Neil Spiller

The Hawksmoor International Lecture Series 2016-2017 :: Neil Spiller :: Surrealism in the Groove

28th October 2016

Thursday 3^rd November 2016, 6.30pm
Tessa Blackstone Lecture Theatre [11_0003]

This lecture will examine the affects Surrealism has had on record cover design particularly in the “Heavy Rock” genre in the last 3 decades of the Twentieth Century. Surrealism has also influenced the bizarre stage antics of some artists and the making of their videos. There will also be the book launch of Neil Spiller’s new book Architecture and Surrealism – A Blistering Romance which charts the relationship between one of the most popular artist movements of the 20th century and 100 years of architectural thinking. In an era of wearable technology, big data and the fascinating possibilities for new spaces and buildings, Architecture and Surrealism is a breath-taking resource of spatial ideas, visionary buildings and occasionally mad-cap notions of our built world.

Neil Spiller is Hawksmoor Chair of Architecture and Landscape and Deputy Pro Vice-Chancellor of the University of Greenwich, London prior to this he was Dean of the School of Architecture, Design and Construction and Professor of Architecture and Digital Theory. Before this he was Vice-Dean and Graduate Director of Design at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. He has guest edited 7 AD’s, his eighth “Celebrating the Marvelous” is due in 2018. He is on the AD editorial Board. His books include Cyberreader: Critical Writings of the Digital Era (2002), Digital Dreams (1998), Visionary Architecture – Blueprints of the Modern Imagination (2006) and Surrealism and Architecture- A Blistering Romance (2016). His architectural design work has been published and exhibited on many occasions worldwide, his drawings are held in many international collections. He is an internationally renowned visionary architect and his work has a remarkable graphic dexterity. Spiller is also recognised internationally for his paradigm shifting contribution to architectural discourse, research / experiment and teaching.

Kris Kuksi and Neil Spiller: Extreme Dreams Exhibition :

25th October 2016

Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning
October 7–November 4, 2016

prov-kuksi-spiller_1440x690

Neil Spiller and Kris Kuksi are exhibiting works at Cornell University, New York

Excessive, spiky, inky, layered. Surreal, Baroque, Goth, fantastic. The interdisciplinary pendulum is swinging toward an art and architecture project immersed in history and liberated by technology, a creative space unfettered by restraint or stylistic orthodoxy. This double-act exhibition presents Kris Kuksi’s sculptures alongside Neil Spiller’s two-dimensional works. Both Kuksi and Spiller conceive their work as assemblies built up from fragments. Both eschew revealing collage techniques in favor of visually flattening their final compositions through manipulation of color, texture, and amalgamation of disparate forms

http://aap.cornell.edu/news-events/kris-kuksi-and-neil-spiller-extreme-dreams

Open Lecture :: Neil Spiller :: Maverick Deviations

27th September 2013

Open Lecture Series 2013/2014
Norbert Singer Lecture Theatre / M055
Mansion Site, Avery Hill Campus
Wednesday 2nd October; 6PM

Neil Spiller will talk about his 30 years of work, Drawing Drawings and pushing the architectural envelope.

Neil Spiller is Dean of the School of Architecture, Design and Construction and Professor of Architecture and Digital Theory at the University of Greenwich, London.

He guest edited his first Architectural Design (AD), Architects in Cyberspace in 1995 followed in 1996 by Integrating Architecture, Architects in Cyberspace II (1998), Young Blood (2000), Reflexive Architecture (2002), and Protocell Architecture with Rachel Armstrong (2010). Neil’s books include Cyberreader: Critical Writings of the Digital Era, Digital Dreams and Visionary Architecture – Blueprints of the Modern Imagination. He is on the AD editorial Board. His architectural design work has been published and exhibited on many occasions worldwide.

