
ics" who, not surprising ly, have been more skeptical about the
neo-avant-garde's version of repetition and role crossing. For
instance, in t he final pages of several wo rks written over the
last 35 years, the th ree most import ant critics of the postwar
period - the li beral formalist Colin Rowe, the ratio nal technol-
ogist Reyner Banham, and the critical Marxist Manfredo
Tafuri - all suggest the near universal dismissal of the neo-
avant-garde with respect to the historical avant-garde. While
their differences relative to the question of "Architecture" are
interesting to catalogue - Rowe desperate to save it , Banham
ecstatic to abandon it, and Tafuri anxious to eulogize it - all
three exhibit a curious ly simi lar ambiguity or host ili ty with
regard to t he neo-avant-ga rde project. Regardl ess of whether
their allegiances are to technology (Banham), the socio-pol it i-
cal (Tafuri), or physical form (Rowe), each accuses neo-avant-
garde production, ultimately, of a failure to engage the real
and of a too intimate connection to discourse, to words and
images. It may be more economical, however, to suggest that
the contemporary period has
witnessed not the cris is of
architecture but, at least in
part, the crisis of criticism . In
other words, the neo-avant -
garde has produced a materi-

I ~
'"
....
"only differences are alike," and consequently its horizontal
("one thing after another ") hybrid can only be dismissed as a
al response to t hese critiques
that resides exactly in their
~ e simulacral collapse into theater or obiecthocd by modernist elucidation of diagrammatic
'! n '"
Q critics like Fried. procedure: after words comes
""
&. 3:
The crossing of the disciplinary with the everyday - one not a li mited constr uctio n of
~ ].
Q
r-
~
aspect of the "improper" repetition of form -en-abyme - t he real but t he diagram. The
-::;
e-
~ s
"
~ ,. '" requires educators and designers to mobilize the "eureka" of diag ram animates not only
0, c
surprise and th e event. I n t he end, th is cal l f or a new discipl i- the unconscious of Rowe's
if .... nary model promotes architecture as the f raming and posing of mathemat ics, but also the
[ ~ '"
= ~
~
problems rather t han as the defin it ion of solut ions. The argu- technological and pol itical-
~:;; ~
'"
z
ment for a diagrammatic project takes it as axiomatic that social unconscious. While
5 ... every design project needs to take up anew the issue of what traditional modes of criti-
.:; 2-
> "....
constitutes architecture both as a disciplinary and a social cism, in their distinctly ana-
~ '"
Q

question, to suspend and rearrange ruling oppositions and lyt ical orientations, rely on
~ ...'" hierarchies currently in operation, to promote design projects "choices, /I "dialectics," and
~
~
[ and processes that cannot simply be inferred from context or "oppositions," the diagrams
~ -g. reasoning but t hat ret rospectively transf or m t heir very con- of the neo-avant-g arde oper-
~
~
~.
.g.
..
0
~
texts, social and intellectua l. Toward this end, one mig ht begin ate to collapse th ose duali -
~ to understand t he connection of academia and t he profession ti es. They positively exhaust

e
n
e-
if
~
(or criticism and design) as a kind of catastrophe curve, whic h the t riad of fo rmal, techni-
> is the same diagram that Ulmer has borrowed to explain the cal, and pol itical critiques
~
c,
..~ event of laughter. Thus, rather than trying to close or bridge through the material solici-

~
So the presumed chasm between such alternative realities, widen- tation and projection of the
ing the gap may be the way to instigate the most productive informe, by means of t he
"'~ '"
~

~
moments of collapse. flows and instabi liti es of the
2- 5"
r As one contribution to this possiblearrayof new institution- machinic, and via the pl astic
~ al forms, various generations among the neo-avant-garde have relat i ons of t he virtual - t he
\1
~ endeavored over the last four decades t o dismantle and recon- multiple devices and effects,
figure one of the most intractable of modernist oppositio ns, t hat is, of t he diagrammatic.
-.-

Samal

L
 parti
DIAGRAM: AN ORIGINAL SCENE DF WRmNG
Peter Eisenman
As in all peri od s of suppo sed change, new ico ns are thrust for -
ward as beacon s of illumination. So it is with the idea of the
J
diagram.While it cm be argued that the diagram is as old as archi -
tecture itself, many see its initial emergence in RudolfWirtkower 's
use of the nin e-squar e grid in the late 19405 to describe Palladian
villas.Thi s pedigree continued in the nine-square pr oblem as p rac-
ticed in the American architectural academy of the late 195 Os and
early ' 60s, a practice seen then as an antidote to the bubble dia-
gramming of Bauhaus functio nalism rampant at Harvard in the
late 19405 and the pacti of the French academy that was still in
vogue at several East Coast schools well int o the late 1960 s. As a
I ,
classical architect ural diagram . the pcrti was embodied with a set
of pre existent values such as symmetry, th e marche, and poche, w hic h
constituted the bases ofits organizing strategy.The bubble diagram
attempted to erase all vestiges of an embodied academicism in the
parti. In so doing, it also erased the abstract geome tric con tent of
the nine-square.
Generically, a diagram is a graphic shorthand. Though it is an
ideogram, it is not necessarily an abstraction. It is a represen tation
ofsomething in that it is not the thing itself In this sense, it cannot
help but be embodied . It can never be value- or m eaning-free,
even when it attem pts to express relationships of forma tion and
their processes. At the same time , a diagram is neither a structure
nor an abstraction of structure. While it explains relationships in
an archi tectural object, it is not isomorphic with it.
In architecture the diagram is hi storically understood in two
ways: as an explanatory or analytical device and as a generative
device. Although it is often argued that the diagram is a postrepre-
sentational form, in instances of explanation and analysis the dia-
gram is a form of representation . in an analytical role, the diagram
represents in a differen t way than a sketch or a plan of a building.
For example, a diagram attempts to un cover latent structures of
organization, like the nin e-square , even though it is not a conven-
tional structure itself As a generative device in a process of design ,
the diagram is also a form of representation. But unlike traditional
forms of representation, as a generator a diagram is a mediati on
between a palpable object, a real building, and what can be called
archi tecture's interiority. d early this gen erative role is different
from the diagram in other discourses, such as in the parsing of a
sentence or a mathematical or scien tific equation , whe re the dia-
gram may reveal latent structures but does not explain how those
structures generate other sentences or equations. Equally, in an
architectural context, we mu st ask wh at the difference is between a
diagram and a geometric schem e. In other words, whe n do nine
squares become a diagram and thus more than mere geome try?
w trtkower's nine -square drawin gs of Palladto's project s are dia-
gtam s in that they help to explain Palladto's work, bu t they do not
show how Palladio worke d. Palladio and Serlio had geometric
schema in mind, sometim es explicit and som etimes implicit,
which they drew in their pro jects.The notations of dimension s on
the Palladian plans do not corre spond to the actual pro ject but to
the diagram that is never drawn . A diagram im plicit in the work is
often never mad e explicit . For example, as Kurt Forsrer has not ed,
..
I in the earliest parchment drawings in architecture, a diagrammatic
schem a is often drawn or etched into the surface with a stylus
I witho ut bein g inked.The later inking of the actual pro ject over this
I
interiority
then becomes a superposition of a diagrammatic trace. In m any of
these drawings - from late Gothic archit ecture to the Renaissance
- the overlay doe s not actually take all of the diagrammatic
imprint, only partial traces of it. The quality of the ink on the page
change s when it runs over the diagram from when it is actually
part of the plan of the building.Thu s, there is a histor y of an archi-
tecture of traces, of invisible lin es and diagrams that only become
visible through various means.These lin es are the trace of an inter-
mediary condition, that is, the diagram, betwe en what can be
called the anrerioriry and the interiori ry of architecture. the sum-
mati on of its history as well as the projects that could exist as
indexed in the traces and the actual building.
Reacting against an understanding of the diagram as what was
thou ght to be an apparently essentialist tool, a new genera tion,
fueled by new comput er techniqu es and a desire to escape their
perceived oedipal anxieties - the gen eration of their mentors - is
today proposing a new theory of the diagram based partly on
Gilles Deleuze's interpretation of Fou cault's recasting of the dia-
gram as "a series of machini c forces," and partly on th eir own
cybernetic hallucinations. In their polemic , the diagram has
becom e a key word in the interpretation of the new.They challenge
bot h th e traditional geome tric bases of the diagram and the sedi-
merited history of archit ectur e, and in so doing que stion any rela-
tion ofthe diagram to architecture'~ anteriority or interiority.
R.E. Somol follows Deleuze in situating these ideas of the di a-
gram in architec ture. For Somol, diagrams are any kind ofexplana-
23.27
tory abstracti on : "cartoons , formulas, diagrams, machines, both Diagrams for tht Stattn Island Institute of Artsand Sciencesat the SL George
FerryTerminal, NewYorll.
abstract and concrete. Sometimes they are sim ply found and
other tim es they are manipulated." A par tial list of what Somo l
labels as previo us diagrams includes the nine -squar e, the Panop -
tlcon , the Dom -in o, the skyscraper, the duck and the deco rated
shed , the fold , and bach elor machines. Somo1 says that h e is
searching for an alternative way of dealing with archi tectur e's
history, ..one not founded on resemblance and return to origins
but on m od es of becoming an eme rgence of differen ce." The
prob lem with thi s idea of th e diagram as matter, as flow s and
forces, is that it is indifferent to th e relation ship of the diagram
to architecture's interiorit y, and in part icular to thr ee conditions
un ique to archi tecture : ( 1) architecture 's com pliance wit h th e
me taphysics of prese nce; (2) the already mo tivated con dition of
the sign in archi tectu re, and (3) the n ecessary relationship of
architecture to a desiring subject.
Somo l's argument for a diagram m atic project takes as
axiomatic th at ever y design project, w hether in p ractice or in
th e un iver sity, needs to take up anew th e issue of what consti-
tutes the di scipline or, in other words , that architecture both as a
di scipline and a social project needs to suspen d and rearrange
ruling oppositions and hierarchies currently in operation. This
would su ggest th at design projects and processes cannot sim ply
Eisenman
 repression
be derived from their co ntexts, but rather must tran sform their
very social an d int ellectual conte xts. In this sense. Somo l's dia -
grammatic pro cess, as a ma chin ic environment. is already given
as a social project. That is, it is not abstract or autono mo us but
rath er pre sumes that archi tectu re alread y contains in its being
(Le., its interio rity) the condition of the social.
If in the mtertorttv of architecture the re is a po tentially
autono mous condition that is not already socialized or which is
not already historicized, on e which can be distilled from a his-
toricized and socialized interiority. th en all diagrams do n ot
nece ssarily take up new disciplinary and social issues. Rather,
diagrams can be used to op en up such an autonomy to under-
stand its n atur e. If this autonomy can be defined as sin gular
because of the relationship in archi tecture of sign and signified ,
and if singularity is also a rep etitio n of difference, then there
mus t be some existing condition of architectu re in order for it
to be repeated differently. This existin g condition can be called
archi tectu re's interiority. Wh en there is no int eriority, that is, if
there is no relationship of interiori ty to the diag ram , there is no
singularity which defines architecture .
If arch itecture's inte riori ty can be said to exist as a singular as
opposed to a dialectical manifestation of a sign that con tain s its
own Sign ified, the moti vation of the sign is alread y internalized
and thu s au tonomo us. Yet if the .diagram is already social, as
Somo l sug gests, thi s defini tion immediately lnstoncizes aut on -
23.28 omy.The not ion of the diagram being proposed here attemp ts to
I
overcome the histori cization of the autonom y of architecture,
tha t is, the already motivated nature of architecture's sign.
In this con text, the relation of the diagram to architectur e's
in terio ri ty is crucial. Ioucault's und erstandi ng of an archive as
the historical record of a culture, and of an arch aeology as the
scientific study of archival material, can be translated as archi-
tectu re's anter iority and interi ority. By their very nature the se
cann ot be constituted merely by unformed matter, as Somol
suggests, but in fact already contain presence, motivated signs ,
and a psychical desire for delineation by the subject of bo th
gro und an d figu re. A di agram ofins tability, of ma tter and flow s,
mu st find a w ay to accommodate these conce rns specific to
arc hi tecture. In thi s context, ano ther idea of the diagram can be
proposed, which begins from jacques Derrtda's idea of writing
as an openin g of pu re presenc e.
For Derrtda. wr itin g is initi ally a condition of repressed mem-
ory.The repression of writing is also the repression of that which
thr eatens presence, and since architecture is the sine quo non of the
metaphysics of presence, anything that thr eatens presence would
be presume d to be repressed in architectur e's in teriori ty. In this
sense, archi tecture's anteriority and int eriority can be seen as a
sum of repressions. While all discourses , Derrida would argue ,
contain repr essions that in turn contain an alternati ve interior rep-
-.-.-.- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - _ : . . . . - _ - - - - - - - - - - - - ---:
Eisenman
<-=~-=::=--=--=---;;;=----;;-----=--------=-----_.
permanent traces
resemation, architecture must be seen as a special case because of
its privilegin g of presence. If Derrida is correct, there is already
given in the interiority of archit ecture a form of represent ation ,
perhaps as the becoming unmotivated of the architectural sign.
This repressed form of representation is not only interio r to archi-
tecture but anterior to it. It is this representation in architecture
that could also be called a writing. How this writing enters into the
diagram becomes a critical issue for archi tecture .
One way that memo ry overcomes forgetting is thro ugh
mn emonic devices. Written lists are a form of mn emonic device,
but one that is graphic and literal; they do not represent or contain
a trace. In architecture, literal notations can produc e a plan but they
have nothing to do with the diagram , because a plan is a literal
mne monic device. A plan is a finite condition of writing, bu t the
traces of writing suggest many different plans. It is the idea of the
trace that is impor tant for any con cept of the diagram , because
unlike a plan, traces are neither fully structu ral presences nor
motivated signs. Rather, traces suggest potential relationships,
whic h may both generate and emerge from previou sly repressed
or unarttculated figures. But traces in themselves are not genera -
tive, transforrnative, or even critical.A diagrammatic mechanism is
needed that will allow for both preservation and erasure, that at
the same tim e can open up repression to the possibilit y of generat-
in g alternati ve architectural figures which con rain these traces.
Derrid a says, "We need a single apparatu s that contains a dou -
ble system , a perpetually available innocence and an infinite
reserve of traces." A diagram in archite cture can also be seen as a
dou ble system that op erates as a wr iting both from the anteri ority
and the interior ity ofarchitec ture as well as from the requirements
of a specific project. The diagram acts like a surface that receives
inscripti ons from the memo ry of that which does not yet exist;
that is, of the potential archi tectural object.This provides traces of
function, enclosure, meaning, and site from the specific condi-
tion s.These traces interact with traces from the interiority and the
anteriority to form a superposition of traces. This superposition
provides a means for looking at a specific projec t that is neither
condemned to the literal history of the anterio rity of architecture,
nor limited by facts - the reality of the particular site, prog ram ,
context, or meaning of the pro ject itself Both the specific project
and its interiority can be written onto the surface of a diagram that
has the infinit e possibility of inscribing impermanent marks and
permanent traces.With out these permanent traces there is no pos-
sibility of wri ting in the archite ctural object itself.
If archi tectur e's interiority is a possible con dition of an
already wri tten , then Derrtda's use of Freud's double-sided Mys-
tic Wri ting Pad could be one mo del for describing a conception
of a diagram different from both the traditional one in classical
architecture and the on e proposed by Somcl . Neither of these
consider in any detail architecture's prob lem with the meta -
--
~
I
Mystic Writing Pad
physics of presen ce. the unmocvadng of th e sign , or the psychi -
cal problem of repression in both th e in ter iorit y of arc hitect ure
and in the sub ject.The analogy of the Mystic Writing Pad is use-
ful because the speci fic conditions of site and the ante rio rity of
architecture both constitute a form of psychi cal repression.
h
The Mystic Writing Pad, as prop osed in Freud's analogy, con-
sists of three layers: the ou ter layer or surface where the original
writing takes place, a middle layer on which the writing is tran-
scribed, and, underneath, a tablet of impressionable material.
Using a stylus. one wri tes on the top surface. Because of the surface
under neath, th e top sur face reveals a series of black lines.When the
top surface is lifted from the other two, the black lines disappear.
W hat remains is the inscription on the bottom surface, the trace of
th e lines that have been drawn .The indentations made by the sty-
Ius rem ain , always present.Thus, there are infinite possibilities for
wri ting on the top surface and a means of recordin g the traces of
this writin g as a series of superpositions on the tablet undern eath
witho ut main taining the specific writing on the top surface. This
recalls the traces of the earliest incisions on parchment that already
exist in the anteri ority of architecture as describ ed above.
The arch itectural diag ram, like th e Mystic Writing Pad, can
be con ceived of as a series of surfaces or layers which are both
con stan tly regen erat ed and at the same tim e capable of retaining
multiple series of traces. Thus, what would be seen in an arc hi-
tectural object is both the first percep tual stim ulus, th e object
itself, alon g with its aesthe tic and iconicity, an d another layer,
I
I
I
I
the trace. a written index that would supplement this per ception .
Such a trace wo uld be understood to exist before perce ption , in
othe r words, befo re a percep tion appe ars to itself or is conscio us
of itself.
Derri da says, "Mem or y or writing is th e op ening of that
pr ocess of appearance itself.The ' perceived ' may on ly be read in
th e past, beneath percep tion and after it." The di agram as a stra-
ta of traces offers th e possibilit y of opening up th e visible to the
articulable, to what is within th e visible. In thi s context , archi -
tecture bec om es mor e than that which is seen or which is pr e-
sent ; it is no long er entirely a rep resentation or an illustration of
pr esen ce. Rath er, architec ture can be a re-pr esent ation of this
int erv ening appa ratus called the diagram. In thi s sense , th e dia-
gram co uld be un derstood to exist before th e ant eri ority and
th e interiority of architecture. It exists as the pot ent ial space of
writing. a writing which supplem ents the ide a of an interiority
before percep tion . Thi s idea of an inte riority as co nt aining an
already-written undercu ts the premise of architecture's orig in
in pre sen ce.
Suc h a defini tion of writing implies that in an arc hitectura l
I
1
objec t, th e objec t's presence woul d already contain a repeti tion .
In this sense an archi tectur al ob ject would no lon ger be merely
j
of
a condition of being, but a condi tio n which has within itself
already-written
bo th a repetition of its being an d a rep resentation of that repeti-
tio n . If the interiority of arc hitec ture is singular as opposed to
dialectical. and if tha t sing ularity is a repetition of differen ce,
then architecture's in teriori ty may be already writte n.
There is a second concern that such an idea of the di agram
must addre ss, an d th at is the potential for the becomi ng unmo-
tivated of th e sign . First, the already-written introduces the idea
of the index in to the architec tural object. This index is re ad as
th e first movement away fro m the motivated sign . Here, ano ther
layer m ust be add ed to the stra ta, one which. thr ou gh a process
of blurring, find s new poss ib ilities for th e figural wi thi n archi-
tecture's interiority th at could not have come from th at interior-
ity. An external condition is required in the process , some thi ng
that will introduce a gene rative or transformative agent as a final
layer in th e diag rammatic strat a. This external agent is not the
express ion of a desirin g subjec t, but rath er mu st com e from
outside of architecture as some pr eviou sly unfi gured , yet imma-
n ent agent in either the specific site , the program , or the hist ory.
It coul d take the form of a transparent p attern or screen, which
causes the already imprinted to app ear as other figurations , both
blurring and revealing what already exists. Thi s is similar to the
action of a moire pattern or filter, which permits these external
traces to be seen free of th eir forme r arch it ectural contexts.
The diagram acts as an agency which focuses the relationship
between an authorial sub ject, an architecture obj ect, and a
receivin g subj ect; it is th e strata tha t exist between them . Derri-
23.29
COU RTESY EISENMA/'l ARCHITECTS
da says that "Fre ud, evoking his representa tio n of the psychi cal
-l!
apparatus, h ad th e impression of being faced with a mac hine f.
which would soon run by itself. But w hat was to run by itself
z
was no t a m echanical re-presentatio n or its im itatio n but the .E
psych e itself." The diagrammatic process will never run wi th out .E
.~
some psychical input from a sub ject. The di agram cannot
~
u
.;
"~
e
"reprodu ce" from wi th in th ese conditions. The diagram does c
not generate in an d ofi tself. It opens up the repression that lim -
]
.a-e
u
~
~
its a generative and transformative capacity, a repression that is
constituted in both the ant ert orttv of architecture and in the
, ee
....
subject. The diagram does not in itself contain a process of over-
coming. Rather, the diagram enables an author to sim ultaneously
overcome and access th e his tory of th e discourse while over-
u
"'
....
'"
u ~
!
co ming his or h er ow n psychical resistan ce. Here, the diagram '"
'"
takes on th e distancing o f th e su bject- author. It becomes both z
rational and mystical, a stra n ge su perposi tion of th e two. Yet ~
accord ing to Freud, only th e subject is able to reconstitute th e z
past; th e diagram does not do thi s. He says, "The re must com e a
tim e whe n th e analog y between this app aratu s and the proto- "z
type will cease to appl y. It is tru e tha t once writin g has been "'
~
erased th e Mystic Pad cannot 'r eproduce' it from wi thin; it
could be a Mystic Pad indeed if, like our me mory, it could
"'
'"
"'
....
accomplish that."
..
"'
Eisenman

