Moderator: Ferda Kolatan (University of Pennsylvania, PA)
Participants: Graham Harman (American University, Cairo), Jason Payne (UCLA, CA), Rhett Russo (NJIT, NJ), David Ruy (Pratt Institute, NY)
23 November 2012, 16.00-18.30
Venue: Istanbul Modern

Over the past two decades the “digital revolution” has transformed our cultural landscape on a global scale. Following a century of modernist agendas dominated by mechanization and globalization, the advent of computation held the promise of a different ethic, one that favors specificity, authenticity, and individual expression over modes of standardization and efficiency. However, today we see this promiseseverely compromised by an even more rapid trend to homogenize design expression into a disembodied universal brand. This often results in “spectacular” designs that are accessible only to a small group of design aficionados while leaving most others feeling uprooted and culturally alienated. This sense of loss is further aggravated by the still prevalent postmodernist emphasis on relationalism and language, which defines all things through their ties to other things and through translations rather than through a real, material identity. In opposition to this tendency a powerful alternative has been emerging in recent years in the work of a small group of thinkers and architects who look to define their work based on materiality, digital craft, and ambient effects. The panelists, who are leaders in their respective fields of philosophy and speculative architecture, will show their work and discuss the potentialities of this new paradigm, as it refers to our current cultural situation.