Constantinos Gallis
Cambridge, MA & Athens, GR
Hello, my name is Constantinos, & I am a Greek-Swiss artist, musician & student based in Cambridge, MA & Athens, GR. I am currently a dual degree student at MIT, pursuing a Master in City Planning & a Master of Architecture, & I hold a BA in Urban Studies from Stanford University, where I graduated with departmental honors & distinction. I am curious about the effects of urban change on the natural environment & society, I have explored my interests through academic research, teaching, large scale installations, performances, audio-visual investigations, & practical work experience at firms in Athens. GR, New York, NY & London, GB.
cgallis@mit.eduInstagram
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I am one half of Oo-PS, a collaborative research & design practice working across scales to produce narrative-driven artwork, writing, music & objects as ways of anticipating sets of future socio-environmental challenges & designing theoretical methods to meet them.
Oo-PS
I write, record, produce & occasionally perform music under the alias Shrinking Violet, a project that modulates between ambient, dreampop & indie rock in an effort to create music about memory, distance & uncertainty.
Shrinking Violet
Selected WorkUrban DistortionAthens, GR
Attempting to capture the visual disarray of exposed cables, graffiti & layered posters, as well as the sonic discomposure of cars, electrical buzzes & loud conversations, I created Urban Distortion, a series of drawings fundamentally anchored in the density of lines.
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Atmospheres For WindhoverStanford, CA
Atmospheres for Windhover was a one-time live ambient performance of three thirty-minute sound pieces that I composed specifically for the Windhover Contemplative Center at Stanford, designed by Aidling Darling Design. It was the first & only solo performance to take place at the Center.
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Elastic FuturesStanford, CA & Peristeri, GR
By delving into the contemporary history of urban development in Athens, examining the impacts of two distinct architectural movements, & analyzing firsthand data gathered in West Athens, I investigated whether a substantial relationship with nature is congruent with Athenian modernism. My research culminates in a series of design proposals, organized into a restructural toolkit & a destructural framework for long-term urban change.
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Center for Constructed Ground[w/ A. Kenna]
Boston, MA
Rather than treating our intervention as either a permanently fixed object or as a thoroughly ephemeral addition to the land, the project interrogates how architecture can responsibly inhabit a ground condition that is unstable & increasingly inundated by rising tides.
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Confluence[w/ E. Petersen, K. Han, A. Adriano, L. Laugharn]
San Francisco, CA
Confluence was a week-long ambient light installation atop the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco, the tallest building in the Bay Area. The project was a response to the way in which daily urban life separates us from nature; how we perceive a distance between ourselves & the water, land, & living beings which sustain us.
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VariscapesStanford, CA & Berlin, DE
Variscapes examine both the details & the scales of expansive landscapes, attempting to articulate perspective by modulating line density & intensity.
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Third PlacesBerlin DE & Brooklyn, NY
Third Places is collection of twelve sound-art compositions derived from twelve distinct points in Berlin, Germany. The collection is the result of an independent study I conducted entitled Twelve Views of the Fernsehturm: Klangunst Born from the Sights & Sounds of Berlin, advised by Paul DeMarinis, & supported by the Chappell Lougee Scholarship, Stanford’s most prestigious creative grant.
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Athenian UrbanismsStanford, CA & Athens, GR
Initially thought of as a hypothetical architectural tour of Athens, the course began to develop a structure as I started to think of all the lenses through which to view, interpret, & analyze the city. Each of the eight approaches led to the creation of eight corresponding profiles of Athens. Every week, a different profile was presented, & a new way to mine the city for information was examined.
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Monuments of TransmutationCambridge, MA
The collection is the result of a semester-long exploration into both the material & narrative qualities of concrete, reflecting an interpretation of the building material as a medium capable of simultaneously embodying both creation & decay, straddling a territory that spans from ruin to aspiration. It resists an aesthetic that adheres strictly to notions of beginning or end, life or afterlife, & instead embraces an agnostic stance toward these concepts.
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Murmuration of LightStanford, CA
Attempting to capture the visual disarray of exposed cables, graffiti & layered posters, as well as the sonic discomposure of cars, electrical buzzes & loud conversations, I created Urban Distortion, a series of drawings fundamentally anchored in the density of lines.
[See more]10
Looking At Each OtherCambridge, MA
Tasked to create an auditorium & archive for the School of Architecture & Planning, I considered the elements needed to create new knowledge, as well as the process of knowledge creation. As interaction between people or parties is fundamental to the making of new knowledge, the buildings I proposed became machines for generating interplay, oriented such that they could be looking at each other.
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AcropoliticsCambridge, MA & Athens, GR
Acropolitics reframes the Acropolis as a political instrument with the capacity to produce new meaning through moments of damage, intervention & reinterpretation. Structured as a detailed anthology & glossary, the seventy-page book traces a counterhistory of the monument through five operative conditions, each demonstrating how acts can be both destructive & generative, shaping how the Acropolis is governed, represented & mobilized.
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Experiences in a Changing CityAthens, GR
Experiences in a Changing City: an Inquiry into Ten Neighborhoods of Greater Athens is my debut album which captures two years of urban explorations in Athens. After long discussions with dozens of Athenians from ten distinct neighborhoods,
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Greyscale CityAthens, GR
The organized chaos that makes up my hometown of Athens has fascinated me for years. Greyscale City is a series that celebrates the disorder of the urban environment, & demonstrates that among the chaos exists an implicit uniformity in the group form that mediates the madness of the city.
[See more]14
Only Passing ThroughCambridge, MA
Over the course of several weeks, I designed an interfaith chapel at one of three thresholds on the MIT campus. Rather taking up space on the end of the Broad Canal, this project proposes occupying the canal itself.
[See more]15
Generation LossStanford, CA
Prompted by Paul DeMarinis, I decided to revisit an ambient song from an EP of mine entitled ‘The Fourth Way’, & use it to investigate how tape degrades after multiple replications.
[See more]16
Memory Pavilion[w/ E. Petersen, K. Han]
Stanford, CA
The Memory Pavilion was selected from a pool of nearly 100 projects to be featured in the 2023 Frost Arts & Music Festival, where the theme of the year was Sacred Spaces. When considering this exhibition’s theme, Ethan, Katie & I quickly realized that themes of ritual & memory resonated between our shared notions of sanctity.
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MultiplicationAthens, GR
Made in the lead up & aftermath of national elections in Greece, the Multiplication series was driven by themes of crisis & prosperity, growth & decay, & political polarization.
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Changing Too Quickly[w/ N. Vitoraki]
Hydra, GR
Changing Too Quickly is my second album, conceived during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. I wrote and recorded the music for the album independently, and my girlfriend-turned-writing-partner Nefeli Vitoraki helped me write the lyrics.
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The Ephemeral[w/ Twenty Collaborators]
Stanford, CA
This project was created alongside twenty-one students, & it inhabited the grove outside the Anderson Collection. Straddling the disciplines of architecture & structural engineering, we created a membrane ‘tensegrity’ system to form the modules.
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Stair To ForeverCambridge, MA
Given just three weeks to respond to the riddle a stair to there, a stair to nowhere, I set out to create a staircase out of one continuous surface, that perpetually loops around itself. I made initial concept models out of folded sheets of paper, creating various related structures that were achieved only by scoring & folding single sheets.
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Various SinglesAll Over The Place
Over the past eight years, I have been recording & releasing music under the alias Shrinking Violet. To date, I have released five standalone singles, three full length albums, & two EPs. I have also created soundtracks for two short films, & I have done two remixes.
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