TECH-INDEX:
NATURE-INDEX:
AI:
There are two different understandings of artificial intelligence (AI) as a research field. One approach takes a philosophical attitude and is interested in the possibilities of building artificial systems with intelligent behavior primarily for scientific purposes – to understand intelligence and to test the abilities of computers. This attitude prevailed at the beginning of AI research starting from the middle of the last century. Another attitude is aimed at practical applications and is interested in building applications that possess some intelligence, or more precisely, seem to be intelligent. This approach became very popular with the development of expert systems about thirty years ago. It continued with the research and applications of artificial neural nets, constraint solving and intelligent agents. It includes even more specific areas like robotics, natural language understanding, etc. Many useful and quite intelligent methods of data processing have been developed in AI during the years. A number of them have become widely used, like various search methods, planning, constraint solving and optimization methods. This thesis book focuses more on the latter part.
artificial landscape:
Landscape is not, or not exclusively, nature. In a new artificial landscape, nature is above all a manipulable component. The concepts of naturalness and artificiality have accordingly lost much of their original meaning and are no longer manifest opposites, just as nothing is manifestly what it seems.
Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a "combination of low-life and high tech" featuring advanced technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cybernetics, juxtaposed with a degree of breakdown or radical change in the social order.
A dystopia is a community or society that is undesirable or frightening. People are worried about in the future, AI will become our human's threat and bring about new moral issues.
Italian poet Filippo Tommaso Marinetti produced his first manifesto, the Manifesto of Futurism, in 1909. This started a movement in the early-20th century. In the late 60s and 70s, another movement called Neo-Futurism brought about new aesthetics. If there is new futurism in the contemporary world, what attitude and aesthetics will be?
Olmsted's Central Park marks a great step in modern landscape design. However, as an artificial landscape, it requires frequent maintenance to make up its low self-control ability.
climate change:
This is a heated discussion issue that matches the dystopian prediction in some Sci-fi movies. E.g. In the past few years, some wildlife documentaries have shown evidence of global warming in the Nordic area. Different than scientists' focus on providing data-based analysis, responsible architects use visual approaches to address the urgency of focusing on this environmental agenda and create bridges between environmentalists and decision-makers.
Low-tech:
Low technology, often abbreviated low tech, is a simple technology, often of a traditional or non-mechanical kind, such as crafts and tools that pre-date the Industrial Revolution. Compared to advanced AI development, many "new technology" in the twentieth century such as big screen and Neon lights can also be regarded as low-tech.
folly:
It originally refers to a small element in the western garden. However, it here is a non-functional small building. This term, from its history, has a strong relationship with nature.
Parc de la Villette is a post-modern example of follies. Here, I use folly as a framing device to mediate different temporariness.
Sci-fi:
Fiction based on imagined future scientific or technological advances and major social or environmental changes.
smart:
Relating to:
- proactively reading and reacting to a changing and complex environment rather passively stay aside;
- respond to people with different moods, behaviors, and personalities, etc.
A famous urban commercial zone in NYC celebrates 20th centuries technologies such as big screens and billboards. Also, there are well-established skyscrapers and underground infrastructures such as the subways.