Imaging the Imagined

This paper will be an effort to think through the work done by representations of imagined networks and futures. In particular how these representations have the potential to create agency through their occupation of the gap between the real, lived, and the imagined.  In essence a condensing of the zoom in/out into a single image.

However different types of representation do this in different manners. I  will be primarily focusing on architectural representation in the form of digital renderings, diagrammatic systems analysis, and the traditional floor plan and cross section.  While plans and sections rely on ideas surrounding cognitive mapping to create the potential for agency, diagrams and renderings rely mainly on affect.  The main questions is then, what is the difference between the agencies created by each form of representation, and what type of networks do they prefigure, both in the present and in the future. A smaller question is what is the nature of this space created by architectural representation and how do we enter into and occupy this space.

Central to this argument will be Jameson's  Cognitive Mapping and his various writings on utopianism, Anna Tsing's writing on the gap and the haunted nature of reality in Friction (although in this case it is by potential futures), Nigel Thrift's discussion of affective economies in Turbulent Passions and some of the ideas regarding the democratization of truth from Professor Muhanna's lecture.