MARCOS NOVAK

LIQUID ARCHITECTURE

TRANS ARCHITECTURE

HYBRID INTELLIGENT ENVIRONMENT

DEMATERIALIZED ARCHITECTURE

CYBERSPACE

IMMERSION

EVERSION

ROBOTICS

CONTENT

MARCOS NOVAK - WHO IS HE?

HIS APPROACHES

EMERGENCE OF VIRTUAL SPACE

CYPERSPACE

TRANS ARCHITECTURE

LIQUID ARCHITECTURE

AS HE SAYS – LIQUID ARCHITECTURE

VARIABLE DATA FORMS

PARACUBE

DATA DRIVEN FORMS

HOW NOVAK’S “LIQUID ARCHITECTURES” ARE GENERATED.

EXAMPLES

WHO IS HE?

• Marcos Novak is an architect, artist, composer, and theorist who employs algorithmic techniques to

design actual, virtual and hybrid intelligent environments. The self-described trans- architect is

seeking to expand the definition of architecture by including electronic space, and originated the

concept of liquid architectures in cyberspace and the study of a dematerialized architecture for the

new, virtual public domain, the immersive virtual worlds.

WRITINGS:

•Liquid Architectures in Cyberspace (1991)

• TransArchitecture: Against the Collapsing

Radius of Fiction

• Transmitting Architecture: The

transPhysical City (1996)

His approach:

we conceive algorithmically (morphogenesis);

we model numerically (rapid prototyping);

we build robotically (new tectonics);

we inhabit interactively (intelligent space);

we telecommunicate instantly (pantopicon);

we are informed immersively (liquid architectures);

we socialise nonlocally (non- local public domain);

we evert virtuality (transarchitectures)."

Transvergence

Transarchitectures

Transmodernity

Liquid architecture

Navigable music

Habitable cinema

Archimusic

Eversion

Allogenesis

Once predicated on qualities such as enclosure, form, and , architectural

space is finally getting rid of its physicality and is now giving way to virtual

spaces, where digital technology emerges in the form of data and

information. Digital media are responsible for creating a new territory

where stability and actuality are tempered by this indescribable reality: a

reality where variations of visual qualities, internal contents, and social

expressions are influencing the creation of new spaces. However, this is

not an imperious assumption. The emergence of new virtual spaces does

not always mean the end of physical space.

EMERGENCE OF VIRTUAL SPACES:

By, "...placing the human within the information space, it is an architectural

problem; but beyond this, cyberspace has an architecture of its own and, furthermore, can contain architecture

“cyberspace is architecture, cyberspace has an architecture, and cyberspace contains architecture"

CYBERSPACE:

But what does it mean literally?

‘Cyber’ connotes automation, artificial control, and computerisation. In the context of artificially

generated imaginable environments,

‘space’, of course, means a multidimensional place, most often used in relation with Electronic spaces

created by computer-based media.

Cyberspace relate to ‘virtual reality (VR)’, ‘data visualisation’, ‘graphic user interfaces (GUIs)’, ‘networks’,

‘multimedia’, ‘hyper-graphics’.

TRANS ARCHITECTURE:

A new domain extended to include intelligent local, remote, and virtual space as a new

continuum; … the techniques for designing in this new continuum involve conceiving

architecture algorithmically, modeling it directly from data via new techniques such as rapid

prototyping, building it robotically, inhabiting it interactively, occupying it telepresently, and

connecting it seamlessly to virtual space, where a parallel conceptual and poetic structure

applies

In short, “transarchitecture” is

The intersection of information, in the form of

algorithms, and the material world, as robotic

prototypes.

It is the intermingling of architecture and

media, the combination of design and

machine/computer.

LIQUID ARCHITECTURE

Cyberspace is liquid. Liquid cyberspace, liquid architecture, liquid cities. Liquid architecture is

more than kinetic architecture, robotic architecture, and architecture of fixed parts and

variable links.

Liquid architecture is an architecture that breathes, pulses, leaps as one form and lands as

another.

Liquid architecture is an architecture whose form is contingent on the interests of the beholder;

It is an architecture that opens to welcome me and closes to defend me;

It is an architecture without doors and hallways, the next room is always where I need it to be

and what I need it to be.

Liquid architecture makes liquid cities, cities that change at the shift of a value, where visitors

with different backgrounds see different landmarks, where neighborhoods vary with ideas held

in common, and evolve as ideas mature or dissolve.

Marcos Novak, Cyberspace: First Steps.

Space is no longer innocent. Under the impact of science and technology, ordinary space has

become just a subset of a composite "newspace" that interweaves local, remote, telepresent,

interactivated, and virtual spacetime into the new spatial continuum that is the focus of emerging

transarchitectures.

Physically, this installation consists of four interrelated parts :

a)a large scale video projection of liquid forms derived from mathematical explorations of virtuality ;

b) a physical model captured from the fluctuating projected virtual forms ;

c) a sensor-created, invisible, interactive sculptural form, and ;

d) a generative, interactive soundscape that weaves the previous three together

AS HE SAYS – LIQUID ARCHITECTURE

•The video projection consists entirely of liquid, animated mathematical forms

derived from the manipulation of mathematical fields.

