Continuing the series of events, on Wednesday, 24 January, at 19.00, the second of the two planned winter episodes will take place in the cultural space "Smilga". This time, the guests of SALONS #5 will be architect and scholar Dr. Miro Roman and photographer Zane Priede. Current episode will explore the overlap between IT and architectural means of expression, playing with real and digital environments, data and objects, provoking the imagination and the possibilities of creating surreal spaces.

What to expect? Miro Roman will take part in SALONS with a talk “Writing Architecture”. He will delve into the concept of writing architecture, examining what it entails to write and code architectural designs, as well as to write images. Using a fictional scenario, he will explore how to integrate the common sense artificial intelligence of ChatGPT and Dalee with custom-made search tools such as Ask.Alice, and Search0more. His goal is to develop an architectonic exercise without relying on traditional drawings, but instead by writing and coding architectural aspects in abstract but precise terms.

Photographer Zane Priede will walk us through her meandering path to set design and photography revealing how her dream of being a shoe designer has led to “stacking rocks in piles”? She will also discuss her practice and intuitive way of working in photography where often the decisions and process ir driven by materials. Zane will reveal where her inspiration comes from and explain the labyrinths of prop making, finding, storing and approaching light and its effects.

Miro Roman is an architect and a scholar. He is interested in the overlap of information technologies and architectural articulations. He explores, designs, codes, and writes about architecture and the world while playing with a lot; with “all” the buildings, books, images; with clouds, avatars, streams, lists, indexes, and pixels. What is this abundance of information about? How to handle it? How does it shape the way we think about the world? To navigate and surf these vast flows, Miro codes and articulates synthetic characters and alphabets. For him objects are alive and well.
Currently, Dr. Miro Roman is an Assistant Professor in the “House of Coded Objects” at studio2 at the University of Innsbruck, and a senior lecturer and researcher at “Studio Meteora”, chair for Digital Architectonics at ETH Zürich. He has been a guest lecturer at TU Wien, and a researcher at the Future Cities Laboratory, the interdisciplinary research program of the Singapore ETH Centre, where he co-edited “A Quantum City” book. Miro conceptualized and developed the computational library Xenotheka and its search instrument Ask Alice. Alice_ch3n81 and Miro together wrote “A Play Among Books”. Alice_ch3n81’s relationship with Silvio Vujcic gave birth to their son SOLL. In his previous life, Miro was a part of the romanvlahovic project. Miro.romanvlahovic.com 

Zane Priede, a self-taught still life photographer based in Riga, Latvia, has a background in design and a passion for photography. As a graduate of the Design Academy Eindhoven in the Netherlands, she combines her education and fascination with photography in her current work. She creates imaginary and surreal scenes from everyday objects, infusing them with fantasy. Her love of architecture and design is evident in her approach to constructing scenes with small-scale objects and textures. Her work questions the ever-changing nature of perception with a playful approach to storytelling. Through her visual explorations, Zane aims to discover the fantastical in the mundane. https://www.zanepriede.lv/

SALONS is a gathering, lecture and informal conversation event organised by the Institute of Contemporary Art, Design and Architecture of the Art Academy of Latvia (LMDA), LMAA AGENCY (a communication and activism platform within the newly established LMAA School of Architecture) and ĒTER architecture studio. The events are planned on a regular basis with the aim of contributing to the local architectural scene, highlighting the diverse culture of contemporary architecture, engaging and conversing with researchers, thinkers, designers, creative professionals, stakeholders and the general public. 

Curators: Dagnija Smilga (ĒTER, LMAA) and Dina Suhanova (LMDA, LMAA).