SCI-Arc Presents Damjan Jovanovic: Discovery

SCI-Arc is pleased to announce Discovery: a story about rooftops, airships, robots, and inflatables, a new exhibition by design faculty Damjan Jovanovic, opening October 28 at SCI-Arc’s Arts District campus. Made in partnership with Lidija Kljakovic, the exhibition is a project of architectural worldmaking, including an installation exploring games, ecology, and artificial intelligence. Discovery will be on view from October 28 - December 18, 2022 at the SCI-Arc Gallery (960 East 3rd Street 90013) with an opening reception on Friday, October 28 at 6pm. Jovanovic will be joined by fellow SCI-Arc faculty and acting History and Theory Co-Coordinator John Cooper for a public conversation on the exhibition on November 18 at 6pm in the SCI-Arc Gallery. Further details are available on the official event page.

Discovery is an exhibition based on an ecological video game and simulation of a near-future version of downtown Los Angeles. The installation features projections, large-scale inflatables, and varying prints from the video game. The project was born out of observations of an emerging rooftop culture of urban gardening and alternative lifestyles in downtown LA during the pandemic. Reads Jovanovic’s official text for the exhibition: “We imagine a new urban community in the air, able to produce its own energy, grow its own food, scrub carbon, and invent novel forms of artistic expression—offering an image of hope.”

Jovanovic approaches architectural worldmaking through video games and artificial intelligence, imagining what a hopeful and regenerative environment could look like in the near future. The exhibition features a narrative that follows The Airborne Collective, a radical environmental hacker group seeking to make a flourishing roofscape ecosystem and unleash optimism in the face of looming ecological threat. Operating between the languages of design, fashion, and video games, Discovery extends Lifeforms.io work on systems and aesthetics of simulated worlds into the space of a physical installation.

Opened in 2002, the SCI-Arc Gallery provides a space where practitioners, professionals, faculty, students, and the public can learn about and experience provocative architecture. The exhibitions exemplify the intersections among the various communities in which the institution participates: architecture, urban planning, design, and art.

The gallery program allows exhibitors to experiment with new materials, concepts, and fabrication methods, reflecting SCI-Arc’s encouragement of an experimental approach to construction materials and its emphasis on learning through building.

About Damjan Jovanovic

Damjan Jovanovic is an architect, educator, and game designer based in Los Angeles. He is a co-founder of game design studio Lifeforms.io, as well as full-time faculty at the SCI-Arc. Jovanovic finished the postgraduate Master of Arts in Architecture degree at the Städelschule in Frankfurt, Germany in 2014, where he afterwards worked as design faculty. Jovanovic’s work centers on the development of video games and experimental architectural software, and his academic interests lie in investigating the culture and aesthetics of software platforms, as well as questions of contemporary architectural education, authorship, and creativity.

About Lidija Kljakovic

Lidija Kljakovic is co-founder of game design studio Lifeforms.io. She is a designer and digital artist, working at the intersection between video games and fashion and specializing in procedural design and creation of digital life forms. Kljakovic is a multidisciplinary creative with experience ranging from hard core architectural design and development of real-world high rises in Frankfurt, Germany to running a successful fashion brand and store in Belgrade, Serbia. She holds a master’s degree from Belgrade University of Architecture. Her work was exhibited internationally, most recently at Ars Electronica and Frankfurter Kunstverein in Frankfurt, Germany.

Discovery: a story about rooftops, airships, robots, and inflatables will run through December 18 with an opening reception October 28 in the SCI-Arc Gallery.