Open Lecture: Neil Spiller – COMMUNICATING VESSELS

3rd November 2010

NOTE: THIS LECTURE HAS BEEN CANCELED DUE TO ILLNESS
THE LECTURE WILL BE RESCHEDULED AT A LATER DATE

Architecture Open Lecture Series 2010 /11

University of Greenwich
School of Architecture & Construction
Mansion Site, Avery Hill Campus
Bexley Road, Eltham, London SE9 2PQ
Norbert Singer Lecture Theatre (M055)

Wed 17 November 2010 18.30

Neil Spiller

COMMUNICATING VESSELS

What is interesting to me as a surrealist is the connection that can be made between the exchange of information in wet unconventional computers and the sexual act or desire and the mixing of information. There is much precedent for such notions. Marcel Duchamp was very adept at these sorts of analogies and epistemologies. His Large Glass is conceptually activated by gas, water and electromagnetic forces to create tableaux of desire, autoerotics and barely maintained equilibrium. His addition to Maria Martins’ (his lover) version of his Boite-en-valise , Paysage fautif (Wayward or Faulty Landscape) was a spurt of seminal fluid on Astralon backed with black satin.

In my lengthy project “Communicating Vessels” I speculate on the protocell and other forms of synthetic biological structures. Here they are called the “grease” and are created by a bio-technological factory called “Little Soft machinery”. Little Soft Machinery isn’t very smart, just smart enough to desire. This desire provokes his biomechanical glands to produce, the grease, the vaz or the holy gasoline (this substance is called many things, it changes lives, it mixes chance) It is a synthetic biological elixir, smart but highly explosive. The grease lubricates the project and is always present when human or machine information desire is present- which is most of the time. The grease eases things, it is lustfully combustable, it is sought after and it is autonomous until it is caught. It is used by many of the structures that inhabit and interact in the site, which is a garden. This is indeed a Duchampian “faulty landscape” teeming with desire, the exchange of information and the probabilities of chance.

Let’s undo the locks that have constrained architecture for centuries and rejoice in hearing the chains drop to the ground. Our new architecture is an architecture of bespoke, wet and invisible solutions.

Neil Spiller is Head of the School of Architecture and Construction at the University of Greenwich and Founding Director of AVATAR. He is the author of numerous books on the technological future of architecture. His recent books include ‘Visionary Architecture’ (2006) ‘Future City’ (2006) a book/catalogue published to coincide with the exhibition of the same title in London’s Barbican Art Gallery ‘Digital Architecture Now’ (2008). All published by Thames and Hudson. His is a visionary architect whose work has been exhibited, published and lectured on around the world.

The Work and Aspirations of AVATAR

14th October 2010

Professor Neil Spiller and Dr Rachel Armstrong invite all staff and students to a presentation of some of the work and aspirations of AVATAR

6pm, Monday 25 October
M055 Norbert Singer Lecture Theatre.

The Advanced Virtual and Technological Architecture Research Laboratory was founded in September 2004 at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London by Professor Neil Spiller it is now based here in School of Architecture and Construction at the University of Greenwich.

AVATAR is conceived as a cross unit research group and has an agenda that explores all manner of digital and visceral terrain, its augmentation and symbiosis. AVATAR also has dedicated Design Masters/PhD Programme students, currently at the Bartlett. Over recent years AVATAR has grown into an international research collaborative centre including associates at MIT, Cornell, Rensaalar, Ann Arbor, Berkley in the USA, Waterloo in Canada and scientists in Odense, Denmark. It attracts students from around the world and a critical mix of cultural, aesthetic and social agendas are encouraged.

AVATAR is fundamentally interested in research concerning the impact of advanced technology on architectural design, however it also contributes to discussion on issues such as aesthetics, philosophy and cybernetics.

Technologically, AVATAR concerns itself with virtuality (exploring fully immersed, mixed and augmented environments); Time based new media (film, video and film theory), Nano and bio technology (micro landscapes and architecture, ethics, sustainability and ecology) including reflexive environments and cybernetic systems. It is also developing synthetic biological architecture that is capable of sustainable construction.

Its components are:

Architecture and Digital Fabrication
Architecture and Synthetic Biology
Architecture and Interaction
Architecture and Cyborgian Geography
Architecture and Digital Surrealism
Architecture, Film and Animation

AVATAR considers itself uniquely skilled and positioned to posit new aesthetic systems and codes of representation for architecture, interior design, multi media design and graphic design. Generally, it is at the forefront of international architectural discourse and is constantly working to uncover the new architecture of the Twenty – First Century.