The average Canadian spends more than 37 hours a week gazing idly at a glowing screen, from television, to Netflix, to YouTube. Most viewers are blithely unaware of the miles of cable and megatons of minerals necessary to support all of this viewing. Turn On, Tune In is a design for a pavilion intended to vivify the materiality of the digital world. The steel-frame pavilion is sheathed in overstocked or recycled polarizing film manufactured for use in LCD television screens. By layering and manipulating the direction of tiled sheets of the film, the pavilion emits intense optical effects that constantly shift with one’s vantage, changing seasonal conditions, and weather. The familiar rectangular shape of a conventional 16:9 screen, so rarely understood as matter itself, reveals its material properties through variable display of kaleidoscopic effects. Team: McLain Clutter, Cyrus Peñarroyo

Year: 2017