Columbia GSAPP: Horizontal MSCDP: Lucia Rebolino

Welcome to the second lecture in the 2026 MSCDP conversations with practitioners lecture series. So this lecture just brief overview serves as a kind of introduction to diverse practitioners from across computational design practice offering a range of perspectives on design technology engineering and architecture. Last week we have Kosen and Noah Toyonaga. They showed us pattern magic and this week we will have Luchia Rebelino who will be talking through her work and trajectory in various contexts. To briefly introduce, Luchia Rebelino is an artist, architect, and researchbased computational designer. She is currently a researcher of forensic architecture in London and most importantly to me, one of the first graduates of the MSCDP program and a good friend. Luchia conceives her practice as a space where different branches of science and design can conceptualize, critique, visualize, and provoke new vibrant aesthetics drawing attention to complex and invisible systems. Luchia maintains an experimental approach at the intersection of art and science using computation to create alternative pathways and design practices. Her spatial and conceptual thinking is grounded in research-based practice developed during her time as a teaching associate at GAP and researcher at the center for spatial research in New York testing new tools and investigative projects exploring data visualization and new counter carttography aesthetics. Since 2023, Luchia has been a researcher with forensic architecture in London, working across cgraphy, remote sensing, and web platforms in support of environmental justice and human rights investigations. In parallel, since 2023, Luchia has been working with the Institute of Contemporary Art and Graz, contributing to the Kumono Maro project, translating oceanographic data into video and visual material for a series of sailing based research exhibitions across the Adriatic Sea in 2025. Across web-based environments, video installations, netar, and performative lectures, Luchia examines how sensing technologies, and computational infrastructures shape scientific narratives. Her long-term project, unpredictable atmosphere, which started in CDP 2022 to ongoing, investigates climate models focusing on how technological infrastructures interact with physical laws and how uncertainty, error, and outliers emerge within predictive systems. Developed in dialogue with researchers from from institutions including NASA and the ESA. The project has been published in e-lux exhibit at the Venice Architecture Bianual and presented at MoMA's R&D salon media lab matadoro the institute for postnatural studies and the photographers gallery through screenwalk. Luchia holds anarch from the poly technico in Italy and an MS in computational design practices um from Columbia GP in New York. She has lectured internationally institutions including ETA Zurich, EPFL, Royal College of Art, Architectural Association, Design, Economy, and Oven and now Gap again. So, please welcome Lucia. >> Hi. [laughter] Sorry. Usually people told me that I have a a mouse voice, so like I wanted to speak a bit louder. Um well it's uh I'm so happy to be back. As uh Adam was saying I was actually one part of the first cohort here. Uh I hope that this like time together can become like a way that I can walk you through some of the project that I've been doing like both like before coming here and why then I decided to come here and why being part of CDP also somehow like shape my current direction and practice and what I'm doing at the moment. So it's um yeah I I I told about okay let's spend an hour together and work through work through this together. Uh so there is these things that I always like mention that also thanks Adam for reading uh this very detailed bio and also for having me here uh and uh which is that I am an architect. So I come originally from Italy. I have uh done like the kind of traditional path in Italy which is like five year of architecture and then eventually I discovered this like interest in like all those architects that do architecture beyond architecture. So I found them like always to be very cool and I was like how how do they shape their own practice to kind of use use the spatial thinking and the methods and the tools that they developed as architect or like they teach in architectural school which is this very also rigorous way to look at the space but also to look at like theory philosophy and how do they applied in like uh different kind of like or an extension of design practices and then I found this program and I found this program and uh when I joined then now I always say that these kind of two paths never really replace one another. So the architecture and the computational design and they kind of like interwined in the practice that I have together and I and hopefully I can like you can understand more while we walk through the the presentation. But the idea is that through the years um I start developing like a practice where the kind of this the spatial thinking of architecture to me unfold into kind of making an autopsy or like kind of analyzing how the computational infrastructure and softwares works especially in relation with like ecology and environment and weather and climate which are all topics that I'm like deeply really passionate about even before uh moving to New York. So I always say that like uh there are two parts of my practice and we I'm going to show you how they unfold differently. There is one at the moment also more rigorous where so since 2023 I've been like part of forensic architecture in London uh working which for those who are not familiar is a in a research agency based at Goldsmith University where we investigate uh human rights and environmental violence through the tools of architecture and design and um and against like corporate and state violence. And my role there has been like since 2023. So now it's been three years that I work mostly on like environmental justice projects through the tool of remote sensing, ctography, mapping and web development. So the idea is I am very bad with powerpoints because as you probably also see and from like my website all of these pages are kind of docs and website they live in URLs. So what I do most of the time is like we're going to navigate through different desktop which because I don't really know what order would work better. I put them chronologically. So hopefully you can understand more about my practice also knowing about my kind of non-connective way of thinking work which can be very messy. But I recently learned that like this is also part of like I accepted that this is how my brain is wired and I understand that this way of thinking is also how I um how I develop more my artistic practice. Um okay another things I wanted to say is that I am an next an alumni I'm a very friendly person so any question either here or later in front of a coffee or anytime come to me like so don't be embarrassed if there are no question now we can chat anytime um okay so there is something I wanted to show you uh which is a bit like um how do I arrive at CDP which I think is um an important path. So I'm actually I graduated with a professor it's called Elisa Katano which is also professor of one of your classmate Michelle. So we kind of share this um this path and um when I was in Italy there was a moment where I started thinking about how I wanted to develop further um not only like the architectural practice but also the landscape ecology practices for me became this like kind of hinge point where I started to understand how computational tools can merge into architecture. And especially like through landscape ecology, I found a way to work with different like parametric tools. So at the time was a lot of like grasshopper for me and try to understand how you can study um landscape and space through variables. So it was the first time like this node way of connect information and data consequences and this like relational thinking came into my practice. So I think many of you are following the grasshopper course. So you probably are happy sl struggling but it's also a nice way to understand how this like way of thinking can be implemented within like spatial practice. So this was actually a project I developed with Federica Pesato which is a close friend but also um was my collaborators for the thesis. So this was like the master thesis of architecture we did at poly techchnico itino where we decided um to try to develop like we call it like calligraphic aesthetics of landscape ecology. So it was more of an experiment over like data visualization and ctography to study this concept of like moving borders. So the idea of moving borders intended as there are like geopolitical borders that can collapse or overlaps into ecological borders let's say river or or borders that are in motion because environmental reason. So what does it mean mapping these geographies that are in continual motion? So to do so we developed like a body of work that was like very grounded in like um theoretic approach. But then through this theory the idea was like okay how do we develop like an aesthetic that talk about this fluidity or like this um the way that like uh all psychological process cannot be mapped as static um variables but they need a new language that can talk about these new like time scales. So, so yeah, this is how it cames uh came this project which is all I'm not going to dive deep exactly in like each of the phases. But what I think it stayed with me over time is the the fun that I had in experimenting the static. So that's what I brought with me at the end of my master of architecture. And I was like okay what did I enjoy the most of these five years actually testing these new yeah testing the new tools uh within like theory and topic theoretical topics philosophy uh geography geopolitics and like okay so what do I actually want to bring uh further from this point onward and this is how I started to get much more interested of what computational design can offer you Because as you probably also understanding now there are many different things that you can develop through computational design like and at the time to me I think the main interest was in ctography. So it's still what I'm doing now and so it's still like part of like how I'm evolving as a let's say as a ctographer. Um but then I'm going to show you what happened through the years that now it became more and more um kind of not only ctographer that like map the data through the space but also ctographer that tried to use the threedimensional space of software and computation itself to map processes and map uh relation and map conflict mostly and that's what happened here. So I arrived here it was uh 2022 and um during my stay at uh CDP I was trying to figure out what is the what's the way I can further develop this passion and interest I have in climate landscape ecology but through kind of like a new way of visualizing this