#63: Andrew Witt — Formulations, Mathematical Design, and Writing

Andrew Witt, associate professor at Harvard University and author of Formulations, on how mathematics and computational methods transform the way we think, design, and make art. Andrew Witt is co-founder, with Tobias Nolte, of Certain Measures, a Boston/Berlin-based office for design futures and an Associate Professor in Practice of Architecture at Harvard University. Trained as both an architect and mathematician, he has a particular interest in a technically synthetic and logically rigorous approach to form. His work has been shown at the Centre Pompidou, Barbican Centre, Futurium, and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, among others. Connect with Andrew on LinkedIn and Certain Measures . Favorite quotes “It’s not possible to do everything in an amazing way all at once. You have to cycle through those things. Different moments in life will create different opportunities.” “One of the consequences of mass media is that [it] creates intuitions around certain concepts through imagery.” "The only thing that really conveys human value to things is time.” “What remains after people are gone?” Books Formulations by Andrew Witt Where Good Ideas Come From by Steven Johnson Synergetics by Buckminster Fuller Links Andrew Witt Certain Measures Application public interface (API) The Black Box with Aziz Barbar Grasshopper & Dynamo Deep nostalgia and deepfakes DeFi and NFTs The adjacent possible is an idea introduced by Stuart Kauffman in 2002 and later used by Steven Johnson Log magazine edited by Cynthia Davidson A Machine Epistemology in Architecture by Andrew Witt MIT Press A Brief History & Ethos of the Digital Garden by Maggie Appleton HfG is Karlsruhe University of Arts and Design Institut Henri Poincaré is a mathematics research institute People mentioned Alfred North Whitehead Charles Johnson - Matrix theorist Buckminster Fuller Steve Baer Bruno Latour Norbert Wiener Tobias Nolte Refik Anadol Satoru Sugihara William Huff Louis Kahn Ben Ferhman-Lee - Graphic designer Cynthia Davidson - Book series editor Sean Canty, Esther Choi, and Cameron Wu Aziz Barbar Henri Poincaré Peter Pierce Sanford Kwinter Paul Erdös Chapters 00:00 · Introduction 01:22 · Mathematical design 06:53 · Gray boxing 09:28 · Black box algorithms 14:26 · Knowledge anxiety 20:47 · Collective authorship 22:04 · Adjacent possible 27:18 · The physical medium 30:13 · Triangulation and photogrammetry 33:40 · Voxel and pixel 37:52 · The role of the designer 41:10 · Formulations book 43:48 · Catalogs 48:56 · The eve of digitization 52:58 · Artificial intelligence 01:00:26 · Mass media 01:02:29 · Research methods 01:06:25 · Book publishing 01:15:10 · Writing 01:19:04 · Digital gardens 01:21:53 · Creative thinking 01:26:20 · Lecture preparation 01:30:20 · Erdös number 01:32:43 · Zines 01:39:54 · Consistency 01:41:08 · Time 01:43:18 · NFTs as value stores 01:48:44 · NFTs at Certain Measures 01:50:42 · The AI design critic 01:55:20 · Modern-day design collectives and influencers 01:58:38 · Advice for young people 02:01:08 · Money 02:03:35 · Collaboration and delegation 02:06:16 · Death 02:07:55 · Success 02:09:27 · Outro I'd love to hear from you. Submit a question about this or any previous episodes. Join the Discord community . Meet other curious minds. If you enjoy the show, would you please consider leaving a short review on Apple Podcasts/iTunes? It takes less than 60 seconds and really helps. Show notes, transcripts, and past episodes at gettingsimple.com/podcast . Theme song Sleep by Steve Combs under CC BY 4.0. Follow Nono Twitter.com/nonoesp Instagram.com/nonoesp Facebook.com/nonomartinezalonso YouTube.com/nonomartinezalonso

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#63: Andrew Witt — Formulations, Mathematical Design, and Writing is an episode from The Getting Simple Podcast by Nono Martínez Alonso.

This episode is 02:11:00 long.

This episode was published on Mar 24, 2022.

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