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February 18 2012
Any Sufficiently Advanced Civilization is Indistinguishable from Nature
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” [1]
In Western cultures, nature is a cosmological, primal ordering force and a terrestrial condition that exists in the absence of human beings. Both meanings are freely implied in everyday conversation. We distinguish ourselves from the natural world by manipulating our environment through technology. In What Technology Wants, Kevin Kelly proposes that technology behaves as a form of meta-nature, which has greater potential for cultural change than the evolutionary powers of the organic world alone.
With the advent of ‘living technologies’ [2], which possess some of the properties of living systems but are not ‘truly’ alive, a new understanding of our relationship to the natural and designed world is imminent. This change in perspective is encapsulated in Koert Van Mensvoort’s term ‘next nature’, which implies thinking ‘ecologically’, rather than ‘mechanically’. The implications of next nature are profound, and will shape our appreciation of humanity and influence the world around us.
The Universe of Things, by the British science fiction writer Gwyneth Jones (2010) [3] takes the idea of an ecological existence to its logical extreme. She examines an alien civilization whose technology is intrinsically alive. Tools are extrusions of the alien’s own biology and extend into their surroundings through a wet, chemical network.
The idea of existing in a vibrant, organic habitat is an increasingly realistic prospect as living technologies are now being designed to counter the ravages of global industrialization. These can even be implemented at a citywide scale. For example, Arup’s Songdo International Business District, in South Korea, is being built on 1,500 acres of land reclaimed from the Yellow Sea. Incorporating rainwater irrigation and a seawater canal, this design suggests that the building industry is aspiring to use living technologies to revitalize urban environments via geoengineering. The Korean artist Do Ho Suh had proposed to build a bridge that connects his homes in Seoul and New York by harnessing natural forces and using synthetic biologies to literally ‘grow’ a trans-Pacific bridge.
The apparent science fictional nature of ecological-scale projects has prompted science fiction author Karl Schroeder to observe that the large-scale harnessing of ecologies might explain our current lack of success in encountering advanced alien civilizations. Schroeder explains the Fermi Paradox – the apparent contradiction between the likelihood that extraterrestrial civilizations exist and the lack of evidence for them – by speculating that we have not yet encountered our cosmic neighbors because they are indistinguishable from their native ecology.
“Any sufficiently advanced civilization is indistinguishable from nature.”
Despite our visions and desires for a more ecologically integrated kind of technology, the scientific paradigm, which underpins technological development, considers the world to be a machine. Ecologist Fern Wickson argues that humans are intertwined in a complex web of biological systems and cannot be included within a definition of nature where “an atom bomb becomes as ‘natural’ as an anthill” and wonders whether there is a better definition of nature [4].
Changing the definition of nature is not the solution to Wikson’s conundrum. The scientific method is actually responsible for this paradox. If the problem of human connectedness to the natural world is to be resolved, then science itself needs to change. Modern science relies on ‘natural laws’ that use mathematical proofs and the metaphor of machines to convey its universal truths. In the 1950s Robert Rosen observed that when physics is used to describe biology, a generalization occurs that distorts reality [5].
Alan Turing noted in his essay on morphogenesis that mathematical abstraction couldn’t capture the richness of the natural world [6]. Life is a complex system that is governed by a variety of unique processes that machines simply do not possess. Life responds to its environment, constantly changes with time and is made up of functional components that enables life the ability to self-regulate [7]. Complexity challenges the epistemological basis on which modern science and industry are grounded.
So what does complex science mean for our relationship with nature? Are we separate from or intrinsically connected to the natural world? In a complex system we are both. Our actions through technology are intrinsically governed by the physical and chemical constraints of the terrestrial environment, yet we also possess agency and a capacity to modify our surroundings. But if we are connected to nature, then is Wikson right that our propensity to innovate through technology becomes a meaningless idea?
Science Fiction author and cultural commentator Bruce Sterling proposes a further play on Clarke’s dictum and wryly observes that “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from its garbage.”