r-~------------------------------------------- - -
visual knowledge
DELEUZE, DIAGRAMS, ANDTHE GENESIS OFFORM
Manu el De Landa
The study of diagram s and of diagrammatic thinking is cur rently
enjoying a revival in several disciplines. On one hand, there are
historians of technology who, in anempnng to rescue engineerin g
knowledge from its status as a minor branch of applied science,
have stressed th e relative autonomy of its goals and , m ore im por -
tantly. its means. In thi s context, w hat is em pha sized is the exis-
ten ce of a peculiar rype of knowledge - visual knowledge - and
the role that it has played in the develop ment of the engine ering
sd ences.l On the other, there are cogni tive scientists and
researchers in artificial intelligence w ho have recently expanded
the reservoir of representati onal resources that they use to give
their mod els (or their robots ) problem -solving abilities. Here too ,
it is the specifically visual aspect of diagrams th at is emp hasized,
for example. the ability of geometri c representation s to rapidly
convey to a problem -solver som e of the crucial aspects defining a
part icular problem, and hence , to sugg est possible solutions.2
There are several differences between these approaches to the
question of diagrams and the one advocated by Gilles Deleuze, the
least im portant of which is that for Deleuze, diagrams have no
23.30 intrinsic connection wi th visual represent ations.The truly signifi-
cant differen ce, on the other hand, is that for Deleu ze the problem -
I solving activity in w hich diagrams are involved is not necessarily
performed by humans or robots, but may be instanti ated in even
sim ple material and energetic system s. To take an example from
physics, a popul ation of interacting ph ysical entities, such as the
molecules in a thin layer of soap, m ay be constrained ene rgetically
to adopt a form which minimizes free ene rgy. Here
I the "problem" (for the population of molecules) is
o find this minimal paint of ener gy, a problem
solved differently by the m olecules in soap huhhles
(which collectively minimize surface tension) and
by th e molecules in crystalline structures (whic h
collectively minimize handing energy) .
The question of th e objective existence of problems
(and their definin g diagram s) is a cruci al issue in
Deleuze's phil osophy of ma tter and form, a philo s-
op hy w hich attempts to replace essentialist views of
the gene sis of form (whic h im ply a conception of
matter as an inert receptacle for forms that come
.......from the outside) wi th on e in whic h m atter is
already pregnant with morphogenetic capabilities,
therefor e capable of gener atin g for m on its ow n .To
return to our previous examples, th e spherical form
. _ of a soap bubble emerges out of the int eractions
C; .-.....- am ong its constituent mol ecules as th ese are con -
straine d energetically to "seek" the point at which
surface tension is minimized . In thi s case, there is
no question of an essence of "soap- bubblen ess"
somehow imposing itself from the outside, an ideal
geom etric form (a sphere) shaping an inert collection of m ole-
cules. Rath er, an endoge nous topological form (a paint in the space of
energetic possibiliti es for this m olecular assembla ge) govern s the
collective behavtor of the individual soap m olecules and results in
the emergence of a spheric al shape. Moreover, the same topologi-
cal form , the same minimal po int, can guide the processes tha t
generate man y other geometrical forms. For exam ple, if instead of
-.-.-.- 1 EU9ft'l! s. f~, EnglllM'i ng Mtd tilt Mirid's E ~ (Cambri dgt. Mas.soll(huswU:UIT p~, 199)1.
2 S~, fur uamp~, the nsays indl>dord in Ja,,;a Glas<Jow, Han Na l'3yanan , and 8. Cl\andra~.arJt'\, tds., Dioll!lrammalJf; Rtason ing. Cogn.iti'l't and COII1lUtalional flt.rspectives {Mt"llo Park, California: AAAl f'rtSS. 1995l .
3 Gillti Otltwt..-.cl Ftll. Gl/oI.tarf, A Thousand Platf~, tl'ilf"IS.
De Landa
abstract oscillating machine
m olecules of soap we have the
atomic compo nents ofan ordinary
salt crystal, the form chat emerges Q
from minimizing energy (bond- ~~~~~...
ing energy in this case) is a cube.
Other materials, in rum. yield still
other forms.
A simil ar point appli es to other
topological form s which inhabi
th ese diagrammatic spaces of
energetic possibilities. For example, the se spaces may contain
closed loops (technically called limi t cycles or periodic uttrcctcrs) . in
whic h case the possible physical instanti ations of this space wi ll all
display isomorphic behavior, an endo geno usly generated tend ency
to oscillate in a stable way. Whether one is dealing wi th a socio-
technological structure (such as a radi o transmi tter or a radar
m achin e), a biological one (a cyclic metabolism), or a ph ysical
one (a convection cell in th e atmos phere) , it is a single immanent
resource that is involved in their different oscillatin g behavior.As if
an "abstract oscillating m achine" were incarna ted or actualized in
all these physical assemblag es:
An abstr act machine in itself is not physical or corporeal, any
more than it is semiotic; it is diagranunati c (it knows nothing of
the distinctions between th e artificial and th e natural either). It
operates by matter, not by substance; by fun ction, not by form... .
The abstract ma chine is pure Matt er -Function - a diagram inde -
pendent of the forms and substances, expressions and contents it
will distribute. 3
Deleuze calls this ability of topological forms (and other
abstract machines) to give rise to many differen t physical instanti-
ations a process of"divergent actu alization," takin g the idea fro m
French philosop her Henri Bergson w ho, at the turn of the century,
wrote a series of texts w here he criticized the inability of the set-
ence of his tim e to think th e new, th e trul y novel.The first ob stacle
was, accor din g to Bergson , a mechanical and linear view ofcausal-
ity and the rigid determinism tha t it imp lied . Clearly, if the furure
is already given in the past, if the future is merely that modality of
tim e where previously determined possibilities become realized,
then tru e innovation is im possible. To avoid thi s mi stake, he
thought , we must struggle to mod el the future as open-ende d, and
the past and the present as pregnan t not only with possibilities which
become real, but with virtualitier which become actual.
The distin ction between the possible and the real assumes a set
of predefined forms (or essences) w hich acquire physical reality as
material forms that resembl e them . From the morphogenetic
point of view, realizing a possibility does not add anything to a
predefined form except reality.The distin ction between the virtual
and the actual, on the other hand, does not involve resemblance of
any kind (e.g., our example above, in which a topological point
becomes a geometr ical sphe re) , and far from constituting the
essential identity of a given struc ture , a virtual form subverts thi s
identity, since struc ture s as differe nt as spheres and cub es emerg e
from the same topological point. To quote from w hat is probably
Deleuze's most impor tant book, Differenceand Repetition:
Actualisation breaks with resemblanc e as a process no less than
it does with identity as a principl e.. . . In thi s sense, actu alisation
or differentiation is always a genui ne creation. . . . For a potential
or virtual object, to be actualised is to create divergent lin es
Bri a" U&SSY'Tll tMimupoli$: Uniwrsity of Mimesou. f'1"tiS, 19871 , 14 1.
=
embryogenesis
which correspond to - wi thout resem bling - a virtual multi -
plicity.Th e virtual po ssesses the reali ty of a task to be performed
or a problem to be solved. 4
Deleuze goes on to discuss processes of actualization more
complex than bubbles or cryst als. pr ocesses such as em bryogene-
sis, the development of a fully differentiated organism starting
from a sing le cell. In this case, the space of energetic possibilities is
mor e elaborate, involving many virtual topological forms govern-
ing complex spatia-temporal dynamisms:
How does actualisation occur in things themselves? .. . Beneath
the actual qualities and extensiues [of thing s themselves] there
are spati o-temporal dynamisms. . . . They mu st be surveyed in
every domain. even tho ugh they are ordinarily hidden by the
constiruted qualities and extensities. Embryology shows that tbe
division of an egg into parts is secondary in relation to more sig-
nificant morp hogenetic movements: the augmentation of free
surfaces, stretching of cellular
layers,invagination by folding,
regional displacement of
groups. A whole kinematics of
the egg appears, which impli es
a dvn amtc.f
In Difference and Repetition, Deleuze
repeatedly makes use of the se
spaces of en ergetic possibili ties
(technically referred to as "state
spaces" or "phase spaces") and
of the top ological forms (or
"stngulartdes" ) that shape
ese spaces. Phase diag rams
are, indeed , the very first type
of diagram used by Deleuze .We
will see below that mor e com plex types are discussed in his later
work . Since these ideas reappe ar in his later wo rk, and since the
concepts of phase space and of singul arity belong to mathematics,
it is safe to say that a cru cial component of Deleuzian thou ght
comes from the philosophy of mathematics. Indeed, chapter four
of Dtfference and Repetition is a meditation on the metaphysics of
differential and inte gral calculus. On th e other hand, given that
phase spaces and sing ularities become physically significant onl y
in relation to mat erial systems that are traversed by a stro ng flow of
energy, Deleuze's philosophy is also intimately related to the
bran ch of ph ysics that deals with mate rial and energetic flows, that
is, with therm odynamics. Chap ter five of Difference and Repetition is a
phil osophical critique of 19th- century th ermodynamics, an
attempt to recover from that discipline some of the key concepts
needed for a theory of immanent morphogenesis.
At the beginning of tha t chapter, Deleuze introduces some key
distin ction s that will figure prominently in his later work (specifi -
cally, the con cept of "intensity"), bu t more importantly, he reveals
his ontological commitments on the very first page. Since Kant it
has been traditional to distinguish between the wo rld as it appears
to us humans, that is. the world of phenomena o r appearances,
and the wo rld as it exists by itself, regardless of whether there is a
human observer to in teract with it. This worl d "in itself" is
referr ed to as "noumena." A large number of contemporar y
thinkers, particularly those w ho call themselves postmodernists.
do not beli eve in noumena. For them. the wo rld is socially con-
4 Gilln Drlwzr, Oi~1nd Repetition, wns. ~ ... I ~non (New Vort<: Coh.ll'nbil. Univr~;t)' Pons, 199'11, 212.
5 lbi4., 21'1
6 Ibid., 222.
noumen a
srrucred . hen ce, all it contains are lingu istically defined phen ome-
na. Even though many of these thinkers decla re themselves to be
anti -essentialist, they share wi th essentialism a view of matter as an
ine rt ma teri al, only in their case form does not come from a Pla-
tonic heaven , or from the mind of God, bu t from the minds of
humans (o r fro m cultural conventions expressed linguistically) .
The wo rld is amorphous, and we cut it out into forms using lan -
guage. Nothing could be further from Deleuzian thought than this
posrmodem linguistic relativism . Deleuze is indeed a realist
philosoph er, who not only believes in the autonomous existence
of actual forms (the forms of rocks, plants, animals and so on) but
in the existenc e of vir tual forms. In th e first few lin es of chapter
five, whe re Deleuze introd uces the notion of "intensity" as a key to
un ders tanding the actuali zation of virtual forms, he writes:
Difference is no t diversity. Diversity is given, but dif-
ference is that by which the given is given.... Dif-
ference is not phenomenon but the noumenon
closest to the phenomenon.... Everyphen omenon
refers to an inequality by which it is conditioned...
. Everything which happens and everything which
appears is correlated with orders of differences: dif- I
o
ferences of level, temperature. pressure, tension,
potential, difference ofintensity.6
Let me illustrate this idea wi th a familiar example
23.31
from thermodynamics. If on e creates a container
separated into two com partme nts. and o ne fills on e
compartme nt with cold air and the o the r with hot
air, one thereby creates a system em bodying a dif-
ference in inten sity, the Intensity in this case bein
temperature. If one then opens a small hole in the
wall dividing the compar tme nts, the di fference in
inten sity causes the o nset of a spo ntaneous flow o,tf _ - .-- - - - - ..
air from on e side to the other. It is in this sense than
intensity differences are mor phogenetic, even if in
this case the form that eme rges is too simple. The
examples of the soap bubble and the salt crystal, as
well as the m ore complex foldings and stre tchings
undergone by an embryo, are generate d by similar principles.
However, in the page following the above citation, Deleuz e argues
that , despit e thi s important insight, 19th-century thermodynam-
ics cannot provide the foundation he needs for a philosophy of
matt er.W hy? Because that branch of physics becam e ob sessed wi th
final equilibrium forms at the expense of the difference-d riven
morphogenetic pro cess that gives rise to those forms. But as
Deleuze argues , the role of virtu al singularities and of the diag ram -
matic and problematic nature of reality can only be grasped dur in g
the process of morphogenesis, that is, before the final form is actu -
alized , before the difference disapp ears.
This sho rtcom ing of 19th -century th ermodynamics , to over-
look the role of intensity differences in morphogenesis, to con-
cent rate on the equilibrium form that eme rges only once the
o rig inal difference h as been can celed, has today been repaired in
the latest version of thi s branch of physics, appropriately labeled
"far-from -equilibr ium thermodynamics." Although Deleuz e do es
not exp licitly refer to this new branch of science, it is clear that far-
from -equilibrium thermodynamics meets all the objections he
raises against its 19th-century coun terpart. In particular, the sys-
tem s studied in thi s new discipline are continuously traversed by a
stro ng flow of energy and matter, a flow which does not allow dif-
De Landa
 far-from-equi Iibrium
ferences in intensity to be canceled , that is, a flow which maintains
these differences and keeps them from caneelin g themselves. It is
only in these far-From-equi librium conditions that the full variety
of immanent topological forms appear s (steady state, cyclic, or
chaotic attractors). It is on ly in this zone of intensity that differ -
ence -driven morphog en esis comes into its own and that matter
becomes an active material agent, one which do es not need form
to impose itself from the outside. To return on ce more to the
example of the developing em bryo : the DNA that governs the
process doe s not contain, as was once believed, a blueprint for the
generation of the final form of the organism, an idea that implies
an inert ma tter to which genes give form from the outside. The
m odern understanding of the process pictures genes as teasing
form ou t of an active matter, that is. the function of gen es and their
products is now seen to be merely constraining and channeling a
variety of material processes . occurring in that far-from-equilibrium,
diagrammatic zone in which form emerges spont aneously.
We saw above that in his definition of diagram Deleuze distin-
guishes between matter and subs tance and be tween function and
form. We can now give a better characterization of these distinc-
tions.While substance is a formed material, the matter that enters
into a diagram is "matter-content having only degrees of intensity.
resistance, conductivity, heating, stretching, speed, or tardiness."?
In other words. it is any ma teria l far-from-equilibrium, and with
I 23.32 access to the same reservoir of immanent, morphogenetic
resources. On the other hand, the vector or ten sor field that cons ti-
! tutes a phase space diagram - and the topological singularities that
structure it - is a useful image for a diagrammatic func tion with-
II out a definite form, "a func tion-expression having on ly tensors, as
in a system of mathema tical , or musical, language."8
To com plete m y characterization of Deleuze's theory of dia-
grams and of their role in the gen esis of form, I would like to
explore the way in which his more recent work in collaboration
"With Felix Guattari has extended these basic ideas. In their joint
book A Thousand Plateaus they develop theories of the genes is of two
very important types of structures, referred to as "strata" and "self-
consistent aggregates" (or. alternatively, "trees" and "rhizomes") .
Basically, strata emerge from the arti culation of homogeneous ele-
ments. w hereas self-consisten t aggrega tes emerge from the articu-
latio n of heterogeneous element s as such .
Both processes display the same "divergent actualization" that
characterized the Sim pler processes behind the formation of soap
bubbles and salt crystals. In other words, in both processes we have
a virtual form (or abstrac t machine) underlyin g the isomorphism
of the resultant actua l forms. Let's begin by briefly describing the
pr ocess behind the genesis of geological strata. or more specifical-
ly. of sedimentary rock, such as sandstone or limestone.When on e
looks closely at the layers of rock in an exposed mountainside, a
striking characteristic is that each layer contains further layers,
each composed of sm all peb-
bles which are nea rly homoge-
neous with respect to size,
shape, and chemical composi-
tion. These layers are referred
to as "strata."
Given that pebbles do not
......_ _naturally come in stan dard
sizes and shapes, some kind of
.,
sorting mechanism seems to be
ne eded to explain this highly
~~--_ _im probable distr ibution, some
-.-.-...:- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 7 Deleuze and Guattarl, A Thou ~nd Plate au s, 141.
8 Ib id., 141.
9 See rnc-e deta iled diScussion and refe rences in Manuel De Landa, A Thousand Years of Nonlinear History (New York: Zone Books, 1'1'17), 5'1-b2.
De Landa
sedimentation
specific device that takes
T
a mu ltiplicity of peb-
bles with heterog e-
neous qualit ies and dis-
tributes them in to more
or less uni-form layers.
One possibility un-cov- . . . . . . . .tttA..:;~
ered by geologists
involves rivers acting as
sorting ma chines.
Rivers tran sport rock y . . . . .
m aterials from their '
lllll 1II
potn r of ori gin to the place in the ocean where these materials will
accumulate. In this process, pebbles of variab le size, weight, and
shape tend to react differently to the water transporting them.
These different re-act ions to m oving water sor t ou t the pebbles,
with the small on es reaching the ocean sooner than the large one s.
This process is called sedimentation. Besides sedimentation , a second
operation is necessary to transform these loose collection s of peb-
bles into a larger scale entity : a sedi mentary ro ck. This operatio n
consists of cementing the sorted components, an op erati on carried
out by certain su bstances dissolved in water w hic h penetrates the
sediment through the gaps berween. pe~bl es. As thi s per colating
solution crystallizes, it consolidates th e pebbles' temporary spatial
rela tions into a more or less permanent "archirectontc" structure.
This double articulation - sorting and consolidation - can
also be found in biological species. Species form through the
slow accumulation of genetic materials. Genes, of course, are not
merely deposited at random but are sorted ou t by a variety of
selection pressures , in cluding clim ate, the actions of predators
and parasites, and the effects of male or female cho ice during
mating. Thus, in a very real sen se, genetic materials " sediment"
just as pebbles do . Furthermore, these loose collections of genes
can be lost (like sedimented pebbles) under dras tically changed
conditions (such as the onset of an ice age) unless they beco m e
consolidated together. Thi s second operation is performed by
"reproductive iso lation," that is, by the closure of a gene pool,
which occ urs when a given su bset of a reproductive community
becomes incapable of mating with the rest. Through selective
accumulation and iso lative consolidation a population of indi-
vidual organisms com es to form a larger scale entity: a new
individual species.
We can also find these two operations (and hence, this virtual
di agram ) in th e formation of social classes . Roughly, we speak: of
"social stra ta" when a given society possesses a variety of differ-
ent iate d roles th at are not equally accessible to everyone, and
when a subset of those roles (t.e.. those to w hi ch a ruling elite
alone h as access) invo lves the control of key energetic and mate-
rial resources. In most soci eties. roles tend to "sedime nt"
through a variety of sorting or ranking m echanisms. yet ran k
does not become an autonomous dimension of social organization in
all of them. In many societies, differentiation of th e eht es is not
extensive (they do not form a center while the rest of th e popula-
tion forms an excluded periphery), surpluses do not accumulate
(they may be destroyed in ritual feasts) , and primordial relations
(of kin and local alliances) tend to prevai l. Hence, a second oper-
ation is necessary: th e info rmal sorting criteria n eed to be given
a theological interpretation and a legal definit ion . In sh ort , to
transform a loosely ranked accumulation of traditional ro les int o
a social class , the social sedim ent needs to be come consolidated
via theological and legal codification. 9
 ..
meshwork plane of consistency

Is there also a virt ual diagram behind the genesis of m esh-
wo rks? In th e m odel proposed by Deleuze and Guatrart , th ere
are thr ee elements in this othe r virtual diagr am. (W O of whic h
are part icularly important . First, a set of h eterogen eou s elem ents
is bro ught tog ether via an articulation of superposittons, that is, an
int erconnection of diverse but overlapping eleme nts. Second, a
spec ial class of operators. or intercalary elements, is need ed to effect
thi s int erlo ck via local connection s. Is it possible to find
instances of this diagram in geology, biology, and sociology?
Perh aps the clearest exam ple is that of an ecosystem . Whil e a
species may be a very homogeneou s structure, an ecosystem
links together a wide variety of h eterog eneous elements (ani-
ma ls and plant s of diffe rent spe cies) , which are ar ticulated
through interlock, th at is, by their functional complementarities.
Since o ne of the mai n features of ecosys tems is the circu lation of
ene rgy an d m atter in the form of foo d, th e compleme n tarities in
qu estion are alim entary: prey-predat or or parasite-h ost bein g
tw o of th e m ost com mon. In this situ atio n , sym biotic rela tions
can act as in terc alary elem ents aiding the process of building
food web s by establi shin g local couplin gs. Examples include the
ba cteria th at live in th e guts of many animals, allow ing them to
di gest th eir food, or th e fun gi and other micro -organi sms which
for m the rhizosph ere, the underground food cha ins that inter-
co nnec t plant root s and so il.
Geology also contains actu alizations of these virtual operations,
a good example being that of ign eous rocks. Unlike sandstone,
igneous rocks such as grani te are not the resul t of sediment ation
and cementation but the product of a very different construction
proc ess, forming directly from cooling magma. As mag ma cools
down , its different eleme nts begin to separate as they crystallize
It is no longer a question of imposing a form upon a matter but
of elaborating an increasingly rich and consistent material, the
better to tap increasingly intense forces.What makes a material
increasingly rich is the same as what holds heterogeneities
together without their ceasing to be heterogeneous. 11
Given the close connection between intense matt er and the con-
cept of the diagrammatic, we may seem to have an oppos ition
between stratified and diagram -embodying str uctures. Yet, as
Deleuze and Guattari argue , it is impor tant not to treat the dichoto -
my of strata and self-cons istent aggregates as embodying a static
typology. Neither m eshworks nor strata occur in pure form, and
more often than not we are confronted with mixtures and hybrids
of the two. Beyond that, self-organizing, diagrammatic processes
par ticipate in the creation of strata (e.g., the rivers that sort the peb-
bles or the crystallizations of the percolating solutio n that cements
them together) , and sorted , homogenized elements can some times
function as intercalary elements (here one can offer the Internet as
an example, a true meshwork of networks made possible by the
existence of homogeneou s standards , such as those for HTh1L).
Hence , it is better to picture this dichotomy as a continuum , charac-
terized at one end by the most hierarchical, stratified structures and
at the other end by pure, intense matter at its limit of desrratifica-
tion, that is, the plane of consistency As Deleuze and Guattari put it :
We cannot, however, content 23.33
ourselves with a du alism
between the plane of consisten-
cy and its diagrams and abstract
machines on the one hand, an.............~
:~

-_
in seq uence, those that solidify earlier ser ving as containers for the strata and their programs
those which acquire a crystalline form later. Und er these circum- and concrete assemblages on the ;;:
S
~
stances the result is a com plex set of heterogen eous crys tals
w hich interlock with one ano th er, giving granite its superior
other. Abstract machines do nor.
exist only on the plane of con-
... ~
-e
s e:o
sistency. upon which they @
streng th. Here, the intercalary elements include anything that 0 -@
.~
g -e~S
brings about local articulations from within the crystals, includ- develop diagrams; they are -e
S
in g nucl eation centers and certa in line defect s called dislocations, already present, enveloped or
~ .:. e
as well as local articu lation between crystals, suc h as events occur- "encasted" in the strata in gen- ~

a ]ic
;g"
~
c
rin g at the interface between liquids and solids.Thus, granite may eral. . .. Thus there are two com- c

s~ ."2 i
t:!- 0
be said to be an in stan ce of a m eshwork. plementary movements, one by
In the sodo-economic sphere, pr ecapi talist markets may be which abstract machines work tc ~
i" {
considered examples of cultural meshworks. In m any cultures the strata and are constantly setting things loose. another by 0
'2
e,

weekly markets have tradi tio nally been meetin g places for people which th ey are effectively stratified, effectively captured by the ~ ~
.s
c
wi th heterogene ou s needs and offers. Markets connect peop le by strata. On the one hand, strata could never organize them-selves 'a -a 0

~ " ~

ma tching complem ent ary demands, that is, by in terlocking them

o n the basis of their needs and offers. Money, even primitive
if they did not harnessdiagrammatic matters or functions and for-
malize them. ... On theother hand, abstract machines would never
... ~
0
"0
1i

-5
~ u ~

3
m on ey such as salt blocks or cowry shells, may be said to perform be present, even on the strata, if they did not have the power or
potentiality to extract and accelerate destratified particle -Signs
~
0
"
.~
~
the fun ction of int ercalary eleme nt s: while in pure barter the po s- '"
j
Q
~
sibility of two exactly matching demands meeting by chance is (the passage to the absolute).12
'"
I-
very low, w he n money is pr esent those chance enc ounters become
unnecessary, and co mpleme ntary demands may find each other at It sho uld be clear by now that talk of the " stratification" of
:>
et
... i
~
~
S

a dis tance, so to spe ak. ID abstract machines is sim ply another w ay of discussin g the actual- '"
I- ;;;-
e,
~
Thu s, much as sandstone, animal species, and social classes may izatio n of the virtual , or in othe r words, that the theo ry of dia - '"
be said to be diverg ent actualiz ations ofa virtu al process of "do u- grams develo ped in A Thousand Plateaus was already pr esen t in et "g
Q t;,
ble articulation" th at brin gs homogeneous components to gether, Deleuze 's early wo rk. Ind eed, I wo uld go so far as to say that this Z

et ~
granite, ecosys tems , and markets are actualizations of a virtual th eory was developed in greater detail in Differmce and Repetition, and ~ ~

pr ocess tha t links heterogeneous elem ents through inte rlock and th at it is this book that constitutes the main reser voir of conceptu-
al resources needed to approach diagrarrunatic thinking. In the
...c
~
~
int ercalation . Moreover, the diagram behind the genesis of mesh-
...:> ...
~

wo rks is dir ectly related by Deleuze and Guattari to the Sim pler preface to the English edi tion , Deleuze calls Difference and Repetition
z ~
abstr act machines animatin g int ense, far-from-eq uilibr ium matter. the first boo k where he speaks in his own voice and asserts that et
As 'hey write : everything else he had written (including his collabor ation s with " ~-e
10 Ibid., b2-M.
11 Delevzeand Guatta ri, A Thousand Plateaus, nq.
12 Ibid., 144.

