Cultural Concerns in Computational Architecture
Interesting article on Non-Standard Praxis.

The “Non-Standard” in Non-Standard Praxis refers ambiguously to Nonstandard Analysis in mathematics and to emerging computational approaches in architecture. Some of the phrases in titles of presentations at the conference include: performativity, topologies, virtual standardization, amorphous space, hyperbody research, immaterial limits, affective space, algorithmic flares, the digital surrational, the boundaries of an event-space interation, bi-directional design process, and voxel space.

(wonderfully pretentious crap, don’t you think?)

Praxis is a complex activity by which individuals create culture and society, and become critically conscious human beings. Praxis comprises a cycle of action-reflection-action which is central to liberatory education. Characteristics of praxis include self-determination (as opposed to coercion), intentionality (as opposed to reaction), creativity (as opposed to homogeneity), and rationality (as opposed to chance).

Voxel is a unit of volume corresponding to the smallest element depicted in a three-dimensional computed tomography (CT) image. For spiral CT, the size of this volume is determined by the design of the instrument and the instrument settings. For the latest scanners, the voxel size can be 0.3 mm 0.3 mm 0.6 mm, yielding a volume of 0.054 mm 3.

Performative utterances are speech acts which perform the action the sentence describes. For example: * “I promise to be there.”* “I order you to desist!”* “I now pronounce you husband and wife.”* “I challenge you to cite a precedent.”* “I accept your offer.”* “I deny that accusation.”

Surrational as far as I can figure is an art movement that I don’t quite get. It seems to refer to sur – super – rational, or super rational. I like the word, but it may be one of those words that is full of potential but ultimately empty of useful meaning.

So there you go! Four new words in one paragraph. Performative and Surrational were thrown into the mix, I believe, for no other reason than to flout vocabulary because they are without real content in the context. Still, they are neat words and add to the ponderous weight of the description.

I just love pretentious crap.