Friday, June 28. 2013"In Orbit" Installation / Tomás Saraceno
Via ArchDaily -----
A gigantic installation work by Tomás Saraceno, entitled “in orbit,” was just assembled last week in the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Germany. At a height of more than 20 meters above the piazza of the K21 Ständehaus, Saraceno has suspended a net construction within which visitors can move, apparently weightlessly. Saraceno’s net construction, which is accessible on three levels, resembles a cloud landscape: those bold enough to clamber high into the web set beneath the glass cupola perceive the museum visitors far below them from the lofty heights as tiny figures in a model world. The installation will be up until September 7th.
Studio Tomás Saraceno © 2013
“To describe the work means to describe the people who use it – and their emotions,” explains Tomás Saraceno concerning his largest installation to date, planned over the past three years in collaboration with engineers, architects, and arachnologists – experts on spiders and spider webs.
Studio Tomás Saraceno © 2013
This highly contemporary safety net, which covers altogether 2500 m², spreads itself out across three levels below the massive glass cupola of the K21 and the levels are held apart from one another by a series of “spheres,” airfilled PVC balls measuring up to 8.5 meters in diameter.
Studio Tomás Saraceno © 2013 Viewed from below or from intermediate levels of the Ständehaus, and against the background of the glass cupola, conversely, the people enmeshed in this net seem to be swimming in the sky. For the artist, this floating space becomes an oscillating network of relationships, neural pathways, resonances, and synchronous communication – a new digital geography, one that is experienced in physical terms.
Studio Tomás Saraceno © 2013
The various materials underscore Saraceno’s basic ideas of flow and lightness: “When I look at the multilayered levels of diaphanous lines and spheres, I am reminded of models of the universe that depict the forces of gravity and planetary bodies. For me, the work visualizes the space-time continuum, the three-dimensional web of a spider, the ramifications of tissue in the brain, dark matter, or the structure of the universe. With ‘in orbit,’ proportions enter into new relationships; human bodies become planets, molecules, or social black holes.”
Studio Tomás Saraceno © 2013
“in orbit” is one of the lightest projects realized by the artist to date: the work summons associations with the fineness and the stability of spider’s webs and soap bubbles – despite the fact that the net structure alone weighs 3000 kg, and the largest of the “spheres” weighs 300 kg. The conjunction of functionality, beauty, and strength that Saraceno has encountered during years of studying the web constructions of various spider species is also in evidence in the details of “in orbit.
Studio Tomás Saraceno © 2013
The precise observation of nature and the conceptual development of its phenomena are consistent trademarks of Saraceno’s work, which dissolves the boundaries between art and science. In this installation, space is perceived through vibration – just as it is by spiders. The result is a new, hybrid form of communication.
Studio Tomás Saraceno © 2013
Says the artist: “Each individual strand not only holds visitors in place, but weaves them into itself, at the same time allowing them to act. It is like an outstretched network with an open character. An open, cosmic, woven structure that becomes densified, ramified, before flowing out into lines again at its edges. The web is singular in its relationship to the existing architecture.” For more information on the exhibition, please visit here.
Related Links:Personal comment: Following its previous installation (Quantum Physica) at Biocca in Milan, a new "cloud" architecture/installation by Seraceno in Germany.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture, Art
at
09:28
Defined tags for this entry: architects, architecture, art, artists, design (environments), installations
Wednesday, June 19. 2013Augmenting Social Reality in the Workplace
----- By Ben Waber
A new line of research examines what happens in an office where the positions of the cubicles and walls—even the coffee pot—are all determined by data.
