Sep '06 - Dec '09
Today we started Buildings Texts and Contexts listening to a 1966 broadcast from Radio Caroline.
The subject: Architecture as Megastructure
The reason for the radio broadcast: looking at the role that pirated radios had in making the new “electronic environment” theorized by Marshall McLuhan apparent. The ships and offshore artillery forts were outside of English jurisdiction, but within reach to be able to be listened to in major cities. An early example of media completely becoming its own thing with its own identity, rules, and spaces. The media becomes more important than the architecture, making Archigram's idea of architecture as simply the hardware that allows for (constant ?) changes of media. I wasn't aware of these radio stations and wanted to share.
One question: what is our relationship with our media and hardware today? Has it changed?
http://www.archigram.net/
Offshore Radio in England
Radio Caroline
Artillery Forts
Walking City
Plug-In City
10 Comments
Man, another cool post.
In the early 1940's, Sir Henry Tizard was one of a handful of English scientists who ran over to MIT (a group that included luminaries like Alan Turing as well as the inventors of the code-brekaing "BOMBE" and the Colossus Computer) to meet with members of the Office of Scientific Research and Development, the U.S. Government's "Nerd Trust" that developed advanced weapons systems for the United States Army and Navy. The "Tizard Mission," was of vital importance because this was one of the first technology interchanges between the United States and Britain in times of war. This exchange led to the development of advanced radar/sonar technologies as well as the OBOE/GEE programme, a radio-beacon navigation and targeting system that would "guide" planes to their targets in Germany. It was called "OBOE" because once the pilot was in range of the target, they would hear a faint, reedy sounding signal in their headsets, indeed reminiscent of an oboe.
Thus, an example of a system of aural communication that plays according to its own rules. This is very reminiscent of Friedrich Kittler's writings, who views artistic output as borne from "Discourse Networks," i.e. technologically-mediated systems that outgrow the potential of their human inventors. He cites Friedrich Nietzsche's first dabblings with typewriters as the first instance of this ... in other words, the act of using a technology forever changes the media, and thus the technology "writes" its own history (in German, "Discourse Network" is translated as [i]Aufschreibe Systeme;/i], literally, a system that writes itself). Kittler also famously declared that "There is no software" -- in other words, the last authorial act was the coding of microprocessor software ... the idea is that everything else since then is much more about the computer software than the author.
Weird stuff, but wholly compelling.
what if all the cities moved to the country???
vado - cities can commute too, ya know.
"Every writer creates his own precursors."
-Jorge Luis Borges
what if the country moved into the city?
would we have wolves chasing after fashionistas? CEOs stepping in cow patties? or would everything get sanitized?
gingham, baskets, and cupcake candles at the four seasons.
One word; cumbernauld.
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