the imaginary real world of cybercities

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The Imaginary Real World of CyberCitiesAuthor(s): M. Christine BoyerSource: Assemblage, No. 18 (Aug., 1992), pp. 114-127Published by: MIT Press

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2/15

M

hristine

o y e r

h e

Imaginary

e a l W o r l d

o

yber i t ies

M. Christine

Boyer

eaches

ity

planning

andurbanism

t the Schoolof Archi-

tecture,

Princeton

University,

ndat the

Irwin . ChaninSchool f

Architecture,

Cooper

Union.She s the author f

Dreaming

heRational

City:

The

Myth

ofAmerican

ity

Planning

893-1945

(1983),

Manhattan

Manners:

rchitecture

andStyle1850-1900 1985),andTheCity

of

Collective

Memory:

ts

Historical

magery

andArchitecturalntertainments

(forthcoming).

Shibuya

electronic

newspost, Tokyo,

Japan,

26

May

1992. Intial

exposure

1/30

second;

print exposure

6

seconds.

Photograph

?

1992

by

Santiago

Perez.

Assemblage

18

?

1992

by

the

Massachusetts

Institute

of

Technology

In

the mental

geography

of

architectural

heorists,

an

affinity

s

often

expressed

between

science-fictionnarratives nd

con-

temporary

ities.' This attraction nvolves

speculating

on how

the

possible

worldsof artificial

intelligence

and

cyberspace

might

affect the material

reality

of

design,

conceptual

models

of

space,

and architectural

r urban ntuitions.

Since the new

informational

network,

he

computer

matrix,

called

cyberspace

is commonlydefined as if it were a huge megalopoliswithout a

center,

both a

city

of

sprawl

and an

urban

jungle,

we

have to

ask,

What do these

analogies

do?2

'What

does

it

mean for Los

Angeles

to

be

simultaneously

ffered as the visualization

of

cyberspace

nd

promoted

as the

prototypicalposturban

me-

tropolis

(or

perhapsmeta-polis,

loose

configuration

of

sixty-

six nodes tied

together

by

an

elaborate

freeway

ystem

where

the foot on the

gas

pedal replaces

he

pedestrian's

tep

on

the

path)?

From the moment

in

1984

that William

Gibson first

announced

in

Neuromancer

hat

cyberspace

ooks ike Los

Angeles

seen at

night

from five thousand

feet

in

the

air,

what

has this

predilection

or

drawing

parallels

between the

virtual

space

of

computer

networksand the

posturban

places

of dis-

orderanddecayreally xpressed?3 his unwieldymixture of

cyberspace

and urban

dystopia

which

I

call

CyberCities

turns the

reality

of

time and

place

into an

imaginary

matrix

of

computer

nets

linking ogether electronically

distant

places

around he

globe

and

communicatingmultilinearly

nd

nonsequentially

with

vast

assemblages

of

information tored

as

electroniccodes.

What does it

signify

hat this

electronic

m-

agerygenerates

a

unique

mental

ordering

hat seems to

parallel

rather

han

represent eality?

What

significant

effects

result

115

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3/15

IP



4/15

assemblage

18

from the

fact that the textual

universes

of

postmodern

ac-

counts

conjureup

immaterialand fictionalworlds

hat

disavow

any

link

with material

reality,

any connectivity

with

a shared

community?

t is to

attempt

an answer o these

questions

of

the

imaginary

ealworldof

information,

o search or the

meaning

of

CyberCities

affected

by

the

logics

of

computers

and

cyberspace,

hat

I

offer

this account.

Most science-fiction

descriptions

of

CyberCities

assume or

explicitly

statethat a

profound

mutationhas taken

place

en-

tailing

a

transformation rom

the Machine

City

of modernism

to

the

Informational

City

of

postmodernism.

So it

is

said,

this

transformation

displaces

he Western

space

of

geometry,

of

work,

of the

road,

he

building,

he

machine,

with new forms

of

diagramming,

ar

graphs,

preadsheets,

matrices,

and net-

works

expressive

of "anew etherealizationof

geography"

n

which the

principles

of

ordinarypace

and time are

being

tam-

pered

with

beyond

recognition.'

This

matrix

appears

o

be a

metaspace,

or

hyperspace, uperimposed

above the level

of

reality.

t is a

space

in

which

reality

s

deferred

rom

the

screen

to the

memory

bank,

to the

video

disk,

to

imaginary

etworks.

Or

perhaps

a better

analogy

or the

computer

matrix

of

dis-

rupted

space

and

time is the audio-visual

jumps

and

leaps

the blank

spaces,arbitrary

ound

bites,

and

fragmented mages

-

achieved

by

the

viewerof

cable

television

who,

remote

control

n

hand,

flips

through

an

array

f

television

programs

that nevercoalesces nto a

single

knowableorder.

If a

transformation

rom

the

machine to the

computer

has

taken

place,

even

if

it affects

only

the

imaginary,

we need

to

question

what has been transformed nd

what

these

changes

affect with

respect

to architecture

n

the

city,

for

the

imaginary

and

the artisticare

closelyaligned.

As

one

cyberspace

dvocate,

Michael

Heim,

reminds

us,

artistic

and

technological

ascina-

tion are inked:"With an electronic nfrastructure,he dream

of

perfect

FORMSbecomes

the dreamof inFORMation.

Filtered

through

he

computer

matrix,

all

reality

becomes

patterns

of information

...

Further,

he

erotic-generative

source

of

formal dealismbecomes

subject

to the laws of

infor-

mation

management."'

Consequently,

the

absorption

of archi-

tectural

theory

and

architectural ascination

nto

the

language

of

computers

and

I

am not

referring

ere to CAD

systems

but to

the

theory

of

information cience and all the science-

fiction

imaginaries

t

seems

to

invoke

may

make a

categori-

cal

mistake: or

one

side of the

equation

in

CyberCity

s imma-

terial,

while the other remains

material;

ne

side of

the

analogy

is

about

the constructionof

information

networks,

he

other

about

the

constructionof

space.

Indeed,

this confusion of

categoriesmay

undermine

many

of our

postmodern

architec-

tural

theoriesas

they

are

applied

to architecture

n

the

city.

The

Machine

City

Like the

computer

of

CyberCity

and

the

postmodern,

he

machine of

the

Machine

City

is

ingrained

n

the

way

we

repre-

sent

and

imagine

(or

have

represented

and

imagined)

the

modern

city.

Metaphors

of the Machine

City

linked to

repre-

sentationsof and

reflecting

attitudes toward

modernity

and

the

metropolis

at

the turn of the twentieth

century

come

easily

to

mind.

Calvin

Coolidge

seemed to

encapsulate

he idoliza-

tion of the machine

age

when

he

proclaimed,

"The

man

who

builds a

factory

builds

a

temple.

The man who works here

worships

here."6

The

metropolis

was believed to be an inor-

ganic

and

fabricated

nvironment,

he

product

of

mathematics

and the creationof the

engineer.

