AMORPHOGENESIS – Metagaming

Antiplatonic Cave – Zarathustrian Cave / Anaximandrian Cave

by Jaime del Val – Reverso/Metabody

  • installations
  • performances
  • street interventions and metagame
  • metaformance – one to one immersive experiences
  • digital prints, photography and film
  • movement/interaction design technique
  • theraphy
  • workshops

Amorphogenesis is an instrument and installation for digital interactive/intra-active architecture in which the movement of bodies transforms amorphous digital meshes in neverending emergence. Amorphogensis is also a philosophical concept by Jaime del Val that points to an account of movement as not subjected to form nor poiting to it. The ongoing emergence of the amorphous is thus a new perceptual condition. The spaces generated in Amorphogenesis are not cartesian spaces that one can navigate, they are not a res extensa. They are intensive spaces hat emerge with the movement. The architectures are part of an expanded metabody of the intra-acting body. The subject interacting is not in control of the meshes, no manual correlation is established. There is no representation of known spaces. Rather, there is a process of decentralized co-constitution in which perception itself is emerging: a metaformance, in which the interactor experiences the emergence of new kinds of perception, space-time, movement and ecological relation with an environment which is not preformed, nor subjected in its emergence to optimisation strategies: a machine for opening up perception to indeterminacy, an antiplatonic cave, a Zarathustrian-Anaximandrian cave in which there is no realm of representation. A world of becoming.

Amorphogenesis is a metagaming project in which amorphous digital architectures and spatialised electronic sound are further deformed through sensors disseminated on the body.  Metagaming design avoids manual control, representation of Cartesian spaces, or simulation of anthropomorphic avatars, and develops non linear correlations between the movements of the intra-actor and the deformations of the architecture. Like in Flexinamics, it’s about creating a non Cartesian architecture that emerges with the movement, a non linear space that is never actualising in an extensive space, never available to navigate.

One is never in control of the space, rather the intra-actor’s sensations emerge in the process, as the body explores subtle and alien changes in tilting and acceleration, which expand proprioception into the digital meshes. Your micro-torsion of an arm and shoulder suddenly connects in alien manners with the torsion of the architecture, which could also be an alien creature, an abstract or amorphous avatar. Metagaming thus subverts and inverts the aesthetics of simulation and control, based on manual control, Cartesian spaces, anthropomorphic avatars and linear relations. In Amorphogenesis the digital architectures are an extension of the body´s proprioception as much as the body is an extension of the architectures.

The architectures are projected on the mobile and translucent Flexinamic structures, either indoors or outdoors, thus becoming a nomadic environment which dialogues with other spaces while constituting itself a relational field. The more varied the movements the richer the environment, thus expanding Disalignments as anti-choreographic improvisational practice, to the digital architectures and sound. Amorphogenesis is also a philosophical concept that signifies the ongoing emergence of the amorphous which never actualizes in a form, and connects to another concept and project focusing on undoing anatomy and form: microsexes.

METAGAMING WORKSHOP MODULE:  ANTI-SMART INTRA-ACTION DESIGN

The workshop proposes ways of involving the indeterminacy and ambiguity of full body motion in the design of inter/intra-active architectures and environments, avoiding a reductive aesthetics of control. This will be done amongst others by disseminating sensors in the body that have no external Cartesian reference, rather focusing on proprioception and avoiding manual control, and by designing non Cartesian amorphous digital architectures that relate to gesture in non-linear ways, as abstract avatars. By tweaking some aspects of gaming and simulation culture a shift is proposed from smart ecologies of control to ecologies that foreground the constitutive indeterminacy of full body motion as irreducible richness. The proposal thus mobilises a rich multisensory spectrum and is in direct opposition to smart ecologies that operate by reducing sensory experience to fixed points of vision and manual control, an algorithmic reduction that was first enacted with Renaissance perspective. By decentering the controlling subject a shift is proposed from interaction to intra-action, where the intra-actor’s multisensory experience and the space co-emerge in the process, rather than having subject, experience and space already established in advance.

Conception, visuals and sound: Jaime del Val
Physical Structure: Jaime del Val and Cristian Garcia
Projection system: Dieter Vandoren
Computer Programming: Dieter vandoren
Digital meshes: Jia Rey Chang
Reverso in collaboration with Hyperbody – TUDelft

Tests June 2014 in Delft
Presentation July 2014 Madrid
Amorphogenesis/microsexes in Montreal at Concordia University IMF 2015
Amorphogenesis in Montreal at Concordia University IMF 2015
Amorphogenesis tests in Montreal at Concordia University IMF 2015