information that move beyond like kind of more this like almost vector calligraphic um way of visualizing data into is there a way this um computational space can be almost like section and sorry this was like an effect supposed to happen in a sec. How can you like map this uh space in a more like almost three-dimensional way and what it can tell us if like let's say in this case was like what if we section the atmosphere vertically and so we stop looking at the layer of clouds we stop looking from this like kind of bird eye view at the environment but we start sectioning vertically. So um so there was this moment where I was following during the summer uh I think the summer for me was the struggling moment because I was like okay I was discovering all these tools and I was like okay what I'm actually what what I want to pick up like it felt there are so many different things you can do and what is useful for you what is not so to me I got extremely passionate in the power that exists in web development and everything that you can actually do through the web. So the idea was like okay I'm start looking at the web not more as an interface but as a site like really like an architectural site. So the web is start to become a space that is no more like dimensionless as you can see like flat and like HD screen and that's it. But then it's so deep and branched that can allow you to uh unfold and model different way of thinking. So for me I realized that this computer and in a sense I also realized that the conflict that I was interested to map that in the previous case were the conflict between let's say environmental ecology and the geopolitics. Now it was um a conflict that where or like how violence in a sense is embedded in computational channels even before unfolding uh like physically in the space. Um so while I was here in the US uh there was a moment around 2022 where in New York they were starting installing lot of new 5G towers. So I could just see them popping up in the streets and that's cool. And uh eventually like trying to find a way to navigate a topic that was of interest of mine to keep developing. I came to the understanding while a bit nerd as a nerd diving into these scientific communities and I don't know papers and stuff on how there was let's see if there should be a print here. There was an ongoing conflict happening uh actually since 2019 that was because uh the installation of these towers that emit in the high frequency band of the spectrum at like this frequency of 24 gigs while somehow interfering in the way weather satellites were mapping the atmosphere. So all it came from an article in a scientific paper and then through the scientific paper then I managed to dive in understand get to like this letter that you see here uh and then find people that I get in contact to to ask more question to the point that I arrived to be in contact with the um NAZA advisor for the how to better manage the electromagnetic spectrum. Um so imagine the electromagnetic spectrum is this chart that maybe we can let's see um so this is how it works. I don't know why this is an Amazon thing but this is Amazon again people love this chart. Um let me see frequency allocation spectrum. Okay. Uh fine. So that's how the frequency allocation spectrum work in the US. So all these actually graph all these spaces they're dimensionless and that's what interested me. So there is like they're invisible. There is no way to like understand where are how they are located in this space. But the thing was interesting to me is that people were like they were actioning this space. So people were spending billions of dollars to occupy one of these uh allocation spectrum space. So it became so interesting. was like okay that's actually you buy a space so this space has a spatial variable and have different variables that need to be mapped need to be understand um and what was more interesting to me is that I was interested in mapping conflicts and there was a strong conflict happening in one of tiny band of the spectrum that it was I I probably cannot find it now but like it was the 24 gigz um band um So to try to tell it in few words very simply what was happening is that these scientists also explain in very simple word for me to kind of because I'm also not a scientist. So to me I'm interesting what scientists do in what scientists research but there is also this way of like trying to grasp what they do through a special thinking. So to me when the scientist told me okay he tried to talk about numbers figures and like sorry I'm not getting it like simple and then he told me okay imagine a satellite is going through like flying through um over New York uh and then from the image that the satellite send us back to earth we see that is a very moisture day in New York it's like moistister there is a lot of water vapor in the cloud there are clouds but these clouds are actually not there So the the thing is that these 5G towers are emitting in such a frequency that the way the satellite kind of um work it like emits this like I don't know if it's but like emits something that like um bounce from to to the the frequencies that we're communicating communicating at the same wavelength that water vapor droplets uh send the signal back. So they're basically recognized as water vapor. I like okay that's so fascinating because now I understand okay this spatial conflict that exists in an invisible space is actually causing real effect because let's say you see it's a very cloudy day it might going to rain you're going to put your rain coat on but it's actually a very sunny one and then it's just because everyone is messaging I don't know but that's what so that was to simplify what the conflict was about. So it took me over the over the year that I was here, I was trying to navigate this same topic uh over the different classes that I took. So I was taking some classes about how um um uh like about web development where I was trying to develop the website that you see that you see that you see here that we're going to come in a second. I took some classes more about like narrative that then I was building the video that you see here. It was for me the way to narrate uh the the the storytelling of the project itself. Then there was another class, maybe I should jump back here, where I realized a drawing machine for my kind of um actual um the the capstone project together with the with the essay that I was writing that then was also published on Influx. Afterward, um, I was also developing in another class a drawing machine that was connected with the kind of the moving of the the satellite and real-time information that I developed in a class in the last in the last semester. So, what I was trying to do and then there was I think another class uh that I was following. Let me see if this is here. Yeah, this is like okay this is actually the the second semester where you see the the final capstone was already in process. So this view that you see here, it was kind of the prototype of the website that then later on I make that was posting the the different video that I scraped from the internet of the movement between these 5G towers in New York, the mapping of the clouds. Then another things that I was enjoying doing when I before I saying like kind of do the uh autopsy of softwares I really meant autopsy of software in a sense that at the time then I was talking with the always talking with these scientists and he point me to how to download these um because then what I have to understanding that the let's say the the biggest event of water vapor collection that can also be like um can also become a catastrophes like hurricanes. So he explained to me okay you can like actually downloading this information start to see how this data structure work. So to me also a lot of the semester was researching and writing about the topics. try to like collect this information trying to develop a website as my form of narrative and spatial thinking that unfold the finding of the project itself but also really experiment with all the computational tools that I got the the chance to touch. So this one for instance came from the scientist. He pointed me to where to find the data of the hurricanes that I was interested and then there was me not really able to open this file googling before tragic then tragic became a thing during my masters. So there was a moment of struggle where it's I was googling how do I open this file and then it point me to this medical software used to do uh MRI MRI scan of bones and I was like cool let's try to pull it in and then I put the file in and then eventually I was able to section the hurricane. So to me it was like you know we don't really know how precise is this value visualization but it was also an experiment to use the computational tools and the softwares that were available online and see and try to understand in this more investigative way what is available what you can what you can do and uh then there are part of this website as I just realized this morning that some stuff are not working anymore but um You are going to trust me that they were working at some point. But everything is also collected in here. So this is an article which I think it this is actually Adam was the moment where I started to it opened up to me a lot of doors. this article which was something that I got the chance to write uh because of Adams because of this program and uh it's um it's an article that summarize um let's see if it's loading summarize the main kind of research um um research finding and the the core of the research collecting also the visualization that were part of it and it was a moment where also the work that I've been doing here trying to uh I had the chance to get uh seen from a broader public. So this was exactly the moment where my path shifted a little bit because at the time this writing was coming out. I was still uh or maybe it was like just I just moved to to to London. So there was a moment where I graduated. I stay here a little bit more. I work as a TA at Gizap. Uh and then I got the chance to move to London. And this is where my practice shifted a little bit. And this is how also I'm thankful. I'm thankful for this experience because it allowed to ground even more some of the methods that I was interested and give me also an understanding of what does it mean working within this rigorous legal setting because as I was mentioning before what we do at FA we work on this topic related to like human rights and corporate violence, state violence using the same tools that I also learn here. So when I moved there was actually for a role as a researcher but also the way the office is structured which I think it's very interesting is that you get in for a specific set of computational tools that you have plus a research interest. So at the time they were looking someone that has a skill set in ctography, mapping, data analysis and web development which has all the skills that I developed through this program and um