There’s a sense of quiet after a snow fall, which brings to mind the importance of noise in everyday life. We think of noise as random and unattributable sounds. More technically, and as developed by mathematician and information theorist Claude Shannon, noise is any unstructured or random signal. Noisy signals are those with high entropy.…More
Author Archives: Richard Coyne
The cultural, social and spatial implications of computers and pervasive digital media spark my interest ... enjoy architecture, writing, designing, philosophy, coding and media mashups.
Computer images and realism
Computer graphics and animation are remarkable in their ability to mimic reality, or so it seems. Such technologies are interesting in so far as they purvey unreality, or more precisely, for making presentations to audiences that are unlike everyday experiences — features of narrative, drama and film in any case, but exaggerated further in the…More
Derrida and WikiLeaks
In his article Archive Fever Derrida suggests that the desire to preserve information is in some way a symptom of an inbuilt and unavoidable desire to destroy it. Drawing on Freud’s concepts of the pleasure principle and the death drive, Derrida argues that an information store (archive) on the one hand involves a desire to…More
Brain Scans and Creativity
As well as its obvious clinical applications, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) helps researchers create maps locating brain activity during tasks such as solving puzzles, daydreaming, playing musical instruments, composing, writing and generally being creative. Knowing where something takes places provides confidence that we are closer to understanding it. This tendency to equate understanding with getting…More
Architectural remainder
Visiting Canterbury Cathedral today for only the second time in 35 years I was unsurprised to observe that this important building still has a bent plan.More
Architecture and Music
Musicians are familiar with the discrepancies evident in musical scale systems. The cycle of fifths and the cycle of octaves work together to produce a harmonious and well-ordered system of relationships between notes — almost. The superimposition of the two systems that is so essential for free and inventive modulation across musical scales in fact…More
Being David Hockney
David Hockney sends digital paintings of flowers to his friends by email. These are pictures he created on his iPhone and iPad. Some of these images are now on show at a gallery in Paris (Fleurs Fraîches at the Fondation Pierre Bergé). It’s pleasing that artists of his stature can embrace new technologies and explore…More
The Future is Unremarkable
This blog post is derived from an article I wrote in response to a request from the Students’ Society of Architecture, Jadavpur University, India, in 2008.More
Transilience
Build bridges that link across chasms and break down walls that divide communities: these are the spatial symbols of transformation towards reconciliation and unity, ie transilience as a movement from one place to another. Who would deny that communities need to seek common ground and unite in shared purpose?More
Hermeneutics and ethics
Some ethical problems: uneven access, inflated claims of egalitarian access, presumption of growth, the deception of conspicuous simulations, the primacy of calculative reason, and obsessions with devices rather than the socio-technical systems of which they are a part. The critical theorists (see Wired-up Words) identify potent areas of critique, but a hermeneutical perspective presents an ethical…More