Towards a Performative Architecture

Abstract

We identify performance as the primary criterion to revealing a new paradigm for architecture. We do not delimit this definition to the role traditionally played by mechanical and quasi-mechanical technologies in the optimization of environmental control systems and building skins. Nor do we intend to ascribe to performance the interpretation narrowly defined by the emergence of digital gadgetry, primarily optical in methodology, which have nonetheless already radically altered the means by which we negotiate our environment, built and otherwise.

Instead, we seek to engage a notion of performance that encompasses these definitions in a wider arc: one that seeks an understanding of a broad interface between architecture and technology, and one that attempts to solicit optimal collateral advantage from their respective strengths. From architecture, we affirm presence as its quintessential condition, its inalienable concreteness, with the necessarily contingent properties of Benjamin’s ‘tactile appropriation’. And from technology, we recognize the emergence of models of interactivity and intelligence that allow for not only new possibilities for the inhabitation and manipulation of space, but for indications of a new definition of architecture itself.

I

This is our primary question: with the inexorable advance of digital technologies along all fronts of human endeavor, whither architecture?

Epitomized by Hugo’s observation, technology has long been portrayed as adversary, heedlessly overthrowing established cultural mechanisms with new modalities.  Hugo’s archdeacon divines in the printing press not only the loss of doctrinal hegemony by the Church, but by extension, the very stones of that institution itself: From the loss of the didactic monopoly of the inscribed monument and the illustrated cathedral, engendered by the rise of the printed word, comes the displacement of architecture’s (implied) historical centrality towards the margins of cultural discourse.

Hugo’s contemporary, Viollet-le-Duc [2], simultaneously identified in technology its potential role as saviour, believing it to be the means by which architecture might return to its former exalted stature, epitomized for him by the gothic cathedral. Viollet-le-Duc proposed an architecture freed from issues of ‘style’ and based upon a rational foundation of tectonics and materials science, and as such was instrumental in establishing a post-Enlightenment view of architecture, and design in general, that has sought to privilege performance (measurable, empirical) over aesthetics (subjective, idiosyncratic). His ecstatic vision for the emancipating role of technology morphed long ago into the breathless genre of futurology, exemplified in the pages of Popular Mechanics and, more recently, Wired magazine.

The extent and outline of cultural practices are not invariant. Even for what Benjamin characterizes as its uniquely “uninterrupted” presence among the arts throughout history, the practice of building has demonstrated a parallel fluidity in its very definition. Etymologies for the term architecture itself reach no further back than the mid-sixteenth century, and most definitions of it that we would recognize derive from post-Enlightenment discourse: this is very recent indeed. The degree to which technology is instrumental in the mutability of contemporary cultural practices suggests its immanence within a new definition of architecture, while the rate of change wrought by technology suggests the imminence of such a paradigm.

II


ENIAC Programming, U of Pennsylvania

“The fathers of the field had been pretty confusing: John von Neumann speculated about computers and the human brain in analogies sufficiently wild to be worthy of a medieval thinker, and Alan Turing thought about criteria to settle the question of whether machines can think, a question of which we now know that it is about as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim.” [3]

In the roughly half century since the introduction of digital computers, they have spread to near ubiquity in the culture; Moore’s law uber alles. There has been an historical evolution in the input/output devices, moving from dials to punch cards to TFTs.

Virtually all general-use computers (as opposed to those embedded in a car or toaster) employ a Graphical User Interface (GUI{say goo-eee}), pioneered at XEROX PARC and subsequently adopted by the Apple Mac OS using a keyboard, a mouse, a monitor, and an icon based file system.

Within the field of computer graphics, gaming and simulation, interest has grown in breaking free of the constraints of the monitor-mouse-keyboard paradigm. This interest can be invoked as distributed computing, tangible user interface, ubiquitous computing and immersive technologies, among others. All these efforts aim to find ways to extend the computer into the physical setting, through new ideas of input devices and display methods.

One example of this is Tangible User Interface (TUI{say too-eee}): the interface proposed by researchers at the Media Lab at MIT [4] that extends the computer beyond the monitor into other forms that can be touched, such as wearable computers. Techniques such as CavePainting have been explored that use virtual reality techniques to make three-dimensional paintings [5].

These efforts within computer science represent, if not a challenge, certainly a poaching of architecture’s turf. Each specifically appropriates traditional elements of architecture, (walls, surfaces, human behavior in space). When they are finished, will there be anything left of architecture?

III


Wire frame Computer Model

“…the tasks which face the human apparatus of perception at the turning points of history cannot be solved by optical means, that is, by contemplation, alone. They are mastered gradually by habit, under the guidance of tactile appropriation.” [6]

Architectural Users Interface (AUI{say ah-ooh-eee}) is an operational metaphor to an architecture that might exist if we think of the computer not as a means of representation, but as embedded with-in the media of architecture itself. 

