Dennis Dollens Universitat Internacional de Catalunya, Barcelona. ESARQ [email protected] AI-to-Microbe Architecture: Simulation, Intelligence, Consciousness Abstract Keywords This paper probes questions of how big machines— Metabolic Architecture, Artificial Intelligence (AI), buildings—can function as hybrid metabolic/AI ALife, Alan Turing, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Computational organisms. Focusing on AI, artificial life (ALife), and Simulation. microbial intelligence I look through the lens of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and Alan Turing’s algorithmic 1. Propositions Toward Metabolic plant simulations to source modernist theory for Architectures biointelligent architectures. I’m using scant records and testimony interpreted through each thinker’s writings, Research strategies to regulate exploratory sets of architecture, and/or simulations. This text is then a generative design actions are called upon here for device for considering ways-of-being within, and ways- reasoning the inclusion of AI, synthetic life, and bio- of-thinking about, theory/practice for the fusion of algorithmic generation into the production of metabolic architectures. These exploratory tactics underwrite biological-to-biosynthetic intelligences (microbes, plants, animals, AI, machines.) Resulting theory thereafter hypothesizing biointelligent buildings as parts of nature. supports the development of bioremedial environmental Therefore, to link theory and observation I evolve cleanup addressing climate change. My proposition then strategies for the investigation of matter and forces deploys biomimetic and laboratory data to nurture starting with symbolic languages to sort types of metabolically driven intelligences partnered with AI intelligence. in the production of architectures. That ontological pathway stems from machine learning, bio-surveillance, Specifically, concepts-terms such as “atomic facts,” and digital simulation at object, agent, and urban scales. “form,” “objects,” “substance,” and especially “picture” Accomplishments in neural net AI and synthetic biology — autonomously inhabiting Wittgenstein’s Tractatus stirred me to question earlier breakthroughs in relation — are appropriated for research organization. His to current experimental practices. Subsequently, I link philosophy suits design analysis reinforced when the and hybridize emergent design proposition to AI, ALife, Vienna house [1] he designed for his sister is decrypted and biological intelligences as unities for environmentally to acknowledge Tractatus logic I analyzed in “Calculating performative, intelligent buildings. Turing, Thinking Wittgenstein” [2]. Likewise, for this paper, the Wittgenstein House stands as a pre- 70 Design and Semantics of Form and Movement Fig. 1. Brainstorming. Theory for plotting application and methodology for metabolic buildings involving microbe/plant/animal/ machine intelligences organized on Wittgenstein’s Tractatus and Turing’s Morphogen propositions. Drawn for the 2018 Metabolic Architectures Studio, UIC. Dennis Dollens. computer agent balancing thinking and design practice may then reveal biological attributes of living organisms to enact theoretical propositions in architecture. suited to architectural simulations and models. Viewed In the above framework, Wittgenstein’s philosophy through propositional tactics, the Wittgenstein House guides design-research, especially when joined by [1], designed approximately ten years after his book, notions of extended cognition [3], extended phenotypes is a built idiom — the logic of the Tractatus resolved [4], and Turing’s algorithmic botany [5]. That mix is in tectonic form: book-to-building, mind-to-matter. used to prompt theoretical organization to motivate Mind-to-matter scrutiny — mixing modes of autopoiesis AI-to-microbial [6] design conceptualization. Such [13] and extended cognition [3] — further situates the organization enables metabolic and AI linkages through house in a relationship with intelligence, language, and Wittgenstein’s logic and Turing’s simulations to illustrate visualization. relationships for theories of intelligent buildings. In the same way, designers may configure objectives for their 2. Typologies of Microbe, Plant, & Animal own projects, observations, and strategizing research Intelligence procedures for metabolic architectural [7. 