STRELKA INSTITUTE FOR MEDIA, ARCHITECTURE AND DESIGN

THE NEW NORMAL

2019

strelka.com

About Strelka About The New NormalThemes 2016–2019Themes 2019ResearchersResearchers 2019ProjectsProjects 2019Current / ЭфирMera / МераOf Earth and Sky / О Земле и НебеPodkop / ПодкопPresense/ ПредчувствиеSybl / СиблVault / ВольтAcknowledgementsThe New Normal Essay SeriesEducation at Strelka 2020

2610121418202628303234363840424650

Table of contents

2–3

Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design was founded in Moscow in 2009 with a mission to change physical and cultural landscapes of Russian cities. Strelka offers a creative, interdisciplinary space for architects, intellectuals, designers and other professionals to explore various subjects — from the preservation of the past and demographic shifts in cities to the future of urbanism and virtual space.

ABOUT STRELKA

4–5

STRELKA INSTITUTE ENCOMPASSES: — 5-month tuition-free postgraduate

programme — ‘Strelka Summer’ public programme with

a series of free thematic lectures, discus-sions, workshops and film screenings

— Strelka Regional programme — A blended learning programme for

professional architects & urbanists Архитекторы.рф

— Strelka Press publishing — Strelka Mag media

The Institute promotes positive changes and creates new ideas through its educational activities. Strelka provides new learning oppor-tunities, while the сity remains at the centre of the Institute’s research.

We believe that when we generate the right knowledge — we contribute to a better under-standing of urban design practices and help young specialists to perform better in a new and complex environment.

Strelka is an educational centre that is open to the world. What happens here spills out into so-cial exchange. The output of the Institute is multi-dimensional. It includes graduates and their proj-ects and design practices. It involves a growing network of creativity. We want to distribute and broadcast our knowledge and build a strong media voice, which will help not only professionals but also the general public in forming new habits and interests.

About Strelka

Stre

lka

Inst

itu

te’s

arc

hive

6–7

The New Normal at Strelka is a three-year initiative (2016– 2019), a speculative urbanism think-tank and a plat-form for the invention and articulation of a new discourse and new models. Each year, The New Normal accepts 30 researchers from all over the world from a wide range of back-grounds for a 5-month intensive programme to develop original speculative interventions and platforms.

THE NEWNORMAL

thenewnormal.strelka.com

8–9

The programme employs tools and approaches from a wide variety of disciplines and mixes seminar, studio and technical workshops in an al-ternating sequence of modules that closely link conceptualization and prototyping, one folding into the other.

The New Normal programme outcomes take on several forms, oscillating between tra-ditional urban design outputs to the production of software, cinema, strategy, and everything in between. All the final content and research is also developed for external public presentation and broadcasting in various formats for various audiences: online and offline, physical and virtual, fact and fiction. In addition, a parallel programme outcome is the design of new kinds of urban design practices itself, which are reflected by the diversity of perspectives, interests and exper-tise gained by the graduates during the 5 months of the programme.

PROGRAMME KEY FACTS:— postgraduate— multidisciplinary— tuition-free (+stipend)— 5-months— In English

The New Normal research agenda at Strelka is set for three years. Each year’s sequence results in an annual body of urban design projects that, in turn, form part of the three-year research cycle of distributed, collaborative research between the faculty and researchers.

The New Normal

Stre

lka

Inst

itu

te’s

arc

hive

10–11

THE NEW NORMAL How must design recognize the complexity of our contemporary urban condition, and how can it intervene within it.

PATTERN RECOGNITION

How Big Data and Cultural Analytics in the Digital Human-ities show us patterns that would have been otherwise invisible.

ALGORITHMIC GOVERNANCE

How dynamics of algorithmic governance shift our perspec-tives on political geography, and how leverage is embedded in computational technologies.

PLATFORM AESTHETICS

How to mix traditional and emerging forms of design and media to reset the terms of the urban discussion.

SPECULATIVE SENSING AND CINEMA

How technologies of synthetic sensing represent an augmenta-tion of urban surfaces with sen-sory intelligence, and new forms of storytelling and discovery.

AI AT URBAN SCALEHow modern urban programs that have historically been drawn by the cycles of residence now open to re-imagination.

