Monthly Archives: December 2012
Few months ago, Joanne Pouzenc from CollageLab proposed that we would have an epistolary conversation in the frame of the CollageLab’s Points of view series which was opened by our good friend Daniel Fernandez Pascual. This conversation is still going on but while waiting for the publication of new articles here, I would like to propose what has been written so far as I suppose that it is a useful definition of… Read More
I am not really sure if I would be able to write any new article until the end of the year, so in the meantime, here is a very short aside post to discover a particular object : the Gömböc. Invented by Gábor Domokos and Péter Várkonyi in 2006, this shape is inspired by some species of turtle which developed a type of carapace that allow them to swing back to their… Read More
Inspired by a recent conversation I had with my good friend Nora (see her text for the funambulist) about the recent UN vote in favor of the Palestinian Authority, I came to think about the notions of idealism and imagination. In substance, Nora was explaining that the idealist she is could not possibly be satisfied by such decision. As we all know, this vote crystallizes the post-1967 borders (which is a tremendous… Read More
Apparatus and system for augmented detainee restraint. Patent assigned to Scottsdale Inventions LLC (2012) The following article is a good opportunity for me to open a new category in the blog’s archive, one that I voluntarily keep very focused to differentiate itself from broader one (like ‘weaponized architecture‘ for example). This new category is entitled ‘cruel design‘ and gathers only pieces of industrial design or architecture whose primarily function is to subjectivize… Read More
This post is the second part of an article about the first chapter of Gilbert Simondon‘s L’individu et sa genèse physico-biologique (1964), entitled Form and Matter. After exploring the text itself and its critique of the Aristotelian hylomorphic (form/matter) scheme to think about objects, I would like to introduce a second architectural interpretation of Simondon’s essay. Indeed, not only the hylomorphic paradigm fails to describe materially the energy that operates within the… Read More
French philosopher Gilbert Simondon (1924-1989) is very likely to join Spinoza, Nietzsche, Deleuze and Foucault in the list of philosophers that influence the writings on this blog. It has been a while now that I would like to expand my conclusion for the essay Abject Matter: The Barricade and the Tunnel that I already published here. This little piece of text was an interpretation of Simondon’s first chapter of L’individu et sa… Read More
‘It must be the case that I have some perception of the movement of each wave on the shore if I am to be able to apperceive that which results from the movements of all the waves put together, namely the mighty roar which we hear by the sea.’ Leibniz, Gottfried, Correspondence with Arnauld, 1686. The world exists only in its representatives as long as they are included in each monad. It… Read More
One of the last issues of the excellent Brooklyn-based magazine Cabinet was dedicated to the notion of game. The dossier itself, is very interesting, but I was particularly curious about the first text of the series, entitled Reimagining Recreation and written by James Trainor. This essay traces the history of the various policies that created playgrounds in New York Cities since the 1950’s. Following the era that saw Robert Moses’ 26 years… Read More
The Funambulist 