M R
Why is interactivity important for you in the things you do?
F D
It is like the thoughts running through my head – these are composed of lots of other people’s thoughts, too. The moment I was born, my body was composed of how my father and my mother had lived. It is a perpetual chain. What I create is interactivity; the technical term for it is “meme”. Thoughts materialize in a certain form and I have decided to present them in an information field, in a way that is closer to the elusive stream of thoughts in the brain. I find something created in a studio to be presented somewhere else later, lifeless. It is vital that the ideas that are represented by movement, sound and body temperature be created right there on the spot, meaning a new organism is created that exists in the present, while the past is suppressed in it.
M R
What place should art occupy in contemporary architecture?
F D
I don’t separate architecture from art. I don’t separate it from sculpture or interactive installations. When I walk down a street, I cannot separate the two. I can’t answer that question because I am unable to separate the two.
M R
In some of your projects you dabble in architecture, so to speak. What makes you do that?
F D
People tend to meet in certain spaces. They can meet in a field, in the woods or on a square. In the past they used to gather by the village pump. After the pump was replaced by water mains, they started meeting inside buildings. They used to gather around fires. Now it is around radiators. The natural need to share information and talk remains, and is absolutely central for human beings. Meme theory even states that human beings have been created solely for the purpose of carrying memes. But that is beside the point.
The space that provides our living conditions and protects us from the cold and heat creates circumstances for us to be able to share ideas and talk. That is the space of architecture. And because I am interested in communication, I always think about spaces that are intuitive, that don’t build barriers, spaces where people are not separated in individual cells. I think about spaces which allow ideas to materialize. In our interactive installations we work with the fact that whatever one thinks, whatever movement one makes, will materialize and be reflected in some way. There will be immediate interaction with the building, the building will respond to people. We plan houses that think, houses that are living organisms.
M R
The Generatrix project – an installation responding to individual persons – was based on a similar idea. Do you think it could be translated into architecture?
F D
In the beginning, in 1999, there was architectural thinking, an effort to create an intuitive AI‐HCCI space. When you build a house, you need to collect lots of practical parameters for its construction; the geological foundation, the movement of wind, water, light and temperature. These parameters can be gauged and they can be the basis for an interactive materialization of the house, of a space, of urbanism. We added other parameters, such as one’s feelings and emotions that can also be partially converted into data systems, and the result was Generatrix. An architect who has this data can create in an interactive way. Generatrix is very viscous. Imagine that it spills into the space which is a result of these interactions right there on the spot. One makes an appointment with the architect at the location where the house is to be built and using a sensory umbrella they create a living organism – the foundation of a living space. The data is recorded and can serve as a basis for spaces and new intelligent materials.
M R
What is currently new in your work? I know that you have cooperated with the architect Josef Pleskot in the town of Litomyšl…
F D
We were approached by the Litomyšl authorities to take part in a competition for a memorial to the astronomer Zdeněk Kopal. He lived in Litomyšl for twelve years and then moved to the United States, and also worked in Britain and Japan. He worked for NASA. One of his major tasks was to prepare a map for the Apollo landing on the Moon. He cooperated with František Malina, a renowned lumino‐kinetic artist. I imagined him and František Malina developing rocket engines while discussing art, and I realized that the monument needed to be something different than just a sculpture or a bronze bust. So we recreated the outline of his house, which no longer exists, using a light display. There is a ten‐centimeter band in the ground continuously displaying Kopal’s writings and formulas covered with walk‐on glass. In the corner facing the street, the display is twisted into a figure eight representing the binary star which he discovered and worked with. Its models are called Roche lobes. A three‐meter star is wound from carbon fibers using the same technology used for rocket engines.
M R
What else is important for your work, for your life?
F D
For me it is important to balance the electronic forest with nature and love. I take walks in the woods and run long distances, which tones the body. The working atmosphere is important for me, being able to work without compromising and with a vision.
M R
What is your view of human beings and their place in the world? Would you call yourself a believer? What do you think of God?
F D
What others call God, I don’t. But I can feel it, and thus I respect all religions. When I speak now, it is in fact God, because God is timeless and spaceless and people are his extended “sensors” that enable him to experience the beauty here on Earth. Everything here is perishable and everything exists in time – God cannot see it because he is timeless and without space. Thanks to our memory, we can live. Thanks to its memory, wood can burn. Thanks to the fact that trees remember they are supposed to bear fruit, they live… We exist in time and space. So that’s how I think about it.
M R
What do you think of the relation between the physical world and the virtual reality? I have come across the view that virtual reality is more real than the physical one because you can define it to the last bit and you know exactly how it works. Do you think that is a proper description? Is digital reality more real than physical reality?
F D
It is just as real; it is not virtual. We call it virtual because we need to give it a name just as we need to label the color green. We need to realize that it is the planet’s natural self‐regulation. Before there were any kind of written records, information was carried in the heads of wanderers. Then came clay tablets, cuneiform script and smoke signals, and eventually books. It does not mean the amount of information is growing. But as we penetrate reality deeper and deeper with the electron microscope, we need to record all the information. At the same time the number of people on the planet is rising, so the net and the Matrix are natural responses to overpopulation and the necessity to record more information. Naturally, a parallel world where information could be recorded was bound to emerge. A user‐friendly interface was created for us to be able to move around it and store things from this world there.
M R
Do you think that with the development of technology the interface will become more similar to physical reality?
F D
No, it definitely won’t. It is impossible because we create it. It lags behind the idea. However, I believe that just as we will stop writing one day, the keyboard will disappear and everything will become more intuitive, a whole new space and new forms of communication will emerge. Right now I think about it as a multidimensional ornament. When you see it, you will understand what I would have needed several sentences to explain. The ornament can contain scents and sounds, and at the same time a biological mechanism will circulate in our blood system, connected to this Matrix. But let’s not imagine anything metallic. To us, to me, it seems scary, but at the same time I think it is natural that the body will go through a lot of changes.
M R
Do you think that in the future people will be born straight into that cyberspace?
F D
That there will be people who have never known anything else? They will basically be born straight into it. We will still realize that they were born into cyberspace, but their peers won’t because perhaps fifty percent of their bodies will be connected to the system. But just like with the layers of thinking, it is important to keep recording and developing our senses. To see where they are becoming dull and exercise them in meditation, movement and in vibration…
M R
Are you scared by the forecasts that we will be able to create artificial intelligence on a par with humans around 2030?
F D
No, I’m not.
M R
Do you think that humans and artificial intelligence can be partners, or will they compete?
F D
Just as there are fights between people, between intellectuals, over differing views, there will be fights between individual machines with artificial intelligence, and between artificial intelligence and human beings. We need to realize that human beings are not superior to this universe. Even if they cease to exist there are at least ten other planets that are developing in a different way. Extinction is completely normal, so why should I be too anxious when the universe is so beautiful and running?
M R
Thank you for talking to me.
F D
Thank you.