CONTINENTAL ROTATIONS

How the Belt and Road proposal and the fabric that will grow around it presents opportunities to estab-lish new urban design norms.

ALPHAVILLESHow the urbanism of artificial to-talities acts as living laboratories where alternative systems can be tested and where unusual niches can appear and prosper.

SPECULATIVE MEGASTRUCTURES

How we cannot enact another ur-banism before we imagine it, and how science-fiction often antici-pates things before they arrive.

INVERSE UNCANNY VALLEYS

How the “inverse uncanny valley” (seeing ourselves from an outside alien perspective) has an impact at individual, group, urban and geopolitical scales.

HUMAN EXCLUSION ZONES (HEZ)

How bringing automated factory logics into the city at various scales means learning to live with (if not in) Human Exclusion Zones.

EMERGENT ECONOMICS

How emergent forms of urban economics and technologies such as blockchains can sense, index and calculate value at higher reso-lution and with greater equity.

THE NEW NORMAL RESEARCH THEMES

2016–2019

12–13

Benjamin H. Bratton, Strelka Institute Education Programme Director:

Algorithmic Governance research theme looks at how politics and technology are interwoven as means to remake the world by design. In an age of planetary-scale computation, the dynamics of algorithmic governance shift our perspec-tives on political geography, sovereignty, citizenship, regimes of rights, and how leverage is embedded in computational technologies. This research theme will look at ways that al-gorithmic governance — its past, present, and future — is taken as a core design program.

Inverse Uncanny Valley. The Uncanny Valley refers to a feeling of unease that peo-ple feel when confronted with something human like but not quite human enough. What we call the inverse uncanny valley is instead seeing yourself from an outside alien perspective. We appear strange and not as

we imagine ourselves to be. Such moments of demystifying confrontations are not only psy-chologically instructive, they are crucial politically. This research theme looks at such uncanny valleys at individual, group, urban and geopolitical scales. The obvious examples of hu-manoid robotics, deep fakes, camouflage, chatbots, machine vision and so on are of central concern, but so are bigger stakes of a post-anthropocenic design.

Human Exclusion Zones (HEZ) theme will explore one peculiar implication of pro-grammatic posthumanism: not the further amalgamation of human and non-human but their programmatic separation. Today, automation’s most com-fortable environment is within the bubble of the factory, where humans and robots are kept safe from one another. Automa-tion at urban scale may mean opening the factory doors and generalizing its environmental motifs more widely. Bringing automated factory logics into the city means learning to live with (if not in) Human Exclu-sion Zones (HEZ). The differ-entiation between the urban core as a front-stage zone for human residence and entertain-ment versus “rural” peripheral back-stage zones for automated agriculture, manufacturing, logistics, and energy harvesting is drawn more distinctly.

Stre

lka

Inst

itu

te’s

arc

hive

RESEARCH THEMES

2019

14–15

The programme convenes young pro-fessionals from Russia and abroad from a wide range of backgrounds — architects, programmers, interaction designers, game designers, artists, philosophers, filmmakers, novelists, economists, free-range computer scientists and others.