You’ve got to hand it to Sterling – his observational powers are immaculate! Garbage explains how we can be connected to nature – but not in an unlimited way. We subjectively distinguish ourselves from the natural world by ‘editing’ our networks through the process of making garbage. We choose what is important to us by applying cultural, rather than material criteria, which does not lend itself to empirical measurement. Turing had already grasped the importance of personal bias in dealing with complex systems and devised the ‘Imitation Game’ to address the conundrum of intelligence, which evaded an easy empirical solution. This is now more popularly know as the ‘Turing Test’ and is now being used more widely to fathom complex systems and to identify ‘life’ [8].
Suppose then, that scientist observes distant aliens that are so highly advanced that their technology works in concert with the generative natural forces of their planet. Using our current empirical methods of observation, scientists will note the alien landscapes, but they will not be able to discriminate the meaning that is flowing within its organizing networks. Yet the flow and structure of information within the planetary terrain is of vital importance in establishing just exactly what is technology, what is garbage and what is ‘life’. The issue here is how can we ‘prove’ meaning? Currently we do not have the right tools, materials and methods that enable us to ask the ‘why’ questions that Aristotle was so fond of, and which could be most revealing in this context [9].
The development of living technologies and the cultural questions that Next Nature asks are important steps to be taken along the journey towards a more ecological kind of human development. Until complex technologies can be built and deduced from their meaning: Any sufficiently advanced civilization will be indistinguishable from its nature – and also from its garbage.
Image via Zeutch.
[1]Clarke, A.C. (1973) Clarke’s Third Law, quoted from the essay Hazards of Prophecy: The Failure of Imagination in Profiles of the Future, Harper and Row, p. 21.
[2] Bedau, M., (2009). Living Technology Today and Tomorrow, Special Issue: Living Buildings: Plectic Systems Architecture, Technoetic Arts A Journal of Speculative Research, Volume 7, Number 2, Intellect Books, pp.199-206.
[3] Jones, Gwyneth (2010). The Universe of Things. Seattle: Aqueduct Press.
[4] Fern Wickson, “What is nature, if it’s more than just a place without people?”, Nature 456, 29 (6 November 2008) | doi:10.1038/456029b. 2. Editorial, “Handle with care,” Nature 455, 263-264 (18 September 2008) | doi:10.1038/455263b.
[5] Rosen, R. 1996. “On the limits of Scientific knowledge” in /Boundaries and barriers:on the limits to scientific knowledge./ (J. L. Casti and A. Karlqvist, eds.). Reading: Addison-Wesley. pp199-214.
[6] Turing, A.M. (1952). The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis, /Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, /Vol. 237, No. 641. (Aug. 14, 1952), pp. 37-72.
[7] Maturana, H. R. and F. J. Varela. 1980. /Autopoieses and cognition: The realization of the living. /Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
[8] L. Cronin, N. Krasnogor, B.G. Davis, C. Alexander, N. Robertson, J.H.G. Steinke, S.L.M. Schroeder, A.N. Khlobystov, G. Cooper, P.M. Gardner, P. Siepmann, B.J. Whitaker, D. Marsh,. (2006) “The imitation game—a computational chemical approach to recognizing life” Nature Biotech., 2006, 24, 1203-1205.
[9]Rosen, R. 1996. “On the limits of Scientific knowledge” in /Boundaries and barriers:on the limits to scientific knowledge./ (J. L. Casti and A. Karlqvist, eds.). Reading: Addison-Wesley. pp199-214.
December 17 2011
Skyscrapers for Pandora
We’ve previously featured architecture that imitates nature by opening its walls like a flower, or drifting like a cloud. However, maybe this is not imitation enough. The next award-winning example by designer Stanislaw Mlynski shows a building made of the Re-cell ecological wall, which promises to turn a high-rise into an ecosystem. The cells use organic waste as an input, and produce filtered water, grow plants, and reduce C02. Now apartment-dwellers get to experience nature outside their windows. Decide for yourself: Does this project offer a promising future, or does it merely replace nature?
