Applied Virtuality Book Series • Printed Physics - Metalithikum I

Applied Virtuality Book Series • Printed Physics - Metalithikum I

Edited by Vera Bühlmann, Ludger Hovestadt
Technology is not simply technology, it changes character over time. We suggest there is a twin story to it. We call it metalithicum and postulate that it has always accompanied that of technology. It concerns the symbolics of the forms and schemes humans are applying for accommodating themselves within their environment. We assume that the protagonists of this twin story, the symbolics of those forms and schemes, are also not simply what they are but change character over time. From this perspective, Printed Physics looks at the technological and economical developments with which the physical characteristics of materials can be symbolically programmed, for example in the field of photovoltaics or in electronics more generally. These devices are being industrially produced by printing procedures. It is no exaggeration to call this a veritable printing revolution, although, unlike in Gutenbergs day, the printed products represent, primarily, their own functionality. They demonstrate what they can do in a technological, operative way.

This book is the first based on the metalithicum conferences organized twice a year, where distinguished personalities from a broad range of architecture-related fields come together to discuss particular technological developments that are economically significant and philosophically interesting. The conferences are organized by by the Laboratory of Applied Virtuality, at the Chair for Computer Aided Architectural Design, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zürich.

EXCERPT FROM THE BOOK: THE INTRODUCTION
The topic Printed Physics takes as its starting point the phenom- ena observed in recent developments in information technology, by which materials can have their physical characteristics formally analysed, tech- nologically constructed and (bio-)chemically synthesized on a symbolic level, and—hence the wording of the title—can be produced industrially, using printing technologies. This manipulation of materials, specifically upgrading them so they become capable of information-technological programming and control functions, is called “doping”. Doped materials can be manufactured using a process that bears striking similarities to the printing technologies we are familiar with from the past. The manufac- ture of digital processors and memory chips for example is in fact reminis- cent of lithography and copper etching, and the chemical printing of pho- tographs, and thus comes to continue a line of earlier forms of analogue relief printing methods. In the case of printable solar cells, it can be said that instead of ink on paper, ions are literally being “imprinted” on sili- con. Yet there is one important difference, which becomes apparent in the respective notions of “imprinting” and “doping”. Unlike any other print product we have known before, this new printed matter plays a genuinely operational role, rather than a primarily descriptive or representational one. What we call printed physics actually refers to tiny electronic de- vices, produced and distributed on an industrial scale in processes that are akin to those used in the printing and distribution of newspapers.

From a philosophical perspective, there is something interesting that hap- pens in this printing of doped materials. The rationally defined grid, which has been crucial to us for deducing all our physical descriptions of nature, serves here as a frame for projecting the fantastical. Could it not be, is the question we would like to pose with this book, that we are witnessing a development in the field of physical thinking similar to the one that occurred with the logification in geometry in the early 19th century? Are we seeing the appearance of non