Archaeology of the Digital

Media and Machines marks the second phase of the research project initiated with the 2013 exhibition Archaeology of the Digital. Curated by Greg Lynn, this initiative investigates how architecture engaged with digital technology from the 1980s until the turn of the century. The first exhibition identified the earliest practices looking to computation as a design medium that could serve architectural ambitions that anticipate the technology before it was available or used. Many of the approaches persist in this second exhibition, including the experimentation in formal, spatial and material language, procedural or parametric processes, and robotic motion. However, in this second exhibition the architects have a deeper engagement with the digital in each project.

The exhibition brings together Asymptote’s New York Stock Exchange Virtual Trading Floor and Operation Center, Karl Chu’s Catastrophe Machine and X Phylum, the Objectile Panels by Bernard Cache, Hyposurface by dECOi Architects, Muscle NSA by ONL [Oosterhuis_Lénárd], and NOX’s H2Oexpo. The breadth of creative scope among these projects extends from the design of buildings to the design of interactive media, interactive robotic mechanisms, drafting machines based on the Catastrophe theory, generative algorithms, and the writing of disciplinary and cultural theories.