Massumi Brian. Architectures of the Unforeseen: Essays in the Occurrent Arts

Minneapolis: University Of Minnesota Press, 2019. — 240 p. — ISBN-10: 1517905966; ISBN-13: 978-1517905965.Bringing the creative process of three contemporary artists into the conversation, Architectures of the Unforeseen stages an encounter between philosophy and art and design. Its gorgeous prose invites the reader to think along with Brian Massumi as he thoroughly embodies the work of these artists, walking the line that separates theory from art and providing equally nurturing sustenance for practicing artists and working philosophers.Based on Massumi’s lengthy — and in two cases decades-long — relationships with digital architect Greg Lynn, interactive media artist Rafael-Lozano Hemmer, and mixed-media installation creator Simryn Gill, Architectures of the Unforeseen delves into their processes of creating art. The book’s primary interest is in what motivates each artist’s practice — the generative knots that inspire creativity — and in how their pieces work to give off their unique effects. More than a series of profiles or critical pieces, Massumi’s essays are creative, developing new philosophical concepts and offering rigorous sentiments about art and creativity. Asking fundamental questions about nature, culture, and the emergence of the new, Architectures of the Unforeseen is important original research on artists that are pioneers in their field. Equally valuable to the everyday reader and those engaged in scholarly work, it is destined to become an important book not only for the fields of digital architecture, interactive media, and installation art but also more basically for our knowledge of art and creativity.Form Follows Force: Greg LynnEnter Process
Getting Topological
Gotta Love It
Force, Field, Nature–Culture
Multiply and Vary (Cloud and Blob)
Folding in Architecture
The Biomorphic Hypothesis
Toggling Potential
The Continuing Problem
The Body Topologic
Abstract Surface
The Architecture of Body-Events
Abstract Expressionism of the Body
Surfacing Design: Intricacy in Action
Body-Cursor
Recursive Filiation and Outside Alliance
Beyond the Blob Guy: The Composite Paradigm
A Final QuestionRelational Architecture: Rafael Lozano-HemmerStretching the BodyTechno-Solstice
Local–Global
Distancing the Body
The Amoebic Reality of Relation
City of Words
Material Quality of Thought
Infraphenomenal
A Promiscuity of Levels
Changeability
The Medium Is the Meiosis
Cultural Domain
Cultural Act
Culturability
Beyond Interactivity
Expressing RelationFloating the SocialThree’s a Crowd
Something like Language
Language to the Third Power
Sea of Noise, Crest of Words
Words upon Words
Constitutive Limits
Language: Caught in the Act
Sociability
The Social Death of the Personal
The Rise of the Quasi-Public
A Quasi-Directness of Expression
Sociability Giganticus
The Determination of a Quasi-Mind
CodaMaking to Place: Simryn GillThis Place?
Places of Stone
The Bad Citizen
Little Nothings
Just Nosing
Small Epiphanies
An Alibi
The Art of No Reason
A Procedure for Living
It’s Not “About”
Making to Place
Peeling a Room
Floating-Specific Art
Living beyond Biography
What Is Winning in Art?Concluding RemarksImmanence (Many Lives)Notes

Index