Exhibition hall, purple floor, silver seat cushions, round flat lamps hanging from ceiling

A white house with curved shapes, by the sea or a lake

Screenshot from the video game Common'hood (Plethora Project)

Film still with a field in pink, on it drive agricultural vehicles

/imagine:

A Journey into The New Virtual

In virtual space visionary designs and fictional scenarios for architecture and urban planning can be imagined without the limitations of the real world.

10.5.2023—10.9.2023

Upper Exhibition Hall

Design techniques such as renderings and AI algorithms are becoming ever more popular. Computational tools have not only revolutionized the design process and concept development in architecture and design, but also expanded our cultural, social, political, and aesthetic understanding of how we shape, experience, and navigate space.

The exhibition /imagine: A Journey into The New Virtual presents an overview of the many design strategies of “The New Virtual” and brings together exciting projects by international architects, designers, and artists that deal in different ways with the challenges and potentials of virtual space and the affiliated social, ecological, political, and infrastructural effects.

In four chapters—Speculative Narratives and Worldbuilding, Research Investigations, Dreamscapes, and AI and Algorithmic Variation—the exhibition features a diverse range of recent work, including a number of commissions, formulating new narratives, perspectives, and agencies in virtual space that may continue into physical reality.

/imagine: is the command that allows users to create their own architectural utopias with the software Midjourney. Based on a text prompt, an AI generates images that can be infinitely varied.

Exhibition hall, red scaffolding hanging from the ceiling

Wall with many small single pictures, on it you can see an AI generated picture of a multistory house

Exhibition hall, black pedestal, behind it a video, blue floor

An oversized tree house in the shape of a tube in the middle of a forest.

Exhibition hall, a podest with two models of a house

Exhibition hall, pale pink wall, on it a display cabinet with a transparent figure without a head containing a data chip

Black background, on it a data model in bright green

Rendering of a train compartment, a table set.

House in longitudinal section, carried by deer under the house, on the roof are birds

A large model with prongs, next to it stands a man

An oversized chair made of hydrangeas stands in an arcaded courtyard.

A house made of blue garbage bags stacked on top of each other, the image was generated by an AI

Graphic with writing /imagine: A Journey into The New Virtual

PARTICIPANTS

Morehshin Allahyari, Alisa Andrasek, Matias del Campo & Sandra Manninger (SPAN), Alexis Christodoulou, Formundrausch, Genevieve Goffman, Kordae Jatafa Henry, Miriam Hillawi Abraham, iheartblob, Simone C. Niquille (/technoflesh Studio), Lee Pivnik (The Institute of Queer Ecology), Andrés Reisinger (Reisinger Studio), Jose Sanchez (Plethora Project), Space Popular, Studio Mary Lennox, Studio Precht, Charlotte Taylor, Leah Wulfman, Liam Young, Zyva Studio, 2MVD (Damjan Minovski, Valerie Messini)

CURATORS

Bika Rebek, Architect and Principal, Some Place Studio

Marlies Wirth, Curator Digital Culture and MAK Design Collection

EXHIBITION DESIGN

Some Place Studio

GRAPHIC DESIGN
Process - Studio for Art and Design

All texts and information on the exhibited works are available on the project website: thenewvirtual.org

Media

MAK Exhibition View, 2023, /imagine: A Journey into The New Virtual, Alexis Christodoulou, Quantum Express, 2022 © kunst-dokumentation.com/MAK

MAK Exhibition View, 2023, /imagine: A Journey into The New Virtual, Space Popular, The Portal Galleries, 2022, Installation, Virtual-Reality-Experience © kunst-dokumentation.com/MAK

MAK Exhibition View, 2023, /imagine: A Journey into The New Virtual, SPAN (Matias del Campo & Sandra Manninger), The Doghouse, 2023, Model, Midjourney images, AIBO7 robots © kunst-dokumentation.com/MAK

MAK Exhibition View, 2023, /imagine: A Journey into The New Virtual, Simone C. Niquille, HOMESCHOOL, 2019 © kunst-dokumentation.com/MAK

MAK Exhibition View, 2023, /imagine: A Journey into The New Virtual, Leah Wulfman, My Mid Journey Trash Pile, 2022, Installation, Midjourney images, oil paintings © kunst-dokumentation.com/MAK

MAK Exhibition View, 2023, /imagine: A Journey into The New Virtual © kunst-dokumentation.com/MAK

MAK Exhibition View, 2023, /imagine: A Journey into The New Virtual, Kordae Jatafa Henry, Earth Mother, Sky Father, 2019, Film © kunst-dokumentation.com/MAK

Space Popular, The Fabric of Civic Teleportation, 2021 © Space Popular

Studio Precht, Bert, 2018 © Imanuel Thallinger

Fantasy city made of colorful blocks, rendering.

iheartblob, _Spaces, 2020 © iheartblob

Octagonal building, aut of a pink cliff by the sea

Zyva Studio × Charlotte Taylor, New Chemosphere, 2021 © Zyva Studio × Charlotte Taylor

MAK Exhibition View, 2023, /imagine: A Journey into The New Virtual, Genevieve Goffman, The View, 2023 © kunst-dokumentation.com/MAK

MAK Exhibition View, 2023, /imagine: A Journey into The New Virtual, Morehshin Allahyari, Material Speculation: ISIS, 2015/2016 © kunst-dokumentation.com/MAK

MAK Exhibition View, 2023, /imagine: A Journey into The New Virtual, Miriam Hillawi Abraham, Abyssinian Cyber Vernaculus, 2019 © kunst-dokumentation.com/MAK