Arch. Maria Tsilogianni, Coventry University (GR/ UK)
Abstract: Whether as complementary to efficiency or as intelligent systems with self-evolving capacities, non-human agents and how they interact with humans is a matter that often comes down to pre-scripted roles and entanglements. But this goes against both the unexplored qualities of human behavior and the potentialities of non-human agency. Most importantly, this goes against the possibilities of the embodied coming-together of the human and the non-human under a common multiplicity that showcases ‘another’ sort of agency. This agency of the human-non-human assemblage is one that accommodates the absurdity of heterogeneous agents coming-together to shape radical manifestations of performativity. It has nothing to do with a predefined model of intelligence neither with behavioral scripts that operate upon specific guidelines. It is rather a constantly mutating agency that is speaking from many different points simultaneously, through multiple intelligences that go beyond anthropocentric knowledge.
Idiocy is the plane within which the embodied agency of the human-non-human assemblage might operate at its fullest potentials. Idiocy is not a state that indicates a lack of general capabilities as inscribed by authoritative systems. It is instead a plane of immanence that is able to accommodate the absurdity of the human’s most eerie expressions and the heterogeneity that pertains to the tight entanglements between humans and non-humans. The idiot designates an openness to the unpredictability of genuine human and non-human interactions and how these might be manifested in terms of materiality. The idiotic human-non-human assemblage might take up diverse, unexpected forms that bring something new and disruptive to the constituted norm–normativities generated by ‘surveillance capitalists’ who are commodifying both the human subject and the non-human agent as tools. As part of my research on idiotic assemblages of virtual agents and humans, and how these might be manifested both through mater and discourse–artificial idiocy–, I am investigating how performativity of everydayness might be altered within the premises of domestic landscapes. I am interested in how habitats might refigure their interactions with virtual agents through material-discursive practices that facilitate an inclusivity for humans’ specificities–unique, absurd, intimate particularities–, and how the role of the designer might trigger such emergences of artificial idiocy.
Short CV: After completing her architectural studies in Greece, Maria Tsilogianni received an MA in Design Critical Practice from Goldsmiths, University of London (2017). Her multidisciplinary research and practice move between critical theory, speculative and spatial design, and future studies. Using mixed media, she experiments with mechanisms and structures that invade domestic environments and disrupt everyday performativity in order to reinvent alternative interactions between humans, non-humans and the built environment. She has been an artist-in-residence at Affect-Agora (Berlin, 2015) and her work has been published and presented at international conferences and group exhibitions, including: Cook 8, Benaki Museum (Athens, 2018); London Design Festival, (2017); Mittelweg, Mittelweg 50 (Berlin, 2015); Default 5//Long time no sea, Tsalapata Museum (Volos, 2015), 1st Thessaloniki Biennale of Architecture, 2012. She recently co-founded studio MIWI–a creative design practice based in Athens (GR) and San Francisco (USA) that explores future scenarios through the design of immersive experiences as well as digital and spatial narratives. Studio MIWI’s work has been awarded, published and exhibited internationally in the context of the following exhibitions and competitions: 1st prize and Vitra Design Museum Award Dancing. Alternative designs for clubs, Non Architecture Competitions, 2018; Aesthetics of Prosthetics, Pratt Institute, 2019; Honorable Mention at the Fairy Tales 2020 competition, organized by the online platform Blank Space Project. She is currently active in the field of Collectible Design, working on the production of avant-garde objects and spatial structures. She has also recently started her PhD research in the field of AI ethics and design, at the Centre for Post-Digital Cultures (Coventry University, UK).