(n)certainties/LAB M4

LAB M4 (Francois Roche, Stephan Henrich and Qi Su, Kris Mun (fall time)

The Lab M4 (Mind, Machine, Material, Manufacture) will be driven by several type of researches, articulating several fields.

But mainly as a starting point this “LAB” will be driven by the potential of speculative approach, as a strategy to re-initiate innovative protocols which articulate knowledge, tooling and process of production.

We have to articulate computation, mathematics, “machinism” and fabrication but also logic and subjectivities with empirical and expertising methods.

In the pursuit of the research of R&Sie(n) / New-territories, visible on the web-site http://www.new-territories.com/blog/architecturedeshumeurs/ this Lab will conduct a research

which will reintroduce materiality as a sophisticated process in term of shaping and production with specific developments by both “embedded robotic process” and “bio-chemistry”.

We will integrate also strategies of design and procedures to interrogate a non-deterministic approach, confronted to entropic and self-organized potentials:

-What is the equilibrium and disequilibrium from nature growth?

-How could we re-question the notion of Vitalism?

-How could we re-read the nature beyond the mimicry of its appearance but in the emerging of shape optimization from a potential of metamorphosis of permanent re-adaptation according to the mutation of the environment?

-The “machinism” (robotic process) which is able to resolve this “work in process” on the site itself, and able to re-sophisticate the know-how. The design and behavior of this robotic (in swarm intelligences or in swarm-task) has to be included in the research workflow as advanced protocols of frame work (in the pursuit of contour crafting with other methods and technologies), by smoothing, pouring, extruding, secreting, weaving…

The narrative aspect (Mind) is a way to re-articulate knowledge from both: principle of reality and fiction. Young scientists and architects has to integrate their studies in the media culture biotopes, touching and absorbing science as it is; a field of speculations, which have to be subjectively developed and scientifically tested and expertised.

This LAB, animist, vitalist and machinist, will re-introduce the need to confront the unknown in a contradictory manner by means of computational and mathematical assessments. Rigor and Empiricism are the preliminary conditions of emitting new conditions of production, including adaptative and uncertain protocols.

Agenda:

-Fall / Feasibility and Preparation period, Evaluation of Strategy of Knowledge;

The Master Students will participate to this framing period, in term of mapping the USC potentialities (other Lab).

-Spring / Apparatuses of Shaping emergences & Strategies of Production / The spring period (2011) will be the occasion to test  the “Mind, Machine, Material, Manufacture” in a process of reality : the extension of the architecture school, by developping a Lab-Shop in the campus.

First step:

www.mjt.org

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Museum_of_Jurassic_Technology

The first step will be the apply the procedures to a existing situation : The extension-mutation  of the “Museum of Jurassic Technology” as an anomaly, as a organic and mechanic procedures of entropy which is coming from inside, which was embedded at the origin of the museum, intrinsically dependant of its pataphysical (science, rumor, storytelling) contents.

Second step:

The first step will be the apply the procedures to a existing situation : The extension-mutation  of the “School of Architecture” as an anomaly, as a organic and mechanic procedures of entropy  intrinsically dependant of its pataphysical (science, rumor, storytelling) contents, which has to appear as the shelter realized by the machine sheltered by the shell.