RUSSIA

ASIA

OCEANIA

NORTH AMERICA

SOUTH AMERICA

PROFESSIONAL FIELDSGEOGRAPHY

Russia 38

USA 7

Germany 4

Ukraine 4

UK 3

Australia 2

Brazil 2

China 2

Croatia 2

France 2

Greece 2

Hong Kong 2

Sweden 2

Argentina 1

Belarus 1

Bulgaria 1

Canada 1

Chile 1

Finland 1

Indonesia 1

Italy 1

Jordan 1

Mexico 1

Malaysia 1

Architects 31

Artists 13

Designers 10

Software Developers 8

Urban Planners 4

Strategists 4

Researchers 4

Filmmakers 3

Philosophers 2

Curators 2

Journalists 2

Writers 2

Project Managers 2

Photographer 1

Analyst 1

Lawyer 1

New Zealand 1

Pakistan 1

Slovakia 1

Spain 1

Switzerland 1

Thailand 1

Uzbekistan 1

The New Normal Researchers 2016-2019

9

4

EUROPE26

38

10

3

Nabi Agzamov architect & urban designer UZ

Mary Anaskina designer & art director RU

Sofia Pia Belenky architect & researcher US/DE

Antonia Burchard-Levine urban planner & consultant CL/CA/ES

Olga Cherniakova architect RU

Grigory Chernomordik computer vision engineer RU

Ricardo Saavedra designer & artist BR

Mariia Fedorova architect RU

Alexander Geysman engineer RU

Svetlana Gorlatova curator RU

Eli Joteva artist BG/US

Olesia Kovalenko architect & project manager UA

Anna-Luise Lorenz designer DE

Nashin Mahtani architect & designer ID

Provides Ng architect HK

Gle

b L

eon

ov

The New Normal Researchers 2019

Artem Nikitin architect RU

George Papamattheakis architect & geographer GR

Gleb Papyshev researcher & consultant RU

Alyona Shapovalova artist RU

Valdis Silins foresight strategist CA

Igor Sladoljev architect & urban planner HR

Don Toromanoff architect & researcher SE/CA

Kseniia Trofimova architect RU

Natasha Tyshkevich philosopher RU

Evgenia Vanyukova lawyer & project manager RU

Mark Wilcox strategist & project manager NZ

Tony Yanick artist, programmer & philosopher US

Alexey Yansitov artist & 3D-animator RU

Hira Zuberi architect & teacher PK

20–21

During the first 2 years of the programme, The New Normal projects have taken on several forms and outcomes, oscillating between tra-ditional urban design outputs to the produc-tion of software, cinema, strategy, and everything in between. All the final content and research was also developed for external public presen-tation and broadcast in various formats for various audiences.

RESEARCH PROJECTS 2016–2018

22–23

PH

ISh

ift

AIR KISS air-kiss.comAir Kiss is a film speculating on a future scenario where AI embedded in material and am-bient computation have become res ponsible for an all-encompas-sing predictive governance.

COMMON TASK commontask.ruCommon Task is an alternative Russian history and ideology drawing lines between cosmism and the quantified self move-ment. DOMA doma.cityDOMA is a non-profit platform of networked home ownership that turns its users into owners of their cities.

PATTERNIST pattern.istPatternist is an augmented-re-ality multiplayer location-based game facilitating alternative social and economic networks.

SHIFT unionshift.comShift re-thinks the role of the truckers unions and engages with stages of automation of the trucking industry in Russia.

PHI phi.isPhi is a token, simulation app and a decentralised autonomous organisation to model, predict and facilitate investment in peer-to-peer energy networks.

SEVER sever.networkSever [SVR] is a territorial development strategy and location-based cryptocurrency whose value increases with the degree of latitude at which it is used.

RESEARCH PROJECTS 2017

Com

mon

Tas

k

Pat

tern

ist

Seve

r

Air

kiss

Dom

a

24–25

ATOLL atoll.cityAtoll is an alternative simula-tion tool, urban design suite and governance platform driven by deep learning.

SIR-AHA sir-aha.netSir-Aha is a speculative narrative proposal for a Yakutian-based AI almanac confronting industri-alised time with the possibility for alternative temporalities.

SEICHE seiche.oneSeiche is a platform enabling the management of techno-legal procedures of exchange between infrastructural systems and the organisations that operate within them.

SIMPTOM simptom.xyzSimptom is a software genera-ting scenario-based simulations of user interactions tested on the site of Moscow City.

ALT’AI altai.idAlt’ai is a simulation and visual meditation inspired by the rich aesthetics and cultural practices of the remote mountain region.

STANDART DEVIATION standard-deviation.euStandard Deviation is an avant-garde insurance agency that helps realise radical futures by redesigning risk in the present.

TUDA SYUDA tudasyuda.comTuda Syuda is a terraforming platform led by a ’conversa-tion’ between two A.I. systems: AI Chef & AI Farmer.

GEOCINEMA geocinema.networkGeocinema is a conceptual proposition to consider plane-tary-scale sensory networks as a vastly distributed cinematic apparatus: a camera.

RESEARCH PROJECTS 2018

Sir-

Aha

Tu

da S

yuda

Stan

dart

Dev

iati

on

Geo

cin

ema

Sim

pto

m

Alt

’ai

Ato

llSe

iche

26–27

The final research & design projects take several forms — from cinema to software to strategy, and range from imaginative speculations to practi-cal propositions for intervention. They draw on design’s capacity for descriptive, predictive and projective models.

