SensiLab Forum: Parallax as a Design Research Practice between Speculative Historiography and Experimental Digital Fabrication

SensiLab Forums are back! 🚀

Join us live for our 5th SensiLab Forum edition in 2021, online over zoom, on Wednesday, August 4th from 5 - 6.30pm. Please RSVP to secure your free ticket and gain zoom access. The forum will be moderated by Lucija Ivsic, researcher, artist, and a PhD candidate from SensiLab.  

‘This time your 24 eyes look inwards'

This talk uses the notion of parallax to discuss some recent works from my design research practice. Parallax, the effect whereby the position or direction of an object appears to differ when viewed from different positions, is fundamental to the geometrical reconstruction of three-dimensional spatial positions from two-dimensional information and lies at the basis of technologies like photogrammetry. Moving beyond this metrological meaning, the work proposes an expanded, generative notion of parallax that accommodates and generates multiplicity, thereby challenging the imperatives of homogenous categorisation in current (digital) design practice.

The method is developed through a series of projects oscillating between speculative historical enquiry and experimental technological design practice. Through the description of these projects, ranging from the photogrammetric reconstruction of a long-destroyed unphotographable tailor shop to the fabrication of a prototype for an inhabitable mobile amphibious sculpture, the parallactic method unfolds simultaneously as a mode of observation and creative invention: following parallactic shifts between the heterogeneous points of view of historical interlocutors, technological agents (the projects use digital fabrication, scripting, 3D scanning and robotics) and further ‘others’, heterogeneous design artefacts are created that hold the capacity for an ongoing multiplicity of interpretation and open-ended re-invention.

The talk will also introduce a theoretical framework for this entanglement of parallactic knowing and making by referring to poststructuralist philosophy (in particular Karen Barad’s writings on quantum theory) and questioning the very separability of historiography and design practice, capture and fabrication, instead describing design research as a mutually implicated onto-epistemological practice.

Thomas Pearce (www.thomaspearce.xyz) is an architectural designer, researcher and lecturer working at the intersection of digital fabrication, emerging technologies and speculative historiography. Thomas’ research situates the potential of technologies of digital capture, simulation and fabrication between their capacity as tools for increased precision on the one hand and as generators of new uncertainties, shadows and unknowns and hence as spaces for speculation on the other.

After having worked extensively in architectural practice as a specialist for digital capture, design and fabrication, he now works as an independent designer within a changing network of collaborations and at various scales. Thomas is a Lecturer at the Bartlett School of Architecture (UCL) and a research associate at the Institute for Architecture at the Berlin Institute of Technology. He has previously taught at the Architectural Association in London and has lectured and acted as a guest critic at, amongst others, the University of Greenwich, Syracuse University, the University of California San Diego, the UdK Berlin, La Cambre Horta Bruxelles and the University of Toronto.

Thomas holds a B.A. and M.A. (KU Leuven, Belgium) in Cultural History and a B.Sc. (TU Berlin, Germany) and M.Arch. (Bartlett, London) in Architecture. He is currently being examined for a PhD by Design in Architecture at the Bartlett School of Architecture.

SensiLab was founded by Prof Jon McCormack in 2015 on the idea that the best way to learn was by making things. His vision was of a space where researchers from unconnected disciplines could collaborate freely in a vibrant and supportive environment. Today, that vision flourishes. Facilities include immersive visualisation spaces, sound and imaging studios, fabrication areas, a wet lab and a dedicated deep learning supercomputer. The lab operates under Monash’s Faculty of Information Technology and is housed in the Monash Art Design and Architecture building on the University’s Caulfield campus.