VS GLOW
/ 2019 Spring Semester
From The GLOW / Instructed by Elena Manferdini, Andrea Cardio
Snapping photos from the front row has become the norm for any fashion-show-goer. Taking this notion a step forward, the Japanese label Anrealage envisioned its entire Paris Spring Show not only as photo-friendly, but made personal devices essential for viewing. The fashion brand dimmed lights and offered instructions: snap photos with flash to uncover hidden details, said a Siri-esque voice. Fabrics appeared a dull gray, only to reveal intricate prints once photographed. These clothes had hidden designs revealed by iPhone flashlight.
Similarly to what has been happening in fashion and several design fields, our architectural culture has turned up the visual volume and has been embracing social media feeds, augmented reality applications for personal devices and virtual reality glasses as a way to look at our same old reality. And if on one side of the barricades architects have been pushing for a detour into the non-interesting, boring or comforting, on the other side our addictive and ubiquitous technology has filled our eyes, minds and free time with compulsively exuberant immediate feeds.
The 2018-2019 spring seminar, we look closely at the changing relationship between “interesting” and “attention span” in architecture; style, identity, originality and remarkableness (anything that can be understood as excellence or unmistakably connotative brand) will not be the primary ingredient of our design recipe. Listed videos below are the studys recorded using processing scripting about colors and layouts related to the topic. On the contrary the class will master various optical effects able to transform a non-interesting object into an interesting one, through various modes of digital and physical lighting condition.
001a Josef Albers Color Interaction
001b Josef Albers Array
001c Array updated tests
The first part of the seminar is a survey engineered to help us understand the potential of optical effects in a digital and physical environment and become familiar with color interactions, printing techniques and personal devices capabilities as AR. During the second part of the class, we will experiment with UV printing in order to produce mute building facades that come alive under various light conditions. The class as a whole will expand the notion of close-attention versus close-reading (distinction often used by Jeff Kipnis). The seminar will engage in a conversation on the ambiguous power of contemporary materials seen through personal devices and their unparalleled ability to produce new forms of imagination.
