Out of the Eye – drawing perspectives and profiling figures in architecture

Institute for Art and Architecture (IKA) in collaboration with Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies (IKW) present Out of the Eye – drawing perspectives and profiling figures in architecture.

What if seeing with the eyes is accomplished or substituted by cameras that provide data for algo­rithms to profile patterns and figures? What if the visualization of these figures and patterns is no longer related to the realms of visibility and perception? What if the production of data­based images masks the very disappearance of visual qualities?

Architecture structures space and its perception, not least on the basis of the points of view and perspectives that it offers. Architecture is and always has been a viewing machine that wants to be looked at as well. Yet the issue of seeing and the capacity of the (human) eye is chal­lenged by processes of digitalisation and artificial intelligence that offer new perspectives—or, to put it in more radical terms: a mode of perception that is related less to seeing than it is based on the recognition of patterns and quantifications. The (visual) perspective is substituted by an algorithmic process of reading data. The results are perceived as (visual) images to a lesser extent, even if that is what they look like, because the identification of objects or situations is based on (ir­)regularities of and in patterns. The (earlier) notions of view and per­spective thus appear redun­dant. What is left of per­spective is the point of view that reality and presence appear as a thread. The question of forecasting and planning is not so much a political issue as a task of programming and tinkering with data. Out of the Eye looks at politics out of the political.

The lecture series wants to reflect on the concept of perspective in the context of media technologies that substitute the actual performance of seeing and looking with the recognition of patterns that only algo­rithms can “see”, which they do by “profiling (e­-merging) figures”.

The lecture series Out of the Eye, a collabora­tion between the Institute for Art and Architecture (IKA) and the Institute for Art Theory and Cultural Studies (IKW), is organized and curated by Christina Jauernik, Andreas Spiegl and Wolfgang Tschapeller.

Lecturers:
Jaya Klara Brekke
Wendy Chun
Philippe Parreno
Ursula Schmidt-Erfurth
Jutta Weber

Please visit ika.akbild.ac.at or register for the IKA-Newsletter via arch@akbild.ac.at to receive information about current and upcoming lecture dates.

All lectures start at 7pm (CET) and will take place via Zoom. To receive the link to the Zoom event, please send a registration to arch@akbild.ac.at.