This exhibition will explore how planetary landscapes, and our perceptions of them, can be utterly transformed by technology and design. Specifically, it will investigate the shifting terrains of architectural invention, where the construction of new spatial devices on a variety of scales, from the inhabitable to the portable, can uncover previously inaccessible aspects of the built and natural environments. The devices on display—and the traces they reveal—will thus demonstrate that the landscape around us is like sheet music: an interpretive repository of bewildering variation that can be captured and made visible (even audible) through the perceptual instruments and recording devices that we invent.
This group exhibition will reveal the multitude of ways through which landscapes can be read, interpreted, and understood; but it will also ask questions. How, for instance, can these and other future tools be designed, and implemented? What potential uses might be found for something that alters how we see, read, and understand our surroundings?
Ultimately, the exhibition’s focus on devices of landscape transformation will introduce museum visitors to the visceral powers of architectural technology, spatial invention, and perceptual design.