Major Study by Sirwan Qutbi

This is a major study presented to the Department of Architecture of Oxford Brookes University as part of my Major Studies course in my Diploma of Architecture

Statement of Originality This Major Study is an original piece of work which is made available for copying with permission of the Head of the Department of Architecture.

Signed ________________________________________________________

Acknowledgements I would like to thank Harriet Harriss and Dr. Igea Troiani for providing constant help whilst I was writing my research project. I am grateful for all of the guidance, encouragement and meticulous care given throughout my time at Brookes. It has all helped me develop more confidence in tackling design issues whilst enjoying all the qualities of architecture. The knowledge gained through critiques and discussions with colleagues have been invaluable. The feedback from many of the guests and the diverse inputs have been vital in my development.

Preface This major study extends my 5th year design project. Titled the “Code Catchers”, it was a place-making collocation project involving a collaboration between the National Autistic Society and MI5 with the aim to reduce cyber crime. Criminals with High-Functioning Autism and in particular Asperger’s Syndrome dwell in cyberspace and operate through cyber communication channels. A place for MI5 and the National Autistic Society was designed, for the purpose of remedying their lack of social skills and the nurturing of their talent, often used and expressed in belligerent ways. The distinct abstraction I wish to take and combine with this major study, is the idea that those with low social skills can utilize digital communication tools to appropriate cyberspace for their own diacritic beliefs and in their own somewhat peculiar ways. This abstraction from my 5th year project predicates that spaces either virtual or physical can become occupied by an emergence of diacritic ideas, transforming it into an insurgent space with modern forms of communication tools. However, my 5th year project did not address questions on how architecture can be used as a medium for the proliferation of diacritic beliefs, ideas and knowledge whilst mediating the insurgent transformation of public space. This major study questions the predicament found between cultural mechanisms and the appropriation of public spaces. The study will identify and compare traditional and digital forms of communication that aid in proliferating political, economical and cultural ideas, whilst highlighting the importance of these tools in the evolutionary nature of culture, it’s contestations and appropriation of public space. That is, “Can architecture be used to emancipate people from the spread of ideas and trends, that proliferate through social media and create the insurgent transformations of our public spaces?”

Contents Acknowledgements 2 Preface 3 Introduction 6 Memetics: Proliferation of Ideas Memetic: Limitations of Traditional Media Case Study: The East London Federation of the Suffragettes Social Media and the Transcendent Memes

8 14 17 23

Case Study: Occupy St Paulâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cathedral

Utio Meme Viewer

Utio Meme Catcher

Memetic Appropriation of Public Space

Conclusion 52 Bibliography 56 Lexicon List of Figures

62 66

Appendix 68

Introduction This thesis intends to initiate a unique response to the growing use of social media and the impact it has on our public spaces. This design research analyses the point of interaction between the escalation of ideas and the insurgent spaces and how social media as an instrument, amplifies these public interactions. The appropriation of spaces and the transformation of insurgent public spaces are not an everyday event. Due to its temporal nature it remains unfamiliar within the city. Jeffery Hou (2010, pg1) who’s research and practice focuses on design activism and engaging marginalised social groups in the making of public space, wrote the book Insurgent Public Space: Guerrilla Urbanism and the Remaking of Contemporary Cities which is a key proponent to this thesis. He’s book makes use of case studies to highlight instances of how insurgent public spaces occur across the world. Examples range from community gardening in Seattle and Los Angeles, street dancing in Beijing, to the transformation of parking spaces into temporary parks in San Francisco. This thesis subscribes to Hou’s (2010, pg.4) assertion that spaces of insurgency are no longer delimited to the archetypes, codes or categories found in public spaces. Instead they become a place of public expressions; a common ground where our collective senses are developed and expressed. These public expressions and ideas tend to have a memetic agenda of wanting to be proliferated as far and as fast as possible. With this assertion, the research intends to ascertain an understanding of the transformation from public spaces to insurgent spaces, through the ideas and expressions proliferating out of social media tools. I will be analysing the creation of insurgent spaces using the study of cultural evolution and memetics. Susan Blackmore (1999, pg.1), a prominent memeticist, who’s work has made a large contribution to the field of memetics. She makes an assertion in her book The Meme Machine that culture has an evolutionary model consisting of small units of information that are called memes. Memes are what genes are to the human body and cultural information in it self has the same selfish desire as the gene in wanting to be replicated and multiplied. However with social media and modern communication tools, how fast do these memes travel and what behaviours do they possess that may affect our public space? By using the theory of memetics this thesis will have a safe conceptual scheme in which to identify and examine the interactions and the implications of social media in public spaces. I will be using case studies to better understand the impact surges of cultural information through modern and traditional channels have 6

on our spaces. It predicates an attempt to address the question of whether architecture can be used as a medium for cultural diplomacy, and an agent to emancipate people from dominant trends in culture and in space. I will focus on how traditional tools of communication were used to strategically channel ideas of political movements and social issues in public spaces. In comparison, I will examine how modern digital tools of communication have aided, amplified and instrumented the reclamation and appropriation of public space for the transformation of insurgent spaces. This premise underpins the design research investigation ratifying this body of work. “These instances of self-made urban spaces, reclaimed and appropriated sites, temporary events, and flash mobs, as well as informal gathering places created by predominantly marginalised communities, have provided new expressions of the collective realms in the contemporary city.” (Hou, 2010, pg.2). I have not found any work on how memetics can illuminate the transcendent nature of social media. As a case study I will be thoroughly analysing the build up to the protests outside of St Paul’s Cathedral at Tent City. I intend to address how the social aspect of these communication channels eventually appropriate the public space through the proliferation of these contagious viral like pieces of information. As part of a secondary case study I will carry out extensive library research to identify the key events in the struggle the Suffragettes endured whilst trying to proliferate their message, and the restrictions their information faced from spreading further. I will make observations of the public interactions between the meme’s physical form, which is the meme that surfaces to the real world from social media and its interaction with Tent City. The length of time the public spend and the interest shown to the signs, information and protestors will be well observed and backed with a survey. I will also observe the movement of the protestors and how they appropriated the space, and how much of that appropriation and behaviour lends it self to the meme’s level of social media presence.

Memetics: Proliferation of Ideas “God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survival value, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture.” (Dawkins, 1976, p.193) “Meme, An element of a culture that may be considered to be passed on by non-genetic means, esp. imitation.” (Oxford English Dictionary, 2010, http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/meme). Culture is constructed entirely from information that once stood in its place, formed from fragments of human intellectual thought or a collective unconscious from the outside world. It serves as a purpose through being a transmitter of information and as background noise humming through space. Memetics help analyse ideas, behaviours or styles that spread from person to person within a culture. The term ‘meme’, first coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, has today almost reached the level of common language, if not common acceptance for its place as a legitimate cultural construct. A meme is a unit of cultural information that spreads across space. This study will look at the spread of cultural information that affects our public space and how it proliferates and replicates itself. Whether through the excellence of taste in the fine arts and humanities, also known as high culture or an integrated pattern of human knowledge, belief, and behaviour that depends upon the capacity for symbolic thought and social learning. Within culture is a set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution, organization, or group. As a measurement of culture, a memeticist monitors and uses their ability to separate seminal thoughts from background noise to understand how the spread of mental content happens. A memeticist believes that a cognitive connection exists between the human unconscious and the living structure of knowledge in our abstract spaces. Through an analytical approach the memeticist would use his ability to view the channel of communication between the human conscious and the structure of knowledge as a platform of human expression. To view existing spaces of information and looking at its condition helps create a greater understanding of the mechanisms used to pass information in space. This would shed light on the process of communication in the modern era, which leads to concerns about how physical space is treated, and how 8

well information is passed before it reaches us, and whether our existing methods of communication that makes our culture creates synchronicity or dissent. A memeticist thoroughly interrogates our communication portals. Channels of communication funnel information that inadvertently render our physical spaces. The quality of our spaces can be correlated to the quality of the information we receive from the channels of communication. Whether or not these communication channels help in creating the culture depends on how well connected we are and if the connectedness of us in space does not degrade the quality of the information as it passes through. The use of memetics is increasing rapidly and the application of memetics are spreading across multiple disciplines. It is used as an approach to evolutionary models for cultural information transfer (Gulas, 2004, pg.3). I have chosen this method to analyse the effects of social media on public spaces. By determining what the behaviours and patterns are of memes whilst contesting in there respective evolutionary models, it can help describe it’s space and the environment in which these behaviours and patterns occur. What are the socio-spatial boundaries for the meme’s replications? What is the meme physically up against? Has the meme set up a new temporal re-configurations of the space? What are the general perceptions of the meme and what are the implications of the new topology that the meme create whilst replicating in public space? In culture and commercialism, the principles of memetics are translated into the artificial world and put into practice for human benefit and use. In architecture, we can use memetics to help answer a few questions that, issues regarding the city and an increasingly techno-socially engaged public space, may pose. An example of memetic processes can be found in commercialism, when entering the Apple Mac Store in Oxford Street, London; you enter a space that is more unified, you’re amongst people with a common function, interest and purpose. The ‘transcendent’ nature of the space caused by the memetic agent in the customers mind and the cultural make up of the app store; uncovers a patriarchal space that proselytizes the meme and eventually helps sell more products. Like in commercialism, companies use memetic strategies to help there products survive competition, as does social media as it enters the physical space, it uses memetic models to help there memes survive competition.