De Landa
 cartography
Guauart) leads back to this volume. Ind eed , he speaks of chapter
w ee of this book (w here he presents his own "image of
thought ") as "me most necessary and the most concrete. and
which serves to in trodu ce subsequent books." 13 In this chapter,
Deleuze proposes that thi nking consists no t in problem-solving (as
m ost trea tm ents of d iagrams and diagram m atic rea soning sug -
gest), but on th e cont rary. tha t given the real (tho u gh vir tual)
existenc e of pro blems in the wo rld itself, tr ue thinkin g consists
in problem-posing, that is , in framing the right problems rathe r th an
solving them . It is o nly thr ough skilIfui problem -posin g that we
can begin to think diagrammatically.
OFTHE DIAGRA M IN ART
Christine Buci-G lucksman
Translated from the French by Josh Wise
"I draw on chance." It is in these te rms that Ouchamp enunciat-
ed the spec ificity and power of the diagram. That is, to bring
about co-existence th rough drawing, the lig ht lines of the
a leatory, to harness the complex in a ll its possibilit ies in order
23.34 to better grasp the "in-between" dimensions of reality. In contrast
to retinal modernist abstraction, the diagram in art presupposes a
"thln" abstraction composed of inflections and vlrtualltles. We
soon understand that the cognitive detour necessary to the devel-
opment of The Bride Strip ped Ba re by Her Bachelors, Even
required a digrammatic and cartographic abstraction: a space
of projection and t rans fer which leaves the lone perspectival
mode l in favo r of a weightless/ aerial space - that of the Bride.
Such space, wh ich finds its cold symbolism in the glass and the
"rnl rror- Hke;" is " the virtu-
al as fourth d imension, " as
Ducha mp put it. Schemas of
body without ftesh, bache-
lor s reduced to simp le deliv-
er ies/ "In-betweens" and
"operations"; do all of these
aim to construct an "abtract
machine" or modern Eras?
Thanks to this transference
[plan- t rans fertJ, the paint-
0 01 ing becomes " a Diagram of
the Idea."
f,e I
No diagram exists without
the in-betweens necessa ry
to an a bstract mac hine/ in
which the points of separa-
t ion and the convergences of
lines an d trajectories define
a mental processing of fig-
_ C1C> / - Y \
\ ures and a mode ling of the
Sol leWitl,. World " g Dra w ing fo r Compl ex Form, c.. 1988; Pencil on ~r;8.25 l( 10" . leW itt C o llectio~, Cheste r, Corlflecticut. real . By operating th rough
the construction of abstracts and analogical structures, the
diagram recalls Wittgenstein's definition of the wiring dia-
gram of a radio as a "bunch of lines. I! As Gilles Deleuze
showed in his book devoted to Michel Foucault's disciplinary
diagrams/ the diagram is intimately linke d with cartography:
\\A diagram is a map/ or rather a su pe rim posi tion of maps." !
B neteice, Difference and Repet ition, xvii.
Buci-Glucksman
\\chaos-germ"
Still/ this diagrammatic cartography is most ambiguous.
Indeed/ the current movement away from a cu lture of objects
toward a culture of net wo r ks and flux seems to blur the d ist inc-
t ion between two conceptio ns of t he d ia g ra m present in
Deleuze's own work: the diagram as "re lationship of fo rces,"
and t he diag ram as idea l and virtua l, as paradigm of a new
abstraction - a post -abstractton .?
To be certain/ the diagram as "re lattonship of forces"
implies an abstract machine that gr ids the social and engenders
an "Intersoclal in the making." The diagram is uns tab le, form-
less/ and fluctuating, a lways subject to "micro-movements,"
variations/ and points of resistance. And yet this relationship of
forces is virtual, that is to say, only manifest in its effects. The
battles of micro-powers "modify the diagram" since every force
carries a potential dependent upon its place in the diagram. The
diagram is always a composite of the ordered and the aleatory,
of place and nonplace. It is guided by a kind of causa lity t hat
Deleuze borrowed from Spinoza: an imma nent cause, inte rna lly
expressive of its own effects. 3
We find a sl ightly diffe re nt version of the diag ram in
Deleuze's ana lysis of Francis Bacon's paintings . He re it is no
longer an " intersocia l" diagram. Using Bacon's own te rms,
Deleuze deve lops a theory of diagram as "an operating group of
splotches, lines, and zones" in a painti ng . The d iagram is at the
threshold of pa inting as "chaos-qerm." Better yet/ "it is quite a
chaos/ a catastrophe, but also a germ of order and rhythm." ?
This dialectic of the aleatory and the ordered shifts toward the
dialectic of the plan and of chaos in Deleuze and Guattari's
What is Philosophy? Little remains of the diagram as material
and rhythmic/ as Pa ul Klee understod it; Klee never ceased his
exp loration of vectora l diagrams of dimension and form/ as in
his "atmospher ic" pa inti ngs. Even while he he lps to make
pai nting lit he ana logica l art pa r exce llence," his art is not
abst ract as s uch. Deleuze opposes dia gra mmat ic pain t ing
(Ceza nne or Bacon ) t o "abst rac t" pa int ing composed of codes
an d bin ar ies.
As we can see/ t he questio n of the diagram/ through its many
roles in the sc iences, arch itecture, and the arts/ poses the more
general question of the status of abstraction. In place of the
"subtractive" understanding of abstraction, which opposes the
abstract and the figurative, it would be useful to develop a
newer extractive and projective conception of abstraction -
Duchampian, if you will. The hazards of the diagram, of its flue-
tuations and retracings, are no accident. Rather, they are the for-
mu lation of a new type of mental imaging that I call " Icarian" in
my l!oeil cartographique de l'art, devoted to the history of t he
map in art. s In constrast t o the sin gle, pr ivileged viewpoint of
the perspectiva l ga ze, th e Icari a n gaze sees from above/ much
like t he gaze betwee n "site" an d "no ns ite" that Robert Smith-
so n ana lyzed in Aerial Art, his project for the Dal las ai rport.
Vision is a nt ivision; a rchitecture, disarchitecture; order,
entropy. "Visiblllty is ofte n marked by both menal and atmos-
pheric turbidity." 6 As in New York architecture of the 193 0s,
Aeria l Ar t injects t ime into space. But the time of Ae rial Art is a
nonorganic time in which the aesthetic is simply "the airport as
idea." In the tradition of Duchamp, the displacement of vision
introduces the diagram of the idea, a nonvisual, mental ca rtog-
raphy composed of the conjunction and disjunction of flu id or
suspended spaces. In this, the diagram resemb les contempo rary
numerica l maps which seem to realize Borqes's dream of a ma p
expanded to the scale of the terr ito ry.
1 G I I I~s DeleuZ!, Foucau lt (Paris: Editions de Minuit, 198b), 51 .
2 1bid.,4 2.
3 Ibid., 44.
4 G I I I ~s D! I!Ul~, r-anctsBacon; l ogique de la s ensauon , (Paris: Editions de la Differtn ee, 1'I8U, bb .
5 1 refer the rt.lder to my book l' OI'il cartog rap/lique de I' art (Pa riS:Galiln, l'I'lBI where 1 reconstruc t the history
of the cartographic "eye," its q.eoaesthetic and its real ity effect from the Ib th ce<1wry up to the contemporary
cartor;r,rT\iI, Onth is question, see my essay "Abstnction: from Marcel Duchilmp to Cartography " in t rans (New
'fori<: 199 7) a"'ll the catalogue of the Linz ill\d 8el"9!" exllibitions, Atlas Mapping (luria Kant, 1"7).
6 RObrrtSmithson, The CollectedWritings, ed. Jack Flan (Berl<el ey, U ni~~i1Y of cal ifornia P~, 199 bl, 177 .
..-,
all usive strategy
More than an abstraction, the diagram is a field of resonances
and virtualities, an abstract which explores an experimental
thought of possibilities. Be it a diagram of knots, interlacinqs,
combinatory or labyrinthine circuits, folds and unfoldings, the
diagram is connected to a topological space in which interior and
exterior, forward and back, empty and full, ordered and aleatory
are inseparable. The diagram has haunted art from its begin-
nings to the present day. The clasps and labyrinths of Celtic art,
the interlocking patterns of Islamic decoration, and Indian man-
dalas are all magical diagrams which express, through their infi-
nite figures of divinity, different levels of a rea l at once sacred,
cosmic, and architectural. But by the same t oken, we find a dia-
grammatic activ ity in the wo rk of a pai nter suc h as Vermee r,
whose gr ids were made by cross ing strings a ttached to fixed
points on a horizon line.
Just such a diagrammatic qua lity of dr awing ma nifested
itself wide ly during the 1960s, when the idea was at the core of
art istic practice. I am thinki ng, obviously, of the combina tory
and axiomatic st ructu res of So l Le Witt, such as t he 19 2 draw-
ings with numbered lines of the 1968 Wal l Drawings. The combi-
nat ory ac ti vity here is Leibni zian becau se it refe rs to comb inatio n
unders tood as a science of va riatio ns from lines or notations,
identica l yet diverse. Sim ila rly, we find diagrams of logica l and
compositional st ructures that anticipate light in drawing.
Between place and nonplace, t he diagram is al ready a virtual izing
opera tion, a "geographic" and topogra phic abstraction which
consti tutes a place. As Dan Flav in put it, " I have come to under -
stand that for me drawing and diagramming are mainly what lit-
tle it takes to record thought, however, to whatever use, whenev-
er." 7 In giving form to thought, the diagram unites the finite and
the infinite and organizes the power of a place in advance.
It is useful to conceive of the diagram following the tradition
of Orseme or Leibniz and reworked by Deleuze in The Fold as an
abstract of possibilities and not of forces. The diagram enacts a
threefold structure: cutting actions, an abstract figuration, and
an experience of thought which "folds" complexity in order to
better "unfold it" on the plane of immanence. As Gilles Chatelet
showed regarding diagrams in physical science, the diagram is
an "allusive strategy" which "secularizes the invisible." S Any
a llusive strategy presupposes in-bet ween spa ces, a metaschema-
tism where the object is obj ectile and the subject is subjecti le.
The diagram is an object which suggests someth ing in the world
by means of its components and the ir inter relat ionships, from a
dist ance and ang le tha t make the refe rence more or less exp licit,
like the geographic construction of "diaqrarn blocks," for exam-
ple, which are no more than the translat ion of the morphological
map of the terrain into perspectiva l signs .
We ca n construct Or program on ly by int roducing or injecti ng
inte rva ls int o a ter rit ory. At its limit s, t he "expe rience of
th ought br ought to completion is a diagram ma t ic one. "? Or, to
put it differentl y, t he diagram is a n inflective ideality if "the
inflection is an idea lity or virtua lity whic h only exists in the sou l
that enve lops it." I O Inflect ion as diagrrammatic mode l is thus
the " pure event of th e line, " "an intrinsic sinq ulari ty." The dia -
grammatic abstract ion is firs t and foremost, since any geogra ph-
ica l site imp lies a plura lity of figur es an d possibilit ies. In this
sense, drawing aims to " diaq rarn a limit less space, free from
possible inflection and anterior t o the de limited space of fixed
objects," as Bernard Cache shows in Ea rt h Moves. l1 This anteri-
ority reminds me of the a llusion to the infinite in landscapes and
in the Chinese and Japanese aesthetic, more evocative and dis-
7 0", F~Yin, OrawillqS, Diagramsand Prints (Fort Wortll, Texas: Fort WorthMUSoN'Tl, 19751.
8 GiUn Cl\ltt lft, I n EnjNx ell: Mobile (06 ttaYa ~.r.;euil) J3, J &, 267.
9 lbict., ) t.. The u peNoce of tMullht is " an u perience 01permutation of the plaas of natl.lreJ Md unde rsaMding," linked to the 'niti JI act of QJtting awa~.
10 GillnOelNn , le Pli, (~,;s: Ectitionscte Mi""it, 19811, 2L
11 8 ema rd Cache, Ea rth MOYeS, If.ms. Am r Boyman, rd. Mit""rl $pe;oh ("""bridge, MJ$SiId>usnts: MIT Prf'S$, 19 95 ).
....
geophi losophy
rr
W A rv O E"R l rJ & E,q~ T H M O!."'NDS
tJ/lJO 6"R A v t L. p A i MS
Robert Smtmscn, Dallas-Fort Worth Regional Airport Layout Plan: Wandering Eart h Mounds and Gravel Pat hs, 1967; blueprint
.....Ith collageand pencil; 15 112x 11". Collection Estate of Robert Smlthson.
criminati ng than visua l. Klee's Vill es Fl ollantes [ Fl oat i ng Cities]
and Celle etoile enseigne I' infl exi on [T his Star Teaches I nfl ec-
23.35
tion ] come to mind as wel l. The abstraction of the landscape
prior to landscape implements the oblique path of a spatial nega-
tivity, an entire art of line and interio r r hythm.
Conceive d thus, the dia gra m leaves the world of fixities and
substances, of objects and essences. It is no longer simply a "pl a y
of forces" enclosed in an expressive structure, but rather a pure,
operating abstraction formed of flux, networks, and projections.
But this is still saying too little. For in essence, the diagram is
taken up in the movement that goes from the place to the virtual,
a movement in which it finds maximum and ideal expansiveness.
The place does not carry the geographic fixity of the site. Indeed,
it is a \I locus," as Le ibniz would put it: an intensive space
reduced by perspectives and subject to floating, unattached
zones. This is wha t many contemporary architects call the
"between two" (Be rna rd Tschurni), the "In-between" or "inter-
stitia l" dimension (Cache), the " becoming clothing," or even t he
electronic, floating "postephe meral" (Toyo Ita). The dia gra m
ha s been used so many t imes by art an d a rch itec tu re precise ly
because it reponds to th e const ruc tion of liberated volumes,
float ing in Ica rian weightless ness through an abstract a rch itec -
t ure of possibilit y, in which hete rogeneo us an d disjointe d spa ces
are supe rimposed.
We can thu s see t hat The Fold inaugur ated a thi nki ng of di a-
gram different from that contai ned In Foucault. The diagrammat-
ic activ ity is herea fte r situa te d within a "geop hilosophY,JI wit hin a
movemen t an d between territory an d deter ritoria lization t hat
moves from te r ritory to Earth and vice-versa. Otherwise, t his
Ea rth, t he object of al l ca rtograph ies, cannot be pro jected onto
":>
the pla ne of t hought, onto t he screen in nonfinite coo rdina tes. As
'"
Deleuze put it, the re are " infinite diag rammat ic movemen ts." "'
z
Infinite in the strong sense, since it is always a matter of finding ....
~
degrees of abstrac tion, a putti ng into space that ca lls forth "dia-
grams of t he possible." The diag ra m temporalizes form by open- '"
:I:
ing it to the aleatory, to complexity, even to suspense, and to what "
the Japanese call M uj o (Impermanence) or Mitate (to see as). In
Buci-Gl ucksman
 representation
this "to see as" of the t raiet such as that of the Zen ga rdens that
inspire Richa rd Serra, the gaze is inseparable fro m t he route
[parcoursJ and from visua l fluidity. Indeed, one could oppose a
static spa tial ity of the finit e object to a dyna mic, tempo ra lized
spati a lity in whic h th e process is infin ite. In th e latter, t he move-
ment is one through th e flu idity and disconnection of vi rt ual
space, th rough di sjunctions, folding s, and unfolding s.
One, the n, can clear ly understan d why contemporary paint ing
w oul d be fascinated by t his diagr ammati c and cartog raphic
abstrac t ion that is so different f rom pict or ial modern ism. Jac k-
son Poll ock deri ves from this inflective abstraction point -folds
and tangled interlacings more than the ambivalen t powers of the
Euclidian grid. In essence, the new pictorial abstrac tion rein-
scribes the powers of the technological virtual into painting by
creating heterogeneous spaces, multiple connections, discon-
necti ons, and undeci dable zones. From Lydia Dona' s diag rams
of desi re and war t o Jo nat han Lasker ' s chaot ic knots to t he
infl ections in ri bbons and or ganico-ar t ific ia l mi cro-be ings by
David Reed, t he diag rammatic has seized upon an impure post-
abst ract ion whic h seeks to grasp th e worl d in an analog ica l
manner. Li kewise, urban, t er r it ori al, and sexual artifact s creep
into the painting s, which become li ke plat eaus composed of a
th ousand strata.
Such is t he power of t he diagram in art : to offer a model of
abstract ion that opens up an aesthetic of imm anence.and sus-
23.36 pense, a "qeoaes thetlc" t hat offers all its force in Ri l ke' s formu -
23 lation, \\We do nothing but pass like an exchange of breezes."
LINES OFWORK: NOTES ON DIAGRAMS
Andr ew Benjamin
Lines and diagrams would seem to be distinct. Even though
the line may work within the diagram , each has its own
specificity. On one level this distinction is clear.And yet, the
distinction is held in place by an identifiable ground: the
field of represent ation.There is a coincidence of a num ber
of apparently distinct terms once representation deter-
mines particularity.This is not to suggest that line , diagram,
plan, etc., are not different but rather mat the ground of the
difference is a pervasive sameness. Evidence of that same-
ness is the relatively unproblematic move from "modes of
representation to the actual butldtng" ! One interesting conse-
quence of this position is that it is only with the enforced
abeyance of representation, und erstood as that which determines
the field of their operation, that the real particularity of the dia-
gram and the line would begin to emerge.The important point in
light of this possibility that is not simply the problematic status of
representation within archit ecture but that allowing representa-
tion centrality precludes any real consideration of actual particu-
larity Allowing for the identification of the specific "ill take place
here in terms of tracing the conseq uences for me line and the dia-
gram once the possibility of experimentation is Introduced. A
beginning can be made, therefore, by allowing repr esentation a
retained centrality - retained only in order to plot its limits - to
confront the possibility of experimentation.
The openin g question must be the following: Is there a link
between the line and the diagram and the possibility of experi-
1 Thjs is a point arg ued with great ,larity by Calt1erine lngra ham in A l'(:l1 i~,lure and tile Burdens of li near jty (Ne..... Haven, Conllecticut: Yale Universl\j' Press, 19gel.
2 Forfurt herwo rk in th is ar ea see my " L: informe quiz fort e: Bata llle, Oeleuze and ArcMitect ure" in D: COlumbia
Benjamin
origin
men tation ?The immediate answer must be that there is not. lines
and diagrams represent and therefore cannot sustain experimenta- .
tion on their own terms. By definition a representation always
refers to what it re-presents.This formulati on entails that lines and
diagrams are held in a relation where their identit y and status is
determined by what they are not. Moreover, the realization or'
instantiation of what they represent needs to be understood .as a
form of completion. Experimentation is precluded in regard to the
work of lines and diagrams once they are articulated within the
framework of representation and the envisaged necessity of forms
of completion. Were a line or diagram to become an exper imen tal
site then - excluding the insistence of the pragmatic - it could no
longer be a representation since it would have given up that deter-
mining hold in which identi ty is deter mined by a relation to an
outside. Consequen tly, answering the opening question concern-
ing the possible relation between lines, diagrams, and experimen-
tation in the affirmative necessitates a reformulation of both line
and diagram. In the place of the complete there must be the incom -
plete, The latter is not the mere negation of completion; in fact,
another type of completion will have to emerge, The incomplete
signals the possibility of the continual reworking and.opentng up
of the line and diagram. The presence of the space of experim enta-
tion emerges when neither is taken as complete in itself The
abeyance of completion marks the limits of representation. And
yet, the incomplete is not failure. Rather, it is the inscription of the
reality of a productive negativity within the field opened by both
the line and the diagram. These notes are an attempt to sketch
some of the issues at work in such a possibility.2
CLOSING LINES
The line already marks a space; it mar ks it out by dividing and
creating space. And yet, a line neith er draws nor plots out of
necessity.The diagram need neither present nor hold to the spatial
possibilitie s of some thin g other than itself Nor, for that ma tter, do
lines and diagrams exist as ends in them selves.There may be a pos-
sibility oth er than that demanded by the literal. Nonetheless, the
history of the line as representing, as standing for, and thus as act-
ing out is there at the posited ori gin of painting. The ori gin as a
que stion should not be taken as bringing considerations of truth
into play (as tho ugh there were a truth abou t the nature of the line
that comes to show itself through a concern with the orig in) .
Rather, the origin - the question of the origin - works to stage the
emergence of different beginnings. Why, then , begin wi th the ori-
gin? The answer to the question is straightforward . However, the
response does not lie in the demonstration that any origin is only
ever putative and therefore not an origin at all.The aporia of the ori -
gin is not the issue. What is of interest is the conflict concernin g
the origin. Origins - and there will always be different and incom -
patible origins - stage different possibilities.
Pliny's account of the origin of painting explains the first mark
in terms of the drawin g of a line that holds as present - and thus
will hold as present - that which is absent. While his text, as he
indi cates. is not directly concerned with the origin, he nonetheless
suggests that there was little disagreement amon g the Greeks that
paintin g "began wit h tracing an outline rou nd a man 's shadow"
(Natural History xxxv: v.14). The drawing of the line as the origin of
painting links the line to the work of representatio n. In addition, it
opens up the way the line is more generally understood. Represen-
tation rather than being seen as an end itself, is mo re nuan ced and
is therefore more detailed. Representing, the activity of re-presen-
tation , stages an opening articulated in terms of oppositions. The
Do~UmertlS of Art~itecture and Theory (1997) 6: 90-1 00.

opening
opening is already there is Pliny's formulation. At the origin.
between th e shadow and the figure , there is an opening. One is not
the other. The shadow marks the pre sence of what it is not. And
yet, this opening has particularity since the shadow also posits a
closur e to the extent that the shadow is in ter preted as the immedi-
I ate presence of th e one who cast the shad ow. (The me diation h ere
has to do with tim e. Allowing for, even suggestin g, immediacy is,
of course , the fantasy wit hin representation .As fantasy. and thu s as
the mark of a certain desire. immediacy is already m ediated .) The
shadow differen tiates itself, and yet the act of differen tiation
allows for an iden tification - perhaps a reidentificarion - of that
which originally cast the shadow. With the absence of the one who
cast the shadow the opening is then reinforced , while the closure
is envisaged.
Closure , here , refers to the demands made by the incor poration
of the line. diagram. etc., into the structure of representation .
Within that structure a line marks bo th itself and wha t it is not . A
diagram supposes a realization in which the envisaged ob ject is
what the diagram is taken to represent. Instantiation or realization
wo uld close the ope nings which are th emselves already pre sent if
the lin e or diagram are taken to represent. Lines and diagram s.
from this perspective. work wi thin the in terd epend ence of
absence and closure.I
While absence predo minates, the closure is still posited insofar
as me line now tracing and marking the absent figure presents that
figure and thus allows for its reiden ti6cation .With reidenttfication
a closure is effected even though it is a closure tinged with loss
precisely because it is impossible if thought as absolute. What this
particular story of the origin stages. th erefore, is a relationship
between line and shadow in which there is an opening. The line
end ures holdin g a relation to the one who has gone . It is as though
there is an inescapable dou bling of loss. In more general terms.
therefore . representation creates an open ing for which a subse-
que nt closure is also envisaged. Openings and closures are int erar-
ticulated with the enforcing work of absence (as always, it is an
absence given to be overco me).
These openings occur in different sites. Each site involves the
effective presence of a specific type of opposi tion. This parti cular
form of opposi tion is characterized by its having been formulated
in term s ofa distance to be traversed (the oppositions bo th overlap
and implica te each other). The oppositions presence/absence.
model/real object , and plan/building, for example, instantiate a
specific desire and thus specific forms of operation. The desire is
the possibility that one side of the opposition holds and presents
wh at the other side eithe r is or will be.
At the origin of painting, the image of the one who is absent
has to be th e actual likeness of the absent one. The image has to
stand for that which is not there. The image has to present it and
therefore has to be its re-presentation. In the case of the model/real
object opposition . the model will have to have become the real
objec t.The plan becom es the building (thereby secur ing the posi-
tion of model and plan as always other than the obj ect but only
after th e event). Plan and model stand for what is absent bu t only
on the conditio n that presence is possible.The dictates of represen-
tation are such that movement across the divide defines activity.
Moreover, it defines the way either side of the opening is to be
interpreted. In other words, representation determines the way
both the line and its instantiation are to be understood. That this is
the interpretive setup is eviden t from the predominant question
stemming from th e presence of the divide, a divide that has to be
un derstood as the opening wi thin repre sentation and thu s which
3 Another history could ne Introduced at this point. In it the line would be di~ctly Incorporated into th e history of geometry. It shOUld not be thought. however, th<lt
ueo . For an Importan t study showin9 how that relati onship operate s in the wr lti n~s of oes certes see Claud ia Brodsky Lacour, Lines of Thought (Durham , North Caro lina: Duke Univers ity Press, 19 91> l, 49-6 8..
1
melancholic spaces
also functions as the source of representation. The question that
each opening sets into play concerns how the divide is to be
crossed; how, that is, is the opening to be closed?This question is
already marked by a for m of necessity. Once the line or diagram
is given with the struc tu re of repre sentat ion then this question is
inelim in ably pr esent. It presents that version of the inco mplete
that is determined, again out of necessity, by the need or desire for
completion. What cannot be sanctio ned is the inco mp lete taken as
an end in itself
Responding to the demand for closure is, as has already been
intimated. to turn the plan. drawin g, mo del. or line intO that
wh ich can only be explained within the structure of represen ta-
tion . It shoul d not be forgotten that this structure allows for its
OVJIl negative instance: namely, a series of drawings, models,
plans, etc., whose interest is determined by the claim that they
have pure ly present arional force.They could. for example, be taken
as either fantastic possibili ties or uto pian projections. In both of
these instances the fantasy or the futural pro jection would have
been identified from within the structure of represent ation.They
present re-presentation 's othe r possibility: its impossibility. As
such . undertakings of th is type remain on one side of the open-
in g. Gesturing to th e impossibility of the realiza tion of the
desire for completion . th ey beco me representation 's negative
in stance. Impossibility, within this for mulation , is no more than
the negative in stance of possibility. One is defined in relati on to
the other. W hat thi s m eans is th at the possibility of retr ievin g
23.37
the line, of allowing the diagram another possibility, is not to be
interpreted within the terms set by repr esentation 's pos itive or
negative dimensions.
REPRES ENTATION -
MELANCHOLIC SPACES
Representation stages its
ow n limits. In order to chart
its limits it is of fundamental
importance to allow repr e-
sentation to dictate both pos-
itive and negative in-stances.
The reason for this imp or-
tance is linked to the descrip -
tion, already given, of the
divide that has to be crossed
and which forms, from with-
in the in terpretive pur view
of representation , an in tegral
part ofan accoun t of bot h the
drawing and diagram . A plan
m arks out wha t is going to
be pre sent. This means that
representation dictates that
the plan or the diagram hold
that absen t presence in place.
There is. ther efore , a certain
futur ity inscribed in the existence of the plan or diagram. It is pre-
cisely this particula r determinatio n that is at work in the sugges-
tion that the origin of painting is linked to the outline of that
which is necessarily absent. Impossibility does not check represen-
tation; it is explained by it. Allowing for this particular formulation
of the possibility of impossibility is to reiterate the wor k of
absence and thus to delimi t the plan or diagram as a melancholic
space. Such an eventuality is the pot ential within represent ation.
t~ abstract line is n ec e~sadl y distanced from the work of ~ p~$enU
Benjamin
 subsequent realization rum

The introduction of melan cholia here is intended to identify
the way that representation demands a particular conception of
that which demands completion.The demand of representation is
ine scapabl e. Moreover, it is pr ecisely this demand that underlies
what has already been identified as me coincidence of line , dia-
gram, and plan within the determining str ucture of repre sentation.
The place of absence and with it the forced retention of this
, melancholic place mark w hat can be described as the limit of rep-
resentation. limit here is not that which is problematic within
representation; it is not rep resentation's OVo/Il cporenc possibiliti es.
The identification of limits pertains to propriety and hen ce to
what is proper to repr esentation. He re. what is of pr imary conce rn
is the opening and hence the lin k between lin e, drawing, and dia-
gram and a pervadin g sense of absence. Absence sign als the inter-
pretive demand. As has already been intimated , what that m eans
here is that the site of in terpretation is m arked by what it is not.
Thi s quality - the "what it is not" - needs to be link ed to the
future. The "what it is not" is connected to the "what it will be."
Melancholia pred ominates in the pre cise sense that the site itself is
marked by loss - at the present, for the future - even thou gh the
object ofloss, what it is that has been lost, cannot be specified in its
own terms (the lack of spedficiry has to do, for the most part , wi th
the nature of the difference between the media in which the present
and the future are staged).
This definition of the site - the determination of the site as given
23.38 through loss - has a number of interrelated consequences. Two are
central here. The first concerns the particularity of the line, draw-
ing, plan, etc. Loss m eans that which lies in what it is not. The sub-
repr esentation. The yet-to-be comes to be com pleted. Within this
serup. the site defin ed in terms ofneg ation (and which allows for the
ascription of melancholia precisely because it is defined in terms of
loss) both envisages and demands its own subsequent negati on . In
other words, the incomplete demands to be completed; loss insists
on its own overcoming.Allowing for the incomplete cannot be given
within the opposition of incomplete and com plete. The incomplete
has to maintain itself as such. Maintaining here is necessarily interar-
ticulated wi th production. It is this position that has to bedeveloped.
LI NES OFWORK
Represen tation is defined in terms of a cer tain conception of
negation . Allusion has already been made to this conce ption in
terms of the "what it is not." Within this formulation the diagram
and the lin e are what they are because they allow for their instantia-
tion in a fonn other than their own; they allow for a completion in a
time (the future) that is not their s. Having been completed - com-
pleted in the sense of having been instantiated - both the line and
the diagram are necessarily devoid of po ssibilities. They lose their
capacity for investigation or research and therefore their capacity to
be the site of experimentation because they are pr ecluded - the
preclusion is the consequence of int erpretation - from retaining a
generative quality.This does no t m ean that the possibility of experi-
mentation is linked to the incomplete. but that experimentation
need s to allow what has been taken to be a repre senta tion to sustain
a gen erative qu ality. With the strict operation of representation -
moving as it must from the incom plete to the complete and thus
from the present to the future - this quali ty is denied, because lin es,

.. seq uent realization, be it reidennficadon or building. reinforces the diagram s, and plans are taken as demanding their own completion

..'"
z ascriptio n ofloss. (If there were the time, a far more detailed exam - and thus of having been completed (again, it is essential to allow for

.~
,. :e'"
ination of what is involved in any anempt to give greater par ticular- the coincidence of plan s, diagram s, and lines within rep resenta -

,
0

5'

0.
=
ity to what is designated by "subsequen t reali zation" would have to
be under taken .) The secon d consequence co ncerns how the lin e or
tion) . What predominates here is a conception of negation that is
linked to its own overcoming through the act of com pletion (either
S "'~ '"z dr awing is to be in terp reted. These two consequences are related real or envisaged) . Neither the truth nor the viability of this serup
, .. .
0
~ ~
0 insofar as what arises with the second are the result s of definitions com prise w hat is central her e. Cen trality has to be given to the
~ ~ " that involve no more than sim ple negations. What has to be taken demand for the act ofcom pletion. Realization precludes experimen -
z
3
~
s ~.
"
..
c
3.
up - here in outline - is what emerges in the departure from this
structure of negation. In the place of the enforcing hold of loss
tation precisely because it is the mar k of the act ofcompletion; or at
least that is the demand that is made.
3
~

8
" .'"
0
there is a conception of the in complete understood not just as There is a twofold movement at work here. Representation
~
i .'"
~ ." always already in complete but as given wi thin its own economy. deni es that either the line or the diagram could present po ssibiliti es

.. .. ...
~
Once the incomplete is viewed as a mark of pr oduction, the incom - resisting com pletio n. Moreover, to the extent that either were
0
plete brings with it its own gen erative capacity (As will be sug- allowed this capacity, then neither the line nor the diagram could be
~
~ '"
~-e E co gested, it is pr ecisely this possibility that ari ses in the move from a int erpreted within the determination s given by the work of repre-

! l-"[
~
g;
..
."