eventually it happened that um the other kind of parameter uh they were looking for it was like they were coming more environmental project and was also like uh an interested of mine. So this is the way I always say that like I have this rigorous side of my practice which is this one. And then later on, I would say maybe more recently, so in the last maybe one year and a half, two years, I started to um apply or like kind of invert the forensic gaze from the physical space. And we're going to see what does it mean in a second through the digital space using the same tools in a bit more of an experimental way. So without the boundaries of like legal settings or lawyers or everything that is very much related to the way we work at forensic architecture but more the idea was like how do I bridge this like um strong um barrier that I see at the time that is between academic research. So in myself I'm also interested in like PhD. I'm interested in this thing. But then I'm also interested in like the artistic output and the artistic forum that exists to expose this type of research. But I always found a barrier. So it's either one or the other and it's a bit difficult to like communicate between these two institution. So the idea is like okay how I can talk about this inversion of the gaze looking at the digital space but also finding a methods and artistic practice that allow to communicate between these two forums we're going to get in a second. Um so going back a bit to my path within FA I joined I arrived there it was like late uh August early September 2023 and then as probably most of you know since October 2023 genocide started and all of the office shift the focus so we at the time were like fairly small office now it's like we're much more people but then there was a moment where no matter what was your interestatter matter what is their skills, everyone moved to Gaza and that's the time I joined. So I got involved since the very beginning into this project and I managed to touch a different phase of how this project evolves through time and I'm now going to go through what a genocide is in Gaza. Um just when I want to show is a bit more how I did apply uh my knowledge and my practice and my research interest in within this very specific project that is an ongoing conflict that it was uh very hard to navigate also as an architect and not like you know I've been working earlier with this kind of like human rights topic but then um there is a way that also I want to talk about this like FA my personal FA experience which is also the one uh where I how I do use my skills in there which they're again like ctography and web development mostly like web development intended as like um ctography on the web or or data visualization on the web and I decided to show two uh like two example of this kind of platform and the way you can use um uh kind of satellite analysis, remote sensing, counter carttography applied to uh platform and more this um web web design. So one of the work we did I mean we did we are still doing is um is building this database of ctography of genocide. So ctography of genocide it started as I said in October 2023 and then since then uh what we have been doing and it's like building um a report um together with the South African team lawyer um team of lawyers in the case uh South Africa against Israel for genocide uh that went to the international court of justice and it's still on the international of justice. So we have been partnering with them to produce the visual evidence of their claims which means that in the office we were divided in teams. Each of us were working in a different area of analysis. Uh my area of analysis was uh both the destruction of reculture and water resources and the spatial control. So I was dealing dealing with these two things meant mostly um kind of there was a clear there is still a clear routine of how the work does. So you have a moment where you do live monitoring. So it means that like every day you log in when on social media script on social media if there are like any information or attacks related to your specific kind of topic log this in a spreadsheet. This spreadsheet is sent to one of our colleague that does um geoloccation. So the the by geolocation I means when there is an event looking at shadow reflections or landmark or uh the environment to understand where this event happened. So this is all what you can see here. I'm not going to open the link because sometimes they're bit sensitive material, but they're all uh if you're interested, you can um uh you can look more into the platform. But this is basically all the event and you can see also here in this visualization all the attacks that we've been mapping through time because what was interesting for us was developing uh this platform that uh a main difference with the second platform that I want to show you later. This for us was like a tool of research. So we actually have two way of this um uh this different platform. One is the public one and this is the one we use to [music] work. So as you can see it looks very similar but this is actually how every one of us work every day. So we had access for uh since uh the very beginning um uh of planets satellite imagery. So planet is a US commercial provider uh that uh realized how important was this type of work done from certain organizations. So they gave access to this organization for free to the images that they were interested. So we requested all the data set and what we've been doing is like uploading this information as you can see. Yeah. I mean 6 of July is the last one. Uh I'm just now going to zoom in just but like that's that's all how the we can basically monitor all the destruction and then all the layers that you can see here. These are all layers we have been uh tracing ourself. So the the goal was like building a data set. So um building a data set that could work as a tool. So only through all this work that we've been doing both us as researcher with also bigger team because we were a lot of time collaborating with the PhD placement or le university that were offering volunteer work to let's say map all the tents to then build a model that could recognize tent location and then as as researcher we're kind of going through this model and trying to understand uh how uh confident the results were or or not all these um allow us to realize the public platform that we have that when I say that it works as a tool because is the way we were able to make the visual evidence of the claim that the lawyer were were do like were kind of researching and writing about like for instance just talking about an example that um I I was following um and kind of researching myself is um let's see in here there was a moment where we were oh I found it immediately uh there was a moment where we were mapping the uh kind of the destruction and the how the agricultural destruction was systematic because it was also related to the way they were dividing Gaza and taking um taking invading Gaza and also taking uh land and uh creating new military outpost and the thing is that at the time there was is like I think it was around like February March. Um they were posting on social media where they would have been like to communicate to people the evacuation order and where people were allowed to move and where it was like a dangerous combat zone. So there was a moment that they were in the south but then through remote sensing which is the practice of using satellite imagery and different spectrum bands to analyze what is not visible. So in this sense using the different bands uh of information that are related to certain satellite imagery you can through equation mathematical equation reasssemble these bands to show uh features that usually are not visible. For instance this is NDVI which is normalized different vegetation index that show the level of um health of vegetation. So you can see which vegetation is more healthy. So when the leaf is more green or when the leaf is not. Long story short again [gasps] doing this we figured out there was this line which looked quite weird because in other way we could see like plots of agricultural feed that have been raised but then there was this line appearing more and more. So what we were able to detect even before it actually happened and so at the time what we were doing was like posting on Twitter about it was like our way to communicate uh the real time finding they were starting to develop what later on became one of the main corridor that is dividing Gaza from north side from north to to south. And this cames because of this remote sensing analysis but also because we were able to overlay different information and build this like own data set and this became one of the part of the biggest claim we were we could uh we could make on the report. So this is a type for instance of platform where what I wanted to highlight is how from different way to map an environment then you could um use it like literally as like a tool of investigation. The other example which is more recent is like actually a project I oops sorry this wrong uh this is actually a project which is still not on outside uh but it will be soon so I don't even know if the title is going to be this one but it's a um I just wanted to show you very briefly as um a different type of platform. So another way that we develop um interfaces so if the previous one was a tool uh this one is intended to be a narrative tools. So it's intended to be used from the community. So here specifically we're talking this community in Namibia which is another site where I have colleague of mine Agata is developing since many years this like uh research and I've been collaborating with her specifically on this project in the production of a series of remote sensing analysis to map basically where the there is this new green colonial project green hydrogen development that is going to is promoted to be in this park that used to be of the Nama people. Uh and um the idea is like how we can give them a more uh a support and a right for them to consultation free prior or informed consent in the decision that affect their ancestral land. So what we wanted to show is that in the area where this hydrogen infrastructure is going to be built is an area of an ancestral land of people that went through a genocide uh and um to do that. So we we develop like this interface that I think is quite interesting because it's more of a collection a way that we collect like oh sorry let me uh we collect information both from um um like video narratives. So we collaborate like there are a lot of like footage that we had but also we found a way uh these are still like in progress as you can see there are some things that are not properly working but is a way to working with like dual channel of information where we have video and footage there are chapters of the narrative and then there's a navigation of this platform and datas that we develop and it's the process the all different five