A meme can also take the form of ‘social media content’, such as a ‘tweet’, ‘article’, a ‘picture’ or a ‘Facebook like’. The memetic makeup of public activity and its rendition of our public spaces is a vital aspect of this study. As we become more conscious of a memetic structure shaping our cultures through social media the proliferation of ideas and memes become more accessible as a function of human expression and part of the everyday life. It is becoming increasingly evident that the gradual development of an enriched media environment, ubiquitous computing, mobile and wireless communication technologies, as well as the internet as a non-extraordinary part of our everyday lives, are changing the ways people use cities and live in them. What is less clear, however, is how these technologies are actually modifying city living and the fruition of urban spaces. (Aurigi, 2009, p.5). The existence of a memetic structure in culture predicates that any existing communication channels for memes to pass through makes our spaces highly vulnerable to memetic exploitation. Diacritic ideas and beliefs multiplying and replicating in digital spaces can and will surface into the physical world, especially when there is high contestation between varying ideas. Contesting ideas will find a new format of space to contest in until one idea or meme obliterates the other. Susan Blackmore (1999, pg.93) likens the contestation between memes to natural selection and evolution, that is the greatest idea prevails. A greater idea does not necessarily mean the truest idea to its context, but the idea that has been able to acquire the public the most, which can be aided through social media tools. Social media can shift the contention between memes and ideas from digital spaces to the physical spaces as part of a new environment where the memes compete for the amount of people to acquire in a totally different level of contention. For example, two lions from the wild in Sub-Saharan Africa could compete for a mate or resource, but how integral would the competition be given that those two lions where instead put in a zoo. The zoo gives a totally different environment for the contention between the two lions and their subject. The zoo in this case would have infrastructure, walls, barriers, mediators, rangers that feed them. The parameters of a meme’s evolution change in a different environment. These ideas or memes can have adverse affects on our public spaces, depending on how viral they are, or rather to which extent social media amplifies the meme’s replication and spread. A concentrated area of similar memes, or a memeplex makes the space less public as any newer or other idea has less chance of proselytising (Blackmore, 1999, pg 187). A single dominant meme can take over a public space and make it inhospitable to any other idea or meme. These memes can act almost like a virus. “We tend to call something a virus when it is clearly act10

ing mainly for its own replication by stealing the replicating resource of some other system - and especially when it does harm to that system. We usually give it a different name when it is useful to us. “(Blackmore, 1999, pg.22). An open memetic infrastructure for the making of culture can become open for abuse, especially when the communication channels are so easily available and social media tools makes these communication channels much more transmittable for memes to go through. The assertions being made is that the evolutionary model of memes and its subsequent behaviours and characteristics are only out to attract as much people as possible to help spread it, and will consequently selfishly and ignorantly use the city’s space as a stage to proselytize itself for replication. The city then becomes highly a permeable to memes and becomes impressionable to the greater meme, where the spaces in the physical world start to harbour more memes just as in the digital world of social media. The spread of memes and ideas happen through imitation, the memes acquire people to then be replicated. Ideas spread through the city through imitation. “When you imitate someone else, something is passed on . This ‘something; can then be passed on again, and again, and so take on a life its own. We might call this thing an idea, an instruction, a behaviour, a piece of information.” (Blackmore, 1999, pg.4) Aurigi asserts (2009, p.140) that in the actual world, our body is the mediator in creating our personal identity, but when the body is put aside, precisely as it happens in online social interaction, technology replaces it. Blackmore’s (1999, pg.22) assertion that memes are like viruses leaves the city impressionable to a public to the point of interaction between the social online world and the physical. Memes can exploit this open interaction between the two spaces and the affects can amplify much greater and faster than if a meme was spreading in the physical world alone. This can have adverse dystopian affects, if unregulated and without an mediation of ideas and beliefs, replication of any meme can take over and create interstitial spaces in the physical world. The biology of culture and the evolution of ideas through such an unregulated and an open form of communication creates an uncivil, harsh and dystopian environment. Hou (2010, pg7) states “While new technologies in telecommunication and media have undermined the importance of placebased public space, they have also enabled new types of actions and means of public dissent” (Hou, 2010, pg.7). Memes can also give a public space attachment and define the public by their location. People who 11

are defined by a location usually develop an emotional attachment to a particular place. This social identity is not only defined by socialization but also refers to perceptions in the form of images, memories, facts, ideas, beliefs, values, and behaviour tendencies relevant to the individual’s existence in the physical world. (Aurigi, 2009, pg 127). Memes then stitch together the notion of place, and creates the community in public space, whether the place is a build of memes two hundred years old or from memes relatively new surfacing from social media. Memes in a community and in public space contest for dominance and for resources to replicate further. In the physical world the contestation becomes ever more prevalent as Donath (1999, http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html) puts it in the physical world there is an inherent unity to the self, for the body provides a compelling and convenient definition of identity. The norm is: one body, one identity.” (Donath, 1999, http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/judith/Identity/IdentityDeception.html). A contesting meme wants to dominate and vies for singularity. This can be in a form of political dissent and violent protests with the aim of uniting as much people under one banner. “The community is the centrepiece around which all resources, spaces, instruments, and the knowledge contained in them evolve. That being said, it must also be emphasised that the community is continually being shaped by the very things it is shaping.” (Aurigi, 2009, pg. 188). Aurigi goes onto say that a there is a commonality between a community which is the continuum of the knowledge process, in which the boundaries between individual and collective knowledge are blurred. This assertion goes on to predicate that ideas as a resource increases in value the more it is used. Unlike physical resources which may deplete with use, such as water and grazing land, the more knowledge that is created and used in a community, the more useful it becomes. Wikipedia is an excellent example as it gives people open access to its resources and allows anyone to edit pages. (Aurigi, 2009, pg.189). Recent evidence has also shown how the quality of resources in Wikipedia increases the more they are edited (http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/ view/1763/1643 , 2007). Memes are the product of complex situations and interactions that are expressed in a multichannel way. Memes are expressed through digital, social and traditional avenues. This study splits the meme into two forms. The digital meme which is the part of a meme that interacts with other memes inside of cyberspace and the surfaced meme which is the other part that interacts with its local environment in the physical space of the city. Both forms of memes share the same traits, behaviours and characteristics but one devel12

ops and spreads faster than the other due to their respective environment. The study will specifically look at how invasive the surfaced meme is capable of becoming, whilst quantitatively comparing the memetic level of the surfaced agent against any consequential heterogenous and interstitial spaces. Splitting the meme into two forms gives a better insight into the emergence of social media and its physical spatial assemblage. As social media has different functions and settings, the memeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s characteristics respond differently. For example, the internet, lacking a physical verification of the self, allows people to create multiple identities if they wish to. Even if a person does not want to create multiple identities but a single one, the online identity does not necessarily match the physical identity due to the use of pseudonyms. From this perspective, identity is constructed through participation in terms of frequency and quality of posts, and digital signatures (Aurigi, 2009, pg.126). Both of these forms of memes share one great memetic trait, that helps spread ideas and beliefs across a given space. The altruistic trait of memes help the meme look much more attractive to replicate. From a cybernetics perspective, one would compare this to the biological model of evolution the same way a gene amongst a tribe is passed. The altruistic trait of the meme or a gene helps entice the meme amongst a community to spread it further as those with that piece of information or meme look more generous and beneficiary to others. The meme becomes more open to a community and anyone willing to take the meme on would be suitably impressed and may see to gain something out of the generosity through its altruism (Blackmore, 1999, pg.169). Similarly in commerce, a company would offer incentives to any potential customers. Not only for the sole act of selling a product but for the company to be seen as generous, charitable and self-sacrificing for the good of the local community. The altruistic factor in memetics helps the meme spread amongst a community and specifically targets people within a community because of its humane characteristic. Royrvik (2000, pg.4) elaborates that instead of genes in the original model of evolution, memes become the unit of analysis in the exploration of cultural transformation. Large clusters of memes forming a contextual collective sense of publicness through sharing ideas, information and the memes transcend the public space. Transcending the public space away from its original context and its mere functional nature can both have the meme acquire significance whilst creating insurgent spaces. Gulas (2004, pg.472) states that memetically created transcendent spaces, like churches or Apple stores creates a sense of union amongst a community, where proliferation is orchestrated harmoniously in a group to both show the capacity of altruism and strength in exposure. These characteristics further help strengthen memes and are done both in the digital and the surfaced memes. 13

Memetic: Limitations of Traditional Media Protests appear suddenly in prominent public spaces. The purpose is to stand out in public and create dramatic, allegorical and parabolic contrast to the context of the space. The act of protesting and the calling for democracy in public space has a distinctness about it that galvanises the place and animates the city as a form of public theatre. The dramaturgy of public protesting in the past was a key characteristic of the proliferation of memes and its development over a given space. Fraser argues “It designates a theatre in modern societies in which political participation is enacted through the medium of talk. It is the space in which citizens deliberate about their common affairs, and hence an institutionalized arena of discursive interaction.” (Fraser, 1992, pg.110). Fraser also distinguishes public spaces from other spaces. “This arena is conceptually distinct from the state; it is a site for the production and circulation of discourses that can in principle be critical for the state.“ (Fraser, 1992, pg.111). By critically subscribing to this assertion, the memetic evolutionary structure of culture and information surrounding public spaces predicates that public space is indeed a space of memetic replication and a harbinger of memes. Susan Blackmore argues that memes are easier to transmit and replicate when they’re being harbingered by a familiar source or replicator. (Blackmore, 1999, pg.67). It’s at a familiar space that protesters hope to find a commonality between others that may help replicate and spread their memes. Acts of protesting and demonstrations don’t require and overburdening infrastructure or investment, they enable individuals and often small groups to effect changes in the otherwise hegemonic landscapes (Hou, 2010, pg. 8). Hou (2010, pg. 11) argues that as cities and their economical, social and political dimensions continue to change, the functions, meanings, and production of public space have also evolved over time. Hou, continues to say as urban populations and cultures become more heterogeneous, a growing presence and recognition of cultural and social differences have made the production and use of public space a highly contested process. There’s a constant predisposition for memetic contestations between ideas, expressions and information on our public spaces. Reflecting any current cultural, spatial or cultural changes to our cities, insurgent public spaces represents a growing array of actions and practices that enable and empower such contestation.

