Guest lecture: 'Three projects' by Tobias Putrih and Aleš Korpič

We continue with the guest lectures in “A Re-Place” workshop and cycle. This time we listened live and also over zoom, to a very interesting lecture held by To bias Putrih and his associate Aleš Korpič. Tobias Putrih is a Slovenian contemporary artist, who studied physics before turning to art; he draws inspiration from the pure geometric forms of modernist architecture. His work is included among others in the permanent collections of the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Centre Pompidou, Paris; Musée d’ Art Moderne Grand-Duc Jean, Luxembourg and Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Aleš Korpič is a Slovene artist and architect who has been a member of the Tobias Putrih Studio team since 2005.

In the lecture, they presented the three projects of the Tobias Studio, which focus on an intersection between materiality and computation and explore how both converge in present-day object making. The idea of "group form," describing the human-made environment as a mesh of material and informational cascades, not a product of individual control, informs many of the studio's projects. From digital applications and modular objects to be used or played with, to projection spaces, museum libraries, and auditoriums, they result from collective decision-making chains, guided by material properties, environmental conditions, economic constraints, and algorithmic transformations.

The lecture was followed by a lively discussion among all participating students and mentors, debating the balances between materiality and digital computation, collective decision-making chains, and environmental and economic constraints of the design.