I-grid is a design research performance that Open Source Architecture was invited to propose a reconfiguration of a billboard on Sunset Boulevard at the corner of Olive Drive in West Hollywood. The project consists of a computed protocol that transforms the original format of an existing 20 foot wide by 50 foot tall billboard. Initially based on a neutral 5 foot incremental grid of the billboard, an evolutionary algorithm produces a series of iterated mutations that index the intensive computing system. By utilizing an evolutionary computational procedure, the process autonomously restructures the billboard surface, manifesting an alternative topology. The process tracks and records multiple iterations of the form finding procedure, condensing it into a singular frame. I-grid expresses the notion of instability inherent to its info-engineered nature in constant mutation.

I-grid features a new form of interactivity stimulated by intensive information streams that are intensified (compression) across multiple virtual computing grids and extended (decompression) on the physical surface. Information here becomes a unique vector that blurs the conventional dialectics between private and public realms, home computers and urban environments. It suggests the formation of a networked organism where information streams shape nothing more than abstraction, an abstract space of interaction.