Throughout history, people have been fascinated with collecting, sorting, curating, and recombining tangible and intangible artifacts. This fascination gave rise to the archive: a form of organizing a repository and thus an active catalyst for the production, administration, and dissemination of knowledge.

With the emergence of Web 2.0 as a collectively maintained and constantly growing participatory archive, a global economy of sharing, copying, and remixing has been slowly established in recent decades, fostering a cultural production that does not necessarily create something new, but rather draws from the same sources over and over again.

The concept of Sampling, which has been well known to us since the 1970s, when the first generation of data storages enabled an entirely new kind of cultural and, in particular, musical production, has now spread unhindered through all kinds of online media and digital practices.

The exhibition Simple Object Access Protocol (SOAP) explores the idea of Spatial Sampling by utilizing the archives of the Internet as an inexhaustible resource for space-making. At the same time, it raises urgent questions about the role of the designer as collector and curator,  challenges the necessity of striving for novelty and individuality, and reflects on the relationship between creation and authorship.

Concept and Design:    some online architecture practice SOAP.

Press:    KoozArch ︎       e-flux Architecture ︎

Image Credits Exhibition:    Simon Veres

Image Credits Vernissage:    Richard Pobaschnig