Materialising the pixel: A productive synergy

The composite photoreceptive field of the human eye receives photons emitted from a source and converts this energy into image information within the brain. The internal mechanisms of the contemporary camera imaging technologies represent yet another in a long history of attempts to technically replicate this procedure. The critical difference between the capacity of the human eye to receive quanta events or photons and that of a camera transmitting to a digital display device, rests in how much of the original signal can be recovered. This paper aims to show how the 'information deficit' associated with this technological conversion can be enhanced by the deliberate exploitation and re-arrangement of the camera's image sensor mechanism. The paper will discuss how the mapping of pixel grid geometries and colour filter array patterns at the vastly increased scale of building façades, imparts a materiality to urban form that modifies the visibility and performance of the corresponding virtual screen image. The exploration of the material adaptation of pixel geometries leads to a new technique that extends the working gamut of pixel-based RGB colour space and both establishes an index to develop material performance criteria and modifies the limitations of traditional viewing technologies. © 2012, Association for Computer-Aided Architectural Design Research in Asia (CAADRIA), Hong Kong