Research into Lou Gehrig's disease has demonstrated that, at least in mice carrying the genetic mutation, it can spatially manifest itself as “very subtle” but detectable behavioral patterns before the onset of symptoms.
Quoting at length a press release from the American Psychological Association:
Researchers led by Neri Kafkafi, PhD, of the Maryland Psychiatric Research Center, part of the University of Maryland's School of Medicine, mathematically analyzed about 50,000 predetermined movement patterns that resulted when rats roamed freely, one by one, in a small arena. The software created an abstract space defined by combinations of behavior such as speed, acceleration and direction of movement. Mining the resulting behavioral data enabled researchers to test many more facets of behavior than they could analyze manually.
After videotaping the movement of two groups of rats – one type with the mutation that results in an ALS-type syndrome, the other type normal controls -- the scientists used the computer to "pan" for differences between groups and identified a unique motor pattern in mutant rats two months before disease onset (which would equate to roughly five to 10 years in humans).
Of the multitude of behavior patterns analyzed, the predefined "heavily braking while slightly turning away from the wall" showed a group difference. In two independent data sets, rats with the ALS-type mutation were significantly less likely than controls to brake and turn from the arena wall as they approached.
The benefit of this study is that “by being able to predict more accurately which carriers may express the disease before they experience symptoms (the "premorbid" state), researchers could test medicines that might prevent symptoms from emerging.”
One wonders here this sort of research, somewhere down the line, will result in public places getting littered with CCTV cameras data mining for the tell-tale signs of genetic diseases affecting motor functions. Similarly when traffic cameras take a photo of your license plate when you go over the speed limit and a couple of days later, you get your ticket in the mail, these outdoor medical scanners take a photo of your face, match it up to a database at the CDC and a couple of days later, you get a diagnosis in the mail.
There will be a specially outfitted plaza where those without health insurance or those with no more sick days can get free check-ups. Hypochondriacs will come in droves and stay there, like skateboarders to a Brutalist plaza.
If there is a predictive behavioral pattern to a pedophile's movements within the spatial confines of playgrounds and park (that is, if children still go outdoors anymore) as well as the streets bordering schools, you get a court order to receive some psychiatric counseling.
Do terrorists have a genetic mutation that not only affect their cognitive reasoning but also their motor functions, the pattern array of which is so perceptibly different with that of non-terrorists that you can “spot” them?
Performance for a matrix of 64 gas balloons, lights, and sound
A room is filled with deep, evolving noises from a four-channel sound system. An eight-by-eight array of white, self-illuminated spheres floats in space like the atoms of a complex molecule.
Through variable positioning and illumination of each atom, a dynamic display sculpture comes into being, composed of physical objects, patterns of light, and synchronous rhythmic and textural sonic events. Change, sound, and movement converge into a larger form.
The height of the helium balloons is adjusted with a computer-controlled cable, whilst the internal illumination is accomplished using dimmable super-bright LEDs, creating a pixel in a warped 8×8 spatial matrix. The sonic events, the patterns of light, and the movement of the balloons are manipulated in real time as a 45-60 minute-long performance.
balloon motion control: Christopher Bauder
Music, sound design & LED patterns: Robert Henke
Balloons software and hardware engineered by C.Bauder, Till Beckmann and Holger Pecht (whitevoid.com)
Pas si extraordinaire, il y a le syndrome "ça clignote" pas mal et il s'agit plutôt d'un display que d'une architecture. Cela rapelle aussi évidemment les projets "ballons" réalisés par Usman Haque ("Burble", voir deuxième lien), mais donne éventuellement quelques idées pour des pistes avec structures gonflées, variables.
Alex Trevi sent me a link last week – which he later posted – about the so-called ANTS program. ANTS is an "autonomous nano technology swarm" developed by NASA for possible use in the "lunar base infrastructure" of tomorrow. ANTS consist of "highly reconfigurable networks of struts, acting as 3D mesh or 2D fabric to perform a range of functions on demand."
The ANTS approach harnesses the effective skeletal/muscular system of the frame itself to enable amoeboid movement, effectively ‘flowing’ between morphological forms. ANTS structures would thus be capable of forming an entire mobile modular infrastructure adapted to its environment.
However, I was especially excited to see that the ANTS system has been hypothesized as "an architectural pathway to artificial life."
Might the artificial biology of tomorrow be buildings that have come to life?
I'm reminded here of Philip Beesley's Implant Matrix, or Theo Jansen's Strandbeesten, machine-architectures that cross over into animation and back, convincingly evincing signs of life.
But NASA's recent research into ANTS suggests that these units could actually be used to build whole bases and instant cities under extreme – and literally lunar – living conditions, where the village itself would not be just a substrate or infrastructure but a kind of artificially intelligent labyrinth of living architecture that coils round itself in a cascade of walls and air locks. All under the constant radiative glare of the sun.
These "autonomous remote systems," as NASA refers to them, are already coming into existence, of course; one need only look as far as the skies of the Middle East, for instance, which now buzz with unmanned aerial drones, or at the deep desert labs of the U.S. Air Force, where shape-shifting airplanes are taking (and re-taking) shape.
But is there a drone architecture?
Unmanned buildings – server farms, parking garages, airport terminals, and offshore cargo-processing warehouses (or RoboVault, say) – that, given mobility, could approach the condition of biology?
And is this what the haunted house genre has always been about: a fear of architecture that has come to life?
[Image: Ron Herron's Walking City, first proposed in Archigram 4 (1964)].
It's NASA meets Archigram meets Manuel de Landa meets Theo Jansen – a walking city gone off-world, communicating via secure satellite to earthbound observers back home.
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