Urban design today has many points of en-try and project teams are multidisciplinary — they include architects and designers, writers and phi-losophers, programmers, artists and many others.

Projects appear as new platforms for urban engagement and governance including applica-tions, simulations, protocols; as worlds glimpsed by partial views and emergent totalities; as models for foresight, mapping, and reaction; as systems for sensing, differentiating, and archiving; and as territories for development, addition, subtraction and mobilization.

RESEARCH PROJECTS

2019

28–29

PROJECT DESCRIPTION: The infinite scroll of contemporary live-

streams posits extraordinary moments alongside the infinitely mundane. By supplementing this current streaming condition with algorithmic personalization, Current is a cinematic explora-tion providing new ways of seeing that collapse viewers’ past archives with their predicted futures, planar images with volumetric data, and personal POVs with planetary perspectives. As this gene-rated content enters intimate and social spaces, a new economy of values emerges with the poten-tial to refashion relationships between individuals and environments.

In imagining this infinite stream, Current explores the nonlinear mashup of live steaming culture, algorithmically generated content, deep fakes, personalized narratives and ambient en-vironmental feeds. In this way, the project seeks to configure a new aesthetic vocabulary by entan-gling different scales, temporalities and affective experiences.

CURRENT / ЭФИР

DOMAIN: current.cam

TEAM:Mary AnaskinaEli JotevaProvides NgAlexey Yansitov

30–31

PROJECT DESCRIPTION: The fragmented governance of ecological

bodies is misaligned with the necessity to make cohesive decisions about ecological systems that extend beyond state borders. The combination of spatial incoherencies with the short-term log-ics of current political and economic structures have fueled anthropogenic activities resulting in the overexploitation and progressive shortage of na tural resources. How might we define alter-native spatial and temporal logics of governance more consistently linking the deep time and shifting dynamics of ecological systems with the micro-scales of human temporal perception?

Taking the contested region of the Cas-pian Sea as a case study, Mera is a speculative proposal for the redefinition of territory based on the primary logics of watersheds, the dynamic relations they offer and require, and the cascading flows of resources they shape.

MERA / MEPA

DOMAIN: mera.zone

TEAM:Nabi Agzamov Antonia Burchard-Levine Olga Cherniakova Nashin Mahtani Evgenia Vanyukova

32–33

PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Humans have been terraforming the Earth

since we first set foot on it, yet it is not long ago that we became conscious about this. We there-fore need to understand and map the disparate perspectives and ideals for this Earth, considering its large-scale manipulation as different “nation- building” projects. Given its territorial scale and unique connection to environmental modification history and technologies, Russia is a fitting case to start exploring the conflicting cosmologies and cultures of planetary design.

Of Earth and Sky is an investigative and speculative narrative that reframes the Russian territory as an artificial land in itself; a geode-sign project of continental scale. From a city built on swamps to the weather race, from nature preservation to the control of the ionosphere, the research traces a Russian vernacular of geode-sign in the interplay between the engineering of land and the control of the skies, bouncing bet-ween the national and the planetary. The analysis is reposited in an archival website in the form of non-linear stories that weave science with fiction. By uncovering this trajectory, Of Earth and Sky speculates on the future of the geodesign practice that we need but not yet have.

OF EARTH AND SKY / O ЗЕМЛE И НЕБE

DOMAIN: earth-and- sky.ru

TEAM:Alexander Geysman Olesia Kovalenko Anna-Luise Lorenz George Papamattheakis

34–35

PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Podkop is a speculative, “curiosity-driven”

self-learning AI transforming data into recursive fictions across multiple media platforms.

Its organs are the endlessly sensing infra-structures of smart everything. Its memories are the cultural, historical and literary archives that train its rituals and abilities to interact. Combin-ing the unlikely data inputs it’s constantly sensing like a child putting toys in play, it generates uncan-ny stories in semblance of human form. It seeds these ritualized fictions across the internet, from public forums to private message channels. There the interactions it creates with users help it learn about the world and renew its cycle, continuously adjusting its senses.

The project investigates what it means to de-velop infrastructures of distributed sensing and the broader relations to human and cultural forms that could ensue, beyond the framing of techno-logy as either a subservient tool or a malevolent master.

