Glissmann
Appendix X, Single-channel video, 5:30 min
In dialogue with media archaeology and design futures, Atlas of Speculative Mineralogy reflects on how human infrastructures and material culture record the geological present. The video moves between field documentation and algorithmic speculation, tracing the transformation of matter into data and data back into image.
Drawing on the traditions of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century naturalists, it reimagines the mineral specimen as both physical sample and digital prompt. Through sequences generated by machine-learning systems, the work opens a speculative archive where the boundaries between the natural and the artificial blur.
Looking back and ahead at once, it envisions a future in which archives themselves become living, evolving systems of perception.
Transdisciplinary graduate seminar at The New School. Co-taught with with Selena Kimball. Fall 2024
Field notes, cyanotypes, sound recording, frottage, virtual simulations—the history of observing and documenting nature through creative practice involves manifold methodologies using the senses, specialized instruments, and speculation. Most recently, human behavior–individually and as a global species–is causing radical change to natural systems. This demands an equally radical shift in the way we observe and document nature, and a rethinking of how we might circulate newfound knowledge to inform the conversation and instigate change.
This 3-volume book is a single-edition publication documenting eight workshops—from archival excavation to typology-making, anthotypes, and planetary diagrams—tracing how students generated “radical records” that rethink how nature is seen, sensed, and circulated. I designed the publication entirely with “materials humans use to archive”—mundane office papers, tapes, folders, and binding elements purchased at Staples.
DESIGNER, CO-EDITOR
Initiated by the Observational Practices Lab, Atlas of Looking at Water begins with a commonly overlooked object—a glass of water—and invites artists and scientists to observe it using the tools and methods of their practice: tools of art, design and science. Participants record both what they see and how they see it—the instruments, the environment, the practice. Through panel discussions, field-observation tasks and public calls, the project asks: how is global change embedded in everyday objects and perception?
The project embodies a genuinely transdisciplinary approach, bringing together perspectives from computational biology, chemistry, environmental engineering, oceanography, architecture, and the visual arts to explore how acts of observation bridge scientific analysis and artistic perception through the shared subject of water.
COLLABORATION WITH SELENA KIMBALL, CO_INITIATOR, CO-EDITOR, DESIGNER
atlasoflooking.org
In past years, the most recent epoch in Earth’s history has often been described as the Anthropocene.
To collectively look at the traces of this new, yet unofficial, geological epoch, the contributors of this atlas—artists, designers, and social scientists—met virtually on March 11, 2021.
Over the period of 24-hours, a total of 36,322 permutations (atlas plates) were created through synchronous and asynchronous collaboration using the platform
EDITOR, DESIGNER
Newsprint Publication
This publication gathers the work of emerging artists and designers who have hacked, bent, and reimagined the archive—not as a static repository of the past, but as a generative starting point for new work. Participants treat the idea of archiving itself as a method—as a lens for inquiry, and a way to intervene in dominant narratives. What is preserved? What is excluded? Who decides?
All projects were developed in the class Critical THinking and Making: The Visual Archive, taught at Parsons School of Design, 2019-2024.
The publication’s design takes inspiration from newsprint, reflecting the archive as a living, circulating form. Its typography follows this concept through a single-size system and a radical alignment to the right margin, leaving open space for visual recordings. The punched hole references early archival printing methods, linking material design with the act of preservation and transmission.
EDITOR, DESIGNER
Inspired by Dr. Reinhard Brauns’s 1903 description of the Polarisationsapparat in Das Mineralreich, this work reflects on the long history of scientific instruments and their role in shaping what—and how—we see. In mineralogy, the device was used to examine thin sections of rocks, yet its presence also revealed a deeper truth: the tools of the observer are as culturally and historically situated as the specimens they claim to measure.
This (archival—-and still growing) publication reinterprets Brauns’s apparatus through a chain of analog–digital–analog transformations, translating light, bits, and energy across media. While the instruments of observation have become ubiquitous—smartphones, scanners, LEDs—the visual recordings in this edition intentionally retain traces of the observer: dust, fingerprints, minor distortions. These marks echo the individuality embedded in scientific practices of the past, when Brauns himself inscribed his own presence into the images produced by his Polarisationsapparat.
Object America is a research project initiated by the Observational Practices Lab to investigate observational methods—from the scientific to the absurd—in order to reveal unseen histories embedded in everyday objects and to speculate on the future of the concept of “America.” We invited Ellen Lupton, Senior Curator at the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, to select an object from the museum’s collection that she believed represents “America.” She chose the Model 500 telephone, designed by Henry Dreyfuss first in 1949.
We then identified thirteen researchers from diverse disciplinary backgrounds—ranging from climate science to poetry—who investigated this object and shared their ways of looking through lectures and written reflections. Their responses form a collection of transdisciplinary essays that explore how a single object can become a lens onto cultural identity, technological history, and possible futures.
COLLABORATION WITH SELENA KIMBALL, CO_INITIATOR, CO-EDITOR, DESIGNER
A gigantic spiral of symbols unfolds across the space of Sankt Peter, bringing together the work of artists and designers from around the world. Inspired by the circular form of the Disc of Phaistos, the installation transforms the church’s central nave into a living archive—an expanding visual dialogue between the ancient and the contemporary.
Sankt Peter, renowned as both a venue for contemporary art (previous artists include: Olafur Eliasson, Gerhard Richter, Bruce Nauman) and an active place of worship, becomes a site of encounter—physical and mental—between the internal visual languages created by the participants and the surrounding community. The spiral invites reflection on collective authorship, cultural exchange, and the shared act of visual storytelling.
COLLABORATION WITH OLIVIER ARCIOLI & ANDREAS HENRICH, CO_INITIATOR, CO-DESIGNER
The Observational Practices Lab (OPL) is a research platform at Parsons School of Design (The New School) that investigates how we look, document, and make knowledge visible across disciplines. Its mission is to create dialogue about observational practices and translate them into accessible, shareable methods and public outputs. OPL uses site-based approaches—treating cities and everyday settings as “living laboratories”—and develops tools that move between art, design, and the sciences.
Our core projects put this approach into practice: Atlas of Looking at Water starts from a humble glass of water to compare scientific and artistic ways of observing, catalyzing new visual methods and cross-disciplinary conversations. Atlas of Everyday Objects invited people worldwide to record the “objects of isolation” during the pandemic, building a participatory archive of daily life that might otherwise be overlooked []. Public programs like Talking About Seeing convene scholars and practitioners to examine the everyday as a site of inquiry and shared method.
COLLABORATION WITH SELENA KIMBALL, CO_FOUNDER, CO_DIRECTOR, DESIGNER