Sun. Dec. 16: Zenovia Toloudi

Architectural Apparatuses for Immaterial Transformations

With the occasion of multimedia installation “Photodotes I: Light Donors” being part of Boston Cyberarts’ “Future of History” group show, this talk unfolds around artworks that embody processes of immaterial transformations such as kinesis/movement. To present these machines that produce effects as well as time-sensitive and ephemeral spaces, the talk employs the term of architectural apparatus. An architectural apparatus can be either an individual structural element with particular forms, materials, textures, and perforations, or an opening and a threshold, or a design of particular scales, geometries, proportions, and dimensions, or a strategically positioning of a building or monument to produce an effect in the eyes of the beholders. The architectural apparatuses can intervene in particular buildings or conditions to either transmit light, or recreate an image to interrupt the daily routine in a building through the production of ever-changing phenomena, or to produce an illusion of infinity. Through this artistic research certain ideas prevail about architectural apparatuses: they are artifacts yet non-representational; they become portals for phantasmagoria; they disrupt the spatial homogeneity and lifestyle monotony; they recalibrate the senses and cognitive abilities of the viewer; they displace temporarily one’s image in relation to the surroundings; they are theatrical, literal, and temporal; they become transitional objects or communicative devices; and they become co-producers of space.

When: Sunday, Dec. 16, 4pm
Where: Boston Cyberarts Gallery, 141 Green St., Jamaica Plain, MA (next to the Green Street Station)
Presenter: Zenovia Toloudi
Free event

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About the Presenter

Zenovia Toloudi is an artist, architect, and Assistant Professor of Studio Art at Dartmouth College. Zenovia makes art to realize imaginative architectures that generate inclusion through digital and organic media, and to experiment with subjective perception of space and engagement. Her work, poised at the intersection of art and architecture, critiques the alienation of humans from nature and each other and strives to restore broken relationships. Zenovia has exhibited at the Biennale in Venice, the Center for Architecture in New York, the Athens Byzantine Museum, and the Onassis Cultural Center in Athens and won commissions from Illuminus Boston, and The Lab at Harvard. Her work belongs to permanent collections at Aristotle University and the Thracian Pinacotheca. In addition, she has published on bioart, immaterial architecture, and the public sphere in The Routledge Companion to Biology in Art and Architecture, Technoetic Arts Journal of Speculative Research and MAS Context’s issue on the Ordinary. A Research Fellow in the Art, Culture, and Technology Program at MIT and a Fulbright Fellow, she received her doctorate from Harvard’s GSD, a M.Arch. from the Illinois Institute of Technology, and a diploma in Architectural Engineering from Aristotle University. Raised at a periphery of Greece, she works in the Mediterranean and in North America and her fascination with borders is reflected in art that ranges in reference and material across the boundaries of biology and technology.

This post was written by and was published on November 27th, 2018 under the categories Events , Past Events.