These images look like drawings but are the output of a style transfer model rendering material swatches ‘in the style’ of drawings by Piranesi and Albrecht Durer. Both artists used an array of hatches, stipples, contours, and patterns to describe form, material, and light and shadow, and some portion of that array of lines and figures is reproduced here.

Aggregate Concrete, Fabric

Wood Veneer, Terrazzo

Plaster, Concrete Block

Mapped onto digital geometry, the textures suggest depth and form.

We developed these patterns as transparency masks that reveal the material substrate behind printed imagery for the exhibition Views from the Field. The result is a combination of 3 distinct but coplanar layers of material: the substrate, the material in the printed image, and a pattern of gaps ‘etched’ into the print revealing the substrate.

Project Team: Luiza De Souza, Moriah Haley, Cole Masuno, Zane Mechem