Olafur Eliasson's "the in between" + Michelle Addington's "simultaneous environment and material non prescriptive sequence"

Eliasson wrote an article called "your engagement has consequences". when we participate in a situation, the situation exists as a consequence of our engagement; at the same time, our engagement exists because of the situation. Olafur is interested not in the 'we' in the situation, or the 'situation' itself, but this coming together..'co-structuration' of us and the situation to form..the unfolding. The last part of the equation is time, but in the sense that time allows the unfolding of the 'in-between'.

Addington, in her book about 'smart materials', describes a new paradigm of observing experience in space. Instead of traditionally 'prescribing' environments for particular inhabitable uses in a chronological manner, we should take a step back and ask why are we treating environments as the thing that exists in time before inhabitation. Yes, we design a space before it is inhabited. But the process of design is not structured similarily to the actuation of this design. The designed, (the made), and the inhabitation occur simultaneously. The environ's inhabitation and environ's materials occur simultaneously: they are a co-structurisation.

Just as Olafur terms the 'in-between', the co-structurisation of the habitant and environs is not built on a hierachy. The co-structurisation is not a system of that sort, but yet a happening which can be picked apart and be looked at in isolated parts. For instance, the economical crisis: housing values are declining in the US.. and in my house my little sister is whining over the process of making her grilled cheese sandwich. 5 years ago houses were worth more. 5 years ago my little sister only had to cut two slices of cheddar cheese from the block to place on her rye bread to make a grilled cheese sandwich. Today, she has to cut six! 1" slices of cheddar cheese from the block, because the blocks of cheese are made thinnier and thinnier each year; but they cost at least 20% more because the cheese company isn't making as much money as 5 years ago. The cheese company thinks this slow, slow, disappearance of cheese will go unnoticed.. but we notice as soon as we need to make a sandwich. I don't read the paper or watch tv enough to know about the economical crisis and the history of housing costs, but I'm sure, because these events are co-structured, that they somehow are comparably related.

Anyways, Addington also talks about phenomenological boundaries which differ from physical and spatial boundaries. Phenomenological boundaries are understood as the zones where there exists a transition between energy changes. Phenomenological boundaries are active zones of mediation rather than delineation. These boundaries are not defined by physical walls telling us we are inside in an environment, and we are not outside in that environment. We can't 'see' them, or 'draw' them as known objects fixed to a location, because they are in the state of constant transition. The boundaries are transition. Phenomenological boundaries are phenomenological because they occur without us needing to understand each individual part of them as separate individuals. All we need to understand is that they somehow work with all their parts together to form something larger. Simondon called the automobile phenonmenological because it has many moving parts, but as we are driving or traveling in the automobile, we do not think of all these parts individually. We think of them as a moving magical system which together allows us to roll from one place to another.

What are examples in the phenomenological boundary? They are conditions we sense. Smell? Taste? Sound? Comfort? Memory? Conscience? Touch/temperature? They are not preconceptions, dogmas, what bounds us physically, or what optically confines us.

In experiment 1.3, the temperature changes in the ARCH2 vestibule are my first mapping of the phenomenological boundary. In this experiment, I 'engage' in the experience of moving through the vestibule. I touch the railing, the floor, I feel the cool breeze when the door opens. the vestibule exists because I am engaging in its environs. now, the 'in-between' is what I study. the 'in-between- is the transfer of heat from my body to the vestibule air and materials, and the vestibule air and materials to my skin. Also, the temporal breeze entering from the other side of the exterior doors. The noise coming from that door, from beyond the door, and beyond the walls, and beyond the floor. Mapping of the overlaps?