Thus we

find,

for

example,

LudwigMeidner n "Directions orPaintingImagesof the

Metropolis"

dvising

he artistof

1914

to

pay

attention to

"tumultuous

treets,

the

elegance

of iron

suspension

bridges,

the

gasometers,..,

the

howling

colorsof the autobuses

and

express

ocomotives,

the

rolling

elephone

wires,

he har-

lequinade

of

the advertisement

pillars."'

And before

long

the

dynamics

of motion

in

the

big city,

as well

as the

visual

juxta-

position

of

disparate

lements

(graphics,

musical

rhythms,

typography,

nd

photography)

used to create

picture poems,

were

captured

by

one

of

the machines

of

the

twentieth cen-

tury:

he movie camera.Laszlo

Moholy-Nagy

xplained

n

his

fourteen-page

ilm

script

for

Dynamics

of

the

Metropolis

f

1921-22

that there were to be shots

of

constructionsites

from

below,fromabove,fromdiagonalviews,fromrevolving ranes,

shots of

the

flashing

etters of

electric

advertisements,

nd

shots filmed

from

racing

automobiles

and

moving

trains,

o

set

up

the

dynamic

empo

of the

city. Although Moholy-Nagy's

script

was

never

produced

as a

film,

it seems

to

have reached

fruition

n

William Ruttmann'sBerlin:

A

Symphony

f

the

City

of 1929.

Now the Machine

City

of

modernism,

ar from

being

only

liberating

and

celebratory,

lso embodieda darker ide:the

116



5/15

Boyer

mechanismsof

discipline

and

the architectural

spaces

of

enclo-

sure that Michel Foucault

has

so

brilliantly

described the

asylum,

the

prison,

he

factory,

he

school,

and the home.

If

subjects

were once controlled

throughdramaturgical

isplays

of

might

and ceremoniesof

exaggerated

orture,

rom

which

could be deduced the

sovereign's

uthority

o

appropriate

wealth, taxes,

goods,

services,

and

life

itself, then,

beginning

n

the

late

eighteenth

century,

his

power

was

transformed nto a

power

to

ensure, maintain,

and

develop

the

life

of a

social

body,

which,

to

this

end,

used

space

and

architecture

as

its

instruments

of

normalization.8

Discipline,

or

the self-construc-

tion of the

individual,

becamethe most efficacious

nstrument

of

powerdeployedby

these

spaces

of

enclosure.Here the acts

of

comparing,contrasting,

and

categorizing

were

organiza-

tional relations

hat

supported

new

disciplinary rocedures;

or

the individualwas

forced

constantly

o stand

in

relation

o the

established

norm,

and this

self-comparison

etermined

the

range

of

deviationsand diversions o be

brought

under control.

Thus

the machinelikenorm established

authority

over an

individualwithout

any

externalreference o a

sovereign's

might.9

Certainly,

we can extend this

analogy

o the Machine

City,

for

disciplinary

ontrol

proceedsby

distributing

bodies/uses

n

space,

allocating

each

individual/function

o a cellular

parti-

tion,

and

creating

an efficient

machine

out

of its

analytical

spatial

arrangement.

n

becoming

a

target

of

disciplinary

on-

trol,

the

city

offered

up

new forms of

knowledge:

ts

disciplin-

ary

methodologies

came to

describean

anatomy

of detail.

An

ideal

architecturalmodel was

conceived

as

well to

house this

disciplinary ystem,

an

architecture hat wouldallowforthe

continuous

operation

of

surveillance.

A

networkof

urbanob-

servatories ent the

space

of

the

city

to

a set of norms

that

both

established

he line

of

horizontaland

comparative

ision

and

surveyed

he

movement

of

eachindividualandeverycellu-

lar

space.

So arose

at the end

of

the

nineteenth

century

he

process

of

city

planning.'0

CyberCities

Gilles

Deleuze has

suggested

recently

hat Foucault's

spaces

of

enclosureare

increasingly

laced

in

crisis."

Thus the

home,

the

factory,

he

school,

the

deindustrialized

city,

and,

certainly,

the

process

of

city planning

are

in

various

tages

of

dissolution,

reflectiveof

the

disciplinary

reakdown hat

CyberCities

en-

tail.

So,

Deleuze

maintains,

disciplinary

ocieties that

have

molded behaviorare

givingway

to numerical ocieties of

modulating

control facilitated

by computer

technology.

From

machines

of

production

hat

require

a

disciplined

abor

orce

and an

efficiently

planned

and

organized ity,

we have

evolved

into a

space

of

flows defined

by

worldwidenetworksof com-

puters.

This

free-floating

membraneof

connectivity

and con-

trol encircles he

globe

in

ultrarapid

ashion,

enabling

a new

economic

order

of

multinational

corporations

o arise.In

these

societies,

control acts like a

sieve whose mesh

transmutes rom

point

to

point,

undulating

and

constantly

at work.The

code,

not the

norm,

becomes the

important

device;

he

password

rather han the watchword

now

provides

or inhibits

access.

In

addition,

the coded

figure

of

multinational

corporations

pulls

an

agoristic

market

mentality

of

competition, rivalry,

nd

contests in its

wake,

conquering hrough

colonization,

special-

ization,

and the

deformableand

transformable ecisionsthat

computer

tracking

allows.

A

market

mentality

of

short-term

advantages

and

high

turnover ates

overtakes

any

long-range

and

continuous

planning

endeavors.

n

computer-led ocieties,

jamming,

viruses,

piracy,

and

corruption

eplace

he machine-

age dangers

of

entropy

and

sabotage.

We

are,

f

we

accept

Deleuze's

description,

at

the

beginning

of

the sociotechno-

logical

revolutionsand

dispersed

ystems

of

domination that

societies of

control

comprise.

Now

clearly,

he

computer

matrix s

just

a

metaphor

or

pat-

terns of

information,

a tool

for

examining

our

contemporary

reality

n

which

electronic

machinery

dominates

our

imagina-

tion. Or is it? For

it seems

increasingly

ifficult to

erase

imagi-

nary

orms

from

our

feelings

about

reality.

As Heim

claims

in

"The

Erotic

Ontology

of

Cyberspace,"

he matrix

holds out a

promiseof connectivity hat realitydenies: the technologiesof

networkinghough

on-line

communication,

electronic

mail,

or

news

groups

offer each

unit at his or

her terminala

way

to

counter

urban

solationand

alienation.

Even

though

"new

communities"are

formed,

Heim does

acknowledge

he dark

side to

networking:

t

operates

hrough

stand-ins

of

ourselves,

representations

n

which

we can lose our

humanity,

or

hide

our

identity,

and thus

it

may inspire

an

amoral ndifference o

human

relations.

"Ason-line

culture

grows

geometrically,"

Heim

allows,

"the

sense

of

community

diminishes."'2

Of

117



6/15

assemblage

18

course,

human

unity

and

community

are totalizations hat lie

among

the

major

conceptual

fault

lines that

CyberCities

dis-

play.

But let us return o the

city;

that

is,

if we can

turn

off the con-

sole and

walk

nto

the

physical

richnessand

energies

of

reality's

world,

f

we

can leave

behind

our

metaphors

of simulated

connectivity

and

the

synthetic

world

of

the

computer

matrix

that has

supposedly upplantedphysical

pace.

