Episodes

The term “Big Data” originally referred simply to our technical capacity to collect, store, and process increasing amounts of data at decreasing costs and this meaning still stands, regardless of hype, media improprieties or linguistic confusion. Now for the first time ever, data is seen as abundant, accessible and in most cases at no cost. “Episodes” is a series which investigates how shared digital data can influence the process of creation of architectural aesthetics and its photographic representation.

The images, compiled of different sources of textures found on the Internet,  depict fictional realities in different geographies from Los Angeles to Japan. Unconstrained by functional reality or structural necessities, they show buildings just real enough to be believable. They are crafted by manipulating and rearranging real textures compiled from a digital catalog of existing buildings and material samples at a convincing level of information which give them their plausibility. Yet they still have a satirical composition that deciphers the images’ reality in detail; the images appear strange, they become weird. They provoke an unusual reading. They are hyper-real.

The process of designing the images rely completely on photo-montage without tackling a three-dimensional modeling software; manually adjusting the geometry, colors, shadows and contrast. In other words, the image uses a single medium, a photo editing tool, as a design, visualization and a refinement tool all at once challenging the current multi-stepped image making practices. The technique challenges the meaning of craftsmanship in the digital reality in which the softwares has taken authorship of making the perfect, photo-realistic images.