SCI-Arc_GraduatePortfolio_2019-2020

Aastha Aggarwal SCI-Arc 2019-2020

AASTHA AGGARWAL M.ARCH II SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTURE 2019-2020

E-Mail : aasthaggarwal93@gmail.com Instagram : aastha_elysianimpressions

AASTHA AGGARWAL M.ARCH II SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF ARCHITECTURE 2019-2020

AASTHA AGGARWAL Aastha Aggarwal is currently pursuing graduate studies in the field of Architecture at the Southern California Institute of Architecture.

Prior to joining SCI-Arc, she has successfully completed a 5-year undergraduate degree from the Sushant School of Art and Architecture, Ansal University, India.

She has worked in multiple offices in India for 2 years. As a junior designer, she has been fortunate to work on projects ranging from educational campuses, to hospitals, and landscapes. She got the opportunity to work from conceptual presentations to working drawings which helped her gain practical knowledge of the field of architecture. The professional experience has shaped how she visualises architecture, not just as an art piece but something that is habitable.

With a passion for art and design, she sees her time at SCI-Arc as an ideal opportunity to expand her horizon, learn new methods and technologies that enables one to influence the built environment. She sees herself practicing architecture as a professional in the field, with a heightened awareness of the philosophical discourse of architecture and design.

CONTENTS 2GBX SPRING 2020 Timeless - LACMA

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DS 1202 2GBX Studio - Computational Design Studio II

Grotesque Beauty

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VS 4201 Visual Studies II

Terraforming HT 2201 Theories of Contemporary Architecture II

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2GAX FALL 2019 Integrated Landscapes

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DS 1200 2GAX Studio - Computational Design Studio I

The Sticky Grid

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VS 4200 Visual Studies I

Macallan Distillery

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AS 3200 Advanced Materials and Tectonics

Parafiction HT 2200 Theories of Contemporary Architecture I

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TIMELESS DS 1201 2GBX Studio|Spring 2020 Instructor Elena Manferdini Collaborators Devangi Kansagra Vimeo Link : vimeo.com/414172393 TIMELESS is an encyclopedic museum that creates a stunning visual timeline of history by creating multiple narratives. The museum is located in the city of Los Angeles and floats atop Wilshire Boulevard lending spectacular views, public influx and a new language of imparting knowledge. A large public plaza in the center becomes a focal point on Wilshire Boulevard for the dissemination of knowledge. TIMELESS showcases the exhibits in unique and immersive ways, both physically and digitally, giving the visitor the option to curate their narratives in the museum. The museum holds temporary exhibitions using permanent collections of LACMA for the neoteric age. Through the night, TIMELESS is a visual opera to experience art with ĂŠclat.

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DS 1201 2GBX Studio Computational Design II

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LACMA - OBJECTS

3D objects were collected to form a catalog of art in LACMA. The study was used to understand how the museum works. The artifacts were used to make still life compositions and do a material and texture study.

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DS 1201 2GBX Studio Computational Design II

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DS 1201 2GBX Studio Computational Design II

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SHAPE AND FORM TIMELESS consists of four rings in an unfinished loop metaphorically symbolizing time as the only constant in our ever-changing history of art and architecture, and physically creating wormholes of narratives that exhibit permanent collections. Each ring seems to welcome and engage with the important landmarks nearby – La Brea Tarpits, Peterson Automotive Museum, Motion Pictures Academy, Downtown LA, and Wilshire Boulevard itself. The form of the building allows for a large public plaza in the center that becomes a focal point in the heart of the city for rendezvous with art and dissemination of knowledge.

View from Peterson Automotive Museum

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DS 1201 2GBX Studio Computational Design II

Views showing public plaza formed in the centre of the museum building

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The interior scheme of the project focuses on the inconsistent mix of objects and stories from different eras and geographical regions. It creates experiences by exhibiting permanent collections of LACMA in temporary locations allowing visitors to curate their narratives while inside the museum. The exhibition spaces are unique as they present the artifacts in their original context digitally and take the visitor through a time-travel journey of that art period.

Interior views showing digital and physical art in the same space

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DS 1201 2GBX Studio Computational Design II

Interior views showing digital and physical art in the same space

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Floor plan showing the interior scheme

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DS 1201 2GBX Studio Computational Design II

After closing, the faรงade of the building turns into a digital projection of stories inside. Through the night, the public plaza becomes a theatre where a visual opera takes place unfolding stories of art and history.

