hybrid and animation

Hybrid and Animation/Bin Wang

Hybridization is about process. Animation is also about process. The difference between the two is that hybrid presents a certain status during the process of combination and inheritance while animation displays the transformation in a certain span of time. Hybrid can be a single object, but animation is more about continuity. No matter what was mixed in Manimal or works of Kielsler, when finished, they became physical hybrid. Hybrid is production of different forces, just as architecture.

Architecture, whatever the form looks like, is hybrid of different forces. Architects are always dealing with different forces, site, function, circulation, all the elements one can think about in design are forces. Ideas and conceptions come from forces. However, forces are changing. “All buildings are the mothers of ruins”. For architects, it is easy to know that architecture is about time, motion, or whatever, but it is difficult if not impossible to design something spans from constructions to ruins. In Animate Form, the author mentioned that “Instead of a neutral abstract space for design, the context for design becomes an active abstract space that directs form within a current of forces that can be stored as information in the shape of the form”. Building, under this circumstance, displays the inflection of forces, however, it is difficult for me to understand this as a process. When a building has been built, it lost the fluid and transmutability.

Process has a speed. Some processes can be caught in one second, such as the running or flying of animals, others might be detected in one million years, such as the formation of mountains. Architecture also has a speed of transformation. Actually, all buildings are changing, but the speeds of these processes are hard to aware.

The self-contradiction of Animate Form is that form is not a right tool to describe animation. In other words, the animate form which can be seen has a different speed than that of architecture.
So if architecture has a right way to express process and changing forces remains a question.