Excursion with Prof. Dr. Nina Zschocke (Digital Aesthetics) and Prof. Isabel Seiffert (Communication Design) together with students from ETH Zurich and the Academy of Fine Arts Munich.

At the Institute for Technology in Architecture at ETH Zurich, researchers from the Gramazio Kohler Research Group are looking for areas of application for robotics in architecture. Experimental arrangements are created within which creative actions take place in the interaction between researchers, machines and building materials.

Rubble Aggregations. Robitic Sand Moulding. Soft Particle Aggergation. Remote Material Deposition. Augmented Bricklaying. Rock Print. Rapid Clay Formation: Not self-regulating cybernetic living environments, but a laboratory in which material research and handling, the programming and modification of digital devices, research and design lines drive and change each other. In the interplay between robotics, digital modelling and material behaviour, the unforeseen also occurs, inscribing itself into the sculptural realisation of physical models and built environments.

Image and video materials are often created in a technical context as sketches, protocols or documentations, whereby their aesthetic value often takes a back seat.

The aim of the seminar week was a collective and authorial individual reading of these videos, photographs and computer visualisations as cultural material that points beyond its original purpose of creation and use.