•Various kinds are shown in rapid succession.

•An interactive, generative musical algorithm drives the video, intercutting among

various sources at a high rate, producing a large number of new variants by

multiplexing the sources in time.

•Each strand of video is thought of as a separate reality, and the rapid intercutting

suggests the coexistence of multiple superimposed realities in the same instance.

This investigation seeked to create architectonic propositions

that are liquid, algorithmic, transmissible and derived

from the geometries of higher dimensionality.

By "liquid", Novak intends a total but rigorous variability driven

by data shifts in cyberspace that can be transformed into

physical world.

By "algorithm" Novak means that the forms are never

manipulated through manual corrections : rather, the

mathematical formula that generate them are adjusted to

produce different results.

By "transmissible" Novak means that his data-forms can be

compressed into algorithmic codes for transmission to

fabrication sites, machines or to virtual environments.

VARIABLE DATA FORMS (1999)

•For this project, a cuboid was defined by six

parametric surfaces, each with its own coordinate

system.

•The parametric equations governing each surface

were arranged so that a variation on a particular

surface would cause reactions or permutations on

adjoining surfaces, effectively creating a topological

cube.

•The parametric cuboid was manipulated to create

two forms : a skeletal frame and a smooth skin.

•Parametrization allowed the smoothness of each

element to be defined and manipulated through

computational formulas

• the frame was derived from the same process,

where the skin was computed at high smoothness and

the skeleton at low smoothness.

PARA CUBE (1997 – 1998)

The skeleton was then mathematically extruded into the

fourth dimension by adding a fourth coordinate to every

three-dimensional point.

Thus, points became lines, lines became polygons,

polygons became cubes and cubes became hypercubes.

The resulting four-dimensional object was rotated about

a plane in four-dimensional space according to the

appropriate matrix transformations.

The transformed object, projected back into three-

dimension space, became a space-frame of variant

dimensions.

The skin was not extruded into the fourth dimension but

instead remapped to create a rippling, non-homogeneous

surface.

PARA CUBE (1997 – 1998)

These images are the result of deriving forms from fields of found

data. As spatial models, the forms explore two concepts : the

delamination of passage from one data set to another and arbitrary

cross-fade (between data sets).

In the examples shown here, an algorithmic function extracted from

linked Web pages as two sets of points in the three dimensional

matrix.

Using spline-based interpolation, two sets of curves were generated.

From further functions, the two sets of intertwined surfaces, or

"lamina", were formed.

A series of crossing links (cross-fades) were then enframed between

the conjoined surface-forms, producing a rich enmeshing of distorded

frames and surface modulations.

DATA-DRIVEN FORMS (1997 -1998)

Composition created by a genetic algorithm. This

image forms the basis of the following

investigation of the spatialization of information

New composition derived from previous one by

processes of superimposition, masking, and

filtering, Information implicit in the original

composition is now visible as color variation.

HOW NOVAK’S “LIQUID ARCHITECTURES” ARE GENERATED

Merging of algorithmic composition with scanned

data, Image processing reveals hidden patterns

implicit in the structures of the component images.

Variation of the image in previous stage produced by

further image processing. Although it is simply a

transformation of the previous image, for the viewer

this image constitutes, in effect, new information.

Three dimensional algorithmic composition, with

the composition shown in image 1 mapped onto

the environment of a cyberspace chamber.

Two algorithmically composed objects in a

cyberspace chamber. Dynamically varying

algorithmically composed textures combining

computed and scanned information are displayed on both objects and environment.

Dynamically varying three-dimenional

composition comprising a liquid architecture.

The number and dind of its component parts vary

according to factors such as position, size, and

proximity to other component parts.

Visualization of a liquid architecture in cyberspace.

Mapping information onto object and

environment, varying it in place, time, and

attribute, focusing attention through filters and

masks, and inhabiting it allows hidden patterns

to become visible, and therefore knowable.

The information content of computed and

digitized data is used to create the perceptual

character of this space, the "place" of

cyberspace.

A MULTIMEDIA CYPERSPACE PROJECT AT BANFF CENTER FOR ARTS IN 1991 the first

example of a new virtual space created through the themes of liquid architecture.

The project was to join inner and outer worlds, moving into and out of virtual space.

“in shell” VIEW OF THE MODEL CLOSE UP “in shell” VIEW OF THE

MODEL “ex shell” VIEW OF THE MODEL

It originally consisted of five elements: a video projection

of forms generated by mathematical algorithms, a

physical model, fixing the fluctuating projected virtual

forms, a sculptural form created by an infrared sensor,

an interactive and generative soundscapes weaving the

three elements, and finally the visitor himself.

The space is constantly reformulated evanescent

environment according to the information exchange

between the elements.The sculptural form that remains

one of this facility symbolizes Marcos Novak phenomenon

eversion, the transition from virtual to reality, that of a

digital architecture with built architecture.

It was conducted through a manufacturing process called

"rapid prototyping" called LOM (Laminated Object

Manufacturing), laser cutting and overlapping layers of

material.

ZEICHENBAU 2000