From the architect’s website:
“Imagine a waste bin. Take that bin and fill it with compostable products like grass cuttings, tea bags, & cardboard (just do it). Now attach your new plant-worthy cell to the facade of an ugly building with thousands of other composting bins (don’t forget the plant). You’re all finished! Now watch it grow, reduce CO2, collect rainfall for reuse, and transform your least favourite eyesores into a recycled, green, and overall cool looking structure. Now wasn’t that easy?”
via Yanko Design
December 07 2011
Conquering the Skies
Everywhere we go, we conquer the land and shape it to our preferences. The next place to build might as well be the clouds. Tiago Barros, designer and architect, has decided to move away from our hectic schedules on Earth’s surface and design a cloud where we can carelessly float around.
The Passing Cloud is a series of zeppelin-like spheres with a fence-like structure on top to keep us from falling back to our stressful routines. The only resource needed is the stainless steel and nylon that form the spheres. Practically no power is needed to move the structure but the wind. But once we board Barros’ floating city, where is it headed? Only nature can tell.
October 24 2011
The Pigeon that Shat the Golden Soap
Ever wished you could take a shower with pigeon poop? Artist Tuur van Balen proposes changing pigeons from flying rats to cleaning agents. A speculative, specially engineered bacteria, as harmless to pigeons as Lactobacillus is to humans, could potentially change pigeon excrement into biological soap.
For Pigeon D’Or, van Balen built a coop that clips to a window, which would allow future apartment dwellers to harvest their very own fresh, pigeon-made soap. Another version of the perch extends over a car’s windshield, inviting the birds to come and rain detergent on glass in need of cleaning. Van Balen’s “bespoke urban disinfection” won him an 2011 Ars Electronica Award of Distinction.
Tuur van Balen will be presenting at the Next Nature Power Show on November 5th. Though he won’t be bringing along any sudsy pigeons, he will be teaching the audience how to make their own anti-depressant yogurt.
October 05 2011
German Robots Destroy a Living Room
Click here to view the embedded video.
Artistic duo Robococo, aka Petra Gemeinboeck and Rob Saunders, have embedded a group of autonomous robots in the walls of a gallery. Wielding hammers and creepy electronic eyes, the robots have been methodically breaking apart their confines for the last few months. While the artists say the piece represents “a stealthy invasion of digital surveillance,” it looks more like the ‘bots just can’t believe your taste in wallpaper.
Via Pruned.
August 30 2011
Growing a Crystal Chair
Japanese artist Tokujin Yoshioka does not sculpt his work, but grows it. His Venus chair was created by immersing a plastic mesh substrate into a tank filled with a chemical solution. Gradually crystals precipitate onto the substrate and give structure to the chair. It might not be the most comfortable place to take a seat, but it’s a great example of guided growth. Yoshioka has experimented with various other crystalline structures ranging from Greek sculptures to entire rooms. Maybe a scale replica of the Fortress of Solitude isn’t too far off.
More images after the jump.
Images via Today and Tomorrow, Core 77 and Siong Chin
July 15 2011
Windmill Trees
A new Dutch landscape with windmills up to 120 meters. Designed by NL Architects.
June 16 2011
It’s a plane!
Click here to view the embedded video.
By nature, man is not supposed to fly. But while we’re at it, we may as well turn it into an experience. Charles Champion, Airbus Executive Vice President Engineering, envisions a fusion of dream and technology:
“Our research shows that passengers of 2050 will expect a seamless travel experience while also caring for the environment. The Airbus Concept Cabin is designed with that in mind, and shows that the journey can be as much a voyage of discovery as the destination.”
full article: telegraph.co.uk | related article: Avatar
April 13 2011
Kinetic architecture
Architecture has now come to a stage where the technical possibilities seem limitless. Buildings become more fluent, dynamic and organic. Examples can be found in most buildings of architect Zaha Hadid.
This proposal by designers Kinetura portraits ‘dynamic lines’ quite literal, and imitates flowers that open in the sunlight.
Click here to view the embedded video.
“The Kinetower’s exterior window elements respond to sunlight or user control much in the same way a flower blooms in the morning, transforming it’s hard facade into a softer and almost unrecognizable version of it’s former self. The metamorphosis is made possible by the use of material that is rigid when taut but flexible enough to bend. This is dynamic design at it’s best.”
via Yanko Design
February 06 2011
Turn a Shoebox Apartment into 24 Rooms
Click here to view the embedded video.
