Tracing Presence (working title)
I am an experimental architect, researcher and artist from Malta working across digital drawing, movement practice, textiles and spatial perception. In my multidisciplinary practice, I investigate how relationships with objects, materials and architectural spaces can be articulated through embodied forms of drawing in extended reality (XR). My drawings are hybrid artefacts that emerge through movement and attentive observation, unfolding as layered records of presence, interaction and texture in space.
I am currently pursuing a practice-based PhD, *Spatial Drawing: Thinking with Materials through Movement*, within the Programm Entwurfsbasierte Promotion at TU Dortmund. I hold a master's degree in Computational Design and Architectural Design Research from the University of Stuttgart.
My work is informed equally by artistic practice, design research and teaching. Most recently, I worked as an Artistic Associate and lecturer in the Textile and Material Design department at the Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin. I was also part of the Excellence Cluster *Matters of Activity*, where I contributed to *Syntopia 1 — soma | body*, a hand-crafted, filament-based architectural installation developed through a wearable augmented reality framework and exhibited at the Tieranatomisches Theater in Berlin throughout 2023. Previously, I collaborated with Image | Space | Material and Studio Tomas Saraceno.
My work has been exhibited internationally, including at the contemporary arts festival Dragoner 3.0 in Berlin. Through my practice, I seek to develop new forms of architectural representation that bring together bodily movement, material processes and digital technologies.
My project explores digital drawing through somatic awareness and body movement practices using extended reality (XR) tools. It is connected to my practice-based PhD research, in which I investigate architectural elements by drawing walls, floors and openings. Through a personal notation system, I reveal and express my relationship to materials and my sense of presence within a space. Guided by intentional gestures and movement practices, the drawings become topographies of interaction that map perception, atmosphere and embodied experience.
For this proposal, I aim to create a new series of drawings focused on architectural remains affected by natural disasters such as storms and wildfires. I propose to draw fragments of damaged settlements and infrastructure, as well as coastal and forest environments where recent events have disrupted human and non-human ecosystems. By physically attuning to damaged objects, landscapes and materials, I seek to engage with what remains and translate the haptic impact of fire and water into digital form.
For me, embodying traces of force and transformation is a way of being with something. The process involves touching, moving through space, spending time with objects, and carefully observing and drawing their details. It is a method of following attention, affect and physically labour while encoding emotional and sensory experiences into virtual lines.
The project also responds to my dissatisfaction with conventional digital design methods, which often prioritise visual, cognitive and analytical approaches mediated by peripheral devices. Instead, I explore more tactile and open-ended ways of engaging with the world through digital tools and hybrid materialities. To date, I have developed methods for drawing spatially in XR, analysing the resulting artefacts, and translating them into 2D works across multiple media to build an evolving archive.