kaman lam | State University of New York at Buffalo (original) (raw)
Videos by kaman lam
Ein ortsspezifisches Bauhaus100-Projekt, das sich der Wiederbelebung des Diskurses historischen B... more Ein ortsspezifisches Bauhaus100-Projekt, das sich der Wiederbelebung des Diskurses historischen Bauhaus und seines intellektuellen Umfeldes widmet.
A site-specific Bauhaus100 project dedicated to reanimating the discourse formation of the Bauhaus and its intellectual counterparts.
https://cargocollective.com/projektbauhausorbits
Team:
Alfredo Ardia (Electro-Acoustic Composer, Media Artist)
Arthur Keir (Filmmaker, Alumni, Art Director at Art Government)
Diego Carvallo (Architect)
Frédéric-Philipp Habermann (Architectural assistant)
Grayson Bailey (Media Architect)
Hamzeh Ahmad (Architect, BIM manager)
Jan Glöckner (Graphic Designer, Artist)
Jyotsna Gorle (Human-Computer-Interaction researcher, Software Developer)
Ka-man Lam (Initiator, Curator, Design Lead, Interface Designer & Developer)
Michael Wilde (HCI, Media Artist)
Nancy Abdelzaher (Architect, BIM manager)
Patrick Saad (Data Scientist, Student Assistant of Research Group Prozessorientierte Diskursanalyse)
5 views
Conference Presentations by kaman lam
The critical concern of the workshop “Utopia Computer” is the euphoria, expectation and hope insp... more The critical concern of the workshop “Utopia Computer” is the euphoria, expectation and hope inspired by the introduction of computers within architecture in the early digital age. With the advent of the personal computer and the launch of the Internet in the 1990s, utopian ideals found in architectural discourse from the 1960s were revisited and adjusted to the specific characteristics of digital media.
Paper presented at the All-Ireland Architecture Research Group 9th Annual Conference in Limerick,... more Paper presented at the All-Ireland Architecture Research Group 9th Annual Conference in Limerick, Ireland. Theme: Earth as Client.
When it comes to coping today’s environmental crises, current responses are split between disparate poles — either an apocalyptic view of the Anthropocene, or an accelerationist view that advocates technological innovations and statistics-informed monitoring systems for Sustainability. The scientific paradigm of Sustainability since the U.N.’s definition in 1987 has long been criticized by environmental historians and scientists alike, but nevertheless remained a hegemonic status in the architectural industries, its agendas formalized in green building standards and green-ICT projects.
If architecture is to meet the task of reinventing itself under immense pressures from a changing present, the first and foremost intellectual task is a re-examination of the certainty of idealized science in the Sustainability discourse, in relation to a more contingent approach in synthesizing pluralistic and experiential knowledge. This paper argues that architects’ familiar conceptual device of Phenomenology can perform this task through its founder Edmund Husserl’s (1859-1938) counter approaches, known as pure phenomenological methods and the concept of ‘lifeworld’.
Through explicating a renewed reading of Phenomenology from its origins, this paper surveys both Phenomenology and Sustainability as contested terrain, which leads to the argument that Phenomenology’s accusation of ‘foundation crisis’ in modern science can be found in the Sustainability paradigm. By further introducing readers to phenomenological methods and concepts such as epoché, presuppositions and natural attitude, this paper applies Phenomenology’s critique of modern sciences on Sustainability, and ends with an affirmative proposition of grounding design intentionalities in the ‘Lifeworld’, as a gateway to more conscious Post-sustainable practices beyond current impasses.
Project entries by kaman lam
Posthuman ARCHE is a response to the acute crisis of being human in a paradoxical time. Under pre... more Posthuman ARCHE is a response to the acute crisis of being human in a paradoxical time. Under pressures of new developments from the Anthropocene to the Technosphere, named a “posthuman condition”, our practices of restoring human habitants demand a deep rethink beyond the binary distinction of urban and rural; spheres of existence on the urban terrain and its immense and invisible Res Extensa. This presents an imminent question to next generations’ architects or urban planners - how should human collective on earth be planned, replanned, or first and foremost, reimagined?
The proposal calls for a new collective among the posthuman subjects, non-human actors, earth system, natural resources and infrastructural networks. Inspired by the well-known biblical story, the act of pairing is re-interpreted as algorithmic strategies for reciprocity and resilience. This collective then forms a missionary crew in search for its self-subsidence, as well as our longings for a salvation to come.
