PULSA: The Affective Art of Novel Intelligent Environments

Abstract

Most histories of digital design in architecture are limited, and begin with the initial investigations into artificial intelligence by the Architecture Machine Group at MIT during the 1960s, and end with a mention of the Evolutionary Architecture at the ArchitectureAssociation during the late 1980s and early 1990s. However if one was to examine many of the artworks created during this time, several artists were working with similar ideas, concepts, and technologies on artificial intelligence. This paper is a media archaeology of responsive environments in contemporary practice.It endeavors to discover the historical and theoretical genealogy of affective, experiential, collaborative work of emerging, contemporary, transdisciplinary groups such as UNITED VISUAL ARTISTS. It does so by revisiting some of the projects by the 1966 artist collaborative, PULSA: People Using Light and SoundArtistically. Both the historical and contemporary examples presented here serve as examples in which the discipline of architecture can expand and take on multi-disciplinary collaborations, and the experience of architecture can transform into one which more fully engages the human senses.