PRECIS #14, Columbia GSAPP publication, 1997

Questions for an Ethics of Material Intelligence

Ed Keller

...simultaneously, the gelatinous geysers are converted into mobile columns that
proceed to extrude tendrils that reach out in clusters towards points rigorously
predetermined by the overall dynamics of the entire structure: they call to mind gills of
an embryo, except that they are revolving at fantastic speed and ooze trickles of pinkish
'blood' and a dark green secretion . . . It would only be natural, clearly, to suppose that
the symmetriad is a 'computer' of the living ocean, performing calculations for a purpose
that we are not able to grasp . . . The hypothesis was a tempting one, but it proved
impossible to sustain the concept that the living ocean examined problems of matter,
the cosmos and existence through the medium of titanic eruptions, in which every
particle had an indispensable function as a controlled element in an analytical system of
infinite purity ... 1
Stanislaw Lem, Solaris

In this quote from Lem's novel Solaris, (filmed by Tarkovsky in 1972), we are invited to
speculate about a form of 'intelligent' matter. Although it is never explicitly stated, an
easy isomorphism takes this description from the realm of 'fiction' to the 'reality' of our
own world, at varying and multiplicitous scales. Suggested in Solaris is an abstract and
intelligent matter which could more accurately model the percolation of culture and
awareness, at their various rates. This model has an investment in the exposition of a
system tending towards the intensive investigation, or the use of intelligent matter. One
might initially discover this matter in highly virtualized systems (for instance, filmic) or
systems which rely upon more concrete manifestations (architectural) which index the
crossing of multiple forces (socioeconomic, passional, political, etc.).

The world Lem gives us in Solaris provides a model of the very real processes that
matter carries out upon/through itself, and suggests that there is little difference in kind
(to borrow a phrase from Bergson and Deleuze) between the representation of a
building and its manifestation as a built artifact--simply a difference in degree. This
difference can be articulated by considering speeds and intensities of performance
organized by the artifact itself. To make a provisional start it seems useful to consider
within the ontological schema Lem provides these following categories: formal,
programmatic and enunciative maneuvers.

In thinking through material intelligence in terms of gradients of intensity, the point I am
extracting from Solaris should be seen simply as follows. Each of the three categories,
formal, programmatic and enunciative, achieve part of their effect through reiteration in
concrete matter (hard copy: architecture, solid tech, and so on) and part in a fast, soft
reiteration (language, program/event, use values, styles, economies, political structures.
the internet, music . . .). A key concern of this essay, however, is to propose the erasure
of many of the boundaries between architecture and other disciplines (film, for example)
as they fall into the extended spectrum of culture and techniques of subjectivity.
Questions for an Ethics of Material Intelligence
Ed Keller, 1997

To develop a context, one could look to Darcy Thompson (or Mies, for that matter) and
say that forms index a complex set of forces that produce the forms themselves, which
then reciprocally influence the tendencies of the forces over time. In our example from
Solaris, the forms (arguably) index the thought processes of a godlike entity-- the planet
itself, a vast material computer. In the example of urban growth, forms likewise index
the percolation of intersecting economic, sociocultural, and political forces, some of
which are consciously manipulated by the individual(s) responsible for them, while
others silently propagate through the modes of reproduction and desire engendered. In
the abstract model suggested by Lem, we can extract a collapse of techniques of
representation and reproduction. Within such a model these different speeds locate
themselves as indexes of varying degrees of soft and hard culture. As well, the criteria
used to distinguish 'form' from 'program' and 'enunciative content' becomes more
intelligent and demonstrates the shifting overlap between these three categories. The
value here lies in comprehensively articulating a new set of criteria, which would
ultimately insist on a more fluid boundary between that which has been defined as form
(up to now) and that which has been defined as flow. 2

The moment is a complex situation, in which multiple orientations and diverse polarities
are placed side by side, meet and collide, and in the midst of this interaction ruptures
occur that are called events. We thus come to the idea of multiple temporalities--of a
layered temporality, in which each domain, each level of historical reality advances
according to its own rhythm, largely independent of the rhythm of other domains. 'We
may in this wise be led to observe a sort of mobile structure of time that displays, in
accordance with the diversity of movement, many different kinds of relationships. 3

Molino's model does not preclude the necessity for establishing a differentiation
between the concrete and the virtual, due to the fact that they carry out different kinds of
cultural production. This effective analysis demands the isolation of specific techniques
and the identification of the 'organs' (formal, programmatic, enunciative) upon/through
which they act.

The briefest suggestion of several types of engagement in a few disciplines should
serve to highlight the ways these techniques might work. Let us consider architectural,
filmic, and narrative structures, in relation to each other, and in terms of the way they
work-- removed from any intention of the 'authors,' as that would complicate the inquiry
dramatically.

One obvious area of concern in architecture, topically at least, would focus on the point
of collapse of actual construction techniques and systems onto digital systems of
representation. I am thinking here of Greg Lynn's practice, or Frank Gehry's. 4 However
significant the impact of these offices, in regards to actual construction, it is more
important to recognize their effective realms in terms of the way they affect larger fields
of culture (and index them) beyond the obvious direct relationship between systems of
representation and reproduction. In Lynn's case, his practice foregrounds time as a
primary factor in generating and evaluating the performance of architecture, thus
Questions for an Ethics of Material Intelligence
Ed Keller, 1997
redefining the premises of 'form.' This redefinition is achieved both through the
computer based process of design (using animation and simulations of spatio temporal
forces), and in the ultimate recognize ability and use ability of the building as a highly
complex artifact at the local and city scale. To use his term, 'the building would be both
formally and programatically aneidetic.' 5 This redefinition, recited through current
projects in construction, such as the Korean Church, thus encompasses both a radical
reconfiguration of an internal modality of practice, and an invention of new capacities for
architectural form.