Protests and public demonstration through insurgent spaces can help bring human and domestic elements into public and political life. Despite the contestation of the space and ideas practiced, its a democratic struggle for ideas, expressions and beliefs. The insurgent space is an amalgamation of hostile memes looking to replicate their ideas further. Relating to an individual, this could be political concern, strife, trying to make an opinion or meme heard. In the past traditional forms of media and communication channels used to express ideas were limiting, they were predominantly seen as the antithesis of architecture and the public space. On the contrary, their role in democratic cities is significant. They exert democratic life in to the city and provide a healthy contestation of ideas and memes. Memes are the unit of cultural information and if there is biological and evolutionary traits found in the build up of culture, than surely thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a sign of good democratic perseverance for a city. Mitchell states that the openness and freedom offered in the making of public spaces still requires vigilance and actions. (Mitchell, 2003, pg. 5).

Figure 1-1. The Suffragettes and their traditional.

Case Study: The East London Federation of the Suffragettes At the beginning of the 21st century, a group of radical, militant, working class feminists started The East London Federation of the Suffragettes. It was a highly provocative movement at the time, which sought to expose the exploitation and oppression of women in all aspect of day to day life. It was a community organisation that involved activities aimed at disrupting and challenging the openness of public life and the preconceptions of women in society at that time. They admitted men and were not only focused on the right for women to vote. They used military tactics and they actively recruited and roused the poor women of London. (Winslow, 1996) The suffragettes carried out numerous campaigns during the start of the 21st century with varying results; some campaigns were not as successful as others. However, the campaigns led to the appearance of sister groups, such as the Suffragists who also mimicked the suffragettes in their methodology for demonstrations. Both the Suffragettes and the Suffragists used methods for the sole aim of publicity and demonstrations. The methods were predominantly successful, except the groups where demonstrating in more private and restricted areas; which areas that were less memetically penetrable. It was during the year 1905 in Parliament where Christabel Pankhurst and Annie Kenney of The Suffragettes who interrupted a political meeting in Manchester. They managed to get through security and access to the meeting to ask two Liberal politicians, Winston Churchill and Sir Edward Grey if they believed women should have the right to vote. Both men listened courteously and silently but gave no reply, to which both Pankhurst and Kenny got out a banner out which said their slogan â&#x20AC;&#x153;Votes for Womenâ&#x20AC;?, and they then both went on to shout at the politicians. (Dorling, 2011). There actions were futile and there attempt at spreading their meme was ineffective with their initial approaches. Their demonstrations in secluded, well guarded and insular private spaces of parliament led to no memetic value. Neither did their meme spread, replicate or mutate and negotiate into another meme. The politicians were in this case not ones to replicate anything to. In 1903 two women Emmeline Pankhurst aged 45 and her daughter Christabe Pankhurst aged 23 got fed up with the approach, the majority of the feminist movement were taking. The slow and inadequate protesting directed at these men was futile and led to no cultural, social or political change. They instead opted for 17

Figure 1-2. Women Rights Activist, July 31 1914, A Women’s Right activist handing out the ‘Votes for Women’ Newsletter

a more bolder move. A move that would make a new meme much more powerful. On the end of a dieing cause the two women set up “Women Social and Political Group” which would see thousands of women flock to this new group. A group under a new banner and style of protesting, looked for violence and militant tactics to spread their campaign. They believed violence would give them the results they were looking for. What was interesting is that their gradual lack of patience, their sudden change in approach to their meme and ideologies led to an increase in recruits. The initial peaceful campaign and the respective meme spread through street handouts, pamphlets and leaflets. However, these forms of traditional communication tools had ill effect in a society were even the medical profession painted women as being incapable of working in indelicate places. (Dorling, 2011) The Daily Mail, a prominent newspaper at the time, printed out an article which seemed to have sarcastically coined the term ‘Suffragette’ for any woman that was part of the movement. The women gained momentum, and the meme was mutating in a direction that wasn’t in one it was in before. A great orator of her time, in a speech at the Albert Hall, London on October 17, 1912 Emmeline Pankhurst declared “I say to the Government: You have not dared to take the leaders of Ulster for their incitement to rebellion. Take me if you dare.” (Dorling, 2011) Emmeline became the chief proponent of their meme, and any meme joining or otherwise would go through her to be replicated and evolve. The violence continued and many were arrested and imprisoned. Many of the imprisoned went through hunger strikes, acts of self mutilation were part of spreading the meme and Emmeline amplified these acts by rewarding the women who went on hunger strike with the ‘Suffragette hunger strike medal’, which had the name and date of the woman and when they went on hunger strike. (Dorling, 2011) This meme was avoided all possible threats and instead grew stronger. Although the meme was very strong, partly because it involved an absolute human right, it did however struggle by having to go through physical contestation, to be heard and reciprocated. It grew not through social procurement, or persuasive memetic tactics but through radical, militant and insurgent techniques. Traditional media did not compel the public to the meme, and the public were not as exploitable to a meme through traditional media. Print media did not connect ideas and beliefs, it was only through the strengthening of those who were already aware of the meme but were not fully committed. With The meme gaining little exposure the poor single down trodden mothers where one of the only group of people that the meme could attract. 19

Figure 1-3. The Suffragettes Poster, July 31 1914, Poster depicts Force Feeding of the Suffragettes to quell and martyrdom.

Figure 1-4. The Suffragettes Newsletter, July 31 1914, Poster depicts Force Feeding of the Suffragettes to quell and martyrdom.

The problem I found whilst researching the memetic behaviour through traditional forms of communication and past events is that, the public were not as aware of the memeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s spread. There was no monitoring device, one could use to monitor the growth of the meme. Any observation of the memes growth was limited and were only made possible through the human rights abuses the women endured and was reported of. I believe it was vital that the speed, spread and growth-rate of their meme had to have been noticed by the public for it to have developed more successfully and to effectively polarize the public. A visible and noticeable measurement of the meme is a factor that would have led to greater public awareness, regardless of whether the public agreed or not. A monitoring device or a greater outlet for the meme to surface onto would have made a greater difference as more people would have been aware and exposed to the meme. Unlike today, communication channels have far more memetic output such as the Television and the Internet. It was only through word of mouth and communal organisations that the memes of the womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s rights as a political and social belief that the Suffragettes could spread the idea and have it replicated by enough people for the meme to grow in a favourable and congruous size.

Figure 1-5. A variety of pamphlets as a traditional form of communication for the building of the Suffragettes memetic strategy in improving Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Rights in Society and Parliament. These were handed out during demonstrations, before the violence and chaos that later started.

Figure 1-6. Social media tools proliferate and amplifies ideas, images, opinions and memes.

Social Media and the Transcendent Memes Social networking sites allow individuals to build a public or semi-public profile, articulate a list of other users in the network with whom they share a connection and view and traverse this list. As the member base of these sites grows, so does the general accessibility as people have more and more sophisticated devices to connect to these sites with. (Boyd, 2007, http://www.danah.org/papers/KnowledgeTree.pdf ). “Since the rise of Social media it has become increasingly clear that the gradual development of an enriched media environment, ubiquitous computing, mobile and wireless communication technologies, as well as the Internet as a normal part of our everyday lives, are all changing the ways people use cities and live in them”. (Aurigi, 2009, pg. 5). Social media works to enable, amplify and drive new forms of in this case, political, cultural and social interaction; mutating or evolving how we have communicated, allowing for new forms of civic interaction and habitation. This makes our new cities an ideal place for memes to pass into and through the new forms of communication channels. Lynch (1996, pg .6) characterises memetics as a new criterion for how ideas proselytises and ‘acquire’ people, which goes against the traditional notion that ideas ‘acquire’ people. I find this resonates well with the case study of the Suffragettes and how the failure of their meme replicating was due to this paradigm shift. Their way of spreading their meme gravitated towards militancy and violence, which is where the meme’s growth stalled for over 35 years before the Suffragettes could see change. The militancy shifted the paradigm from their meme ‘acquiring’ the public - to the suffragettes trying to ‘acquire’ an idea. Their militancy and violence, saw public spaces being appropriated and caused demonstrations to be less heard and weakening the effect of their proselytising meme. Their meme and ideas had no effective form of communication to travel and spread through. The nonexistence of a suitable tool for their idea or meme to acquire the public was one of their toughest set backs and proved a challenge for their meme’s growth. I believe this was largely due to the ineffective media of that time, such as print, symbolism and the lack of tools to have a meme replicate and be monitored, creating insufficient success. None of these mediums had an effective form of tracking their meme’s growth.

People reflect the places they inhabit because places interpenetrate the human body, heart, and mind. Fundamentally places matter. But so often, they are invisible, simply there. Places do not come into consciousness unless their inhabitants experience them as distressed, as rapidly changing, or as exceptionally beautiful. In modern Western cultures, in which the virtual becomes more real every day and in which professional sand experts have taken over the making of the spatial world, places have become the background of everyday life, neutral and inevitable. But such perceptions, or lack thereof, belie the unremitting presence of place in human life, especially for those confined, literally, in the margins of society. (Kemp, 2011, pg .1). Social media is decentralised, abides to no rules and has no central governance, power is given to the public. Social media is made up of those that can replicate a meme harboured by and from social media that can then pass them meme on in physical space. Therefore, making the city permeable to viral information. Over 50 million tweets a day and 15 million Twitter users in the UK alone, social media is accumulating a massive amount of textual content, cultural information and value (Parr, 2010, http://mashable. com/2010/02/22/twitter-50-million-tweets/ ). Over time the memes that live and interact in social media have built themselves a vast infrastructure, for the sole purpose of infecting citizens and spread as far out as possible. Ignorant to our local environment the meme infects the citizen and takes over there identity, from the destruction of public spaces in Tottenham during the London Riots to the mobilisation of people during Flash Mobs in New York; social media is having an increasing affect on our spaces. For the sake of clarity, social media refers to digital devices and communication technology used to access social networking sites where cultural information circulates and is sent back out through devices to form part of the physical world. Memetic analysis of key events in a cultural context through the use of social media can help identify the interaction between the contestation of ideas prevalent in social media. Signs of memetic growth over time is much more visible, both textually and well documented and referenced through web pages. Traditional media tools had no effective way of verifying the growth of a meme. Social media allows us to observe and analyse a meme qualitatively and quantitatively. Digital tools allow us to use the power of search to yield data that helps us make better decisions over whether we should replicate a meme or not. It gives us far more information about a particular idea, opinion or a political movement than traditional media did in the past.