Museum screens on the exterior facade light up during the night

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DS 1200 2GAX Studio Fall 2019

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GROTESQUE BEAUTY DS 4201 Visual Studies II |Spring 2020 Instructor Angelica Lorenzi Collaborators Shreya Shridhar Vimeo Link : vimeo.com/414170216 The front view “Empire” and the back view “Monarch” depict a kingdom- like stage plagued by the juxtaposition of morbidity and beauty. The stage presents a platform for the skeletal nature of the structure ornamented with grotesque sculptures and figures.

The sculpture emulate the bizarre nature of existence wherein one endeavors to morph the original nature of being to meet irrational standards of beauty. While the externally applied texture can deceive the viewer to perceive a healthy vision, the flesh and the skeleton within cannot hide the pathological effects.

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VS 4201 Visual Studies II

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VS 4201 Visual Studies II

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VS 4201 Visual Studies II

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VS 4201 Visual Studies II

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VS 4201 Visual Studies II

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VS 4201 Visual Studies II

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TERRAFORMING HT 2201 Theories of Contemporary Arch II |Spring 2020 Instructor

Eric Ghenou, Marcelyn Gow, John Cooper

The final project is a catalog tries to compile a few works from artists, architects, geologists, mineralogists, etc. who are working constantly to explore new materials and technology using the human waste and the changing body. The catalog is divided into three categories based on materials – geomorphic materials, body and the built environment. The scope of this catalog is vast, but I have limited my research to a few selected artists constantly working towards a terraformed world.

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HT 2201 Theories of Contemporary Arch II

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GEOMORPHIC MATERIALS Human activities have intertwined with the most powerful forces of nature to form rare sediments in nature that will form the future planetary strata. The artists and materials in this section are constantly working with human-made minerals obtained from the most distinctive materials of our epoch – plastics, aluminum, steel, concrete, glass, textiles, bones, industrial waste, etc. These materials are imagined as materials of the future.

Plastiglomerate was discovered in 2006 by Charles Moore, a sea captain and oceanographer at the Algalita Marine Research Institute in Long Beach, Calif.

Mr. Moore was surveying plastic washed up on Kamilo Beach, a remote, polluted stretch of sand on Hawaii’s Big Island.

Canadian artist Kelly Jazvac researched on this new unknown substance that was made of a mixture of lava and plastic garbage. Chunks of plastiglomerate became part of her exhibition at Milan’s Triennale exhibition illustrating how the Anthropocene era is leading to the formation of new man-made minerals.

The substance, called plastiglomerate, is a fusion of natural and manufactured materials. Melted plastic binds together sand, shells, pebbles, basalt, coral and wood, or seeps into the cavities of larger rocks to form a rock-plastic hybrid.1 Climate change is a result of human activity and Anthropocene suggests that humans have become a geological force irreparably altering the Earth. The formation of new materials which is created by a unique combination of nature and plastic or human created waste compels us to think about life on Earth and its complex relationships with geology.

1. Kelly Jazvac, http://www.kellyjazvac.com/Stones/Stones.html

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HT 2201 Theories of Contemporary Arch II

Future Remnants is a research project by Artist Xandra van der Ejik on the influence of man on the evolutional development of mineral formation.

Xandra van der Eijk worked with the alteration of minerology to produce a wide range of material reactions and crystallizations. She has poured household chemicals onto widely available metal objects in an installation that aims to demonstrate how chemical waste dumping is affecting the earth in the Anthropocene era.

She exposed steel, aluminum, zinc, and copper to cleaning products such as all-purpose cleaner and battery fluid for a minimum of two and a maximum of seven days. The chemicals evoke a process in which the exterior of the metals is affected, resulting in a large diversity of patterns, crystallization and colours.

The objects are meant to represent, on a smaller scale, the impact of chemical waste dumping. 4

4. Xandra van der Eijk, ”Future Remnants ”, https://www. xandravandereijk.nl/projects/future-remnants

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GEOMORPHIC MATERIALS

Yesenia Thibault-Picazo has created three household objects for the Anthropocene era, using materials she believes will be used by craftsmen hundreds of years in the future. Called Craft in the Anthropocene, the project is centered around the proposed new geological era, in which human impact is the dominant force on the earth’s natural materials.