It

is curious

that

just

as

CyberCities

narrate he dematerialization f

physi-

cal

space

and

chronological

ime,

within

postmodern

criticism,

"space"

as

become a dominant issue.

Edward

Soja

n

Post-

modern

Geographies

elateshowthe nineteenth

century's

affair

with

progress,

which valued

time over

space,

allowed

space

to

be used

as a

veil drawnover the

surface,

hiding things

from us.

And

David

Harvey

n

The Condition

of

Postmodernity

peaks

of

how

space-timecompressions,

ach

revolution

n

communica-

tion

technology

causing

an annihilation

of

space by

time,

pro-

duced crises

of

representation.

While Fredric

Jameson

notes

in

Postmodernism,r,

The Cultural

Logic

of

Late

Capitalism

hat

the cultural

conditions of

postmodernity

have createdthe need

for

cognitivemaps

to

link

our

ideologicalpositions

with our

imaginations

and hence enable social

transformations

o

take

place."3

nall three

accounts,

the

postmodern

body

is sur-

rounded

by

and bombarded

with incoherent

fragments

of

space

and time.

For

we seem

in

CyberCity

o be

perpetually

reflectedfrom

glass

curtain

wallsand

continuously

n

motion,

whether

driving

he

freeways,

hopping

at

the

mall,

or

pushing

carts

through

supermarket

isles.And it has been

argued

hat

electronic elecommunications

have

so reformulated

ur

per-

ception

of

space

and time that we

experience

a loss

of

spatial

boundaries,

of

spatial

distinctions.

All

spaces

begin

to look

alikeand

implode

into an

undifferentiated

ontinuum,

while

time is reduced

to

obsessive-compulsive

epetitions.

As a re-

sult,we areunable to mapourcontemporaryerrain, o envi-

sion

space

and

representational

orms,

and thus to weave

things together,

to

conclude,

to act.

Increasingly,

n

postmodernist

criticism,

as

spaces

of modernist

enclosureare

placed

n

crisis,

here

has occurred nstead a

massive

restructuring

f

our

perception

of

space

and

time to

the

point

where

we

have

assumed the nonlinear

vision of a

computer

matrix

ull

of

ruptures,

breaks,

and discontinuities.

Might our postmodern

ixation

on

shifting positions

n

space

and time

and

our common

pronouncements

of the

disappear-

ing

or invisible

city

mask

deeper

anxietiesand ambivalent

negations

within the

metropolitan

core?At the same moment

that

computational

connectivity

holds

out the

promise

of

nonhierarchical,multicentered,

open-ended

forms

defining

a

"new

community,"

voices from other times and different

spaces

are

beginning

to

emerge

and disturb he

supposed

unity.

Is the

gesture

of

electronic

connectivity

anything

other

than an

attempt

to contain contested terrains

and to

absorb

excluded

parts, hereby

allowing

he whole to

reorganize

with-

out

challenging

ts fundamental

assumptions?

Lag-Time

Places

In

the late twentieth

century

unknown

and

threatening

errito-

ries ie within the

center,

inside the

boundariesof the

metrop-

olis where

there are

many

ag-times,

temporal

breaks

n

the

imaginary

matrix,

and areasof forced

delay put

on

hold

in

the

process

of

postmodernization.'4

hese

partitions,

cuts,

and

interruptions

n

the

urban

imaginary

llow us to

deny

our

complicity

n

the

making

of

distinctions

between the well-

designednodes of the matrixand the blank n-betweenplaces

of

nobody's

concern.

Disavowed,overlooked,

marginalized,

eft

out of our

accounts,

these

in-between

spaces,

the

inexpress-

ible,

the

incomplete,

the

unattended,

the "etc."and the

"..."

are the

center's

truly

nvisible

places."

To attend

to a few of these

lag-times

and

spatial

gaps

within

our

metropolitan

narrations,

o

note the

margins

and

para-

doxes

of

our

postmodernity,

we have

only

to turn to the

New

York

Times.

5

November 991:

To visitMottHaven

a

neighborhood

f some

fifty

housand

eople

around ast

138th

Street]

and here reMott

Havens

n most

arge

American

ities

hese

days

is

to

discover

world part.Here,povertyutsdeeperhan he ackofmoney, he

lack

of health

are,

heabundance

f

drugs.

This

grayplace

s

largely

bereft

f

many

of thethreadshat

knitother

erypoor

neighborhoods

together:

trong

enant

rganization,owerful

ommunityroups,

charismatic

eadership,

vena safe

playground.

he

strongest

eigh-

borhood

ind s

its

struggle

with

hardship.

We're

ikethe

forgotten

city.'"6

26

April

1992:

Jos6

Delgado ingered

t the

doorstep

f a

decaying

South

Bronx

partment

uilding

ast

week

watchingMayor

DavidN.

Dinkins

romise

millions

f

dollars

n

developmentrojects.

ftera

118



7/15

Boyer

while he

politicians ispersed.

he elevision ameraswere

packed

up.

The

onlookers ribbled

way.

ButMr.

Delgado

emains,

s he

al-

ways

does.

Every

ime

hey

want o

be elected

hey

come

here,'

aid

the

forty-one-year-old

uilding uperintendent.They aythey

are

going

o do

things

o fix the

neighborhood,

ut t's been ike this

since 1972.'

7

These

lag-time

narrations,

nd

there are numerous

others,

reveal

how

the

imaginary

matrix

performs

patial

and

temporal

disjunctions hat enable us to think of citycenters as if they

were

naturally

bipolarplaces

of uneven

development

rather

than effects of a willful

dismemberment hat sites certain

ives

and

places

outside

of,

and

only

sometimes

beside,

the main

events of

contemporary

ities.'"It is

this

splitting

that the

binary

ogic

of the

computer

matrix

allowsus to

achieve with

relativeease. Such an

arrangement,

or

example, provides

Paul

Viriliowith

his

images

of the

disappearing

ity

-

wherechro-

nologicaltopographies

eplace

constructed

geographical

pace,

where mmaterial

electronicbroadcast

emissions

decompose

and

eradicatea sense of

place.

Virilio's

city

has lost its form

except

as a connector

point

or

airport,

as a

membrane

or

com-

puter

terminal;

his

is a

two-dimensionalFlatland

n

which

the

citycanvanish.Obviously,Virilio'spositionis overdetermined

by

the

binary

coding

and

switching ogic

of

computer

technol-

ogy:

the

logical

+/-, 0/1,

on/off

of

electronic

pulses

and,

hence,

the

appearance/disappearance

f

the

city.

But the

point

here is

that this architectural

theory gnores

our

involvement

n

the

shaping

of

space,

in

the

production

of

lag-time

places

and

temporal

disjunctions.

Agoric

Systems

The

logic

of

computers

engenders

more than

binary

modes of

thought.

