"Proponents of Actor Network Theory (ANT) such as John Law (2002) and geographers such as Nigel Thrift (1996) have long argued that there are two basic approaches to space. One sees space as a container pre-existing the entities within it, and can be recognised as the projection familiar to Euclid, Descartes and what - for lack of a better word - could be termed as "the common sense opinion". Space here plays the role of a referential context - each entity within it is a priori defined byits reference to the spatial context - serving as an absolute determinant of the relations performed within. In other words,space is viewed as always primary to any relations that might be observed. The second approach in turn, sees space as a performative effect of the relations between entities... the relational attachments between entities perform the space, not vice versa. While the first projection sees space as a static referential context, the second sees space as a dynamic relational effect." Teodor Mitew
relational effects
database logic and landscape art
"For Delanda and before him Deleuze, virtuality is not merely a contemporary artifact of computation, but rather identifies the proximity of concrete attractors, realities which attract the actualization of systems, and which for Delanda replaces essences in philosophy. It is specifically because the virtual is real (or more real than real) that it can be explored computationally, where for example Plato's ideal forms simply can not be computed. In other words, virtuality implies a relationship to the actualization of systems in concrete terms, not transcendental terms." Brett Stalbaum
locative situations
"During the last museum night in Amsterdam the Amsterdam architecture institute Arcam decided to have an evening about the situationists. Apparently the Dutch situationist Constant had (co-)written a pamphlet fifty years earlier about his ideal city. The pamphet, it was revealed, could just as easily be interpreted as a joke instead of as an actual serious statement. Those silly situationists, always up to mischief." tijmen