Michael Kozlowski

Many of the architectures that govern our lives are hidden inside devices and data centers. Tessellations demonstrates what it would mean to treat this pervasive circuitry as a form of ornament. The work begins from a simple observation: the dense geometries of modern circuit board design bear a striking resemblance to the algorithmic craftsmanship of medieval pattern-making and architecture, used for centuries throughout Europe, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Oftentimes, the most ornate architectural features of the past were reserved for holy, public, or otherwise critical places. The carvings in stone on a cathedral wall, the expansive mosaic covering the floor of a Mosque, and the intricate wooden inlays in the ceiling of a King’s meeting chamber. These were surfaces that imparted a sense of deeper significance and idolization. Visually, Tessellations is a speculative archaeology; fragments excavated from an imagined future in which the mosaic, stonework, and textiles of the Middle Ages have slowly evolved into terrains of chipsets, heat sinks, and connector arrays, our new source of veneration. By treating circuit board aesthetics as the façade of contemporary life, the project connects the revered architectures of the past with ubiquitous electronic designs of the present.

Tessellations is code-based artwork made into physical objects. Each sculpture is first created mathematically by custom code which is capable of generating unique patterns at an effectively infinite scale. Each process in the algorithm (such as tiling, recursion, and subdivision) consciously runs parallel to the algorithmic design practices employed by medieval craftsmen and architects, who developed rule-based geometric methods long before computation became electronic. By weaving together ancient pattern-creation traditions and the incidental beauty of electrical engineering, Tessellations frames contemporary computation and manufacturing not as a break with the past, but as a continuation of humanity’s enduring impulse to encode divinity, meaning, and belief onto physical surfaces.

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