%
formulation of the ont ological in terms of stasis to a conception
determined by the cen trality of becoming. However. this con cep-
sentation. How then does it become possi ble to account for the
work of lines and the field of activity given by the diagram?
~
.. ....
~ r- tion of becoming has to be one that retains the m ovemen t to form. The term haunting the str ucture of representation , haunting it
S' co
~ co There cannot be pure process without the move to form.With mere precisely because it defin es its mo st essen tial determination, is
!' ~. becoming form is precluded and therefore its archi tecture is con- melancholia. Represen tation is m arked by loss. However, what is
f
~
Q
0
0
:l~.
%
-<
~
~
tinually defer red . Allowing for form as tnt erarticulared wi th m ove-
m ent and th erefore wi th the centrality of becoming is the potential
absen t cannot be nam ed as such ; moreover, it cann ot be readily iden-
tified.The desire of representation is for that which com pletes it and
~
3 5'
[ ~
> ! within Leibnia's theory of the monad.) thus what is given in re-presenta tion is the lost object. Representation
'!i ~
;; ~ 2- Rath er than cross the d ivide . and thus rather than allow the insists on a com pletion that cannot be identified as absolute. It is
~
.:;
l
0
~
n
~
5
de sire to cros s the divide and unify what would otherwise have
bee n an opposition to determine the struc ture wi thin w hic h the
tempting to suggest, therefore, that it is always ruined in advance.
Here melancholia works wi th the ruin of com pleted form. Taken as
~ line or di agram is to be understood , another possibility emerges. the defining term, loss restricts activity by limi cing the range ofwork.
~
It arises to the extent tha t negation is funda me ntally rework ed in There is, however. another ruin. Nei ther ruined in advance nor
~ [ terms of the incomplete. the ruined form of what already stood. Beyond the strictures of the
~ ;.5' The distance bein g staged here is between a structure in which melancholic turn there is the ruin that yields form. It is not the ruin
~ ~

.. ..
~
~
~

~
~
there is an envisaged movement from the presentation of what is yet
to be, thereby defining that presentation as the repr esentation ofwhat
of form bu t the ruin that forms.This ruin that demands the abeyance
of any pr oblematics of loss is the diagram or the line once freed
~
it is not, and the su bsequent realization or instantiation of that earlier from the need to repr esent. Rather than open out by trying to stand

Benjamin
monad plane of immanence

for w hat they are not, the line and di agram open up wi thin th em -
selves. Allowing for the continuity of thi s opening, allowing for the
continuiry of an opening resisting absolute finaliry and th us an
enforcing completio n, is to allow both lin e and diagram to take on
the status of plural events." Plurality here does not refer to mere
semantic overdetermination. Rather, for th e diagram or th e line to
take on this status th ey would be come th e site of an ontolog ical irre-
ducibility.They would. for example, articulate the determinations of
the Leibnizian monad.
The monad always presents itself and can be perceived as suc h in a
particular form at a particular time. No netheless, the monad is always
more than this formal actuality The "more." though. is not derived
from links to the monad. On th e contrary. it is internal to the monad
itself Th e monad "is" - is itself- in its continual opening up within
itself It plots and replots itself It could not be described as the conti -
nuiry of an opening wi thout end unl ess there were the fundamental
recognition that the monad is. at th e same time, an endless opening
always having a particular form . It is the copresence of con tinuity
and discon tinuity of form and th e generation of form of in stan tia-
tion and becoming.With the m onad the se terms are taken as coexi st-
ing and therefor e are not m utu ally exclusive. Presentation is always an
effect of an econ omy of production. As an economy - a produ ction of
endless completio n opened by the effective presence of the in com-
plete - it allows the monad to become the diagram. With thi s m ove,
one that in general terms is occasioned by the diagram having the
ontological status ofa plural event. it becomes the site of experimen -
tation. The diagram is the place of a mapping and remapping in
which finirude is always an effect of an ineliminable infinite.
Two points need to be made in conclusion. In the first instance,
once freed from the need to represent, the line and the diagram work
as ends in th ems elves. This is not in ten ded to preclude pragmatic
necessities. Rather il is to allow for the em ergence of the diagram as a
plotting of com plexity - a com plex of relations - that is always m ore
than the addition of elem ents.The conception of complexity at wo rk
here is the m oment of realization occasioned by the lines in question
but which the lin es cannot be taken as repr esenting.At that moment
the diagr am em erges freed from its origin al need to present what is
not there. What this means is that the diagram can inscribe the furure
into the present because that possi-
biliry is itself part of the present's ,_ ,
own self-constitution , The second ......
point opens up a further limit. If '
------_
-_----
. __ .-..
within the diagram, each line is are
given a differen t weighting suc h
.....
...
.
that speed and time define th e pres-
ence of the line - a geome o-y of
.....
.,.t
- -.'
movement rather than that of mere _.
I ... .
place - then the intersection of two . ... 1
THE CONE OF IMMANENSCENOENCE . .
Karl Chu
... God has no sons.
-Anonymous
Let this be yet another renewal of the plane of immanence by think-
ing of it as a leaf of the cone of tmrnanenscendence. The plane of
immanence holds a fundamental position in the philosophy of Gilles
Deleuze and Felix Guattari (DIG). and a whole chapter is devoted to
it in their book Mat Is Philosophy? The plane is conceived as neither a
concept nor an object but as a necessary abstraction that establishes
the plane of immanence as the invisible tablet upon which a host of
interrelated concepts is actively played out to form a machinic philos-
ophy of multiplicities. NO(the least significant among these concepts
is their notion of the diagram. A renewal of the image of the plane
would therefore effect the image of diagrammatic features registered
on the plane. The plane of immanence is an image of thought which
is constituted by the construction of concepts. according to DIG.
Concepts are events defined as concrete assemblages analogous to the
configurations of a machine. \.. . . hereas the plane is the abstract
machine of the absolute horizon ofevents. DIG interpret diagrams as
trackings of dynamic movements, while concepts function as inten-
sive ordinates of these movements on the plane . Since concepts are
23.39
tribes that populate the plane. it would necessitate a different image
of the plane if it were to be occupied by some other entities such as
monads with a different logic of construction and behavior. The plane
of immanence is the plane par excellence that serves as the ground or
planommon upon which the infinite movements of thought, lines of
flight. and rhizomatic formations are portrayed as diagrams or direc-
tions within the vector space of the plane "that rolls them up and
unrolls them" in a single gesture that engulfs the One-All.
The plane of immanence therefore is an ontological construc-
tion of the possible spheres of being compressed onto a single
plane of thought. DIG describe the plane as "that which must be
thought and th at which cannot be thought." It is "the nonthought
'_.

lines, while appearing in any dia- ..1

gram as the intersection of those 1 1
lines, will always h ave been more. I .
The nature of the intersection as a ...
staged irreducibility defined in ..
terms of time and speed marks the ..
impossibiliry of representation. The .....
diagram works within itself allow- to""
ing a continual reworking within the
...
... ---_..--_._.
incorporation of different weight-
ings. Diagrams and lines stage that '-'
... __ ,,'_0 _ _'

work and therefore are able to be ....01 .. _ _ ... _ .

redefined in terms of lines of work.

Gla sona d . Rendering by X Kavya.

4 [hav~ tri~d to develop th i$term in a numb~r of difbrent place$. See in particular The Plural Eyent (London:
Rout l ~d9~. 1"192).

Chu
 prespace
within thought:' and "the most intimate within thought and yet
the absolute outside - the not-external outside and the not-inter-
nal inside of thought." It is a supreme act of philosophy, according
(0 DIG, to point out the nonthought within thought by showing
that it is there. By also bringing mm relief the necessity and diffi-
culty of thinking about immanence without invoking the tran-
scendent that would make the plane immanent to it, they have
shown what thought can claim by right and the construction of
the plane of immanence as an authentic image of its own making.
Such is the nature and scope of the plane of immanence as delin-
eated by DIG. The plane. however. resonates with the distant echo
of the chaosmos proposed by Anaximander. In this pre-Socratic
version, the cosmos is conceived as a self-organizing entity that
engages in a perpetual revolution within itself while being sus-
pended in a timeless and spaceless zone of eternity without gene-
, world out of an infinite number of possible worlds. Each world
I. 23.40
Phylagon. Renderi ng by X Kavya.
sis. Even though the plane of immanence is described as an
abstract machine by DIG. the idea of a metagenetic basis for the
emergence of possible worlds is \...-ithheld as a virtual reserve
awaiting further explication.
To think the plane of immanence anew is to start from the
unthought within its suppositions: prespace that is prior to any
thought of being. It is anterior to any notions of presence or
becoming, and it evokes an unconditioned sense of pure passivi-
ty that is more ancient than time itself. It is in this sense that the
reality of prespace coincides with the nonrhcught within
thought as that which Cannot be thought. Otherwise, the plane
of immanence is liable to be posited as a given somehow waiting
to be appropriated by the advent of philosophy as its homecom-
ing. Prespace, which can only be expressed in symbolic terms. is
the black light that gives light to the light of being. Without
depth or extension. it is the primordial nothingness that resides
within the metaphysical point that is the absolute monad. Its
nature can only be obliquely referred to as the One beyond being
that is the cause of itself, an impossible designation due to the
radical nature of alterity that is transcendent and unintelligible
to all claims. It is neither the One nor the All; it is the supreme act
of vacuum genesis. It is the convergence of transcendent cause
into immanent cause through a primal catastrophe or singularity
that projects an infinite substance or consi stency to form the
cone of immanenscendence while concealing the reality of pre-
space within the veil of nothingness at the very moment of its
inception. Nothin gness is the primordial effect or symptom of
~ ----------;jiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii~
Chu
regulative totality
the ontological difference between prespace and the sudden
explosive adventure of genesis that marks the announcement of
the gift of being as the instantaneous occurrence of a bi-condi-
tional directive: an emission that projects only through the
simultaneous withdrawal of itself back into prespace. As a meta-
physics of emanation, it channels out attributes of the absolute
monad into the cone of immanenscendence through the process
of gene rative condensations that subsequently crys tallize into
constellations of mona.ds. The plane of immanence is an emer-
gent phenomena out of this condensation, a phenomenal act that
stages the becoming conscious of cosmic reason through the
markings of the appearance of intelligence as a threshold in its
passage toward the absolute. Its nature is essentially genetic to
the extent that prespace withdraws itself in order to allow for the
manifestation of possible worlds. Space-time is the extensive
domain procured by the development of these primitive monads
as they participate in the construction of the plane of imma-
nence as a world unto itself
The cone of immanenscendence is the medium of substantia-
tion, of the pyromaniac dissemination of the absolute infinite
that knows no bound. Immanenscendence is neither ascendence
nor descendence but explication of conditioned indetermina-
tion. or real potentiality. as Alfred North Whitehead would relate
to it, into attributes and modes that give expression to a po ssible
occupies a plane as the absolute plane of immanence that is
immanent only to itself as an emergent singularity. From the
standpoint of genesis, the plane is immanent to the cone since
the cone. in Kantian terms, is a regulative totality that appeals to
a transcendental illusion and. therefore, is outside the domain of
possible experience. Based on whose experience? Even the sub-
stance of Spinoza is outside of empirical experience. Spinoza
requires the claim of thought to embody substance as its consti-
tutive mode of being. as well as of the world, and' thereby mak-
ing substance immanent to itself through a differentiation of
attributes into modes. The plane of immanence is immanent to
thought that conceives it, but the cone of emanation is the pre-
condition which creates the possibility of thought itself. The
cone is the object of contemplation that re-introduces the tran-
scendent by making the plane immanent to the cone. How else
can thought conceive of emergence Out of a precondition, espe-
cially of itself, if not through the expression of modes that con-
dense and crystallize into thought? Thought cannot simply be
construed as the instrument of the coguo which engages in
auto-affirmation of the self by bracketing the cogito away from
the world. nor can it be so conceived as to be directed only
toward external objects severed from its constitutive mecha-
nisms of understanding. Thought is an emergent expression
along the lines of tele-kaustos or reception of a preceding material-
ity that has become the other of thought within thought and
which at once sustains thought while withholding itself from
thought. Radical empiricism. on the other hand: refuses to take
measure of that which is not available within concrete experi-
ence, and thus holds a skeptical relation to causality, transcen-
dent or otherwise. To avoid the slide into dogmatic slumber, Kant
was compelled to invent an exemplary idea of pure immanence,
a transcendental unity of apperception within consciousness that
provides the basis for a priori synthetic judgments. The cone of
immanenscendence, however, is only transcendent to the extent
that it is an inference that posits metaphysical realism to the
cone. the Universal Abstract Machine of genesis. as the progeni-


f uxstratum worldsheet

tor of possible worlds independent of any observers. The image effect and the effect implicated
of the cone can only be inferred from the plane and the image of in the cause through an alter-
the plane inferred as a projection of the cone. nating mode of differentia-

,.. The plane of immanence is a fluxstratum that stages the mon-

ads of the world into a cohesive spectrwn of dynamic correlations.
The plane is neither an object nor a concept, as DIG have shown,
but rather a nonobjective planomenon that is constituted by event-
structures evolving on the plane. Each plane is a generative con-
struction out of the anarchic milieu of chaos by monads based on
tion that engenders emergent
cycles of possible worlds.
There is a reciprocal nesting
and complication of the
plane with the cone in such a
manner that the plane of
the principle of combinatorial expansion. Monads, according to immanence is a leaf, or
Leibniz, are micro automata propelled by metaphysical force, and "worldsheet" that evolves
they function as dynamically induced constructive agents rather from the cone at a multitude
than as morphing entities. Monadic regimes are created through of scalar and specification
massive autocatalytic reactions of microautomata percolating on regimes of immanence. The
the plane of immanence to form a hierarchical spectrum of reality vibrational modes of the
structures through the embedding of lower dimensional struc- worldsheet consequently
tures in higher dimensional structures. Their collective heterogen- impel the plane to 'tw ist and
esis gives rise to various emergent phenomena and phase transi- turn and fold the crystal-
tions leading to the construction of higher-order entities and lized attributes of the cone
intelligent processes. However, when diagrams are interpreted into a multilayered torus
only as dynamic flows or movements within a vector field, their with holes, thereby revolving
behavior is limited to a form of diagrammatic dynamism or state the worldsheet into a toroidal
transformative processes that merely transform states of affairs vortex that converges at infin-
exogenously without issuing any novel entities or, in Whiteheadi- ity. From this concentration
of infinite density, it once
an terminology. concrescence. In and of themselves, they are incapable
of generating emergent organisms because interacting entities are again emits the cone of
23.41
understood as the temporal and spatial change in the magrurudes immanenscendence to form
of quantitative variables. Diagrams, conceived as state transforma- yet another recursive projec-
tive processes, signal only the changes in position of singular tion of the absolute horizon
points or elements within the vector space of the plane and not the of events - a theater of the
construction of the plane itself In dynamical constructivism, world that knows of its exis-
which is based on the monadic transformation of genotypes, the tence only from within the
development of complex organizations or hyperscructures is plane of immanence as a sin-
achieved through the causal linkage between the internal struc- gularity. The worlds it pro- Phylogon. Rendering by X Kavya.

tures of objects and the actions through which they participate in
the construction of other objects as events. Without the logic of
construction, it would no longer be possible to endogenously
induce a motion in the combinatorial, albeit nomadic, space of
possible objects or species. The plane of immanence, conceived
from this angle, yields an implicate structure that takes on the
function of a genetic machine that processes bits into a phylogeny
of species and life forms . The same oscillation of hypercycles that
resonates on the plane is mirrored and nested within specification
regimes of each species. This is the inner pulse of every heartbeat
that harbors a strange atrractor as the soul of each species. Each
attractor is an ambient ring with a knot topology and is dynami-
cally linked to adjacent rings, thereby forming a pulsating fabric of
reality that is the plane of immanence. The plane is immanent to
itself only after the advent of life and of consciousness (a cogito)
that has already begun to construct concepts of understanding,
both of itself and of the world. Each plane is not only immanent to
the machinic composition of concepts, or self-organizing
schematas, but also immanent to the compulsions and computa-
tions of microautomata that eo-evolve into a spectral fusion of
hyperstructures within the plane.
It may seem to be paradoxical that the.existence of the cone of
immanenscendence is predicated by the very existence of the
plane of immanence that is only immanent unto itself, however,
each is a reason for the exist ence of the other. Since the plane is a
projection of the cone, the two are essentially different aspec ts of
the same reality. As such, the cause is already explicated in the
jeers and constructs are permeated by reflection spaces caught
within crystallographic structures that recursively map onto them-
selves as reflections within the chromogenic patterns of the world-
sheet. The plane with its virtual hyperplanes compressed into the
plane of intelligence is a shining leaf of immanenc.e that inevitably
focal izes at the absolute infinite only to emit yet another cone of
immanenscendence. Such is the audacity and natur e of the cone of
immanenscendence, which ceaselessly revolves and projects its
substance into an infinity of attributes by generating conditions of
possibility for the construction of the plane of immanence at every
turn. Every emission is an ejection of a possible world that is dif-
ferent in every manner and in every way from every other possible
world. The cone of immanenscendence together with the plane of
immanence forms the real ity engine or the Universal Abstract
Machine of reality. The plane of immanence is the absolute stale of
affairs for a given world and the cone of imrnanenscendence is the
cone of emission that projects an infinity of possible worlds.
Every construction of the plane is a projective inscription in
the book of immanence. "Literature reveals what revelation
destroys," remarked Maurice Blanchot. The inverse of literature is
the recursive series of bits syntactically iterated by the Universal
Turing Machine. The Church/Turing Thesis, which defines the
limits of computability, both logical and physical, states that any-
thing that is computable can be computed by the Universal Tur-
ing Machine. The Turing Principle: an extension of the thesis in
its strongest version as reformulated by David Deutsch, claims
that it is possible to build a virtual reality generator whose reper-

Phylogon. Rendering by X Kevye.

Chu
 Universal Turing Machine

totrc includes every physicall y possible envi r on m ent. This prin-
ciple, in conjunction with the eschatologtcal thesis of the
omega-point theory (first proposed by Frank Tipler and later
reinterpreted by Deutsch from a com putatio nal standpoint) .
postulates an infinite number of computational steps mad e pos-
sible by an unlimited supp ly of energy near the moment of grav-
itational collapse. There. according to one of the current co smo-
logical model s, an infinite number o f oscillations o f the in crease
and decrease in deformation of the geometry of the universe
(the three-dimensional analogue of the surface of an ellipsoid)
would occur.Toge ther, the Turing Principle and the omega-point
theory provide the most provocative susten ance to the construc-
tion of a principle of sufficient reason for the virtual ontology of
the plane of immanence.
"V-le never perform a computation, we just merely hitch a
ride on the great Computation that is going on already," accord-
ing to the com puter scientist Tomasso Toffoli. The Universal Tur-
ing Machine therefore is an ins trument of revelation. It is an
instrument that discloses the deep embedded structures of realt-
ty throug h a recursive generation of bits. but leaves open the
semio logical dimension of meaning. whic h it is incapable of
computin g. It is an irony of the Turing Machine that it can write
only under erasure in order to arrive at significance or logical
de pth. The cost it entails for the differential incarnation of form
in bits, an im manent version of metempsychosis. is in the conse -
THE DIAGRAM AS TECHNIQUE OF EXISTENC E
Bri an Massumi
I.
"We judge colors by the company they keep." j Colors are convivial.
"A" color "is an alteration of a complete specrrurn.V However
lonely in appearance, a color is in the com pany of its kin - all its
potential variations. The spectrum is the invisible background
against which "a" calo r stands ou t. It is the ever-present virtual
whole ofeach color apm.
ll.
"I was in a totally whi te room.As I held the pri sm before my eyes,
I expected, keepin g Newtonian theory in mind, that the entire
white w all would be fragmented into different colors. since the
light return in g to the eye would be seen shattered in just so many
colared lights. But I was quite amazed that the white wall show -
in g thr ou gh the pri sm remained as white as before. Only where
there was some thing dark did a mor e or less distinct color show. ...
It required little thought to recognize that an roge weB nec=ry to bring
aboutcalor. I imm ediately spo ke out to myself, throu gh ins tinct, that
Newtonian theory was erroneous.... Everything unfolded itself
before me bit by bit. I had placed a white sheet of glass upo n a

23.42 quent production of entropic chao s and ignorance as it erases black background. looking at it through the pr ism from a given
part of its memory in orde r to make room for fur ther processing distance, thu s representin g the known spectrum and com pleting
(except at the omega-point. where it finds itself with in exhaust- Newton 's main experiment with the camera obscura. But a black
ible computational resource) . Nonetheless, the space hollowed sheet of glass atop a light, white ground also mad e a colored , and
out by the Tur ing Machine along with the chaos it left behind is to a certain degree a gorgeous specter.Thus when light dissolves
the space of me taphysical desire that is traversed by the poerics of itself in just so many colors, then darkness must also beviewed as dissolved
literature. Even literatur e, in its eagerness to fill this space. par- in color." 3
takes in the so-called "insane gam e of 'wr itin g: ' an insight of The spectrum is convivial. It is always in the company of dark-
Mallarrne . that opens up writing to wr iting and , in so do ing , ness. The range of achromatic variation forms a larger enco m-
,". risks conc ealing the nonabsenr absence that is the pri mordial
space of inscription.The Turing Machine, with all its pretensions
passing whole against which the spectrum appears. "Colour and
illum ination constitu te .. . an indissoluble unity . .. One illumina-
'"
r-
to inscribe the book of the world within bits even at the omega- tion with its colours emerges from the other, and merges back into
n
~
~
:l:
0=
point, not only fails to compute the space of literature but is also it; they are both indicators and bearers of each othcr.?"
circumsc ribed by the mere fact of being physical. The laws of
I
~
~
"- :;
"-
~

,.
z
physics are constituted and fine-tuned in such a way that they
cou ld give rise to the Turing Machine which, in tur n. can com-
Bearers of each other. triggered into being by an edge.The con-
vivial edge of emergence: one line indicating all, presenting the
continuity of variation that is the shadowy backgroun d of existence.
"-
8 o ,. pute those very laws of which it is an expression. This is a self- And at the same time effecting separation: the spectral distinction of
3
-e ~
'"n
~c.
~ ...:l: consistent loop that presumes physi cal laws to be timeless eternal what acrually appears. Merging; emerging.Virtual: actual. One line.
Q
? truths. However, if the universe represents maximum potential
g;
~. ...'"n variety, it would nor only generate the richest variety of orga- ill.
... nized forms but it wo uld also allow for the laws of physics to "There must be a con tinuity of changeable qualities. Of the continu-
"
~
,.'" evolve with the universe, ther eby raising the question of the ity of intrinsic qualities of feeling we can now form but a feeble
"- n
~ :l:

Z
computational limits of the cosmos. Even in a universe wi th
fixed laws, the domain of what is logically possib le to compute
conception. The developm ent of me human min d has practically
extinguished all feelings. except a few sporadic kinds. sound. col-
~
e,
,." extends beyond what is physically computable.That fact. though. ors. smells, warm rhs. etc., which now appear to be disconnected
~.

;; ... does not even come close to addressing what is logically impos- and disparate. In the case of COlOIS, there is a tridimensional spread
"- ~

n sible to compute. Beyon d that vast space of the logically no n- offeelings [hu e. saturation, brighmess]. Originally, all feelings may
~
~
c, ,. computable, we don 't h ave the slightes t clue excep t through the have been connected in the same way, and the presumption is that
~ '"
n
glimmer of a plasuc intuition which Spinoza describes as the the number of dimensions was endless. For development essentially
~ thnd kind of knowledge tha t is the highest form of knowing. involves a limitation of possibilities. But given a num ber of dimen-
~ :l:
.,
~
The book of the wo rld is perp etu ally written and rewritten sions of feeling, all possible varieties are obtainable by varying the
if
g, ~ because of the absence of the Book. The con e of immanenscen- intensities of the different elements.Accordingly.time logically sup-
1:
Q
dence is the perpetual writing machine that emits and generates poses a continuous range of intensity in feeling. It follows, then ,
the plane of imm anence as a page in the book of the absolute from the definition of continuity. that when any particular kind of
~ infinit e. Let this be yet anot her renewal of the plane of imma- feeling is present, an infinitesimal continuation of all feelings differ-
nence as a leaf from the cone of immanenscendence. ing infinitesimally from that is present." 5
-

Chu
 The enveloping of color and illumination in one another
extends throu gh the senses, each one bearing and indi cating all.
Mutually enfolding : a many-dimension ed. virtual whole of feel-
ing is enfolded in every actual app earance in any given sense
mode. Synesthesia. A color, smell. or touch is an emergent limita-
tion of the synaesthetic fold: its differentiation. A color, smell, or
touch extinguishes the whole in its difference. And in the same
stroke presents it: as the totality of its own potential variations.All
the befores and afters it might be. instantaneously.The distinc tness
of each present perception is accompanied by a vague infinity of
self-continuity An integral synchro ny of befores and afters.
Unbeen, be-able. Ttmelike. logically prior to linear time. In the
limi ts of the present .Who lly, virtually, vaguely Differentially Edging
into existence.
IV.
"let the clean blackboard be a sort of Diagram of the or iginal
vague potentiality. or at any rate of some early stage of its determ t-
nation . ... This blackboard is a continuum of two dimensions,
while that which it stands for is a continuum of some indefinite
multi tude of dimensions. . . . I draw a chalk line on the board.This
discontinuity is one of those brute acts by whic h alone the origi-
nal vagueness could have made a step toward definiteness.There is
a certain element of continuity in this line.Where did the continu-
ity come from? It is nothing but the original continuity of the
blackboard which makes everythin g upon it continuou s. What I
havereally drawn there is an oval line. For this white chalk-mark is
not a line, it is a plane figure in Euclid 's sense - a surface, and the
only line that is there is the line which form s the limi t between the
black surface and the white surface.This discon tinuity can only be
produced upon that blackboard by the reaction between two con-
tinuous surfaces into which it is separated, the white surface and
the black surface. The white is a Firstness - a springing up of
something new. But the boundary between the white is neithe r
black. nor white. nor neither, nor both. It is the pairedness of the
two. It is for the white the active Secondn ess of the black; for black
the active Secondness of the white."0
Something new: First. And with it. simultaneous ly and indisso-
ciably, a Secondness : a visible separation of surfaces.The separa-
tion is across an insubstantial boundary, itself imperceptible. Pure
edge. Neither black nor white. Not neither, not both.A virtu al line.
An insubstantial boundary does not effectively enclose. Quite
to the con trary, it "actively" connects that which it separates.The
virtual line is the activi tyofrelation of the black and the white: a reci-
procal coming-Second. It embodies the event of that pairedness.
The pure edge invisibly presents the immediacy of spatially and
chromatically differentiated surfaces to each oth er.That imm ediacy
is also an imm ediacy of forms .The virtual line is the event of the
oval and the plane coming-to gether: their belonging to each
other.As protofigures to each other's oscillating ground .
"Like the ovum of the universe segmente d."?
A perceptible difference has emerged from vague potential.The
continuity of the virtual whole of be-ability has fed forward ont o
the plane of actual being-different . As been. the whole presents
itself twice. Once: in the concrete sur face continuity of black and
of white. Again: in the pure abstractness of the invisible line sepa-
rating and connecting the surfaces.
Surfaced , continuity is on either side of a divide. It bifurcates
in to a perceptual contrast between copresent and disjunct ele-
ments. A "copresence of disjunct elements": the definition of
space. The "integral synchro ny" of mutually enfolded before-
afters is supplemented by some thing planely spatialized. A spa-
tiality is emerging from that spatlaliry's own potential timelike -
ness. It has unfo lded as an after. its before almost left behind.
Continuity is no longer entirely in self-continuity. It is divid ed,
supplementarily. int o a double difference-from : direct con trast,
spatial and temporal .
The cosurfacing of the oval and plane does not entirely detach
from the continuum of potential.The insub stantial boun dary sep-
arating and connecting them retains the vagueness of the virtual
whole: neither this nor that. Neither black nor white, neither plane
nor oval. Rather, the pure activity of their relating. Reciprocally, in
their spatial separation. Recursively, in a kind of instantaneous
oscillation joinin g the disjunc t in mutual Seconding. Actively, reci-
procally. recursively Eventfully: the boundary preserves an edge of
timelikeness. The virtual line is the virtual whole as it edges,
imperceptibly, into the actual.Timelike continuit y is drawn ou t of
itself, cutting into the actual, where it appears as pure edging: dis-
continuity in person . Unenclosing, the line is not a boundary in
the usual sense. It is spatializing (its timelike cutting-in, constitutes
the simultaneity of the sur facing disjun ction) . But it is not in itself
spatial. The virtual line is less an outline than a limit. It is the
processual limit between the virtual and the actual, as one verges
actively on the other.The "brute act" of the actual and the virtual
relating. Drawin g each other, to the verge of forma l definition.
Contrastive difference is protofigural: eme rgently ord ered, tnsub-
stantially bounded.
The defining limit of the pro tofigural is doubly an opennrss. On
the level of actual being, it is the active reciprocity of differen tiated
forms to each other. Between that level and its be-ability. it is the
openness of form s to their belonging-together. infinitel y, continu-
ously, indefinitely in potential.
The double openness is of relating.
"The line is the relation" (James, Principles. 2, 149).
V.
Now mul tiply lines on the board, each succeeding mark intersect-
ing the last at a set angle. A black oval now stands out distinctly
against the white edgin g of the lines. Make the lines black ink and
the background white paper. T~e effect is the same: a figure is dis-
tinctly visible.The proli feration of line-ovals has emerged from its
own repetition into a super-oval.
The unity of the figure strikes the eye immediately, even
though it is composed. It is a gestalt. Its figurative unity stands ou t
from the multiplicity of its constituent marks. The edge has taken
on a visible thickn ess.The line has propagated into an outline.

