While curating Complete Trust I was working on the publication of the 2nd issue of PROspectives, an academic journal at the Bartlett School of Architecture, where I used to teach. The issue title is “Algorithmic Form’, it brings together historical perspectives on artistic practices who pioneered algorithmic tools in art and architecture: from Luigi Moretti to Isa Genzken, the contributors reflected on the use of computational tools for form-making. Working across art and architecture in the past ten years I observed a profound disconnect in the literacy on digital culture and computational tools in the two fields, which only recently has started to resolve.

Ten years ago at the Architectural Association in london, the Design Research Lab, was already experimenting with ‘algorithmic forms’ and digital fabrication tools, while in art the conversation on ‘post-internet art’ was still struggling to be taken seriously; and even then post-internet art reflected on the societal transformation brought about by the internet, but only marginally was preoccupied with the new possibilities offered by digital fabrication and CAD software.

With some significant exceptions, digitally fabricated objects entered exhibitions only in the form of a critique of consumer objects, for example in the work of Anne de Vries or Yngve Holen. Later artists started to use, probably also for budget reasons, digital tools for art making, beyond simple 3d modeling or visual editing softwares.

In light of this COMPLETE TRUST represents for me a sort of epiphany, a collision of timelines across two disciplines which are finally starting to speak similar aesthetic languages: in fact the show brings together the work of experimental architects and different generations of artists engaging in convergent ways with ‘algorithmic forms’ either as a tool or an object of reflection.

Alessandro Bava, june 4th 2022, Milan