 intuitive programming, biomimetics, cultural mimetics, cyberbotany, hybrid reality, heterotopia, morphogenetic architecture, evolutionary fashion, design, phylotic multiverse continuum
Phylotic is a computational system employing dynamically relational assemblages for analysis, synthesis and cataloguing of cultural and biological phenotypes into a library of seeds or DNA, which may be hybridized and grown upon infinite topographies In Phylotic, the human body becomes the most intimate heterotopic space, the breathing landscape onto which the computational system grows elaborate and sensuous bodyscapes/gardens
Abstract "All possible branches are real"
(Borges, J.L. The Garden of Forking Paths) Gardens were always optimistic reflections of the world, the liminal spaces between the known and unknown, matter and aether. Foucault describes gardens as the oldest form of heterotopias, a microcosm of species, the smallest parcel of the world in its totality: "The heterotopia is capable of juxtaposing in a single real place several spaces, several sites that are in themselves incompatible ... the oldest example of these heterotopias that take the form of contradictory sites is the garden." Shifting away from millennia old, rigid and static instrumentalities of control on the one side and fictional representational effects on the other, this paper discusses research into a computational and production system employing dynamically relational assemblages for analysis, synthesis and cataloguing of cultural and biological phenotypes into a library of seeds or morphological DNA, that may be grown, mutated and hybridized upon infinitely variable topographies/bodies, transcending temporal, spatial, geographical and disciplinary boundaries, osmotically bleeding the real and virtual within a heteroglossic, yet glabrous continuum. The system is open ended, being suitable for biomimetics and cultural mimetics, fashion, design and architecture. Within the current context we shall elaborate the myriad manifestations and potentialities of bio and cultural mimetics in the evolution of intimate fashion ecologies/bodyscapes. To begin, visualize extracting the DNA from the intricate phenotype of a centuries old lace from Pag, Croatia, mutating it with a sensual Romanian 'marama' and growing it onto your body, as an elaborate vessel of time and custom. Employing processes of intensive genetic computation, distributed authorship and human/non-human agents in material/design praxis we adopt a syncretic methodology for reconciling and coalescing the disparate, even opposing, cultural and biological patterns, germinating their multifarious seeds into a heterotopic multiverse of intricately entangled, real and irreal gardens patterned as phantasmagorical bodyscapes. Through the mediation of a genetic computational framework, the system educes the hypostases, or DNA's, from divergent cultural and biological phenotypes, populating a genetic library of seeds for the incubation of novel garden types -- poly-scalar heterotopias. As opposed to individuations as subject or form, design is understood as genetic inscription. The parallel reality of the invisible code is a common ground for multiple actualizations, exploding design beyond the edges of human imagination, into a nomadic and unstable topology traversing spirals polyphonically within the plasticity of incandescent meanings and coruscating myriads, as an infinite abacus of fugue matrices, clarity and autopoietic complexity. Phylotic presents an invitation to rediscover the pleasure of gesture, the spirit of curiosity, the notion of intimacy and sharing. It embraces the idea clothing as evolution and harmony with life, human body and environment, away from novelty for novelty's sake, towards an unpredictable yet dialogical, affective, continuos state of becoming. The human body is thrilling. Phylotic's bodyscapes embody the beauty of life -- joie de vivre, making clothing as thrilling as the body, coming alive with it, overflowing in its vitality. "When the sign loses its meaning, when it loses all possible meanings, then it becomes pure sign, naked sign, abstract sign, it enters deeper still into calculation, into mathematics, into money, (...) the number becomes a letter, the letter itself is a symbol, the information, the software undifferentiates itself, as if it were slowly entering its own faculty, its own nakedness"
(Serres, Michel. Genesis) URLS:
bio(t)hing |