The imp ercepti bili ty of each mark's virtu al edge no long er
presen ts itself. d isappearing int o the thick of boundaried visio n.
Separating more than it connects , the inte rvening boundary
br in gs a palpable stillne ss to th e figure it encloses.The reci procity
of black and w hite has settled into a mediation of surfac es that are
fit qualitatively th e sam e - w hite-inside separated from whi te-o ut-
side. Th e "acti vity" or eventfulness o f the contrast is lost, along
with its immediacy.What directly strikes th e eye is no longer an
invisible, yet vaguely palpable, oscillation evocative of infinite
potential. Rather, it is th e very stillness of the figure.
The stilln ess is dis tant ly echoed , muted, in the white-o uts ide.
Mutual Secondness of black-F irstness and white-Fir stne ss is
replace d by muted subordi nati on of white to w hite, same to
m edi ated same . What co mes with the edg e is no lon ger a sing u -
larly direct, qu alit ative di ffere n ce in percep tion, but an attribu-
tion of d ivergent function to sameness.The d irect "pairedne ss" of
pure, open co ntrast is replaced by an opposition of m ediated sames
as a fun ction of pe rceptual closure. The w hi te outside is limited
to a passive backgrounding function for the in sid e's standing
out. What remnant of activi ty is still p alpa ble pa sses ent irely to
th e side of th e figure's standing. It is entirely spa na ltze d . The
edg y activit y of relation no lo nge r presents itself, only the stabl e
disjunction of gestalt result. Th e oval appears to stan d still in even
stiller space, as if it had stepped o ut of time, even out ofi ts own
presen t. Th e still -standing figure stands for a species of eternity :
a particular in stance of a Platonic for m .
eta The ovu m of the universe as been. Hatch ed eternal.
Look closely, and yo u will still alm ost-see the invisible edg e of
each constituent mark. Use your im aginati on . Each mark is imper-
ceptibly bound ed by a virtual line.Th us the marks never effective ly
int ersect. There are cracks between the m . Sin ce they do not int er -
sect, they never actually form a boundary. Their iteration fractally
m ultipli es the cracks, intensifyin g edg ines s.The unity of the figure
is actually composed of a cross-proliferation of virtual crack s.The
unity is abstract, su peradded as a perceptual bridge across the crack-
in g. The super-oval resulting fro m the br idg ing in -fill is not so
much seen as overseen. Look closely and you will see the bridging,
you will undersee the seethi ng cracks. Activity, under-still. As the
figu re cr wnbles int o the crac ks it straddles, the background re-
arises from its mute subordination . Whites and blacks re-become
reciprocating protofigures to each other's oscillating gro und, or
grounding oscillatio n , their active cont rast afloat in a deepenin g
virt ual abyss. Hatched eternity dissolves back into the still vaguely
timelike spacing of precariously sep arated surfaces, m utually
grounded in coflorarion : recip rocally self-standing.
The fulle r the unity of the figure, the m or e actualized th e fig-
ure - th e more multiply and in tensely the virtual edges in upon
it. The m ore p assively th e figu re stan ds o ut in it s unity - the
-. m or e actively its multipl ying co ns tituents reci procally self-sta nd,
The undermin in g insistence of the virtual is a co m plemen tary
and inverse movement to the actualization of the figure. The vir-
tual is gestalred out of the pi cture by the same iterative process
~::t
that fractals it in ever more de eply. Do ubl e ar ticulation : oflevels
of pro tofigural activity and figu ra tive annulment .
Dou ble visio n . Looking m ore o r less closely, focusin g m ore or
less attentively, the eye oscillate s between the annulment of the
process and its activity. Flicker. Between fully hatched stability
and contin uing, cracked emergence. Flicker. Between the made
and the making. Flicker. Betwe en seein g the figurative stability and
seeing the imperceptible float of figural pot ential. Flicker.The eye
tires of th e flicker. It habi tuates to bridge-l evel stabil ity.The eye is
.-
th e organ of habitual oversight.
The figure is a habitual inattention to the im perceptible in vision.
VI.
We have retur ned to dou ble vision w hen we can say that "it is non-
sense to talk of form perception." All the while acknowledging that
the "n onsense " is directly and effectively seen. Or when we say that
"the figure-ground ph enomenon does not apply to the wo rld."
Even as we hang pictures on our walls. Or w hen we say "there is no
speci al kin d of perception called depth perception" because space
itself "has nothing to do wi th perception." As we mea sure where
the new sofa might go. Or when we say that "we perceive not time
but proccsses.t'f Impa tiently checking our watch.
When we say these things we are sayin g that fo rm , figure /
groun d, depth, Euclidean space, and lin ear time are not founda-
tions or containers of percep tion . Exper ience cannot be derived
from them ; it is they that are derived from experience. Experience
cannot be contain ed by them; they are the conte nt s. They are
derivatio ns of a mor e o pen process: superaddi tio ns of habi t. Crea-
tures of habit, no t grounds of perception (which. as we have
almost-seen, is actively self-standing) .
Thi s do es no t imply that we can turn co m pletely away fro m
formal stability.We still hang pictu res.We can never. of cou rse, lit -
erally see th e im perceptible"ground" of potentia l over w hic h the
figure actu ally han gs. But then we cannot liter ally see th e figure
eithe r.We see our fill.Vision is never literal, alw ays figurative, in an
o utstandingly di rect , overfull way. Acknowledg ing that does no t
concede pot enti al and the virtual . For if we cannot see th e imper-
ceptible, we can sometim es see the flicker of the figure as it
eme rges fro m it. We can undersee the protofigural abyssing th e
figure . Seeing the figure 's self-standing by underseeing it is as
close as we come to glim psing pot ential. We alm ost-see it , edgily
side- perceive it , approaching the actual lim it of vision.
VII .
How could we ever literall y see a uni tary form o r figure when the
ligh t striking o ur eye is splintered into countless separate points
by th e rods and cones populatin g the retina? Fill in the gaps. H ow
coul d we literally see a co ntinuous sur face-surro und of space
w he n our very own no se sunde rs our field of vision in two - not
to me ntion the holes poked in both halves by the blind spo t of
each eye? Brid ge it over. How co uld we see depth when ou r re ti-
nas are two -dimensional to begin wi th , even before what they
register is poked , sundered , and splintered? Superadd it. We see
un ity of form in excess of our eyes.
What our eyes see , literally, is edging. No t only col or, but space,
time, figure / ground , and formal stabili ty, in th eir reciprocal dif-
feren ce and o n their respecti ve levels, all eme rge from the ed ge
of illumination . For the simple reason th at li gh t scatters. Its scat-
ter carries int erference patt er ns, gaps, and gradients ofint ensity:
lines of protofigural d ifferentiation. Thi s "ambient ligh t array" is
what lite rally str ikes the eye (Gibson , 65- 92). A chaos of visio n.
For not on ly does the array co n tinually change, but a body is
always m ovin g: a co mplex co uplin g of two conti n ual var iation s.
Even m or e : the flicker almost-seen in emergen t form is prefig-
ured by jitter. "Nystagm us" : the constant , invo luntary mic ro jerk-
ing of th e eyeballs in th eir soc kets. If the jerking stops, vision
blanks out. Visio n ari ses from the addition of random jitt er to a
complex coupling of two contin ual varia tio ns. How do unity of
form, stability of spat ial relati on , cons tanc y of color and brigh t-
ness, and linearity of time der ive from this impossibly com plex,

e
chaotic condi tio n? We already know the answer: by sup eradding
to the seen .
The conti nual variatio n draw s th e prorofigural lines of th e
am bient array across the gaps between the rods and con es,
across the nose hole, and across th e blind spots. The di scon tinu-
[ ities are giddily bridge d by a continuity of movement . The
bridging does not yield a unified figure or stability of ground. It
yie lds a co m plex o f m oving lines of lig h t continuing across invisibl e
abysses of darkness. Prorobrtdges of co ntin u ity. self-s tanding,
over a void of vision .
To get an emergent figure you need to add senses other than
vision. In parti cular. touc h and proprioception, the registering of
the displacem en ts of body parts relative to each other. Say a varying
com plex of light-lines com es to the eye with a change in proprio-
ception. Intersensory conjunction: the first com plex of moving
light-lin es segues into another. With the new complex com es a
feeling from an outstretched hand : intersensory conjunction . Say
the two intersensory conju nctions repeat. Next, their repetition is
anticipated. Habit. The anticipation is recursive, sin ce it arises ret-
rospe ctively from an iteration of hne crossings and con junctions.
Habit is the actual experienc e of a before-after, in a continuity of
present conjunction. or course there is also smell and hearing. A
panoply of before-after s merge into and eme rge out of each other,
bearers one of the other, folded together by habit. The folding
together composes an infinite continuum of pot entia l conjunc-
tions.A vague, unbounded virtual whole: the "ovum " of an expe-
riential un iverse. "W hen any parti cular kind of feeling is present,
an infini tesimal continuation of all feelings differing infinitesi-
mally from that is present." "Development essentially involves a
limitati on" of that potential.
Say that on the level that limitatively develop s, the two con-
junctions just described will be experienced as seeing an edge
(complex ofl ight-lines), moving around it (prop riocep tion) , and
touching some thing behind that was occluded but is now visible
(new comp lex of light-lin es) .The new complex oflight-Iines is a
second occlusion : there are still other things behind the thing
behin d . Focus on what the habituating eyes register: an edge. then
an edge . After the habit has set in, the second ed ge will come with
the first edge, in anticipation, before the mo vemen t around. It will
also come after the m ovement. Dou ble articulatio n: before-after. Of
course, the second edge will come after the first differently than it
preceded itself: wit h a touch and a proprioception. The before -
after that is seen wit h the first edging is a simultaneous disjunc-
tion of surfaces: a germ of space.The anticipated coming-after is a
germ of linear time. The self-di fference of the second edge - the
difference it encompasses betwe en its coming after something
else and its preceding itself - is the germ of its iden tity as an
object : its predictability, or its sameness across its variations.
Experiments have verified that a "surface . .. being uncovered
[is] seen to pre- exist before being revealed" (Gibson, 190). The
identity of the object is seen. Again, with different em phasis: the
identity of the obje ct is seen. Identity is a recur sive (before-after)
un ity added by habit to the sight of a simultan eous disjun ctive dif-
feren ce. Ident ified . the edging associated with the object thickens
into a stable contour. The light arrays habitually conjo ined wi th
the inside of the contour detac h from the amb ien t array and come
to be seen as th e object 's color. The colo r makes the object stand
out, a visible figure gestalting its way into the brig htness of being
against a muted backgroun d onto which it casts its shadow. Form
and depth emergent. The ovum of the uni verse segm ented : int o
contra sting objects separated together in space and succeedin g
I.'
l''''N
o:
,
e
each other in time . "Of th e continuity of feeling we can now form
but a feeble conception."
When identity is seen, what is being seen is an anticipated
tou ch conjoin ed with an anticipated propriocepti on conjoined
with an anticipated second vision . The eye is func tioning synes-
th etically to see the unseeable.To oversee touch. proprioce ptio n, and
its own present . An anticipated touch . prop rioception , or vision is
a potential tou ch, proprioception , or vision .The overseen is un seen
potential. The identity or simplicity of the resulting object has
been lim itatively extrac ted , or abstracted, from the complex chaos
of vision . That chaos contin ues to be seen , feebly: underseen . It
must continue, for the object to have something to reemerge
from , as anticipated. Double vision: figurati ve or ob jective order
out of iteration; and a continuin g chaos of light. Vision oversees
orde ring abstraction by superaddin g habituated other-sense regis-
terin gs to its own Sin gular chaos.
The obj ective extraction of id ent ity ar ises out of m ovem en t:
coup ling upon coupling of continual variation. Vision 's synes -
the tic resu lt stands on an oscillating kin esthetic "g roun d." Sta-
bili ty and order emerge from perceptual chaos , in the eye's
passing fro m kin esth esia to synes the sia. Vision is the pro cess of
tha t p assage from the giddiness of invi sible, abyssal darkness to
abstract oversigh t.
Each time eye-jitter draws an edge, a whole universe of po ten-
tia! abstractly appears to vision , and an objectivity is extracted
from it.The edge is a synesthe tic-kinesthetic relating of existen tial
levels (acrual and virtual or potential) and a separating ou t of
ob jective identi ties (in time and space) .
VID.
Draw a line on a piece of pap er. The lin e repeats the edge. The
line repeats the relatin g. "The lin e is th e relatin g; see it and you
see relation ; feel it and you feel th e relation ."? You have opened
a who le universe of prot ofigural relation .You have invoked th e
virtu al.You have called th e pot ent ial it enfolds in to being. Noth-
ing substantial comes of it. The potent ial is only felt (syn esth eti -
cally-kinesthetically seen) . But only felt is almost some thi n g.
Whi ch is quite eno u gh for th e being of th e virtual. Any more
and it would actualize.
Go for more. Draw more lines, until a geometric figure defines
itsel You have figurati vely closed the virtual world by selecting
on e from its infinity of felt pot entials.You have limit atively actual -
ized the virtual.
There is nothing to be do ne. Except to draw another lin e. And
enclo se its active potential in another figure.
At each repetition , you draw forth an infinite continuum
of experie ntial potential, then deactivate it. You invoke
active powers of existence, and enfeeble them . Renew, annul .
Existential flicker.
The ann ulm ent of powe rs of existence is all the more enfee-
bling when more than one figure are laid side by side on a single
page.The disjun ctive germ-space of pure contrast, flickering with
the tim elikeness of each mar k's virtual edge , di sappears.The page
is now a plane space of comparison .The identities of the outlined
figures repeat each other, or fail to. Difference is no longer active.
It is negativized as a "failure" to repeat. The contrast is now an
a ppositional differen ce: a plane ly separated eith er/or. Either/or is
an op position. An opposition is not a dualit y. Duality is the self-
standin g positivity of still-active contrast, pure unmediated
"pairedness" : the Secondness indissociable from th e Firstness ofa
newn ess sprin ging up. Either/ or applies to the already-sprung:
t
t
" .. "",...
~
 either/or
completed figures. Comparing them requir es a mediation
be tween th eir comple tio ns. For degrees of identity to be assessed,
there mu st intervene an abstract notion of what the figures must
repeat in ord er to qualify as rep eating each ot her: a definitive idea,
for example, of w hat ovals are, h ere and forever after.A standa rd ...
and the standard makes three. The mediating third term is ideal:
pur ely overseen .U' And overseeing: the correct selection. Activity
has not entirely ceased. It is concen trated toward abstract over-
sight aimed at elim inating "failur es.t'The space of compariso n is a
normative space of ideal Thirdness - triage - purified of visual
chaos and of the syn esthe tic-kinesthet ic vagueness of figur al pre-
defini tion .The "forever after" of the ideal means tha t the selective
orderin g of Thirdness can be transposed from the surface space
into tim e. Instead of laying two figures side by side on a single
page, put one here on the page and pro ject one int o an indefinite
futu re somewhere else. Take a cube, for example, and project it
on to a plot of available land.
IX.
Arch itectu ral diagrams are conventionally thou ght of as occu-
l pying a space of comparison. Recently, the page has become a
screen . Computer-assisted design draws a figure out of th e ideal
space of the architect's creativi ty and de posits it on the surface
of the screen , then projects it into a built fut ure .This use of the
diagram is a normative mod elin g (no matter how "original"
the figure) .
All archit ectural design involves normative modeling. The
completed diagram for a buildin g meets standards imposed by
client preference, cost effectiveness, zoning, and the architect's
own stylistic preferences.The point is not to force a choice between
the "either/or ' of normative triage (opp ositional difference) and
the "both" of emerging potential (contras tive difference) , or
between either of these and the "n ot neit her/not both" of the vir-
tualline (pure differenc e) . Making an either/or issue of opposi-
tio n is just ano ther way of enforcing opposi tion : paradox.
Opposition returns in its own overcoming. Thus there can be no
question of Simply opposing or elimin ating the mediated plane of
figurative un ity, or even normativity and ideality.
The virtual is also ou t of the question . It ente rs in - even into
what it is not - regardless of the choice. Figurative unity and
ob jective identity are a feed-forwar d of the continuity of the vir-
tual who le, throug h line-surfacing to ano ther level. The virtual
always enter s in, bu t is always qualitatively transformed into
something actual. Unity and closure are not opp osites of the vir-
tual. They are its continuation on the level of its own annulment,
figuratively transform ed into a residue of itself The virtual repre-
sents the necessity of that pr ocess: of the stilling defini tion of its
seething existential vagueness. The transformati ve annulment of
virtual 's timelike "not neither/not both" is the completion of the
figur e toward the definitive existence of the object. We need
objects. We also need lineari ty. It is a necessity of our own exis-
tence that the virtual 's unmediated enfoldme nt of un been before -
afters objectively unfold. And that it unfold, here and there, in a
way that conforms to norms of shelter.
If the virtual n ecessarily figures in , then the diagrammatic
choice operative in the archi tectural design process concerns the
protofigural and the figurative. It does not bear on whether to
have on e or the othe r. The protofigur al also always enters in (at
every edge we see, with every mark we make) . The cho ice bears
on how to have both , how productively to affirm paradox. It is all a
question of articulation , double articulation: how to play the
10 WlIIlam Jeees, Pri nciplu of Psrtholon , vol. 2 (NfW York:: OOYl'f; 1~ 50l, 14~ .
Massumi
formativity
~.....d
belonging of the protofigur al and the figurative to each othe r.This
boils down to choosing how mu ch to focus on the pure activity of
the protofigural (th e activity it takes up from the virtual who le in
the person of the con stitutive limi t or virtual line) . If the choice is I
made to focus in on the self-standing activity of the protofigur al I
in the design process , then the next question is whether or how to
Signal it in the final product. This is the follow -up question of
double vision : to what degree will those observing or entering
the building be confronted with residu e of the vagueness of the
virtual? Will rcten tion s of the protofigur al make their vision I
synesthetically-kinesthetically edge out at strategic conjunction s?
Will their bodies be jolted from habitual form percept ion? To I
what extent will they be delivered to the existent ial flicker that is,
at any rate, the oscillating ground of all expe rience? To what I
effect? How much can a body tolerate flickered op ennes s of being
in a build in g if it conflicts, as it may well, wi th the enclosing
norms of shelter?
The first diagrammatic question, that of double articulation , has
I
received concerted attention from a nwnber of contemporary
architects. Grappling wi th that question involves inserting anoth er ~
phase of activity between the intention to build and the built result : t
between the origination of the design process and its end in a still- ~
standin g figure.The end- form of the building no lon ger flows in a
straight, predictable line from inten tion to com pletion . Something I
cuts in. Protofigural activity comes between prefiguration and for- I
mal completion. It can have many avatars. Peirce's oval-line is just
one image of it, useful for its relative simplicity.The marking of the _
"virtual line" doesn't have to resemble a line at all. In fact, in some
ways it is better if it doesn 't (the less it does, the less likely it will be
confused with a visible figure or substantial form , the more likely it
will be un derstood as a process). Greg Lynn's serial generation of'
self-transforming blobs is protofigural .As are Peter Eisenman's ran- I
dom acts of cut-and -fold, and Raggatt's low-tech blurrin g. The.
"mark" of the virtu al can appear as a programmed proliferation of
quasi-animate blobs, as an algorithm, or as a paper-shake on a pho-
tocopier (or as many other almost-som ethin gs besides) .The key is
that an uncon trolled variation, an emergence unt amed by norma-
tive standards, edges in between origin and end , and that this mid -
dling takes on a value of its own. If it does, the end result will be as III
much an extraction from that chanced activity of the between as
the final realization of a design intent (much as the stability of .
vision is an extraction from its edging chaos). This gives the design
process an experimental margin of autonomy. Architecture is
endowed with a processual edge recalling the formative insubordi-
nation of the virtual line to the plane of its appearance. $0 if it is l1li
unrealistic, or at best paradoxical, for architecture to oppose, it can
still be formatively insubordinate. If architecture has never quite
lived up to its modern calling to be "radical" in the oppositional I
sense, it can at least say that it has learned to be experimental .
Experimen tation is the beginning of something radical, if that
means the springing up of something new in the world.
How " radic al" the experimentation is depends on whether
somethin g continue s to spring, beyon d the completion of the
design pro ject and even beyond architecture's disciplinary
boun dari es. It dep ends, in other words, on how the continuity
of th e virtual is fed forward , across the discontinuity of vari a-
tional doses of chao s, int o the in tended for m : as the buildi ng
settles into the fabric of the everyday.This gets back to the ques -
tio n of double vision : how formativity, or the emergeability of
form - its openness to itself as change - might live on , not
en tirely annull ed , at the exp eriential edges of the finished form.
r----- -- .-~-- - -- ~-~
. ---~~~~--~~-~~~=~===~_- _ __====~=~_=~- =====~_=:

field of experience J

If the virtual line is the relating of figur e to figure. for m ~

to bud into mo re specific forms or what we ca ll nodu les. In every
form . ob ject to ob ject, as well as the relatin g of the edgin g-in of , inst an ce of t his surfac e t here is always a consta nt numbe r of
the virtual whole to its actual definition , of the protofig ural to the I pan e ls wit h a consisten t rela t ionship t o the ir neighboring pa n-
figure. the form ativity to the finished for m , why can't ways be I els. In t his way no e lement is ever added or subtra ct ed. In addi-
foun d to let it show or make it felt ? If when the archi tect sees she . ti on, every element is inevita bly muta t ed so th at no two pane ls
sees relation , if when he feels he feels relation . why shouldn't . a re ever the sa me in a ny single or mult iple configurat ion. These
those sheltered and even passin g by be treated to a glimpse or pa nels, with their limits a nd tolera nces of muta tion , have been
I brush of th at flickering openness of being? If every time you make linked t o fab rica tion tech niques involving comput er -controlled
a mark , you have in some small way called forth an en folded " robotic processes. These include high-speed wa ter jet cutti ng of
potent ial, if you have invoked the virtu al, however faintly, why not met a l a nd rubbe r; stereolit hogra phy resin prot otyping throug h
let othe rs build on that in their own lives after the design is "com - I comput er-cont rolled lasers, a nd th ree-a xis CNC milling of wood
pleted' T There are risks, because this involves asking others to live I composite board. In t his way t he limits a nd numerica l con-
wi th a margin of quasi-animate incompletion and to put up with st raints of compute r cont rolled robots a re a lso bui lt into the
chaotic irruptions of genera tive vagueness in the m ost habit-ridden ' softwa re, giving th e panels th eir limits of size an d sha pe.
recesses of their lives. Such is the pri ce of potential. Making ~
explicit the feed-forwar d of the virtual is the risky gift of experi-
enti al pote ntial.To the extent tha t architecture concerns itself with
this, it is not a discipline. It extends into an etho s: an experi enced
ethic of inh abitin g the given. The politi cs of architectural activity I
reent ers at the etho logical level, in how the givenness of inhabit-
ing comes to be negoti ated (in the dou ble sense of "moved I
thr ough by others" and "collectively modified ") .
Grappling with the qu estion of do uble arch itectural vision'
requir es acknowledging that the diagram is a technique of existence _
and that design is always collective.Architectu re will always bene-
fit from the application of powers of formal analysis. But its basic ~
23.47
I

~
medium is not geometry,or top ology, or CAD, or design in gener-
" al. or critiqu e, or any ot her for malizable field . Its basic m edium is
the field of experience. As approached, collectively, convivially, from
the edge of emergence wh ere color, illumination , figure/ ground, ,
" depth. space. and linear tim e mutually enfold and in the same
f stroke reciprocally differentiate onto respective levels of objective t
Iti. ..... existence, bearers and indicators of each other. The mutual bear-
ing on one another of th ese differenti ating levels is th e proper ly
aesth etic aspect of architectural activity.The aesthetics of architec-
ture is inseparable from its ethics. Because, as a collective tech- I

$-
, niqu e of existence , the architect's profession al activity rests on
precisely the same oscillating groun d as everyone's "natural" per- I
14 ception: the synesth etic-kin esthetic edge of experience. Design is
.~
as natural a function as stretchin g out a hand to an anticipated I
touch. Or (w hat amounts to me same thing) "natural" perceptual
functio nin g is as diagrammatic and artificial as design . Experience I
Il_...&..-~ m akes a habit of over-reaching itself, cont inually superaddin g
form-completion to the op enn ess of experience - mu ch as design
11.1. . . . makes a profession of it.
Make the over-reachings flicker, together. Come what m ay.

Greg Lynn

In the hist or y of modern architectu re, espec ial ly regarding

housing, buildi ng has been conceived as an assembly of indepen-
dent pa rts, or a kit. In th is st udy, a surfa ce of over 3,000 pa nels
is networ ked so th at a change in a ny individua l pan el (or
" pa rt " ) is tran sm itted th roughout th e whole, th at iSI th rougho ut
ever y other pan el. A set of cont rolling points is orga nized across
this surface so t hat groups of the se generi c pan els ca n be effected

l~ Variations of the surW:e st-'nlJ the buddlnljJ iUldelaboration of the surface In specific I'e9lons.This study Includes I. strat2gy of opening the sumcewfthout the pundllnljJor euttJngofwlndows. InstRd, open-
1ng51.~ elthet''''tom.'' venentlnlJ I. series of "shredded openings" Inthe surlaa:, orthe surface Is "'offsd," venentlng I. seetes of "'lowe red openings" In the surface .

Lynn
 . I~
I -

-~-
j
{ /-
s.::

-~ - -
~..., -

: - -"--~:
i __- -
- --=4 - -r...c: -
\ I
-V-
t,

23.48

10

o OOOD . .
7

o 0608
M.
vQDOo
W ODw(}
1:3 WWWO
6 Thesurfaceenvelopes wereconnected w ith a landscape 50that anya lteration in the objectwas transmitted onto a groundsurface.Forinstance,a dent or concavity in the envelopegenerates a lift or plateau irl the
grou nd. In t his way a deformat ion In th e obje ct has a cor responding effect on t he fi eld a round It, faci li ta ting openi ngs, views, and circulat ion on a pote nt ia l sit e.

7-8 This shows the hierarchy of contrail."!! points used to shape the 3,000+ panels . A hierarchy of control points was used such that arl increase in information involves the specification of each panel's position. A
low l~el of weciticity U~ conlrol points that interpolate the position of pimeb with fewer control points.

Lynn
 11

I
1-

23.49

-
.
12

9-17 The weeaceswer1! connected to computer-controlled milling al'ld clltl.ing macllintry. Two techniquts weft used in this regard. Both involved splittir19 the ~ntJs into 91"ClUPS of eight Ptl!led strips. The first teen-
nique Ul-IM divided the e;9ht peeree strips into eIght C\.lrvt'd panels or chips. rrese panels were then aligned so that wir edgM mared the ~ffif plOilnt, and then all of the chips were connected into a sil19le wrtace.
This wrface was then milled into a wooden panel that served as a formworlc for casting. ASS plastic was then formed against these solicls al'ld the individ~1 pll'ltlS tntf1 cut out of the pla5tic and cQnnected to9'!'ther
to achieve the original shilope.The second technique 19---11,16--17) ...,folded or ~attened the e'ght peels into leaves that were Wfl wa ter jet Cllt from both rubber ar'd steel. These steel teaves could men be bent so that
all of the edge!> aligned and the original shape was actlieved.

