Collaborators since 1979, Diller and Scofidio have made the relationship between architecture and technology a pervasive theme in their work. The collage drawing TV in Picture Window Apparatus shows them manipulating a view of the ocean through the frame of a picture window and the technology of a video camera and monitor. Rather than the view itself, the representation of the view becomes their primary interest; indeed the monitor obstructs the actual view, while the camera transmits a copy of the view to the screen. Thus the drawing represents three different types of view, real, framed, and virtual, using a different medium for each one: a cutout magazine reproduction is pasted onto a pencil drawing of a plan and partial interior elevation of the picture window. Color photocopies of exterior perspectives, located beneath a Mylar sheet that covers the entire drawing, tie the parts of the image together. The right side of the drawing, a study of the mechanisms of the monitor's support arm, illustrates how the inhabitant can control the location of the television image.
Publication excerpt from an essay by Melanie Domino, in Matilda McQuaid, ed., Envisioning Architecture: Drawings from The Museum of Modern Art, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2002, p. 234.