chapters is the process that we use to map how this ancestral land used to be and how these and why these are should be protected. Um so I'm very slow but that's so this is uh just to sum up that this is I wanted to show you these few projects mostly to um give you also an understanding of what is my office practice. Um, and I'm also still trying to navigate exactly what is a good balance for for instance for me uh for my like interest and practice to balance this more um yeah I keep saying rigorous but it's also because it require also a sense of um awareness constant awareness of the violence that happen in the world. So it's it can be like sometimes more of a hard work. So for me like a way to balance this is also keep always also this more creative and artistic practice on the side and that's how I started to develop um as I was saying before this research interest in trying to invert the forensic gaz. So I was like okay I'm learning a lot on how to look at the space at the physical space. I'm seeing a lot of violence. I'm seeing lot of destruction, seeing lot of death, but is there other violence that need to be mapped that maybe is not visible tangible in the space. So what was interesting for me is like trying to understand as the project that I developed here at CDP, how can this thinking can further move in touching other fields. So at the time I knew okay I like weather, I like um computers, I like softs, I like the internet, how can I keep working on this? So I found this way which we come back again of my messy way of thinking. I was like okay how do I actually do my research? And I realized that like lot of the things I do are like sometimes some maybe like visual experiment like little data visualization some websites then like I develop to like test how to visualize some data set and slowly I realized how much people were interested about it. was like, "Oh, we actually want to hear how you tell the stories of what you do." And I was like, "Okay, so this is actually a method, I think, of doing research. It's like showing the process of the research through this type of spatial thinking through the web or and uh and talking about the topic I'm interested on. So what I've been developing then and it's also um the way for me that the work unpredictable atmosphere then started growing even further to have even at the Venice Bale that now I'm going to show you some images and also how the processing world but it's like I tried to start pitching my work not more at maybe like artistic institution because it lived in the web and I was like okay I need someone that is open to look at the website in more of a choreographic way. So if I understand for instance in London there is this program that has been developed since co it's called screenw walk uh with the photographers museum of London and it's um it was the first time that they basically asked me okay um come it's like a online exhibition it's an online performance and I got very excited I was like I like this I like this term it's an online performance where you can like talk about your research church and it's going to be like an hour online and I was like okay so then it became a thing for me because I started to play a lot with all these things that I already had or like they already existed on the web rather than what I was doing before was like okay taking the data visualize the data making these maps now I'm like okay can I play with the information that exist online in form of you know uh let me go here in form of the kind of article or images and then let me see if it's actually still working maybe it's not working but how how I can tell this story and as you can see also I'm a bit a scrappy coder like I'm not like a web developer so I don't identify myself in anything but in lot of things which is also the fun part but this also then a difficult part because then when it become a matter of like what what are you doing then you know you need to I'm still carving out this path so I can't tell you exactly how it's going to be but hope it's going to be great. Um so yeah so this was the moment for me where I started to like navigate the research in this way and I actually learned a lot especially when I was here in New York I attended like probably some of you are familiar with the school for poetic computation there are lot of realities there is the new museum with the new ink program so I was like attending lectures uh going to meet people if I could so I took my time in New York very seriously as a mission to okay I'm going to meet the artists that I really job. I'm going to meet the people I really like and then I understand okay this technologydriven lecturing performance is actually a thing. And then this is also where I am at the moment and I'm going to show you the very last project that I actually presented it like two days ago. So it's still very new but this be the direction that I'm also taking uh right now. um all this like screen walking um project that like you know sometimes it's like this is like part of a visualization that we did uh when I I was doing um because another things okay maybe this was another things I've been doing which I think it's interesting in how uh we you develop a practice between academic environment and artistic settings is that I found university still to be these protected zones where you could use the space to experiment with student participants or people that are interested in the same topic within the safe wall of you safe maybe I don't know but sometimes uh so in this case uh it was a workshop it was a three-day workshop in Madrid and we were talking about this idea of like uh counter modeling of basically how what I was saying the violence sometimes is um is embedded in this model. So even before materializing in how the data constructed so who govern the model, who own the model, how this model actually build. So there became a question. So we were talking about this in relation to climate model and the idea is that to start populating how let's see if I can show you here. So we were talking about how how climate model are constructed. So we took this geometry and then there was a series of like participants. We were talking about how weather modeling have been the idea of weather modeling have been um um how I say changing over time but still the kind of spatial dimension of what the climate model is. It remained the same since the first vision in I think this is 1922 of this uh guy Louis Fred Richardson who was described as from his biographer as an unorthodox intelligence. So he was visualizing his idea of climate model or like as a weather forecast machine. So it was like described as a building that was divided in a grid that is what now is called computational grid. So it's what scientists use to calculate weather. In each of these grids there were in each of these grid there were like numbers processing which is numerical calculation. Numerical weather prediction is how we do predict weather also nowadays. But then he was talking about these human machine uh computers and it was also interesting these were open like in Spanish they're called calculas and so it was also interesting to see that most of these were actually women. So then it connect like you know a lot of things lot of aspect of like also the role of like women in this like cyber cyber world. But then what was interesting to me was discovering how uh eventually this is how a climate model is the the diagram of a climate model. So you could still see this computational grid. You could still see like the arrows here represent the way the numerical calculation the direction the ve the vectorzation of the equation like okay this is actually how this crazy guy in 1922 was like envisioning the way you forecast the weather arrived to the point that there was this funny parallel that I always find interesting this is the CEO of Nvidia showing the digital earth to uh I think it's called earth 2 project which is a digital twin of the earth to then forecast basically starting from weather but then you can forecast other sort of like earth related uh earth related like uh activity and forces and movement. And what was interesting to me seeing this imagery which I I bet I think it was like 2024 and then going back to Lred Richardson vision where there was still like a man and it's both like almost theatrical these two men kind of choreographing the way that we could control the world or we couldn't control the weather. So this was like the way I was thinking the way I was like writing. I was writing a paper that went you know into a scientific magazine at the time. But at the same time we develop this way of thinking through a workshop. So talking about workshop I yeah I linked here like sometimes the workshop I do tend to be and these are also related to the things I learn here. So I was uh very interested in um kind of mapping and ctography and GIS which is QJIS which are all like kind of uh tools that I was learning already in architecture school and here I had a chance to develop even further but then I discovered for instance the tools that I use them I use a lot is called Google Earth Engine which is um on cloud remote sensing way of like computing calculations. So remote sensing calculation through code. So um there are a lot of forums that's or like available script that tell you how [snorts] to do this analysis. And uh what what was interesting for me is like apply uh this um remote sensing analysis uh with like design architecture school or professor students that were interested in investigate further how do you can use computation so coding to map basically. So these are like lot of in in let's say in my uh other side of the practice there is also a lot of these like um teaching droplets of knowledge of computational tools in architecture schools. Um then then there are some sometimes things are more even more experimental and fun. This is something we did in the in the design academy in Endovven in the Netherland where the idea was um creating like clo um short like cinematic experiment because they were working in like a cinema class. And so the idea was like using um the information that are connected to the uh Google Street View camera that actually there are embedded all the information of how the camera move to create uh yeah to create shorts of this um engineer cinematic way of a computational camera on the web. I didn't choose the titles but it was fun. So, so this was this is just some of example of also how I myself try to find the space to keep experimenting with the tools through teaching. So, this is also something that I think this um I I I learn a lot here in terms of tools and then when you go outside of university and academia you realize there is no much more time to learn the tools. So, take your time to do it here because then there's no more time. The way you can keep learning tools is through teaching other people the tools. You prepare the lecture, you learn something, and then you teach other people. So [gasps] then it's it's a bit how I'm navigated. So I'm grateful that I had a full year on uh to learn what I know at the moment. Um now there is this um I wanted to show you. So there was a moment also where I I realized uh unpredictable atmosphere took like a second phase. Uh I keep joking I think because I'm not very good in finding titles. So I think I kept the same title but it made sense because people think it's the same thing and then it's great but it actually was a different project. Uh so it started and in something that I actually would recommend many of you to look into because I think the open call is out now uh which is this grant that the Valale of Venice give to people that are under 30. I was 29 and uh to develop their um own project. So they give you a budget a production budget. uh then you have to like sort of attend some workshop and things during the year and then you can exhibit in the binal venice together with architects and people that are actually invited. So, so that was like a chance for me to develop the work further. I had the budget. I got a team with me. Uh so there was Ricardo Petrini which is like one close collaborator which I also continue to collaborate now which is an amazing web developer who help me to shape the project also from a technical perspective but also very much of like critical thinking and how these uh these two things always kind of come together. Then there was Yopasant which was like these scientists PhD scientists from Belgium who was working on AI climate model. Um so there was like a a series of people a team that also had me alet who help me to build the the kind of the physical um the physical exhibition. So it was a chance to like experiment in these artistic settings and the way the project evolved it was like okay if I left my water vapor droplet at the very tiny scale of electromagnetic spectrum then I became interested many of these water droplets are actually hurricanes what we were seeing before. So I messaged the same scientists eventually we became linked in France and I was like hey there any other things going on that we should like talk about and he said well actually I mean this is there is this thing but I don't know if it's interesting for you. So we start talking and then what he was explaining to me because I as I asked him okay I'm I'm hearing a lot about so this is another things talk with people like I most of the things I'm learning I'm just learning because people and scientists which are the people I'm interested to they actually tell me their stories or tell me I mean they tell me they tell me facts and I ask them for conflicts and then they tell me these things and then I okay maybe my role could be the role of talking about this and draw attention to this topic within a different audience within different mediums screen work lecture performance installation but I'm still also trying to find my own way but I think that's the direction I'm slowly taking so he was telling me how AI climate model are like foundation models and these models are trained long story short again to ignore outliers and outliers in climate science are all those events that fall outside the norm. And if you think about a war that is in continuous war that is warming more continuously, everything becomes more unpredictable. Hurricane are outliers like hurricanes are slowly moving from category five, they're proposing a category six. So the idea what it was telling me is that these models are also trained on historical data. So this means that like out of historical data maybe out I don't know like thousand thousand hurricanes high category five hurricanes there is only I don't know seven and then how do you think about so these models are really good in predicting path because they learn and path in different forces of like uh topographical and currents and ocean but they're very bad in forecasting the intensity and intensity of hurricanes is what determine a catastrophe. So he was telling me this thing and I was like okay that's the conflict I'm interested. Uh so what we did is like we we tried a way to take and this is like I'm diving into the arena board which is so messy. I open it earlier today and I'm like okay I don't know even what to show you exactly but maybe I want to show you the messiness because it's like it's how things happen. But then so there was all this moment where the idea was like okay we need to create a sequence the sequence that um I was interested in showing this climate model and I wanted to kind of have the opportunity for people to see the the in these models in this architectural structure you know that we saw before with the towers the strips these boxes these vectors. So I was trying to build a set of layers that I was I was interested in mapping. So there was this layer of uh this idea of using thinking about these models into different layers. So how do we map environmental data? There was swallow means soil in Italian. Uh there was the soil, there was the orbit, there was the forecasting, there was the AI forecasting. Then I then it wasn't working. Then we found another way. Anyway, at some point we arrived to like trying to unfold this space. So this was kind of all the diagram that I was trying to communicate with Ricky my my collaborator like okay can we just like push it further and then it open up and then the strip is get pulled. It was so difficult but then eventually we arrived at the point where this was kind of the the the outcome of the work. Um, so imagine it as like it was a two channels um two channels project. I don't know why sometimes it's zooming randomly in this video, but like maybe I should move the for some reason I have to move the mouse so it doesn't zoom. But it's um it was a two channel project. two channel web based project. web based because um everything is developed through these are two different web pages because the work as it lives online it technically technically it's not actually it's not working anymore but what it was supposed to do was supposed to like according to uh different variables related to like forecasting and and climate weather data prediction like pulling a different set of um a different set of um towers which are here. These are all the towers of information. So this data set all come from like the 15 most um um intense hurricane in the last uh uh 25 years. Then the 25 came because we're actually in these things that is called um AMO which is Atlantic multi-deadical oscillation which is the way the Atlantic Ocean oscillate. Let's see maybe I have a maybe I have a graph of this somewhere but there is this very interesting phenomena that talk about how the how the Atlantic Ocean is continuously oscillate from an anomaly of 50 years where is slightly more hotter than usual and other 50 years where it's slightly more colder than usual and it's a very it's anulation that go like from centuries but every every 50 years you can see a graph that show how all the ocean went one degree anomaly more than usual one degree less and this actually as a butterfly effect uh creates like different like weather phenomena all around all around the world so the idea is that the 2025 was actually the peak of the cool phase which was the fa actually of the warm I don't remember was a peak of one of the two phases which means that hurricane would be stronger than ever so the idea was like okay we're picking these moment in the kind of environmental history. So we choose like certific specific set of hurricane. I can talk of this for hours. So I'm going to stop here. Um then I just wanted to show you. So there was a moment where this work manifested in the space through uh this was like an archival table that was a design built also with this friend of mine Alysia. So we position like the archival table was meant to contain some drawings, some maps, uh some layers of this investigation and um in each of the drawers there were um sensors. So according to how you were opening the drawers, the two different uh channels was one was a projection, the other one was the lead screen were changing the contents to show the different layer of forecasting you were analyzing of. Um and then there was another moment where I recently went to South Korea because then as I was saying I think was again a bit of a hinge point where um people get to know the work I get to know the people and people invite me then to show the work in other contextes. So this was like in Korea in Busan and I was there in April and we show it uh was less budget so we show as a two channel like installation. Um I'm I'm going through the end. Um I wanted to show you this other project that actually I did with the Ricard always with Ricardo Petrini which is um the same collaborator I was mentioning earlier. And uh so what we did with Rick is that we this interest for climate model shift and this idea of like try to understand this there is this concept of counter modeling which I think it's interesting to investigate. So it's like okay what other model can we unpack? So there was this idea of unpacking word models which is another things that is going on at the moment. Many of the big corporate are like building their own war models. And basically among other things war model used to be. But when we talk about war models at the moment, we talk about this almost ludic video game experience that for instance Google is creating with like these models called Jenny or like Nvidia is also creating one. But then there are um imagine you immerse in an environment where through a prompt a word manifest in front of you. So you say I'm in Giza fourth floor, fifth floor, sixth floor, I this floor following a lecture and all of a sudden you will sit in a lecture. Then you see like the environment uh like like building around you. It's not a 3D model. It's just like a series of images that get produced at a very computational fast velocity. What this means is that the memory that these models have is very low. So let's say you're here watching me, watching this presentation. You move, you go in the bathroom, you come back and maybe there is a I don't know a cat on the screen, which I I have meme cut, but like I'm not going to show you. But this is the thing of like there's no memory, a long memory that allow this model to remember the space and the special variable of the content of the space. It's okay. We were like very interested in this. We were reading about it. We had the chance with like a little grant to expose at the festival of another friend of us in Torino where we both like studied and and then it became such an interesting project because then I we realized there was so much to talk to but um the idea was like okay how do we how do we tell people what this word model are that can be a bit long to explain but then we found these beautiful drawings of um yeah I think her wrote it is like 1893 three. It was a carousel. Uh, let me see. It was this guy, this crazy guy, Am Mariah Lake, which was building the mad house or like drawing about