Hipo F / Kinaesthetic Design

María Isabel Jiménez León, Mumbai, Octubre 2010

Virtualities are present in space as frozen durations coexisting with the current instant. They translate into layers of information overlapped into actuality; continuously our physicality is being virtually transported to other locations in other times. Our bodies simultaneously perceive a multiplicity of spaces/durations.

Technologies enhance the perceptual capacities of the human body to previously unexpected levels, generating new conditions blurring the limits between the “actual” and the “virtual”; conditions where Virtualities can not be interpreted “virtual” anymore, but rather as “actual”.

The consequences of these emerging conditions go beyond the understanding of the technology that generates them, raising new issues concerning the evolution of the anthropomorphic relationship with those technologies and space/time.

Prior to analyzing these issues it is important to define space/time from the point of view of human scale, and therefore to initially understand how our physical bodies perceive and experience.

The human body experiences through a combination of two very different set of sensors. The first ones, called Exo-Referencial, operate by defining the position of the body in relation to external references, such as distances to objects, colors, sounds, etc. The second ones are Self-Referencial sensors, also referred to as Proprioception or more commonly “muscle memory”; the capacity of the body to orient itself in space, in relation only to itself, where the muscles register the displacements of body parts in relation to each other. It is this sense that allows our bodies to translate space into motion experience.

Within this framework, “actual” Space/Time must not be understood as prior to kinesis. Space is defined by specific movements within particular locations, which are constantly unfolding while updating it. Motion carves infinite figures arbitrarily in space across time, and therefore our bodies’ spatial experiences are simply the culmination of a multiplicity of instantaneous positions.

Understanding this conceptualization, in order to exist, “virtual” Space/Time needs to be perceived and experienced within the same conditions. However, our sensory perceptions are, by themselves, not enough to perceive the virtualities of space/duration. Technology, projected as a new form of evolution, amplifies human sensory receptors to the extent of allowing the body to interact in virtual spaces. Screens, projections, internet, displays… are treated as interfaces, that dilute the limits between the “actual” and the “virtual”, disrupting traditional territorial conditions while generating new materialities, thus breaking the rules of “conventional design”..

Comentarios 
emg: A posthumanistic virtual_real_ity
Pierre Levy or Paul Virilio deeply dive into the notion of virtual/actual defining a scenario where what is possible is considered as virtual and what is able to be actualized becomes real. Current technology blurs the limit between these categories and breaks the traditional notion of the body. Today humans control their own evolutionary paths merging artificial devices with their bodies through technology in a posthumanistic framework (Moravec, Huxley, Fukuyama, Haraway…).

Kenniff: 
What does it mean for a body to interact in virtual space –and more importantly-, what is its opposite? Technological advancements encourage me to act on virtual objects (transform, translate, erase, etc.), but does this mean that my body itself (that unique assemblage of living tissues and organs) may become the object of virtual acts? And would I want it to be? Is diluting the limits between virtual and actual space/time actually desirable?

MiaWallace: Bio-adaptable

La biomímesis en arquitectura sin duda pasa por el diseño cinegético.
La faceta bioadaptable de los espacios necesita sensores más capaces de percibir las realidades relativas que nuestros propios órganos de percepción para transformar sus condiciones y su propia forma.
Cuantas más “sensibilidades mecánicas” seamos capaces de desarrollar, más lejos (en distancia y en metáfora) llegarán nuestros sentidos.

GarcíaGermán: Kick
As much as Modern Architecture developped a program around the idea of “dissolution between inside and outside”, digital architecture seem obsessed with attaining a peculiar blurring between “actual” and “virtual” and giving it a physical form, something which could be seen as a contradiction in its own terms: diluting those limits could develop into abandoning architecture or at least not bringing the border clash to architectural terrain with all the naivety this aim suggests (at least momentarily...).

más información: http://www.hipo-tesis.eu/numero_hipo_f.html