THE RISE OF THE 'INVISIBLE DETAIL': UBIQUITOUS COMPUTING AND THE 'MINIMUM MEANINGFUL'

摘要

There is a grain of sand in a concrete wall in the Church of the Light in Ibaraki, Japan (1989). It is the smallest material element of the building - a mere speck - yet this sand was deliberately chosen by Tadao Ando to serve as a crucial tool in the profound transformation of human spatial experience, ultimately to resolve a meticulously crafted piece of architecture. This grain of sand is not just a utilitarian constructive material dumped into concrete slush and poured as walls of a building - it is evidence of intentionality. The granule might seem to fall under the Oxford English Dictionary's traditional definition of detail: 'A minute or subordinate part of a building, sculpture, or painting, as distinct from the larger portions or the general conception.'1 By this characterisation, an individual detail is simply a constituent part that carries neither value independent of the whole, nor a direct relationship to it. Yet it could be more. An alternate definition - one we presuppose in this article - lends detail the weight of significance far beyond its function as a subordinate unit.