There is

also within

connectionist

systems

an interest

in the capacityof machines to learn.Computer earningcon-

sists

in

the

shifting

of

internal

linkages

(that

is,

the

production

of

new

representations)

mong

units distributed

throughout

the networkas

they

interactwith

the

world/context

and

adapt

to

patterns

hat it

presents.19

In

the

attempt

to

develop expert

systems,

moreover,

"the

goal

is to

develop

computer-imple-

mented

rule

systems

that can

replicateaspects

of the

reasoning

of

humans who

perform

he function

in

an

expert

fashion."

Such

rules,

usually

obtained

through

nterviews,

are then en-

coded

in

a

computer

program.20

Returning

o the

agoristics

of

Deleuze's societies of

control,

Manuel De Landa

explains

n

War n the

Age

of

Intelligent

Machines hat

the

decentralization

f

intelligent

computer

networksaround

he

globe

introduces

a

problematic

paradox,

since

they spawn"independent

oftware

objects,"

known

as

"demons,"

which

may

lie

beyond

the network's ontrol.

De-

mons

operating

within the

membraneof

global

networks,

De

Landa

proclaims,

already

display

a

tendency

to form

societies

that resemble

nsect

communities

or

economic

markets.

Independent

oftware

bjects

will

soon

begin

o constituteven

more

complex omputational

ocieties

n

which

demons radewith

onean-

other,

bid and

ompete

or

resources,

eedand

pawn rocesses

pon-

taneously

nd o on.

The

biosphere..,

is

pregnant

ith

singularities

that

pontaneouslyive

riseto

processes

f

self-organization.

imi-

larly,

he

portion

f the

'mechanosphere'

onstituted

y

computer

networks,

nce t has

crossed certain

ritical

oint

of

connectivity,

begins

o be inhabited

y

symmetry-breakingingularities,

hich

give

rise o

emergent

roperties

n

the

system.

These

ystems

can

encourage

he

development

f

intelligent

software]

bjects,

ut

here

is

a

sense

n which hese

ystems

hemselveswill

be

intelligent.'2'

In

this

scenario,

he

agoric,

or

marketlike,

omputer

system

takes on a life of its own. We seem

entrapped

within a

giant

machine from

which we can never

escape,

a

fear

exploited

by

the best and

worst of

science

fiction.

Or,

expressive

of

yet

another

postmodern

narrative,

we find

ourselves

n

the nihilis-

tic and

deterministic

errainof

Jean

Baudrillard,

here the

computer

"code s the

unseen,

'ob-scene'

vehicle

by

whichthat

power

[the

power

of

corporations]

moves toward

global

con-

trol,

toward he

profitable

reation

and

regimation

of

ever

more

sign-oriented,

media-bound,

simulated

and

simulationist

cultures."22

uteven a

cursory

ook

at

computer

iterature

remindsme

that

way

back

n 1959

Oliver

Selfridge,

earching

for

a means of

pattern

recognition

or

handwritten

etters of

the alphabet,cameup with a theoreticalmodelhe calledPan-

demonium.

"Cognitive

demons"

acting

in

parallel

without

attention to one

anotherwould

each

eventually

"shout

out"

its

judgment

of

what letter

had

been

presented

o it.

A

"decision

demon"

would

then

identify

the letter

based

on

which

demon

shouted the

loudest. For

each

cognitive

demon

was,

in

its

turn,

responding

o

lower-order

feature

demons"and

the

greater

the

number of

features

represented

by

the

letter,

the

louder

the demon could

shout.

In

other

words,

he

computer

field is

alive

with

attempts

to

develop

network

models of

parallel

119



8/15

assemblage

18

processors

rying

o simulate

cognitive

processes.23

ow what

does this

development

of "smart

computers"

able to learn

from their

environment,

o

planproblem-solving trategies

at

increasingly

aried evels of

complexity,

and even to eliminate

irrelevant etails from considerationas

they

become endowed

with a relentlesscommon sense

I

repeat,

what does this

have to do with the

city

and

architecture?

Mini-MaxStrategies

To

begin

with,

we need

to

acknowledge

hat the

history

of

computers

has,

from ts

inception,

been

deeply

affected

by

militaryobjectives,

and this has tainted

its

logic

and modes

of

operations.

The

paradigmatic

ecisionistic

model is the

Prisoner's

Dilemma,

a

game

articulated

by

John

von Neumann

that

guided

our

militarypolicythroughout

he Cold War

and

still

guides

our

corporate

decision

processes.24 verygraduate

business school offers

a course n the

theory

of

games

not

intended

for leisure-time

sports.

The

purpose

s

rather o teach

competitors

how to minimize

their maximum

osses. Conse-

quently,

a

proconflict/anticooperation

ias is worked

nto the

model. Need we be reminded hat in the Cold War neither the

Soviet

Union nor the

United States ever

made a

gesture

of

unilateral

disarmament?

instead,

osses were

supposedly

minimized

by

supporting

nuclear

build-up.

We can

apply

his

Cold

War rhetoric

of chance and

risk o the

city:

for,

ndeed,

corporate

adversarial

olitics,

the

agoristics

of the

market,

affects the

space

of the

city.

Lookat New York

City

today

and

you

will see von Neumann's

"mini-max"

ogic

at work.

To maximize one's

unilateral

private

gains

at

the

expense

of

the collective

good

appears

o be the

rational

move.

I

need

only

mention

the

twenty

or

so

"business

improvement

districts"

BIDs)

that in the last decade

have

pockmarkedhe citywithprivatizedprotectedzones. These

are commercial

and business

areaswhere

property

wnershave

agreed

o

assess themselves

at a

rate

higher

than the

city's

n

order

o

generate

unds to

improve

heir ocal environment

n

the faceof the

disintegration

f the

whole. BIDs

usually

dis-

perse

their

collective

money

to

private

ecurity

orces,

private

sanitationcollection

companies,

or street

and

sign

beautifica-

tion

programs.25

However

ucrative

heir

assessments

may

be,

it is hard

o conceive

how the

problems

of

drugs,

homelessness,

and

security

can be

treated as issuesof

boundary

maintenance,

for

they permeate

he

city;

minimizing

the maximum risksof

doing

business

in

one area

simply

pushes

the

problems

else-

where.Or another

example

of these

struggles

an be found

in

the recent

complaints

romsome builders hat New York

City

has a

faulty

economic-development

policy.

Since 1976 the

city

has

tried to form incentive

packages hrough

ax breaksand

creditsthat would lure

developers

o the outer

boroughs

or

above

Ninety-sixth

Street

in

Manhattan.As a

consequence,

downtown

Brooklyn

as

experienced

a

surge

of new

develop-

ment.

Now, however,

during

economic

recession,

his

policy

s

being

called

misguided

because it was

pursued

o the detri-

ment of Manhattan the

borough

that must remain he

epicenter

of commerce

if

maximum osses are to be

mini-

mized.26

The

City

of Artifice

Another

aspect

of the

logic

of

computer

mathematics

applied

to the

city

is the art of

spatial

and

temporalordering,

what

we

might

call the creation

of

the

City

of

Artifice.