Social media provides for a more democratic platform, with accessibility to opinion and provision of feedback incredibly easy compared to traditional tools of communication did in replicating memes. The value of ideas can be highlighted through their growth values and be turned into quantitative data. This can be formally extrapolated and used in decision based tasks, but the data can also exploit public space and cause appropriation. Social media is a open tool and many make the most of it in their own way.

November 18th 2011, 13:00. Social media pulses showing digital memes over the afternoon, with a low rate of replication, stated in re-tweets of the meme hash tagged #occupylondon.

November 18th 2011, 18:00. The evening shows a higher rate of replication, growth and inheritance. The rate of replication and growth shows a very physical attribute to time and space. Hash tags of #occupylondon.

Figure 1-7. Social media impulses during the day of November 18th 2011 showing meme replications.

Case Study: Occupy St Paul’s Cathedral At the time of writing this thesis, the public space outside of Saint Paul’s Cathedral had been occupied since October 2011 up until February 2012. I had been fortunate enough to be able take multiple site visits and document the occupation of the space through photographic documentation, extensive internet research and read numerous news articles on it. The public space outside of St Paul’s Cathedral’s had been occupied by a meme originating from a much wider movement from the United States of America. The primary word ‘occupy’ of the ‘occupy’ meme became the word of the year in 2011 (Zennie, 2012, http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2083898/ Occupy-camps-2011s-word-year--conquering-99-percent-job-creators.html) which has coagulates the memetic phenomena that social media predisposes in our modern time. The ‘occupy’ meme has taken the form of a written word, which is ‘occupy’ and has spread in this form through out the internet and digital communication devices. The meme first started as ‘Occupy Wall St’ and later evolved, mutated and multiplied in different variations from the original ‘occupy’ meme. There has been ‘Occupy Nigeria’, ‘Occupy Chile’, ‘Occupy Poland’ but the variation this thesis focuses on is the one variation of the ‘Occupy St Paul’s’. The ‘Occupy St Paul’s’ meme in its diacritical context has caused controversy, angst and contestation between opposing beliefs and ideas relating to the physical space it has appropriate. ‘Occupy London’, which was a derivative before it became ‘Occupy St Paul’s’ had come from an international political and democratic struggle relating to the increasing gap between the rich and the poor in America. This meme later grew in strength through the absorption of many other diacritic beliefs, opinions and ideas linked to mainstream political issues and world affairs. Many political issues or smaller memes such as the anti-war and student fee’s protesters became part of and under the ‘occupy’ meme banner. St Paul’s Cathedral became the hub or nurturing ground for this growing meme, and it was established as the site for the ‘Occupy’ meme because it challenged the traditional and cultural make up of the space, which was about religion and all of its tenets that kept the public secure from harm in the past. It became the platform of political expression, ideas and opinions where people could voice their opinions and it opened up a physical manifestation of the digital meme that was being communicated on the internet around the world.

Just as the Suffragettes did, the ‘occupiers’ sought refuge within the public by demonstrating and proselytising their meme in a place where high contestation for cultural make up. St Paul’s became a battleground for memetic contestation in a physical environment. Blackmore (1999), who asserts that a place of high memetic value can be seen through the many contesting ideas and opinions fighting for supremacy over a given territory becomes a place also known as a memeplex where idea’s vow to acquire the public, each person becoming a node in the interlocking intricacies of the memes structure to replicate. Lynch’s (1996) criterion in memetics for idea’s acquiring the public became ever more clear through observing the ‘occupy’ camp when seeing people from different classes, races and ages be attracted by the ideas emitting from this place, that they could also join and learn more about. For those that had subscribed to the meme initially through digital communication channels linked to ‘St Paul’s’, the manifesting memeplex transcended the public space, and made it a place of worship for their meme. An assertion can be made that the digital communication channels have aided the public outside of this small space in lending their energy and willingness for their meme, just by merely being exposed to it through these channels. Unlike the suffragettes who had little or no complex communication channels during their time, the mechanism for exposing their meme in their memetic strategies largely failed. With social media how ever the transcendence of the place was aided by a meme that became ever more ubiquitous and godly, growing larger through just being exposed to the public through social media. People communicating in and out of the memeplex in St Paul’s were almost having an asynchronous communication channel with god, one would relate this transcendent feeling aptly with the cathedral it was inhabiting quite successfully. Unlike the Suffragettes case study where the meme contested through proselytising the human rights of women, a large predisposition of the occupy protesters where fuelled largely by a memetic take-over, and what Blackmore (1999, pg.188) calls a memeplex. I can see this by identifying certain trend statistics on keyword search based analytical tools and mapping them out to ground based correspondent journalists. On Monday 31st of October the Guardian (2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/oct/31/dean-st-paulsresigns-occupy) reported that the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral had resigned over the ‘occupy’ protest. The 27

article also reported that the bishop of London, Dr Richard Chartres had said he wanted “St Paul’s to find a place in modern public life as pivotal as that it had during bombing of London in the second world war, when it was a symbol of Blitz defiance.” The occupy movement deliberately challenged St Paul’s transcendent meme or belief in religion to help join and replicate their meme. This was an obvious contestation of space between “modern public life” as Dr Richard Chartres (2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/ oct/31/dean-st-pauls-resigns-occupy) put it and the memetic make up of the public space outside St Paul’s Cathedral. The FIGURE on the opposite page shows a search result using Google Trends that shows a comparison between the two memes. The thickness of the graph line over time shows the contestation between the memes. This exercise demonstrates that social media can have its communication channels analysed, which in this case exposes the memetic make up of this space over time. Key events show that social media can have an effect on the public space. I had a look at the time line of the meme, ‘Occupy London’; shown in the next page. I saw a peak in the memetic replication or popularity, which helped the meme break geospatial boundaries and spread to Cardiff, Wales. Having had a site visit. I saw over 30 tents erected, transforming public space, right across the north facing side of St Paul’s Cathedral, parallel to Starbucks’s WiFi signal, which ironically provides the protesters with free internet. The place dubbed Tent City, is a small community of protesters with different tents designated a certain functionality, i.e. One tent was an information hub for people interested in the protest and another was a small cafe. There where many anti-corporation signs, posters, QR codes, A4 print outs laminated and stuck on the existing architecture. Many of the people had Guy Fawkes masks on, which is a mergence of existing memes already there. I surveyed 16 protesters at Tent City and over 60% of them had organised most of the camping material, events and living instructions through the internet. I found that they had been communicated within Tent City through social media tools, keeping interested people updated through the medium of vlogging and making video diaries that were published to the web. I also found that most of the activity at Tent City was documented and blogged about as it happened through Twitter. So not only does the meme spread through digital communication channels, but the data shows its exposure levels, confirming the meme’s strength and making it more likely to spread even more amongst the predominant media outlets such as the BBC. You can find the survey at the back of this thesis in Appendix 1.

Starbucks FREE Internet

Wi-Fi Signal

edral

th St Paul’s Ca

1/11/11

Occupy Spreads to Cardiff

Eviction Notice

30/11/11

‘OccupyLondon’ ‘StPaulsCathedral’

‘Occupy London, St Paul’s, a brief account of the Occupy London protest at St Paul’s Cathedral’s ‘Tent City’ with two key peaks in its memetic replication. The thickness of the above line expresses the level of the memetic replication across digital devices (using Google trends) with an increase in the appropriation of public space across St Paul’s Cathedral.

Figure 1-8. St Paul’s Cathedral and the memetic timeline of key peak replications.

Figure 1-9. 1:2500 site plan of St Paulâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cathedral.

court

Figure 1-10. St Paulâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Public Space

Figure 1-11. The public stopping by the walk through onto St Paul’s Underground station were drawn into the campus facing the Cathedrals Northern facade.

Figure 1-12. Tents were a clear sign of an occupation and the space perpendicular to St Paul’s Cathedral and a walk-through to the station had been appropriated.

Figure 1-13. St Paul’s entrance had a visible sign of a memeplex appropriating physical space. A large amount of the information gathered here had been from the internet and occupiers set up their tents engulfing the entire space.

Figure 1-14. Tents were a clear sign of an occupation and the space perpendicular to St Paulâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cathedral and a walk-through to the station had been appropriated.

Figure 1-15. There was purpose built tents for spreading the meme through traditional media too. Pamphlets, Discussion space and a Shop selling self published books were an attempt at drawing the public in to learn more about the surfaced meme as opposed to be put off by the spatial appropriation in public space.

Figure 1-16. an open public camp, handing out refreshments and food to the public.

Figure 1-17. Surfaces memes in the form of print media decorate the existing building with varying memes.