Can we use data about people to alter physical reality, even in real time, and improve their performance at work or in life? That is the question being asked by a developing field called augmented social reality. Here’s a simple example. A few years ago, with Sandy Pentland’s human dynamics research group at MIT’s Media Lab, I created what I termed an “augmented cubicle.” It had two desks separated by a wall of plexiglass with an actuator-controlled window blind in the middle. Depending on whether we wanted different people to be talking to each other, the blinds would change position at night every few days or weeks. The augmented cubicle was an experiment in how to influence the social dynamics of a workplace. If a company wanted engineers to talk more with designers, for example, it wouldn’t set up new reporting relationships or schedule endless meetings. Instead, the blinds in the cubicles between the groups would go down. Now as engineers passed the designers it would be easier to have a quick chat about last night’s game or a project they were working on. Human social interaction is rapidly becoming more measurable at a large scale, thanks to always-on sensors like cell phones. The next challenge is to use what we learn from this behavioral data to influence or enhance how people work with each other. The Media Lab spinoff company I run uses ID badges packed with sensors to measure employees’ movements, their tone of voice, where they are in an office, and whom they are talking to. We use data we collect in offices to advise companies on how to change their organizations, often through actual physical changes to the work environment. For instance, after we found that people who ate in larger lunch groups were more productive, Google and other technology companies that depend on serendipitous interaction to spur innovation installed larger cafeteria tables. In the future, some of these changes could be made in real time. At the Media Lab, Pentland’s group has shown how tone of voice, fluctuation in speaking volume, and speed of speech can predict things like how persuasive a person will be in, say, pitching a startup idea to a venture capitalist. As part of that work, we showed that it’s possible to digitally alter your voice so that you sound more interested and more engaged, making you more persuasive. Another way we can imagine using behavioral data to augment social reality is a system that suggests who should meet whom in an organization. Traditionally that’s an ad hoc process that occurs during meetings or with the help of mentors. But we might be able to draw on sensor and digital communication data to compare actual communication patterns in the workplace with an organizational ideal, then prompt people to make introductions to bridge the gaps. This isn’t the LinkedIn model, where people ask to connect to you, but one where an analytical engine would determine which of your colleagues or friends to introduce to someone else. Such a system could be used to stitch together entire organizations. Unlike augmented reality, which layers information on top of video or your field of view to provide extra information about the world, augmented social reality is about systems that change reality to meet the social needs of a group. For instance, what if office coffee machines moved around according to the social context? When a coffee-pouring robot appeared as a gag in TV commercial two years ago, I thought seriously about the uses of a coffee machine with wheels. By positioning the coffee robot in between two groups, for example, we could increase the likelihood that certain coworkers would bump into each other. Once we detected—using smart badges or some other sensor—that the right conversations were occurring between the right people, the robot could move on to another location. Vending machines, bowls of snacks—all could migrate their way around the office on the basis of social data. One demonstration of these ideas came from a team at Plymouth University in the United Kingdom. In their “Slothbots” project, slow-moving robotic walls subtly change their position over time to alter the flow of people in a public space, constantly tuning their movement in response to people’s behavior. The large amount of behavioral data that we can collect by digital means is starting to converge with technologies for shaping the world in response. Will we notify people when their environment is being subtly transformed? Is it even ethical to use data-driven techniques to persuade and influence people this way? These questions remain unanswered as technology leads us toward this augmented world.
Ben Waber is cofounder and CEO of Sociometric Solutions and the author of People Analytics: How Social Sensing Technology Will Transform Business, published by FT Press.
Personal comment:
Following my previous posts about data, monitoring or data centers: or when your "ashtray" will come close to you and your interlocutor, at the "right place", after having suggested to "meet" him...
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture, Interaction design, Science & technology
at
07:48
Defined tags for this entry: architecture, behaviour, code, data, design (environments), interaction design, monitoring, research, science & technology
Friday, June 14. 2013Harmony cannot be obvious
Via Domusweb ----- By Jack Self
Rather than a mere folly, Sou Fujimoto's Serpentine Pavilion is sincere in his proposition about the future of architecture and its place in the world.