PODKOP / ПОДКОП

DOMAIN: podkop.io

TEAM:Valdis Silins Natasha Tyshkevich Tony Yanick Hira Zuberi

36–37

PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Presense is a platform for the creation and

tracking of personal synthetic doubles navigating multiple urban environments in parallel. Acting as a “refractive lens” between the user and their host city, the platform creates personalised predictive models of user activity and is trained from user interaction in order to deploy and manage their multiple digital twins in different cities.

By learning from users’ unique urban signa-ture and simulating various alternative timelines of activity in different contexts, Presense grants the user insight into the multiple lives he or she might be living somewhere else — the benefit of an experience one would otherwise have missed. Users can’t control their digital twins other than by adjusting their own patterns of behaviors and observing the change in their content feed — a social multiverse of self.

As an expanded urban design practice, Presense investigates the intersections of urban planning and synthetic modelling, while explor-ing the existential implications of personalised, predictive behavioural models on users confronted with programmed future versions of themselves.

PRESENSE / ПРЕДЧУВСТВИЕ

DOMAIN: presense.city

TEAM:Svetlana Gorlatova Artem Nikitin Gleb Papyshev Igor Sladoljev

38–39

PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Sybl is an open simulation, testing and pro-

gramming environment that enables traditional ly isolated computational simulations to connect with each other.

It links data markets of models, datasets, real-time feeds and multiple visualization engines by introducing a common data format capable of converging results across multiple scales and disciplines. The platform extends popular pro-gramming and simulation engines by introducing a modular ecosystem where simulation models can be combined, increasing their resolution, accuracy and dynamic complexity.

By creating an integrated space for testing digital twins of complex real world systems, the project speculates on simulation as mimicry, where ecosystems of digital twins begin to co-evolve and start reshaping infrastructure and organisations.

SYBL / СИБЛ

DOMAIN: sybl.ru

TEAM: Grigory Chernomordik Mariia Fedorova Ricardo Saavedra Mark Wilcox

40–41

PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Vault is a film reframing the Russian land-

scape as an enclosed volume and expanded econ-omy of energy storage, harvesting and capture. Extending down from the subterranean realm to the surface of its borders, this territory now constitutes the biggest sovereign body on Earth.

While abundant natural resources and inherited ideologies of representations have his-torically favored the extraction of materials and energy from a landscape of outputs, Vault frames the landscape differently to propose an alternative Russian terraforming ambition.

As a string of inputs ranging from lidar to hyperspectral imagery to real-time air, soil and water monitoring reveal the Vault and render it operational, the project speculates on the com-position of this new landscape and how to close its open loop of energy extraction and expenditure.

VAULT / ВОЛЬТ

DOMAIN: vault.land

TEAM:Sofia Pia BelenkyAlyona ShapovalovaKsenia TrofimovaDon Toromanoff

42–43

We would like to express sincere gratitude for the opportunity to implement this collaborative research programme to the Head of the Board of Trustees of the Strelka Institute for Media, Architecture and Design, Alexander Mamut; Director of the Institute, Varvara Melnikova, and the Strelka team; leading consultant in urban solutions, Strelka KB, and its CEO, Denis Leontiev.

ACKNOWL-EDGMENTS

44–45

The New Normal research 2019 would not be made possible without valuable contributions from local and international thinkers, researchers, professors and experts from various fields.

WE WANT TO EXTEND OUR GRATITUDE TO:

Natalie Afonina, engineerBlaise Agüera y Arcas, software architectSasha Alekseeva, gender researcherJulieta Aranda, artistJoseph Augustin, architect and environmental designerHicham Awad, writer and researcherMatthew Battles, writerMerve Bedir, architect and researcherChristine Bjerke, architect and writerNicolay Boyadjiev, architect and design strategistAlfie Bown, political philosopherBenjamin Bratton, design theorist and writerChristopher Burman, designer and artistBen Cerveny, software designerMaria Dada, researcher in design and material cultureOlga Dobrovidova, eco journalistValentin Dyakonov, art historianKeller Easterling, architect, professor and writerPaul Feigelfeld, data and research architectNegin Ghorbani, architectBenedikt Gross, antidisciplinary designerAdam Harvey, artist and technologist Paul Heinicker, designerLydia Kallipoliti, architect and theoristGene Kogan, A.I. programmer and artistArtem Konevskikh, data scientistElena Korotkova, economistVinca Kruk, designer, artist and filmmakerIvan Kuryachiy, architectDaniil Liberman, serial entrepreneur and investorLukas Likavcan, philosopherSuhail Malik, art theoristGeoff Manaugh, writer and editorLev Manovich, digital media theorist

