"Cloud Cuckoo Land is suppose to create a space between two spheres - space in which architectural theory can meet architectural practice - where the given reality can spawn creative ideas."

"The Architectural Journal Wolkenkuckucksheim-Cloud-Cuckoo-Land-Vozduchnyj samok: Integration of an Internet Journal into Praxis"
Eduard Fuhr

Thank you for the invitation. This is not my first time in Clemson, and I like to be here. I have liked it very much listening to all the speakers today because I have learned a lot, but I want to present now. I think I have a more pragmatic approach to these things. Pragmatic in a twofold sense: first, I really want to show how we do it. Second, I want to talk about the pragmatic dimensions of information. My talk has two parts. The first part I am going to read, and the second part is a presentation, during which I will show some pictures and explain what we are doing.

Allow me to say some words about who we are. Cloud Cuckoo Land—that is the name of the journal we are editing—is edited by members of the Division of Theory of Architecture at the Brandenburg Institute at Cottbus together with scholars from America, Australia, and Russia. Cloud Cuckoo Land is published on the Internet in three languages but not everything is always translated. The name of the journal is a translation of "Kingdom of Birds in the Clouds" and comes from an Aristophanes' play The Birds. In this play, the birds have had enough of both humans and gods of earth and heaven, so they decide to found a city in the clouds between heaven and earth. As it is a comedy, it is a practical critique of the situation on earth and in heaven. The birds try to live the alternative, but they are too bound to earth, so it fails. We chose this name because we had enough journals named "Architecture...something." We thought that this would be an adequate name for an Internet journal. It signals that something is on the way, that something is in the air, that we are on air. Cloud Cuckoo Land is suppose to create a space between two spheres—a space in which architectural theory can meet architectural practice - where the given reality can spawn creative ideas. A space where future is based on history, thinking on action, creation on its process, and art on the everyday. Our understanding of theory is a reflection on reality with the purpose to change reality. We don't want theory to emigrate from reality, that is why we modified Leonardo's presentation of Vitruvian. We extricated this man from his structural ties and gave him the chance to act in reality. So theory of architecture means for us the development of planning methods and the application, evaluation, analysis of the design process, participation in the reconstruction of the town landscape, analysis of schoolbooks on architecture, and development of books for schools. But I think you want to hear about our Cloud Cuckoo Land.

The first question is "Why do we publish an architectural journal?" One way to make things clear for architects is to use pictures. So in journals on architecture, they have to publish a lot of good colored pictures, but this is really expensive, so you have to have a lot of ads. The result of this is that there is a big risk in publishing a printed journal. It exposes you to the pressure of the ad-giver, which is the building industry. We can see this in Germany, and think it is the same in America. There is a big influence on the subject matter, on how we publish, and on the contents. Our understanding of architecture is neither building-industry orientated nor mainstream. So we asked how we could develop our ideas, and we saw that the only possibility was to establish an Internet journal. An Internet journal makes it possible to publish relatively quickly, and to publish a lot of pictures, which are necessary to present what you are going to say. The second point, or aim or goal, is the integration of traditional academic work and the Internet. But now the project. This is what we do.

There are four parts in the journal: Architecture Online—AO, the Greek sign for O—is an architectural journal search engine; Expo of Expos is an international exhibition on World Fairs; Data is an archive for sources in theories on architecture.

Before I start to present, I want to say something simply on our understanding of media. In technical terms, this information is a sequence of signs or a configuration of symbols, which can be distinguished, identified or transformed into other configurations by a certain system. Opposite this, profanely and philosophically speaking, is information—certain knowledge that some have and others don't. So in a narrow and technical sense this information is a sequence of signs and in a broader profane and philosophical sense meaningful and practically related. Information is exchanged in order to generate certain knowledge of other people or to cause action. The sender transmits information presuming that the receiving person is missing information for a decision, and when given information, will be helped, provided that this information is meaningful, practical and useful. Then there's pure information. For example, "Have you heard that the rabbits of your cousin Susan gave birth to nine young rabbits?" or "George W. Bush has five pairs of gray socks." If you get this information you usually answer "Oh, really", and it shows there is no science in it. It is information that neither has to be, nor can be understood, if understood means to grasp at sense. Nor is it important for action. The point is that the information is identical to the technical definition of information. Why differentiate between these two definitions of information? Because it decides, in my opinion, between success or failure of an Internet activity. Let me give an example. In Germany, a lot of citizens are getting cable networks. Every citizen is hooked in and can use it, but it is not used because the information technologists forgot to ask what people want to do with the technology, how they can use it, how it is integrated into the everyday, and how it facilitates every day activities. They didn't realize that an Internet activity is only successful when it meets the needs of the user. The information technologists say that people haven't gotten so far as to use the Internet. I would say that the information technologists are far behind people's needs. Information being understood as meaningful and pragmatic comes out of the living word of the sender and reaches the receiver into his living word. When one is talking about media, especially new media, one often thinks of lines, nets, digital television broadcasts, and the Internet. If one thinks about the reality of architecture, I think one could compare it with gas, water, and electricity networks. In our opinion, the Internet is a device, not a net. It is like the oven, not like the network of gas pipes that the oven is connected to. If you want to sell gas you first have to see what needs it meets and how people can use it. You have to adapt it to people's habits, and show people how they can use it. In our context, we deem it necessary to think more in terminal devices than the net. These terminal devices are media that re-materialize the technical information into living language. The telephone, for example, transforms electric pulses into words that have been said by a certain person in a certain situation, which are heard by another certain person in a certain situation. The gas oven, the shower, and the lamps-they are all devices that have to do with nets, and it is these devices that lay the foundation for the action that leads to the creation of the networks of which they are a part. We experience the Internet through the monitor on the desk in the study, office, or library.

With our Internet activities, we have a colleague or student in mind who sits at a desk and must be addressed, who needs to look into our site. That is why we think about what we can do to facilitate scholarly work, how we can meet a colleague during his everyday activities and in his usual and traditional behavior. Let me give an example in which we failed. We developed what we called a blue box, which was a box to be displayed in the library stacks together with all printed journals. We thought we would send one printed sheet by regular mail to the librarian when we publish a new issue or a call for papers, expecting that he or she would display it in this box so that our announcement would be seen when a scholar or student went through journals, which as we all know is a traditional activity at universities. But this didn't work, because the librarian usually catalogs the journals, and in our case he or she didn't know how to deal with this box. So, the box was once displayed and then vanished. Let me now move on to the presentation.

The remainder of the presentation was devoted to displaying the Internet cite Cloud Cuckoo Land which can be seen at http://www.theo.tu-cottbus.de/wolke/cloud_1.html