Recycling Recycling, Mark Wigley

· Future of the Future (John McHale) 'Man Plus' — man plus prosthetic, 'accessorizing and extending the body does not just start and end at attaching prosthetics as a limb, etc — but also by passing apparatuses into the body, letting the machinery of the body interact with the machinery of the outside to produce a new kind of body.'

· successive waves of extensions of the human nervous system transform the space occupied by the body.

· 'the distinction between body and space soon collapses: in ecological terms, human flesh is but a transitional event in the continuous redistribution of energy. with the arrival of the artificial body, ecological management is nothing more than the management of hyper-extended flows of nervous energy.'

· 'the future and the past become natural habitats. all these diverse technologies collaborate to produce a 'species extension,' a fundamental transformation of the morphological and social condition of humanity.'

· 'traditional prosthetics v. international media = simple mechanical hands v. more sophisticated hands... ears v. radar systems/radio... eyes v. telescopes.'

· 'the artificial body is globalized into a vast electronic network mirroring the internal electricity of the nervous system.'

· 'within the globalized electronic network, distinction between culture and nature cannot easily be made. the uneven distribution of resources has to be combated with new tactics; politics becomes obsolete.'

· 'man is a social animal only through his extension.' prosthetics are 'psychological extensions' of many by which organized human thought covers the glove as a fundamental part of the overall ecological system.'

> this need for excessive, constant communication is a means of security for humans, or what?

· 'ideas, like bodies, can be prosthetically transformed and dispersed. inside the ever-larger, interconnected, and entangled network that envelops the planet are layers of concepts that evolve and interact continuously like the weather. it is in this intricate play between organic processes, economics, technologies, and concepts that the nuances of McHale's understanding of ecology lies.'

· 'ecology, gk.: oikos (house) + logos (knowledge) = knowledge of house, household economy.

· 'the global ecosystem has become a kind of building, an interior, a domestic space that needs to be redesigned.'

· '... rethink the relationship between material shelter and the technologies that have redefined the meaning of shelter.... expendable/expandable houses, everything is mobilized.'

· house is world, world is house — extended communication brought inot the house, the house or concept of home placed upon all modes of transportation.

· 'ongoing extension of the house has provided the idea of a single ecosystem whose flows can be managed with new ecological principles.'

· 'the internal and external extension of the home has occurred without the help of architects. the appeal to popular culture is an appeal to a newly emerging architecture for the prosthetically extended human body that the formal discipline of architecture cannot comprehend.'

· 'living unit' mentality (Fuller, Banham, etc.) especially manifest in the 'kitchen.' the architect only provides packaging for that technologically advanced package.

· pop culture and technological advances influenced the role and form of architecture at the time around the 1960s: "the economy of popular images is an age in which the whole range of the sensory spectrum has been extended — man can see  more, hear more, travel faster — experience more than ever before...' 'architects and designers are professionally concerned with communicating visually and, where not actively engaged, we are all participants in the process of mass-communication.'

· Banham made the point that 'modern architecture, which explicitly describes itself as a prosthetic technology, was just an image — an image of prosthetics rather than a form of prosthetics.'

· instead of abandoning the image altogether in the search for prosthetic technologies, 'it was obsessed with the prosthetic structure of images in popular culture.'

· 'the cyclical mobility of images through space and time is aligned with the reconfiguration of architecture on ecological principles. simulation is understood as a means of species survival.'

· most of what is considered to be symbolically and culturally important and irreproducible can now indeed be reproduced by way of photo-record and techno-enhanced studies of old buildings. so... 'architectural experience is recycled.' in the spirit of Duchamp and Warhol after him, the 'authentic' (experience) becomes no less an image than its simulation.

> look at Walter Benjamin's The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction

> revisit Antonioni's Il Deserto Rosso (industry, technology, madness, domesticity, role of the 'playhouse')

· 'the imagery of technology may be as powerful an agency of change as the rational understanding of a scientific and technological basis.' 'ecology is a question of images in the end, images of architecture and the architecture of images.'

· 'ecological design must rethink the house rather than simply recirculate a generic suspect image.'

> still uncertain as to how 'the very idea of the house is structured by violence.'

· 'to inhabit a house is usually to suppress its nightmares.' um... okay.