Damjan Jovanovic: Software as a Project

Software has become the meta-medium of architectural design, a common cognitive and representational toolset with which designers see, engage and construct the world. At the same time, software is a cultural apparatus, a regime that shapes authorship, the 'abyss that stares back'. The invisible hand of the software default has a central role in constructing our collective representations of space. The talk presents an idea of a critical software practice for architectural design and education that explores alternative ways to engage with the software regime, through strategies of disruption and play. Eventually, the ethos of play might be our last resort in engaging with the coming regime of cognitive technologies that will emerge through machine learning and ai.

Damjan Jovanovic is an architect, educator and software designer, based in Los Angeles. He currently works as Full-Time faculty at the Southern California Institute of Architecture (SCI-Arc). Damjan finished the post-graduate Master of Arts in Architecture degree at the Städelschule in Frankfurt, Germany in 2014, where he afterwards worked as design faculty. Damjan’s work centers on the development of experimental architectural software, and his interests lie in investigating the culture and aesthetics of software platforms, as well as questions of contemporary architectural education, authorship and creativity. Recent projects include software works centered on reinterpretation of the works by Marcel Duchamp, John Hejduk and Superstudio and various pedagogical apps positioned between gaming and architectural design culture. www.dmjn.net