ABSTRACT
Both interdependent and autonomous, lineaments and matter have a long, complicated, and multiplicitous history. Since the fifteenth century, architects have largely carried forward Leon Battista Alberti's assertion that lineaments have nothing to do with inchoate matter, but instead 'project whole forms in the mind without any recourse to material. Simulating real-world forces and material resistances through video game physics, these 'perturbed 'technologies' for representing lineaments in space immediately excuse themselves from architecture's more 'orthogonal' metrics of evaluation. Simulating real-world forces and material resistances through video game physics, these 'perturbed 'technologies' for representing lineaments in space immediately excuse themselves from architecture's more 'orthogonal' metrics of evaluation. The user interface of the physics-engine software is like an audio mixing console, allowing for forces to fade in and out, for errors and failure, and for imprecise interactions. Forces and potentials replace idealized constructions; situational, relativistic, and spontaneous parts replace regulated wholes; gravity, entropy, and chance replace geometry; and, most significantly, material replaces lineament.
