2018 - Hanging out with Home

Space Popular solo exhibition at MAGAZIN in Vienna explores a future where buildings take on human features as a result of increasing agency in domestic appliances.

Unrolled fabric mural of central column with 6 puzzled anthropomorphic characters 

If buildings become robots and robots become humans, how human will our buildings be? Buildings already move and speak to us, they make decisions based on input data. With artificial intelligence at our doorstep and ever more efficient and affordable technology, will buildings soon be conscious entities? What will their minds and bodies be like? How will we relate to them? Will they be our companion? Will they look or talk like us? How will anthropomorphism influence architecture?

The installation explores these questions through a series architectural elements, such as a portal and a column carrying formal and behavioural anthropomorphic features; and a domestic vacuum cleaning robot displaying human-like behaviour through motion and judgement. Together they create and inhabit space at once. They embody the room they are in, surrounding us whilst making us feel we are intruding. The presence of another -even if that other is not a living or even a physical thing- changes our behaviour, leading us to meet, engage and exchange.

Full elevation of main fabric mural exhibiting five of the anthropomorphic characters. 

As our speakers read our emails, our doors lock themselves and or washing machines tell us how dirty or clean we are, conscious architecture is coming. Whether if physical or virtual, actual or imagined, we wonder what will it look like, how will we communicate with us and how close will our bond be.

Poster for the exhibition produced by the gallery. 

The robot cleaning the gallery around the central column. Photograph by Eva Sommeregger

Central Ccolumn. photograph by Eva Sommeregger

Central column on the left and main fabric mural on the right. Photograph by Eva Sommeregger

The robot cleaning the gallery around by the main fabric mural exhibiting five of the anthropomorphic characters . Photograph by Moritz Ellmann

Virtual Scene Two

Virtual Scene Scene Four

Virtual Scene Scene Three