Circuito de Auscultación Hidrigráfica
Liga Espacion para la Arquitectura
Cuidad de México, 2019
1
Proyecto ganador de la convocatoria abierta Máquinas Imaginantes en Liga_Espacio
2
En colaboración con agentes provenientes de la arquitectura (Roberto Michelsen Engell), letras (Iñigo Malvido Escobedo), cine (Francisco Ohem Chávarri), ciencia de la computación (Mateo A. Torres Ruiz) y artes plásticas (Mariana Mañón y Manolo Larrosa).
3
Instalación e investigación imaginativa y performativa sobre el Río Becerra/ Fotografía, Video, Estaciones de monitoreo.
Exhibición CLICK AQUÍ
4
Ay Agüita, texto que reporta a manera de crónica-collage la primer fase de la investigación y proceso del CAH.
5
Regresar al proyecto CLICK AQUÍ
6
Catálogo del proyecto
Liga Espacion para la Arquitectura
Cuidad de México, 2019
1
Proyecto ganador de la convocatoria abierta Máquinas Imaginantes en Liga_Espacio
2
En colaboración con agentes provenientes de la arquitectura (Roberto Michelsen Engell), letras (Iñigo Malvido Escobedo), cine (Francisco Ohem Chávarri), ciencia de la computación (Mateo A. Torres Ruiz) y artes plásticas (Mariana Mañón y Manolo Larrosa).
3
Instalación e investigación imaginativa y performativa sobre el Río Becerra/ Fotografía, Video, Estaciones de monitoreo.
Exhibición CLICK AQUÍ
4
Ay Agüita, texto que reporta a manera de crónica-collage la primer fase de la investigación y proceso del CAH.
5
Regresar al proyecto CLICK AQUÍ
6
Catálogo del proyecto
El Circuito de Auscultación Hidrográfica (CAH)
El Circuito de Auscultación Hidrográfica (CAH) es un observatorio metodológico, recolector de datos, procesador de información e interfaz de lenguajes. Un elemento vinculante entre medios, disciplinas y territorios, que imagina las posibilidades del paisaje y sus desequilibrios ecológicos.
CAH investiga las aguas ocultas y expuestas que circulan en la ciudad de México, así como sus efectos en el ambiente, en constante relación con las condiciones histórico-tempo
1. Proyecto
El CAH continúa la investigación y los experimentos realizados por PANOSMICO, junto con Iñigo Malvido y Lucas Bartholl, alrededor del Río Becerra, un punto geográfico particular en la hidrografía de la ciudad. En esta segunda fase del proyecto se presenta el CAH como un observatorio y ampliador sensorial o de fenomenología expandida, que permite ingresar al metabolismo del agua y visualizarlo haciendo uso de diversos microcontroladores que se comunican y articulan a un servidor. La traducción de los datos fluctuantes se presenta a través de dos plataformas: una física dentro de LIGA y otra virtual a través de la página web del proyecto: www.panosmico.com, donde se reflejan gráficas de análisis comparativo y otros múltiples detalles de este proyecto.
El CAH opera mediante tres estaciones de sensores distribuidos en las presas A, C y D del río Becerra, reportando cada hora el estado fluctuante de índices: pH, cantidad de oxígeno, velocidad de movimiento, temperatura, y densidad de partículas disueltas en las aguas. La información recolectada circula en tiempo real dentro de LIGA, traducida por actuadores en la instalación en sala. Cada contenedor recibe la información procesada del río y reacciona a partir de los valores obtenidos, afectando la imagen de las presas reproducidas en pantalla. Desde el abordaje fílmico se imagina el cauce del agua donde el concreto y el chapopote se apoderan del espacio, mostrando la estructura urbana caótica. Las estaciones, dotadas de un circuito cerrado, funcionan como un testigo visual.