Utio Meme Viewer I built a web application that positions tweets on a map relative to where they were tweeted from. The web app was built over the Christmas holiday of 2012 and is located at http://ut.io. Although, as of writing this thesis, Useful Terminal Input Output or Ut.io is still incomplete in some of its features, what it does do is sufficient for this research. It has validated that there is memetic data over a certain space. In this case, it has shown that there is social media activity over St Paul’s Cathedral and its surrounding public space in a specific meme, the ‘occupy’ meme. Blackmore’s (1999, pg.186) subscription to memeplexes being a heap of amalgamated memes forming one concentrated area, manifesting their own built-in defence mechanisms for not letting intruding memes can be seen at the ‘Occupy St Paul’s’ meme. Utio helps visualise the memeplex. The visualization of a memeplex helps identify the source to which social media will help surface the digital meme into the physical public space. This does several things for us as architect’s it shows there is cultural concern, and enough of it over a certain public spaces; it shows what exactly the key concerns are and helps facilitate discussions, ideas and disputes. With its current state it does enough to search for one or more keywords or memes and finds contestation and appropriation of space, either in physical or digital space. I hope to continue working on it after this thesis by making Utio analyse and identify the key attributes and characteristics of a given meme and contrasting it to the memetic makeup of its local public space. Besides identifying memeplex, I think there is a tremendous amount more one could do, with the data that is given from a comparison made between the memetic make up of a given space and a meme. For example how would the characteristics, similarities and differences between public space and the current cultural ideas of that space help build better architecture both socially and physically or help mediate between the two differences and the contestation caused. This would be for later research and stretches out of the scope of this thesis. However, Utio provides enough for me to see that there is memetic contestation over St Paul’s Cathedral and the memes are taking physical appropriation. So I will be designing a brief that addresses the memetic contestation created by social media. As all of the data on Utio is channelled through social media tools and other technologies that can make use of this data

Figure 1-18. ut.io meme mapper created by Sirwan Qutbi, showing digital memes across a space.

http://ut.io Geo-spatial search engine verifying social media activity over a space. The red dots represent memes that are prowar and the black dots represent the ‘occupy’ meme. This also shows the level of contestation with the amount of black dots versus the amount of red dots.

Utio can provide a pattern of surfaced agents, across St Paul’s Cathedral. The findings will be cross compared with the survey of the public and the interview of the protesters. A pattern drawn across the city would also allow me to see the concentration level of memeplexes that may be the precursor for creation of interstitial spaces. The assertion made is that enough memes in one spot can leave the space exposed for spatial appropriation.

Utio Meme Catcher Besides coding and creating the Utio Meme Viewer, I decided to compliment it by designing a tool that would help capture more memes across the physical space and channel through social media tools. An iPhone application would help capture more memes and create a memeplex for both the architect and the public to be aware of. An idea, an opinion could then be more mediated, discussed and negotiated through social media before it starts to unconsciously get stronger without being detected. So the purpose of this app is to capture undetected memes and insert it into a democratic memeplex. Social media has a far greater platform for democratic and for free expressions to take place than the appropriation or contesting of physical spaces. Used to monitor all memes across a given space, for every meme or idea to have an equal amount of exposure time. Every meme observed through the device will have an opposing meme show up. In a way where it shows relevant context but with opposite views to the subject meme. I have story boarded the use of the iPhone app in its physical public context and how its use would help expose memes to people with different ideas and negotiate the process of communication through social media.

Tent City, St Paulâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cathedral,

Tweet : #OccupyLondon Meme

Part of a Meme that Proliferates in social media.

Digital Agent

Surfaced Agent This QR code is a digital representation of the meme linking the digital with the physical space.

Figure 1-19. Devices such as the iPhone used to transmit surfaced memes backed into digital meme.

Tent City takes over St Paul’s Public space.

User captures meme, tweets, judges it and view other memes in the area.

Protestors start to discuss the meme, at a common place to related better to the meme and to better materialise the cyber identity with the physical. Protesters start to gather at St Paul’s Cathedral as they find through the app, that the area is concentrated with related memes. (occupy)

The occupy meme starts off on internet discussion boards, the meme makes a few faint appearances in the form of a small crowd demos. Those at the protest and those outside of it, help spread the occupy meme through social media, and an increase in Tent City takes place. The iphone app captures the meme, and it spreads faster on the internet and through devices that help pinpoint geo-spatial areas relating to the capture.

A user snaps up a varying meme of the ‘occupy’ version. Tweets, and shares it. Others take not of this memes variation.

Smaller memes, like the Kurdish rights and the Armenian genocide fuse under the occupy meme and make both memes spread faster. However, there were some at the demo who where pro-war but most where anti-war.

The ‘occupy’ meme becomes a banner under which anyone has issues with democracy joins in. Regardless, of whether the context of the origins of the ‘occupy’ meme. This both loses the memes integrity and creates greater insurgency and spatial appropriation.

Others voicing concerns over there take on democracy, join the protest. Albeit, start to have other ‘ideas’ since they were pro-war.

Tent City matures and opens up its first University.

Social media has helped push Tent City into a self autonomous space. With the rate of replication and spread of the ‘occupy’ banner it shows there is public support for the demos. Which in a way, makes the appropriated space more public. So its the receptiveness of the meme through social media that makes it consensual for the meme and the insurgent space. The iPhone app, shows relating memes,discussions, photos, videos of things happening around the area, with a degree of relativity to the occupy meme. One would search the tagged ‘occupy’ meme and all relative content would show up around St Paul’s - allowing the user to cast there own opinion on it.

The iPhone app extends the debate, and the protest, people cast there own vote on issues relating to the nearest meme ‘occupy’, discuss and share. People find places relative to there opinions. They find memeplexes they can join.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;Through a variety of actions and practices, insurgent public space enables the participation and actions of individuals and groups in renewing the city as an arena of civic exchanges and debates. Through continued expressions and contestation, the presence and making of insurgent public space serves as a barometer of the democratic well-being and inclusiveness of our present society.â&#x20AC;? (Hou, 2010, pg.5)

A correlation between the number of shares in Social Media tools and an increase in new comers emerges, as more and more are sharing content on there phone in and around public spaces.

Tent City takes over most of the public space.

Kurdish separatist activists share their physical meme.

The iPhone application will help create a pattern of memes across the city, showing any contestation between two or more memes, ideas or opinions. The capture of memes will also help analyse the memes rate of growth and correlate it to a time line of events in and around the space, making any suggestions of memes surfacing from the digital world into public space. The capturing of memes will help visualise a memeplex across the city and yield better information for architects to build architecture that nurtures the spaceâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s memetic make up and take into consideration the rate of growth memes grow in that space. Some spaces are less receptive to memes than others and other places create a transcendent nature to the space.

With human replicators of a meme at the site a memeplex forms through the contestation between ideas. The black dots were pro-war and the red dots were for anti-war memes.

Figure 1-20. Social media content being replicated via re-tweets at â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Tent Cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;.

Concentrated memes forming a memeplex near St Paulâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cathedral, surface into physical space through digital communication tools. A memeplex, the iPhone app senses and locates a place of discussion for all the memes to be mediated, discussed and nurtured by those that wish to share theirs. The iphone app will show the user a visualisation of where and how intense the memeplex is, what it relates to and pictures at the scene.

Figure 1-21. Graphic definition of a memeplex over the public space near St Paulâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cathedral.

Memetic Appropriation of Public Space “Public space has had a positive connotation that evokes the practice of democracy, openness, and publicity of debate since the time of the Greek agora.” (Hou, 2010, pg .2). Hou (2010, pg. 3) goes on to say that public spaces serve as a vehicle for social relationships, public discourse and political expressions. Public spaces become familiar to everyone, promotes civil engagements and creates our collective sense of what we develop as a public arena. It is a place where we associate and where we see the public space as being accessible to everyone, thus reflecting and embodying the diversity of the city. However, during my research and whilst writing this thesis I have found that the openness, inclusiveness of public space and the making of it can reflect different political and social biases. St Paul’s Cathedral is considered a public space for both religion and an the establishment of Britain’s past and to an extent its current social status too. It had been occupied by people from different social biases and political beliefs who challenged the space’s memetic makeup just by appropriating the space. In the past public spaces where a way of displaying political power to impress citizens, they were often used to stage military parades, national celebrations and exert order amongst the public, to both legitimize and express political control. (Hou, 2010, pg. 3). Modern democracies assert a contestation amongst public spaces that contain an aging memeplex of memes that originate from older times. As the power shifts to the people, public spaces become a legitimate place of protests and demonstration, which advocates an expression of freedom of speech. This freedom of speech and expression is what creates a contestation amongst the memes in our aging public spaces. The freedom of speech is not only an exercise in modern society and democracies but are a representation of individual ideas, beliefs and social statuses. The contestations and appropriation of public spaces is created through a growing group of minorities from any political, social or ideological background demonstrating and proselytising their meme. The affect in public space is the traction that meme gains against the older memes of that public space. Buildings like St Paul’s Cathedral embody memes from an older time that are threatened by the lack of memetic rejuvenation. St Paul’s Cathedral and all the memes that make it up as a space, belief and idea is threatened by growing groups of communities demonstrating, camping and appropriating the spaces that represent St Paul’s Cathedral. Kemp (2011, pg. 119) asserts that such groups extend the duties of place making in public spaces to create a community amongst the space. 50

St Paul’s camp had its own cafe, university and information centres; the camp concatenated the word ‘city’ to its name for it to be referred to as more of a community engagement. Memetically, this would be considered an extension of the ‘occupy’ network. It was the sharing of responsibilities within the communal arrangements that had helped proselytise the ‘occupy’ meme. Kent (2011, pg 118) goes on to say that in a communal arrangement, members of the community share responsibilities such as cooking, celebrating, caring for children and providing informal social services without expecting that you will get anything immediately in return but have the confidence that someone will return the favour is a primary function of an appropriated space. Through communal interactions in appropriate space memes can get passed and be replicated within the camps and consequentially creates a memeplex. Blackmore (1999, pg. 145) makes an assertion that memes possess an altruistic trait where part of the evolution of culture involves doing something that costs time, effort or resources for the sake of someone else. This altruistic trait serves as too increase the meme’s popularity. In the context of culture, the act of appropriating space has evolutionary mechanisms such as altruism that help create a public space which is more relevant to the people. If a member of the public witnesses an act of generosity at the ‘occupy’ St Paul’s camp, then this act of communal generosity can be imitated in precisely the same way as the altruistic act happened in the camp, which references the act of generosity back to the ‘occupy’ camp. One example of an altruistic act that I saw help the meme grow is that of the willingness to give free information out to the general public. I saw more of the general public talking to each other about the information given and who then asked more questions, reciprocated the act of generosity and shared the information. This memetic behaviour helps harbour a common ground where we establish a collective sense and where the public space becomes a communal democratic forum for free speech and expressions. Appropriating represents actions and manners through which the meaning ownership, and structure of official public space can be temporarily or permanently suspended. (Hou, 2010, pg. 13). The occupy movement lends its popularity to Twitter and its respective #OWS hash tag that helped it spread and break the geo-spatial barriers from New York City right across the world. The altruistic trait of sharing information took place in the digital space complimented any altruistic communal and generous acts of sharing information in the physical space, which happened a lot faster due to allowing more communication channels.

