Copyright

Andrew Lucia

Published On

2024-10-09

Page Range

pp. 605–634

Language

  • English

Print Length

30 pages

37. Notes on A Catalog of Difference

  • Andrew Lucia (author)
Chapter of: Meta-Xenakis: New Perspectives on Iannis Xenakis’s Life, Work, and Legacies(pp. 605–634)
This chapter focuses on the author’s decade-long research project, A Catalog of Difference (2017). Approached from a background in architecture and art, this inquiry into spatial-material perception and its representation synthesizes information theoretic methodologies and concepts derived from Iannis Xenakis, Gregory Bateson, and the perceptual psychologist James J. Gibson, giving priority to an informational approach over that of the geometric. Architecture, through its representational tools and design workflows, has historically favored the latter of these distinctions, giving primacy to line and geometry at the expense of material phenomena. The work presented here challenges this bias while deliberately paying favor to formal potentials inherent within differentials of ambient light and surface curvatures. A Catalog of Difference is a study of change across material and perceptual environments, calling attention to those differences which make a difference. The collection comprises over 1,000 studies that survey and analyze degrees of difference across images, objects, and environments. The outcome of these studies is a collection of artifacts comprising a range of representation and media types including 3D printed ceramics, digital photography, renderings, and drawings. The difference machines elaborated on in the catalog operate as a methodology and collection of post-digital representations. The research is divided into three distinct yet related subsets examining the order and organization of: a) Planar ambient light, b) Surface curvatures, and c) Spherical ambient light. The studies in each of these questions form versus appearance.

Contributors

Andrew Lucia

(author)
Visiting Critic at Cornell University

Andrew Lucia is a Minneapolis-based multimedia artist, designer and academic, and is a Co-founding Partner of the creative collaborative, LUCITO. Formally trained in architecture, Lucia’s practice is one that is informed by this disciplinary approach to cultural production fusing historic reference, perception, and experience through spatial-material practice and its representation. His work comprises a focused inquiry into the world of matter, its organization and affect through image, projection design, installation, land art, and architecture, including numerous collaborations with composers and sound artists. Lucia is currently an invited Visiting Critic at Cornell University, College of Architecture, Art, and Planning (AAP), and has held the positions of Visiting Critic at the University of Pennsylvania Weitzman School of Design (2019–21, 2024); Visiting Scholar at the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism, Carleton University (Spring 2018); Visiting Lecturer and Critic at Cornell University, AAP (2011–15); and was a member of the Faculty in visual studies at the University of Pennsylvania, School of Design (2008–11). From 2015-17 Lucia held the position of Cass Gilbert Visiting Assistant Professor in the School of Architecture, College of Design, University of Minnesota, during which he realized the extensive research and design project A Catalog of Difference. He has been nominated for the United States Artist Fellowship and the Civitella Ranieri Prize for Architecture. Lucia received his Master of Architecture from the University of Pennsylvania (2008) and his BA in Architecture from the University of Minnesota (2001).