the mad house, which is also arena is something that I use a lot. Uh, which I recommend, maybe some of you knows, but it's a way that I I collect all of this information. But then he was building this um basically this architectural drawing or what he was calling an illusionary machine because the way uh the the the med house work is basically you stay sit still and then this carousel is like moving and like kind of rotating on the axis around you. So you can you keep having different images of the world around you. So in a sense we found like a special almost architectural parallel between how word model works computationally and how this um architectural object work in a terms of building a word through image around you while you don't move. So all this um in a sense this um um this parallel became a way for us to unfold uh an installation. Rick is an amazing 3D modeler. is something is a skill that I don't have at all. So there was this like very beautiful model that like he develop and um and then we try to narrate the story through the experience of a human that goes slowly move from um uh move from let's see if it's working. There is also audio that Connor Cook which is another artist related realized related to he took basically the the the curve of the movement of the camera in blender and then he realized like the movement of the taking like like kind of similar like a carousel kind of let's see if it's working it's working um so the idea was like trying to tell the story through this um user of the med house who was like first in a crowd simulation that moves all this video that you see are video produced by like a data set data set. So a data set of um basically human that film their activity that could be like any sort of activity. Then they're used to train models of the same activity. Then there is a big discourse of like okay what other sort of use they're going to do of these robots moving around. Um then there was this last it's a bit long but then there's a moment it entering the mad house and then it's like a long loop of like this user just running along this mouse. But I wanted to show you this project also to kind of give you this idea of how yeah this idea of like mapping this computational model could be done like and we found it funny doing it through um through um architectural and special example. This is the last things I'm going to show. Hopefully it's going to work. Is this something I just finished last week in Rotterdam? Because another things in my practice I'm trying to do is like navigate the more creative part through whatever opportunity I found that give me a little money to [panting] do it. So this means apply for grants artistic residency and anything that really allow to carve some times and develop these things. So I had this nice very nice opportunity to get residency at the new institute which is um in Rotterdam and as a digital lab um since couple of years that give the possibility of like four pe people every year to develop like um a project that is related to computation uh the digital world and there's lot of theory that is involved that you can develop. So it's a very it's a very nice space. So what I was interesting and still interesting is the idea also of computational realism. So the way that like all these models tends to produce image that reflect more and more real the real reality and the the way of mirroring reality means um um determine what is real and what is not. Uh so I was trying to think okay how do we how we do navigate this this idea of reality? What is reality? Then eventually I was like okay I there was this moment I show you maybe it's to be funny who know Raven okay everyone knows Raven uh so I was it was the first second months of this residency I really had little time of working on this residency I was talking with the one of the the director of this space and I was just say you know I keep having this raven moment and he didn't know what raven was and to like Then I explained to him what Raven like what is the you know the TV series and then this person having this like almost this vision go into the future see a possible future then try to work around the way to like either make this future happen change and then and then he told me something I really I can't recall exactly how I was like wait maybe because they so what I pitched at in this res I want to build a method to how to use computational tools to tell narrative that live in academic settings within artistic context. And he was like, wait, maybe Raven is your method. And I'm like, well, I don't I don't think so, but sure. [laughter] [gasps] Then I realized actually Raven is my method. I was like, that's how I think. So that's my way of thinking and I shouldn't be like afraid of like this messiness, but maybe use this way to produce my practice. So it was a fun it was so fun this residency because I had the chance to like experiment in a bit more of a relaxed way. What am I going to do? So what came out of this residency if it's going to work because I tested I didn't test it yet in here. Uh let me see. Um um so let's Okay, let's close some stuff. Uh so I wanted to create a space [snorts] where to the project was called hide through model lies HTML. So I was like okay I want to see I want to talk about all the lies that exist in how this model live on the internet. And so talking to me, I decided to talk about Google specifically and how Google interface hide and show like information in different way and everything started from an essay that I was reading uh from a phone and then while you navigate from the phone the this like vertical screen that was in the room was like the web space were changing and the web space was actually an architectural space that you're going to see that I model first and then I build and I model because of the narrative I want to talk about and then you're going to understand better. Then there was like the first part was starting talking about hide. So hide it's talking about this like folder that in May 2026 Google uh basically downloaded in each person computer without [snorts] consent and it was 4 GB folder containing this um LLM Gemini Nano which unless you knew unless you read online about it everyone has it probably I had it I had to I had to delete it but it just downloaded from Chrome and if you try to delete it Chrome is going to download it again. So this is like something interesting. So okay, there is this folder hidden in your computer downloaded through the browser. So what I was so then what you see in this part of this so every time I click there is a new part of this say coming out and then these are all the p icon which are the icon of the web that I'm pulling randomly online that gets to populate let's say competition. Then I'm not going to go through. Let's see. I think this is um this was meant to be in a vertical space. So probably it's a bit weird now. But the idea is that the second space you were actually going through. So if you press on the phone, I don't know why it's not. Let me just try something. Okay. Imagine it that it was big and vertical. Um then you were pressing and then this portal were starting come into the screen. So more I was pressing [music] more like there were portals that these were all the kind of broken meshes that I could find on Google on Google Street View Photo Spear. I was talking about this photo realistic map on Google Earth shape the trust that has been built through time and there because I read online maybe it's a bit of conspiracy theory I don't know but there was this like hacker online Google space where they were saying that um they were basically claiming that now specifically in the US they don't blur the military site anymore or like this sensitive site but they they start to create um rendering about it of like things that don't actually exist. So they create this like fake imagery and I was like so okay that that's also how we change a bit how we use this information. Then I was reading about this nice definition that hit Taylor give about uh this when she talk about mean images producing by this model and she she talk about mean as mean as like bad but as mean as like average. So because are statistical and everything gets to like this mathematics statistical way foundation model of thinking but I'm not going to go through it all the project but this was more to say then everything was also written how we use screen so there was the first one was touching the second one pressing this one was swiping so while swiping I don't know it works better on the phone but then you were like swiping from all of these um Gemini word models where you could use street view to ground truth the the kind of war model I was talking earlier and then there was the last phase where we move into the lies of the model and I get to know about something that I actually I found it super interesting I don't know if anyone know about this world but conceptually and critically was very interesting to learn about the long tale of the internet long tale of the internet is basically all of those niche spaces that could be YouTube channels. It could be uh Reddit. No, not Reddit maybe, but like other sort of blogs where people still um put content but um they are not processed. You know now how Google sometimes create the AI short answer. They made it to create revenue for them because you stop clicking because you don't feel the need to click anymore on other things because you have the thing. So all the visits go don't go more in this part of the internet but stay in there. So then there is the long tail of the internet is like this space where already there were few clicks now there are even less but this means there's still like protected because somehow this model cannot access it. So there was again like something that to me was like conceptually interesting and uh oh no dam it wait I wanted to show you the last things but didn't u and all of this when I was saying creating an architecture of the model it's actually I need to finish this to show uh otherwise not working so this is all the text blah blah blah and then at some point you finish and this is the architecture so all the things you just saw and I saw I was very inspired by this artist that I he did she did the same talk I'm doing now she's called Yan song she's um she does a lot of work with the with the web as an architectural narrative space and when I was in New York I went to her talk and I was very like inspired about her work and I so this idea came also from her her own practice which is the idea of like taking the web really as an architecture like facial object and then build a narrative on top of that. So all the movement that you see, you know, kind of the the vertical phone interface, then the Instagram stories vibes that move around, then the pushing of these walls, then the move of the camera and all these like spiral that is created created from the Instagram shuffling that creates this like long tail. It was part of the narrative