If Vivaldi’s Summer is the architectural high-season, then the Serpentine Gallery Pavilion is its opening refrain — a measured, majestic transition from the long British winter to the frenetic hyperactivity and crystalline skies of summer proper. Perhaps for this reason the Pavilion always attracts a certain sleepy journalism, as though the whole press hadn’t yet had their morning coffee. One reads endless tales recounted as though written in a half-waking state — soggy with dream-like odes and fanciful metaphors, rambling and extravagant, but almost universally uncritical. On the rare occasion that a pavilion does get bad press, it is invariably childish insults hurled at the architect with a kind of impertinent bad-temperedness: “Nouvel resembles an ageing bouncer,” (Edwin Heathcote, FT) “I smell Jean Nouvel before I see him,” (Tom Dykhoff, The Times) “A one idea building from a once extraordinary architect” (Ellis Woodman, The Telegraph). In fact, although Nouvel’s 2010 shape-shifting red pavilion was received terribly, it remains the only attempt to broaden public engagement beyond the over-priced Fortnum & Mason’s coffee bar. With free kite flying, table tennis, chess and checkers, it became for a short period the only building in all of Knightsbridge that didn’t force you to spend money to enjoy its amenities.
More importantly, critique of the Serpentine Pavilion as an institutional project is totally absent. Inasmuch as the media accept or reject this or that form, it amounts to whim. We must name the Serpentine Pavilion for what it is: a star factory whose elitist self-perpetuation typifies the vapid iconicity of the pre-Crash years. This is a massive work of architectural branding, or at best, architecture-as-sculpture. At the core of the whole project is a profound question about the intended benefactor of all these pavilions. For architects, the project’s ambition of providing a platform for little-known practitioners operates like a last-chance saloon for the already established. The category of never having built in the UK only increases the uniqueness of the bijou. For visitors, the pavilions do not serve any obvious purpose beyond to be looked at. Yet most passers-by do not actually spend much time looking at all (about four to six minutes). Presumably many are put off by spaces always focussed around a hopelessly over-staffed bar of well-dressed waiters, patiently expecting you to buy a £3 Americano. The only entity that really profits from the pavilions is of course the gallery itself. Beyond the empty rhetoric, it is publicity for the sake of publicity.
All this is unfortunate really, because Sou Fujimoto’s nebulous pavilion is possibly the finest yet. Rather than a mere folly, Fujimoto is sincere in his proposition about the future of architecture and its place in the world. A polite, quiet, deferential man, he speaks slowly, but explains himself with eloquence and a precise clarity. I quickly notice a pattern in the way he responds to questions: first a tactful and positive remark, then his opinion. I asked him who the structure was really for, and what was its purpose. He said, “It is for the people of London, and visitors of many different nations, to behave nicely in this park.” After a pause he added in a lower tone, “Of course, we have some other ideas which are not about today but about the future urban environment. A pavilion of this size should not be concerned with super-practical things, because that can limit its life to the present. It should not be for now, but for 20 or 50 years later. People can imagine how such a living environment could be the future city, or future house, or the future park. I like to create such imaginings, and I hope people just casually enjoy this dream of architecture’s potential.” He spoke about Corbusier, and how influenced he had been by the Modular. A simple unit based on the body, he said, had great power to harmonise, or integrate, differing scales. Corbusier was also remarkable for how he used small projects to express powerful ideas. Then he spoke about how Toyo Ito’s 2002 pavilion generated a lot of interest in Japan, heightened by SANAA in 2009. I got the impression that for Fujimoto the pavilion represented a platform; a coded message; a statement of intent pointed at his own country (as much as to anywhere, or anyone, else). When I asked if he had plans to build again in Britain he gave me a look of slight bemusement. “I like the UK a lot, and I feel very welcomed here.” The pause. “I do not have any current intentions of building here.” Would you though? “My work for the moment is in Japan.”
For an outsider, Japan’s complex social order can be at times impenetrable. Certainly though, something that has always struck me is the traditional continuity between generations of architects — where in the West each younger generation has to forcefully overthrow, reject (even denounce) their elders, the Japanese seem harmonious and respectful. On the contrary, Kengo Kuma told me recently that just because he goes for Sake and Karaoke with Ito and Sejima (his words), it doesn’t mean he won’t take advantage of any opportunity to distinguish himself and declare his independence. As the youngest Japanese architect to do a pavilion, how did Fujimoto relate to this type of culture, with respect to Ito and SANAA? “Actually, we have a nice relationship between the generations. I myself didn’t work for Ito-san, or SANAA, but they are very open and generous. They appreciate and elevate the young. They like to know what’s next, and what is the younger energy. That’s really great. We get such nice support.” Pause. “At the same time, we discuss architecture.”