The first question that arises from such an investigation is the nature of the media itself. In any interface, the physical and ergometric nature of either the punch card and the teletype or the mouse and the screen establish a particular relationship with the user, a presence that has grown more involving as immersive technologies have developed.

Architecture’s irreducible presence is its engagement of all our senses. We do not make an argument for a phenomenological approach, but rather recognize the manner in which architecture inevitably engages our senses of sound, tactility and smell as surely as it does our sight. This presence can be paired with digital control, recto/verso.

IV


Gurenberg Bible

“A picture is worth a thousand words. An interface is worth a thousand pictures.” [7]

Interface design has developed rapidly in the last 20 years, deriving through inductive practice a set of principles for design.

A clear example of these principles is Ben Schneiderman’s “Eight Golden Rules” [8]:
•    Consistency (use the same actions for similar situations)
•    Shortcuts (allow advanced user to proceed quickly)
•    Feedback (give some indication that actions produce results, large and small)
•    Sequences (arrange actions in groups with beginning, middle and end)
•    Error handling (anticipate user error)
•    Easy reversal (allow correction of errors)
•    Internal Locus of Control (give user the sense of control)
•    Reduce memory load (keep the number of elements of a problem low)

Among these principles of interface design, several are clearly indigenous to traditional architecture. Indeed, with the principles of consistency, sequences and easy reversal, it is tempting to speculate on the degree of influence that the shared experience and navigation of traditional built space has had on developers of digital interfaces: did the Gothic cathedral beget software architecture.

The rogue principle that is likely to lead to an idea of an architectural user interface is feedback. The concept that the environment might respond directly to its user is likely to transform our idea of architecture.

This idea of feedback is related to the idea of architectural programming, behavior studies and all its variants within architectural thought. But the predominant idea of the human use of building is that it develops a set of requirements, which a sensitive architect will be able to use as the starting point for design.  At best, this results in work by architects such as van Eyck and Herzberger that propose an open-ended provocation of human occupation. Despite post occupancy evaluations, there is very little concept of the on-going recursive participation of the user over time.

The focus of our work, then is to make the building responsive, to see the performance of the user as an integrated part of the building. A performative architecture will have the user become a central part of the experience in a way that modernist thought, absorbed as it was with function, could embrace in only a desiccated form. But just as Hugo warns us about the triumph of the printed word and widespread literacy turning into a second Tower of Babel, the diffuse user “input” of performative architecture has its dangers. Precisely to the extent that it is responsive, it is unpredictable in ways that are unaccustomed and almost certainly uncomfortable for architects; the myth of the master builder will be difficult to sustain in such an environment. At best, we may be able to embrace the idea of narrative, but there will be so many narratives, and our pleas for authority may be unnoticed.

This proliferation of narrative engagements will lead to a problem of framing. Lacking the clear mechanisms of the literal frame and the metaphorical frame of the museum, architects have almost always relied on geometry to call attention to their art; it is “here” and not “there” that you should look. Whether this takes the form a simple and reductive form (Palladio and Eisenman) or a loosely composed grouping set apart from the context (Gehry) or a set of particular and idiosyncratic gestures (Libeskin), we have no problem identifying the limits for our attention. But a truly performative architecture must disdain this idea of limits and follow the user into overlapping and unclear environments.

V


Dido + Aeneas, Henry Purcell, Opera Workshop

“Interactive media do not sap the spontaneity or variability from a live performance, as linear media do, since they embody those qualities. Media are interactive to the extent that they adapt to the performer rather than making the performer adapt to them. By definition, the more interactive the media, the more responsive. Theatre that incorporates interactive media has the potential to combine the strengths of both live performance and media.” [9]

 

An ideal laboratory for the development of a performative architecture is likely to be in situations that have a tradition of human use that is more focused and articulated than a general architectural practice. One venue for such experimentation is stage performances, such as theatre and opera.

One advantage of such venues is the existing tradition of liveness in theatre, a tradition that maps almost exactly onto ideas of interactivity. Interactive media can be used to extend this idea in a controlled setting.

Interactivity with the computer in the theatre setting has both a traditional theatrical meaning and a potential to destabilize and expand the theatre setting. Interactivity has always been one of the characteristics of the theatre performance; actors making asides to the audience, actors entering from the seating to the stage and performances that physically engage the audience all are part of the history of liveness of the theatre. Computers offer a way to extend the reach and character of this interactivity, but ironically only to the extent that they clearly reveal their character as artificial. Computers can force the audience to be aware that it is watching a play, and create critical distance from the action; Bertholt Brecht describes this as Verfremdungseffekt, or “estrangement effect”.  [10]

Another advantage, particularly in early stages of development, is the fact that the users are more expert at using what are often systems that are initially less than robust.  Just as a line in the score may be awkward and a costume change may come at inconvenient moment, actors are more agile in their adaptation to unconventional participants.  They can find ways to avoid a particular position in a motion capture suit the same way they learn not to make a particular move for fear they may tear their costume.