What to do when you live in Hong Kong, a city where every square meter counts? You just have to get creative. Empty rooms are a waste of space anyway.
June 24 2010
Self–Repairing Architecture
All buildings today have something in common: They are made using Victorian technologies. This involves blueprints, industrial manufacturing and construction using teams of workers. All this effort results in an inert object, which means there is a one–way transfer of energy from our environment into our homes and cities. This is not sustainable. I believe that the only possible way for us to construct genuinely sustainable homes and cities is by placing them in a constant conversation with their surroundings. In order to do this, we need to find the right language.
By Rachel Armstrong
Metabolic materials are a technology that acts as a chemical interface or language through which artificial structures such as, architecture, can connect with natural systems. I am developing this technology in collaboration with scientists working in the field of synthetic biology and origins of life sciences whose model systems of investigation are materials that belong to a new group of technologies being described as ‘living technology’ (Bedau, 2009), which possess some of the properties of living systems but are not considered ‘alive’.
The characteristic of metabolic materials is that they possess the living property of metabolism, which is a set of chemical interactions that transform one group of substances into another with the absorption or production of energy. This transfer of energy through chemical exchange directly couples the environment to the living technology and embeds it within an ecosystem. Metabolic materials work with the energy flow of matter and systems using a bottom up approach to the construction of architecture.
Metabolic materials need water to chemically participate in an ecological landscape since they have not, developmentally speaking, reached the origins of life transition through which they are able to leave the water and adapt to ‘life’ on the land, bringing with them all the necessary support systems for survival on air. Currently metabolic materials can be thought of as architectural symbionts since they coexist alongside structural materials and offer a medium through which a chemical dialogue between the classical architectural framework and the environment can take place. Metabolic materials may also be thought of as the next generation of architectural skins that are more than just decorative cladding but living integuments designed to give biological like functionality to building exteriors. With further technological development metabolic materials may become autonomous structures and not dependent on existing infrastructures for ‘survival’. These continually recycling, auto-cannibalizing architectures would emerge from derelict building sites being shaped by their environmental context and responsive to changing urban land use.
Metabolic materials are able to carry out their dynamic functions without the need for DNA, which is the information processing system that biology uses. One specific example of agents that are capable of generating functional metabolic materials is protocells. These are dynamic oil in water droplets that are chemically programmable and exhibit some of the properties of living systems.
Protocell oil droplets are able to move around their environment, sense it, modify it and undergo complex behaviours, some of which are architectural. The architectural properties of protocells include the shedding of skins, altering the chemistry of an environment through their ‘waste’ products, the precipitation of solids, population based interactions, light sensitivity and responsiveness to vibration.
Protocells can be ‘programmed’ chemically to achieve particular outcomes. For example, is possible to create a ‘carbonate’ shell from insoluble carbonate crystals that are produced by protocells when they come in contact with dissolved carbon dioxide. Protocells can therefore produce a limestone like substance and artificially extend the development of this material (created by the accretion of the skeletons of tiny marine organisms), which can continue to grow, self-repair and even respond to changes in the environment. We are developing a coating for building exteriors based on this principle.
A practical example of how the first protocell based metabolic materials may inform architectures was developed for a series of collaborations with architect Philip Beesley where active protocells were engineered to be accessible for public display. Sargasso Sea (CITA collaboration for ‘Architecture and Climate Change’ exhibition, Royal Danish Academy, December 2009), Hylozoic Grove, (Quebec, February, 2010) and Hylozoic Field (Mexico City, Festival of Mexico, March-April 2010) featured protocell ‘incubators’ that took the form of flasks of modified protocells reaching several centimetres in diameter. A propositional relationship was created between the soft technology and the synthetic framework of the cybernetic field suggesting that living materials in the incubators would replace the inert scaffolding materials of the main exhibit.
A more intricate chemical landscape was designed to exist within a similar cybernetic framework at the Canadian Pavilion for the Venice Biennale, which is exhibited from September to November 2010 in Venice, Italy. The proposed chemical systems within this installation performed a functional and dynamic relationship both to the cybernetic installation and the human visitors. The metabolic materials ‘breathed in’ carbon dioxide that was naturally dissolved in the water drawn from Venice’s canals and were able to demonstrate a carbon fixation process where the waste gas was recycled it into millimetre scale building blocks. In this way metabolic materials turned products of human activity into bodily components for the construction of Beesley’s giant synthetic ‘life form’.