Craft in the Anthropocene collection features a pestle, a mortar and a vessel made from raw materials that Thibault-Picazo believes will be mined as a valuable resource one day. Each material responds to a different environmental challenge, such as animal farming and plastic waste. The other materials include bone marble, made of sheep and cattle bones that came from victims of the foot and mouth disease in 2001. Ocean plastic from the floating debris in the Pacific ocean and aluminum waste from Thames river in London are some other materials used in the project. Very high levels of heat were applied to the chosen materials using a heat press, intended to mimic and accelerate the natural process exerted on these resources over time. 2 The project investigates the effects of the Anthropocene era to demonstrate how chemical waste dumping is affecting the Earth.

2. Yesenia Thibault-Picazo,”The Anthropogenic Specimens Cabinet”, https://cargocollective.com/yeseniatp/THE-ANTHROPOGENICSPECIMENS-CABINET

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HT 2201 Theories of Contemporary Arch II

Manufactured Geology is another project by Yesenia Thibault-Picazo that questions how future generation will experience history and time through materiality.

The project speculates that the future fossils will be manufactured from materials characteristic of our industrialized times. 3 Using craft, Yesenia has tried to make fossils from the future. She imagined what geologists will dig up in the future and what new materials can be formed from the waste we produce today. The geological process today will form the raw materials of the future.

3. Yesenia Thibault-Picazo, �Manufactured Geology�, https:// cargocollective.com/yeseniatp/MANUFACTURED-GEOLOGY

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BODY ARCHITECTURE With the ecological and geological changes, there are significant changes in the human body. In the Anthropocene epoch, the human body also needs to be protected and restructured. In this section, works from Body architect – Lucy McRae are compiled, focusing on the need for protection to the human body.

Technology and AI can be a boon as well as a bane for humans. A balance is needed to keep our future sane with a level of adjustment to the new world.

Biometric Mirror is an immersive installation that blends the act of casually glancing at one’s reflection with modern algorithmic perspectives on facial perfection. The artwork explores the accuracy and flaws of artificial intelligence and the ‘uncanny valley’ of algorithmic perfection and its potential black mirror outcomes.

The project as a part of Science Gallery Melbourne’s PERFECTION exhibition program, takes on a unique approach towards the use of Artificial Intelligence to define natural beauty. The AI mirror analyses an individual’s character traits based on their face.

Biometric Mirror is a moment to start thinking about transparency of algorithms and AI as a tool to improve society. The experiment looks at the uncontrollable imperfections that occur when working with the human body in contrast with the controlled and programmable systems of artificial intelligence. 6 Biometric Mirror and its dependence on artificial tools to define natural beauty standards and traits is an alarm for humans where the reality is being altered by the artificial medium. The project emphasizes on the fact that humans are terraforming their bodies to adapt to the future via digital and artificial means.

6. Lucy McRae,” Biometric Mirror”, https://www.lucymcrae.net/ biometric-mirror-

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HT 2201 Theories of Contemporary Arch II

Compression Cradle is a machine that affectionately squeezes the body with a sequence of aerated volumes that hold you tight – to prepare the self for a future that assumes a lack of human touch.

The artwork was exhibited at Triennale Milano to explore the current touch-deficit status, which will likely become more extreme in the future. This project blurs the boundaries between entertainment and domestic space, presenting an indifferent format of voyeurism. Touch sensation, the mechanism assists in altering the expression of oxytocin –the hormone released in the brain, responsible for building trust and pair bonding. 7 The project is relevant for the future where there is a lack of human touch and a life of loneliness. It is a futuristic take to showcase how the need for physical and emotional longing will become prominent in the coming years. The aerated volumes emphasizes on the fact that humans need to come closer and work together to avoid depression and other health issues.

7. Lucy McRae,” Compression Cradle”, https://www.lucymcrae.net/ compression-cradle

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ARCHITECTURAL PROJECTS Architects are the creators of the built world. Thus, when the planet changes, architects need to explore and innovate in order to fulfill the needs of the present and for a healthy and balanced living in the future

Blue Marble Circus is a monument to industrial humanity’s plastic footprint, which—although at a planetary scale—remains outside our geographical imagination. The installation appropriates Rome’s ancient Pantheon, known for its spherical “architecture of the cosmos,” to take aim at the dissonance between our individual worries and the vast environmental transformations the Earth is undergoing.