I asked if that made it difficult to disagree? “We don’t have to just say yes. Sometimes we propose our opinion or objections, and that makes the relationship founded on mutual trust. If you just say yes all the time, it means that in a different condition you might say no, and that damages trust. We can enjoy these types of talks. They’re not fights. I am now 41, and the younger generation is coming up, and some of them are quite talented. So we have a responsibility to those who are younger, to support them and encourage them, just as I have seen Ito-san, or Sejima-san’s attitude to make the whole atmosphere of architecture in Japan more energetic, and more active.” As you manoeuvre around the pavilion the form changes quite radically, and in a sense it is quite hard to say what shape it is. Normally, the architectural press (and Serpentine Gallery) don’t like shapeless pavilions, as though each building must be reducible to its own 32-pixel icon. Unlike Nouvel, the response to Fujimoto has been overwhelmingly positive, which led me to think there might be different kinds of formlessness.
“I agree. I personally saw Nouvel’s pavilion,” says Fujimoto. “From far away, it was a red square on a green background; it was quite beautiful. Inside, you couldn’t easily understand the form, or how the structure worked, or how the spaces were made. It was just red, and then less red, and then more red... I really like such an approach to architecture, that doesn’t focus on the form of the object, but on the qualities of the subjective experience, and I was fascinated by that.” He continues. “For me, it was important to produce a structure that definitely had a shape, but one that was ambiguous. If you are outside the pavilion, this shape should be blurry. From different directions you should have completely different impressions. If you are inside, the object should disappear, it should be a gradient of shifting densities and transparencies. From some directions it is more like a floating cloud, and then from others more of a forest, or a group of trees. These are harmonious qualities, but they must be approached very carefully, it cannot be too strong. Harmony cannot be obvious.” Jack Self (@jack_self)
Related Links:
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture, Art
at
14:26
Defined tags for this entry: air, architects, architecture, art, design (environments), exhibitions, particles
Wednesday, June 05. 2013Silk Pavillion – CNC Deposited Silk & Silkworm Construction at the MIT Media Lab
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Created at the Mediated Matter Research Group at the MIT Media Lab, The Silk Pavilion explores the relationship between digital and biological fabrication on product and architectural scales. The primary structure was created of 26 polygonal panels made of silk threads laid down by a CNC (Computer-Numerically Controlled) machine, followed by a swarm of 6,500 silkworms spinning flat non-woven silk patches as they locally reinforced the gaps across CNC-deposited silk fibers. Inspired by the silkworm’s ability to generate a 3D cocoon out of a single multi-property silk thread (1km in length), the overall geometry of the pavilion was created using an algorithm that assigns a single continuous thread across patches providing various degrees of density. Overall density variation was informed by the silkworm itself deployed as a biological “printer” in the creation of a secondary structure.
More about it HERE.
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture, Science & technology
at
07:46
Defined tags for this entry: architecture, design (environments), digital fabrication, materials, research, science & technology
Friday, March 08. 2013Roam through colour with the Interactive installation by Carlos Cruz DiezVia It's Nice That ----- Posted by Ross Bryant
Carlos Crus-Diez: Chromosaturation
We all love a bit of colour in our lives, right? It’s the spice that can turn the drabbest of life experience into a wealth of vivid wonder, taking the ordinary and making it extraordinary. Carlos Cruz-Diez has been exploring the kinetic movement of colour in his celebrated works, creating interactive manufactured chambers that lures visitors to rethink their perceptions of colour in their everyday lives. The installation works in a very personal way, altering the colour of your skin, clothing and anything you so happen to be carrying on your person. It culminates to create an experience that adapts depending on what chamber you emerse yourself within, drawing attention to the individual experience of processing colour through a disruption in the way that light is received and understood. These wonderful installations have been developed over many years, and can be explored at the Musée en Herbe en in paris and the Museo universitario arte in Mexico. But if you can’t make it to these, feast on some images and live your life through a spectrum of colours that can only add a richness to your imagination and a smile to your face.