Lynn
----::---------------------~~ ................... _ _- -- ..................

territory

It m akes n o difference wheth er you prepare fo r yo ur rol e throu gh

Method Acting or any other form of diagrammatic preparation
(su ch as n o tes on a scr ip t) unl ess it result s in a pe rformance tha t
gives th e appe arance of bein g (co mplexly) m ot ivated , of being
(com plexly) animated , of bein g m ore than just a di agramm atic
sum of individu al lin es of script. Mo re : because yo u find th e dif-
ferences, the differentials, of moti ve and anima cy and gesture
wi thin (and between) those di agrammatic lines in order to trans-
late, to b ring for th, th ose differences th at might mak e a difference
in yo ur performance.
"A difference that make s a difference" : th at was Bateson s defini -
tion of info rmation (Steps to an Ecology 01 Mind, 4 53) . I h eard th at
expressio n often in the second year o f my undergr aduate educ a-
tion, atten din g what was to be the last year of Greg ory Bateson 's
teaching.That expression and, along wi th many o ther exp ression s,
thi s one : the map is not the territory, ech oing and elabo rating, as he
o ften did, Alfred Korzybski's famous di ctum.
Meaning: th e fact th at I cannot p eel the words Fresh TogliateUe with
Wild Mushroomsand Mint off the surface of this m enu (at thi s restau -
rant in th e East Village I am Sittin g in r ight n ow, jottin g down
th ese lin es w hi le waiting for th e ch eck to arrive) and eat those
lin es of in k for m y dinner. "T he fact," in o th er words, in Bateson's
words , " tha t a m essage, o f whatever kind. d oes not consist of
th ose objects that it denotes" - for w hic h Bateson cites th e exam -
23.50 ple: "The word 'cat' can no t scratch us" (Steps, 180) .
Ditto th e diagr am , as th e dictionary states: "a gr aphic desi gn
that explain s rath er th an repr esen ts: a drawing tha t sh ows arr ange-
m en t and relations (as of parts to a w h ole, relative value s, o rigins
and develop m ent , chronological flu ctu ations , disrribution) ."
I star ted o ut thi s essay w antin g to question certain kinds of
di agramrnarics, but let's just admit it: isn't every building a built
diag ram (from some plan, professiona lly ins cr ibe d or not) ?3 Isn't
every kind o f music, th eater, and film a p erformed di agram (from
som e score o r some script, transcri bed or not) ? Isn 't every essay,
~
~ '" every novel, every po em a written di agram (from some ou tline,
-

;:
~
~
~
e
'"
"'"
r-
jot ted down o r n ot ) ?
Everyth in g is a transcr ip tion, every thing is a transl ation, every
~ "" " ~.
-e
8 ~ z artifact, every object begins as n oti onal for m as it makes its way to
~
~ ~. ... z
its re presenta tion as m ater ial form . How it might m ake its way
2-
"c c ,.'" th ere is what I w an t to begin to address here.
~
..=~
n Her e w as m y beginning, my first sent en ce in th e very first dra ft
3
~
;;
e-
~
'",.'"'" o f thi s essay: "The qu estion is - is always - how to be gin : begin
your de sign : begin the design of your arch itec tu re or th e design
~
~
~
~
~
~

... MOTIVATIO NS OF ANIMATIO N o f your essay about archt rectu re .t'You see, I start ed mixing things
:r ~ '"
0
Mark Rakatan sky up, right fro m th e very beginnin g, mixing up th e object and som e
"~ ',." ~
c representation of th e o bject, bu t the dic tio nary says th e wo rd dia-
S -e 3:
"> ~. gram com es fro m the Greek diagramma, from th e Greek diagraphein
":a- l ,.'" (dio- [through] + grophein [to wr ite D, meaning to mork out bylines , so

0
~ e
;. z Take Chri stophe r Walken , for example: the marking and th e w ri ting of lin es, th e object and its rep resenta-
"-
~ c~ '"
< "He h as no tim e for The Me thod. He just turns up and does it. tion , are already mixed up , at least in th e dic tio na ry, even befor e I
[Walken :] 'It boils down to: Can you act? Who cares what you ar rive th ere on th e p age, or on screen , to make m atters worse.
...'"'"
0
~ think?' '' l And: "He [Walken] pulls out his Script and every wo rd had a W hic h is w h at I di d in tha t first draft of thi s essay: it' s n ot how
~
-< note on it about what he wanted to do." 2 yo u be gin - the how com es later - but withwhat?Wi th w hat do yo u
"c
~
S
0
~
~
,
z

This is an example of som ethin g other than contradiction.
Notice Walken didn 't say: "Who cares il you think?" (he h ad
begin : w hat diagram , w hat ou tline, w hat m oti ve, w hat do you h ave
in your mind (or up your sleeve)? The n - here's the how- h ow does
~ ~
~
~
thought written on every wo rd o f his script). He said : "W ho cares th at di agram , that outline, th at motive give th e ap pearance o f
0
0
Q
r ~
what you think?" Who cares w hat your preparation is if it does n't working its way throu gh your beginnings and thr ough to yo ur
~
t ~

~
~
make it into your performance?Who cares what your diagram is or
what my diagram is if it does n 't make it int o the act of your act or of
ends and so into th e objects of yo ur design ?
Any hi storical or recent ur ge in architectur e to eq uate, to col -
~
~ m y act, in to the act of your design or of my design, in a way that is lapse the differ ence be tween , th e map and th e territory, to assert
legible, per ceptibl e? th e di agrammatic map as th e terr itory o f architecture, will reveal,
1 Adam Higgenbolham, "Walken on the Wild Side" Prem iere, Ut( edition (June 199&): &7.
2 Director Peter O'Fallon, quoted in Holly MiIlea, "Tall, Dark, and Ransom." Premiel't' (March 1998): 75.
3 For the operations and play of nonprol~5ional diagrams and plans in verl13cular architecture, see, for example, Henry Glanie, Folk Housing in Middle Vi"}inia (t(no xville: Univers:ty of renoessee Press, 1975).

Rakatansky

identities
as Bateson noted, the naive desire to "get back to the absolute
innocence of communication by means of pure m oo d-signs," like
"the flag which men will die to save" (Steps, 183) .
But: there are no pure signs of any sor t, th ere is no abso lute
innocence in any communication, every explanatio n is a for m of
rep resentation (even if not mimetic) , every diagram is a repr esen -
tational form of some idea and some motivatio n tow ard that idea:
nothing is unm ediated , the map is not the territory.
But: it wo uld be foolish and pointless and futil e to insist on the
absolute and unequivocal separation of the map from the territory,
for at least four reasons:
First, the failure of old identities (o r diagrams of id entities)
will not eradicate the recurrin g desire for n ew "stable" and
"true" identities - and thus , in archit ecture, for n ew "stabl e"
and "true" diagra ms.
Second, there are certainly relations, between the m ap and the
territor y, which, as Bateson noted, are relations of difference:
"What is it in the ter ritory th at gets onto the mapj vwe know the
territory does not get onto the map. This is th e central point
abou t which we here are all agree d. Now, if the territory were
uniform, no thing would get on to the map except the bo und-
aries, which are po in ts at w hich it ceases to be uniform against
some larger ma trix. Wha t gets onto the m ap, in fact, is difference,
be it a difference in altitude, a difference in vegetation, a differ -
ence in population str ucture, difference in surface, or whatever.
Differences are th e things that get onto a map. (Steps, 45 1)
Thir d, in aesthetic operations, it is difference that must be used to
br ing what is in the map back in to the territory, because in aes-
~
thetic operations, to turn th at dic tio nary defini tion around , a dia-
I I gram is a represent ation in reverse. Aesthetic diagrams, in other
words, are just as often made after-the -fact as prior-to-the-fact of
I~
I
the ob ject. Either way, in the end, the object is always a rep rese nta-
tion, not of itself bu t of the diagrams, the outlines, the m otives,
the ideas - the ideas of cer tain "arrangements and relatio ns," as
said dic tionary definition said , which the objec t then repr esen ts.
I am trying to say that no one is exempt from thi s condition of
th e translation between the diagram and th e obje ct, whatever your
pos itio n on th e use of di agram s, but tha t in this play that is your
work it all depends on the quality of your translation, the quality
of your performance.
To wit: Chr isto pher Walken .
"The inner life of the characters is irrelevant ... except in sofarasit
is expressed in their ourward attitudes and actio ns " (Brecht, 123) .
Drama theorist Martin Esslin's description of a Brechtian theory
and practice of performance could stand for the performance of
architecture as well, for architectural elemen ts are alw ays acting as
characters wi thin the architectural drama. This makes the resource -
fuln ess, responsiveness, and expressiveness of the characters within
both your map and your territory all the more important.
The m ap th at is the n am e of the dish Fresh Tagliatelle with Wild
Mushrooms and Mint (th ose ink y lin es, those grap hic de signs, th at
are th ose wor ds on a page of a menu or on a page of a discipli-
nary journal), or th e "inner" map th at is the recip e for thi s dis h,
is of no int er est to m e (whethe r I am eating it at thi s restauran t or
coo king it m yself at home) except in so far as the in gredi en ts and th e
operations pe rfor m ed on th ose in gredients accr ue to a greater
effect in th e "out w ard " territory th at is th e dish , so as not to
remain m ere ly a d iagram of a di sh, so as not to remain merely a
di agrammatic sum of th ose individual in gredient part s, which
2]
map
unfort unately remains the sum of my experience w ith this partic-
ular tagli atelle, even though th e New York Times recomm en ded it
just the ot her day!
Th us: theproofofthepudding is in the eating - an expression that th e
actors of the Berliner Ensemble heard often from Bertolt Brecht,
w ith respect to the act of developing a play fro m its initial co n-
ception through the diagrammatics of its script to its perfor-
mance - attending, as they we re, w hat we re to be the last years of
Brecht's directing.
And finally, the fourth and perhaps most im portant reason why
it would be foolish and poin tless and futile to ins ist on the absolu te
and unequivocal separa tion of the ma p from the terr ito ry is this : if,
as Bateson noted, in that psychical condition designated as primary
process "map and terri tory are equated" (because the primary
process operates under the pleasur e principle to speed gratification
by collapsing difference) , and if in that condition designated as sec-
ond ary pro cess map and territory "can be discriminated" (because
the secondary process operates under the reality principle to man-
age gratification by asserting difference) , then in the performance
that is the actof play (animal play, child's play, grown-up play) , map
and terri tory are "both equated and discriminated" (Steps, 185) .
In Iean-Luc Godard 's film King Lear, for example, to the partially
ironic imperative "Tell me Professor!" the partially ironic response
is "Show .. . Show . .. Show, not Tell!" It is pr ecisely bo th the show-
ing and the telling that give Godar d's work its "vir tue and power,"
nor by collapsing showing and telling together, bu t by treating
23.51
showing and telling as two equal (representations of) realitie s
through w hich relations are to be developed. There are few finer -
grained and more deeply rendered momen ts of realism in cinema
than the scenes of Burgess Meredith as father Lear and Molly Ring -
w ald as daug hter Cordelia, moments of fine-grained and deeply
ren dered showing, mimetic representation, which then are tactically
put in relatio n with every m anner of both coarse -grained showing
(absurd scenes, ridiculou s puns) and fine -grained and course-
grained telling (inte r-titles, complex manipulations of im age and
soundtrack) . Here is an object that is constructed thr ough the
refus al to believe either that ma p and territory can be equate d or that
ma p and territory can remain discrim inated , that refuses to believe
in these false distin ctions betwee n realism and abstraction , berween
cri ticism and lyricism , between mise-en-scene and m onta ge, and, yes,
between tragedy and come dy. Godard:
Thi s is w here the trouble begins. Is th e cin ema catalogued as a
w hole or as a part? If you make a Western, no psychology; if you
make a love-st ory.no chases or fligh ts; if you make a ligh t comedy,
no adven tures ; and if you have adventures, no char acter analysis.
Woe ont o me, since I have just m ade la Femme Mcriee, a film where
subjects are seen as ob jects, w here pursuits by taxi alternate wi th
ethnological interviews, w here the spe ctacle of life finally mingles
wi th its analysis: a film, in sho rt, where cin ema plays happily,
delighted to be onl y what it is. (Godard onGodard, 208)
Samuel Beckett , Marguerite Dur as, Max Frisch, Jam aica Kin-
caid, Gordon Lish , Grace Paley, Dennis Pott er, Gerh ard Richt er,
Kryzstof Wodiczko: just a few exam ples of thos e w ho produce
wo rk th at plays hap pily between the m ap and the territ ory.
I gu ess th at helps explain w hy most people are not all that
interested in architectur e let 's just admit it - compared to novels
-c
or m ovies or just about any other ar t for m. You h ardly need m e to
draw your attention to the fact that most pe opl e do not pay much
attentio n to archi tectu re.
Rakatansky
 animate
Because mos t archi tecture is not all that complexly rendered ,
you might say. in relation to what counts as complex (or even
noticeable) rendering for m ost people.
Too diagrammatic, you mi ght say.
Which brin gs m e to what the edito rs e-rnailed me to ask m e to
write abo ut, which is animation and th e animated di agram .
Cartoons, for example. An interest of mine. And pleasure. like
wil d mu shroom s.
$0 why is it th en , tha t still, in a desi gn review, when ever I w ant
to su ggest that a building might need to be worked more in rela-
tion to its co nce p t, why is it tha t, still, I say: "It's a di agram of a
buildin g" or "It 's a cartoon of a building"?
I am tired of discriminating myself from myself
$0 let me now try to wri te it out as it seems to me right now: It's
not that these buildings are carto ons that's the problem, it 's that
they're n ot engaging cartoo ns, not (complexly) animated eno ugh
(in form and in conten t) .
It's not that all buildings begin as bubble diag rams that 's the
problem, it 's that so many end there - whatever their styles and
however embe llished their det ails. It's the begin ning -and -the-
end probl em , it's th e means-and -th e-ends problem, it's the
tran slation problem . It's a qu estion of whe ther the diagram is a
means of exp loring an idea or an end in and of itself. Fortunately
there are a number of individuals struggling in archi tecture, art,
film , graphics, writing, attemptin g to wo rk on and with these
23.52 pro blems tod ay.
What in the pro cess of design would resist such a sim plistic
translation, what differences and differentials are in the in gredi-
ents of archi tecture (of site, of program , of tectonics) and in the
operations performed on th ose ingredients such that mo re com -
plex tnterweavtngs of ob ject and diagram , of territor y and m ap, of
discriminatin g and equating, of the spectacle of life and its analy-
sis, might be possible?
This is where Chuck [on es. ren owned animation dir ector, can
come in , can make an entrance of the stagings on these pages ,
along with his books Chuck Amuck ( 1989) and Chuck Reducks
( 1996), from whic h I will attempt to draw out some number of
po ints, seven for now, mo re on some other occasion, for archi -
tectural considerati on :
1. Animation means toinvokelife,not to imitate it (geducks, 268).
Chuck [ones summarizes his position with the precedin g
statement in Chuck Reducks , but in his earlier Chuck Amuck he goes to
the dictionary first before concluding with the same poin t, and his
dictionary says: "ANIMATE: [Webster's] From Latin , animatus- to
invoke life, to make alive, to give life to, brin g to life, to stim ulate
to action or creative effort" (Amuck, 180) .
Like jo nes, I would say that the only one of these definitio ns
relevant to the process of architectural design is "to invoke life,"
not to imitate it. It's not possible to make architectur e alive. It's not
possible to give life to. Or bring to life. Or even to stim ulate to
action. Simulate yes, stim ulate no - a simulation that might, in
turn, cause a stimulation of the user. It's only possible to invoke the
possibility of action or effort, the po ssibili ty of the performance
of action or effort.
In other wo rds, a building cannot move as a body m oves, a
building is not a body, needless to say. But, needless to say, given
how dull, how unanimated. most buildings are, whatever cons id-
erations it takes to get a building animated - or at the other
extreme, to obdur ately, albeit futilely, attempt to resist any and all
anim ation - could be worth the consideration .
Rakatansky
character
And, anyway, isn 't the art of animation animating what isn 't?
Likewise, th e art of art?
After all, a painting is just pigment on canvas, an essay just ink
on a page.
Here's a story Chuck [on es tells in the 1991 documentary Chuck
Amuck.The Movie: a little boy's father in troduces him to th e little boy
with the following introduction: "This is the man who draw s
Bugs Bunny." The little boy, as Chuck jon es tells it, was fur ious:
"He looked up, threw his lower lip out and said 'He do es not draw
Bugs Bunny! He draws pictur es of Bugs Bunny!'" [ones comme nts
approving ly: "And that to me is the who le difference. That's the
who le point."
2. Animation is not thean ofdrawings that move, but thean ofmovements that are
drawu (Amuck. 180) .
In th e book ChuckAmuck, [on es follows his dictionar y definiti on
of anima te wit h the precedin g quote from Norman McLaren,
another renowned animation director. Not movement, but a
series of representations of movement: this is as true wi th the
olde r form s of celluloid anima tion as with the newer computer-
ized , vector-based forms of anim ation .
Not movement but th e invocation of move ment, not gesture
but the invocation of gesture, not motivation but the invocation of
motivation. Looney TUDes,Merrie Melodies: it's all just lines, after all,lines
drawn on a "eel.' as anim ationi sts say, on celluloid, five or six
thousand eels for a six-minute anim ated cartoo n. There are no
characters, there is no perfor mance, only the invocation of charac-
ters, only the invocation of a performance.
Lines drawn on a eel, at least that was the old techn ology. Not
entirely unlike this institutional office I am writing this in now at
this mom ent, one of a set of cells all in a row, lines drawn usin g
whatever technology was new or old at that moment, a plan
"marked out by lin es," diagramma, diagraphein, a bubbl e-di agram of a
building with the bubble-lines turned into wall-lines, a built dia-
gram showing "arrangements and relations. " Except Chuck
Ion es's eels and Norman Mclaren's eels do not just repeat, they
iterate, they iterate to provide animation and movem ent in the
characters as the characters respond to differen ce from eel to eel,
whereas these office cells are drawn all the same, so the story (of
this space, this social space) does not m ove.
No iteration, noanimation - in the territory, that is, regardless how
m uch (or even whether any) iteration is visible in tho se diag rams
that make up the archit ectural m ap.
But the animation of life happen s in the office space, wi th the
people, not wi th the archi tecture , right ?
So I've heard - from many sur pr ising ly diverse and distinct
qu arters of this discipline. Well, it m akes a good excuse anyway.
How convenie nt it would be if someone else were respon sible
for the animation of th e spaces we are supposed to be designing,
and n ot us.
3. CherecreraJways comes first, before thephysical representation(Amuck, 261) .
"What we did at Warner Bros. is often called 'character anim a-
tion : but if one considers Webster, that is redundant" (Amuck, 180) .
In other words: "We must have a clear idea of what our charac-
ter is doing before we start to draw him" (Reducks, 120). That sen-
tence follows the Norm an MacLaren quote when [ones evokes it
again in Chuck Reducks. It is Chuck [ones's explication of what those
movem ents that are being drawn are bein g drawn as and for: not
just abstract m ovements, but m ovement s of ch aracters, m ove-
m ents as characterizations: "For in stance, when Daffy Duck plays
1
,I
vector
. "& )....44J:!2... 6 tI ~'"
Robin Hood, we must be thorougWy familiar not only with Daffy
him self but with how he would approach the role of Robin Hood .
If Bugs Bunny played Robin Hoo d, it wou ld be wi th a different
manner, attitude, and body m ovement" (Reducks , 120) .
In order to animat e you have to have some "chara cter" in mind
first, you have to have some "arrangemen ts and relations" within
and between characters in your mind first.This is what Chuck la nes
calls: attitude.That's the map, that's the diagram.
You can see righ t here in this parade of some of Chuck [ones's
characters, Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck and Pepe
Le Pew and Porky Pig, that these "arrangements and relations" are
conveyed as internal differentials, let us call them vectors, that [ones
has diagrammed for us here in his parade.
And you can see in this severely reduced diagram - that's
redundant: isn 't every diagram severely redu ced ? - that all of
these characters, as a minimum requirement, have vectors going
in two different dir ections. In other wo rds, wi th two (or more)
vectors, characters already have within them internal conflicts,
intern al differentiat ions, internal differentials, and that is the
nature of their conflictual and differentiated and differentia l char-
acter, which is always in response to extern al conflicts, external
differen tiations, extern al differentials.
The common definition of a vector force is that it involves
magnitude and direction, as opposed to a scalar forc e, which
involves only magnitude. But in fact ther e is a third vectoral dimen-
sion. so to speak, to add to magn itude and direction, and that is the
dimension of sense: "The word 'direction' used here is some times
replaced by 'dir ection and sense' to deno te the fact that a vector is
an orientated line segmenl which poin ts in a particular sense." 4
In that mappy space of pure math ematics, two di mensions are all
that is necessary, but whe n a vector is used to analyze properties
of this territorial and third -dimension al space that is our im pur e
materialized wo rld , it "requi res," as this diction ary says in the
first of the three definition s it enumerates und er vector: "for its
complete specification , a magnitude, direction, and sense."
A vecto r is thu s not just a physical for ce: it is said to be
"di rected," to be "o riente d ," to h ave some "sense." This sense,
this orien tation , is its moti ve force. A vector is mo tivated , like a
gesture is mo tivated (as all knowing acto rs know) , as a relation -
al complex of mot ivatio n, a dialogical mot ivation, not as a
reflection or illu stration of a sing le moti ve. A deep ly rendered
perfor mance is pr ecisely that whic h canno t be rendered as an
enactment of a sin gle, uni form , h omogeneous, monovalent ,
pure moti ve - given that hum an -bein gs are incapable of feeling
only one emotional vector at any given time. The simultane ity
and com plexity of conflt ccual emotions is precisely what a
4 Ric.t\molld B. Mc.Quistan, Scalar and Vector Fields: A Physicalln-tl'flU'l'tatioll (New York:Wile)" & Sons, 1965J, 2. It is JasOl'1 Vi9l'1eriBeane wllo
betVtl!'tl'l the scala r and the vector.
motivation
A-7nrtJj)~ I P /fii vGJ.4JJ1,~
...
A
/
P~PF .., P.ri.Jt: j ::Oa;q,
deeply rendered performance enacts at every mic ro level of ges-
tur e and speech . revealin g not a fixed character but a character in
the process of acquirin g form and sense. An actor or a director
wanting to kn ow th e tr ue and defin itive motivation of a charac-
ter m isses the po int , as doe s the stere otypical Met hod Acting
query "what's my mo tivation?" as this is usually just lon ghand
for "wh at's my mo tive?" - as if a sin gle experience, a single
mo tive, a sin gle force, could defin e and explain th e complexity
of beh avtoral performan ce.
Motivation is always plural, as Gerha rd Richter has said: "I
h ave no motive, on ly motivati on~' (Paintings, 12) , which is another 23.53
way of sayin g, as Godard has: "We need to show that there is no
model; there' s only modeltng " (Introduction, 95) . Ditto : there is no
map , there 's onl y mappin g. Ditto: there is no terr itory, there's
only territorializin g.
Or as Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari might have said it: there
is no territory, there's only deterritorializing and , in rum, reterrt-
torializing - de-coding the terr itor y as certain mappin gs (operating
on certain vectors) , and then over-coding and re-inscribin g these
mappings back into the terr itory (What is Philosophy? 67-68) .
That a vector is not just force but has some "sense" that may be
operated on shoul d not be too sur prising, considerin g that "vec-
tor," as this dictionary says, comes from the Latin verus. meaning
"carrier," meaning "to convey" ("to impart or comm uni cate
either directly by clear statem ent or indirectly by suggestion ,
implication , gesture, attitud e, behavior, or appearance") .
Which leads us to the second of these three dictionary defint-
tions for vecto r: "an agent capable of transmitting a pathogen from
one organism to another/'You could say that a vector thus acts both
as a force and as a cond uit, but it would be more accurate to say
that if a vector acts as a force of sense, it is because it is a conduit of
sense.The vectorial force of architecture is the means for the social
and cultural force of architecture - the social and cultural trans-
mission and infection of archi tecture - whose systems of sense
exemp lify the capillary action of Michel I oucault's "micro-tech-
nologies of power" : the "circulation of effects of power through
prog ressively finer channels, gaining access to ind ividuals them-
selves, to their bodies, their gestures and all their daily actions"
(Power/ Knowledge, 151 - 52) .
One trick for architecture to learn to play mig ht be thi s: how
to acknowledge and make legible, in the object, the in evitable cul-
tural and ideological transmission of architecture while showi ng
its potential to reconfigur e that transmission - sim ultaneously
showing tha t every act of transmi ssion, like every act of ch arac-
ter, is always a form of configurati on, and tha t every act of con-
figuration (or reconfigur ation) is a form of tran smission. This is
I'l'mi n~ me of the importanc:e of addl'l'ssirM) the diffel'l'Ilce
Rakatansky
~I
characterizing
the sort of sim ultaneity of tran smission and reconfiguration
that Angelika Hurwicz, one of those Berlin er Ensem ble actors,
spoke of when she spo ke of Brechr's characterizatio ns : "He
demonstrates per sons as produ cts of the conditions in which
they live, and capable of change thr ough the circumstan ces
which they exp eri ence" (" Brecht'sWork," 133) .
This simu ltaneity is what (a) character is, whether that for m of
charac ter is revealed as a person or as an archi tectural element.
4. If you srerr with character, you probably will end up with good drawings. If you
start our with drawings. you will almost certainly end up with limited characters.
caugbt in the matrix of yourlimiteddrawings.. .. For identity. you do nordrawdif-
ferentlj; you thin.k diff"'ndy (Reducks. 268).
Here are just a few of th e characters that wi ll be coming soon
or soon er to a build ing near you : Door, Wall, Win dow, Ceilin g,
Floo r, Cabin et, Signage.
Or pick an other category of character, if you pre fer : Lobby,
Meeting Room , Working Room , Eating Room , Sleeping Room -
Rooms and Rooms an d Rooms and Rooms.
There are many ch aracters in any given project, and each
cha racter contains many cha racters or, rath er, many (d iverse and
con flictual) characterizations. In othe r words, th ere is no
(fixed) character, there 's only chara cterizing. Only character -
onl y identi ty - in proc ess.
23.54 5. Ourcharacters are based on individual personalities, their anawmy ebstrected only
in the most general way from their prototypes - rabbits, dncks, ens, canaries, etc. ..
What they looked like grew in each case from our discovery of who they vme. Then
and only then could their movements and voices uniq uely demonstrate each of these
personalities (Amuck. 261 -62) .
[ones's point is particularly relevant to architecture her e. Say, for
example, you were to consider using any of the architectural charac-
ters mentioned in the previous section , then one way you might
consider using them would be, first, to consider their personalities
through their anatomy - their social, psychological, and physical
anatomy - abstracted, say, only in themost general way from their conven-
tional or normative "types" - because that is more or less what we
all do anyway, sooner or later in the design process - and then , sec-
ond , what you design these characters to look like - for that particu-
lar project - could grow and develop in each case from your discovery
of who they were.The important point is that the architectural char-
acter is not just predetennined and then repeated, but rather that the
character is discovered through the responsive iteration of its mul ti-
ple characteristics throughout the project.
I say abstracted only in the most general way, because even
tho ugh Chuck jones says he anima tes "'realistically' . .. compared
to the . . . 'abstractions' of som e of the so-called avant-garde ani-
mators," he goes on to demonstrate how dissimilar Daffy is from a
nor mal duck , how Bugs'sm ovements and gestures bear surp risingly
little resemblance to a conventional rabbit , how the only thing Porky
shares with a pig is its tail.
And yet: Daffy is (and remains) a duck , Bugs is (and remains) a
bunny Porky is (and remains) a pig.That rem aining is necessary for
the exploration of character.
"With Bugs. Daffy. etc., we invented our own anatomi cal struc -
tures," [ones saysin Chuck Amuck- but of course this is not true: what
jones did was to adopt and cdcpt comparative zoological anatomy. but
he finishes his sentence wi th a statement that is quit e tru e - "and
were faithful to them " (Amuck, 26 1).
Faithfuln ess: "We are dealing in shapes, shapes with indi vidual
characteristics, variations on a common anatomi cal structure . ..
5 Quot ed in Mic hael But ler, The Novels of Max Fnsch (Lo ndon: Oswald Wolff, 1976), 14 9.
Rakatansky
bel ievabi Iity
individual personalities, so that in the same circumstance they react
in different ways. . . . If you want believability in your characters,
you must have visual consistency In animation, each character mu st
move according to its own anatomical limitations: Daffy Duck mu st
move with Daffy Duck's anatomy, Donald Duck with Donald Duck's
structure" (Bedecks, 13 1,267) .
Believability: "One principle he learn ed is that believability is
mo re important than realism " (Chuck]ones:A Flurry of Drawings, 62) .
That m ight be some film director or film critic speaking of
Chnsropher Walken, but actually it is the literary cri tic Hugh
Kenner speaking of Chuck Iones. jon es himself says: "We mu st
all start with the believable. This is th e essence of our craft. All
drama, all come dy. all artistry stems from th e believable, which
gives us as solid a rock as anyon e could ask from which to seek
humor: variatio ns on th e believable - that is the essen ce of all
hurnor " (Amuck, 26 1) .
Believability,Visual Consistency,Faithfulness to Anatomy: th ese
principles do not con stitute a reduction of variation but, on the
contrary, allow for that prolife ration of variation - variations on
and in the believable - that is the chara cter.
If a proliferation of variation is what a character is, that is
becaus e, as Mikhail Bakhtin has said: "A man never coincides with
himself. One cann ot apply to him the formula of identity A=A"
(Problems of Dostcevskys Poetics, 59) . Whi ch accounts for the variation
within character, as Max Frisch has said : "The individual is a sum
of various possibilities. not an unlimited sum, but one whic h goes
beyond his [specific] biography. Only the variations reveal the
commo n centre."5
There is no Daffy, no Donald , no Lear, no Corde lia, no Chnsto-
pher Walken, no you, no me . There is no definitive common cen-
ter, only some set of common in tersection s, no true and stable
self, no true identity or map or diagram to be revealed , mere are
only the variations - the way you see that character on the screen
or in a book, or, say, you or me in life, respond in various ways to
various situations - that retroactively sugg ests som e character, some
you, som e me, some map, some diagram .
If you look at wh at is called me model sheet or the character
sheet for any Looney Tun e character, say Daffy. you will see that
there is no single Daffy, no Daffy qua Daffy, no Daffy Ding-no-sich,
mere is only a series of Daffys, a series of Daffy responses, gestur-
al and verbal.
Only: It's-mine!-All-mine!-I' m -rich!-I' m -wealthy!-I'm-com -
fortably-well-off! Daffy and Sligh t-pause-w hilst-I-adjust -my -
accoutermen ts Daffy and Now- then-we' U-just-see-who's-bos s-in-
this-bailiwick Daffy nod It-isn 't-as-though-I-haven't-lived-up-to-
my-contract-Goodne th-knows-I've-do ne- that Daffy and That-sir-is-
an-inmitigated-frabication !-It's-wabbit- season ! Daffy and I-say-
it's-duck-secson-and -l-say-Fire! Daffy nod I'li-start-it-thts-nme! Daffy
nod Okay-this-time-You-start-it! Daffy andYou 're-d ethpicab1el Daffy.
And ou t of th ose multiplicitous ch aracterization s, you create
the character : Daffy.
So given that th ere is no character, only characterizing, then
how could you abstract the "anatomy" ofone of those archit ectural
characters I menti on ed in the previous section?
This is where the editors of this special issue can make another
entrance on these stagings, because when the editors e-mailed me,
they e-mailed me the following statement: "The way the diagram
oper ates that distinguishes it from an icon, inspiration , or objet UOUV(
is related to the difference between representational and instrumen-
tal techni ques. An image becomes a diagram only when you instru-
ment it toward organizational effects."
,-, ----
11