The geodesic sphere echoes “Blue Marble,” the iconic symbol of the environmental movement. All white inside, its plastic material expression invites another imagination now that greenhouse gases and greenhouse agriculture are at the forefront of planetary issues. 8 The camera obscura globe is an invitation to re-learn, like Atlas, to carry the world and all there is above it on our shoulders. The installation suggests through its form, color and material to the iconic symbol of environmental awareness, highlighting the correlation between humanity’s actions and the degradation of the ecosystem.

8. Design Earth, “Blue Marble Circus”, https://design-earth.org/ projects/blue-marble-circus/

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HT 2201 Theories of Contemporary Arch II

The Plug-In Ecology: Urban Farm Pod is a “living” cabin for individuals and urban nuclear families to grow and provide for their daily vegetable needs.

It is an interface with the city, potentially touching upon urban farming, air quality levels, DIY agronomy techniques in test tubes, algal energy production, and bio-luminescent light sources, to name a few possibilities. It can be outfitted with several optional systems to adapt to different locations, lighting conditions, and habitation requirements. 9 The pod archetype converts the food system into a visible artifact and a functional space. The exterior is made of foam panels and a sub-irrigation system.

The project tries to set out strategy for growth of the ecosystem and that the future iterations of the pods will be a new way of living with nature.

9. Terreform, “Plug-In Ecology ”, http://terreform.org/projects_ habitat_Plug_In_Ecology.html

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INTEGRATED LANDSCAPES DS 1200 2GBX Studio|Spring 2020 Instructor Angelica Lorenzi Collaborators Heena Patel Vimeo Link : vimeo.com/418191141 INTEGRATED LANDSCAPES questions the contemporary status of the image in architecture. The project began with a process of extracting visual and physical information from a site in Chinatown, Los Angeles as well as several urban artifacts of diverse scales. The aim was to produce a composite form of selected source material derived from the site that redefines the formal relationship inherent in selected elements and convert these into an architectural scale.

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DS 1200 2GAX Studio Computational Design I

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PHOTOGRAMMETRY 3D - Photoscanned images from site to explore with different architectural scales used for post processing with images to produce a new composite form. Different object geometries obtained from the process of extraction of visual and physical information.

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DS 1200 2GAX Studio Computational Design I

3D Printed models obtained from site to explore geometries and forms on a vacuum-formed model which was used as a landscape.

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Different geometries to study form, material and textures

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DS 1200 2GAX Studio Computational Design I

INTEGRATED LANDSCAPES incorporates techniques to produce forms and geometries from images of objects. The composite forms produced new perceptions of common artifacts.

The project uses a cohesive design strategy by making use of contrasting themes which can be seen from part to whole. The formal quality of the 3D scanned objects integrate with the soft landscapes obtained from vacuum-formed models. The landscape and the built-form allow for an atrium in the centre which becomes a recreational area.

Diagram showing the design process from part to whole.

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DS 1200 2GAX Studio Computational Design I

The building envelope is a pixelated and planar version of the 3D objects obtained from site. As a contrast smooth organic elements are placed onto it. The texture and colors of the building add to the playfulness and dynamics of the project and the immediate context around site.

Inspired from pod working spaces, the atrium has smooth and organic extrusions at different levels which act like extended areas for small offices.

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ARCHITECTURAL REPRESENTATION The design of the co-working space is to create an architectural project to be viewed from outside as well as experience the interiors. The office space offers a flexible infrastructural environment for pod spaces, small businesses, large companies, conference halls and retail shops.

Section through office building showing play of levels and offices

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DS 1200 2GAX Studio Computational Design I

Plan of the co-working space showing interior scheme

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View showing the different levels in landscape and the building 54

DS 1200 2GAX Studio Computational Design I

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Aerial view showing the textures and activities present on site 56

DS 1200 2GAX Studio Computational Design I

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THE STICKY GRID VS 4200 Visual Studies |Fall 2019 Instructor Andrea Cadioli, Curime Batliner Collaborators I Hsiang Wang Playing in the game of part to whole, the course looks at the potential of a gestural cut as a device for the production of dualities in an ontologically weak system. Concepts of inside/out, open,close, right/wrong are challenged in a surface in continuous evolution in between opposing identities.

