FUG THEY
MACHINE VISION - BETWEEN DIGITAL AND PHYSICAL
TEAM : Arsenios Zachariadis, Hsiao-Chiao Peng
‘ What is the aesthetics of the digital in craftsmanship or how the digital world could jump out of the screen on a dirty, imperfect physical environment? ’
The creation of objects is always a contemporary challenge that both architects and artists have to take into the game. Digitality and analogicity are more and more close to each other creating a new uncomfortable space of speculation. The project is an experiment on how the human and non-human biases could possibly contribute in the creation of new types of objects, yet undefined and speculative. The object have uncanny visual and physical results because it is not any more a pre-decided still object created through a linear human vision process. The object is created through a loop between traditional making technics and real-time
‘fab-creation’, where the object is partially designed the moment its being created.
The idea of using pre-existing objects, forms or data of the physical world is the driving idea of this project. The importance of the tools and the imperfection of the results introduce a new way of understanding the geometry and the space jumping in between the physical world and its digital representation.
The project is an exercise on how the relations between existing parts could generate new kinds of objects that partially carry the properties of their initial object-generator. In the case of a pre-existing Jail Building in Lincoln Heights, this investigation is translated in a catalogue of new objects, created by the volumizing of the existing surface of the building. New relations between the parts emerge through the manipulation of the volumes and the surfaces, like the craftsmanship of a dress, introducing a new way of understanding the role of the seams, the shapes and the different materials.
In this case the material has a key role in shaping the objects of the digital. Rather than just applied on the very last minute on something that pre-exist, it co- forms the design and our perception of the physical/digital object. Misreading of the scale of the textures affects the way the objects/parts are perceived. The multiple scales and the superposition of the perfection and imperfection turn the physical space to a weird scale-less spatial experience. The urban fabric of Los Angeles long with the craftsmanship has a key role in the understanding of the space, since its crucial need to turn and materialize a completely digital object. The idea of an exaggerated and kitsch urban aesthetics has an impact on the overall composition.
Pre-existed materials operate like pre-existing data* they carry the beauty of an intentional imperfection, totally free of idealization or preoccupancy. They stay open of new experiences and new ways of reading or using them. The action of bringing these to the digital world and reintroduce them back to the physical is what drives these object to existence.