Talks/Workshops by kaman lam
How does currency mediate and organize societies and the built environment? This workshop approac... more How does currency mediate and organize societies and the built environment? This workshop approaches the sub-theme of MAB 2020, "Restorative Cities", through envisioning currency as a medium of community. The workshop host, a collective of artist, former FinTech practitioner, architectural designer, and legal theorist, will invite participants to design a speculative currency following a survey of case studies of FinTech and local currencies, contextualization of the medium in urban settings, introduction to speculative design techniques and hands-on demo of crypto-tokens.
Contemporary social and political infrastructure is increasingly powered by algorithms and algori... more Contemporary social and political infrastructure is increasingly powered by algorithms and algorithmic systems that are widely used in everything from financial markets to healthcare, to social media, to policing. Oftentimes, however, algorithms operate as ‚black boxes‘: not only they are corporate secrets but also their workings are obscure to the general population, making it difficult to discover and account for the algorithmic biases and their material effects on different social groups. This workshop will invite participants to engage, both in a theoretical and hands-on manner, with the following questions: What is an algorithm and how does it work? How are algorithmic systems built and employed? What concepts can adequately account for the workings of algorithmic power and governance? And finally, what are the implications of algorithmic biases and regulation for different groups and what kind of models of collective politics are needed to tackle them?
Thesis by kaman lam
A century had passed - a century's histories of art and design, humanities and sciences, networks... more A century had passed - a century's histories of art and design, humanities and sciences, networks and ecologies, bright side and dark side of modernism. If one were challenged with the task of interpreting the Bauhaus century; at first glance, it would seem an impossible assignment. Despite numerous efforts set around 2019 to re-narrate the historical pedagogy, methodology or masters' oeuvre, the underlying, traditional approach to history is far from adequate; and worst, contradictory by nature in the preservation of an intact past and making-sense of a true avant-gardism.
This thesis argues that the Bauhaus should be analyzed ahistorically through the post-structuralist method of Automatic Discourse Analysis. In pursuit of a unified approach to design, history and science by means of experimental knowledge production, the thesis reformulates the assignment of archiving and interpreting the Bauhaus into different inquiries: 1. Contextualising/ Spatializing: Architecture in the Expanded Field. 2. Curating: the structuralist / post-structuralist view of a universal, unchanging order of things. 3. Computing: Data science's macro-view of the world by way of computation. 4. Visualizing: the changing discourses on visual form, language and system. These inquiries are threaded together to support the case of a Bauhaus100 project (www.bauhausorbits.de). Finally, the design relevances of experimentation and software are discussed to illuminate possibilities of reflexive/discursive practice in the future.
Papers by kaman lam
Architektura et Artibus, 2020
In the relativistic world of the 21st century, if the Bauhaus would still be upheld as doctrine, ... more In the relativistic world of the 21st century, if the Bauhaus would still be upheld as doctrine, we must face the truth: it can hardly be considered a provocation. Rather, we most often find ourselves caught between contradictory wishes to preserve an intact past and to make sense of a resolute avant-gardism. This paper proposes that the Bauhaus, as a discursive knowledge body, be structuralistically analyzed with Foucauldian Discourse Analysis. Our claim is substantiated by: first, that a Foucaultian concept of discourse offers an alternative to the practice of history and theory; second, that the publication of Bauhaus reveals a discursive structure in a Foucaultian sense; third, that discourse-analysis-search-engine can perform the analysis on the Bauhaus corpus, contributing to emergent epistemological positions; fourth, that this revealed structure of discourse could be mapped and re-materialized to invite interferences on today’s territory of Bauhaus Discourse. The research and development process in the accompanying project “Bauhaus Orbits – scenographic apparatus for discourse analysis” (bauhausorbits.de) will be discussed.
