The Internet of Things defines a world rooted in so many digital devices that the space between them does not consist of dark circuitry anymore but rather the space of the environment and the city itself. This potential I find in ordinary objects today seems to finally fulfill my dream of experimenting with a cybernetic apparatus for modeling space.
Along with my underlying interest in notions of time and space and cinematic architecture, the works of architects such as Archigram, Christopher Alexander and Cedric Price who were on the threshold of designing an architecture that has become information fascinate me. Cedric Price combined networks and infrastructure to design building details, games and toys as strategies of human and non-human actors unfolding the construction of space over time. I strongly believe we are not yet accustomed to the idea that the inanimate could possess agency as much as we are not fully aware that they carry information unless we know they are programmed with code to do so and are designed by protocols of information technology.
But as it is hard to see spatial technologies and networks independent of the digital, I look at examples of existing systems such as traffic lights and electrical grids. The agency seems to be clear in relationship to the objects that form these networks - in these cases, the cars and the electrical voltage - but not vis-à-vis the network itself, which seem relatively static to us at first glance. As a matter of fact, the spaces we occupy are arrangements of objects, but this organization of objects could be active by itself. The agency is then present in the networks and those can become active and therefore influence the context in which they exist.
In my research, I am bringing the notions of Object Oriented Ontology and the Internet of Things together in order to address a speculative future where networks affect our interaction with the objects, the way we design them and the way we organize them in context.