2MVD: Digital Twins. Playful Augmentation

We are living in the age of the digital. This has been made inevitably clear by Covid-19 and the respective measures such as smart working, health tracking, distance teaching, zoom parties etc. One could say, digitalization conducts a profound and irreversible change on the way we live together—it has already and will even more in future. In this exhibition we seek to illuminate the effects of digitalization on the perception of spaces and objects. This is an investigation in a media-centric spatial experience which follows the theoretical approach, whereby physicality and digitality are not understood as separate instances, but are merged into one.

We used digital design tools to populate and expand material space through visual effects that put focus on the notion of interaction and artificiality. On an aesthetic level the term “digital nature” is at the core of this work: we are interested in the interconnections and antagonisms of mathematical and natural shapes.

To view those augmentations we developed the AR-application afx-isi: Through your smartphone an additional virtual layer becomes tangible—immaterial sometimes floating sculptures and new spaces, seamlessly integrated into the existing brick walls or attached to material objects scattered in the exhibition space. We want to address a supposedly banal question: What is the difference between material and real? We want to tighten the threads between the immaterial and the material to overcome this dualism. Therefore we invite you to interact and explore the relations between what is there and what you see, between the human and the non-human, between you and the other…and make kin.

2MVD Valerie Messini and Damjan Minovski graduated from the University of Applied Arts (Studio Prix) in Vienna in 2011. They have been working since as independent artists in the fields of architecture and digital art. They both worked for renowned architecture firms, VM as design architect and DM as freelance visual artist.

Since 2013 they are also active in the academic field, both in teaching and researching. VM is currently working on her PHD supervised by Peter Weibel. DM was part of several research projects. Since 2011 they repeatedly collaborated and together they realized several large-scale installations for the artist Eva Schlegel.

In 2017 they founded the collaboration 2MVD which focuses on connecting architecture with innovations and advances in the field of digital technology. Their work has been shown in galleries and at festivals in Austria as well as internationally.

MAGAZIN is an exhibition space for contemporary architecture in Vienna run by Jerome Becker and Matthias Moroder. MAGAZIN presents the work of local and international architects in solo exhibitions that are especially conceived for the spaces in the Weyringergasse location—framed by corresponding lectures, panel discussions and publications.