68 EAAE no 35 Teaching and Experimenting with Architectural Design: Advances in Technology and Changes in Pedagogy
nological subject (the designer, in our case) that is going through a significant change.
The technological subject, using haptic diagrams, pulls aspects of program, ideology
and context and embeds them within the design process. We distinguish this new form
of subjectivity as the "state of distraction" throughout the design process.
Applying haptic knowledge on to the diagram allows a field of multiplicity to open
up: programs can be created in different scales and resolutions, inside outside volumes
and surfaces, through notions of matter, body, temporality and event.
Our design methodology uses Haptic Diagrams in order to generate a set of three
possible procedures: from cinematography to diagram, matter –surface- figure, haptic
diagram as program generator.
Methodology 1: from Cinematography to Diagram
"With the close-up, space expands; with slow motion, movement is extended. The enlarge-
ment of a snapshot does not simply render more precise what in any case was visible, though
unclear: it reveals entirely new structural formations of the subject."^9
Cinema, through the virtual gaze reveals haptic dynamics and narratives of body
in space. In this method, cinematic language is used as the external concept (haptic
knowledge) that generates the diagram.
Diagram: Analyzing Cinematic language (camera movement, points of view, composi-
tion, sound, narrative, etc) as parametric data.
Haptic knowledge: The inscription of architectural meaning on to the diagram that
was generated from cinematic parametric analysis.
Syntax- Haptic Diagrams: The syntax allows the intimate immersion with surface,
matter and texture, a "surface closeness". The complexity generated through the visual
experience emerges as a new temporality in space.
Methodology 2: Matter–surface- figure
Experimenting with actual materials construct haptic sensibilities that can be embed-
ded into the digital realm.
Diagram: Creating spatial surface from an actual material by using a set of rules as a
sequence of operations, in order to examine how matter, surface and figure are affected
by information along a timeline.
In this way the behavioral potential of real materials was explored by applying an
algorithmic way of thinking outside the computer.
Haptic Knowledge: Actual body actions immersed into the surface.
Syntax- Haptic diagram 1: Searching for the formation of the figure ,but not the figu-
rative as a fix form, by material and spatial qualities: repetitions, expansions, densities,
transparencies textures and tactility. [fig. 2]
Syntax- Haptic diagram 2: At a later stage, this 3D surface was digitally modeled,
using animation to examine transformations over time. The new technological subjec-
tivity allowed an actual surface to become a new material. This actual-virtual surface
was used as an abstract machine, a surface that contains the potential of its owns
transformations.