dcg
conversations initiated in/by/for the forum of the design computation group at MIT
participants:
  • aarpak
  • Moa Carlsson
  • Filipe Coutinho Quaresma
  • fad
  • Dina
  • Onur Yuce Gun
  • sarah hovsepian
  • Josh Ingram
  • Moritz Kassner
  • duks
  • Carl Lostritto
  • Vernelle Noel
  • mine
  • Athina Papadopoulou
  • Will Patera
  • Daniel Rosenberg
  • Woong Ki
  • Theodora Vardouli
  • Thomas Wortmann
  • Cagri Zaman
  • Katia Zolotovsky
    • archive
    alumni
    read dcg

    read dcg, spring 2013: Tuesdays 5pm room 9-255
    Announcing Spring 2013 Read DCG
    01/25/2013
    Selected by
    Bring texts that have influenced, intrigued, inspired or annoyed you and prepare for an open-ended 2-hour discussion that will make you see them with (many) new eyes! The Computation Reading Seminar (Read DCG) is a student initiated reading group which aims ...
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    The Computer and the Brain, by John Von Neumann
    02/08/2013
    Selected by
    This Tuesday we will discuss short selections from John Von Neumann's seminal 1954 book "The Computer and the Brain." As philosophers of mind Paul and Patricia Churchland describe in the Foreword: What John von Neumann attempted to provide in his ...
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    Haptic Perception, by Robert Jütte and What Might Cognition Be, If Not Computation?, by Timothy van Gelder
    02/26/2013
    Selected by
    The next readings for the DCG  follow up on the conversation from last week, 'What is computation?' The first article discusses the modeling of cognition, computationally and by other methods as a comparison.  We decided that this article could be ...
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    Language [...] spatial representation, by Ray Jackendoff and Perception in Action, by Giulio Giorello and Corrado Sinigaglia
    03/02/2013
    Selected by
    Athina and I have selected two papers for the next reading group. We believe they are both contrasting and complementing each other in various ways in context of space representation and perception. The first ...
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    Thing Theory, by Bill Brown and Experiences of Artifacts, by Edith Ackermann
    03/09/2013
    Selected by
    This week, the proposed reading is Bill Brown's "Thing Theory" (2001) which has been an influential text especially in material culture studies. Bringing back our attentions to things rather than ideas and subjects, it provokes us to consider, for ...
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    “Overview of the History of Visual Theory” in “Laws of Seeing” by Wolfgang Metzger
    03/16/2013
    Selected by
    Wolfgang Metzger (1899 - 1979) is considered one of the main representatives of Gestalt psychology (Gestalt theory) in Germany*. Written in 1936 and translated to English in 2006 Laws of Seeing remains aktuell as it covers subjects that are equally important (and ...
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    The Expressiveness of the Body, by Shigehisa Kuriyama
    04/02/2013
    Selected by
    In this Tuesday's ReaDCG session we will be discussing the third chapter of Shigehisa Kuriyama's "The Expressiveness of the Body and the Divergence of Greek and Chinese Medicine." In this chapter, entitled "Styles of Seeing," Kuriyama discusses Greek and Chinese ...
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    How We Think, by Kathleen Hayles
    04/09/2013
    Selected by
    This Tuesday we will be discussing a chapter from "How We Think: Digital Media and Contemporary Technogenesis"  by Kathleen Hayles. Hayles interrogates the meaning and practices of the emerging field of digital humanities. You can find an online summary of the ...
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    The Eyes of the Skin, by Juhani Pallasmaa & other readings
    04/14/2013
    Selected by
    This week's reading, by popular demand from the DCG Reading Group, is Juhani Pallasmaa's The Eyes of the Skin.  We will read  the 'Introduction:  Touching the World ' ...
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    read dcg, fall 2012: Tuesdays 5pm room 9-255
    Announcing Fall 2012 Read DCG
    08/31/2012
    Selected by
    Dear DCG, It is my great pleasure to announce the Fall 2012 Computation Reading Seminar (Read DCG).   Intentions: What it is Read DCG started last Fall as a collective space for reading and discussing important texts in the trajectories of its participants' ...