Carlos Crus-Diez: Chromosaturation
Related Links:Tuesday, January 29. 2013Nam June Paik Library / N H D M
Via ArchDaily -----
Designed by N H D M / Nahyun Hwang + David Eugin Moon, the Nam June Paik Library is a new public art library in Nam June Paik Art Center in Yong-In, Korea, which opened to the general public in 2011. Inspired by Nam June Paik’s artistic processes, the library was designed as a multi-functional spatial device, which redefines the relationship between library users and information. While the conventional library is characterized by the one directional transmission of the static, centralized, and predefined content, this library aims to promote non-linear and random access to information, and its production beyond the consumption. More images and architects’ description after the break.
The goal of the Nam June Paik Library is to collect, preserve, and provide access to historical and contemporary material related to the history and activities of Nam June Paik and his art. It offers to scholars a space for professional research, and to the local community an open forum for cultural engagement. The library houses and circulates the Center’s Nam June Paik Archives Collection, Nam June Paik Video Archives, and a rare Fluxus Footages Collection, as well as the user generated materials. The design and construction of the library was made possible by City of YongIn and Gyeoggi Province Government’s Small Library Fund.
Through spontaneous expression and juxtaposition of ideas, the consumer of information becomes the producer, and the static contents of the library turns dynamic. The collective generation and appreciation of information makes the library experience multi-directional and reciprocal.
The Library Machine located in the center of the library deploys the following 6 architectural and programmatic devices. 1. Scattering – The juxtaposition of the dispersed information produces complexity that contrasts the simple geometric initial form. 2. Non-Textual Content / Off-Site – Objects related to Paik’s work are scattered, plugged, and mapped throughout the surface of the machine. Reprogrammable dynamic media can communicate Paik’s previous works, as well as information on artistic and other happenings from the off-site locations of interest. 3. Physical Engagement – Additional storage areas and unique shelving in the long drawers are incorporated to help the future expansion of the collection, while inducing curiosity, interactivity, and playful engagement.
4. Production Lab – Inside the machine is reading, installation, video laboratories, and a space also for debates and group workshops. 5. “Representation Cells” – Content is also generated by users who can contribute to the information exchange. Small spaces or vitrines are made available for public display. 6. Library “Machinettes,” The Propagation Aides – Parts of the machine can detach as independent modules and can freely travel to other rooms or even outdoors to perform communicative functions, such as video projections or sound performances.
Architects: N H D M / Nahyun Hwang + David Eugin Moon
Related Links:
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Architecture, Culture & society, Interaction design
at
14:34
Defined tags for this entry: architects, architecture, art, content, culture & society, design (environments), history, interaction design
Monday, December 31. 2012Here are some balloons, they are floating...
And a last post on | rblg for this year, a "balloonesque" and well-timed one with this installation by William Forsythe.
Included are all our best wishes and joy for 2013!
Patrick
Via It's Nice That
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Posted by Ross Bryant, Wednesday 21 November 2012
We’ve seen some fantastic installation art recently, ranging from the Interactive Thunderstorm in Philadelphia, to The Rain Room in London. And now – joy of joys – we’re reflecting on more amazing installation art for y’all to dive into. This time we’re in the Bockenhelmer Depot, in Frankfurt, Germany. Ready? Right, let’s GO! The magical spacial installation Scattered Crowds was conceived of by multi-disciplinary artist William Forsythe. Thousands of white balloons are suspended in the air, accompanied by a wash of music, emphasising “the air-borne landscape of relationships, distance, of humans and emptiness, of coalescence and decision”. Obviously, keep your eyes open and finish reading my little post, but this installation is well worth taking five; Put some tunes on and visualise your world surrounded by balloons. What would you do? How would you move? And that’s the physical point of the installation – you’re forced to interact with each balloon which requires effort to manoeuvre, dodge, dance pass, or simply run headlong through like a sexually charged elephant. William’s installation draws this out of everybody who interacts with it, replicating the emotions and decisions of people. With this in mind, please – no pins!
