Post-Digital Neo-Baroque

Paradigm shifts in architecture are not only reactive to changes in society but are proactive towards the production of cultural transformations such as the way we design, produce and place buildings into the environment. The project Post-Digital Neo-Baroque is an endeavour to provide evidence for the impact of a Neo-Baroque mentality and style across various disciplines that have reached a Post- Digital state of affairs. By drawing inspiration from, and founding its research on, both Heinrich Wölfflins seminal work Principles of Art History and Omar Calabreses hypothesis outlined in Neo-Baroque: A Sign of Our Time, the team embark on a transdisciplinary, transcultural and transhistorical investigation in theory and design of the spirit of our age that pervades many of todays cultural phenomena in all fields of knowledge. One of the most intriguing questions of the current architectural and artistic discourse is in fact the potential reconciliation of two seeming opposites in the contemporary architectural discourse digital design and the physical environment of traditional technology, crafts and aesthetics. By additionally including the Baroque notion of Gesamtkunstwerk, the project aims to converge the digital, the physical and the virtual to generate innovative artistic and architectural design output. The findings will be showcased in a public exhibition, discussed in an international symposium and published in a three-volume compendium including a reader documenting theoretical findings, an exhibition catalogue and the conference proceedings.

The Postdigital Neobaroque (PDNB) project builds upon the formalistic methods of Swiss art historian Heinrich Wölfflin's book Principles of Art History (1915) and Italian semiotician Omar Calabrese's Neo-Baroque: A Sign of the Times (1992). While distancing from the nationalistic undercurrents found in some 20th-century Germanophone baroque studies, the team embraced Wölfflin's comparative formal analysis of Baroque versus Renaissance to frame the digital baroque aesthetics of the 1990s to mid-2010s - characterised by smoothness, dynamism, and continuity - which eventually lost momentum. Calabrese's work further informed the team's understanding of how neo-baroque sensibilities emerged in postmodernist 1980s culture. The primary aim of the research was to explore the theoretical, practical, scholarly, and artistic implications of re-emerging postmodern aesthetics within digital architectural design practices. The team sought to unearth a dynamic, hybrid, and transdisciplinary paradigm: Postdigital Neobaroque - a concept reflecting a fatigued and 'dampened' digitality. While both 'postdigital' and 'neobaroque' have been significant topics in multidisciplinary research and artistic production, the team recognised that these two terms had never been examined together. They aimed to identify hybrids that embody both, contributing new knowledge by isolating concepts, objects, and expressions that illustrate the overlap between these compound terms. The PDNB project successfully achieved its original objectives, including theory, design, dissemination, mentoring, and career guidance. The research findings were published in three volumes by D Editore in Rome, Italy: Vol 1: Fragmentary Acts of Transference (304 pages), Vol 2: Transmedia Practices (224 pages), and Vol 3: Traits of Postdigital Neobaroque (384 pages). The team also organised the international Traits conference in Obergurgl, Tyrol, Austria, in December 2023, bringing together leading international scholars and practitioners to present and engage in discussions on the research and its broader implications. Additionally, several exhibitions and projects were developed to showcase the design work, including Ars Electronica 2022 and 2023 in Linz, Austria, and the Traits Exhibition in Innsbruck, Austria, in 2023. This comprehensive approach highlights the project's contribution to advancing theoretical and practical knowledge, whilst fostering mentorship and professional development within the field.