Chromakey has historically served as a promiscuous interlocutor between the real and virtual in which color anticipates a thing yet to exist. In this sense, chromakey performs as a placeholder that denies fidelity to either physical or virtual arenas; instead conjuring new spaces of contradiction superimposed with multiplicitous agencies. This essay examines the genealogy of chromakey while conceptualizing placeholders as spaces that leave room for something that might change, transform, and transverse. The popular usage of chromakey is tracked alongside artists whose work subverts the technology to inform an architectural design studio that critically examines the techniques, visual regimes, and cultural manifestations of contemporary digital spaces.
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