Another Digital

Project Details

Project Description

FROM THE ARCHITECTS:

“Another Digital” is the fellowship exhibition of the Walter B. Sanders 2016-2017 Fellow in Architecture at Taubman College of Architecture and Planning at the University of Michigan, Erik Herrmann in collaboration with Ashley Bigham

Another Digital is an exhibition that reconsiders fundamental aspects of digital design. The exhibition is based on the premise that the digital is not an aesthetic or formal language, but rather a format. As a universal format, the digital introduces biases and tendencies that challenge fundamental premises of design. Of interest to this exhibition, the digital destabilizes the act of designing objects in two particular ways: First, the digital format puts disparate things into conversation with one another, inviting comparisons and equivalences that seem unlikely, impossible or even inappropriate and second, it opens objects to infinite alternatives of configurations, scale and materiality, converting any given object into a gradient of possibilities, what Umberto Eco might call an Open Work.

In Another Digital these tendencies and biases of the digital format are manifested through the figure of the labyrinth. Visitors to the exhibition are confronted with an enormous labyrinth-like cabinet composed of 420 separate galleries densely packed with hundreds of objects and drawn experiments. These objects recur throughout the cabinet in varied representations, materials and scales, transfiguring in form, scale or materiality as they recur throughout. The cabinet builds from a simple set of four chambers at its lowest level to a diffused field of rooms at the zenith.

The exhibition compels viewers to re-consider the status of objects in digital frameworks. Ultimately, Another Digital ruminates on the increasing influence of the digital format in contemporary design culture through acts of translation, organization and formatting.