differential transformations elastic play

u If you want to maintain the productive tension of the tran sfor -

3
z mation, in a way that would articulate difference and relation, then
0

~ that transformation should resist being too smooth, too easy,

~

"
<
~

~
because then it will not be legible as to what rransform ed into what.
And why And how.
r
"
0 But, given that, what is particularly ins tructive in animation is the
"" "amazing, elastic play" that the film director Sergei Eisenstein not es:
~
z
I
"<~
@ With surprise - necks elonga te.
With panicked running - legs stretch.
With fright - not only the character trembles, but a wavering
line runs along the contour of its drawn image. . .
For if, in terror, the neck of a ho rse or cow stretches, then the
representation itself of the skin will stretch, but not . . . the
contour of the drawing of the skin, as an independent ele-
1)
/ p.....3i';~.~
~ ment! . . .
~.Ai .~_.,~ And only after the contour of the neck elongates beyond the

~--dj ~~~."~~
f ~{_
possible limits of the neck - does it become a comical embod-
iment . . . (Eisenstein onDisney, 57) .

~J'} 1 (Y;
~""~. ~,~ \ \' . iIIl
Now when the editors sent me that e-mail they were trying to
discriminate the diagram from the image, and you already know I
have been trying to discriminate and equate the diagram and the
image, but this is where the editors can help with the question of
how you might abstract an image like an archi tectural character: by
deterritoriahzing and reterritorializing the image or the objet trouve or
character, by instrumentalizing it toward organizational effects (as
they would say it), by operating on its organizational effects (as I
would say it) .
Thus: the diagram is n ot imported to the image (or the object) .
I.. the diagram is exported from the image (or the object) . It is found
already at work metonymically in or around th e image or th e objet
trouve or the character, and drawn forth . But then, it should be said :
the image (the character) does not become a diagram , what the
image (the character) does is to reveal its own diagrarnrnatics. Dia-
grarnrnatics that will only be recognizable by virtue of how they are
drawn forth in the act of responding to internal and external forces.
6. We are left to ponder, oh, the reluctance of Being to succumb to Mutability
(Flurry, 67).
But why worry about believability, visual consistency, faithful-
ness to anatomy, anyway ? Or characters, even? Animation is great
becaus e anything can transform in anything else, a character can
become anything at all, right?
Or so it's said, at least in some cyber circles. Oh, that dreamy talk
again. On the contrary: what the art of animation and the art of art
reveal is the possibility, bur also the difficulty, of transformation in
the struggle of and for identity - a struggle not in order to transform
into something else, but in order to find the differential characteriza-
tions , the differential transformations, from within (the) character.
Transformation is easy. It is not difficult, say, for a handrail to
change into a bench or a coat rail, or, say, a counter to turn into
a di sh rack, or, say, a shelf to turn into a table, nothing could be
easier really, it's only a qu estion of what you get for this labor,
what you get out of it, what relations can be drawn out of such
transformations.
As in montage : a juxtaposition does not a relationship make
- so, too, in animation : a transformation does not a relati on -
shi p make.
This ama zing, elastic play is due to a limit of physical ide ntity
already having been established and then temporarily elongated,
extended, in relation to, in comparison to, that limit. This limit , of
course, is not just the limit of that physical identity but the limit of
that set of cultural id entitie s tha t circula tes around that physical
identity. What is enacted, in other words, is the temporary dissolu-
23.55
tion of the object and its representation. "The c.omicality here,"
Eisenstein notes, "stems from the fact that any representation
exists in two ways: as a set of lines" - themap - "and as the imag e
that arises from them" - theterritory (Eisenstein, 57 ) .
Eisenstein used the example of a clock to fur ther illustrate thi s
principle: if the relation between "the graphic drawing of numerals
and hands on a clock face, and an image of th e time of day that
comes from their specific combination" is "normally . . . indissolu-
ble," then "in a comical construction there is .. . dissection, but of a
spe cial type : th e perception of them as independent of" - asdiscrim-
inated from - "each other, and simulanteously as belonging together" - as
being equoted to each other (Eisenstein, 57-58) .
This productive ten sion is maintained by simultaneously
establishing and exceedi ng a particular identity. In order to work,
in order for th e transformation of identity to be perceivable as a
transformation, this transformation has to be developed in rela-
tion to, within range of, that identity, that identifiable identity:
Tex. [Avery. [ones's mentor] showed us that we could go beyond
rationality.At a time when we were learning to animate and real-
izing that respect for anatomy is vital for believability;Texshowed
us that a character can come out of that anatomy very briefly for a
violent, distorted reaction. However, the distortion can't continue
for long, or ... credibility is gone. (Reducks , 98 )
This is one of Chu ck Iones's principal points: "Our characters
achieve believability beeouse of th eir limitations" (Amuck, 263 ) .
Your architectural characters, your architecture: by their limits
shall you know them. The limits, say, of th eir mutability, which
will give you the very pos sibility of enacting what might be per-
ceivable as that which has mutated .
Here 's Hugh Kenner 's exam ple, from his dis cussion of th e dif-
fer entials ofWile E. Coyote's fall from whatever edge of w hatever
cliff Coyote was falling off of in his forever failing pursuit of the
Road Runner:

Rakatansky
~= ....- - - - - - - - - -- - - - - - - - -- -.

sonic tectonics anamorphosis

Wile E.'s tors o dr ops away. leavin g a str essed face atop th e th at w hen sam pled , or stre tched , w hat is lacking in th e abstr act
stre tched -out neck. Two seconds later th e contr acted neck snap s uhuhh uh sounds is the way sense might be held in sus pen sion .
the face down ou t ofsight, leaving two lon g ears.Wh en those in Thi s holding in suspension of both fo rm andsense is th e an amor-
turn vani sh we are left to ponder - o h. th e relu ctan ce of Bein g to phic act, and it is the m eans by which Lacan links anamorphosis
succumb to Mutability. (Flurry, 67) to tho se techniques of suspe nsion th at are found in (cour tly) love
- and in tra ged y and in co m edy - where in the relation between
What a wonderful lin e: "When those in turn vanish we are left action and desire is held within var io us states of suspension.
to ponder - oh , the reluctance of Being to succumb to Mutability" Further, w hat anamorphosis an d anim ation point to in this
But, actually, it's not just the relu ctance we are left to ponder. it's play is th e pointlessness anyway o f making such absolute di stinc-
th e reluctance and rhe possibility, rhe necesstry, rhe difficulty, rhe tions between , say, the abstra ct and the figu ral - precisely by
inevi tability, of Being to succum b to Mutabili ty. kee pin g th e categories of abstr action and figuration in suspension.
This play between relu ctance and inevitability, between bein g in process, precisely b y neither allowing for th e in stant gra tifica-
equated to and bein g discriminated from , between establishing tion of th ese categor ies as fixed or stable, nor the di splacem ent of
and exceeding identity leads u s to ]acques Lacan and to anam or - the one catego ry by the other :
phosis. the principles of w hi ch Lacan first discussed in hi s semi-
nar of 19 59-1 960 : "It is any kind of construction that is ma de in This also allows us to approach a littl e closer to the unanswered
such a way that by means of an optical transposition a certain question on the ends of art: is the end of art imi tation or non-
form th at wasn' t visible at first sight trans form s itself int o a read - imitatio n? Does art imi tate what it represents? If you begin by
able ima ge.The pleasur e is found in seein g its emergence from an posing the question in those terms , you are already caught in the
ind ecip hera ble form" (Ethics, 13 5) . And r eturned to again in hi s trap, and there is no way out of remaining in the impasse in
sem inar of 19 64 , wher e h e seemed to emphasize ju st the reverse , which we find our selves between figurative and so-called
focusing then on: " the pleasure of ob taining not the restoration abstr act art ....
of th e world , bu t rhe distortion . . . of rhe im age . .. and [ will That's a trap one must not ent er. Of cour se, works ofart imi-
dwell, as on some deliciou s game. on this method that makes tate th e objects th ey represent , but their end is certainly not to
anything appear at will in a part icular stre tching" (Concepts, 87) . represent them . In offering th e imitation of an object, they
23.56 Borh of these pleasures - rhe pleasure of finding the readable make something different out of that object.Thus they only pre -
image in the in decipherable form and the pleasure of its distor - tend to imitate.The object is established in a certain relationship
tion - are already implied, as the historian Stephe n Greenblatt ha s to the Thing and is intended to encircle and to render both pre-
noted , in the etym ology of anamorphosis, which "sugg ests a sent and absent. (Ethics, 14 1)
back-and -forth movem ent, a constan t forming and re-forming"
(Renaissances<U-Fushioning, 23) . In th e end , anamorpho sis can eithe r be an end in andof it self -
A co nst an t de-forming and re-forming : a constan t det emton - say, a kind of cu te par ty trick - or a means : "At issue, in an ana-
aliztng an d reterritorializing. lo gical or anamorp hic fo rm , is the effo r t to po in t o nce aga in to
Thi s po ssibility of a constan t d e-forming and re -forming in the fact th at w hat we seek in the illusion is something in w hich
architecture, thi s possibility of an anamorphic architecture, is the illusion as such in so me w ay transcends it self, de str oys itself,
,.
0- "'" perhaps better exem plified not by a sin gle painterly im age, but by d emonstr ating th at it is only th er e as a sign tfier " (Ethics,
by an ex am ple from m usic , say, John Coltran e's "sam pling and 136).ln orher words, by showin g tha t rhe im age, rhe picture, as
~ '"
,.
~ '"
scr atchi n g" in his various versio ns of "My Favori te Things," Lacan said , is "wh at an y picture is, a tra p fo r th e gaze ," but
e ,.
'" w hich not only show how you can find radi cal abstraction fro m showing it to us in a way that shows us: "th at , as su bjec ts, we
E.
~ ,..... within th e figur al, but even m ore radi cally: just how clo se the are literally called into th e picture, ar e repr esent ed her e as
~. z
~ abstract is to the figu ral , say a not e or a pitch or an o ctave or a cau ght" (Concepts, 89 , 92 ).
~ -<
'" beat away, in other word s, how in stantan eou sly the indecipher - We are alrea dy entang led, here, betw een th e m ap and th e ter -
~
g able for m o f abstracti on is read y to snap for us into th e read able ri tory, in the pi ctu re, in th e object.
eS ,.~

im age o f figuration . But then th e qu estion is: how can architecture be animated so as
~ z
~ ,. Hi p hop ma y be an even better m usical exa m ple her e. Say to cause us to recognize our own entanglements, as it respo nds to
~ ~
~
you sample and scratch a lin e something alo ng the lin es of: "e h us, and we to it, in our various differentials of ch araaeriza.tio n?This
~
... ch . . . eh . . . chec ... chec ... check it . . . check it . . . ch . is how we mi gh t re cognize o urselves - as already called into our
~ ,.....
~

~
ch . . . check it o oouuuuuttt.I'This is not so me uniformly gr ad u- own pictur es - in the enactment of our entanglements."
z
1 .....
e,
ate d tr an sformation or deformation, this is an ana morp hic play

."" '"
c
~
with a ver y figural p h ras e, one th at maintains th e set of div er se 7. Allof ourcharacters are recognizable, not only by theirpersonal characteristics,but
but specific co n notatio ns of the phrase, w h ile at th e same time by how they express these characteristicsin response to conflict or love or any adversar-

e-
~ '"
~
r evealing the entir ely abstract so n ic tecton ics o f its co nstr uc- iaJsituation (Amuck, 263 ) .
e
~
~

c tion. If it we re all abst rac t - if it we re : "uh uh u h . . . uhuh W hat is wrong with thi s statement in Chuc.kAmuck, [o ne s goes
~ '"
S-
.. . uhuh ... uh uhh uh ... uhuhh uh . . . uh oh uhu hb oh o n to co rr ect seven years later wi th th e fo llowing statement in

is if
~
-e
~
u uu hhhh hhhh" - th er e wo uld be no tr ans for m ation, not even an Chuck Reducks: "It's not w hat or w he re a ch aracter is, nor th e cir-
o rg asm ic one, which would require quite a di fferent array of cu ms tances under w hi ch he fin ds him self cha t d eter mine s who
~
sou nd s (which anyway are not an abstra ct set of sou nds , but h e is. It is only h ow in a uniqu e w ay h e resp onds to th at envi-
c g
~

a
..
~.

c
z ~
c~
already and co nven tio nally have assumed th e figurati on o f th e ronm ent an d th o se cir cu mstances w hi ch id en tify h im as an
" orga sm -sound" ) . in dividual" (Reducks, 268) .
In other wo rds, there is no personality; no m ap, of a character in
,[ if If th ose par ticular abstract sounds hold none of th e tension of
~
that anamorp hi zed "c heck it OUT," we ll that is d ue to the fact the fihn or in the architectural space.The only thing you can see is rhe
~ ~
" WORKS CITED:
o The idea ofan aestheticobjectel'lacting entanglements iflorder to make its -reace-s" enact their own
entanglements isdeveloped byStanleyFish in SurprisedbySin; The geaoer in Paradise l ost (Berkeley: Uni Thecdcr W. Adorno, "F unctionalismToday," Oppositions 17 (Summer 1979): 31-4l.

veesity ofCalifornia Press,1971l. Alain Badiou, "On a Finally eeje cuess Subject," in Who Comes After the Subject, ed.Eduardo Cadava
7 All the voicesfor almost all of the classicLooneyTunescharacters (including Elmer and Bugsand Daffy et al. (New Yo rk: Routledge, 1991l, 24- 32.
and Pepeafld Porky)were enacted by MelBlanc, whose jobdescriptionwas "Vocal Characu.rintions.." Mikhail Bakhtin, Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1 ~ 84J .

Gregory Bateson, StePS to an Ecology of Mind (New York: Ballantine Book$, 1972).
GiIlesDeleuzeand Ft!ix G ~ttari, What is PI1i1osophy? vans.. Hugh Tomlinson and Graharn Burchefl
(New York: Columbia University Press, l q94).
Mart in Esslln, B ~ht (LOfldon: Methuen, l Q84).
Sergei Eisensteifl, Eisensteil1on Disney (London: Methuen, 1988).
Michel Foucautt, Power/Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writings 1972-19n , ed. Calln Gar-
don (New York: Pantheon, 1980).

