Hyper-Real
How and why do architects, artists, and designers manipulate reality? Impossible and Hyper-Real Elements of Architecture: Exercises, Provocations, and Theories of Digital Representation answers that question by examining what it means to render, draw, represent, and mediate the elements that make up and affect our digital and physical worlds. From pixels and rooms to gaming spaces and dioramas, this book exposes approaches to rendering that are equal parts instructive and critical.
In the pursuit of the strange and the uncanny, digital media and software aren’t taken for granted, nor are they always used as intended. This journey is forward-looking about the emerging role of gaming engines, volumetric raytracing, and procedural shaders, but also looks back and samples from some 1980s and 1990s classics including MacPaint, DOOM, the Star Trek Holodeck, and the film Predator.
Carl Lostritto is the director of University of Tennessee Knoxville College of Architecture and Design, formerly an associate professor and graduate program director at RISD Architecture. His teaching, practice, and research explore the intersections between computation and representation.
Viola Ago is an Albanian architectural designer and researcher. She directs MIRACLES Architecture and recently held the Wortham fellowship at the Rice University School of Architecture. Julie Kress is a lecturer at the University of Tennessee Knoxville College of Architecture and Design. Her work straddles across realms of architecture, exhibition design, and research in digital media. Hans Tursack recently served as the MIT Pietro Belluschi research fellow.
