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Title of exhibit: Ink on Paper*

Carl Lostritto is associate professor and graduate program director at the Rhode Island School of Design Architecture Department. Much of Lostritto’s recent practice and scholarship address the broad implications of a refined technique: computer programming to control a vintage pen plotter. This work involves intense and iterative refinement of the algorithmic, aesthetic and material nature of the line. It is also a conceptual enterprise as it relies on and addresses the capacity of the human eye, the adaptability of historic conventions, the role of representation and the nature of architecture. Read more about Lostritto below.

His exhibition opens in Gallery 103 on Monday, November 2, 2020, and will be on view until January 29, 2021.

Artist’s description:

* To describe the medium associated with this work as, “ink on paper,” is to lie by omission. To be fully truthful would be to tell the complex story of an architecture of a practice. Vintage machines, algorithms, rules, equations, physics simulations, pixels, NURBS surfaces, formats, indexes, the Python programming language and APIs, HPGL, pens, operating systems, software, and Serial Port Protocols are all essential substances for transfer that leave their mark, sometimes literally, on the work. Mediums mediate media…

The concept of “medium” is always a bit precarious when ascribed to drawings or architecture, both of which are arguably mediums themselves. Rather than delineate the boundary between technology, space, method, tool, language and medium, this work stakes its position at the center of multiple confluences. These are all interrelated semi-representational works of computational proto-architecture. And, they are ink on paper.

Graduate program director Carl Lostritto works alongside students and research assistants hacking machines, writing computer code, sampling from history, designing tools and adapting technology to augment human authorship in pursuit of architecture. Much of this work manifests as drawing. Because drawing does not have a fixed relationship to architecture, Lostritto also conducts research that involves reflection, analysis and critique of drawing relative to form and space. With a group of interdisciplinary faculty, he recently initiated RISD’s new concentration and taught first versions of its required courses: Introduction to Computation and Computation Research Studio.

Much of Lostritto’s recent practice and scholarship address the broad implications of a refined technique: computer programming to control a vintage pen plotter. This work involves intense and iterative refinement of the algorithmic, aesthetic and material nature of the line. It is also a conceptual enterprise as it relies on and addresses the capacity of the human eye, the adaptability of historic conventions, the role of representation and the nature of architecture. In sum, Lostritto draws architecture, draws about architecture, draws for architecture and draws as architecture. His contributions to the field take the forms of artistic exhibitions, essays and professional collaborations on built and unbuilt work. Two recent essays elucidate his agenda: “A Collection of Circle-Spheres: A Pre-Digital Post-Digital Convergence” in Drawing Futures (published by the Bartlett and edited by Frédéric Migayrou, Laura Allen and Luke Pearson) and “Computational Hatching” in the (Vol. 70, Issue 1, edited by Amy Kulper).

Lostritto joined the RISD faculty in 2012. Previously, he taught architecture and design at MIT, Boston Architectural College, Catholic University of America and the University of Maryland.