World At Work - An Interview with Theo Deutinger I've interviewd Theo Deutinger about his work, his fascination with Europe, and his views on time in the age of globalisation. Where are you from? Where did you study? I grew up in Salzburg and studied in Graz. You have your own architecture office, TD, in Rotterdam. What kind of architectural work do you make? The office has a very broad basis. We are developing urban master plans, architecture, interior design as well as graphical and journalistic work. The knowledge we build up can be easily cross-linked, and in this way projects of a totally different scale or function can profit from each other. The work you've made for Impakt Online is part of a series called 'Snapshots of Globalization'. According to your website, 38% of your site currently consists of these SNOGs. What are these snapshots and when and why did you decide to start capturing the process of globalization? The website itself, created by Michael van Schaik (restruct.org) is a kind of snapshot. The 38% you are referring to is actually not the amount of work but the amount of visitors in this section. The site is constantly changing with every visitor. Through a database with all IP-addresses, every visitor can be traced and gets a location in our 'guestbook' in the form of a world map. The visitor intensity, on the other hand gets translated into a barcode. Thus, the background of the website is a constantly changing world map that draws itself, as a gift from all our visitors. Two weeks ago (1 December) we had a 'terror attack' from Israel on our scheme which is visible in the barcode as one broad bar - reflecting 50.000 hits within one day. This person wanted to test our system or wanted to leave a note, I am very thankful for this, it shows that the system is alive. I am generally fascinated by the all embracing, by the universal, and mostly these are very simple things. Like the post-it note or the ballpoint pen, or even clichés that everybody loves, such as a beautiful sunset. I can't live with the argument that the world became too complex to be understood. I really believe that it is a matter of finding a way to tell the story. And that's what I want to try to do with the SNOG's. They are an attempt to explain systems or values that effect a big part of our society, in an understandable way. The SNOGs appeared as a part of my architectural work and for me they are necessary to understand our profession. They are contextual research. Architects are used to investigate the context of a building site before they start designing; I propose to zoom out and see the world as a context. Some of the snapshots focus on Europe in particular, what's your fascination with Europe, and the role of Europe in globalization? (You even have a .eu website, now that I think of it) Europe is the context that I know the best. Personally I am fascinated by the idea of a common peaceful Europe that we are born in. A humble Europe, without any megalomanic ambition could, in the end, turn out to be the role model for a world community. Europe managed to establish a system that is almost perfect and exactly this status of 'almost perfectness' is so promising. Every generation will see something to refine do make a little bit better, Europe is a project that will be never done. This fascination is not shared by all Europeans and a large part of us is extremely skeptical. As much as I am triggered by the achievements, I am equally fascinated by the reluctancy of the Europeans. But I strongly believe that people secretly love Europe. I want to make it visible how people love to go on vacation in Spain, Greece, Italy in summer and France, Austria and Switzerland in winter. I want to show how much they love the same clothes, the same furniture and the same food. I love seeing Europeans complain about their neighboring countries like they did about the neighboring provinces some 50 years ago. The largest role Europe plays in the current phase of globalization is a political one. Since it is clear to everyone that there is no place for a superpower on this planet, a union of nations, and maybe once, of all nations, could be the solution. As a whole, does this series function as a globalization timeline? Is that also an aim of the project: to write a certain history? Globalization as we understand it today started some 500 years ago. Heralded by the terrestrial exploration of the world, followed by the organization of this spherical space through standardization of communication, laws and products, we are now living in a total state of globalization. The snapshots are highlighting this latest phase of globalization. They want to reflect the here and now as accurately as possible, in order to make everybody feel part of it. The spherical condition of the earth has the advantage that nobody is cornered, while it has the disadvantage that one never can see everything at once. With the SNOGs it is possible to show the world at once… every SNOG adds another page to this latest history of globalization. In the office we have designed a timeline of globalization, with all its major highlights. Somehow this became a certain guiding line and index page for long term globalization projects like the timeline project, while for current phenomena it functions more as a diary. With the support of Impakt Online, you have created together with Michael van Schaik (technical development) an internet world clock, that shows a global 9 to 5 economy. Can you tell me a bit more about the background of this project? World at Work is based on the concept of the universal time zones introduced by the International Meridian Conference in 1884. World time zones as such always have fascinated me. The notion that somebody wakes up while I go to bed is confusing and intriguing at the same time. In my thinking about 'scalelessness', I rediscovered the earth as a giant clock and the solar system as a calendar. This only shows how disconnected we humans are from nature, that when we hear time that we first think of a machine: a clock. Later on, we think about natural phenomena like day and night, and of summer and winter. Time zones however are entirely artificial. They are a product of human ratio and nationalism. There is barely a logic in their distribution and the countries caught in one time zone don't have a lot in common but the same time. But the same time is a lot to have in common. You get up together, see the sunset together and look at the stars together. I was interested in the question: when do the most people on earth share the same activities? When are they all working? And that's how it all came together; that's how we discovered that at the peak of the day, 80% of the world's inhabitants share one hour of working together. Could you explain the various elements of the work, and the navigation? There are three possible views: Solar system: the solar system is our calendar. After the first notion of time, the reoccurring rise and set of the sun, and the reoccurrance of the seasons introduced the rhythm of the year. The earth is a cannon ball that shoots with about 100.000 km/h in its track around the sun. By pressing the speed button one can accelerate the earth (and therefore accelerate time) and watch the planets in their ever repeating dance. The solar system view is best watched at the speed of 'one week in one second'. Earth: The earth is shown as a clock with 24 hours. The currently 39 time zones (36 because of quarter and half hour shift from full hour time zones) are accumulated and added up to the 24 hour clock rhythm. The amount of people per time zone is shown in pink. The time when most people are working, thats between 9.00 am and 5.00 pm, is highlighted as the blue pie. The amount of people in this blue pie is added up and shown as bar diagram in the scroll view. The earth view is best watched at the speed of 'one hour in one second'. Workforce Cylinder: This is a cylindrical bar diagram that shows the rise and fall of the global workforce. At its maximum, 80% of worlds population are working while at its minimum only 2% are dedicated to labor. The scroll view is best watched at the speed of 'one hour in one second'. (The speed can be adjusted in the navigation pane, red.) How does this work comment on globalization? What are your findings? The most interesting discovery is that by looking at the working hours of the entire world population, a kind of global day and night rhythm appears. Drawing this out as a graph, a shape appears that architects know very well from investigations into city-life. In fact, the day and night rhythm that the global workforce is generating, is that of a big city. And if the world acts like one city, why should we not start to think about it as such? Right now the production mode levels out this imbalances and North America has such a high level of production that it still outnumbers with its few people the entire Asian continent. But with the rising productivity of India and China this will be different soon and productivity will adjust more and more to the demographic scenario that is shown in our model. In the near future, the world's productivity will be leveled and this current demographic model will become an economical one too. That's when the day and night rhythm will become apparent to people. Suddenly we will notice that there are certain periods when it's quiet on the planet; when e-mail traffic is slowing down, the number of Web visitors decreases and energy usage drops to only 2%. That's when we realize that it is night on earth. |
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