Angelos Floros — interactive and visual design leader
Curated by Maria Theodorou
UIA / Hellenic Ministry of Culture
Exhibited: Byzantine Museum, Athens, 2003
Exhibited: Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), London, 2004 — and subsequently in other European cities
The installation was made for the international architectural competition Ephemeral Structures in the City of Athens, organised by the UIA and hosted by the Ministry of Culture at the Byzantine Museum, within the framework of the Cultural Olympiad and the parallel events of the Athens 2004 Olympic Games.
The competition drew eight hundred submitted projects. The problem was what to do with them: a competition of that size produces an archive that no exhibition can hang and no visitor can read.
The response was an algorithmic video which presents all eight hundred entries over more than seven hours — a duration that no one is expected to watch through, and which is the point. The work does not select. It refuses the curatorial cut that would normally reduce eight hundred proposals to twenty, and instead makes the whole body of submitted thought available as a single continuous object, generated rather than edited.
From 2004 the installation travelled to several European cities, including London, where it was hosted by the RIBA.