Verb Processing

VERB: a new publication devoted to cutting edge issues in architecture and design. The first issue of "Verb" looks closely at the current relationship between information and authorship in cultural practice, asking: how does the increasing complicity between author and audience affect architectural practice? And how can architecture be conceived more fluidly in terms of information? The shift from ''modern'' to digital systems of design and production opens up a material work to a much more profound interaction between author and audience. This change represents a new stage in the development of the relationship that a work--or, in another sense, a message--establishes between the author--or sender--and the reader--or receiver. From the classical work, with its "a priori," essentialist model of appreciation, to the modernist object, with its subjective model of aesthetics, to the emerging cybernetic model, the interface between author and ''user'' has become closer, more direct, and more open. Handsomely designed and richly illustrated, this combination of book and magazine--a "boogazine"--is the first installment in what is sure to be a groundbreaking journey through architecture and design. Essays by Jorge Wagensberg, Manuel de Landa, Alejandro Zaera, Kunio Watanabe, and Adilkno Bilwet.