2. Arquitectura expandida
En este proyecto, las partículas de oxígeno presentes en el agua son tan relevantes como las ventanas que miran al río en la arquitectura informal que crece sobre las riberas de su cauce, o el mapeo de los objetos/entes estáticos en las calles, siempre ocupadas por el tránsito citadino. Todo ello, en contraste con el cambiante panorama del río. El río Becerra se convierte en caso de estudio para entender la transubstanciación de las aguas urbanas de este aparato digestivo, en cuyos cauces se depositan gran cantidad de partículas heterogéneas. Su medición amplía la información sobre los efectos de la densidad poblacional y los estragos-síntomas de la ocupación del territorio.
El proyecto revisa la condición hidrológica y residual del espacio por diversos frentes, subjetividades y performatividades; desde la información que arrojan a estas pantallas-filtros los espectros sensoriales de las estaciones camufladas en el río, hasta las conversaciones con los habitantes de un barrio acorralado por el desarrollo del segundo piso del periférico. Un lugar donde la presencia de una estación de transferencia de residuos, la industria cementera y la intermitencia de la velocidad y el flujo de este cauce, son regulados a conveniencia de la megalópolis.
3. Ojo en el cielo
Desde el punto de vista de la ciencia e ingeniería de la computación, el CAH se manifiesta como un sistema tecnológico que concretiza medidas abstractas a partir de sensores que establecen un diálogo vinculante entre ellos. Esta red neuronal genera imágenes y datos sobre su caudal que van, sin embargo, más allá de la función práctica de la medición, recolección y despliegue de datos; El CAH también busca imaginar nuevas formas de aproximarse al paisaje urbano a partir de la interacción de dinámicas que difieran en cadencia y modos de aparición pública.
panósmico, en este sentido, genera con este proyecto una atmósfera participativa, provocadora de cuerpos y espacios que se involucran en campos inesperados para trabajar el territorio en su multidimensión y enriquecer el diálogo. La tercera fase de este proyecto consistirá en utilizar la información recabada por este laboratorio subacuático, imaginando otras formas de conocimiento que difieran y contaminen la lógica actual que el ecosistema del cauce ofrece.
4. La sala como observatorio
El CAH, construye desde la arquitectura en sala una fluidez generada en la desviación de la ortogonalidad que la domina. Se generan dos situaciones complementarias: lecturas íntimas, que promueve un recorrido deambulatorio y múltiples para reconstituir de manera conceptual las capas de información que arrojan los estanques. Para exhibir y ampliar el conocimiento del sistema operativo del CAH, adosados al muro de la galería, dos elementos hermanados en materialidad buscan ser una mesa de trabajo versátil y cambiante durante los meses de exhibición.
Panósmico: An anti-anthropocentric artistic research collective
by Lucas Bartholl
In times where we more and more question the way of how problems were solved through trusting in the capabilities of grand visionairs, new techniques in looking at the urban fabric have to be found. It could be argued that the artist today can take a certain responsibility in investigating the inter-relations behind complex scenarios and has the potential to experiment with new modes of communication. Mexican collective Panósmico, comprising Mariana Mañón and Manolo Larrosa have entered in this political moment as artists who intend to question the paradoxes that make up the complexity of our societal relationship with space. They have been active since 2017, coming together to work on research inquiries concerning the inter-relation of the body with the perception and design of urban space.
With the “death of god” along goes the uprising of ethics as aesthetics. As Boris Groys notes: “Where religion once was, design has emerged. The modern subject now has a new obligation: the obligation to self-design, an aesthetic presentation as ethical subject” (Groys 2018: 10). As part of this shift regarding the tasks of design, the process of iterative collaborative reasoning becomes aesthetics in its own right. In defining his understanding of eco-aesthetics Malcolm Miles is arguing that the relation of the subject to other subjects/objects is fundamental in developing an ecological design approach (Miles 2014: 3). In the practice of Panósmico such an understanding goes along with including the agency of non-human actors in their research concept, critically questioning the sole authorship of humans in relation to the design of natural and urban landscapes.