НАУКА, ОБРАЗОВАНИЕ И ЭКСПЕРИМЕНТАЛЬНОЕ ПРОЕКТИРОВАНИЕ (Science, Education and Experimental Design), 2020
Abstract and front page of a paper presented at "Bauhaus: Past Present Future" conference in Bial... more Abstract and front page of a paper presented at "Bauhaus: Past Present Future" conference in Bialystok, Poland 2019. Abstract: In the relativistic world of the 21st century, if the Bauhaus would still be upheld as doctrine, we must face the truth: it can hardly be considered a provocation. Rather, we most often find ourselves caught between contradictory wishes to preserve an intact past and to make sense of a resolute Avant-gardism. This paper proposes that the Bauhaus, as a discursive knowledge body, be structuralistically analyzed with Foucauldian Discourse Analysis. Our claim is substantiated by: first, that a Foucaultian concept of discourse offers an alternative to the practice of history and theory; second, that the publication of Bauhaus reveals a discursive structure in a Foucaultian sense; third, that a discourse-analysis-search-engine can perform the analysis on the Bauhaus corpus, contributing to emergent epistemological positions; fourth, that this revealed structure of discourse could be mapped and re-materialized to invite interferences on today's territory of Bauhaus Discourse. The research and development process in the accompanying project "Bauhaus Orbits-scenographic apparatus for discourse analysis" (bauhausorbits.de) will be discussed.
Essays by kaman lam
Final paper for seminar Advanced introduction to History Theory Criticism, Academy of Fine Arts V... more Final paper for seminar Advanced introduction to History Theory Criticism, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Supervisor: Prof. Dr. August Sarnitz, Prof. Dr. Angelika Schnell
Mid-term essay at Institute for Art and Architecture, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Supervisor: Pr... more Mid-term essay at Institute for Art and Architecture, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Supervisor: Prof. Dr. August Sarnitz
Seminar's final essay. Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Tao Zhu, University of Hong Kong. A draft rushed to ... more Seminar's final essay. Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Tao Zhu, University of Hong Kong. A draft rushed to finish. Typos and mistakes abound.
Drafts by kaman lam
An artistic-research statement written in Dec 2016. Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Teri Rueb, Prof. Dr. Ka... more An artistic-research statement written in Dec 2016. Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Teri Rueb, Prof. Dr. Kah-Kyong Cho
An unfinished draft on Husserl's pure phenomenology and possibilities for artistic and spatial pr... more An unfinished draft on Husserl's pure phenomenology and possibilities for artistic and spatial practices. Though flawed and missing a substantial deep dive into why phenomenology as a rigorous philosophy (a topic i'm currently researching on), this draft is quite amusing to look back at how it all started... Independent Study with Professor in Philosophy Kah Kyung Cho, Professor in Media Studies Teri Rueb at the University at Buffalo, 2016.
Ein ortsspezifisches Bauhaus100-Projekt, das sich der Wiederbelebung des Diskurses historischen B... more Ein ortsspezifisches Bauhaus100-Projekt, das sich der Wiederbelebung des Diskurses historischen Bauhaus und seines intellektuellen Umfeldes widmet.
A site-specific Bauhaus100 project dedicated to reanimating the discourse formation of the Bauhaus and its intellectual counterparts.
https://cargocollective.com/projektbauhausorbits
Team:
Alfredo Ardia (Electro-Acoustic Composer, Media Artist)
Arthur Keir (Filmmaker, Alumni, Art Director at Art Government)
Diego Carvallo (Architect)
Frédéric-Philipp Habermann (Architectural assistant)
Grayson Bailey (Media Architect)
Hamzeh Ahmad (Architect, BIM manager)
Jan Glöckner (Graphic Designer, Artist)
Jyotsna Gorle (Human-Computer-Interaction researcher, Software Developer)
Ka-man Lam (Initiator, Curator, Design Lead, Interface Designer & Developer)
Michael Wilde (HCI, Media Artist)
Nancy Abdelzaher (Architect, BIM manager)
Patrick Saad (Data Scientist, Student Assistant of Research Group Prozessorientierte Diskursanalyse)
5 views
The critical concern of the workshop “Utopia Computer” is the euphoria, expectation and hope insp... more The critical concern of the workshop “Utopia Computer” is the euphoria, expectation and hope inspired by the introduction of computers within architecture in the early digital age. With the advent of the personal computer and the launch of the Internet in the 1990s, utopian ideals found in architectural discourse from the 1960s were revisited and adjusted to the specific characteristics of digital media.
Paper presented at the All-Ireland Architecture Research Group 9th Annual Conference in Limerick,... more Paper presented at the All-Ireland Architecture Research Group 9th Annual Conference in Limerick, Ireland. Theme: Earth as Client.
