MARCOS NOVAK - TURBULENT TOPOLOGIES

[Editor-in-Chief]

"Convergence, divergence, transvergence: in the face of exponential change, transvergence is proposed as a tactic of corrective derailment of simple extrapolations into elsewhere, the territory of the allo~. Allo~, root of words such as else, alternative, alien, signifies the other of another kind. Therefore, at any given moment in history, and given any set of materially and culturally productive theories and practices, transvergence is an algorithm and discipline for producing the salient alien." - Marcos Novak

Y'all ready for this? Technotronic - 'No Limits'

Last year your editor-in-chief (yes that's me) elbowed his way through thousands of bookish-types at the Frankfort Book Fair and bumped into 'transarchitecture' theorist, mathematician, artist and general genius Professor Marcos Novak at the Papadakis stand, to share a cup of coffee and discuss his latest exhibition TURBULENT TOPOLOGIES - now in its third incarnation at the Valencia Insitute of Modern Art. [CONFINES - with architectural component curated by Aaron Betsky- ends 11 November 2009] Of course our meeting had been loosely co-ordinated via e-mail and cellular communication, but in the age of very tedious 'post-911' travel and increasingly restrictive visa conditions - for South African's anyway - it's nice to imagine that spontaneity in the global village can still happen - not to mention actually having a natter with one of the world's most famous creative nomads!

I hadn't seen Marcos, my erstwhile professor at UCLA, for almost a decade, and it was very reassuring to pick-out his black framed spectacles, sparkling eyes and trademark black attire from the mountains of books and feverishly foraging hoards that made up the playing-field sized Hall 8. His charm and eloquence had not dimmed either.

Now of course this conversation happened almost a year ago, so to quote it verbatim would be tedious, and besides a year has passed, so you may well wonder why I have delayed so long in recounting the encounter? Simple - the exhibition of which I am going to describe was conceived as sequential and designed to build upon previous ones as local disciples take over the production of the new prototypes at each new host city - such is the nature of Marcos Novak's algorithmic and iterative approach - and so its only natural to dip into it on its third iteration at Valencia, Spain, as opposed to immediately after its opening night in Istanbul, or its second show in Venice. We also talked of the exhibition finding its way to Cape Town, but then suddenly the economic crisis put paid to any immediate hopes of sponsorship. But back to the art itself...

When I met with Marcos he was traveling back to the University of California Santa Barbara (where he directs the TransLAB and is affiliated with the Media Art & Technology centre, and the California NanoSystems Institute) from the second exhibition of Turbulent Topologies at the Venice Biennale - his latest foray into the heady world of transarchitecture which had two principle exhibits:

• VISIBLE - a series of rapid-prototyped sculptures which are really static 3-D snapshots of his 4-D 'liquid architectures' (the contorted and turbulent looking forms - these are carefully displayed in glass bowls, as if to highlight their seemingly alien genesis, and certainly to protect them from curious fingers - they are very fragile)

• INVISIBLE a physical space in which proximity sensors activated by a human held wand - feel out 3-D forms and emit sounds as one traces their limits - this interactivity and multi-sensory approach is key to Novak's cyberspace roots and his core philosophy of transarchitecture - where actions and inputs from one dimension, impact in another. Example.

On the VISIBLE artifacts, these are the elements of the exhibition that grow in number, almost genetically too with each exhibit, as each host city brings new talent and people involved in creating a new set of sculptures using Marcos' formulae and process. A kind of transmittable virus that can be played with, frozen, and formed.

Of course what we all really want to know if HOW he does it, but like any master of the dark art of numbers - Marcos gives a wry grin and and talks in a most condensed fashion of "scripts", "lists", algorithms and his linking of various softwares such as Mathematica (manual of around 600 pages), MaxSP (manual of around 800 pages) and Form-Z together. Still Greek to me after all these years, but it is very encouraging to see his formerly immaterial forms come into physical reality in the form of the VISIBLE products which like all art, are able to stand still long enough to enter the realm of the public's metaphoric gaze. Like pollen, or microbes, they want to float off and infect each other, and certainly us. These beautiful organisms want to be touched, navigated through and played with.

Maybe they will be coming to a black-box environment near you sometime soon, but it you are in Spain, you have ten more days to make the pilgrimage to Valencia!

Marcos Novak is the founding director of the transLAB at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where he is a Professor affiliated with CNSI (the California NanoSystems Institute), MAT (Media Art and Technology), and Art. He is a global nomad, and an artist, theorist, and transarchitect. He named and was instrumental in the design of the UCSB AlloSphere (the three-story high sphere for the creation of immersive virtual environments and created its inaugural project, the AlloBrain@AlloSphere, using fMRI scans of his own brain. He teaches advanced courses on Transvergence and Worldmaking, fusing art, architecture, and design with current topics in science and technology. He is widely regarded as a pioneer of architecture in cyberspace, of the critical consideration of virtual space as architectural and urban place, and of the use of generative computational composition in architecture and design. He exhibits his work in museums and galleries around the world. Since 2004, he has been a Fellow of the World Technology Network.