Rakatansky
 gestures
character 's respons iveness to various condit ions . The only thing
yo u can see of the m ap is th at w hich is inscri bed in tha t part of
th e territor y th at you do see, as Christophe r Walken indicated ,
beca use yo u n ever see th e te rr itory w hole in the w ay you can
look over the en tire map. th e entire diagram , you just see bits
and pi eces. Only th ese bits an d pieces of re sponsi veness, th ese
bits and pie ces of entangleme nt, give you th e character - or
more pre cisely: i t is only these bits and pieces from which you
will attem pt, retroactively, to co n str uc t so me ch ara cter.
I" Here is Theodor Adorno 's beautiful qu ote about vectors: "Beauty
is either the resultan t of force vectors or it is nothing at all" ("Func-
tionalism Today:' 41) . But I would say, perhaps less beautifully, that
I
forces are m ost strongly represented as the result of representations of
I
forces in responsiveness (and thus in process and in tran sformation) . and
not as an end-resultant, not as a summing up. "The su bject is neither
a result," Alain Badiou has said. "nor an origin . It is the local status of
the proced ure, a configuration that exceeds the situation" ("On a
Finally ObjectlessSub ject," 27) .
Like wa tching a kickoff re turn for a to uchdown in a fo otball
game : all th e tension and dra ma of the kick returner 's gestures
would be eviscerated if th e forces were reduced to the result ant
that is m er ely the run ; that is , if all th e relati onal for ces at work
in the respon sive ges tures of the r un - th e o the r team tr ying to
tackle th e r unner. hi s own team blocking the o the r team or ge t-
ting in hi s w ay, the near out -of-bounds at th e sid eline, th e final
sprin t to th e goal lin e - we re entirely erased fro m view, so tha t
the only thi n g o ne w ould see w ould be some resultant wacky
dance in some abs tract spac e by so m e helmeted nutcase w ith a
big num ber on his shirt.
This is w hy it is important to avoid the mere dir ect exp res-
sion(ism) of for ces as res ultants, lest we as des igners become,
say. glo r ified tr affic engin eers ins tr ume n tally calcifying maps of
circ ula tio n flows - as if those m aps of flow s were th e socially and
psychol o gi cally complex territory th at is the circul ati on of indi-
vidu als through in stitution alized spaces . Rathe r. arc hitecture
might ges ture relationall y to th ese for ces, inferrin g forces as
well as expressing for ces, w hic h is a way, to shift the association
yet again, b ack to music , of being Simultaneous ly on and off th e
beat , devel op in g a syncopa tion of beats, a syncopation of
(res ponses to) forces.
Both ma terializin g the m ap and not ma teri alizing (but allu ding
to) the m ap, happily playing between th e m ap and the terr itory.
In animation an d in h um an pe rformance the lesso n is that
th ese vectors of characterization ar e expressed not as some gen-
eral movements , n ot with some general sha pes, but as physical
and vo cal characterizations..7 as ges tur es in rel atio n and in
respon se , as gestic m ovemen ts of complex motivation between
desire and drive - actio n being th at w hic h is suspended n ot ju st
betw een various desires, but between desire and drive: be tween
that w hich th e character desi res and tha t w hich the character
does not des ire, but neverth eless is compulsive ly driven to do
(th is is the Lacanian notion of drive): "Daffy rushes in an d fears
to thread at th e same time" (Amuck , 239) .
This brings me finally to the third of the three dictionary defini-
tions for vector: "a behavioral field of force toward or away from the
performance of various acts; broadly: drive." So it should not come as
too much of a surp rise if in his discussion of the Lacanian notion of
drive, Iacques-Alain Miller speaks not only of forces toward and away
from the performance of various acts, not only of conflict and love
and other adversarial situations, but speaks of these situations by
speaking of vectors:
Jean-Le e Godard, " Intr oduction a une verita ble histo ire du cinema," Camera Obscura 8910 (1962.): 74-437.
J ean-Lee Godard , S oda rd on Godard (New York: Da Capo, 198 6l.
Ste cben Greenblat t, Rena issance Self- Fashioning: From More to Sha kespeare (Chicago: Universit y of
Chicago Press, 19 60 ).
Angelika HurwiCl, "Brecht's Work wit h Actors," in Brecht as They Knew Him, ee., Hubert Witt (New
York: ln terna tlc nal, 1974).
Chuck J ones, Chuck Amuck: The life and Times of an Animated Cartoonist (New York: Farrar; Straus
and Giro ux, 1'l8 'l).
Chuck J ones, Chuck aeoucks: Drawing from t he Fun Side of life (New York: Warner, 1996).
Hugh Kenner, Chuck J cne s: A Flurr y of Draw ings (Ber keley; Univers ity of California Press, 1994 ).
J ec ques Lac a n, Se mi nar XI: The Four Fundamenta l Conce pts of Psychoa nalys is (New York: W. W.
Norton, 19 77).
schema
It is for this reason that. in this seminar [Encore] , Lacan places
right away. at the side of jouissance, its Other, namely love -
which, on the contrary, is itself represent able. by a vector that
goes from one point to the other. And, we won't even hesitate
to br ing the vector of re turn, which we find in a fundame ntal
cell on Lacan's graph . His entire graph is constru cted on thes e
departures and returns. (" The Drive is Speech," 20)
It is th ese de pa rtures and returns tha t m ot ivate, th at ani ma te,
our character.
Well, that 's my cu e. Time to de part. The re 's more but th er e 's
alw ays m or e. These last tw o sections on anamorphosis and vec-
tonal resp onsiven ess have taken me to th e poi nt w he re these
dep art ure s an d retur ns are th e differential vectors , the differen -
tial motives, of our character, of o ur ar chitectural characters .
W hat is left to discu ss is h ow m ot ives migh t be deve loped into
m otivi c improvisations, how point s m igh t be develop ed
throu gh a pr ocess of co unterpoint. For th is I wi ll need to have
Ch uc k [on es and Hu gh Kenner and Tex Avery re turn. along "With .
say, John Coltrane and Public Enemy. And Glenn Gou ld .
Another time the n : another in tere st, ano ther pl easure.
Another me th en . And the n , well , ano the r you.
THE GENEALOGY OF MODELS: THE HAMMER ANDTHE SONG 23.57
Sanford Kwi nter
Design methodology today seems to want no thing more than a
clearer and more complete view of the relationshi p between diagram
and worldly concre teness. The role that the concep t of diagram is
now playing in our attemp ts to theorize material reality in the late
20th century is not so different from the way the concept of the
"schema" was used by Kant to theori ze Newtonian reality in the late
18th century. Both seek to serve as syn thetic explanatory devices
(though they are no less real for that) that open up a space through
which a per ceptible reality may be related to the forma l system that
organizes it, w hether this latter is a priori or a posteriori as in the
Kantian/Humian version.
Yet ano ther great thin ker of the same era who must not be left
out of consi de ration is Goethe. Goerhe. it may be arg ued , was the
first to have rejected the (apodictic) Kantian-Newtonian mo del in
favor of the modern genetic interp retat io n of form . With respect to
[he form problem, in other wo rds, Goethe placed his wage r on the
side of development. lod gin g [he exp lanato ry device in the space of
abstract interactions taking place over time, so that form was
always moving and represented on ly a visible. froze n section .
through a more fun damental organizing logic tha t itself could be
intuited , analytically described , but never actua lly held in the
hands. Goet he is the father of the modern concept of diagram
insofar as he in sisted on formation as the locus of exp lanation, not
simple appearance.This ecological approach can be foun d in all of
Goethe's wo rk on Natura l Philosophy and on in tui tion , but it is
most explicitly elaborated in his scientific writings. especially
those on botanica l sub jects. A cen tral feature of these inquiries
was his research into the "Ur-forms." a deeply misunderstood
conce pt today that in fact probably represents the first cyber netic
theory of form since [he pre-Socratics and the atornis ts. Goerhe is
also rightly credited with having invented the ter m morphology.
Ja cques Lacan, Se minar VII: The Ethics of Psychoa na lysis (New York: W. W. Norton, 1992).
J e cques-Ata!n Miller, "The Drive is Spee ch," UMBR(a ) 1 (1997): 15-33 .
Ger hard Richt e r, Pa intings (Bolzano: Museum of Modern Art, 1996 ),
Parts ofth is essay were originally presented in J uly 1997 at mnrphe: nineleen97, a conference held at Deakin Uni
versity;n Australia, a nd in October 1997 at Recent Work: Architecture and the Politics of Advocacy and Identity,
the assemlrlage conference held at the Columbia University. My thanks to the organizers of those events, and to
The Grahilm Foundation for Advanced Stud ies in the Fine Arts, under whose la rgesse I have been exploring forms
of attention in a rchitect ure.
I<winter
= I
 rubber sheet
From Goethe then. we were supposed to have learned that dia-
grams do not themselves produce form (at least in no classical
sense of this word) but rather that diagrams emit formative and organiza-
tionul influence. shape-giving pressures that cannot help but be
"embodied" in all subsequent states of the given region of concrete
reali ty upon which they act. This activity represen ts a very com-
plex play of hybridization and creo ltzation. because every compo-
nent of what I am calli ng concrete realit y is itself the expression
of ma ny previous diag rams that have only temporarily been
resolved (or "tested," as in an experiment) and lodged in form .
The view of reality that I have always tried to foster in design (and
which I imagine I am drawing from Nte tzsche) is precisely one in
which the play o f form is seen as a perpetual communication of
mo duluses o r impetuses - gen erating cente rs - the very thing tha t
we seem today to be agreei ng to call diagrams. Form. or world.
one might say, is bu t the co ncrete residue of the incessant com-
merce and conversation (or strife. to use the Greek term) between
diagrams.These diagrams I would claim are fundamentally geomet-
ric in nature. though the word geometry here refers to the modern,
non-Euclidean or "rubber sheet" variety that deals with transitions
an d their logic. Though the wo rd topology tends to be bandied
about to day like a twopenny shibboleth, it does. from the long
view, appear to represent a mass address of the new, emerging
"epistemology." Diagrams are active, and the view mat sees them
as mere blueprints to be translated or reproduced is outdated. The
23.58 diagram is the engine of novelty. good as well as ill.
Even though Kantianism may have appeared to have triumphed
historically over naturalism and romanticism, this was not altogether
the case.The relations between perce ption. concept. and reality (or
"nature") became the central problems of modernist and
post-Enlightenment philosophy. and while Kant's system dominated
debate right into the 20th century, many creative revisions and
refinements were made to accommodate the new realities and
knowledges of the modern century. The Kantian ..schema... as I
argued above. represent ed a profoundly new type of concept. bu t
one which was capable of un dergoing substanti al inte rp retive adap-
tation. Some of the best known and most impressive examp les of
this type of development can be found in the work of early cen tury
neo-Kannan aestheticians such as in the "symbolic form" theories
ofErnst Cassirer and Erwin Panofsky Indeed it is these same general
relationships that have recently been developed by Gilles Deleuze
and Fellx Guattan, specifically the relations between the "concept"
W ES J ON ES
_ _ _THE NELSON
I<winter
topologized schema
and the "percept" in What is Philosophy? albeit no lon ger he re at all in
a Kantian vein .
For Kant. the world of experience. to put it briefly. was divided
into a "material" and a "fo rmal" component. Material referred to
sense-qualities found on the side of the ob ject. of the vv-orld. or. in
the Kantian jargon. of the "mantfold.t'The formal domain, that which
we are interested in when we want to un derstand the genealogy of
the diagram , belongs on the side of the perceiving mind or agent: it
refers to an a priori organization - this is Kant's Newtonian
absoluteness speaking - a kind of engram or partitioning algo-
rithm that lets sense experience - matter - enter into relation with
itse lf to form higher level meanings and unities. (This may well be
the proro-ortgtn of 20th-century gestalt theory as well.) The for-
ma l. however, appears on th e side of the subjective , it corresponds
to the a prio ri schema which on its own is hollow and must be
filled in with data acquired from outside through the senses. For
Kant. each term of the pair is inseparable from the other: su bject
and object. perception and reality. schema and senses. Otherwise
the world would simply collapse into shapeless abstraction or into
a senseless kaleidoscopic scattering. It was the task of the 20th-cen-
tury neo-Kanna ns. and it is our task as well. to topologize the field of
the encounter of each pair of terms.
The neo-Kandan bio logist jakob [ohann von Uexkiill played an
important role in achieving this when he invented the concept of the
Umweit, that broader ecology of features and cues in the external
world with which every nervous system is linked through commu-
nicative circuits. The early Panofsky, on the other hand. showed how
perspec tive played such a diagram matic role in the forma tio n of a
cognitive, technological . and aesthetic gestalt, and Casstrer devel-
oped his theory of symbolic form, which again posits the operation
of a generative, topologizing diagram that engenders both su bject
and object in any gtven context.
The term topology is used here not only to introduce the shi ftin g.
connected mesh wor k in which form and m atter play our their alter-
nating struggle and their dance. bu t also [Q insist that the diagram
not be understoo d as a reduction of the m anifold but rather as a con-
traction, or. to use th e medieval term. a complication of reality.This is
important because once complicated or enfolded, every worldly
thing harbors within itself the perpetual capacity to explicate or
unfold. The diagram - or what one can now call the topologized schema -
represents the plastic aspect of reality : subject and object not only
partially me rge and overlap, but can virtu ally masquerade as one
THE NEL~
~--- WHA T'S ~
CRI 7IOUE 7RACK . .
CHARACTER 71lACI(,
I
CAN 8E REA&> A S
TIME, SPACE, CR
t>URA7/(JN
1
-
i
compositional event
another.This obviously poses a whole new set of problems and pos-
sibilities for the theory of perception, and it certainly frees us from
static, abstract ing, and vision-based concepts of space. Somewhere
along the line one has jettisoned both Newton and Kant, despite the
fact that they served as the primary ladders to our modern position.
I
So what is our modern position? Clearly the notion of the dia-
gram that Brian Boigon and I developed in our "Five Appliances for
the Alphabetical City" article of 1989 was derived directly from Fou-
caulr's development of the notion in Discipline and Punish and in the first
I volume of the History ofSexuali ty (les dispositifs), and at the time we were
happy to do so without adding a great deal to it. I am not sure that
more has been added to it since, except for the marvelous elabora-
tions of Deleuze, though these are still on ly that: elaborations of the
Foucaldian theme. It is worth pointing out though that the diagram
concept functions in Foucault's prison book as if it were itself. a dia-
gram. In other words, it functions as an embedded entity, separate yet
indissociable from the concrete work-event (the book and the sys-
tem of concepts known as Surveiller er punir) that it animates and in
which it resides. So how then do you isolate a diagram from the con-
crete events it generates? This is where Deleuze has made his contri-
bution to the problem, by identifying the diagram with a class of
phenomena that he calls abstract machines.
Abstract machines are precisely what they claim to be: abstract
because they are conceptually and ontologically distinct from mater-
ial reality, yet they are fully functioning m achin es, that is, they are
agencies of assemblage, organization, and deployment. Reality, to
speak a bit reducuvelv is comprised both of matter and th e organiza-
tion of that raw matter into dep loyable ob jects or complexes. The
argument, stated simply,is as follows: to every organized entity there
corresponds a micro-regime offorces that endows it wit h its general
shape and program. Every objec t is a com position of forces, and the
compositionnl event is the wo rk or exp ression of an abstract machine.
Wh at I call the "conductivity hypothesis" is a m ajor component of
some recent m ath em atical work, particulary by Rene Thorn and
some "experimental" or computer-algorithm-based m ath em ati-
cians , as well as work in the biological sciences. It states tha t abstract
machines, or orgamze d shapm g forces, or mi cro-m orphological
regim es, are the mse lves par t of larger assem blages, larger abstract
m achines through which they communicateas if across a single continuum.
Events in one place transmit th eir effects and successes to other
places, and indeed to other scales. This is not a n ew phl ogiston or
ether theory, bu t rather, is entirely in keeping with the modern theor y
lu
-----------------,,-------------------"""---------
I
~~s- -I
~LL Y G()ING
I
# #
1, .: .1-
H I 'I
.~~ --- - - - - ,. -.....
~r;
1/
\
\.r1
l ,. ~~
; I
, i1
i ::>:
o i ~ RA!) MI?~ REFER/lN~~.,I~ os.~PflsiI
: ~ - ~(,~7-S7RUc'11JRA ..~'srI7c,,7i '
I \ I I I\ I, ; I
ALLCWA8LE LAYOU7 CF SEEMINGLY ARBITRARY PANELlZA7I0Il
AS EASY CCMMEN7 CN FRAMING WHiCH- IN 7l/RM IS SU8SUMEl> BY
THE PRINTER'S MCRE TELLING ACCIl>ENTAL RSARRANGSMSNT- - SE E,
IFeR EXAMPLE, f{().IS MEMCRY, INC. El>.
incorporeal
of fields. Fields are one of the models wit h which scientists explain
the incidents of influence that we are here agreeing by convention to
call diagrams.There arise particular problems, of course, when one is
careless in developing models to explain how remote events, or
events separated in time rather than space. are related (such as in the
work of Rupert Sheldrake) , but history is full of provocative non-
me taphysical models to expla in such phemomena as welL I bring all
of this into the equation because I like to claim that what we are
dealing w ith here is simultaneously a new type of materialism (as
Foucaul r called it, "un materialisme de l'mcorporel") and a kind of
enlightened neo-vitalism. It calls for a new epistemology of action
and event, and sees forms and things as mere chimeras of these
underlying diagrammatic processes . Politics must become the poli-
tics of the diagram and history mus t be seen as the history of dia-
grammanc Jife, not me rely of the forms it threw up.
Approaching the incorporeal is one of the ma jor challenges of
contemporary design practice. There were times - more innocent
times, to be sure - when this was done with very little self-conscious-
ness and with sweep ing brilliance; one thinks of the work of
Moholy-Nagy, the constructivists, certain filmmakers. from Bisen-
stein to Kubrtck. of Buckminster Fuller, Robert Smithson, the aes-
thetico-phflosophlcal urb anist movements of the late 19505 and
'60s , etc. These practitioners seemed instinctively to understand
their ro le as intermediaries, and they had a clear intuition of the
interstitial space that they had to occupy in order to become diagrarnma-
tists. I often make the argum ent to my students that this space is the 23.59
space at once of syn thesis , integration, and catastrophe, it is the space
fro m which forms are launched and filtere d, not made. In biology
one is qu ite at ease discuss ing the dis tinc t do ma ins of genotype
(w here data is encoded in a four-letter lan guage of rudimentary
in structi ons ) and ph en otype (the marvelous ly rich wo rld of no vel
shapes and th eir con caren au on s) an d , with a bi t more strain, of an
in terme diary space that links the two and where regulator y processes
guide th e first in to the second. It wo uld already be some thing for
designers to ado pt a "mechanistic genetic" position and conceive of
a genotypic diag rammatism as underlyin g all phen otypic or formal
exp reSSIOn, And yet, we m ust msrst th at the diagram lies nowhere
else but in the space between the two, in the wt ld field of cybe rneti c
interactio ns (w hat Deleuz e, after Bergson , has called actualisation),
regul ator y p ressures and ch annels. and con tro l loops. Once again
then, one m isun ders tan ds the di agram when one conceives of it as a
tem plate rath er th an as a flow.
RM I
I I I
,
I
I
I
I
--::.~{,
o'
--- __\
,
I" " ", ~
i\ /
"f
1"': \ 1
I Ii1Ho
, _- - - - - -rOy jj --f __ ' \ : ' !'JI i1'
I' \ "i1ii
\
l ,ii i j,,/
, j" i1';/i1",~.\,,;;2 i1i1)i:ii ,iiiiji1 i1 i1 ", '
It I I \ \
WAY CIXJL IMAGE HERE
I<winter
L
dynamical systems theory
This is where the problem ofdiagrammatism takes on its postwar
configuration. After World War II there was an extraordinary increase
in the belief and application of science and engineering to everyday
life. which brought along an increasing application of invisible
material logic s to explain and generate realit y. It would be sim plistic
to point it ou t without supplying a mu ch longer argument and
explanation. but the advent o f controlled nuclear processes.
microwave and radar signal processing, industrial applications of
syn the tic chem istry. ballistics , and cryptology were alm ost entirely
made po ssible by both theoretical and practical advances in informa-
tion scien ce. Industrial societies became increasingly satur ated with
these new embedded logics and the corresponding motor habits that
the y produced , but they becam e subjugated by th em invisibly. accord-
ing to what one could call a "subtle coup.t'The diagram is today very
usefully understood as informational. At present the sciences of
cybernetics and information are giving us the mo st useful under-
standing of the dynamic, algorithmic nature of diagrams.
Cybernetics can be said to target three primary phenomena in the
natural and the nonnatural world: integration, organization, and
coordination. These phenome na undeniably exist in the world, bu t
science has never been able to interr ogate these phenomena in th eir
customary numerical or "hard" term s, Philosophy has always nee ded
to step in, along with some makeshift methods in the social sciences
and , occasionally, aesthetics. When we inquire into the nature and
23.60 activity of the diagram today we are really asking : "When som ethi ng
appears, what agencies are responsible for giving this par ticular
sh ape to thi s particular appearance?" One modern information sci-
ence, com plexity theory. or dynamical system s theory. is seekin g to
reconfigure the answer to this question by posiung th e perpetual
interaction of moving , evolving systems : one invisible (th e diagram)
and one visible (the real).
The primary phenomena studied by the new sciences are actually
visible to . or intuirable b}'~ a living observ er, but not to a nonliving
on e, say to a cam era or a measuring devtce . Take, for exam ple, the
phenomenon of integration: What is it ? Where is it located? To
explain the problem I "ill simplify it greatly by lImiting it to a
figur e/ ground example. An active ground, one can say, poses a con -
tinual threat to the figure upon or within it unl ess that figure (1) is
itself active and flexible . (2 ) is in continual comm unicatio n wi th the
ground through feedback loops moving in both directions. and (3)
constitutes within itself a system of even greater densit y of correla-
tions and exchanges so that it can throw up a boundary of order, or a
i...... 1<NtJWING" RSJt'INPER, IMPLYING
. ~1'HA T ITS ALL BI()UJGY, IF NeT se.
,
ty,
ALWA)S
ANI' ALReAPY'
PISGlJSTe. SNCRT, 2
~ IF Tt' SAY
'IN YCUR PRBAMS, PUPS."
I<winter
pattern
discontinuity between itself and the wo rld that surrounds it. The fig-
ure both integrates its surroundings the way a lens focuses and intensi-
fies ambient light. but it also integrates the diffe rential events in the
ambient environment (the changes) which function as a kind of
motor for it, a thermodynamic potential to be tapped.
Next would be the phenomenon of organization. Organization
played a central role in the life sciences in me 1920s and ' 30s and
then again in the 1960s to address the philosophical impasses that
still carried over from the older mechanist-vitalist debates of the 19th
century. The task of the organization concept was to explain differen-
tiation, dissymmetry, and specialization in the development of a
form , because in the 1920s most scientists were already abandoning
the idea of a direct readout theory of the diagram. Organization relies
on the notion of pattern. it attempts to explain how pattern can arise
uniquely through internal controls and how these control factors
themselves are sustained, how they take on a direction , how they
assume the appearance of autonomy, or life.The concept of organiza-
tion targets primarily the emergence of sequenced events as the
source of develo pmental mechanics and formal stability.These were
exactly the questions that Poucault was asking about history at an
inst itutio nal and discursive level, but it had not occurred to him that
his m eth od of analysis was already drawing on this paradigm
through the work of his teacher Georges Canguilhem. In any case, if
organization explains differentiation (novelty) and stability (persis-
ten ce in being), then the thir d term I am positing - coordination -
explains how things actually move, how they "transition" smoothly,
even grace fully between a great variety of states, how th ey emit tem-
poral, rh ythmic morphologies or coherent behcviors.
Now in tegration , organization, and coordination are each
abstract nouns v..r ithout demonstrable correlates in the physical or
chemical world.Yet this doe s not mean that th ey are immaterial- far
from it! - onl y that th ey are incorporeal.Their materiahty quite Sim ply
is nor manifested in space but rather in time. It is in time, I wo uld
argue. where the diagram operates.
These three phenomena that I have identified , v trh cybernetic
or complexity models can all be grouped under a larger rubric or
continuum that Henri Bergson referred to as that of "duration:'
Cybernetics is the science of the materialism - or the materialization -
of time.There is a lot of discussion today around the problem ofvirtual-
ity, and not only in the trivial sense in which one talks about objects in
synthetic sensory environments. In Bergsonian and Deleuzian ontol-
ogy virtuality plays an Important role in explaining the problem of
3
M()MlJNTARY CDNFlJSItJN,
SeNSe THAT THe A.lJ7H()R
HAS '-"ST CtJNT1ltJL. THe
C~CTSRS RUN A.MtJK.
CHA.tJS REIGNS.
THe ReAPSR IS SMI'CWS"
 hylomorphic
appearance in the world itself and the forces that manifest throu gh
such appearance. According to this ontology (developed primarily in
Deleuze's Difference and Rtpetition). a critical distinction is maintained
between [WQ models of morphogenesis. two axes or models of
appearance. On the one hand, there is the Posstble-ekeal axis and, on
the other. the axis of the Virtual-e-Acrual. of course to speak of a
Bergsonian-Deleuzian on to logy in th e first place is to presuppose a set
of common principles in the two systems. I will suggest just two he re:
the idea that Being is the expression of a fundamental mobility and,
second. that there are [\\"0 types of difference - those that appear in
space and those that appear in time - but that only the type that
appears in time is reel.
What exis ts around us is actua l. But acco rding to wha t template
or diagram does this expressed wo rld come? Acco rding to the Pos-
sible....Real (hylomo rphic) model. everything real woul d be the
expression of a Possible that preceded it . which was iden tical to it. and
which was fully pre-g iven. Reality according to this model is a mere
selection of images that has been prepared in advance. This is the type
of pseudo- or mechanistic diagrarnmatism that is still prevalent today
but which one wishes [ 0 avoid. An intervening prindple - that of
selection - guarantees that not every possible version of reality will
appe ar, but rather only one; while ano ther process - limitation -
assures that the process of realization/expression will take place in
successive stages rather than all at once. This latter principle (limi ta-
tion) might appear to constitute a time pnnople. though in fact it does
so only in the most mechanical. external. and abstract sense: reality
would be nothing but a picture of possibiliry repeated (this is the bad
repetition , the pseudo-diagram). and the world of possibility would
be nothing more than an un changin g storeho use of images existing
from time immemorial.The world here is always already formed and
given in advance, a dead mechanical object. Bergson believed this to be
the fundamental fallacy of Western metaphysics: the idea that there
existsa "realm ofpossibiliry" underlying the world of actuality His so-
called "ontologization" of the virtual belongs to his project of freeing
me diagram and its dynamo of becoming from this metaphysical
basis, indeed, to establishing a neo-materialist basis for time.
Now th e virtual, we are told , is real, even if it is not yet actual.
(Diagrams are real but incorporeal.) Wha t does this mean? It means
that the virtual is related to the actual , DO[ by a transposition - a
becoming real - but by a transformation through integration, organi-
zation, and coo rdination. Let me exp lain .The virtual is real beca use
i t exists in this reality asa free difference, n ot yet combined with o the r
,
\ CAR7()()N CF
RM
J SI>17CR'$ s"LtJGUS: A I>/AtJRAM CF
A CAR7()()N
negentropy
differences and lodged into a salie n t form. Virtual is linked to
actual through a developmental passage from one state to ano rher .
one in which the free d ifference is incarnated or assembled. It
passes from one moment-event in order to emerge later - differ-
ently, uniquely - within another. (Think of a winning lottery ticket
and how useless it would be to copy it.) The actual does nor resem -
ble the virtual (as the real did the possible); its rule is rather one of
diffe rence, innovation , or creat io n. Actua lization is differentiatio n,
because it occurs in time and with tim e. Every moment represents a
successive individuation-differentiation of matter from the state
which preceded it (every moment a unique lottery ticket) . Actual -
izaticn is the free movement , the capture and the materialization of
difference. Reality becomes a flow - an irreducible actualizing
duration that inflects. combines, and separates - that leaves nothing
um ransformed.
Every thing is given, and arrives, in time. Its quali ties, its affects,
and its structure may be apprehended in space , but in adopting this
posture we are already breaking the world into abstractions. In time,
and only in time, do matter and world reveal themselves. In other
words,tiIneis real.
To acknowledge tha t the world is the product of actualization
processes - the exfo liation of diag rams - is to acknowledge that
time, on its own, is bo th produ ctive and concrete . It does not fol-
low [hat thi s set of notio ns necessarily leads to an untenable or
naive vitalism. As Bergson said, "Reality makes or remakes itself,
but it is never something made."This clear rejection of any external
23.61
agency in the unfoldin g of things is unambiguous evidence that
Bergson was m ore of a "neo-" vita list th an a classical , or metaphys-
ical, vitalist of the l vth-cen tury type. In other wo rds , Bergso n was
a thinker of immanent, rath er than tra nscendent causes. Th is means
his system so ug ht to explain reality in the same term s in which
reality is given, without having recourse to "extra" principles that
come, like divine endowments, from outside the real itself. Th us
the ultimate question , from an ontological perspective, would
seem to be, "Why is the un iverse crea tive , rather than not, and why
is it so despite the high cos t of cre ation (negentropy)?" But of
course this question is already neo-vita list before we have even
begun. It is so for the simple reason th at we presuppose tha t the
universe is driven , that it moves , integrates - that it is alive . Indeed,
it is not even necessary to posit aliveness - merely the qualities of
drivenness, movement, and integration, three of the primary
ten et s of form theory in the life sciences.
Jones
I<winter
./
bio-Iogic
will

It has been claimed by one comple xity theorist that "all com-
thought from the cliches of reductio nism (from classical science
plexity moves toward biology :' and this is no trivial assertio n.
and numeric al explana tion). These target macrosc opic, hybrid,
Indeed complexity is the movem ent toward biology (some might
and global phenom ena, and they conceiv e of them as open sys-
say toward emerge nt intellige nce. though forms of intellige nce
tems in continu al metabol ic turmoil and exchang e. They grasp
are around us everywhere. which is why we postulate the concept
materia l phenom ena through their qualitie s (or else they posit
of the diagram as a regulato ry or generati ve mechan ism). It ma rks
statistical and probabi hst lc distr ibutions in orde r to nu me rfcalize
the transitio n where commu nication . control. and pattern forma-
them). because tha t is pr imarily what they are: organiz ations of
tion - in a single phrase. relation ships of informa tion - take over
effects, not quantiti es. The real world is always a world of effects
in an organiz ed substrate from relation ships of energy. Historic
ally. (events) , not quantiti es. though clear ly some of our na rr owest
this movem ent - the emerge nce of what I like to refer to as a "bio-
thi nkers have forgo tten that th is is the case. These develop ments
logic" - began with the 19th century 's science of heat (thermo dy-
may well be rerurnin g us to some sort of archaic or anti-rati onalist
namics) as the study of Inelucta ble transitio ns (cold to hot. order
point of view but I do not believe tha t this is necessarily a bad
to disorde r. differen ce to hom ogeneity) and the theory of
evolu- develop ment; at wo rst it presen ts a new set of dan gers and
tion (the homoge nous and simple to the differen tiated and the pi tfalls
to thought . and at best. new possibil ities for thought and life.
complex) .The life sciences could not fully emerge on an indepen dent
Qualitie s are very dense, embedd ed, and complex ent ities. They
basis until a theo retical-mathematical basis could be provided for
once so overpow ered percept ion and the im aginatio n that the
them. Physics itself had to become an "inform ation" science before
mind was continu ally beaten back into supersti tious postures . The
biology could emerge gradually to supplant it. (This history goes
modern . rat ionalizi ng mind thus set out to organiz e the wo rld so
from Boltzma nn's statistical theory of gases to th e postwar era's
that it could become apprehe nsible to , an d manipu lable by. ratio-
elaborat ions by Norbert weiner, Claude Shanno n, Alan Tur in g, and
nal operatio ns.Today those operatio ns have begun to approac h the
John von Neuman n.) This view of history makes it very difficult to
point of radically diminis hing returns. Our lives and our world
accept today's commo n view that sees "inform atics" as a new or
have been desiccat ed by numbers and so the mysteri es of the qual-
indepen dent develop ment in the history of ideas and aesthetics, as
itative world are necessarily beginni ng to recaptu re attentio n.The
a putative "third stage" following and supplan ting the physics
differen ce is that today we have a scaffold of mental technol ogies
23.62 model and the biology mo del. Wha t I call the bie-loglc is the infor-
mational paradig m par excellence. To speak. about "invisible" archi-
wi th which to invest igate the qualitat ive wo rld in a re latively sys-
tematic manner . Though the re is little danger of falling back into
tecrures and informa tional networks, to invoke" dematertalization"
the old types of religion and supersti tion. we will undoub tedly
processes in their support is to misunde rstand the problem . It is to
begin to tolerate in serious discour se a great deal mo re in the way
mistake the incorpo real for the immaterial and to mistake the vir tual
of ideas and models and worldvi ews as we beg in to ween our-
for the phantom real.
selves from the centurie s-long tyrrany of merely reprodu cible
,.
"' Informa tional architec tures have been at the heart ofAmer ican
facts. This is no doubt why the diagram issue is becomi ng preemi-
Z
." aesthetics since the 1960s - Roben Smithso n is one importa nt
nent today: it represen ts a fresh approac h to knowle dge, the idea
" example - but the advent of electron ic gadgetr y and the emer-
"'"
that geomet ry has a truth that cannot always be reduced to alge-
gence of an overdev eloped commu nica tions infrastr ucture have
braic exp ression. Forces exist. and can be explain ed, even if they
"
"...
z
not changed the fun dament al problem one iota. Ou r p rob lem
today remains one of freeing ourse lves from the impove rishmen ts
cannot be rigorously predicted. The classical predict ion criterio n
of truth hid this fact. and much of reality. from our purview.
'"
'"
of mechan ism - and indeed of the many fashiona ble " neo-me ch-
Designers were crippled by th is excl usion, and were left either to
anisms" - wherev er they emerge , throug h the actualization or
tinke r in th e san dbox o f "styles" or else in the r arified and bodi-
,. incarnation of "free" or invisible diffe rence, that is, of virtuality.
less realm of hyperra uonalist abstractions. Both of these represen t
z We can do this only through the relentle ss inventio n of techniq ues
sad academicisms, and the movem ent today toward the world of
'" whose task is to ma terialize the incor poreal by embedd ing every-
"
-< thing in the flow of time.
th e real does no t constitu te an an ti-intell ectualism. Rath er. it is a
revival of archaic materialist thought .
" In time everyth ing is related, and it is to this multipli city of
..,."'" relation s and their shifting an d mobile nat ure, and to their pec u-
liar, and incomplete ly theorized , unfoldi ng within the imper-
The questio n arises as to whethe r the diagram is scientific and
exp lana to ry or literary and illocutio nary (provoking acts not
based on verifiable truth function s). One would hope that no sin-
"'
"'"
turbable unity of a medium (time, duration ) to which the study gle
o r definitive answer will ever be furnishe d. Clearly both func-
of comple xity - or, as Bergson called it, the science of intuitio n -
tions are necess ary, for each is necessary to protect us from the
responds. I believe that archi tecture plays a privileg ed ro le here - excesses o f the other. and only the joint action of both togethe r, in
or it least that it could and ought to play such a role - in bringin g
turn and in oscillati on. can assure us the mobilit y of thought and
these processes of organiz ation, integrat ion, and coordin ation to
action to sus tain our ow n po litical apparatu s in the face of a very
the foregro und not only of p ublic an d cultural appearance, but to
fluid and labil e enemy. The d iagram gives us the power to program
the more subtle arena of experie nce itself. to the place where the historic
al becomi ng. as well as to hack the program s currentl y in
tim e of things and the time of the body are o ne , to the space of place.
Diagram s must be conceiv ed as songs as well as hammer s.
i?tuition . Throug h the materia lizatio n of actualization. archi tecture Tru
th after all. is a function of will, not facts.
has the capacity to free the imagina tion from three-di mension al
experien ce, to free it from the comemp orary curse of so-ca lled
"invisible processes" and hi dden diagram s and to show us that
processes and events . the ones that give form to our world and our
lives. have shapes of their own.
In many mainstr eam areas of research today, new concept s and
(This essay is based on an interview conducted for OASE magazin e.
too ls are emergin g whose purpose is specifically to emancip ate
Holland. 1997. byWouter Dean and Udo Garritzmann.)

I<winter