Conclusion To analyse the results of this investigation into how social media has amplified the memetic creation of culture, I will refer to Susan Blackmore’s (Blackmore, 1999, pg. 18) assertion that the idea of memes is an example of the best use of analogy in science. What beings as an analogy ends up as a powerful new explanatory principle. In the case, the most powerful idea in all of science - the explanation of biological diversity by the simple process of natural selection - becomes the explanation of mental and cultural diversity by the simple process of memetic selection. “The over arching theory of evolution provides a framework for both.” (Blackmore, 1999, pg. 18). Blackmore like Dennet and other memeticists argue that memetics can provide a framework for culture and with the rise of social media and big data can be used as a measurement of cultural growth around a particular space. In this case memes being used as the analogical unit for a tweet. The findings of my survey concluded that social media does amplify the appropriation of insurgent public spaces. The appropriation of public space at Tent City near St Paul’s Cathedral and its intensity can be correlated to the intensity of the meme’s virility. The survey showed social media can also replicate the meme in physical space by live streaming the events to social media and that people were more than likely to use social media in contesting their ideas and beliefs. The social aspect of social media is what makes social media much more effective in proliferating ideas in as Blackmore’s evolutionary analogies states (Blackmore, 1999, pg. 83). The viral memes in the digital space help create a similarity with the physical space, in that memes proliferate from distances outside of an individuals reach. The evolutionary model of ideas is prevalent in the digital spaces as it is in the physical space. “It is hard to say who started it. Occupy Wall Street, which began in September, was the first to popularise the term. But #OWS was itself predated by camps in Madrid, Athens, Santiago – and even Malaysia. The day most Occupy camps got going – 15 October – was first proposed because it marked the five-month anniversary of the Spanish occupation.” (Kingsley, 2011, http:// www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/30/occupy-movement-we-are-world). It is evident just by the data gathered from search engine sites that culture has a memetic evolutionary model to it, whether it’s a hash tag on Twitter and how different tweets group together under one meme to replicate further. With this in mind it becomes necessary to establish a lack of contemplation for memetic. 52

Towards the end of writing this thesis, the occupy movement saw its self spread closer to my self than I had imagined possible. Students from Oxford Brookes University camped outside the university in protest of rising tuition fees. They created their own tent community and had appropriated the public space near the car park. I had not had a chance to survey them as time was running out for my research. However, it was certainly clear that the â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;occupyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; meme had taken a standard physical form consisting of communal public appropriation, tents and information centres.

Figure 1-22. Occupy Oxford Brookes, have appropriated the student green space.

I found that memes have a strong resemblance to genes, in the analogy of evolution and natural selection. Both aim to selfishly replicate and multiply. However, just as genes, memes also have other similar characteristics that adhere to an evolutionary model, such as their altruistic trait of showing generosity in a communal setting to attract replicators and spread the meme. I found this was the case at Tent City, but only through social media were the memes much more altruistic as opposed to its restrictive counterpart traditional media. Social media predicates a sense of community, and in a sense is a patriarchal space where people share information they all find relevant to each other, so this brings out the memeâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s inherent altruistic trait, similar to the biological gene. â&#x20AC;&#x153;It is the meme that launched a thousand camps. The protests in Wall Street, London and Oakland may be its flagships, but the Occupy movement is a global one, stretching across six continents, more than 60 countries, and sparking up to 2,600 demonstrations. There have been 10 camps in Britain alone.â&#x20AC;? (Kingsley, 2011, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/30/occupy-movement-we-are-world). Since memetics falls under the field of cybernetics, which is the study of the relationships between one or more components in a system. We can use memes as a unit of measurement, to measure the quality of interaction between people and the environment in culture. A person infected by a meme, carries data that is traceable in culture and social media. If we were to think about using memes as real time data, we as architects would probably only need to consider a more normalized rendition of the frequency of change. In short, memes can change very abruptly, when would it be the right time to capture a meme, and use it as part of both the spatial analysis and the design solution. The question is can the city communicate with digital memes to create a progressive and interactive feedback loop with social media applications currently webbing the city; which would benefit us, both as users and designers of the city. We cannot completely experience the physical world under our digital personalities, identities and formats. However, I still believe we can glue the two spaces of social media and the city, for a relationship with less contestation and appropriation by those infected by a viral meme. Nurturing the meme and accepting its evolutionary model would be the initial idea.

For my Design Specialisation (which can be found in the appendix with this thesis) I will be designing a forum for public expressions, both for the physical and digital spaces. â&#x20AC;&#x153;Creativity takes place in the interaction between a personâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s thought and socio-cultural context and the memories there of.â&#x20AC;? (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996, pg. 24). Interaction with other people, institutions and societal structures that embody knowledge and resources are therefore important contributors to a culture. Building upon the idea of memetics as a series of memes and ideas. It is my opinion that by taking a memetic approach to the social media phenomenon, we can identify and mirror the behavioural qualities of memes to the physical world, By creating portals and communication channels to their heterotopic origin, we can establish a means of spatial negotiation for a realisation of a greater social conscious, amongst any interstitial space.

Bibliography Dawkins, Richard, 1979, The Selfish Gene, Oxford University Press, p193. Oxford Dictionaries. April 2010. Oxford University Press. http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/meme (accessed April 23, 2012). Blackmore, Susan, 1999, The Meme Machine. Fraser, Nancy, 1992, Habermas and the Public Sphere. Wilkinson, Denis, 2007, Accessing the value of cooperation in Wikipedia, First Monday, Volume 12, Number 4 — 2 April 2007, http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1763/1643 Mitchell, Don, 2003, The Right to the City: Social Justice and the Fight for Public Space, New York: Paragon House Gulas, Charles S, The Memetics of Transcendent Places, 2004, Advances in Consumer Research, Volume 31 Lynch, Aaron (1996), Thought Contagion: How Belief Spreads Through Society, NY: Basic Books Zennie, Michael (2012), Linguists name ‘Occupy’ as 2011’s word of the year... conquering both ‘the 99 percent’ and ‘job creators’, Daily Mail - available at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2083898/Occupycamps-2011s-word-year--conquering-99-percent-job-creators.html Royrvik, E. (2000, September). The knowing vortex: Mytho-logical organisational memetics. Paper presented at the International Conference on Complexity and Complex Systems in Industry conference, The University of Warwick, London.

Winslow, Barbara (1996) Sylvia Pankhurst: Sexual politics and political activism Aurigi, Alessandro, 2009, Augmented Urban Spaces: Articulating the Physical and Electronic City. Kingsley, Patrick, 2011, Occupy: we are the world. Accessed March, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/ nov/30/occupy-movement-we-are-world Donath, J.S, 1999, Identity and Deception in the Virtual Community, http://smg.media.mit.edu/people/judith/ Identity/IdentityDeception.html, Accessed January, 1, 2012. Kalantzis-Cope, Phillip, 2010, Emerging Digital Spaces in Contemporary Society: Properties of Technology Dehaene, Michiel, 2008. Heterotopia and the City: Public space in a post civil society. Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly, 1996. Creativity : Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention. New York: Harper Perennial. Boyd, Danah. 2007. Social Network Sites: Public, Private, or What?, Knowledge Tree 13, May. http:// kt.flexiblelearning.net.au/tkt2007/?page_id=28 The Register (Adelaide, SA : 1901 - 1929), Wednesday 16 April 1913, page 7 Hou, Jeffrey, 2010. Insurgent Public Spaces: Guerrilla Urbanism and the remaking of contemporary cities. Shaftoe, Henry, 2008, Convivial Urban Spaces: Creating Effective Public Spaces. Krauel, Jacobo, 2006, New Urban Spaces.

Parr, Ben, Twitter Hits 50 Million Tweets Per Day, http://mashable.com/2010/02/22/twitter-50-million-tweets/ Gehl, Jan, 2009, New City Spaces. Aymonino, Aldo, 2006, Contemporary Public Spaces Unvolumentric Architecture. Carmona, Matthew, 2003, Public Places Urban Spaces: The Dimensions of Urban Design. Sommer, Robert, 1974, Tight Spaces: Hard Architecture and How to Humanize it. Tyler, Tim, 2011, Memetics: Memes and the Science of Cultural Evolution. Pollone, Ambito, 2011, Responsive Parametric Infrastructure, a proposal for a smarter Turin Imperiale, Alicia, 2006, New Flatness: Surface Tension in Digital Architecture. De Luca, Francesco, 2006, Behind the scenes, Avant-garde Techniques in Contemporary Design. Oosterhuis, Kas, 2006, Hyperbodies Towards an E-motive architecture. Kemp, Sussan, 2011, The paradox of urban space. Kalay, Yehuda, 2007, Architectureâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s New Media, Principles, Theories, and Methods of computer aided design. Barclay, Alex, 2010, Digital meets Architecture.

