Critique

The Dolphins group philosophy has been portrayed through their work in a rather cryptic fashion. At a basic level the concept of ‘dream-based’ architecture is easy to understand. It is difficult however, to work out if something is happening at a deeper level than simply having a body moving physically controlled by our subconscious thought. This difficulty arises from a seeming lack of information in the series of images and small amounts of supporting text.

This project possibly needed the supporting verbal presentations to obtain a full understanding.

The way Alms departs from the Dolphins is in the discussion of intimacy. The Dolphins asked: “How does intimacy translate into a virtual context?” Whilst we might ask “How does intimacy remain honest in coexisting virtual and physical contexts?”

The Dolphins state:

“As we are unconscious, away in our own dream world far away, our bodies seem to come alive and move in strange and unexplainable ways. It’s important to know if we can harness or even learn from what our bodies do while we are in an unresponsive state. The importance here is not to look at our mental selves, but to look at our physical body and the states and shapes it takes while our minds are not there to control it.”

We find this to be an interesting starting point for thinking about how our virtual and physical consciousnesses might communicate with one another. We propose that even in a deep sleep our minds are still subconsciously aware of our physical presence. Whilst we mentally traverse the digital world we are not completely detached from our physical bodies, the movement of our physical self is directly tied to the consciousness of our virtual being.

The architecture that we grow will need to cope with many factors while our minds are virtually conscious: protection, nutrition, warmth and community being the basis of these. However this is not to say our architecture must always be a completely encapsulating form. To live in a truly balanced manner with the physical world our architecture must be fully integrated into the natural environment. This can offer protection and sustenance as is needed, and change with environmental conditions as required.

We further explore the Dolphins statement that “Distance and proximity are collapsed by technology.” We do agree with this statement, the idea of a completely intangible world would remove nearly all difficulty in achieving anything. This means we can return to the physical world to lead a Hadza-like lifestyle where social interaction and creation take the majority of our time.