ann arbor MICHIGAN
University of Michigan
Critic: Hans TURSACK

Layers change how a designer or an illustrator thinks about images. S/he now works with a collection of separate elements. S/he can play with these elements, deleting, creating, importing and modifying them, until s/he is satisfied with the final composition… …An image is thus redefined as a provisional composite of both content elements and various modification operations that are conceptually separate from these elements.” - Lev Manovich

Layers are an ambiguous category of elements, most commonly associated with planar forms, whose assembly (referred to as layer logics) generates images. This project proposes a new understanding of layers in physical space through exploring the role that layer logics have played historically in image creation. A history of layer logics through landscape painting, Cubism, and Photoshop techniques points to the ways that architects now leverage augmentation as a way of affecting perception of objects (color-fields, graphics, gloss, atmospheric lighting, etc.) Layers have therefore been separated into two new categories: Layers that hold content (mass objects), and layers that augment content (effect objects). These new ways of working blur the boundaries between physical and digital ontologies, by expressing both the material characteristics of physical objects and the ambient or sensorial qualities of digital environments. The blurring that occurs creates a flickering, where visual augmentations are in competition with the object qualities, creating something new and uncanny.
The architectural proposal for this project is a complex of sculptural objects and programs, set inside the Storm King Sculpture park in upstate New York. The complex is an amalgamation of masses and found objects, augmented through effect elements. The park approximates the qualities of a delaminated image. Planar elements and neon lights litter the grounds of the park, changing the reading of objects and spaces. These effect elements approximate techniques native to digital environments like color fields, gradients, reflective surfaces, texture mapping, and vector graphics. Visitors interface with the park through two modes, through direct interaction with the garden of effects, or above the garden through an infrastructural system that structures views onto mass objects and allows visitors to observe the environments of the park from a privileged view, like an interface. The park is broken down into an assemblage of large public spaces, galleries, and an artist studio and loft. Artist participating in residencies live in the loft and are charged with creating work to fill into the spaces of the work, and work on the organization of elements of the park.

sP:What or Who influenced this Project?
CW:The original inspiration for project was born out of the research I was doing in my thesis prep seminar, and the readings I was doing as a part of the “Becoming Digital” seminar taught by Ellie Abrons. During my research I came upon diagrams of delaminated cubist paintings, and delaminated photoshop files, and I was struck by the similarities. Ruminating on those similarities, and reading Software Takes Command by Lev Manovich is where most of the conceptual framework for the thesis project was born out of. The full conceptual framework for the thesis will come out sometime later this year in PLAT Journal’s 7th issue, SHARING.

sP: What were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?
CW: Reading: Lev Manovich – Software Takes Command, Alexander Galloway – The Interface Effect, Rendering Air – Andrew Atwood, Camera Lucida – Roland Barthes
Listening to: Lord Huron, James Vincent Mcmorrow, Escondido, Big Thief, Whitney
Watching: Blade Runner 2049, Drive, THX-1138, Stalker (1979), Adventure Time, Maron

sP: Whose work is currently on your radar?
CW:Architects: T.E.A.M., Curtis Roth, Office CA, Common Accounts, The LADG, Ryan Tyler Martinez, West of West
Artists: Laura Owens, Doug Aitken, Alex da Corte, Dan Flavin, Artie Vierkant, David Reed