Computing Life and Architecture

This chapter takes a more biosemiotic perspective, taking a dive into semiotic theory and its application across domains of computing, biology and architecture. Stepping off from Peirce we look at the behavioural approach of Charles Morris, and examine how signs inform and direct behaviour. Fred Dretske’s account of behaviour is looked at initially to establish a model of behaviour, and determine a correlation with semiotic theory: namely Morris’ account of semiotics and how it leads to a biological and behavioural account of sign action. Morris emphasised the role of the interpreter in semiosis. This is deemed a matter of agency, and so we look at how semiosis may be conceived algorithmically. A moot claim, but one which is substantiated - on the premise that life is process, Algorithms are processes and semiosis is the process of sign-action. Hence, the three are considered to correlate. As biosemiotics claims, life is a process of sign action. Consequently, biosemiotics advocates life = semiosis. Algorithms are essentially recipes, or sequences of instructions that are “played”. Through a concatenation of events and actions algorithms unfold, as it were, to generate outcomes. They are processes. Hence, on the premise that both algorithms and semiosis are about process, a computational viewpoint regarding “computational semiosis” and agency is presented. The purpose being to illustrate a process-oriented viewpoint, whereby behaviour(s), or agential interaction, may lead to the generation of organisation; and thereby space and form. The influence of semiotics on architecture, with note to current computational design treatise, is looked at, extending the discussion presented in the previous chapter, to synthesise architecture, semiotics, and computation.