As an example at a more local scale of the body, Mark Rakatansky's Adult Day Center
modulates program and thus the attention of the residents at the Center by modifying a
banal and recognizable device, the handrail. This modification accumulates alternative
programs which might not usually be found in continuous sequence with one another.
The devices 'grafted' onto the handrail include seating, picture holders, cameras,
clothing racks and so on. In this example, the variations on formal configuration invoke
alternative organizations of the individual by virtue of their socially recognizable 'use
value.' 6

In David Lynch's recent film "The Lost Highway," the drastically fragmented narrative
structure finds one character literally replacing another halfway through the film. After
this total transference one never really learns what happened to the first iteration of the
character. Pellegrino D'acierno might characterize this structure as a strange loop in the
film's continuity which dramatically upsets us as viewers, thus placing us in an
anamorphic position in regard to the 'narrative' structure of the film. On a more local
scale within the film, camera techniques such as a highly mobile and asymmetrical
placement of camera POV (moving from knee level, progressively to ceiling level, in the
first half of the film), blurring of image, and switches between video and film footage
work to establish our POV in a skewed location-- sometimes within the main character's
viewpoint, sometimes outside it- -in the service of furthering a radical dislocation of the
viewer's sense of continuity in the structure and flow of time itself. The program of self
as viewer which a Hollywood narrative structure would establish using 'conventional'
techniques of shot return shot etc., is thus disturbed by these camera techniques and
blurs of the cinematic norm. The disturbance goes hand in hand with the larger strategic
device of a broken moebius structure in the film's narrative.

In these necessarily snapshot examples, a tenuous link is established between the
manner the work works 7 and the collapse of formal, enunciative and programmatic
sequence onto one another. Again, to clarify this proposal it is crucial to reiterate that
these devices work, to produce variations of subjectivity. 8

In developing the idea of material intelligence, I have identified ways that material
intelligence might occur and be a motive force in tactics of architecture and cinema.
This development hints at a redefinition of material and intelligence in terms of a less
anthropomorphized will-- an alternative teleology. Any ethical issues might seem
tangential at best to this inquiry up to this point. However, beyond the direct
ramifications upon the user of the computer, for instance in representation become
Questions for an Ethics of Material Intelligence
Ed Keller, 1997
reproduction,9 are the more profound echoes which spread out from a questioning of
will and intention in the context of larger systems. These systems have a tendency unto
themselves, yet do not manifest what we might define as a will (economic, cultural,
manufacturing and so forth). There could be a return to Deleuze's reading of Spinoza's
Ethics here, in search of conditions-- culturally, formally, programatically-- which would
foster a critical will.10 The proposal I make then, suggests a reconsideration of matter,
time and will within the framework of the kind of material intelligence I have examined
above would lead to not only a different conceptual framework for describing the world,
but would also foster the production of what Spinoza calls 'active affections'. This mode
of production of active affections directly engages ethical concerns, and evades some of
the tendencies towards destruction or stasis which other systems of thought cannot
escape. We then expect these models of 'intelligent' behavior to result in a radical
redefinition of intelligence and material, expanding to encompass ethics in as much as
such a redefinition of intelligence (hence will) and material (in terms of systems and
time) might 'emerge' with an alternative criteria for action. 11

This text is a condensation and improvisation based on themes developed in 'Savage
Practices,' and other texts written over the past three years. Jesse Reiser, Sanford
Kwinter, Jason Payne, Sean Daly, John Knesl, and especially Greg Lynn have given
feedback and had significant impact influencing the course of these thoughts, for which I
am grateful.


Notes
1. Lem, Stanislaw, Solaris, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, San Diego 1970 pp. 118--9.
2. Important examples from recent architectural and theoretical work might include OMA's .Yokohama
projects, or Sanford Kwinter's reading of Boccioni's work in his essay 'Landscapes of Change' , in
Assemblage 19 3 pp. 15--6, Jean Molino.
3. Introduction to Focillon's The Life of Forms in Art, Zone Books, 1989.
4. In Greg's case as his office is currently constructing a large project which, in collaboration with Michael
Macinturf and Doug Garofolo, has designed a church using Alias/Wavefront to breed forms sensitive to
forces on the site in Long Island City. In Gehry's case as the translation process from maquette to built
form is accomplished relatively seamlessly through digitization and computer controlled construction
techniques.
5. cf. Greg's text 'Probable Geometries' in Any 0. I would say, in this case, that the building not only looks
like it does something; it also does something. As Lynn has argued, this position would be critically
different from Venturi's notion of appearance, which is grounded almost purely in legibility and only relies
on capacities discovered within interpretation, not within program or abstract form.
6. cf. Rakatansky's text in Assemblage 19, and specifically his use of the term 'trope' to describe the
techniques employed.
7. This turn of phrase originates with Andrew Benjamin, and is used by him to describe 'timing' as an
inherent process in abstract expressionist painting.
8. A project related to the one this essay suggests may be found in DeCerteau's The Practice of Evade
Life, where the collapse of representational flows of narrative onto more concrete cultural fields is
beautifully examined. cf. especially the 'Spatial Stories' chapter.
9. Which Greg Lynn has identified clearly in his essay 'Form and Field,' Anywise Conference notes, Any
Corporation, 1996. 10. Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza, Deleuze, Gilles, Zone Books NYC, 1992
cf. pp. 217--234.
11. I use 'emerge' here as a verb. For a development of this argument in more detail, cf. my lecture/text
'Savage Practices,' published in basilisk issue #2, at http://www.basilisk.com; NB: one example of a
critical system which falls into destruction would be Bataille's.
Questions for an Ethics of Material Intelligence
Ed Keller, 1997