Kenric McDowell, artist and engineerSergey Medvedev, political scientistReza Negarestani, philosopher and writerSimone Niquille, designer and researcherEkaterina Nikitina, researcherMarina Otero, architectJussi Parikka, new media theoristBenjamin Peters, media scholar and authorRobert Pietrusko, professor of landscape architectureSascha Pohflepp, artist and design researcherYanina Prudenko, culturologistDaria Radchenko, anthropologistPatricia Reed, artist and writerCasey Rehm, designer and algorithmic consultantJasmine Roberts, designer and ar/vr producerDenis Romodin, architecture historianSasha Samochina, visualization producerAndrey Sebrant, strategist in marketingFrancesco Sebregondi, architect and researcherArtur Shakhbazyan, architect and traffic plannerStephanie Sherman, producer and curatorVadim Smakhtin, technologistAnastassia Smirnova, writer and researcherNathan Su, designerMaksim Tarasov, drone photographerVarvara Tumasieva, GIS expertEtienne Turpin, author and philosopherDaniel van der Velden, graphic designer and writerMatthew W. Wilson, professor of geographyMolly Wright Steenson, designerKaz Yoneda, architectLiam Young, speculative architect and filmmakerAlexandra Zamyatnina, project managerJoi Zhu, writer

THE NEW NORMAL EDUCATION TEAM:

Benjamin Bratton, programme directorOlga Tenisheva, executive directorNicolay Boyadjiev, programme design tutor Liza Dorrer, programme tutorElena Mozgovaya, programme producerVlad Ilkevich, student coordinator

46–47

The New Normal Essays is a series by Strelka Press published in parallel with the Institute’s programme.

strelka.com/en/press

48–49

NEW NORMAL,BENJAMIN BRATTONPart manifesto and part

syllabus. “It lays out why we would undertake an urban design programme with such a strong emphasis on emerging technologies and speculative philosophy; or conversely, why we would convene a think-tank on emerging technology and speculative philosophy that takes urbanism — Russian urbanism, in particular — as its assignment.”

MEDIUM DESIGN,KELLER EASTERLINGProvocation to invert

some of our habitual approaches to problem solving, aesthetics and politics with regards to spa-tial practice. Rather than favor-ing declarations, right answers, objects or determinations, contemporary designers should learn to detect and manipulate the medium in which they are suspended and in which they change over time. To design medium is to manage the dispo-sition which makes some things possible and some things not.

DIGITAL TARKOVSKY,METAHAVENDigital Tarkovsky essay

by Metahaven is an extended poetic exploration of how our experiences of visual entertain ment and time itself are chan ging in the era of the smartphone and near-constant connection. The essay applies the ‘slow’ cinematic art of An-drei Tarkovsky to our inter-action with the digital, visual reality of screens and interfaces. Digital Tarkovsky is a way of tracing what cinema, story-telling and time mean in our platform-based world.

AI AESTHETICS,LEV MANOVICHIn the essay “A.I.Aesthe-

tics,” Lev Manovich offers a sys-tematic framework to help us think about cultural uses of AI today and in the future. He chal-lenges existing ideas and gives us new concepts for understand-ing media, design, and aesthetics in the AI era.

50–51

Research direction of the next education cycle at Strelka will be announced at the end of August 2019. The new programme will continue to be structured as a multi-year design research ini-tiative with a new group of researchers joining Strelka each year.

We will continue research into topics of crit-ical significance to the future of urban design, as well as the vision of planetary urbanism as terra-forming, the post-anthropocene, everyday geoen-gineering, AI ecologies, eco-governance, compara-tive planetology, and many more.

Application period will run until Novem-ber 2019. For more information visit strelka.com/en/education/apply or contact us at apply@strelka.com to be the first to know when the admission process kicks off.

EDUCATION AT STRELKA 2020