When it comes to coping today’s environmental crises, current responses are split between disparate poles — either an apocalyptic view of the Anthropocene, or an accelerationist view that advocates technological innovations and statistics-informed monitoring systems for Sustainability. The scientific paradigm of Sustainability since the U.N.’s definition in 1987 has long been criticized by environmental historians and scientists alike, but nevertheless remained a hegemonic status in the architectural industries, its agendas formalized in green building standards and green-ICT projects.
If architecture is to meet the task of reinventing itself under immense pressures from a changing present, the first and foremost intellectual task is a re-examination of the certainty of idealized science in the Sustainability discourse, in relation to a more contingent approach in synthesizing pluralistic and experiential knowledge. This paper argues that architects’ familiar conceptual device of Phenomenology can perform this task through its founder Edmund Husserl’s (1859-1938) counter approaches, known as pure phenomenological methods and the concept of ‘lifeworld’.
Through explicating a renewed reading of Phenomenology from its origins, this paper surveys both Phenomenology and Sustainability as contested terrain, which leads to the argument that Phenomenology’s accusation of ‘foundation crisis’ in modern science can be found in the Sustainability paradigm. By further introducing readers to phenomenological methods and concepts such as epoché, presuppositions and natural attitude, this paper applies Phenomenology’s critique of modern sciences on Sustainability, and ends with an affirmative proposition of grounding design intentionalities in the ‘Lifeworld’, as a gateway to more conscious Post-sustainable practices beyond current impasses.
Posthuman ARCHE is a response to the acute crisis of being human in a paradoxical time. Under pre... more Posthuman ARCHE is a response to the acute crisis of being human in a paradoxical time. Under pressures of new developments from the Anthropocene to the Technosphere, named a “posthuman condition”, our practices of restoring human habitants demand a deep rethink beyond the binary distinction of urban and rural; spheres of existence on the urban terrain and its immense and invisible Res Extensa. This presents an imminent question to next generations’ architects or urban planners - how should human collective on earth be planned, replanned, or first and foremost, reimagined?
The proposal calls for a new collective among the posthuman subjects, non-human actors, earth system, natural resources and infrastructural networks. Inspired by the well-known biblical story, the act of pairing is re-interpreted as algorithmic strategies for reciprocity and resilience. This collective then forms a missionary crew in search for its self-subsidence, as well as our longings for a salvation to come.
How does currency mediate and organize societies and the built environment? This workshop approac... more How does currency mediate and organize societies and the built environment? This workshop approaches the sub-theme of MAB 2020, "Restorative Cities", through envisioning currency as a medium of community. The workshop host, a collective of artist, former FinTech practitioner, architectural designer, and legal theorist, will invite participants to design a speculative currency following a survey of case studies of FinTech and local currencies, contextualization of the medium in urban settings, introduction to speculative design techniques and hands-on demo of crypto-tokens.
Contemporary social and political infrastructure is increasingly powered by algorithms and algori... more Contemporary social and political infrastructure is increasingly powered by algorithms and algorithmic systems that are widely used in everything from financial markets to healthcare, to social media, to policing. Oftentimes, however, algorithms operate as ‚black boxes‘: not only they are corporate secrets but also their workings are obscure to the general population, making it difficult to discover and account for the algorithmic biases and their material effects on different social groups. This workshop will invite participants to engage, both in a theoretical and hands-on manner, with the following questions: What is an algorithm and how does it work? How are algorithmic systems built and employed? What concepts can adequately account for the workings of algorithmic power and governance? And finally, what are the implications of algorithmic biases and regulation for different groups and what kind of models of collective politics are needed to tackle them?
A century had passed - a century's histories of art and design, humanities and sciences, networks... more A century had passed - a century's histories of art and design, humanities and sciences, networks and ecologies, bright side and dark side of modernism. If one were challenged with the task of interpreting the Bauhaus century; at first glance, it would seem an impossible assignment. Despite numerous efforts set around 2019 to re-narrate the historical pedagogy, methodology or masters' oeuvre, the underlying, traditional approach to history is far from adequate; and worst, contradictory by nature in the preservation of an intact past and making-sense of a true avant-gardism.
