Society. Spaces. Screens
Abstract
Claude Monet’s “Haystacks” and “Rouen Cathedral” series (1890-1893), the predecessors to his approximately 300 “Water Lilies” paintings (1893-1923), not only transformed art but also influenced computation. Monet inspired a wave of serial artwork in the twentieth century. The concept of “serial” was cemented much later, in a 1968 essay by John Coplans for an exhibition he organized titled “Serial Imagery,” which included the above-mentioned works by Monet, but also others by Mondrian, Albers, Stein, Warhol, and Schoenberg. The roots of data-driven design trace back to the early 1960s serial artworks, a precursor to shape grammars in computation, developed by Stiny and Gips in their 1971 essay. In 1983, Knight applied shape grammar to analyze artistic evolution, noting how Vantongerloo and Glarner transformed De Stijl painting using a grammar of shapes and rules of permutation. Concurrently, Donald Judd installed 100 aluminum objects—all 41”x51”x72”, but each with unique configuration, made of ½” mill aluminum—in two former artillery sheds of a de-commissioned military base in Marfa, TX, fluidly moving between system authority and the artist’s decision-making process. In this paper, we analyze Judd’s “100 untitled works in mill aluminum,” revealing a process driven by systemic shape-data and tempered by improvisational moments. The simultaneity of the systemic and the improvisational provides lessons in critiquing the ubiquity of data-driven decision-making processes in most of our collective and institutional activities today. Most importantly, the simultaneity highlights a practice that intersects seriality, best accomplished through computational intelligence with aesthetic decision-making, best accomplished through human intelligence.
Mahyar Hadighi is an Assistant Professor of Architecture and director of the graduate program in Historic Preservation at Texas Tech University. He received his Ph.D. in Architecture from Penn State and his post professional master’s degree in historic preservation from Cornell University. His work concentrates on modernism understood in relation to historical and contemporary contexts. In particular, he documents examples of modern art and architecture, and analyzes them via computational design methodologies. in order to preserve them and consider them for additional locales and purposes.
Mehrdad Hadighi is a tenured Professor in the Department of Architecture at the Pennsylvania State University. He holds a PhD in comparative Literature from the University at Buffalo-SUNY and completed his post-professional graduate studies in architecture at Cornell University. He holds a professional degree in architecture and a degree in studio art from the University of Maryland. A licensed architect and founding principal of the Studio for Architecture, his work focuses on drawing parallels between 20th century art, critical theory, and the constructive principles of architecture.
3:30 pm - 5:00 pm
Friday 13th December, 2024