The collaboration of the Opera Workshop and the Digital Design Center at UNC Charlotte is a laboratory for the development of performative architecture.

We established a set of possibilities and limits and developed sketches for Dido and Aeneas by Henry Purcell that fit the interpretation of the opera as a conflict between the male and female protagonists, and between their differing ideals of duty and commitment. The main staging concept involves the construction of a rolling set that serves as both a physical element (siege tower, island, cave) and a platform for digital manipulation and projection. The movement of the platform to different positions and orientations on the stage, particularly upstage and downstage, is in concert with the scenes and acts of the opera. The interactive aspects of the opera involved four objectives.

Expanding the limits of the stage
Wireless mini video camera to LCD display: Using a wireless camera attached to a head-mounted harness provided hands-free, real time narrowcasting that was fed directly to a LCD screen that was mounted on a small rolling stair that moved to different parts of the stage. While the Chair of the Music Department welcomed the audience, the screen was located at a part in the curtains, and the first lines of the play were delivered through the mini cam from back stage. As the opera ends and Aeneas leaves Dido, the mini cam is used to track the actor’s journey off stage and outside the building, ending as the signal degraded. In both cases, technology expands the stage.

Operatic hyperbole
Voice controlled projected images: In two scenes, the input from microphones placed on the stage was used to control the intensity of images projected on the cyclorama at the rear of the stage. The sound was processed by Quartz Composer on Macintosh computers, which mapped both the sensitivity of the input and the dimension of the images shift (position, intensity, color). The projected images are meant to provide a greatly enlarged scale to the movement of the singers, in keeping with the idea of operatic spectacle.

Evocation of an unseen realm
Video shadow feedback loop: Using Quartz composer, an iSight camera and a projector, we were able to arrange for a video feedback loop that was projected onto a white spandex screen that formed part of the enclosure of the island.  This allowed the singers to interact both digitally through feedback and physically as they pushed and pulled on the screen, immersing the actor in their own shadow. The video feedback, combined with the realignment of the rolling stage, evokes the dark underworld that is part of Purcell’s opera.

Suspension of disbelief and belief
Real time motion capture: The witch character in the opera wore a ShapeWrap wireless motion capture suit that allowed for a radius of 200 feet of motion. The motion was captured real-time, processed through Alias Motion Builder and projected onto the cyclorama. A single large-scale ghostly avatar augmented one of the scenes, while the other featured multiple avatars interacting with real actors. Motion capture is used in the opera to suggest the supernatural powers of the witches, analogous to digital techniques that appear to transcend the traditional constraints of the natural law, all the while we can see the mechanisms (fiber optic tape) that make it possible.

Our conclusions from this work are that we are able to control the problem of robustness, at least using trained actors and singers. We also found that the boundary between tangible objects & digital effects and the expanded field of the space of the theatre were critical aspects of the staged intelligence. Though often tempted to create an effect through recordings or alternate inputs we resisted and in fact insisted that the digital props/actors maintain a real-time connection with the singers, their voices and movements.  Their performance is our business, our technology is there to make them more effective performers, and render their presence more memorable.

Based on this work, we have already begun research and design for the opera Les Arts Florissants by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, set for production in January, 2008, which will feature an expanded range of digitally controlled devices, including real-time text recognition, servo controlled remote actuators and real-time compositing.

V

Waking Life, Richard Linklater

 

“The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are undistinguishable from it.” [11]

“All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real conditions of life………...” [12]

 

We cannot yet clearly see the unborn child of architecture provoked by the onslaught on the digital. But perhaps we can begin to see the outline.

The Architectural User Interface will be a combination of the tangible and the virtual. Rather than proposing either that all intellect will become silicon based or that computers are essentially useless, it will make a new setting that takes advantage of the strengths of both. [14]

The Architectural User Interface will be defined not by geometry but by topology, which insists that the essential character of a problem is in the sets of relationships rather that in a singular form. It will probably doom most of the formal conventions of architecture, certainly as they are used to en-frame and limit a specific object. [15]

Finally, and primarily, the Architectural User Interface is defined by interactivity with the user, through a specific and sustained performance. This is a disquieting situation for architects who by training and reflex view the world quietly and synchronically. But, it precisely this aspect of the digital that can force us to see the world with fresh eyes and to cast aside preconceptions masquerading as the natural. [16]

Architecture is dead; long live architecture.