As

Margorie

Perloff

points

out

in

Radical

Artifice,

our

word

processors

nd

electronic

devices have

taught

us to

snip,

to

sort,

to

cut,

to

edit,

to

rearrange

ur

data,

our

word-processed

exts,

our VCR

tapes,

until

they

have

become constructedartifices.

n

Perloff's

domainof

poetry,

she finds

that

language

has

given

way

to a

medium

that,

to

quote

Charles

Bernstein,

s

"constructed,

rule-governed,

verywhere

ircumscribed

by grammar

nd

syntax,

chosen

vocabulary:

esigned,

manipulated,picked,pro-

grammed,

organized,

and so an

artifice,

artifact

monadic,

solipsistic,

homemade,

manufactured,

mechanized, formulaic,

willful."27

erloffrecountshow

artificeshave

leaped

off the

page

and

moved into the

public

realm:

n

the

poetics

of

greet-

ing

cards,

n

ingenious

advertisements,

n

the

sign

inflection

of

billboards.28uchpowerful mageschallengethe artistto move

beyond

mere

duplication.

Since

images

are now sold

by corpo-

rations,

Perloff

argues,

he

poetic image

has become

problem-

atic

-

as

has the architectural

image

as well.

"Given he

sophisticated

print

media,

computer

graphics,

signpost

and

advertising

ormats

of our

culture,

all

writing

and

certainly

all

poetic

writing

is

inevitably

seen'as well

as 'seen

through'

or

heard."29

To understand he

latter not

as

phonemic

but as

ink

on the

page

is to contest the

status of

language

as a

bearer

of uncontaminated

meaning.3

120



9/15

Boyer

And

so

we

might

say

of the

spaces

of the

city.

In

spite

of all we

may

have

learned romthe semiotics

of

Las

Vegas,

pop

archi-

tecture

of the late sixties and

seventies

merelyduplicated

the

commercial

artifice,

raising

t

to

the

level of

high

art.

If

we

turn

to our cities of the seventies

and

eighties,

is

it

surprising

o

find

their

public spaces

structuredas

if

a

labyrinthine

networkwere

thrownover their surface?

These urbanmatricesbecome an

aggregate

of

atomistic

detail;for,

indeed,

the urbanartifice

valorizes he

local,

the

regional,

he

particular

it becomes an

array

f historicaland

stylistic

details

and Wordsworthian

"spots

of time."

Returning

o New York

City,

I

would recommend

a walk

through

South Street

Seaport,

Battery

Park

City,

Times

Square,

he

large

historicdistrictsof

the

Upper

East

Side,

the

Upper

West

Side,

Greenwich

Village,

and LadiesMile to

ex-

amine the artifice

at work.Here the nodes of

the urbanmatrix

have

become

cutoutsof local

details,

controlled

by

design

codes,

historic-district

regulations,

and contextual

zoning

ordinances.

n

between,

of

course,

plenty

of

spaces

are over-

looked,

left

unimproved,dropped

out of the

transforming

rid

-

those

numerous

lag-time

spaces explored

above. For detail

owes its

privileged

tatus,

as Freud

proclaimed,

o the

primary

process

of

displacement."

WarringAgainst

Totalities

The matrixof urban

space,

clearly

an artificewith allof its

contrivedand

manipulated

details,

positions

tself

in

war

against

the

reality

of

the

city;

t

imposes

itself

as a

gesture

against

totalities,

as a

recognition

hat

harmony

of

life

can

never

be

achieved. Its

commitment is to the

struggle,

o the

resistance,

o us

versus

hem,

and

in

this sense it

is

radically

antiurbanand

highly

postmodern.

Modernism,

by

contrast,

held artifice o be its enemy, searching or

what Ezra

Pound

called

"good

art..,

that

bears rue

witness,.

..

the

art

that

is

most

precise,"

n

opposition

to "badart" hat "is

naccurate

art,

...

art that makes false

reports."32

Modernists ntended

im-

ages,

both

visual

and

verbal,

o

be

precise

and clear

analogies

of

reality;postmodernists,

on

the other

hand,

discredit he use

of

imagery

because

contemporary

ulture s saturatedwith ma-

nipulated,

commercialized

signs designed

and fabricated

by

product

advertisers.33

onfronted with

these

powerful

and

complex images, poetic discourse s challenged, n Perloff's

words,

"todeconstructrather han

to

duplicate

them.

They

prompt

what has become an

ongoing,

ndeed a

necessary

dia-

lectic between

the simulacrumand

its

other,

a dialecticno

longer

between the

image

and the

real,

as

early

modernists

construed

t,

but

between

the word

and

the

image.714

So we findthat on the

edge

of the

twenty-first

entury

our

technological

ascination

with

computers

merges

with

our

artistic

conceptualizations

of multivalent

assemblages

n

which

the individual, he

collectivity,

andthe dataset

play separate

parts.

Yet

how

does the

outside,

the material

world,

penetrate

and infuse the

images

and

representations

f

this

imaginary

assemblage?

How,

in

particular,

s the

community,

the

polis,

the center allowed o

inform our

position?

And

why, precisely,

is our

contemporary

ime so afraid

of

centering

devices,

why

do

we

speak

so

often

of

invisible

cities,

the

disappearing,

deindustrialized,

isfigured,

and

decentered

city?

What is

this

fearful

center

but a

point

of concentration

or

gravity

hat holds

together

a verbal

sequence

and

gives meaning

to utterances?

Centering

s

both

recursive

nd

precursive,

elping

to

give

order

o what

proceeded

and to what

will

follow.3"

t is the

sign

we readas we enter the outskirts

of

everyEuropeanmetropolis,

unerringly ointing

the

way

"to

the center."

n

the Western

world

centering

events or

images

are

understood

symbolically.

Because

they

often mask

the

verypowers

hat center a dis-

course

and

are feared or their

potential

enslavements,

hey

demand

interpretation

nd

decipherment.

Postmodern

critics,

n

particular,

hink that the notion of

unity, totality,

or

"center" s an artifice an

arbitrarily

on-

structed

narrativewhose

implicit relationships

an no

longer

be

accepted

as true or retaina stable

significance.Lyotard

ells

us that "wehave

paid

a

high enough

price

for

the

nostalgia

of

the whole and

one,

for

the reconciliationof the

concept

and

the sensible,

of

transparent ndcommunicableexperience...

Let us

[instead]

wage

waron

totality,

et us be

witness of the

unpresentable,

et

us activate he

difference."36

Eventually,

however,

we must come full circle to

this

decentering

game

of

postmodemrnism

nd

ask,

n

our war

against

all

totalities and

our

contemporary

iscontent,

Just

what

is

it

that

we

affirm?

We

have,

in

turn,

deconstructed

he

promise

of the

Enlighten-

ment,

the

logocentrisms

of

Western

discourse,

he

purposive,

rationalaction

systems

of science

and

technology,

he

process

of

city planning,

Marxism,

and so on. Of

course,

architecture

121



10/15

assemblage

18

and the

city

are

among

postmodernism's

major

structures

of

ambivalence.The

polis

the

Greek

city

was

the center

of

Western communal

ife

based on the

now-faulty

assumption

of a common

purpose

and common

consensus

and

an unmedi-

ated

harmony

and

unity

of all human

life.