Related Links:Thursday, November 08. 2012Quantum physics into insane interactive artwork thanks to Tomas Saraceno
Via It's Nice That ----- Posted by Rob Alderson
Tomas Saraceno: On Space Time Foam (photo by Alessandro Cocco)
Tomas Saraceno: On Space Time Foam (photo by Alessandro Cocco)
However ruddy excellent your week is shaping up to be, I’d put good money on the fact that you’d change your plans if it meant a trip to Tomas Saraceno’s new creation. The ever ambitious Argentine has taken over the huge Hangar Biocca in Milan with On Space Time Foam, a series of transparent membranes suspended 24 metres in the air. It’s an extension of the Cloud Cities project which took over the roof of the Met in New York earlier this year, and once again the emphasis is very much on interaction.
You’d need a head for heights to take the leap of faith out onto the piece and you need a head for complex physics to grasp the ideas behind it, inspired as it is by “quantum and string theories that assert that the fundamental layer of existence, the subatomic Planck realm (where intriguing physical theories of wormholes and multiverses exist, where superposition, decoherence and entanglement occur) is in fact structured as a foam.” “String theoreticians have speculated that the Big Bang, the origin of our known cosmos, emerged from two such tremendously sized membranes crashing into one another,” he goes on, “sparking the superluminal expansion of energy-matter that typifies our early inflating foamy cosmos.” Mmmmm, foamy cosmos. Ok he lost me, but it’s still brilliant. To Milan! The show runs until February.
Tomas Saraceno: On Space Time Foam (photo by Alessandro Cocco)
Tomas Saraceno: On Space Time Foam (photo by Alessandro Cocco)
Tomas Saraceno: On Space Time Foam (photo by Alessandro Cocco)
Tomas Saraceno: On Space Time Foam (photo by Alessandro Cocco)
Related Links:Thursday, November 01. 2012Demon Hill #2 designed by Julian HoeberVia Archinect
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LA-based artist Julian Hoeber created his installation (for a gallery in West Chelsea) which make visitors deliberately uncomfortable by distorting their sense of balance. Without the use of strobe lights or fake skeletons, Demon Hill 2 can make visitors queasy.
Monday, October 15. 2012Rain Room by rAndom International
Via Dezeen -----
Visitors can play in the rain without getting wet in this installation by interactive designers rAndom International at the Barbican in London (+ slideshow).
Located in The Curve gallery, Rain Room is a perpetual rain shower which lets visitors feel the moisture in the air and hear the sound of rain while remaining untouched by drops of water. Cameras installed around the room detect human movements and send instructions to the rain drops to continually move away from visitors.
The water drips through a grid in the floor where it is treated before being sent back up to the ceiling to fall again. Formed in 2005 by former Royal College of Art students Hannes Koch, Florian Ortkrass and Stuart Wood, rAndom International has created a number of installations involving audience participation.
“Rain Room is the first time that we’ve extended the level of our experimentation to the huge public space that is The Curve at the Barbican,” rAndom International told Dezeen. “Our other work has performed on a more intimate scale in terms of size and engagement, but what’s common to most of our projects is that they extract interesting behaviour from the viewers,” they added.
Their proposal to create a rain shower inside the gallery didn’t faze the curators. “The curatorial team around Jane Alison has not blinked once in view of the actual implications of realising the Rain Room at The Curve – a never-done-before project featuring thousands of litres of water above a BBC recording studio and right next to a theatre and concert hall in a public art gallery.”
The designers have also collaborated again with British choreographer Wayne McGregor, whose Random Dance company will perform short ‘interventions’ in the Rain Room to a score by Max Richter on selected Sundays during the exhibition. “Working with Wayne and Random Dance has always been very rewarding, as his perspective seems to complement our way of working extremely well,” said the designers. Earlier this year Dezeen featured their collaboration for the Future Self project at MADE in Berlin, in which a lighting installation mapped and replicated human movement.
Rain Room isn’t the first weather-related art installation to appear on Dezeen – we’ve also featured a moving cloud of raindrops in a Singapore airport and an LED sign in a London park displaying yesterday’s weather.