Following the contemporary explorations of the 2.5D canvas in post-digital era, the project investigates the architectural facade as a space of multiplicities and singularity, deeply public and in an infinitely state of fluxation.

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VS 4200 Visual Studies I

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VS 4200 Visual Studies I

The first stage of this project is to use different steps of grasshopper machines to project certain pattern to base geometry as to create dynamic pattern. Among various patterns, a chosen one would be made as stickers to create exhibition full of patterns.

After the process of the grasshopper, a series of patterns is created to produce a visual animation.

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Photographs from the exhibition at SCI-Arc

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VS 4200 Visual Studies I

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The Sticky Grid is a graphical outcome of Grasshopper scripting and post-processing to form a hyper-flat sticker. The line patterns are used to make a panel bound to a robot arm.

The robotic simulations created patterns; one of which was transfered to a MDF board to form a temporary column.

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VS 4200 Visual Studies I

Patterns and images produced from robots

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The Column

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MACALLAN DISTILLERY AS 3200 Advanced Materials and Tectonics|Fall 2019 Instructor Maxi Spina, Randy Jefferson Collaborators Carnation Kng, Shayantani Mukherjee, Wen Chen

The Macallan Distillery and Visitors’ Experience Centre in Scotland, designed by Richard Rogers, was chosen for the precedent study.

While selecting an appropriate transformation for the building, possible alternative solutions for the roof of the Distillery were explored and researched upon. The existing Glulam panels that make up the framework of the roof of the building were replaced

by MPP (Mass Plywood Panels) which are lighter and can be customized into larger panels. The vegetation cover on the timber panels over the domes was removed and the panels were also replaced with green tinted glass panels and insulated glass, to allow more light to enter the interior of the building.

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AS 3200 Advanced Materials and Tectonics

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EXISTING STRUCTURE The new distillery for The Macallan is located alongside their existing facility within the extensive 390-acre (158-hectare) estate of Easter Elchies House.

Dug into the naturally sloping contours of the site the building has minimal visual impact on the landscape. The soft undulating roof speaks to the hills of the surrounding countryside yet the clearly man-made and engineered forms of the uniform peaks reflect the industrial production cells contained within.

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AS 3200 Advanced Materials and Tectonics

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Part Section - Existing Structure

Part Section - After Transformation

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AS 3200 Advanced Materials and Tectonics

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Instead of keeping the original small triangular skylights at the corners of the domes, the vegetation cover on the timber panels over the domes was removed and the panels were replaced with glass. The final intervention was to include a curved brie-soleil just below the glass dome, attached to the steel frame with cables in tension, to ensure that only diffused light enters inside.

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AS 3200 Advanced Materials and Tectonics

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PARAFICTION HT 2200 Theories of Contemporary Arch I |Fall 2019 Instructor

Marcelyn Gow, John Cooper

The value of art has changed with the media reproduction and technological influx. Fake descriptions of reality have formed a strange idea of reality in people. Parafiction is a practice that involves the production of objects to support the plausibility of a central narrative. Parafiction art works through aesthetic provocation and demands the viewer to pay close attention to incite him to seek knowledge which is just and sensible.

Para fiction also has a strong relation with Abstraction and Realism- where it focuses on the aesthetic qualities of these two subjects rather than the customary ethical and epistemological concepts.

The paper will focus on the argument of how abstraction and realism in their definition create a disruption between the image and context or reality and how it is represented. The aim is to develop how Para fiction can help give new aesthetic value than the knowledge of these two subjects.

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HT 2200 Theories of Contemporary Arch I

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PARAFICTION - ABSTRACTION AND REALISM Parafiction is a form of contemporary art which derives from the theory of French philosopher and artist Alfred Jarry who defined it as “the science of imaginary solutions, which symbolically attributes properties to objects,starting from their virtuality to their essential traits”(Jarry, Shattuck, Taylor 1996: 21). This theory had the purpose of adding a level of intermediate interpretation between metaphysics and physics.