In our

postmodern

deconstruction

of

totalizations,

we

think we have reinstated

freedomof choice and

enabled the

voice

of

alterity

o

rise,

but

clearly

at the cost

of

community.37

When

Karl

Scheffler,

a member

of

the Deutscher

Werkbund,

confronted

he

reality

of the

metropolis

n the

early

1900s,

he

saw

that the

city

wasno

longer

a

closed

organism

held

together

by

small-scaled

patriarchal roups

n

which

"every

man could

recognize

he

whole,

and

[thus]

... eachtook

part

n

the

pros-

perity

of a whole

on which

one's own

prosperity

epended."

The

metropolis

was

devoid

of a

"spirit

of

community,"

was a

mere accidental

place

of

residence.3"

he

move to the

city

was,

then,

a

voyage

away

rom home

and toward

he

unknown.

And

once embarked

on this

voyage,

here

wasno

promise

of a safe

return,

or

the

urge

to travel

was

simultaneously gesture

that

abandoned

he

security

of

home.39

Consider

how Kafka

n

1912used thismotif of travel n his firstnovel,DerVerschollen,

(the

missing

ones,

as

in

passengers

missing

at

sea),

written

about

New

York

although

he had

never

been to the

city.

"Traffic"

s Kafka's

metaphor

or the

transitory

atureof

things

experienced

n

the

metropolis

not

just

the

comings

and

goings

of

subway

rains

and automobiles

and

the ebb

and

flow

of

crowdsas

they

follow their

daily

rhythms,

but also

changes

in

fashions

and

architectural

tyles,

and the

fragmentary,

llu-

soryquality

of

perception

tself.

Each

chapter

s

organized

around

a different

mode

of travel

hat

propels

he hero

into a

never-ending

uccession

of new

circumstances.

Complex

traf-

fic patternsof New YorkCitystreetsgivewayto pedestrians

and

automobiles

along

the

highway,

which

are

supplanted

by

vertical

movements

of elevators

and sexual

traffic,

which

fi-

nally

eadinto the

subway

and

toward

he

endless

expanse

of

the

American

continent.

New

YorkandAmerica

are

and-

scapes

without

beginning

or

end,

labyrinths

f

accident,

dis-

order,

and

uncertainty

n which the

images

of the

city

are

continually

destabilized,

dematerialized,

nd

erased,

and-

scapes

from

which the

protagonist

s

constantlyexpelled

and

forced

to

move

on.40

Again

we can draw

parallels

between

the stabilities

of

home,

the familiar

nclosure,

and

the

open-ended

and rootless

me-

tropolis

hat defies

connectivity

and

belonging.

For Kafka's

narrative

opens

as the hero

is banished

from his

family

or

having

fatheredan

illegitimate

child;

he

is exiled to

a world

without a

past

and

without a

center,

"aworld

of

changing

appearances,

nstable

mpressions,

accident,

and death:

a

world

of 'traffic'" hat

will not stand

still and

is oblivious

o his

presence.4

Modernismset

itself the

task of

describing

hese

fragmented

experiences

of the

metropolis,

rying

o

close the

gap

between

the

individualand

his

environment,

o recenter

and reconstruct

he

city

until it formedan

organic

whole. The

city

was a

place

of

immigration

and

estrangement,

yet

simul-

taneously

a

register

hrough

which

passed

a

dynamic

array

f

local

styles,

cultures,

and

languages.

Modernist

artistic

expres-

sion

arose

out of and

through

this

metropolitan

xperience.42

To take

up

a

postmodern

narrative

f

travel,

we need

only

turn

to Italo

Calvino's

nvisibleCities.

"Traveling,"

alvino's

Marco

Polo

reveals,

"you

realize

hat

differencesare ost:

each

city

takesto

resembling

all

cities,

placesexchange

their

form,

order,

distances,a shapelessdustcould

invadethe

continents."43

he

type

of

city

is

uniform,

he detailed

variations

ndless.

Hence

everycity

must be

read

n

quotation

marks,

ts

representation

excessive

and

privileged:

we have

to learnwhat

is not

present

in "the

city"

and what

this absence

might

mean.

InvisibleCit-

ies

is structured

as a

systematic

artifice,

a numerical

et:there

are

fifty-five

cities

in

all,

five cities

allocated

o each

of eleven

different

categories.

The

idea

of

city

is fractured

by

this

serial

artifice,

being

influenced

retroactively

y

the definition

of each

element

in

the

set.As Marco

Polo

claims,

"I

will

put together,

piece

by piece,

the

perfectcity,

made of

fragments

mixed with

the

rest,

of instants

separated

by

intervals

discontinuous

n

space

and

time,

now

scattered,

now

more

condensed,

you

must

not believethe search or it can stop."44

Calvino's

nvisible

Citiesbearsa

similarity

o

travel

n

the

informational

matrix

of

CyberCity,

where

borders

arecrossed

with the

help

of a

hypermedianavigator

who

guides

the trav-

eler

in

riding,

raversing,

rowsing,

playing

he links between

different

exts,

images,

words,

and

graphs,

moving

across

he

grid

of

the electronic

screen,

establishing

new

relationships

n

unpredictable

ways.

Marcos

Novak

describes

raveling

hrough

this

hypertext:

122



11/15

Boyer

Every

paragraph

n

dea,

every

deaan

mage, very

mage

an

ndex,

indices

trungogether long

dimensions

f

my choosing,

nd tra-

vel

through

hem,

ometimeswith

hem,

ometimes cross hem.

produce

ew

sense,nonsense,

ndnuisance

y

combinationnd

variation,

nd

follow

he scent

of

a

quality

hrough

anddunes

f

information. ints

of

an

attributettach hemselveso

my

sensors

and

guide

me

past

he

rrelevant,

nto

he

company

f the

mportant;

or I

choose

o

browse

heunfamiliarnd

umble

hrough

olumes

andvolumes

f

knowledge

till

n

the

making.45

Can this thrillof constantly ravelingon into the unknown

networkof information

without a

centered

focus or

bounded

domainmakeus

critically

awareof how

abstract

he

matrixof

CyberCity

s and how

far from

reality

t lies?

The

relays

of

references,

he inversionof

ordersof

precedence,

he

endless

lists

and enumerationsof

texts all

present

the chaoticeffectsof

randomnessand

indeterminacy

enerating

neither

options

nor

choices.

Being constantly

on

the move

in

order o

escape

the

repressive

machines of

disciplinary

ocieties or

to

exploit

fully

the uncertain

voyages

of

complexities

in

societies

of

control

offers

us

no

foundation

on

which to

stand,

to

criticize,

o re-

member

the

past

and

plan

the

future.

The Rhetoricof

Indeterminacy

So

let us now

analyze

a text that

prompted

his entirediscus-

sion,

Brian

Boigon

and Sanford

Kwinter's

"Manual

or

5

Appli-

ances

in

the

Alphabetical

City:

A

Pedagogical

Text"

published

in

Assemblage

5.

Let us

ask,

What

can these

appliances

do?

