Interferences workshop at Knowlton School of Architecture


I was invited by Galo Cañizares to lead a Unity workshop at the Knowlton School of Architecture. He describes his work:

Digital Fabrications is ongoing research on the psychosocial effects of softwarization in design disciplines. Because software today plays a crucial role in the creative process, interfaces and applications should be scrutinized to expose their biases, intricacies, and oddities. This project attempts to confront the fictions often used to describe software’s passiveness and reveal the various ways it is actively affecting our consciousness. 

I approached this as an “anti-worldbuilding” exercise, inverting how the game engine is typically used. Rather than explore geometries in space, students looked at how virtual cameras fabricate movement and vision. Interactivity was off-limits, so the students learned to automate Unity processes using built-in animation tools.

Using techniques gleaned from my studio practice, they trashed the usual 3D metaphors—space as environment, camera as eye, object as body—and ended up devising their own formal strategies and anti-worldviews. The results are archived at the Interferences site.

2.25.19