Introducing Studio Digital-Native

an interview with Ibiye Camp, Rhiarna Dhaliwal and Emmy Bacharach

Ibiye Camp, Rhiarna Dhaliwal and Emmy Bacharach met while studying architecture at the Royal College of Art and went on to be three of the co-founders of all-female interdisciplinary collective Xcessive Aesthetics which explores data and alternate realities through spatial installations.

Now, the trio are bringing together elements of architecture, technology and socio-politics, in a BA Studio at DAE titled Studio Digital-Native “This theme of using technologies to critique, subvert or appropriate is something we are pushing forward in the studio brief,” says Bacharach.

While using technology as a medium within the studio, they also aim to explore critical perspectives on its shortcomings and problematic elements.

Studio Digital-Native is one of the results of DAE’s open call for proposals for BA Studios, which allowed anyone to send in their ideas, with the goal of making the Academy more diverse in its perspectives and network.

Having been students themselves relatively recently, Camp, Dhaliwal and Bacharach have a great deal of empathy for students and are also able to see opportunities in challenges around education. “I think I can understand very well what the students are going through and the struggles they have or these moments of being directionless,” says Dhaliwal.

Writer and DAE alumnus Emma Lucek spoke to the trio about the key principles they want to pass on to their new students and their vision for Studio Digital-Native.

Emmy Bacharach, Rhiarna Dhaliwal and Ibiye Camp by Boudewijn Bollmann

Emma Lucek: You all studied at the RCA, but how would you say that your paths intersected? Where do your paths meet, so to say?

Ibiye Camp: We all selected the same studio, which was the entry point, but we’re all quite concerned with technology and the environment. We were looking at data centres and the ramifications of data centres on infrastructure or looking into how data is collected on individuals and things like that. We had similar interests coming into that studio and our work tended towards these urgent questions about technology. Aside from that, while at the studio, we developed a friendship and enjoyed chatting about pop culture while also sharing knowledge in the different technologies we were using. The collective actually consists of six of us from the studio.

Rhiarna Dhaliwal: Even though we were all in the same studio, we’d adapt the briefs in very different ways regarding digital technologies. We found it really interesting how we were able to take specific kinds of threads and develop them further. Our first project together was collaborating on a competition for Google Arts and the Serpentine galleries, and even though we didn’t win the competition, it was a great catalyst for our further collaborations.

EL: It sounds very rewarding to be able to keep learning with these various perspectives. I can see a lot of intersection in the themes you address but also the methodologies. I suppose that leads me to the name of the studio — Digital Natives. Could you tell me a bit about how that name?

Emmy Bacharach: We were always interested in this kind of tension between the research and data and digital technologies. This theme of using technologies to critique, subvert or appropriate is something we are pushing forward in the studio brief. We will really be taking a critical approach to these wider social and political issues in relation to technology. Something we also want to encourage in the studio is of being playful, collaborative and experimental in the process.

RD: Understanding that we are a generation that was brought up around technology and we were able to lean into that and we want the students to lean into it as well. It doesn’t mean that you have to be an expert in understanding how the technology works. There’s still an understanding now that technology moves so fast that it’s difficult to try to understand the exact implications that it’s having on us because of the rate in which it’s developing.

IC: Another thing is that we wanted to be able to capture and maybe frame these moments, these hybrid phenomena that are happening so fast. We were thinking of creating an NFT land and looking at the idea that people are buying up land in the NFT space. It’s interesting because these hybrid phenomena happen in digital spaces but they also affect human lives. Discrimination is happening in the real world and now it’s also happening in the digital world. We’d like to ask the students to identify these moments where the digital world determines how we interact with each other physically.

EL: I remember reading that the term IRL isn’t really so valid because things that happen online are ‘real life’, too. So, apparently the prevailing term is AFK. Anyway, I know that Rhiarna, you teach already, I want to hear from you and Emmy and Ibiye about how you’re learning to teach? And what are some key principles that you’re looking to convey?

IC: For me, every session is kind of like a new learning experience, it’s always different. I was invited to give some workshops at the Porto Design Biennale because of an installation I had exhibited there looking at the slave trade and the scramble for Africa using AR to change certain architectural details with colonial links in the building that we were using as a case study. That was my first sort of teaching experience, and then the pandemic happened so a lot of the workshops moved online which was actually a great tool for workshops around game engines or augmented reality. But this workshop style teaching is sort of how I imagine my teaching practice will continue at DAE.

RD: I teach at the RCA in the same studio from which we graduated, which is an interesting full circle for me. I think there’s very much a link between the conversations I was having doing my thesis project and the kinds of conversations I’m having now, just from the other side of the table. Given that I only graduated in 2019 and am now coming back as a tutor, I think I can understand very well what the students are going through and the struggles they have or these moments of being directionless. I can remember my headspace then and can advise on how to get through it.

IC: What I think is quite fun is trying to interpret some of the readings that we want to do. I know that a lot of students struggle to get their heads around some of the theory. What we’re planning on doing is taking a text — for example the E-Flux article In Defense of the Poor image — and pair it with an exercise that we could do to help explain the theory. So adding to what Rhiarna said, I think we do have a lot of empathy towards the students and that also means that people have different ways of learning.
EB: Also just thinking about your question about how we’re learning to teach — something that I’ve really liked at the RCA was that there wasn’t really much of a hierarchy between the tutors and the students. It was more like having conversations and developing ideas together. The best teachers would draw ideas out from you instead of telling you what they thought you should do.

EL: Like a good therapist! This ties in nicely with my last question: what’s the best advice you’ve ever gotten as a student?

EB: I’ve got one which is about editing. We always present our work with these long slideshows. Just edit your narrative down to the most important things.

RD: Yes! Before my final exam Marina (Otero Verzier) asked me about my project. And I couldn’t frame it into one sentence. This project that I’d been working on for nine months, and I couldn’t explain it in one sentence! So yes, take a step back and summarize key points in a sentence or two.