Surface Calculus - Perry Kulper

Surface Calculus ‘Surface Calculus’ will unpack the construction of a spatial practice through the lens of architectural representation, by framing various kinds of produced surfaces—analog, digital and composites. The talk will tickle a larger project that augments and, in some cases reroutes the 600-year-old dominance of linear perspective, the picture plane and the ‘subject’ position, or station point—and their historical, disciplinary, ethical, and operational consequences. Key partners-in-crime for the conceptualization of the work include curiosity cabinets; Robert Venturi’s pivotal book, ‘Complexity and Contradiction’; Wallace Stevens’ seminal poem ’13 Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’; Jorge Luis Borges’ fictional taxonomy, ‘Celestial Emporium of Benevolent Knowledge’; Surrealist techniques; and interests in indeterminacy, contingency and emergence. Language prompts, analogous thinking, the ‘naming problem’, tailored visualizations, and inventive programmatic thinking will populate the margins. ‘Surface Calculus’ will get under the metaphorical hood, of an approximate practice, constructed by an amateur, that leverages various forms of visualization towards spatial speculations, that aspire to enlarge the cultural imaginary and what might be possible. videography by Gummi Ibsen (https://www.ibsenphotography.com/) for Space.City (https://www.spacecityseattle.org)