Metabolic materials will challenge the assumptions that we have about architectural building processes and since they require water for their development they are likely to be useful in areas with repeated flooding or in urban areas that are lower than sea level or, as in the case of Venice, have a complex relationship with the sea. Protocell technology could stop the city of Venice sinking on its soft geological foundations by generating a sustainable, artificial reef under the foundations of Venice and spreading the point load of the city.
Protocell technology technology could stop the city of Venice from sinking on its soft geological foundations by generating a sustainable, artificial reef under its foundations. Computer rendering by Christian Kerrigan.
The speculative technology underpinning the construction of an artificial reef under Venice employs a species of carbon-fixing species of protocell technology that is engineered to be light sensitive. The protocell system would be released into the canals, where it would prefer shady areas to sunlight. Protocells would be guided towards the darkened areas under the foundations of the city rather than depositing their material in the light-filled canals, where they would interact with traditional building materials and turn the foundations of Venice into stone. With monitoring of the technology, the woodpiles would gradually become petrified and at the same time, a limestone-like reef would grow under Venice through the accretion and deposition of minerals.
The issues involved with the reclamation of Venice are complex and this particular protocell based approach addresses just one aspect of a large range of factors that threaten the continued survival of the city. However, other metabolic materials besides the protocell technology may have further potential to address other significant issues in this multifactorial situation, such as the very pressing problem of rising damp in the fabric of Venice’s buildings where functional ‘seaweed wraps’ may be able to extract water from waterlogged traditional building materials and attenuate the ongoing significant damage caused by this process.
Metabolic materials may even be able to regenerate problematic areas within urban environments and contribute to regeneration by revitalising poor areas through carbon fixation methods. Not only would the buildings thrive on the carbon emissions from pollution but would add value to the buildings by recycling carbon into the fabric of the buildings the where metabolic materials would function as synthetic ‘lungs’ on building exteriors. The regenerating buildings would become an integral part of the carbon and construction economies since the buildings would be able to perform useful functions and ‘grow’ as a result of sinking the waste gases into their substance and transforming these formerly toxic and undesirable environments into useful and even desirable locations. In the next ten years additional functionality to these urban metabolic materials will go beyond carbon capture and storage so that these interfaces provide a site through which it is possible to recycle the captured carbon and produce fuels and other materials that have been created by further metabolic processing of the chemical systems. The recycled fuel could then be collected through systems within the ‘breathing organs’ (like air sacs within a lung) and reused within the architecture, consequently making more efficient use of oils and combusted substrates and providing further basis for a thriving economy.
Ongoing developments and engineering of metabolic materials even suggest that they will have a restorative effect on the environmental chemistry where the most effective way to ‘heal’ a stressed ecology may be to construct living buildings. In this case metabolic materials could be thought of as performing the role of environmental pharmaceuticals. These architectural interventions may not intend to provide housing for human inhabitants and merely exist in an environmentally restorative capacity where they would be difficult to distinguish from natural materials and accepted as an inherent part of our biological landscape.
Metabolic materials and living buildings will not only be able clean up the pollutants that we pump into the environment but will have the capacity to serve as a first line of defence against climate change and unpredictable environmental events since their sensors, intelligence and efforts are embedded in real environmental event not ones that are simulated using traditional computers. Moreover, metabolic materials possess a language that is found everywhere on planet earth in the physics and chemistry of matter and this new approach to constructing architecture could benefit developing countries as much as First World nations. In this scenario our architectures would be able to serve as an early warning system for catastrophe in a manner similar to the potential of animals to sense impending disaster. In the advent of adversity, living buildings would be the first to respond to damage or detect human life within collapsed frameworks and in many ways they may come to be regarded as our architectural ‘best friends’.
Written by Dr. Rachel Armstrong for NextNature.net.
References:
Bedau, M. 2009 Living Technology today and tomorrow, Technoetic Arts, Volume Seven, Number Two, Intellect Journals, pp 199-206
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