Against the backdrop of digital capitalism, data-driven cultural techniques are increasingly manifested in architecture, provoking vital questions about how data is produced, collected, transmitted and processed.

Archival practices and agendas creep further into architecture as vast data sets influence software-aided design and new interfaces for architectural conception and production. Building information modeling (BIM) libraries for architectural design, databases for structural analysis and many other data-driven practices are applied daily, but their instrumentarian power is rarely questioned.

The symposium 'Abstract Traces' addresses the agency of the producers and users of data sets, and their agendas of capture and control. What are the traces of power influencing memory, thinking and creativity? We invite and explore counter-archiving practices that challenge and expose those agendas. The symposium examines the purposes of data collection, how it is conveyed and archived and how access is granted (or denied). Most importantly, it challenges the archiving conditions of today to reimagine the conditions of tomorrow.

Programme:

14:00 Symposium Introduction

14:15 Session Introduction: Abstraction and Control

14:20 Amelyn Ng, Rhode Island School of Design
"This Will Kill That: When information entered the model"

14:40 Vladan Joler, University of Novi Sad
"New Extractivism"

15:00 Discussion

15:25 Break

15:35 Session Introduction: Traces and Capture

15:40 Martien de Vletter, Canadian Centre for Architecture
"Don't be afraid of the digital"

16:00 Ayesha S. Ghosh
"An act of love: alternative archival practices"

16:20 Discussion

16:45 General Discussion

17:15 End

Place: Zoom
Meeting ID: 628 9127 4274
Passcode: 307969
Link: https://tu-berlin.zoom.us/meeting/register/u5YlfuiqqT8oHdC7c-K5IY5-b2EUeML4ivCz

Organizers:
Abstract Traces is an online Symposium organized by the collaborators of the Taught Research Project: Archives: Fevering, Filing, Caring from the Departement for Architecture Theory, TU Berlin. The initiative is supported by the Netzwerk Architekturwissenschaft e.V. and the Sutor Stiftung.