| Title |
Media Architecture and Data Environment from the Perspective of Karen Barad’s Agential Realism |
| DOI |
https://doi.org/10.5659/JAIK.2023.39.1.137 |
| Keywords |
Media Architecture; Data Environment; Karen Barad; Agential Realism; New Materialism |
| Abstract |
Media Architecture is an architectural phenomenon that reached a level of maturity roughly between 2000 and mid-2010s. It demonstrated
multifarious ways of mediating disparate realms in data-driven environments by architectural materiality. This study casts new light on three
examples of Media Architecture from the perspective of New Materialism, in particular, Karen Barad’s Agential Realism. The stakes are on
asking how architecture can articulate and spatialize itself through relational materiality in a generic data environment. The analyses evolve
around Barad’s agential realist concepts of measurement, apparatus, agential cut, mattering, intra-action, and phenomena. The architectural
examples include Tower of Winds from 1986, Blur Building from 2002, and D-Tower from 2003. In each example, various modes and scales
of how architecture can (re)configure and produce reality as part of the phenomenon that it measures are explored. Lastly, I discuss the role
of architecture in the data age in terms of Baradian agency and ongoing historicity and propose what ‘Posthumanist Architecture’ might be
about as future research. |