exhibitions

TRANSPARENCY OF THE HYPERREAL
City: Less Aesthetics, More Ethics exhibition at Venice Biennale 2000

The presentation focused on P&R's Tokyo Works, questioning the relation between the physical and the virtual in architecture. The first room featured a visual, the second an audio-tactile presentation of the same concepts. A shower of transparent plastic tubes marked the physical shift between the two worlds. The Horizontal Totem, a high-tech, interactive and hypersensitive console, was the only exhibit in the room. Its segments provided audio-tactile descriptions of the concepts presented by classic, visual means in the first room. Visitors could thus experience architectural ideas in a completely unconventional way, and it was no coincidence that the blind approached the exhibit most spontaneously, with immanent understanding. It provided a pattern for a new sensibility.