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    Digital Culture in Architecture – Antoine Picon
    09/10/2012
    Selected by
      This week we will read the third chapter: “Experiments in Form and Performance” from Antoine Picon’s book “Digital Culture in Architecture”. Introduction, conclusion and the index are included for your reference. Picon’s book objectively covers the subject matter its ...
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    Space Reader: Heterogeneous Space in Architecture
    09/23/2012
    Selected by
    After discussing the categories through which Antoine Picon started setting up a (history of the) digital culture in architecture, we will continue with an excerpt from "Space Reader: Heterogeneous Space in Architecture,"edited by Michael Hensel, Christopher Hight and Achim ...
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    Climate of Oppression – Noam Andrews
    09/27/2012
    Selected by
      As a follow-up to last week's reading from Space Reader, we will read "Climate of Oppression" by Noam Andrews. Some excerpt from Climate of Oppression speak for what the text is about: "Far from being self-critical, Space Reader is a ...
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    Indirect Language and the Voices of Silence
    10/07/2012
    Selected by
    Last week we discussed Noam Andrews' astute critique to the Space Reader, coupled with Paul Crowther's September 28 lecture. The themes of structure, language, experience and subjectivity that were brought up in conversation directed our attention to a ...
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    The Meaning of the Body VS The Body as Expression and Speech
    10/22/2012
    Selected by
    This week we will be reading two short similar but quite different texts. The first reading is a chapter from Mark Johnson's book The Meaning of the Body (2008) entitled "Since Feeling Came First" Emotional Dimensions of Meaning. ...
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    A Natural Model for Architecture and The Computational Fallacy
    10/30/2012
    Selected by
    In this week's Reading Group we will discuss two texts: John Frazer's A Natural Model for Architecture (1995)  and Sanford Kwinter's The Computational Fallacy (2003). I quote here excerpts from the editors', Achim Menges and Sean Ahlquist, introduction in the AD reader: Computational ...
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    The Picturesque; the Analytic and the Digital; Arguing for Elegance
    11/01/2012
    Selected by
    For this week's reading group I have selected the following 3 texts on the topic of the Picturesque in relation to two other aesthetic ideals: the beautiful and the sublime. I find all these texts very entertaining reads, but ...
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    Objectivity
    11/10/2012
    Selected by
    In this week's Read DCG we will continue the fascinating discussion on the Pictureque, the Analytic and the Digital that Moa initiated last week, and extend it with the prologue and the first chapter from Lorraine Daston's and Peter ...
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    Drawing: The Motive Force of Architecture
    11/24/2012
    Selected by
      Drawing is the motive force of architecture. This is how Peter Cook manifests the role of drawing on the cover of his book from 2008. Cook traces the evolving techniques and transforming meaning of drawing via a rich ...
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    read dcg, spring 2012: Mondays 5pm room 9-255
    The Media Lab: Inventing the Future at MIT
    02/06/2012
    Selected by
    This is a reminder about the first Spring 2012 Read DCG meeting at 5PM this Monday, February 13th in room 9-255. The first reading comprises three chapters from a book which exposes the role of MIT (and especially the Media Lab) in the shifting of the computational metaphor to visions of personalization, democratization and ...
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    Line, Mark, Linear Codes and Touch
    02/18/2012
    primacy of drawing cover
    Selected by
    This reading is chapter 4 out of the large text, The Primacy of Drawing, By Deanna Petherbridge, who was a speaker at the "Is Drawing Dead?" symposium @ yale last week. She is ...
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    Temple island and other drawings
    03/03/2012
    Selected by
    This week we will continue or extend last week's discussion on drawing by inviting each Read DCG member to bring a book of architectural drawings (or even a single drawing) to share and discuss with the group.  Perhaps ...
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    Course in General Linguistics
    03/03/2012
    Selected by
    This week we will shift gears to discuss an excerpt from perhaps one of the most influential texts in the western intellectual history of the past century:  Ferdinand de Saussure's Course in general linguistics. The ...
