DEEP IMMEDACY: PROGRAMMING BEAUTY

摘要

In the search for beauty in architecture, the notion of emergence, defined as the appearance of novel qualities, is crucial and suggests methods and operations capable of generating alluring aesthetic experiences. In his work The Programming of Beauty (1960), the philosopher Max Bense claims that in the age of information technology 'the concept of beauty is losing in substance, but gaining in function'.1 Here, 'function' has a twofold meaning; that beauty per se is a function or necessity of a design, but also a mathematical expression, which means that aesthetic effects can be instrumentalised and consciously explored. For Bense, the idealistic concept of 'beauty' is tied to subjective interpretation, and he therefore replaces it with the term 'aesthetic state'. While beauty is an ideal, a state is a 'reality' and can be detected in the properties of objects, which can then become ingredients in the programming and automatisation of beauty.2 This approach should not be understood as a quantification of qualities, as quantities and qualities do not relate directly, nor do they correspond. Aristotle describes them as two out often categories of being. Quantities can be divided into discrete entities, such as numbers or speech, and continuous ones, such as lines, surfaces, bodies, time or space. Quality is a more ambiguous concept and has four subcategories: it can be a permanent characteristic; a habit or an elusive state; an ability or inability to perform or behave in a certain manner; or an affective or passive quality that triggers an immediate response in emotions or sensations, a figure or form.