This thesis argues that the Bauhaus should be analyzed ahistorically through the post-structuralist method of Automatic Discourse Analysis. In pursuit of a unified approach to design, history and science by means of experimental knowledge production, the thesis reformulates the assignment of archiving and interpreting the Bauhaus into different inquiries: 1. Contextualising/ Spatializing: Architecture in the Expanded Field. 2. Curating: the structuralist / post-structuralist view of a universal, unchanging order of things. 3. Computing: Data science's macro-view of the world by way of computation. 4. Visualizing: the changing discourses on visual form, language and system. These inquiries are threaded together to support the case of a Bauhaus100 project (www.bauhausorbits.de). Finally, the design relevances of experimentation and software are discussed to illuminate possibilities of reflexive/discursive practice in the future.
Architektura et Artibus, 2020
In the relativistic world of the 21st century, if the Bauhaus would still be upheld as doctrine, ... more In the relativistic world of the 21st century, if the Bauhaus would still be upheld as doctrine, we must face the truth: it can hardly be considered a provocation. Rather, we most often find ourselves caught between contradictory wishes to preserve an intact past and to make sense of a resolute avant-gardism. This paper proposes that the Bauhaus, as a discursive knowledge body, be structuralistically analyzed with Foucauldian Discourse Analysis. Our claim is substantiated by: first, that a Foucaultian concept of discourse offers an alternative to the practice of history and theory; second, that the publication of Bauhaus reveals a discursive structure in a Foucaultian sense; third, that discourse-analysis-search-engine can perform the analysis on the Bauhaus corpus, contributing to emergent epistemological positions; fourth, that this revealed structure of discourse could be mapped and re-materialized to invite interferences on today’s territory of Bauhaus Discourse. The research and development process in the accompanying project “Bauhaus Orbits – scenographic apparatus for discourse analysis” (bauhausorbits.de) will be discussed.
НАУКА, ОБРАЗОВАНИЕ И ЭКСПЕРИМЕНТАЛЬНОЕ ПРОЕКТИРОВАНИЕ (Science, Education and Experimental Design), 2020
Abstract and front page of a paper presented at "Bauhaus: Past Present Future" conference in Bial... more Abstract and front page of a paper presented at "Bauhaus: Past Present Future" conference in Bialystok, Poland 2019. Abstract: In the relativistic world of the 21st century, if the Bauhaus would still be upheld as doctrine, we must face the truth: it can hardly be considered a provocation. Rather, we most often find ourselves caught between contradictory wishes to preserve an intact past and to make sense of a resolute Avant-gardism. This paper proposes that the Bauhaus, as a discursive knowledge body, be structuralistically analyzed with Foucauldian Discourse Analysis. Our claim is substantiated by: first, that a Foucaultian concept of discourse offers an alternative to the practice of history and theory; second, that the publication of Bauhaus reveals a discursive structure in a Foucaultian sense; third, that a discourse-analysis-search-engine can perform the analysis on the Bauhaus corpus, contributing to emergent epistemological positions; fourth, that this revealed structure of discourse could be mapped and re-materialized to invite interferences on today's territory of Bauhaus Discourse. The research and development process in the accompanying project "Bauhaus Orbits-scenographic apparatus for discourse analysis" (bauhausorbits.de) will be discussed.
Final paper for seminar Advanced introduction to History Theory Criticism, Academy of Fine Arts V... more Final paper for seminar Advanced introduction to History Theory Criticism, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Supervisor: Prof. Dr. August Sarnitz, Prof. Dr. Angelika Schnell
Mid-term essay at Institute for Art and Architecture, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Supervisor: Pr... more Mid-term essay at Institute for Art and Architecture, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. Supervisor: Prof. Dr. August Sarnitz
Seminar's final essay. Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Tao Zhu, University of Hong Kong. A draft rushed to ... more Seminar's final essay. Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Tao Zhu, University of Hong Kong. A draft rushed to finish. Typos and mistakes abound.
An artistic-research statement written in Dec 2016. Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Teri Rueb, Prof. Dr. Ka... more An artistic-research statement written in Dec 2016. Supervisor: Prof. Dr. Teri Rueb, Prof. Dr. Kah-Kyong Cho
An unfinished draft on Husserl's pure phenomenology and possibilities for artistic and spatial pr... more An unfinished draft on Husserl's pure phenomenology and possibilities for artistic and spatial practices. Though flawed and missing a substantial deep dive into why phenomenology as a rigorous philosophy (a topic i'm currently researching on), this draft is quite amusing to look back at how it all started... Independent Study with Professor in Philosophy Kah Kyung Cho, Professor in Media Studies Teri Rueb at the University at Buffalo, 2016.