computers

Cedric Price

There is no doubt that a lot of computers are incredibly boring. They go on and on, never appearing to tire and diligently producing answers to a degree of accuracy that is beyond nice. The only animate analogy that comes to mind is that of the pit pony, which, though blind, was always claimed by its minder to be bright, intelligent and never bored. That account, of course, was second hand and given by a mere human, and this may give the lie to the stories told about computers. There is little doubt that the development of the computer has been interrupted by human 'operators', like nineteenth-century teachers, wanting to know what is going on during its operation. The demand for interim retrieval, statistical or graphic, requires the machines to retranslate into 'human-speak' or 'human-look'. It would be far better if computers spoke only to each other, and merely instilled in humans that feeling of well-being which results from knowing everything is under control. Continuous monitoring and making resultant adjustments are common enough roles for the computer, and in most professions this is now accepted as a task requiring next to no human intervention. Unfortunately, this is not the case with architects. There was a UK nationwide competition, recently, for architectural computer graphics. Beautifully 'drawn' and 'coloured' buildings of horrific banality won the prizes. Who were the judges ? Other computers or, more likely, envious fellow programmers. At my school of architecture there were competitions not, thank goodness, compulsory for cursive and italic handwriting. The content of the writing mattered little ; it was the flow of the ink and the stroke of the quill that won the prize. It is tedious to watch a computer ingeniously producing a ceaseless flow of beautiful simulated perspectives of the successive spaces of a yet-to-be-constructed building of staggering dullness. One hopes that real design will not become confused with such tinkering about. Computer-aided design should be involved with body-building, not bespoke tailoring. The trouble may be that most architects have never spent long enough questioning the feasibility of a design, but have always related the stages in the design procedure to the intervals at which others comment, check, applaud or condemn. The inability to relate the amount of one's own time taken up in programming the computer to the time others spend in retrieving and exploring is similar to the inability of many designers to know when to stop. It is Luddite to insist that computers be 'user friendly'. Few designers nowadays complain that a computer is slow, or praise one for its incredible speed. Similarly, as long as someone is engaged face-to-face with a computer, there is little awareness that either, or both, may be rather lazy. Yet it is the realization of the benefits and pitfalls of creative laziness that lies the benefit of urgency. The ability to 'see' time is as important as that of 'hearing' space ( in Dr Richard Gregory's terms ). The radial-fingered clock enables one to visualize twenty minutes as a slice of time that is large enough for a useful conversation or a quiet drink. In contrast, the digital clock requires recall of a digital number not yet displayed, from which present time must be subtracted and the resultant figure translated into a familiar number familiar through previous experience of its usefulness. No doubt such an exercise can, with repetition, become increasingly easy, even automatic, but I suspect that the loss of the actual two-dimensional imagery of a piece of time is a serious one. The word 'impossible' has something to do with time, whereas 'unthinkable' does not. However, in computer terms both, in a way, are capable of measurement. To speak of the 'infinite patience' of a computer is merely to humanize something we really cannot envisage. The computer's capacity to render useless such phrases of approximation as 'a lot of', 'possibly more than', and 'unlikely to be as large as' also renders extremely vulnerable the mental approximation of visual things. This is where human laziness can rescue the designer who has no wish to flog to death some three-dimensional possibility. Taking infinite pains with a problem is best left to a computer ; making a choice is the human's role. However, the development of computers that become 'bored' through not being 'exercised' enough could result in two fields of design activity which are both challenging and intensely useful. Firstly, the bored computer would produce its own possible solutions to a given set of circumstances, whether asked to or not. Second, it is possible that the computer could establish a new language or point-system that would allow that comparison of what was hitherto considered incomparable. The lazy half-science of kinesthetics has always depended on such comparisons. Designers and architects would be better employed in devising new languages of comparison for computers than in using them to confirm the obvious. I would like to suggest that the socio-environmental factors that would stop lonely old people from going mad could be utilized in determining the economic viability of particular intervals of rental vacancy within a newly completed office block just a suggestion.

( from 'Cedric Price talks at the AA', AA Files 19 )