To surmise ‘Information and Thinking’, Michel Serres categorises Truth as information that has not been modified or spoiled, exchanged or regurgitated; information gleaned first-hand from any and all things. Unfortunately, with the abundance of ‘information’ in today’s society, we are burdened with a lack of uninterrupted space to absorb critical messages. Much of what we are exposed to becomes transient, lost in a constant flow of perpetual headlines. Regardless of content, imagery or text, the glut of the modern message dilutes any genuine importance an article may hold. In her seminal text ‘A History of Modern Fact’, Mary Poovey suggests that this around the turn of the 16th century, society was transformed through the increased importance on the production of systematic knowledge, and the notion of useful fact birthed out of numerical representation. This disconnect led to the influence of statistics as a vehicle for perceived truths, and therefore huge cultural shift. This approach has proven fatal to society’s collective perception of Truth. The unwilling blindness to pristine information, has led to a chasm in the human psyche, a lack of desire for Truth, a lack of resistance to social herding. A post-truth society. The project asks whether it is possible to reorient society towards a greater yearning for Truth, through the creation of an architecture which is equally uncomfortable and familiar. This post-contextual architecture is refined from instinctual reactions to certain mediums, gathered through primary data gathered from one of London's 'tribes'. By drawing parallels between Westernised culture and the Piraha, the projects attempts to distill a fundamental toolkit of archetypes, creating a subconscious familiarity, specific to a particular situation.
DIGITAL AND PRINT
LONDON