Jarry called it “Science of the particular” that contextualized that relying on objects improperly, it tends to re-signify object giving the context other readings. Paraficiton is the setting up of this principle in reality. The plausibility of the protagonists, the scientific study, the attention to detail and the involvement of the audience are therefore determining elements for the correct execution of a work to be categorized as parafiction. (Fabio, Ciaravella, 2014) Parafiction art is in which a fiction is presented as fact.It is a practice of fabulation and figment. Art historian Carrie Lambert-Beatty offers the term ‘Parafiction Art’ to describe a genre of artwork which creates fake narratives that are perceived by spectators differently. It is an artwork which wisely plays with one’s mind and its perception. Parafiction Art possesses the power to influence specific contexts, and to challenge their statuesque. While more and more works like these have emerged in recent years, theoretical writing on the subject has remained scarce, as is the usage of the term ‘Parafiction Art’. In his review of ‘mockstitutions’ and parafictional acts, Gregory Sholette writes that ‘some of the most compelling acts of counterfeit reality emerge from geographic places where the public imaginary and public space itself have traumatically collapsed’(Sholette 2011: 159).

All artworks are fictional work as they make the viewer believe in what they show. Parafictional artists are different than the rest of the artists as they are aware of the effect of their work in the viewer’s perspective and then try to hide it with common sense. Common sense holds that what we see

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is real; reality isn’t always true but it makes parafictional art more understandable. Parafictional artists don’t rely on blind belief in the direct interpretation but the question to whether what one sees and hears in really the truth.

According to Michael Young in “The art of the plausible and the aesthetics of doubt”, parafiction art works through aesthetic provocation. It demands the viewer to pay close attention to the facts and the work to seek knowledge which is just and true. Parafiction is the politicization of aesthetics.

It takes the conventions by which something looks real and then begins to pull, stretch and distort till doubts are raised regarding the factity that the mediations propose. Young emphasises on the fact that parafiction reveals the artificial, not the artifice; it is material promiscuous not medium specific.

He ponders over the relationship between abstraction and realism. Abstraction acts as a disruption - between image and context, appearance and content. While, realism is defined as constructed tension between reality and representation (Michael, Young , 2017) The paper tries to strengthen and exemplify this relationship between abstraction and realism in the context of parafiction.

Images have been a part of our communication since forever.

Art is conceived and produced in a variety of different ways.

Some artists rely on an understanding of abstract qualities in our natural world and translate them into recognizable images while others observe the familiar and translate it into abstract forms. There are many who hover between the two but even when working from memory and imagination, the foundation is grounded in recollections of these observations.

HT 2200 Theories of Contemporary Arch I

A collage is an extraction of materials and real features and facts to recombine and decontextualized it into a space of image construction.

(Pablo Picasso, Still Life with Chair Caning,1912)

(Richard Hamilton, 2019)

The collage is a part composition of a knife, blade, a citrus fruit, a scalloped edge of a napkin, a wine glass, cane chair and a wood grain canvas. It’s hard to find the forms present in the collage. We do not see the ‘seam’ (Michael Young,2017) in the picture. This then creates a moment for doubt in the viewer. These abstracted forms and collage techniques are parafictional as they create false realities and force the viewer to seek the knowledge of what actually is true. (pablopicasso. org)

This image is among the most famous in British post-war art originally created in 1956.The artist created a sensual perception of a modern world using confusing images and objects. The painting is an allegory rather than a representation of a room.The ceiling of the room is a space-age view of Earth.

It creates confusion and fake realities in the mind of the viewer which are difficult to comprehend. (Exteriors, Interiors, Objects, People, p.44.)

The ‘seam’ of the collage is visible in a way that a lot of distinctly unique elements come to define a new reality of what a home looks like. This seam is displaced from the surface to the reality in the mediations produced. A doubt is created in the viewer whether to understand this new collage presented to him as reality or to question the different features from reality used to create the collage. (Michael Young, 2017)

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Collage is intimately tied to technologies of reproduction through the possibilities of decontextualization and recontextualization made available through a mechanical copy. (Michael Young,2017 ) Technological reproduction can change the way we look at images. The original image can lose its context and its authenticity. There is a doubt when a physical image is digitized. Will we call the digital image as original or the physical one? Any change of material of the same image, a change in its size or the screen its printed on, creates a low-resolution copy of the original art-form. This visual and digital manifestation is a continual performance of images into alternate relations, hyperlinked into other adjacencies, building up into a micro constituencies of possible worlds.