Apparently,

he

Alphabetical

City

was a studio

room

in

an

architectural chool

open

around

he

clock,

an ideal

space

in

which,

to

quote

the

authors,

"every

ction

and intervention

...

must be recorded n

a

logbook

that

will

be

present

at all

times."This

studio was a "form

of

publishing,

ocial

ife,

bill-

board,

historical

inscription,

archive";

t

was a

happening,

a

situation,

a drift and

dcrive,

both

a

collective

memory

and

a

"diagram

f

every

leeting

moment."*

The

manual,

of

course,

is the

familiar ool

kit,

the ABC

instructional

book,

for con-

structing

he

Alphabetical

City.

But

far

from

being

radically

disruptive,

his

manual

actually

replicates

disciplinary

ontrol:

a

set of ordersand

commands

prescribed

n

military

ones

-

"you

are

required,"

we

will

be

ruthless

n

our

pedagogical

approach"

reveals

how

embedded

in

decision controls

the

images

of

CyberCity

can be.

The

mere reference o

"peda-

gogy"

as

opposed

to

"performance"

s sufficient to

implicate

these authors n

replicating

he deferential

position

of

student

to

teacher,

even

though they

disavow he

power

of

authority.47

Borrowing

rom

Le

Corbusier,

Boigon

and Kwinter

ransform

his

five

points

of

architecture nto the five

appliances

of

time,

screen,

sleep,

information,

and

site/domain.

Quite

clearly,

these

appliances

reflect

a shift from the Machine

City

of mod-

ernism to the

CyberCity

of

postmodernism,

where

theoretical

architecture,

he authors

note,

becomes

"diagrammatical

acts":radicalmachinesor

appliances

nternalizing

n abstract

mechanism

(a

computer

code or

program)

or

producing

in

unspecified

ways)

political

and social

change.

Memories

of

Le Corbusier's laim

of

"architecture

r

revolution"

simply

bounce

off

of their

text,

although

n

highly

ndeterminate

ways.

Of these radical

appliances,

however,

t

is

probably

"sleep"

hat will turn on itself

allowing

he blank

spaces

of

the

contemporary ity,

the

unknown

lag-time

sites outside

of

the

computer

mesh,

the dream

spaces

of

nightmares

and

re-

pressed

antasies o make

their

appearance

s

slips

of

meaning

and

translation.

Boigon

and

Kwinter

laim

that even

"if

the

contemporary

ity

has

undergone

a

partial

dismantling

of its

(traditional)

patial

unity

as

well

as a radical

deployment

of

what used to be

called

'time,'

this does

not

necessarily mply

that it

'expresses' ny

less

coherently

he

regime silently

working

within

it.... The

Alphabetical

City corresponds

ess to a

formed and

distinct

object

than to

a

specific

regime

of

power,

of

effects)

that

cur-

rently,

or

increasingly,

nhabits

the social

field."48

Now if we

understand he

mutations that

coincide

with

the

shift to

CyberCity,

hese

statements about

regimes

of

disciplinary

control

appear

o

be

misplaced,

or

exceedingly

nihilistic,

when

their social

fields are eft

indeterminate,

never discussedor

presented

with

any

specificity.

The

open-ended

networks

of

the AlphabeticalCityallownomadicthoughtto skidacross he

computer

matrix,

reversing

ierarchical

rderand

closed

repre-

sentationswherever t

may

range.

But

Boigon

and

Kwinter

never

question

who

might

controlthe

programming,

with

what

values,

or to what

ends,

and how

the monadcan be ma-

nipulated

at

his or

her

isolated

computer

terminal.

Nor do

they

ask

what is

being

represented

n the

imaginary

pace

of the

networkremoved

from the

public sphere.

For

their

narcotics

are

indeterminacy

nd

iterability

liding

criticismand

commit-

ment.

123



12/15

assemblage

18

Manifestly,

his manual

desires o

place

itself

among

the avant-

garde

of

architecture,

or

what does this

AlphabeticalCity

do

but

mimic

the

role of

avant-garde

exts

by

generating

more

discourse

around t? Look

at the

epitaph

of the demolished

Alphabetical

City:

it lasted one

thousand

eight

hours,

ts

analy-

sis filled

sixty-one

pages

of

logbook

and

a

ninety-two-page

document,

it

generated

a case of

arson,

several

acts of vandal-

ism,

an

article

n

Assemblage,

nd,

following

his

publicity

campaign,

I

would

add

perhaps

more studio

jobs

forthe two

writers,

his

paper,

some

gossip.

In

other

words,

ike a

good

avant-garde

workof

art it

generated

discourse

o be

distrib-

uted,

bought,

and consumed.

The

point being

that

archi-

tecture

in

the last

two decades

has become

an

important

dis-

cursiveevent

with

weekly,

f

not

daily,

coverage

n

the

print

media,

documentary

ilms on

television,

and

background

d-

vertisements

or

life-style

consumer

tems.

The value

of an

architectural

work

seems to

lie

in

its

ability

o

generate

a dis-

course

around

tself: t is the claim

that we

need

only

care for

our

project

until it has

been

photographed

because

at that

moment

it has been

inserted

nto the

endlesscirculation

of

cultural

signs.

Confusion

over

whether

a theoretical

discourse

is productiveorconstraining,iberatingorcontrolling,s one

of

the

ways

t sustains

tself.

Paul Mannhas

written

n The

Theory-Death

f

the Avant-Garde

hat

discourse

hrives n

negations,

evisions,

esyntheses

nd

resub-

limations:

more

extscan

be

produced,

ore

laims

andcounter-

claims,

more

hesesand

antitheses;

ast

researches

nd

polemics

sponsored

yjust

suchconfusions

s

these.

But

not orever:

his

nde-

terminate

ovement

f

alignments

nd

misalignments,

heuncer-

tainty

f both

Leftand

Right

about

he

proper

nd

plausible

ole

of

art,

s acted ut

n the

avant-garde

ntil

t is

only

theater,

nly

a

repre-

sentation,

nd

henceabsorbed

y

the

problematics

f

representation

as such.49

The avant-garde's ositionis anantiposition,a theoretical

discourse

constrained

o

relateto a dominant

discourse

hat it

rejects

but cannot

transcend.

ts role

is

to articulate

polarities:

between

innovation/tradition,

estruction/creation,

move-

ment/stability.5?

uturist

manifestos

were the

prototypical

antigesture,being

both

for and

against

he

metropolis,

break-

ing

the frameand

being

enframed.

Returning

o the text

of

"The

Alphabetical

City,"

we note

in

Boigon

and

Kwinter's

manifestothe

following:

"Hypothesis:

rchitecture

s the

name

of

a universal

ystem

of

oppression

of

what Foucault

called

the 'human

multiplicity,'

he undifferentiated

mass of human

flesh,

thought,

and

desire).

In

this

sense,

its domain is

the

social

and

psychological

ontrolof the

environment,

ncluding

images,

odors,weather,

sexual

practices,

antasies,

documents,

collective

representations

but

this also

suggests

a

guerrilla

architecture f subversion

nd

resistance).."'"

We do

not have to

go

very

arto know

that we arein the worst

of sciencefictions:

battling against

he

closed worldof

archi-

tecturalstudios,the purismsof highart,the regimesof domi-

nation

within the

disciplinary

paces

of the architectural

school.