Photographs are by Felix Clay.
See all our stories about weather »
----- Here’s the full press release from the Barbican:
Rain Room by rAndom International at The Curve, Barbican Centre, London The exhibition is supported by Arts Council England. Rain Room has been made possible through the generous support of the Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation for Art. Known for their distinctive approach to digital-based contemporary art, rAndom International’s experimental artworks come alive through audience interaction. Their largest and most ambitious installation yet, Rain Room is a 100 square metre field of falling water for visitors to walk through and experience how it might feel to control the rain. On entering The Curve the visitor hears the sound of water and feels moisture in the air before discovering the thousands of falling droplets that respond to their presence and movement. Rain Room opens in The Curve on 4 October 2012. Kate Bush, Head of Art Galleries, Barbican Centre, said: The Curve has previously played host to guitar-playing finches, a World War II bunker and a digital bowling alley. rAndom International have created a new work every bit as audacious and compelling – Rain Room surpasses all our expectations. At the cutting edge of digital technology, Rain Room is a carefully choreographed downpour – a monumental installation that encourages people to become performers on an unexpected stage, while creating an intimate atmosphere of contemplation. The work also invites us to explore what role science, technology and human ingenuity might play in stabilising our environment by rehearsing the possibilities of human adaptation. rAndom International said: Rain Room is the latest in a series of projects that specifically explore the behaviour of the viewer and viewers: pushing people outside their comfort zones, extracting their base auto-responses and playing with intuition. Observing how these unpredictable outcomes will manifest themselves, and the experimentation with this world of often barely perceptible behaviour and its simulation is our main driving force. Finding a common purpose as students at the Royal College of Art, rAndom International was founded in 2005 by Hannes Koch, Florian Ortkrass and Stuart Wood. Today the studio is based in Chelsea – with an outpost in Berlin – and includes a growing team of diverse talent. With an ethos of experimentation into human behaviour and interaction, they employ new technologies in radical, often unexpected ways to create work which also draws on op art, kinetics and post-minimalism. rAndom International have gained international recognition, inspiring audiences from broad multidisciplinary interests. A breakthrough work of 2008, Audience, marked rAndom’s first installation with audience participation. Motorised mirrors disconcertingly respond to human activity in their midst in inquisitive, synchronised movements, with the viewer becoming both active agent and subject of the piece. Swarm, a light work of 2010, emulates the behaviour of birds in flight: the sound created by the presence of visitors causes the abundant individual light sources to respond in swarm-like formations. With Future Self, a new commission by MADE Berlin in 2012, the studio explores the direct interaction of the viewer with the full body image of the self, represented in light in three-dimensions. Other notable commissions include Reflex, a large scale light installation that inhabited the windows of London’s Wellcome Trust for one year, and the studio’s scenography for Wayne McGregor’s production, FAR, presently on world tour. rAndom International’s kinetically responsive sculpture Fly was premiered at the last Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, while intelligent light installation Swarm Study / III is on display permanently at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London. rAndom International are represented by Carpenters Workshop Gallery, London and Paris. An overview of their work, Before the Rain, is on show in Paris 8 September – 21 December 2012. Prior to this they have exhibited at Tate Studio at Tate Modern, Pinakothek Der Moderne, Munich and Museum of Modern Art, New York. They have won a number of awards including Designer of the Future 2010, Prix Ars Electronica – Honourable Mention, CR – Creative Futures Award, Wallpaper* Award and were listed in the Observer’s Top Ten Creative Talent in the UK. Earlier works form part of the permanent collections at the Frankel Foundation for Art, the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.
Related Links:
Posted by Patrick Keller
in Interaction design
at
08:38
Defined tags for this entry: design (environments), designers, exhibitions, installations, interaction design, monitoring, weather
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fabric | rblgThis 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. Most articles concern the intertwined fields of architecture, territory, art, interaction design, thinking and science. From time to time, we also publish documentation about our own work and research, immersed among these related resources and inspirations. This website is used by fabric | ch as archive, references and resources. It is shared with all those interested in the same topics as we are, in the hope that they will also find valuable references and content in it.
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