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    The art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century
    03/13/2012
    Selected by
    For next week’s discussion, we will be reading the second chapter[*] from Svetlana Alpers’ book, ‘The art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century’. Alpers compares the ‘descriptive’ Dutch art and its vision of the world to the ...
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    Techniques of the Observer: On Vision and Modernity in the Nineteenth Century
    03/23/2012
    Selected by
    This week we will be reading the first three chapters from Jonathan Crary's text Techniques of the Observer (MIT Press 1990). Given the length of the three chapters, I have also selected ...
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    Visual Thinking [Arnheim]
    04/20/2012
    Selected by
    Following Mark Johnson’s notes about Arnheim in his book “The meaning of the Body”, we will be looking into Arnheim’s ideas about visual perception as a mode of thinking. Two chapters from Arnheim’s “Visual Thinking” [chapter 2: The intelligence ...
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    Graphical Conversation Theory
    05/12/2012
    Selected by
    This week we will discuss the "Introduction," "Interaction," and "Mediation" chapters from the Architecture Machine Group's proposal to the National Science Foundation entitled: "Graphical Conversation Theory: Computer Mediated Inter-personal and Intra-personal Communication." (1976) The ...
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    The Meaning of the Body
    05/12/2012
    Selected by
    The Meaning of the Body Aesthetics of Human Understanding by Mark Johnson (he wrote 'Metaphors we Live By' with Lakoff). This one is more an embodied approach to experience, cognition and perception: the mind and the body ...
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    Brunelleschi, Lacan, Le Corbusier
    05/12/2012
    Selected by
    Lorens Holm's book Brunelleshi, Lacan, Le Corbusier: architecture, space and the construction of subjectivity is a book which runs through discussions of vision and  psyche. (It strikes me though that the book starts with this: "Where to begin? How to ...
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    read dcg, fall 2011 archive
    Week 2: Judgement Against Objectivity
    09/12/2011
    Selected by
    A chapter from: Jones, Caroline and Galison, Peter. Picturing Science; Producing Art. Routledge, New York. 1998. pp. 329-359. The chapter is titled, "Judgement Against Objectivity"
    Week 3: Technological Materiality: Beyond the Dualist Paradigm
    09/19/2011
    Selected by
    by Susanne Kuchler
    Week 4: Autopoesis, Structural Coupling and Cognition
    09/26/2011
    Selected by
    By Humberto Maturana Romesin. Cybernetics & Human Knowling, Vol. 9, No 3-4, 2002, pp. 5-34.
    Week 5: The Expressive Object
    10/20/2011
    Selected by
    The reading for this week is By John Dewey. Chapter 5 in Art as Experience.(download pdf). I'm also uploading an earlier chapter, "Having an Experience," which, if you're interested, is a good conceptual bridge ...
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    Week 6: Experiences of Artifacts
    10/27/2011
    Key Works in Radical Constructivism Cover
    Selected by
    EXPERIENCES OF ARTIFACTS: People’s Appropriations / Objects’ ‘Affordances’ by Edith K. Ackerman, published in Key Works in Radical Constructivism by Ernst von Glasersfeld, 2009
    Week 7: Technics and…
    11/03/2011
    Selected by
    A selection of Mumford ("greatest hits", if you will). 1. "The Monastery and the Clock", inTechnics and Civilization, 1934, pp 12-18. It is a great book and many ways still feels current and full of energy. I would suggest that this is a book that should be in ...
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    Week 8: Space of Utopia
    11/11/2011
    Selected by
    For this week's Read DCG instead of structuring the discussion around the selected readings, we will use them as entry points to the vast theme of the Space of Utopia. Group participants will propose a ...
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    Week 9: We have never been Modern
    11/27/2011
    Selected by
    Week 10: The Autopoiesis of Architecture (Vol. 1)
    12/06/2011
    Autopoesis Cover
    Selected by
    The 4 main sections for our discussion next week are following: Architecture as autopoietic system - operations, structures and processes: 3.4 The lead-distinction within architecture and the design disciplines (page 204) 3.5 The codification of architecture (page 215) The societal function of architecture: 5.1 ...
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