(Jun-Yan Zhu*, Taesung Park*, Phillip Isola, and Alexei A. Efros.

“Unpaired Image-to-Image Translation using Cycle-Consistent Adversarial Networks”,in IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), 2017. )

The image is a result of Image-to-Image translation which is a class of vision and graphics problems where the goal is to learn the mapping between an input image and an output image using a training set of aligned image pairs. The above output is created using CycleGAN to produce the images from a set of input images to reveal an output image with some texture mapping from the inputted image.

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(Jun-Yan Zhu*, Taesung Park*, Phillip Isola, and Alexei A. Efros.

“Unpaired Image-to-Image Translation using Cycle-Consistent Adversarial Networks”,in IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), 2017. )

In all these images and the process of creating these images with a computer generated code is in itself an abstraction of textures and some data from the input images trying to produce these real images which carry abstracted textures. A zebra image morphed to form a horse and vice-versa - raises the question of what is the truth and when to ask questions about it. The second composition which uses paintings to create hyper-realistic landscapes is the fake reality that digitization can produce. If someone was to look at the output image without the knowledge of how it is created, it might be assumed to be a real photograph of a real landscape present physically on Earth. This parafiction does not possess new knowledge of what reality truthfully is, nor does it claim to have access to this reality transcendentally or empirically.

Parafiction accepts that what makes the real seem real is its constant withdrawal from our access. An aesthetic claim toward realism is just how does the world appear real to the senses. (Michael Young,2017)

HT 2200 Theories of Contemporary Arch I

Alternation of the “Still life with Musical Instruments (1623)” by Pieter Claesz (1597–1660)

In the context of architecture, Architects do not make buildings; they make representations that lead to buildings.

In contemporary art, one of the most relevant practices for architecture can be found under the loose heading of parafiction. Parafictional art uses every medium available through which to open an aesthetic investigation of realism.

Reality is not realism. Realism is an aesthetic argument regarding the tensions between reality and representation. In the gaps and tensions between the multiple mediations, the doubt of reality is presented. Drawings, Renderings, Models,, Computations, Simulations, Texts, and Buildings are all put forward by architects as a speculative proposal for the reality of the future. At a time when rendering engines enable the production of hyper-realistic images; It has become more important to speculate on realism.

For architects, technique is more important than the concept or the diagram of the building. Architecture is a multi-medium parafictional object which is a result of its programmatic function, aesthetic and economic constraints. Architecture should exploit its entire available media to propose ways in which the world can be made. The aesthetic dimensions of these projects make it such that doubt is always present regarding the reality represented.

Bibliography: • Young, Michael, The art of the plausible and the aesthetics of doubt, 2017 • Lambert, Beatty, Make-Believe: Parafiction and Plausibility, 2009 October • U. , Sila, Post Truth and Parafiction, 2019 January • Rancière,Jacques , The Politics of Aesthetics, 2004 • Fried , Michael, Art and Objecthood [o.p. 1967] in Art and Objecthood: Essays and Reviews (Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1998) • Jones, Caroline, Doubt/Fear,Art Papers 29 (Jan/Feb 2005) • Young, Michael, The Estranged Object, 2015 • “Still-life with chair caning, 1912, Pablo Picasso”, https:// www.pablopicasso.org/still-life-with-chair-caning.jsp • Richard Hamilton , “Just what was it that made yesterday’s homes so different, so appealing? (upgrade)” , 2004 , https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/ hamilton-just-what-was-it-that-made-yesterdayshomes-so-different-so-appealing-upgrade-p20271 • Jun-Yan Zhu*, Taesung Park*, Phillip Isola, and Alexei A. Efros. “Unpaired Image-to-Image Translation using Cycle-Consistent Adversarial Networks”,in IEEE International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV), 2017.

• Zhao, Jennifer Yifeng, “Transformation Study of a 17th century Violin”, http://www.jenyz.com/#/parafictionalobject-1/

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Aastha Aggarwal E-Mail : aasthaggarwal93@gmail.com Instagram : aastha_elysianimpressions