Lexicon You can verify these definitions by checking them online at dictionary.com or oxforddictionaries.com for validity. The words marked with * are words I made up. meme

an element of a culture or system of behaviour passed from one individual to another by imitation

or other non-genetic means.

memetic

derivative of ‘meme’. Origin: from Greek mimēma ‘that which is imitated’, on the pattern of gene

digital meme *

a memetic unit of cultural information in Social Media, i.e. a tweet, an article, a ‘like’ or an opinion

circulating in social media.

surfaced meme *

a surfaced digital meme which has materialized onto the physical world. The appearance of a the

meme in material form, which may be an event, activity, poster or a mask. Surfaced memes evolve

from memes replicating in significant numbers from social media.

memeplex

a memeplex is a large concentration of surfaced memes in one particular area of physical space.

They are generally made up of one dominant idea or belief.

social media

websites and applications used for social networking.

app

a self-contained program or piece of software designed to fulfil a particular purpose; an application,

especially as downloaded by a user to a mobile device

memeticist

“Memeticist” was coined as analogous to “geneticist” originally in The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawk-

ins, 1979.

diacritic

Adjective: (of a mark or sign) Indicating a difference in pronunciation or of a different view.

viral

relating to or involving an image, video, piece of information, etc. that is circulated rapidly and

widely from one Internet user to another:

altruism

The belief in or practice of disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others.

trancedent

Surpassing the ordinary.

dramaturgy

The art of writing and producing plays

replicator

A person or device that is considered able to replicate or help a meme multiply.

interpenetrate

Penetrate or permeate between or within (something else). 63

blog

A Web site on which an individual or group of users record opinions, information, etc. on a regular

basis. blogging

Add new material to or regularly update a blog.

vlogging

Video blogging, sometimes shortened to vlogging or vidding

twittersphere

Twitters entire tweet database.

hash tag

A keyword that helps tag a tweet to other tweets under a common categorically.

big data

data extropolated from a large database source.

List of Figures Figure 1-1. The Suffragettes and their traditional. Figure 1-2. Women Rights Activist, July 31 1914, A Women’s Right activist handing out the ‘Votes for Women’ Newsletter Figure 1-4. The Suffragettes Newsletter, July 31 1914, Poster depicts Force Feeding of the Suffragettes to quell and martyrdom. Figure 1-3. The Suffragettes Poster, July 31 1914, Poster depicts Force Feeding of the Suffragettes to quell and martyrdom. Figure 1-5. A variety of pamphlets as a traditional form of communication for the building of the Suffragettes memetic strategy in improving Women’s Rights in Society and Parliament. These were handed out during demonstrations, before the violence and chaos that later started. Figure 1-6. Social media tools proliferate and amplifies ideas, images, opinions and memes. Figure 1-7. Social media impulses during the day of November 18th 2011 showing meme replications. Figure 1-8. St Paul’s Cathedral and the memetic timeline of key peak replications. Figure 1-9. 1:2500 site plan of St Paul’s Cathedral. Figure 1-10. St Paul’s Public Space Figure 1-11. The public stopping by the walk through onto St Paul’s Underground station were drawn into the campus facing the Cathedrals Northern facade. Figure 1-13. St Paul’s entrance had a visible sign of a memeplex appropriating physical space. A large amount of the information gathered here had been from the internet and occupiers set up their tents engulfing the entire space. Figure 1-12. Tents were a clear sign of an occupation and the space perpendicular to St Paul’s Cathedral and a walk-through to the station had been appropriated. Figure 1-14. Tents were a clear sign of an occupation and the space perpendicular to St Paul’s Cathedral and a walk-through to the station had been appropriated. Figure 1-15. There was purpose built tents for spreading the meme through traditional media too. Pamphlets, Discussion space and a Shop selling self published books were an attempt at drawing the public in to learn more about the surfaced meme as opposed to be put off by the spatial appropriation in public space. 66

Figure 1-16. an open public camp, handing out refreshments and food to the public. Figure 1-17. Surfaces memes in the form of print media decorate the existing building with varying memes. Figure 1-18. ut.io meme mapper created by Sirwan Qutbi, showing digital memes across a space. Figure 1-19. Devices such as the iPhone used to transmit surfaced memes backed into digital meme. Figure 1-20. Social media content being replicated via re-tweets at ‘Tent City’. Figure 1-21. Graphic definition of a memeplex over the public space near St Paul’s Cathedral. Figure 1-22. Occupy Oxford Brookes, have appropriated the student green space.

Appendix

1. Do you have a twitter account?

a) Yes b) No

5.Do you use more than one social media tool for the same purpose?

a) Yes b) No

2. How often do you use social media to communicate with organisers at events and demonstrations.

a) Rarely b) Seldom c) Frequently

6. How many online identities do you have approximatly ?

a) One b) a few c) Several

3. How often do you create social media content on the internet.

a) Once a day b) Over 5 times a day c) Over 10 times a day

7. How long does it take you to broadcast live events?

a) Instantly b) I blog after the event c) I stream live

4. How much of your fellow protestors have you shared information with on social media?

a) none b) a few friends c) everyone

8. How long have you been using Social Media tools for personal use?

a) A month b) A year c) More than a Year

1. Do you have a twitter account?

a) Yes b) No

5.Do you use more than one social media tool for the same purpose?

a) Yes b) No

2. How often do you use social media to communicate with organisers at events and demonstrations.

a) Rarely b) Seldom c) Frequently

6. How many online identities do you have approximatly ?

a) One b) a few c) Several

3. How often do you create social media content on the internet.

a) Once a day b) Over 5 times a day c) Over 10 times a day

7. How long does it take you to broadcast live events?

a) Instantly b) I blog after the event c) I stream live

4. How much of your fellow protestors have you shared information with on social media?

a) none b) a few friends c) everyone

8. How long have you been using Social Media tools for personal use?

a) A month b) A year c) More than a Year

1. Do you have a twitter account?

a) Yes b) No

5.Do you use more than one social media tool for the same purpose?

a) Yes b) No

2. How often do you use social media to communicate with organisers at events and demonstrations.

a) Rarely b) Seldom c) Frequently

6. How many online identities do you have approximatly ?

a) One b) a few c) Several

3. How often do you create social media content on the internet.

a) Once a day b) Over 5 times a day c) Over 10 times a day

7. How long does it take you to broadcast live events?

a) Instantly b) I blog after the event c) I stream live

4. How much of your fellow protestors have you shared information with on social media?

a) none b) a few friends c) everyone

8. How long have you been using Social Media tools for personal use?

a) A month b) A year c) More than a Year

1. Do you have a twitter account?

a) Yes b) No

5.Do you use more than one social media tool for the same purpose?

a) Yes b) No

2. How often do you use social media to communicate with organisers at events and demonstrations.

a) Rarely b) Seldom c) Frequently

6. How many online identities do you have approximatly ?

a) One b) a few c) Several

3. How often do you create social media content on the internet.

a) Once a day b) Over 5 times a day c) Over 10 times a day

7. How long does it take you to broadcast live events?

a) Instantly b) I blog after the event c) I stream live

4. How much of your fellow protestors have you shared information with on social media?

a) none b) a few friends c) everyone

8. How long have you been using Social Media tools for personal use?

a) A month b) A year c) More than a Year

1. Do you have a twitter account?

a) Yes b) No

5.Do you use more than one social media tool for the same purpose?

a) Yes b) No

2. How often do you use social media to communicate with organisers at events and demonstrations.

a) Rarely b) Seldom c) Frequently

6. How many online identities do you have approximatly ?

a) One b) a few c) Several

3. How often do you create social media content on the internet.

a) Once a day b) Over 5 times a day c) Over 10 times a day

7. How long does it take you to broadcast live events?

a) Instantly b) I blog after the event c) I stream live

4. How much of your fellow protestors have you shared information with on social media?

a) none b) a few friends c) everyone

8. How long have you been using Social Media tools for personal use?

a) A month b) A year c) More than a Year

1. Do you have a twitter account?

a) Yes b) No

5.Do you use more than one social media tool for the same purpose?

a) Yes b) No

2. How often do you use social media to communicate with organisers at events and demonstrations.

a) Rarely b) Seldom c) Frequently

6. How many online identities do you have approximatly ?

a) One b) a few c) Several

3. How often do you create social media content on the internet.

a) Once a day b) Over 5 times a day c) Over 10 times a day

7. How long does it take you to broadcast live events?

a) Instantly b) I blog after the event c) I stream live

4. How much of your fellow protestors have you shared information with on social media?

a) none b) a few friends c) everyone

8. How long have you been using Social Media tools for personal use?

a) A month b) A year c) More than a Year

1. Do you have a twitter account?

a) Yes b) No

5.Do you use more than one social media tool for the same purpose?

a) Yes b) No

2. How often do you use social media to communicate with organisers at events and demonstrations.

a) Rarely b) Seldom c) Frequently

6. How many online identities do you have approximatly ?

a) One b) a few c) Several

3. How often do you create social media content on the internet.

a) Once a day b) Over 5 times a day c) Over 10 times a day

7. How long does it take you to broadcast live events?

a) Instantly b) I blog after the event c) I stream live

4. How much of your fellow protestors have you shared information with on social media?

a) none b) a few friends c) everyone

8. How long have you been using Social Media tools for personal use?

a) A month b) A year c) More than a Year

1. Do you have a twitter account?

a) Yes b) No

5.Do you use more than one social media tool for the same purpose?

a) Yes b) No

2. How often do you use social media to communicate with organisers at events and demonstrations.

a) Rarely b) Seldom c) Frequently

6. How many online identities do you have approximatly ?

a) One b) a few c) Several

3. How often do you create social media content on the internet.

a) Once a day b) Over 5 times a day c) Over 10 times a day

7. How long does it take you to broadcast live events?

a) Instantly b) I blog after the event c) I stream live

4. How much of your fellow protestors have you shared information with on social media?

a) none b) a few friends c) everyone

8. How long have you been using Social Media tools for personal use?

a) A month b) A year c) More than a Year

1. Do you have a twitter account?

a) Yes b) No

5.Do you use more than one social media tool for the same purpose?

