"Hypersurface Hypertheory" 

Review by Ted Krueger in Convergence: The Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, summer 1999, Volume 5, No. 2. Page 119 

Stephen Perrella (guest-editor), Architectural Design, special issue on "Hypersurface Architecture," 68, no. 5-6 (1998), 112pp. ISBN 0-471-97809-4 

The purpose of this volume is to reflect on issues that develop out of the conjunction of representation and form in architecture. This is not a new problem. An illuminated sign or the
presence of a classical portico are common instances of this kind of hybrid condition. What distinguishes the present work from the extensive literature that precedes it is the effort to
characterize the nature of interaction between image and form and, as such, could be of interest not only to architects but also to those that work with media. This "Hypersurface
Architecture" issue of Architectural Design contains an introductory essay by the editor, several essays on related topics, and examples of built and projected architectural works, only a
selection of which will be reviewed here. 

The objective of the Hypersurface Theory is to unite two philosophical discourses as they have come to be implemented in architecture: the deconstructivist tendency based on the work
of Derrida with the more recent topologizing efforts that are grounded in Deleuze and Guttari. The conjoining of topologized architecture with mediated culture is to result in a distinct
hybrid capable or reconnecting an "elitist" architecture with everyday life, language and matter, representation with instrumentality, and image with form. 

While "hypersurface" has distinct mathematical references, the term is redefined in Perrella's essay to refer to the existential rather than mathematical dimensions. It is suggested that the
co-presence of embodied experience and mediated subjectivity results in a condition where neither dominates, but in which the two fuse into an "image-form" with unique properties and
possibilities-self-organizing into experiences of "space-time-information." These altered surfaces are to form the basis of a "productive schizophrenia." 

Perrella asserts that "one of the least considered strategies with which to negotiate the perpetual dichotomization...is to accept the schizophrenic condition." However, the categorical
distinctions fundamental to this analysis may in fact stem from the selection of competing analytic frameworks rather than from the intrinsic properties of the stimuli or the perceiving being. 

While it may be possible that the flickering hypersurfaces open up new understandings of ourselves, the "theory" specifically avoids the issue of "to what end?" Realizing that the specific
designation of a purpose would be an anathema to the nature of the analysis, one must still assume that not only is a space of possibilities opened up but that this space has properties. It is
in the thinking through of the nature and qualities of the hybrid experience that many readers interested in contemporary media will come away from this essay unsatisfied. That
"perception will be swept transversally away into the flows and trajectories" more poetic than it is theoretical, more evocative than informative. 

The political nature of this new condition, for example, is largely unexplored. As the deployment of images is said to be a development of capitalist consumer culture, one must question
the origin and content of the images. This brings up the issue of power in relation to the content. Who selects what images for what purpose? On the other hand, if the images are
deterritorialized to the extent that they are divorced from their referents, then what induces the use of hypersurfaces as a venue? 

In a following essay, "Sending the Virtual: Building the Insensible," Brian Massumi focuses on both forms and images in relation to the issue of virtuality. He develops notions of
topological architecture relative to the historical roots of modernism and explores the manner in which an architecture process ultimately precipitates a static and singular instance of built
form from the manifold of the virtual from which it was derived. For Massumi, a built work's relationship with the virtual is given in the continuous dynamic interaction engendered by use.
His analysis indicates that much of the power of the image-form hybrid resides in the perceptual properties of the media prior to our cognizance of their symbolic relations. That is, they
are important as stimuli before they are representations. This has the effect of radically de-emphasizing the contribution that deconstructive analysis can make to the Hypersurface Project,
focusing instead on the synaesthetic nature of a profoundly situated and embodied experience. 

In "Motor Geometry," Lars Spuybroek characterizes technological environments as prosthetics animated by an expansive body-image defined through action. Body and environment
achieve a fusion. In this context, the fact that some of what is apprehended may be considered media is a distinction without analytic function and without importance. 

The Fresh Water Pavilion (designed by Spuybroek/Nox) attached to the Salt Water Pavilion (designed by Kas Oosterhuis Associates with Ilona Lénárd) are clearly the most
sophisticated examples of Hypersurface Architecture built to date. In both projects, interactive media are integral to and inseparable from the architectural proposition. Equally important
are the presence and participation of the users and links to the surrounding environment. If one is to reference traditional cultural categories, then Hypersurface is an equation of
n-variables, rather than two. 

What the water pavilions illustrate well is that what is new and unexplored territory in hypersurfaces and what distinguishes it from the many well-known mediated urban districts is its
capacity to engage the total experience of the user on a synaesthetic level without primary recourse to the representational capacity of the image. 

In the final essay of this volume, "Transarchitectures and Hypersurfaces," Marcos Novak takes up the notion of Hypersurfaces from a distinctly mathematical perspective, one with
cultural connotations. His work does not employ media in conjunction with architectural forms. It is a pure media with architectural content. Novak designs virtual spaces and so is not
concerned with the manipulation of objects but with the structuring of relationships. These hold the potential for a rich dialogue between the physical and the virtual realms in addition to
being environments in their own right. 

Hypersurface Architecture aspires to treat an emerging architectural condition. The attempt is not to lay out a definitive fixed structure to the subject matter, rather it sets out a field of
possibility in which the readers may make their own ways. The volume is a collection of writings and projects that addresses aspects of this condition with varying degrees of specificity.
While there is much that will be of interest to both followers and participants in contemporary architectural discourses, the direction of the volume is more suggestive than directive. This is
perhaps as it should be in an emerging discourse. Anticipating advances in adaptive material properties and control techniques, one would expect that the emphasis on surface will
decrease and that the present discourse will be subsumed into a more integrated notion of the architectural condition in which adaptability and interactivity are fundamental. 

---End