Endnotes
1.    Victor Hugo, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. (Croscup & Sterling: New York, 1892). Hugo intends at least two meanings for this comment, one related to the lose of authority for the church to the individual and ultimately secular concerns and another related to the end of architecture as the sole repository of concretized culture.
2.    Viollet-le-Duc’s hope for the role of technology as savior is focused mainly on the restoration of historic monuments, ironically enough, largely in Gothic structures that Hugo cites for their anachronistic quality. Eugène-Emmanuel Viollet-le-Duc, The Foundations of Architecture, (George Braziller: New York, 1990).
3.    Professor Edsger Dijkstra, Lecture delivered at the ACM 1984 South Central Regional Conference, Austin, Texas, 16 to 18 November 1984. The common preoccupation with the inferred anthropomorphic dimension of computing continues as a thinly veiled apotheosis of fear. It is interesting that the “worms” and “viruses” that are significant agents of mischief are specifically human sponsored.
4.    Hiroshi Ishii and Tangible Media Group, Tangible Bits: Towards Seamless Interface between People, Bits, and Atoms,  (NTT Publishing Co., Ltd.: Tokyo, Japan, June 2000). The work of the tangible bits group at the MIT Media Lab has consistently connected physical objects and environments with computers. This work is notable for its early success as well as its insistence on the inclusion of both the computer as active elements in the design.
5.    Daniel Keefe, Daniel Acevedo, Tomer Moscovich, David H. Laidlaw, and Joseph LaViola,  “CavePainting: A Fully Immersive 3D Artistic Medium and Interactive Experience”,  Proceedings of ACM Symposium on Interactive 3D Graphics, (Association of Computing Machinery: New York, 2001) pages 85-93. Caves are an extreme example of immersion, combining a three-dimension model, gestures, tracking and see through head mounted displays.  The combined effect is a three-dimension model that can be navigated and manipulated in real time.
6.    Walter Benjamin, “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” , Illuminations (Schocken:New York, 1969). Benjamin is very specific in specifying architecture as a canonical example of an art that is seen in a distracted manner. It is fair to infer that the distraction has increased as the extent and the nature of media have proliferated.
7.    Ben Bederson & Ben Shneiderman, The Craft of Information Visualization: Readings and Reflections (Morgan Kaufmann: San Francisco,  2003)
8.     “Eight Golden Rules” are one of a number of lists, recipes and rules of thumb that Shneiderman assembles in this book. Much of this will stick those with a visual and design training as common sense mixed with a dollop of appreciation for the novel effect of the computer. Ben Schneiderman, Designing the User Interface, Strategies for Effective Human Computer Interaction  (Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1977).
9.    David Saltz, "Live Media: Interactive Technology and Theatre." Theatre Topics 11.2 (Fall 2001): 107-130. Saltz presents a convincing argument about the role of digital media in traditional theatre settings, including a taxonomy of the possibilities for further explorations.
10.    Bertholt Brecht was determined not to let the audience be seduced by the “natural”, but instead to be led to understand the artificiality of both theatre and by implication, current cultural conditions.  According to Brecht, an actor “..never acts as if there were a fourth wall besides the three surrounding him..... The audience can no longer have the illusion of being the unseen spectator at an event which is really taking place." [13]
11.    Mark Weiser, “The Computer for the Twenty First Century”, ACM SIGMOBILE Mobile Computing and Communications Review (Volume 3 ,  Issue 3, July 1999). There is a long tradition in the history of ideas that identifies the invisibility of a good deal of modern existence. (See, for example, Suzanne Langer’s Philosophy in a New Key.) Weiser, however, seems intent on embracing it as a positive condition.
12.    Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Communist Manifesto (Monthly Review Press: New York, 1998). Marx and Engels intend this as a prelude to the economic enlightenment of the proletariat, but it is difficult not to read it as a more general description of the transformation of the cultural to the natural.
13.    Bertholt Brecht, Brecht on Theater: the Development of an Aesthetic (Hill and Wang: New York, 1964) page 91.
14.    One parallel example of this is the work of Luis von Ahn and his idea of human computing. His very specific methods of combining the strength of human cognition with machine processing proposes a new paradigm for computing that avoids polemical position about either human or machine cognition. Luis von Ahn. “Human Computation.” Google Talk, July 26, 2007 .
15.    One of the clearest examples of a theoretician moving toward this position is the work of Stan Allen, notably in his book, Point + Lines: Diagrams and Projects for the City. The projects presented in this book are as uncomfortable fitting on the pages of the book as it would be to identify them within the context of the city.  Stan Allen, Point + Lines: Diagrams and Projects for the City (Princeton Architectural Press: New York, 1999).
16.    Our challenge is similar to that identified by Banham when he notes that  “The architect who proposes to run with technology knows now that he will be in fast company, and that, in order to keep up, he may have to emulate the Futurists and discard his whole cultural load, including the garments by which he is recognized as an architect.”  Reyner Banham, Theory and Design in the First Machine Age, (Praeger: New York, 1960).