Panósmico is connecting different fields. They envision their work conceptually as artists but enter, with the knowledge of their collaborators, various fields such as architecture, urban design, writing, filmmaking or Computer programming. Throughout their collaborations they emphasise the importance of developing an appropriate approach to make the field-crossing practice conceptually work. The different ways of how various disciplines try to comprehend a complex scenario goes along with the challenge to mediate in-between their ways of articulating. Prejudgements and inflexible modes of operation have to be challenged in order to start a collective process of making sense. The collective identifies itself strongly over its objectives as a platform and medium, that incentivizes a collaborative multidisciplinary practice. Every project they develop differs, variating the approach and the methods used according to the collaborators involved. In acting as a medium their practice offers a platform for multiple perspectives on certain subjects, to be translated into a display as part of an iterative procedure.
An early example for Panósmico’s artistic approach is the “anti-anthropocentric guerrilla action” within the work “Crackology” in collaboration with landscape architect Félix de Rosen. Developed as part of the collateral program of Manifesta12 in Palermo, they mapped the geological depressions, architectural faults, plant’s appropriations, water filtrations, among other aspects of decay (from human perspective) within the neighborhood of Danisinni. Placards acted as a medium to invite the neighbors to keep on researching and to develop an understanding of the interrelations of certain attributes that make up the shape of the city. Pedestrian were invited to pay attention to the presence of non-human forces, displayed in a diagram with four concentric categories that served as a hydraulic thermometer applied in an urban environment. The thermometer measured physical attributes such as the materiality, location, and presence/absence of water, as well as social and poetic components.
In Spring 2019 Mariana Mañón and Manolo Larrosa invited me for a research trip to Mexico City to take part in the first phase of the research inquiry around Río Becerra. Together with writer Iñigo Malvido we started an extensive study around one of the city’s last remaining partly open rivers. Around the mid 20ths century, fascinated by architect Carlos Contreras’ design, city leaders implemented a model of supposedly visionary urbanism that encased the rivers in pipes and build roadways over them (Inzunza 2016). In the neighborhood, Río Becerra is running through, people turned their back on the neglected river bed that is in a state of strong pollution. We carried out field visits to meet some of the local residents and to develop a first understanding, looking for feasible points of departure for further investigation, as well as possibilities for future interactions and in-situ projects. Derives, data collection, mapping and archiving were part of the exploration of the territory. The title of the exhibition showing the results of this first phase of the project, “New Narratives”, is not to be misunderstood as the drive towards creating a new narrative in the tradition of grand planning gestures. It suggests that the river is an information system itself that can tell its own narrative out of the various layers of history and materiality it is composed of.
To realize the second phase, Panósmico replied to the open call for a project to be exhibited at the space of Mexico City based LIGA DF. Referencing the book “Imaginal Machines” by Stevphen Shukaitis, the gallery aimed for proposals concerned with structures and mechanisms that could give a “basis of a radical and collective imagination”. A collective approach of “sharing the experience, knowledge and techniques that ground us as a society”. Shukaitis is urging for the construction of “Imaginal Machines” as a tool of radical imagination developing new forms of collective self-determination. He suggests that “Imaginal Machines” might only become functional by breaking down. They come into running through constant transformation and refiguration by their malfunctioning. Through an antagonism without closure that is in constant recomposition keeping the machine running (Shukaitis 2009: 10).
The way how Panósmico structured the research inquiry aims at programming an apparatus that is supposed to uncover the layers of meaning around Río Becerra. Techniques on how to develop a design process that keeps the machine running are tested considering their robustness, calculating with machine failure as an element of refiguration of procedures in an iterative process. In establishing a line of communication with the information system of Río Becerra, directly into the gallery, a decentralized communicative machine is constructed that allows to develop an understanding of the composition of the body of water. Thus the machine acts as a medium for the river, initiating the entire system of nodes that make up the installation to start imagining.