8]. Metabolic architecture — formulated through propositions — articulate cognitive states supporting The result of Tractatus-prompted reasoning may be used to diagram design visualization theory enabling mind-to-matter design enactments. It seeks biological architects to consider: (i) the synthesis and mutability performance by questioning technological ways to of life, matter, and forces, (ii) differing typologies of extrapolate sensory biointelligence from nature. For intelligence existing in microbes, plants, animals, and example, asking: How can designers observe biological some machines for (iii) algorithmic simulation. All intelligence to enact architectural bioremediation? And, three areas have parallel interactions in Turing’s [9] if remedial strategies are sourced in nature: How can research that complement Tractatu [10] precepts when architects employ theoretical procedures to interpret used as foundational logic for AI-managed, metabolic an organisms’ intelligence and appropriate it to monitor architectures. Turing/Wittgenstein reformulations environmental toxicity? Such questions become thereby suggest pathways over which buildings may be recursive — referencing history and philosophy to designed as living technology [11. 12]. evolve thinking and data appropriate to building design. The designer may then set objectives receptive to living Together, Wittgenstein’s propositions and Turing’s metabolic operations involving the hybridization of AI, computational tactics enable design brainstorming [Fig. microbe, and synthetic biology. 1] to frame programs of investigation. That research Design and Semantics of Form and Movement 71 In this phase, aggregates of AI/microbes may be studied or rendered in code to simulate microbial living habitats as cellular-intelligent agents challenging architects to that, until now, have been genetically programmed only harness carbon dioxide (CO2) sequestration. First by nature [17]. Such observations and programming design explorations are organized through biology presuppose subsystems invoking collective microbe via autopoiesis (auto = self, poiesis = making) [13] behaviors that designers (working with biologists), interpreted to validate organisms (microbes, plants, must coax into an alliance with AI in order to ask: Can animals) as intelligent system unities. Theorized by buildings bio-technologically remediate pollution? In autopoiesis, organisms may be composite unities response, post-Turing questions take for granted that coupled with computational technology. Such intelligent bio-façades could incorporate, for example, simulations echo Turing’s plant observations for AI-monitored bacterial colonies (e.g., biofilms) in order algorithmic performance [14] and his theories of to convert toxins to energy by feeding on CO2 in ways machine intelligence [15]. pioneered by oil-spill cleanup. Shadowed by cybernetics, design research is linked to The thinking behind botanic algorithmic programming biology, biology is linked to code, and code is linked to and the exchange of metabolic data will enormously generative architecture. That architecture awaits new increase when AI and synthetic life are genetically questions formulated after Turing asked: “Can machines cooperating and reproducing in living matter found in think?” [9]. From Turing’s starting point, designers may nature [6. 26]. Existing examples preview beneficial fast-forward observations and data to contemplate bacteria living in animal architectures built of beeswax, intelligent systems programmed through computational wasp paper, biofilms, termite mounds, and human-made biology. In such cognitive-to-computational processes, adobe. Biocellular-AI may equally be modeled upon, or Tractatuslike corollaries emerge as tools [Figs. 1. 4] to paired with, microbes and plants to take residence in, determine design research methodologies situating and perform from buildings and urban infrastructures metabolic buildings as human-extended phenotypes [4. that track pollution while metabolically consuming 16]. specific toxins. 3. Hybridizing: Nature/Intelligence to 4. Turing/Wittgenstein Machine By extrapolating from Turing’s theories and Observation of nature’s biochemical processes reveals programming, I repurpose biology-to-code that cellular agents — microbes and plants — can be investigations through which he simulated aspects of integrated into synthetic materials or ALife provisioned matter, life, intelligence, and machine processing [5. 7]. for architectural components/facades. The resulting Procedurally, the lineage stems from his observations metabolic architectures operate as hosts for cellular, of living organisms extended to implant functions from living organisms communicating between urban nature into coding. This meshes with how Wittgenstein infrastructures and dynamic ecotones. For such hybrids, [10] used propositions to argue the “case” as the an architect needs biological data [Fig. 4] visualized and/ world and, in this text, when the Tractatus is culled for Fig. 2. L-system Grown Plant/Microbe BioTowers. Left to Right: PagodaTower, BioTower, and MicrobeTower, Barcelona. Dennis Dollens. 72 Design and Semantics of Form and Movement