The Digital City and the Visceral Brain
Symposium:
- ISEA98: Ninth International Symposium on Electronic Art
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More presentations from ISEA98:
Session Title:
- Bio-Architectures Virtual Cities: The Revolutionary Human-Machine Community
Presentation Title:
- The Digital City and the Visceral Brain
Presenter(s):
Abstract:
In the current phase of ‘revolutionary’ time characterized by technological progress and accelerated acculturation, the development of mediative digital technologies bifurcates the human biological past and it’s present cultured self. In Homo Sapiens, the primitive structure which was once in command, has now been relegated to the level of the ‘visceral brain’ — a condition which may cause extreme unease.
Using the work of the philosopher Jay Appleton, this presentation investigates a series of biological re-readings of architectural space. The modern city, with it’s oscillating dialogue of past and present forms, instructs our habits of environmental perception. Appleton suggests that these habitual patterns, whilst influenced by various cultural experiences, are not solely a procuct of these processes, but, they are vestiges of survival mechanisms which were once the dominant instinct. Together with aesthetic choices, these systems drive human instinct and influence behaviour in architectural spaces — a sensuous response to the digital city.
