MOOD MANAGER

THERAPY FOR OBSOLETE ARCHITECTS
MULTI-MEDIA INSTALLTATION FOR
"HAND AND MACHINE: ARCHITECTURAL DRAWINGS"
AT THE NATIONAL MUSEUM, OSLO, 2023-2024

Mood Manager is a multi-media installation (2023-2024) that explores the labor of architectural image production in a time of generative software and artificial intelligence. A science fiction scenography, it depicts a process whereby an AI called “The Mood Manager” conducts a therapy session with an architect who is plagued by self-doubt and fears of creative stagnation and obsolescence. While talking to the architect, the AI harvests the architect’s emotions and experiences, perusing an archive made up of their previous image-making projects. It is unclear whether the AI seeks to help or replace their subject.

Riffing off the aesthetics of postwar computer design, the installation is phyiscally made up of several components: (i) the capsule, with (ii) its sound track; (ii) the black box, which houses the media player and materializes the AI for the audience, with its cabling; and (iv) the array of screens, which show (v) the six videos that make up the work Housework (2017), (vi) the video Ground Floor (2022), and (vii) a mix of live and prerecorded video feeds from the capsule.

The work was commisioned by and made for the “Hand and Machine: Architectural Drawings” exhibition at Norway’s National Museum, curated by Joakim Skajaa, project manager Maria Csaszni Rygh; “Housework” (2017) was subsequently acquired by the museum and now forms part of their permanent collection. Secretary also authored an essay in the exhibition catalogue, called “Computation Slowly Creeping” (2023), which reflects on the changing role of AI image production softwares in architectural visualization through the concept death cultures of the image.