a) Yes b) No

2. How often do you use social media to communicate with organisers at events and demonstrations.

a) Rarely b) Seldom c) Frequently

6. How many online identities do you have approximatly ?

a) One b) a few c) Several

3. How often do you create social media content on the internet.

a) Once a day b) Over 5 times a day c) Over 10 times a day

7. How long does it take you to broadcast live events?

a) Instantly b) I blog after the event c) I stream live

4. How much of your fellow protestors have you shared information with on social media?

a) none b) a few friends c) everyone

8. How long have you been using Social Media tools for personal use?

a) A month b) A year c) More than a Year

1. Do you have a twitter account?

a) Yes b) No

5.Do you use more than one social media tool for the same purpose?

a) Yes b) No

2. How often do you use social media to communicate with organisers at events and demonstrations.

a) Rarely b) Seldom c) Frequently

6. How many online identities do you have approximatly ?

a) One b) a few c) Several

3. How often do you create social media content on the internet.

a) Once a day b) Over 5 times a day c) Over 10 times a day

7. How long does it take you to broadcast live events?

a) Instantly b) I blog after the event c) I stream live

4. How much of your fellow protestors have you shared information with on social media?

a) none b) a few friends c) everyone

8. How long have you been using Social Media tools for personal use?

a) A month b) A year c) More than a Year

1. Do you have a twitter account?

a) Yes b) No

5.Do you use more than one social media tool for the same purpose?

a) Yes b) No

2. How often do you use social media to communicate with organisers at events and demonstrations.

a) Rarely b) Seldom c) Frequently

6. How many online identities do you have approximatly ?

a) One b) a few c) Several

3. How often do you create social media content on the internet.

a) Once a day b) Over 5 times a day c) Over 10 times a day

7. How long does it take you to broadcast live events?

a) Instantly b) I blog after the event c) I stream live

4. How much of your fellow protestors have you shared information with on social media?

a) none b) a few friends c) everyone

8. How long have you been using Social Media tools for personal use?

a) A month b) A year c) More than a Year

1. Do you have a twitter account?

a) Yes b) No

5.Do you use more than one social media tool for the same purpose?

a) Yes b) No

2. How often do you use social media to communicate with organisers at events and demonstrations.

a) Rarely b) Seldom c) Frequently

6. How many online identities do you have approximatly ?

a) One b) a few c) Several

3. How often do you create social media content on the internet.

a) Once a day b) Over 5 times a day c) Over 10 times a day

7. How long does it take you to broadcast live events?

a) Instantly b) I blog after the event c) I stream live

4. How much of your fellow protestors have you shared information with on social media?

a) none b) a few friends c) everyone

8. How long have you been using Social Media tools for personal use?

a) A month b) A year c) More than a Year

1. Do you have a twitter account?

a) Yes b) No

5.Do you use more than one social media tool for the same purpose?

a) Yes b) No

2. How often do you use social media to communicate with organisers at events and demonstrations.

a) Rarely b) Seldom c) Frequently

6. How many online identities do you have approximatly ?

a) One b) a few c) Several

3. How often do you create social media content on the internet.

a) Once a day b) Over 5 times a day c) Over 10 times a day

7. How long does it take you to broadcast live events?

a) Instantly b) I blog after the event c) I stream live

4. How much of your fellow protestors have you shared information with on social media?

a) none b) a few friends c) everyone

8. How long have you been using Social Media tools for personal use?

a) A month b) A year c) More than a Year

1. Do you have a twitter account?

a) Yes b) No

5.Do you use more than one social media tool for the same purpose?

a) Yes b) No

2. How often do you use social media to communicate with organisers at events and demonstrations.

a) Rarely b) Seldom c) Frequently

6. How many online identities do you have approximatly ?

a) One b) a few c) Several

3. How often do you create social media content on the internet.

a) Once a day b) Over 5 times a day c) Over 10 times a day

7. How long does it take you to broadcast live events?

a) Instantly b) I blog after the event c) I stream live

4. How much of your fellow protestors have you shared information with on social media?

a) none b) a few friends c) everyone

8. How long have you been using Social Media tools for personal use?

a) A month b) A year c) More than a Year

1. Do you have a twitter account?

a) Yes b) No

5.Do you use more than one social media tool for the same purpose?

a) Yes b) No

2. How often do you use social media to communicate with organisers at events and demonstrations.

a) Rarely b) Seldom c) Frequently

6. How many online identities do you have approximatly ?

a) One b) a few c) Several

3. How often do you create social media content on the internet.

a) Once a day b) Over 5 times a day c) Over 10 times a day

7. How long does it take you to broadcast live events?

a) Instantly b) I blog after the event c) I stream live

4. How much of your fellow protestors have you shared information with on social media?

a) none b) a few friends c) everyone

8. How long have you been using Social Media tools for personal use?

a) A month b) A year c) More than a Year

1. Do you have a twitter account?

a) Yes b) No

5.Do you use more than one social media tool for the same purpose?

a) Yes b) No

2. How often do you use social media to communicate with organisers at events and demonstrations.

a) Rarely b) Seldom c) Frequently

6. How many online identities do you have approximatly ?

a) One b) a few c) Several

3. How often do you create social media content on the internet.

a) Once a day b) Over 5 times a day c) Over 10 times a day

7. How long does it take you to broadcast live events?

a) Instantly b) I blog after the event c) I stream live

4. How much of your fellow protestors have you shared information with on social media?

a) none b) a few friends c) everyone

8. How long have you been using Social Media tools for personal use?

a) A month b) A year c) More than a Year

Brief Design I will be designing a building that addresses current cultural ideas, opinions, expressions as a piece of architecture that helps nurture the contetation between different ideas and beliefs and the appropriation of public space. I think by engaging the city in social media, we can create a more conscious and reactionary space that adheres to our contesting identity and reciprocates and provides a feedback loop with the memes, it could drastically change the way we live for the better. Ride-share network applications could improve the environment, specific social networking sites could improve the local community and thousands of more specific application that will help the city support our changing lifestyles. I think it would helpful for architects to have a tool that allows them to have a geo spatial view of memes in real time. How much of the cityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s properties and attributes can be inherited into social media applications, enough to make the city a platform for a fair exchange of cultural information between the physical and the digital? How much can a potential feedback loop within the city affect our emotions or instincts, can a feedback loop transpose all affects, or will the digital agent affect the feedback pathway? What will the quality of architecture engaged in social media, in terms of form, infrastructure and systems, financially, socially and politically. Would this result in oversimplifications, producing bland generated cities, or could this tool hold the key to producing a city conscious of our changing lifestyles? As a memetic tool how would this affect humans, how will humans take to such systems, would it be viewed as a labour and time saving device? A threat to jobs, a redundancy of our skills? Would this save a lot of time? Is this a tool of capture or live feedback with the city? As an inhabitant would we feel safer? Would there be a backlash even if it provided a perfectly engineered space for our lifestyles? How deep has the meme run through the activists, how much of there appropriation is actually made to replicate the meme. How relative to the meme has there spatial identity become? How much of there identity is based off of social media?

Utio Building The brief was developed from my conclusion of this thesis.

Memes spotted across the public space at St Paulâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cathedral and their intensity help allocate not only the precise space but the form of the building itself as meme units have levels of intesity. The level of replication over the same space helps create a greater memetic value of intesity of that given space.

Using the iPhone as a device to catch memes, visual data can also be used as part of the forming and the memetic makeup of that space over time.

Plan 1:350

Concept Model, showing form generated through the meme parameters.

Concept Model, showing connections between ideas and the relationship between the physical space and the digital.

Simone Giostra & Partners Architects have designed the GreenPix – Zero Energy Media Wall – a project applying a self-sustainable digital media LED display on the curtain wall of Xicui Entertainment Complex in Beijing, near the site of the 2008 Olympics. Featuring one of the largest color LED display worldwide and the first photovoltaic system integrated into a glass curtain wall in China, GreenPix transforms the building envelop into a self-sufficient organic system, harvesting solar energy by day and using it to illuminate the screen after dark, mirroring a day’s climatic cycle.

Farnsworth Wall is an architectural wall module that uses and harvests solar energy for illuminating indoor spaces. This application, using real-time responses to itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s surrounding environment, creates an engaging experience for people on site. The Farnsworth wall is a modular paneling system built as a Structural Insulated Panel (S.I.P.) in a standard 4x8 size.This module can be cut and applied to virtually any existing or new construction. A layer of solar panels on the exterior harvests and stores radiant energy and an embedded system of low-energy L.E.D. lights on the other side illuminates the interior space.

The hyposurface wall physically moves to given data, recieved through a programme written to make the wall responsive. The hyposurface wall would connect the digital meme and its pulses of replication and intensity into the physical space, mediating between the digital and the physical surfaced meme. A responsive architecture would help mediate between contesting memes.

A mock up view of how Liquid Crystal Film panels suspended above the public space at St Paul’s Cathedral. Electrical pulses turn the panels on and off gradualy at a rate of speed according to the streaming feeds being circulated through digital space such as the twittersphere, with a tag of ‘Occupy’ and ‘St Pauls’.

The finer details of the building such as the surfaces or the form will be generated through parameters within the values of the memes in a particular space. Data such as the intensity of a meme and its dynamic and changing values give the architecture a responsiveness to its cultural context. A hyposurface wall and projections of tweets help mediate ideas and opinions and provide a space which will nurture a democratic platform for expressions.

The building is formed from the relationship between sorrounding memes. The relationship between the contesting ideas nearby and the intensity of every single meme in that particular space. Through only taking the level of replication, we can exptrolate its intensity and make up the form. So weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re taking the concept of harmony into making the form of the building by using the relationship between the ideas

Contesting ideas and memes in social media across the public space at St Paulâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Cathedral were used as part of the architectural form.

1:300 Section