Oblicuo

Oblicuo challenges fixed aesthetic notions of beauty and legibility in architectural representation and visualization, using abstraction and defamiliarization to speculate on the generation of withdrawn, irritant, and engaging photo realistic images. As both an oblique plan (“oblicuo” in Spanish) and a photo realistic montage based on our proposal for Budapest City Park, Oblicuo attempts to contest long-standing antagonisms — such as those between abstraction and realism, simulation and representation, perspective and projection, object and field, drawing and image. The result explores the potential of machines to perceive and transform our world at ever-finer degrees and scales. In its purposeful dichotomy focusing on the paradox between abstraction and realism, the project speculates on the currency of the image in architecture, specifically the indeterminate status of the icon.

Technically, Oblicuo leverages the underlying biases and discrepancies in contemporary methods of computer visualization and distributed surveying (for example, with drones or surveillance systems) to generate a novel understanding of both context and field in architecture. By purposefully misappropriating and retooling common algorithms utilized to create coherent representations of urban environments from distributed sources, Oblicuo exposes the seams, voids, and flaws concealed by the hidden agencies that continuously manipulate our perception of the world.

Oblicuo is a wall mounted piece done in collaboration with M. Casey Rehm of Kinch that was showcased at the Chicago Biennial in Chicago, Illinois (October 3, 2015 – January 3, 2016).