The Artificial Reality

Paradox: a seemingly absurd or contradictory statement or proposition which when investigated may prove to be well founded or true.

Oxymoron: a figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction. Literary oxymorons are crafted to reveal a paradox.

After initially being interested in technology, it’s effect on human behaviour and the future of human behaviour, as a basis for my thesis project, I have undertaken a Primer project where I have been learning to program using Processing computer language.

I have been looking at Ray Kurzweil and his theory of Technological Singularity, in his book ‘The Age of Spiritual Machines’, I accidently on purpose came across an abstract from an episode of The Twilight Zone. An abstract that highlights the paradoxes in human behaviours; it’s human nature to want to solve problems, but it also human nature to not want all problems solved, we are essentially more attracted to the problems than the solutions. I think we need to consider whether technology is creating solutions for us too quickly or according to Burnham is it forming a realistic fantasy of creating more questions, he states ‘I recently heard an astronomer mention in a talk that we know approximately what 3 percent of the universe is, what it consists of. Just a few years ago that number was 5 percent’.

M.C. Escher, 1953

It is obviously no secret that as a young architect, problem solving provides the most fun for me.

It is this human paradox that has led me to the main idea behind my primer project. Taking the oxymoron (which can be crafted to reveal a paradox) and re-writing The Twilight Zone abstract to be a paradox filled with genuine imitations of paradoxes or the oxymoron, I want to make a visual comparison between the original and adapted version of the texts.

So thinking out loud, I imagine the point at which the texts are different, where the oxymoron has been added, to be highlighted visually, like a nodal point, similar to the image below; these nodal points can then be moved around the page, i.e. to another nodal point, where it will take that position in the text, as a permanent substitute. To then produce an obscure overall text that will be presented as an initial conclusion.

The outcome will be individual but synchronized animations that are interactive. The user unconsciously manipulates the text, by knowingly moving a visual representation; the new text will then be represented to the user at the end.

My presentation is highlighting this world of paradox. I am essentially giving people a problem to solve, whilst never allowing a rational solution.

So in a preliminary conclusion, maybe my project hasn’t been made completely clear throughout this blog, this explicit ambiguity, is part of the ‘problem’ that is so intriguing for me to solve, maybe the extraordinary element is that I may never have a solution; the consistently inconsistent lucidity.