Swarm Architecture of Peter Macapia labDORA: Digital Primitive

Studio descriptionPeter Macapia is the director and founder of labDORA, an interdisciplinary research office that focuses on design, the geometry and topology of matter/energy relations, and the advent of the algorithm. Each year the explores these problems through both material and computational work focusing on new tectonic and spatial problems.

Statement on Digital PrimitiveThere is a story in Plato about the cave – it suggests the problem of matter, of perception, of illusion. Descartes rewrote the story from the point of view of observing a piece of wax. The tendency towards a Royal science we all know is based on the notion that there is, that there exists, a foundation. And that the foundation can explain everything else that needs to be explained. But actually that knowledge is the constant product of the invention of problems that can never be seen or anticipated by the foundation. Even Leibniz knew this when he wrote about the calculus as having a limit, and that the limit was like these monstrous little species that might emerge. There’s nothing primitive about these kinds of problems: what is a geometrical logic, what is a topological one, and what is an algorithmic logic. I tend to see the interest in manipulating the signs according to a new paradigm, to quote Wittgenstein. The fabrication part is the most difficult of these investigations. The nonlinear behavior of material organization always forces a revision.

Project 1: FRINGE PAVILION STUDIES

Location: MANHATTAN

Date: 2009

Client: STUDY

Digital tools: NESTLIST ALGORITHM

Credits:

Design/ fabrication / Implementation

PETER MACAPIA WITH MAT HOWARD