Next weekend (4.30-5.1.1999), the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School
of Fine Arts will host Digital Translations: Emergent, Operative Potentials
for Architecture. According to the symposium's webpage
[www.gsfa.upenn.edu/digital_translations/00main.html], fourteen speakers
will explore the "translations, mediations, constraints, assumptions, and
modes with which digital media operates in architecture and its discourses."
Being already familiar with texts by many of the invited participants, I
have no doubt the symposium will succeed in delivering a good cross-section
of the current thinking regarding architecture and the digital/virtual
realm. What I find most engaging, however, is where the symposium is being
held, Meyerson Hall.
From 1985-87, I was the Graduate School of Fine Arts' Intergraph CAD system
manager and operator, and in that capacity I was the first architect to
actively engage the "digital translation" of architecture in Meyerson Hall.
From my perspective, the GSFA's Department of Architecture at that time was
not exactly enthusiastic about the coming together of computers and
architecture, and I personally was often seen as some sort of traitor to the
art of architecture. It is now safe to say that many architectural educators
in the mid-1980s, especially those at Meyerson Hall, had absolutely no idea
as to the very significant broad ranging implications computers and computer
aided design were already having on architecture.
In keeping with my position of being well ahead of the pack, I am joining
the Digital Translations symposium as a true virtual/digital participant,
and my virtual participation is indeed an object lesson rendering a real
manifestation of exactly the emergent, operative potentials for architecture
that the other participants will come to discuss.
My virtual/digital participation incorporates a variety of guises:
1. using hypertext [www.quondam.com/1999/6/0527.htm] over the next week, I
will address all the questions raised by the symposium.
2. Quondam - A Virtual Museum of Architecture invites everyone on a virtual
tour of Quondam@5233ArborStreet, featuring a new work-in-progress metabolic
artwork entitled "museum peace" @ www.quondam.com/1999/5/0467.htm.
3. Quondam also specifically invites the real participants of Digital
Translations to visit the real Quondam@5233ArborStreet after making
arrangements via lauf-s@xxxxxxxxxxx. Note: before becoming a virtual museum
of architecture, 5233 Arbor Street was a real house of schizophrenia between
1976 and 1981.
4. As reporter for Quondam's journal not there, I will attend the actual
Digital Translations symposium. I will be the one capturing it all with my
digital camera.
If I had to write about the emergent, operative potentials of the digital
translation of architecture in one sentence, it would have to be: the most
important aspect of the digital translation of architecture is its enabling
factor.
Virtually yours,
Stephen Lauf
Director
Quondam - A Virtual Museum of Architecture
www.quondam.com
of Fine Arts will host Digital Translations: Emergent, Operative Potentials
for Architecture. According to the symposium's webpage
[www.gsfa.upenn.edu/digital_translations/00main.html], fourteen speakers
will explore the "translations, mediations, constraints, assumptions, and
modes with which digital media operates in architecture and its discourses."
Being already familiar with texts by many of the invited participants, I
have no doubt the symposium will succeed in delivering a good cross-section
of the current thinking regarding architecture and the digital/virtual
realm. What I find most engaging, however, is where the symposium is being
held, Meyerson Hall.
From 1985-87, I was the Graduate School of Fine Arts' Intergraph CAD system
manager and operator, and in that capacity I was the first architect to
actively engage the "digital translation" of architecture in Meyerson Hall.
From my perspective, the GSFA's Department of Architecture at that time was
not exactly enthusiastic about the coming together of computers and
architecture, and I personally was often seen as some sort of traitor to the
art of architecture. It is now safe to say that many architectural educators
in the mid-1980s, especially those at Meyerson Hall, had absolutely no idea
as to the very significant broad ranging implications computers and computer
aided design were already having on architecture.
In keeping with my position of being well ahead of the pack, I am joining
the Digital Translations symposium as a true virtual/digital participant,
and my virtual participation is indeed an object lesson rendering a real
manifestation of exactly the emergent, operative potentials for architecture
that the other participants will come to discuss.
My virtual/digital participation incorporates a variety of guises:
1. using hypertext [www.quondam.com/1999/6/0527.htm] over the next week, I
will address all the questions raised by the symposium.
2. Quondam - A Virtual Museum of Architecture invites everyone on a virtual
tour of Quondam@5233ArborStreet, featuring a new work-in-progress metabolic
artwork entitled "museum peace" @ www.quondam.com/1999/5/0467.htm.
3. Quondam also specifically invites the real participants of Digital
Translations to visit the real Quondam@5233ArborStreet after making
arrangements via lauf-s@xxxxxxxxxxx. Note: before becoming a virtual museum
of architecture, 5233 Arbor Street was a real house of schizophrenia between
1976 and 1981.
4. As reporter for Quondam's journal not there, I will attend the actual
Digital Translations symposium. I will be the one capturing it all with my
digital camera.
If I had to write about the emergent, operative potentials of the digital
translation of architecture in one sentence, it would have to be: the most
important aspect of the digital translation of architecture is its enabling
factor.
Virtually yours,
Stephen Lauf
Director
Quondam - A Virtual Museum of Architecture
www.quondam.com