There's nothing like a light powered by the juicy red fruit more commonly seen in insalata caprese in this city to get the crowd all excited. Or how about a light carved out of soap or light shades made of freshly blown soap bubbles?
One of the most attention-grabbing displays at Salone Internazionale del Mobile 2010's SaloneSatellite showcase of young designers was "On/Off," a collection of wildly innovative lighting designed by Israeli design graduate interns participating in the industrial design program D-Vision. Still Light, the hybrid LED light system above, is powered by an electrochemical reaction of copper and zinc electrodes fitted into tomatoes.
Still Light. Photo via On/Off by D-vision
The "On/Off" brochure says: "LED is on the verge of becoming the common technology in lighting. Installed in an electrical room, the "On/Off" project emphasizes the urgent need to reduce power consumption. The collection designed by D-vision explores various applications of LED lighting and pushes it towards surprising limits."
97% Soap. Photo via On/Off by D-vision
All of the lights in the exhibition use the most advanced LED technology for low energy consumption. I also liked the sweet tubby shape of the 97% Soap lamp, which showcases one major benefit of the low temperature of LEDs: more material choices.
With an incandescent bulb, this glycerin soap lamp would melt into a sticky, soapy mess. Materials with low melting temperatures are often cheaper and more sustainable, as they are often biodegradable.
Olla. Photo via On/Off by D-vision
OK, so hanging around blowing bubbles all day is unrealistic, but the concept for the glass, brass, and soap bubble Olla light is really neat: A person with a straw both powers and provide the lamp shades (freshly blown bubbles).
Olla. Photo via On/Off by D-vision
Like Still Light,Olla helps demonstrate the green power needed to replace consumption of fossil fuels for electricity -- and what it takes to produce it.
In a project that was as much about raising money and promoting social change as it was about creating a stunning architectural installation, Ice House Detroit saw one of the city's 20,000+ abandoned houses clad completely in ice by Detroit photographer Gregory Holm and architect Matthew Radune...
From start to finish the entire project was documented on dedicated blog – icehousedetroit.blogspot.com – and photographer Holm has kindly supplied us with a stunning high res shot of the ice-covered house for inclusion in the May issue of CR (which comes out later this week). He also sent us a selection of images taken during the creation of the project and told us a little of the thought processes and the methodologies of his approach:
"Returning home to Detroit, there were several considerations to keep in mind – given the vulnerable state of the city being constantly pillaged for its aesthetic refuse, and the public perception of Brooklyn-based artists coming in and still calling Detroit home," explains Holm. "It was very important to initially touch base with the community and assure them that this was not just as an art project. This was going to be as much about giving back to the city in an exchange for using the landscape as it was creating a beacon for dialogue in a neglected neighborhood. Through that commitment we were able to feed several hundred homeless people, and subsidize the purchase of a home for a Detroit family."
"The actual application of water to the structure lasted just over a month," continues Holm. "From the onset I had decided on the more time consuming method of applying water, using only a fine mist. Although due to a very sunny January the attempt at controlling the appearance that our house would take on was met with very modest success. Instead the ongoing process of taking three steps forward and two steps back led to the humbling epiphany that this was a collaboration with the forces of nature. Matthew and myself each did our part by working two shifts of 12 hours a day for the month of January and into February but even so, we did have to extend our finish date."
One of the many collaborators that Holm and Radune worked with to make the Ice House Detroit project happen, was photographer Tom Stoye - who took dozens of shots of the people working on the installation and of the locals who stopped by to say hi and support the project. Here are a few of his shots, including one of photographer Holm:
And one of Radune too:
And some great portait shots of members of the Detroit neighbourhood community where the project took place:
"The question of whether this installation was an art project or a social project is one that I find somewhat redundant, and a difficult concept for gallerists to accept," says Holm. "As always, it is the artist's responsibility to redefine their role in society and reinvent the plateau by which they create. For many photographers the craft of intuitively understanding light has fallen by the wayside with the advancement of LCD cameras. While it may be obvious to see how technology can spur the dilution of film and the photographic image in general, it can be looked at as a time of great opportunity in photography where the stakes are now higher, and certain fields of understanding are now able to be enhanced with a greater socioaesthetic significance."
Thanks to Iceland's volcanic ash cloud, we're again obsessed with vapor — clouds, mists, fogs, steam, chemical gas warfare, the miasma theory of disease — in fact, with just about any aerosolized matter like sandstorms, carcinogenic dust clouds of asbestos, crowd control tear gas, climate change smog and forests atomized through slash and burning. One could devote an entire blog just on this topic without running of material, as anything could probably be vaporized, given a thermonuclear bomb or a supernova or apparition lessons at Hogwarts.
If one were indeed to start such a blog (perhaps called Pathological Aerology in imitation of the awesome Pathological Geomorphology), there definitely should be an entry on Juliet Haysom's Spring.
The proposal of which having won the Jerwood Sculpture Prize in 2007, Spring was permanently installed the following year at Ragley Hall, a stately country house near Stratford-upon-Avon in England.
Quoting Haysom:
Researching my proposal for the Jerwood Sculpture Prize brief, I realized that Ragley Hall is situated above one of England's most significant aquifers. About 40 percent of Severn and Trent Water's supply comes from this vast subterranean water resource, as do the celebrated springs at nearby Malvern, Leamington Spa and Burton on Trent.
Rather than construct and import something into the park, my proposal involved drilling a borehole into the aquifer below the site. Water from the borehole would be then pumped to the surface where it would appear as a cloud of fine mist. Spring's external form and appearance will vary significantly depending on weather and light conditions.
In other words, when early morning sunlight begins hitting the nearby solar panels that power the water pumps, the mist will slowly start to appear. At midday, the cloud will have expanded. When it's sunny, it will create a tower of mist, a sort of shimmering tree. If it's overcast or windy, however, its form will become tenuous, more spectral. If there's a rainstorm, then it will dissolve into the pouring rain.
As evening approaches and the light dims, Spring will dull down until vanishing completely for the night.
Quoting Haysom again:
While at first glance Spring might look like a natural phenomenon, on close inspection the form of its jets and the presence of nearby solar panels will reveal the fact that it is a man-made intervention into the landscape. The parkland at Ragley Hall is similarly deceptive; its rolling hills, informal stands of trees and picturesque lake were, in fact, designed by Capability Brown.
One of the towering figures of landscape architecture thus invoked, and along with him the monumentally rich history and traditions of garden design, it wouldn't be far off the mark to think Spring as a sort of avant-garde folly, a Greek temple vaporized and aerosolized against a sylvan backdrop to evoke the story of Jupiter and Io or the vaporous origins of the Centaurs.
Above is the spectrogram to this five-minute sound file of space dust particles hitting Earth's ionosphere as they are received and recorded on Thomas Ashcraft's forward scatter radio array. We could probably listen to it over and over, replace our CADing music with an extended version lasting hours. It's like Haydn's The Creation re-composed by Ligeti.
All night long eavesdropping on the earth infinitesimally accruing new terrain expelled by extraterrestrial landscapes.
Is Eyjafjallajökull producing similarly marvelous soundscapes?
This blog is the survey website of fabric | ch - studio for architecture, interaction and research.
We curate and reblog articles, researches, writings, exhibitions and projects that we notice and find interesting during our everyday practice and readings.
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