Culture and the knowledge society: present and future Antoni Muntadas muntadas@earthlink.net Visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's (MIT's) Department of Architecture Abstract: The twenty–first century now begun, an age in which the economy is everything, the artist has the potential to generate knowledge from work that is interrogative and metaphorical. The Internet is a tool with which spheres for questions and communication generated by interactivity can be created, not just between artists but also between creators—in a broad sense—and observers. We have entered a culture of paradoxes, where everything can have two or more interpretations. As a result, there is growing interest in the phenomenon of translation, no longer as a process of linguistic translation from one language to another, but as a process of transferring from one (in this case, cultural) code to another. As a practical example, some of Antoni Muntadas' projects are shown. In The File Room (www.thefileroom.org), a metaphor is created which activates discussion on the subject of censorship. Comemoraçoes Urbanas summarises an interactive project begun in São Paulo in which commemorative plaques are hung on the biggest architectural eyesores, and which has spread around the rest of the world via the Internet. On Translation (adaweb.walkerart.org/influx/muntadas/) is a series of projects—now around thirty—exploring the phenomenon of cultural translation. Finally, the phenomenon of the paradox is illustrated with the example of the symbolism of flags, in this case the American flag. It is shown how, depending on the social climate, that flag is rejected and even burnt, and symbolises US economic and military might, and how it can become—after 11 September, for example—a symbol of identity, solidarity, patriotism and even merchandising. [close]