As the

authors ells

us,

we must abandon

he architec-

tural

jury

hat

is the

"squadlike pectacle

of

the

review,"

with

its

"fascist-style

djudication echniques."52

n

another

antigesture

of radical

nversion,

"drawing

ecomes an

editing,

selecting,

or

sampling

process,

a

wreaking

havocwith the

pre-

existing,

overcoded,collective,

social

drawing."5'

nd,

of

course,

robotic

and

cynical

design

students

accept

that

there

is

no

returning

home,

no

private

nternal

space

of

retreat,

or

they

are

impelled

into the world

o

engage

with forces

that are

always

drawing

up

a social

diagram

or

messing

with

ours.54

They

havebecome

"itinerantwarriors

ontinually

on

the

move,"

"punkguerrillas"

eplete

with

computer

virusesand

jamming

mechanisms

admitted

"through

back channels"

o

subvertand eliminate.55

Architecture,

we are

told,

"mustbe seen

as a

collector,

servo-

mechanism,

or sensitive

screen,

monitoring

he results

of end-

less and

still-unnamed

xperiments."56

A

piece

of architecture

...

may

be defined

not

by

how it

appears

but

by

practices:

those that

it

partakes

f and

those that

take

place

within

it."57

Let me

deal

with the effects

of

these indeterminacies

hat

plague Boigon

andKwinter's

ext,

for

it is the

intent of

their

studio

to

open

architecture

o

adjacencies,

o

pollutants

and

impure

practices,

o affect

transformations

within the

institu-

tions of architectureand the city.

Far from

being

radically

ew,

however,

hese

are the

encoun-

ters

and

coadaptations

of

forms,

the

maps

and

diagrams

ug-

gested

by

Foucault,

or the

machine

phylum

of

Deleuze,

where

disconnected

elements

upon reaching

a critical

hreshold

are

expected

to

cooperate

o

produce

order

out of

chaos.

They

are

reminiscent

of

El

Lissitzky's

Proun

Room,

which he

believed

would

have a

profound

effect

on

architecture.

Lissitzky

defined

the

Proun

as "the station

where one

changes

from

painting

o

124



13/15

Boyer

architecture.""58

n

his

view,

the Prounenwere

experiments

n

architectural

design:

documents,

indices of the world o

come,

and theoreticalmodels for the

revolutionary eality

hat

needed to be built.9 Closer to

our

time,

these

assemblages

are

perhaps

reminiscentof the exhibitions

proposed

by

members

of

the

IndependentGroup

n

England

"Parallel f Life and

Art,"

organized

by

Peter

Smithson,

Alison

Smithson,

Eduardo

Paolozzi,

and

Nigel

Henderson

n

1953,

and

"Man,

Machine

and

Motion,"organizedby

RichardHamilton

in 1955

-

a

nonhierarchical

approach

o

imagery,mostlyphotographs,

hat

attempted

to

wring

a new

way

of

seeing things

out of unusual

juxtapositions.

As

Moholy-Nagy

noted

in

Vision in

Motion,

photomontage

of the 1920s wanted to set

up

a "concentrated

gymnastic

of the

eye

and brain o

speed up

the visual

digestion

and increase

he

range

of associative

relationships."60

These loose

arrangements

f associative

materials,

based

on

notions that

contiguities

breed

connections,

are also

prevalent

in

computer

networks hat model

cognitive

processes.6'

Since

computers

have been the

most

important

nstrument o en-

able a

new

cartography

o arise

n

weather

forecasting,

n

the

study

of

DNA,

in

the

mapping

of atomic surfacesand

sub-

atomic

particles,

and,

especially,

n

the visual

exploration

of

chaos

theory,

then

why

not

hope

this

juxtaposition

of masses

of visual nformationand

high-tech

appliances

will

produce

a

new

map

for the

city

and

architecture,

map

that

will

describe

nonrandom

order

suddenly

appearing

n

the midst of

seeming

disorder?But the

analogies

wear hin

-

for

arrays

f informa-

tion are not the same as

knowledge.

nformation s

merely

data,

devoid of an abstract

processing

rameworkhat can

make

comparisons,

draw

connections,

recognize

exemplars,

and know how to

accomplish,

o

perform,

certain

things.

The

science-fictionworld

of smart

computers

aking

over

executive

control

has

yet

to arriveat the architectural

chool.

And

this is

why,

in

the

end,

I

question

the

meaning

of the

Alphabetical

City:

its

open-ended

rhetoric

maskswhat it liter-

ally

means. Does it refer

o

Jean-Luc

Godard's1965

movie

Alphaville,

n

whicha

megalomaniacal

omputer,Alpha

60,

embodied the

triumph

of instrumental

reasoning

and

dehu-

manized

control

systems?

But this is

hardlyreality oday,

when

the

guerrilla

actics of

PC

hackerscan

easily

subvert

such

mainframecontrols.

Might

it refer nstead to

"Alphabyte

Cities,"

magistic

video elements that are

recombinedand

rearticulated

electronically

s

if

they

were etters

in

the

alpha-

bet? Or does it refer o the finite and fixed

alphabetical

ordering

hat eliminates

hierarchy

nd

significance

n the

ar-

rangement

of words

n

a

dictionary

or entries

n

an

encyclope-

dia?

Clearly,

he use of

"Alphabetical

City"

presents

a

paradox,

for has not Derrida

argued

hat

"alphabetic

writing.

. .

is

a

restrictivedefinition that ties the broad

range

of

marks,

patial

articulations,

estures,

and other

inscriptions

at work

n

human

culturestoo

closely

to the

representation

f

speech,

the

oral/

aural

word"?62

herefore,

have not

Boigon

and

Kwinter,

ar

from

liberating

us to achieve new

levels of

perception

and new

orders or the

city,

slotted us back into the

imposed

discourse

and

analysis mplied by

alphabetical

writing?

To return o the

analogies

hat

computer

matrices

imply,

I

am

remindedof

Stephen Tyler's

remark hat "the

matrixmakes

the

shape

that has

shaped

Western

thought

since

the

begin-

ning

of

writing."''6

e it

in

the

markof the cultivatoror

the

grid

of the

city

or the matrix hat

alphabetical

anguage

mplies,

it

is the

Western face

imposed

on

the land. Here we

might

also

note,

albeit

briefly,

another

paradox

hat

Boigon

and

Kwinter's

text

interjects:hey

have

transformed he

primary enerative

device of modernist

urbanism the

planimposed

on the land

-

into the

generative

body,

"a

manifold

endlessly

generating

structure

that

is,

desire)

on the

run."64

ndeed,

postmod-

ernism has seen an

entire

restructuring

f the

body/machine

relationship,

efiguring

he

subject

with

the advent of the

hybrid part

animal,

part

machine

cyborg

citizen

who

dwellsin a

postgendered

"technological

olis."65

We need

to read

Boigon

and

Kwinter's

inscription

and

the

entire

postmodern

discourseand

cultivationof the

"clean

body"

the imaginary real world of cybercities

Documents