2019-2020
Invisible City: Synthetic Memory
Making ground for new negotiations between the technological, the ecological and the social.
The deep city is a complex mesh of interwoven processes and motions where the social coexists with the natural, the real with the imaginary, and the endless flows of data with silicon and organic flesh. We must accept that there are complexities within it which cannot be quantified nor approached simply through technological problem-solving nor through mere critical or speculative musings.
They demand new negotiations and techniques bridging fields and existing cultural divides. What kind of common grounds, both material and immaterial, can foster these pressing tensions of our present? What new tools, practices and spaces are needed to reconcile divisions that risk holding up our action against the urgencies of our time?
This is an ongoing research project where we explore how deep learning can extend Aldo Rossi’s “collective memory” and how it can visualize the diversity and complexity
of cities across the planet to create plausible architecture through the use of generative adversarial networks (GANs) that give birth and infer a new latent space.
Credits
Ingrid Mayrhofer-Hufnagl,
Benjamin Ennemoser