itself. So that's I think that's a bit of an extension of what I was saying before about the the willing of performing the lecture. Like to me this was like okay I did this research I really enjoyed it. It lives in a Google doc but to me the only way to understand it is through this space because otherwise it doesn't make sense. So making this space visible in the sense through the web which is not a 3D software but it's like something that you can only manage to like you can where you can really talk about the branchness and network dimension of the the information itself. It became a sort of medium that I aim to to develop further. And I think I'm going to stop here because otherwise we can talk forever. But yeah, if you have any question, anything you want to talk about, thanks for your time and I hope you're going to have fun in this program as I had. Thank you. [applause] >> Cool. Great. Thanks so much, Luchi. I really appreciate the kind of I don't know insider and behind the scenes perspective too on your work. I feel like it's really useful for a lot of people here. I also think we timed the lecture perfectly with your computer's battery. It's >> nice. Yes, exactly. That's why I >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, okay. So, as usual, I have a couple mics. If anyone has questions, can you raise your hands? Anyone have a question right away? I can start with one first then. Um so I think like one thing that I always find kind of very interesting in your work in general but I also think perhaps as a model you know for people going through the program is I think a lot of times when we work with computation we can kind of I don't want to say get lost but maybe focus times exclusively on the kind of data analysis the data the tool sets the various kinds of like stats or other kind of disciplines we might be exploring very much from my engineers perspective and kind of lose sight of the fact that many of us are like designers by original training, right? And some of that aesthetic development that we should be doing too. >> And I've always really appreciated that like for you it feels like a lot of this has been diving into data analysis, data, various tool sets in order to explore aesthetics, right? And I was wondering maybe if you could just like talk about that for a second. Yeah. >> No. Yeah. I think I think you you really like frame it like properly. That's a bit the feeling I also had since the like since the beginning when I was um I was showing earlier this project that I did in Torino Bordo KMA and then I remember at the time was like lots dealing with like uh environmental data or and always this struggle of like okay how do we visualize this information differently but also I think this was pushed a lot from like how do we visualize what is invisible that like it feels romantic to say in this way but it's more to me was more because if it's not possible to map it then it requires a method to be mapped then maybe the method is not python data analysis as it's like you know rigorously developed by data analysis software engineer and everything but there is another way as a designer that we can talk about this through the in my case is the architectural special way of thinking and that you develop through architecture but and that's a bit also how how I think um I what Adam you were saying I think it's very right like the way that I understand how to to visualize things differently is was a lot for me to diving into the software themselves so I don't know I always find like this software I was saying before about the medical MRI software You can't imagine how complicated this was. It was like this like terrible interface made in the night I mean I don't know if in the '9s but like almost um but then this beautiful image came out and I was like okay I don't I'm not a scientist this probably a doctor would have a a stroke seeing this because they were like what what are you doing? uh but to me it was like this is something you know I I like to develop because there are limits that you can push these tools are going to break let's say if simply you try to input a data or an information in a tool that is not meant to read this tool you know you get the photo for sort of error this is not working fine but then what is interesting in general to me is they push this software to their limits to see if they can evoke new form of a aesthetics that can even just spark you know a sort of um idea or a sort of um yeah sort of lens that is useful for me to talk. So I think one this is definitely one of the thing and then another things that I was briefly mentioning earlier it's really talking like to me was like talking with scientists but then it's just not scientist then it became talking to engineers talking to I recently met a guy which is a philosopher and he's talking to me about all these concepts and it's like wait this is like this is so interesting there are so there are like some connection about this philosophical way of thinking computation then there's all a branch that does things. So maybe you can agree or disagree but like there are definitely like connection that especially another things that I think as a designer and architecture we have a lot is the visual way of thinking. So I was recently talking to someone that was asking me, you're Italian. Do you think in Italian or you think in English? And I was like, let me think about it. And I couldn't figure out after a few hours when I actually figured out that I'm not thinking with words but I think I'm thinking with images that I raven [laughter] but then then it's also I think that like when you develop this way of thinking that is very visual it become much easier to think about concepts through images rather than words which is a bit why these images then to me felt the need to be more abstracted more Yeah, just try different things. >> Uh, thank you so much for the presentation. I appreciated the choreography of all the tabs happening all the time. I feel like that style is definitely something I never thought about that much versus, you know, Google Slides. Um, so my question is kind of related to our colloquium. So our project is now about to partially transition into physical space. I loved your idea with a table with sensors with drawers pooling out but like how do you with your experience with exhibitions actually transfer your visuals into the exhibition space like besides projectors like how do you come up with those ideas or maybe like what inspires you like the space where you exhibit or something else. Thank you. No, that's that's that's a very interesting question because I feel I still feel I'm very bad with it. So, it's like something that I I'm trying to navigate especially when you when you work with like digital medium and a screen seems the most you know uh interesting thing you have uh to actually show the work. I only after I think Venice I realized there are also other ways that you can use screens in multi- channelannel installation in different ways like to make them more spatial in a sense but in in the in the for instance in example of Venice what was uh the reason why the table had drawers had exactly eight drawers drawer has to be activated in a certain way it became because the channel of the the web face were programmed in this layered way with this like sub like sort of like sub um activation layer. So then when I was trying to think okay how does this object needs to look like then immediately I thought about like in archive like I was like going to the office every day we have these like beautiful archival tables and I was like maybe like you know this idea of like opening the drawers the drawer is like in a sense is the way also information are input in these cubic section of climate models. So it it was hard. I'm not going to lie. I don't think I'm like the best person in trying to like in building stuff for sure and in understanding how to physically specialize these things. Uh but the the kind of the variable that I use at the time was like the digit like the kind of computational. So if the computational climate model is a cube that is activated through layers like great let's make a table and then the table uh was inspired by this like archival long kind of like thin drawer where the different different layers of information were living inside. But like for instance um I think I pul them down but in uh Rotterdam the the exhibition was was made of uh let's see if my computer is not dying before. So I was just calculating yeah I I know I had several screen available. So I just realized to I just decided to like creating a compos a vertical like composition of the screen that like resembled like the the like a um a phone interfaces and then the the digit sort of like the the space the three-dimensional space were created with the perspective like so if the user let's say was like in here he could almost feel that there was a corridor like this like portal and then here I think you cannot see very Well, but there was like a a rope from the ceiling and there was the phone and the idea is like also this is not working now from the the the computer but then you know that on the phone you have this um parameter of acceleration and movement that can be read. So the idea is like the phone was staying vertically and then if you rotate the phone this is the way you look at the uh wait let me see actually maybe I have some screenshots of this which is easier than mentioning you're probably going to see a lot of random screenshot in here but uh maybe I actually don't okay it might be somewhere more deep in my folders. But then if you basically if you move the phone you could see this is the top view of um of a folder and then if you were rotating it you could see the side view of the folder and you could see the name under it. So there was also this idea that people could like were invited in engaging with um with the way the phone was standing and more they were like moving it or like touching scrolling. there was not a UI that was um introduced before. So this allow people also maybe you know a page wasn't appearing because they were touching and then they realized that like oh if I actually swipe I activate a new chapter. So it was also interesting in a special way for me to see people like spending a lot of time in front of it because they need to figure out the UI of these things and then eventually understanding the mechanism and then allow them to spend more time of instead of just watching a screen. So maybe all this story to say I think that I'm not I'm not sure I'm like full on with like interactivity in a sense like it depends how you develop interactivity in a in um in an installation but I think there are somehow ways especially through natural movement like I don't know one thing could be like opening a drawer without using I don't know a I don't know a touchscreen interface another thing is just moving your phone. So maybe there are natural way of um tools and mechanism that people could