The Prospectus of the Invisible University

Abstract

This exhibition and research project, helped by Hardingham, is an updating of the famous Locally Available World Unseen Network (L.A.W.u.N.) project that Greene began in the late-1960s while still in Archigram. The original aim, which has now been substantially revised and mutated, was to look at how newly emerging invisible, trans-spatial communication technologies could lead to a new form of Invisible University as a model for tertiary education. In the interim, much of what was once speculation has now come to pass through the advent of the internet, intranet, text messages, etc. – hence this latest presentation for the 2006 London Architecture Biennale showed what the revised version of the project was becoming. As such it involved taking over a newspaper shop, putting up advertising holdings and posters, holding impromptu workshops, and a number of other discrete outputs. The exhibition installation featured in the local press and raised a good deal of discussion. In terms of workload, Greene was responsible for 90% of the research and presentation material used in the exhibition installation and its ancillary outputs, and Hardingham for the other 10% involved in editing it. This latest research work has constantly been disseminated across the world through exhibitions and lectures, with for instance Greene talking about the Invisible University project in connection with the Archigram exhibition in Mito, Japan (December 2004). Elements of the project have also been exhibited at the Architectural Association, ICA, etc. The ongoing scheme for the Invisible University also featured as the subject for a specially invited interdisciplinary design workshop for the ESPRC Ideas Factory in Middlesbrough (May 2006), set up to look at ideas of designing for uncertainty; this event was jointly organised by Greene and Hardingham, and was then attended by many of Britain’s leading mathematicians and scientists