Transdisciplinary Research ● Design Research ● Project Management
Bearing uncanny similarities with contemporary entrepreneurship, alchemy lends a critical lens through which observe today's technology practices.
At once a science, a cryptic communication system, and an art, alchemy was both a philosophy of nature and a practical technology. Its aim was to understand and transform ordinary materials into extraordinary ones to fulfill goals such as human salvation, eternal life and synthetic gold. While the philosopher's stone and chrysopoeia remain mythical to this day, the quest of alchemy enabled some entrepreneurial patrons to achieve high social standing, vast monetary yield, and laid the foundation of modern disciplines now known as chemistry, physics, medicine, as well as psychology and literature.
Practiced in Europe, Africa and Asia over the course of millenniums, alchemy was exercised by scientists, philosophers and artists alike. As such, alchemy is not only one of the most decidedly ambitious material practices known to this day, it was also global and transdisciplinary. Alchemy sets a historical precedent for tech entrepreneurship in the fourth industrial revolution. It lends the opportunity to use the old art as a lens through which to critically observe our current situation in the incubators and echo-chambers of New York City.
Waste, retail and currency are three mechanisms of material transformation and permutation that are currently mutating and morphing under the muscular pressure of digital culture. If reading waste as a financial asset enables the circular economy, can the blockchain leverage how online retail brands find their footing on the high street?
Amir Zwickel will explain how on-demand physical retail space can generate meaningful community spaces. Danielle Joseph will reveal how investments can make wasted materials a resource and enable the circular economy. Mike Goldin will describe the potential the blockchain has in impacting human behavior at the intersection with the material world.
The disciplines of design, architecture, and planning are concerned with orchestrating order in the environment. Expanding the traditional scope of these disciplines can enable the organizing and execution of this multi-scale and timely idea of the circular economy.
European alchemy used graphic strategies to secretly write, publish, and archive a production of knowledge at odds with the ruling monarchies and their alliance with the clergy. Like many of his alchemist peers, Ripley used the scroll to format his graphic narratives. Albeit rarely printed so, web-pages are also scrolls, visible on screen a fragment at a time. This similarity led me to study Ripley's scroll in close detail. Further analysis can be viewed on Cyber-Alchemy 2.0 case study page.
'Le chêne,' pronounced [leuh-sheh-n' means oak tree in French, my native language.