use to interact with your digital work. I don't know. I'm I'm just thinking >> I have a question. Thank you, Luchia. Um I'm curious because you described sort of how you've been, you know, pitching your work and applying to residencies and these grants and everything and I'm curious, um when you apply or if you apply to contexts that are, you know, a bit more I almost want to say like mainstream or kind of like outside of what I would call a bit of like the niche that we're like existing in within CDP or even within like an AR like Gap or like an architectural design context, how you think about or how you've learned to like frame and position your work to other people who might be less familiar with the with its context. You know this is actually something I was I I just faced a rejection from somewhere and the feedback was it was very nice feedback but the feedback was just like it feels it's too you you some of the jury didn't understand it because you write it in a too much pretending like assuming that people had the knowledge because sometimes especially when you want to touch maybe topic about um computation and all these like what's new technology keep developing. It's not it's not as it's hard to it's difficult to assume that everyone is on track with what what was what is a world model, what is a climate model, what is AI climate model. So I think especially in like um in general writing and I'm talking about PhD grant residency there is what I still found challenging and I'm still also learning a lot is how to readapt the work you do to the forum that you're exposing like for instance now I felt that we could also go a bit deeper into like some of the technicalities or some of the work in Gaza some because I felt like this is a comfortable space where I know people are going to understand and are going to be excited. There are other contexts where I'm like okay maybe you know I show this but like then you start to craft a bit the project according to the need and I find it more easy to do it uh in this way rather than in writing because in writing always like you feel maybe the need in 10,000 characters to pull like put in everything because you want to almost to show I know what I'm talking about but then sometimes I realize how maybe like more simple idea more simple way of framing a very complex idea grant you like a grant basically to keep working on that. So, and this is like hard a lot for me also because like I have been um I'm also trying like a possible path for me could be developing this further like in a doctorate in a PhD but I didn't have any luck so far because it's also hard then okay then you need to adapt all of this to a very rigorous academic settings which might say what is what what does she want to do and then you know sometimes I'm also like I don't really know I just I just like these things. I just want to show you that I like it and I'm I have the motivation but then they want to have a methodology a research question an output an outline and then maybe there is that the grant that then instead they ask you like how do you want to use the money and I'm like okay this money am I going to use to pay my rent but then you don't say that so it's so it's so it's um it's it's hard but the best advice I can give is just what I'm doing a lot now is like where rather before I was apply to anything anything that came up just give it a shot put it into code change it apply never work so now I'm like try to be a bit more selective and go really dive into deep like you know I see which were the previous grant recipients which were the previous residents see what are who is the director of the center what does he like is it likely that he's going to promote my work maybe it's not even worth it trying so it's a bit more like selective and I have to admit for instance the new institute it work also because of that it took me a bit of time and then I realized okay this is going to work and then there are other things maybe unfolding that they're unfolding because of more kind of care in crafting the idea according to the need then people always advise me to say then once you get it you do what you want but then you need to navigate this and this is honestly this is part of the challenge to me of leaving academia somehow because when I was saying before the safness of the space it's more a safness to experiment so sometimes it's hard to find space that are not academic that allow you to bas basically like give you money to to experiment because then everything become very like okay we need your money because we want a product we want an idea we want something that then we can further sell develop have people coming to museum paying a ticket watching it if we don't understanding why we should do it. So, so then yeah, but it's a bit how I'm navigating it. >> Anyone else have another question? Probably have time for one more maybe before we have to get out of the room. Anyone else? >> Oh, hi. Thank you. >> Hi. Um your work at forensic architecture obviously has like a really important kind of like social political like implications and um can you speak more about um kind of like what do you think the kind of like utility is of your personal practice and then I have a second question maybe you can answer at the same like it's can be together kind of like um I think there's quite a bit of woriness in terms of like the idea of like planetary data and planetary media and the idea of like kind of visualizing a data set in such a like a tangible spatial way can like um sometime lead to like violence or other forms of um destruction or extraction. I was wondering how um your work kind of responds to that kind of discourse or context. >> Yeah. No definitely like I feel like for instance in within forensic the way there I think it it work on both ways. So there is a moment where I take myself into a FA and I bring it into my own practice and there are moments where instead I bring my own practice into FA to develop a project. I think the way of my own practice into FA come very much into the spatial way of thinking because see like within FA we work to prod to produce evidence through architectural modes and methods. So it's always like okay how do we think about an event related to the environment that it's around it. So, and then it's something that for instance I learn a lot here when I was thinking when I was telling you about this like 5G antenna weather satellites the the letter to the white house the the Washington DC and the scientists and the communities and the people. So then you start thinking through kind of a broader actors and communities different scale of spaces and then you applied to an incident or a conflict. So this is something that I feel like for instance I learn a lot here and also through the years I remember I had forensic architecture came a lot as an example during colloquium during like other lectures. So I learn a lot about so I think I was also doing this because I was learning and directly through their practice while on the other way around uh when I am let's say myself in within the office needs also and I was that was I was like kind of briefly mentioning earlier to think um on this topic of violence which are very much present in everyday realities um and how you could still experiment in the way you decide to analyze an event in a way that a lot of sometimes investigation come from speculation. So like for instance to give a tangible example we are investigating in Gaza these like archaeological sites which has been um has been destroyed since the very beginning and so all the remnants of that that's right all the remnants remnants of these archaeological sites um have been through times like the earthworks and the military outpost and all this like ground new formation have been reworking the earth in so many ways that we don't even know what happened to these archaeological. So recently we learn also from a scientist that because of this way that the earths kept being reworked um um they're messing up with the groundwater system. First things second thing is that most of the sites that have been cleared completely now they're used for tent encampments. So imagine if sites that were already used to be the like kind of the land use of those sites was didn't have like um um a land use maybe they were like open fields or like archeological sites mean it was like an open site um this mess that the water couldn't uh drain the runoff the water was like much easier now that these sites are full of encumbent the the land became more uh waterproof I don't know and So this water moves through the land in different ways creating flooding. The sewage come up and then it create like problem health issues and other sort of other sort of um um of problems. Um we know these things it's happening. We don't have anyone there that can prove that this is you know that the flooding in this water t is actually because of the earthworks that happened. So that's a bit of speculation that we do initially to then you know then we start the project then we start understanding through time through ctographic regression how this site evolved we know that December was the most rainy months okay let's go back to December I don't know 10 years in the past to all Decembers and run this remote sensing analysis to see how much water has been up and up so this is just an example that how everything starts anyway a bit from speculating of like and then eventually if we found evidence then it become a claim. Um uh so I think from this is also how sometimes between the two practice like maybe in my own practice I tend to speculate more and then allow myself to open up to um uh a more experimental way of visualizing also because we're talking to a violence that it doesn't have a form. So it lives online because of this computational software infrastructure and system. So I also sometimes feel more the legitimacy to be more experimental and and allow myself also to be less restricted to a certain rigorous that come from like the legal setting of it. While if you work there for instance all the Gaza investigation it's a report that went on a courtroom. So you can't really be like there are c for there are certain colors of the layers that we use that um that's um had to stay like all the time the same and then we I don't know there's a certain way we work with legend wording we have an editor that keep working on every kind of word we employ so there is uh yeah there is all this more attention on certain details that I wouldn't even think about in my own practice of how uh destruction and clearing of course have two different meaning but if I say it in the wrong way that's bad like so you need to be very careful about about this thing so what I'm also learning a lot is also yeah how to um take from this both sides like Hannah Montana to go back to Disney Channel uh and live in between these two words and I stop with other reference. [gasps] >> All right, we should probably end it there. Uh, thank [applause]