Instrumentalities of an Eternal Baroque: Project, (Ex)tend, Morph, (Sc)roll and Oscillate

Abstract

This paper is an exploration of the exhibition Instrumentalities of an Eternal Baroque. The focus is on exhibition as a medium of art historical research in our digital era—through curating, making, drawing. Not only are several exhibited artifacts digitally produced, but numerous artifacts (both analog and digital) also locate prehistories of digital design. Through five instrumentalities—Project, (Ex)tend, Morph, (Sc)roll and Oscillate—we curate two categories of artifacts: original drawings (mostly those of Francesco Borromini’s San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane) and analytic artifacts such as animations, models, drawings and photographs of architectural artifacts throughout history. Suspicious of an ever-superseding digital techno-rationalism, these instrumentalities are reinterpretations and reframings of ‘the digital’ itself through an archaeology of architectural history.