Ricardo Scofidio

(New York, 1935)

Artist and architect. He founded the studio Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS + R). He led the design of the High Line, the adaptive reuse of obsolete industrial rail infrastructure into a 1.5-mile-long public park, the Blur Building, a pavilion made of fog on Lake Neuchâtel for the 2002 Swiss Expo, and contributed to the redesign. from the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts in New York and The Broad in Los Angeles. Ric spearheads many of the studio's independent works, including Soft Sell, a video installation in an abandoned porn theater in Times Square; Touring Cars: SuitCase Studies, an investigation of American tourist attractions at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; and Reflections on a glass box for the Fondation Cartier pour l'art contemporain in Paris. He is professor emeritus at the Cooper Union School of Architecture. He has participated in Medialb Madrid within the framework of the banquet_03 exhibitions metabolism and communication with the work Indigestion. The interactive media installation crosses two electronically linked modes: an interactive video and a virtual environment. The video consists of a dining scene projected on a horizontal dining screen/table which a viewer can join as a guest. An archetypal film noir narrative develops between two characters with an ambiguous relationship sitting at the table; only his hands enter the screen. An adjacent touch screen offers the viewer a selection of characters from a variety of gender and class stereotypes. The viewer can switch dining companions mid-conversation, and while the narrative always moves in the same direction, the multiple branching dialogues are nuanced by each combination of characters. In an adjacent space, a participant wearing a Polhemus motion-sensing device can navigate in real time through the computer-generated, expanded space of the same dining table. The image is split onto two large screens on opposite sides of the room and viewed in 3-D. The moving, zoomed-in point of view across this mega-landscape reveals a micro-drama unfolding in the details.