American architect and philosopher Keller Easterling notes that to manipulate a medium, it is almost like one has to develop the capability to view at it within a split-screen. On this split-screen it is easier to understand the difference of what a form of organisation says, what it does and in how far the message concerning its agency is decoupled from its underlying dispositive (Easterling 2018: 154). Such a split-screen method is helping us to understand not only the organisation, but also the narrative that acts as a driver for the organisation (Easterling 2018: 158). Easterling is arguing that people are good in pointing things out and calling them by their name. However when it comes to relations in-between things, there is a lack of capabilities in describing the composition of these entities (Easterling 2018: 149). She notes that we are at a moment in time where problems are in a deadlock. Economic and military inspired causality patterns deliver no reasonable explanations. New technologies are bringing no salvation. The consensus on laws, norms and master plans means no alleviation. The problems are leaving us clueless because their extent eludes any rational explanation (Easterling 2018: 150). Keller Easterling argues that maybe it’s more important to accentuate problems then to solve them. Maybe disorder is smarter than novelty. Maybe it’s not the existence or the content of a problem, but the interrelation in-between problems that is worthy to be looking at (Easterling 2018: 154).
The Hydrographic Auscultation Circuit (CAH) developed to study the different bodies of water that circulate in urban environments, is a nomadic laboratory. It enables to analyse the information the river and its environment entails like looking through the split-screen Easterling is talking about. It uncovers the inter-relation of components that make up the current state of the river. The CAH investigates the relations in-between a plurality of problems resulting from human-interference with the landscape. The machine is not creating something new. It’s main function is to trigger processes of imagining possible futures, starting from an understanding of how information systems are composed and how we can allow them to find a form of expression. The nomadic laboratory is supposed to have the capability to present its observations and experiments at various locations in the city. A website, describing the different phases of the project and pointing out the actors participating in the development, is designed to document this procedure for a wider audience.
The different disciplines coming together for the project are enabling the possibility of looking at the information system of the river within a split-screen. Only through their specific knowledge, concerning developing the various nodes that make up the “Imaginative Machine”, the capability of uncovering the layers the rivers is composed of is made possible. Mateo Torres as a Computer programmer has the capability to transfer the data from the river into a digital landscape, from where the composition of Río Becerra can be altered. With the data being transmitted over space and translated into a display, a computerized design, becoming physical in space, allows an architectural experience. The Italian philosopher Mario Perniola, concerned with the sexappeal of the inorganic, points out, that as “[...] a completely spatialized visualization of information, cyberspace transforms everything into landscape and introduces into it an extraordinary and astonishing dynamism” (Perniola 2004: 91). Architect Roberto Michelsen is in charge of developing the physical display for the information to become spatialized in the gallery. He built the aqua-screens displaying the data gained from the sensors within the field. He beliefs that all collaborators were open to push the boundaries of their disciplines. Visiting Panósmico’s studio you start to wonder whether you are in an artist space or in a botanist laboratory. Speaking with Mateo you catch yourself thinking whether he is a poet or a mathematician. Francisco Ohem, a filmmaker, recorded the river with a drone and developed a map that is displayed in the exhibition space. Iñigo Malvido is contributing with his poetics in a way that is giving new perspectives on the body of the river and its perception. He beliefs that poetry itself is interdisciplinary through connecting different systems of thoughts. Panosmico is in charge of the coordination of the design process. They are introducing the different viewpoints and approaches of the disciplines into the engine of the decentralized machine.
Panósmico argues, that through developing an understanding of the information system the river provides, a process of alteration and transformation of the landscape is already initiated. In the first phase field observations and research provided the basis for the components considered within the development of the Hydrographic Auscultation Circuit in phase two. With the interpretation of the data gained within this current stage of the project, the in situ interventions of phase three can be imagined. However, one should not expect the “Imaginative Machine” to provide us with a grand solution. Nonetheless, in accentuating a plurality of problems the interventions have the potential to become design opportunities, building on the information system contained within Río Becerra, with a distanced human authorship.