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INGER MEWBURN

contact: inger.mewburn@rmit.edu.au
website: http://www.mewburn.net/inger/

Project Involvement

    Beyond Representation
    Architectures of Invisible Presence
    I-Design

Research Focus:

The presence of the virtual in, techniques of rococo plaster crafting in relation to digital manipulations, rococo mirror spaces and the relation to hybrid physical/virtual surfaces, tactile interfaces to representational spaces.

Biography:

Inger holds a B.Arch (Hons.) from RMIT University. She graduated from the Post Graduate Certificate in Spatial Information Architecture (SIAL) in 2003 and completed her Masters Degree in Architecture through SIAL in 2005.

Professional building industry experience: Student architect at Anthony Styant-Browne Architect (1993-1995). Graduate architect at Ashton Raggatt McDougall before a two year stint at Lyons Architects (1997 - 1999). She then worked at at Mirvac as a design visualiser (1999 – 2001).

Inger has been teaching since 1997 and has been a fulltime independent academic and post graduate student since 2002. She currently teaches at various universities (including RMIT, Monash and Swinburne) in theory, communications and design and research methods with a special focus on computer applications in architectural design.

Her work has been published in several newspapers and Architectural Review and Monument magazines. She has participated in several exhibitions, most recently Skins of Intimate Distance (Experimedia, State Library of Victoria 2003), 'Brain Cells' (Beijing Biennale, 2004), Curviture (Ember Gallery, Melbourne 2005) and 'Intimate Transactions' held at ACMI in April 2005.

Exhibitions and grants:

» Responsive wall (interactive piece) shown at the Skins of Intimate Distance, exhibition, State Library Of Victoria, 2003

» Parametric Flesh (design piece) shown at the Beijing Biennial in October 2004 and Curvitecture in February 2005.

» ACID grant to develop haptic interface for 888 show Intimate Transactions. Work subsequently received an Honorary Mention in the Ars Electronica Grand Prix awards 2005 in the Interactive Arts Category and will be shown at the upcoming festival. It has also been shown in November in London (ICA), Amsterdam (De Waag) and will be shown in 2006 in Bristol (Arnolfini)

Published papers:

» ‘A Feeling of the Rococo: new digital operations’, Society of Architectural Historians (SHAHANZ) ‘Limits’ Conference 2004

» ‘Resisting Armatures: armatures for a future digital design practice’, Design Research Society Futureground conference 2004.

» 'Unfaithful Mirrors: new animate architectures and the haunting of the surface', The Experimenta Journal Mesh #18, June 2005.

» 'Patching Together in a loose universe of experience: William James, truth and new animate architectures', SHAHANZ) ‘Celebration’ Conference 2005

Current projects:

She is currently completing a Masters in Architecture (submission August 2005), abstract below:

This thesis concerns ways of mobilising digital representation as a ‘performance’ in an architectural design process and the value of this approach in the ongoing life of the design project. Performance is seen here through the lens of performance art rather than as a way to bring forth an optimised design solution. Through an examination of my own design projects, and other relevant precedent, I reconsider the assumption that the digital is primarily useful in the design context to enable a mirror-like representation of the world - a tendency which comes to its fullest expression in the ‘life-like’ computer render. I argue that digital representation has unique abilities to embed the presence of the virtual (strategically redefined here as an embodied relation of affect) in the design process. This is most particularly evident when digital representation becomes live and hence able to capture and inscribe the virtual potential of movement as it happens. Far from assuming that the mechanics of digital representation makes the design process either fully automated, or sensually remote from the designer, I explore the possibilities for a more intimate relation to develop: a becoming sensitive to the presence of the virtual.