.IMG.ING - Processing New Mediums

Ben Waters

Studio Outline:

‘.IMG.ING’ is a research and design unit that introduces students to critical views on new mediums for architectural production through the observation, processing, transformation and materialisation of images. The studio is focused on developing new modes of representation and documentation using advanced 3d scanning technology. Framed by the conceptual distinction between drawings (rule bound, hand mechanical geometric gestures that inscribe marks onto a static substrate) and images (a process of chopping or discretising the energy emitted from a scene into measurable electrical charges called signals), this studio will initiate a process of scanning architecture, as a form of image production. Images, elements and fragments of local architectural reference will be scanned using advanced imaging techniques (3d LiDAR scanners, white light scanners, photogrammetry etc.). These scans will form a 3d digital inventory of a range of architectural types, surveyed and scanned from the contextual field of the University of Melbourne Campus.

Studio Leaders

BEN WATERS is principal at OSK Architects and founder of SIII research lab. He graduated with a Master of Architecture from RMIT University, and studied at Parsons School of Design, New York. In 2014, Ben was awarded a residency position at Berlin’s Centre for Art and Urbanistics (ZKU). He has taught masters design studios at MSD since 2015.

Learning Outcomes:

The digital data of images selected from the inventory will then be ‘computationally processed’ ie. edited, displaced and transformed in order to find new forms of representations and tectonics structures inherent in the images. The second phase of the course will be focused on the development of new tectonic forms, using data and information extracted from images produced in first phase studies. These forms will be tested through physical models (3d printed material). A recursive process of scanned digital image to physical material then scanned again, will produce new modes of transformation and test the dexterity of the students methodology. Locations within the contextual field of the University campus will be selected for sites for archival and exhibition spaces to house images, elements and fragments of architectural tectonics. A key outcome of the propositional phase of semester will be the convergence of social, political and cultural functions of the mediums investigated as represented in new architectural form.

Reading and Reference:

• Nefertiti Hack [Nora Al-Badri and Jan Nikolai Nelles]
• Cave of Forgotten Dreams [Werner Herzog]
• Callum Morton [Neighbourhood Watch]
• Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction [Walter Benjamin]

ST1/19 Monday 6:15pm - 9:15pm, MSD Room 241
ST2/19 Thursday 9:00am - 12:00pm, MSD Room 142

Contact Handbook Key Dates