Posts filed under 'Devices'
Exploded Axonometric of his most recent electro-acoustic system
Architect Richard Roberts electro-acoustic systems have been developed to explore the sonic properties of environments, and reveal the way in which sound and space co-habit one another. The system uses speakers and panels of resonating metal and gains its input and mode of operation through the cyclical feedback of sound waves from the environment in which it is placed. It is extremely reactive and capable of changing in real-time to anything that alters the acoustic properties of the environment that it exists within.
Richard using one of his electro-acoustic systems to explore the sonic properties of Fort Brockhurst, Portsmouth
Through this work Richard describes how he “discovered that sound is an effective method with which one can explore first and second order cybernetic principles, and that any observer is an integral and inescapable part of their own acoustic space.” Richard explorative works are refined through iterative processes involving prototypes, experimental models, digital animations and drawings. His work is currently being presented at the Pask Present exhibition being held in Vienna from 26th March to 4th April 2008.
March 25th, 2008
I’m currently over in Vienna settng up my work for the upcoming Pask Present Exhibition which opens tomorrow. If your in the area feel free to join us for the opening night tomorrow (25th March). One of the artists exhibiting is Richard Brown, so I thought I’d show a taste of his work. Richard Brown has a BSc in Computers & Cybernetics and an MA in Fine Art and works as a hybrid artist, inventor and entrepreneur creating interactive and mimetic experiences using a wide variety of media, including the digital, the analogue and the chemical. His works explores the perception of space, time and energy encompassing ideas from cybernetics, artificial life, interaction design, emergence, complexity and alchemy.
Static Machine
Between 1995 and 2001 Richard was a Research Fellow at the Royal College of Art where he created and exhibited three major interactive works Alembic (ICA 1998), Biotica (Siggraph 2000) and the Neural Net Starfish (Millennium Dome 2000). Whist at the RCA Richard also published the book “Biotica: Art, Emergence and Artificial- Life“. He has been an Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the Victorian College of Art, Melbourne University, and artist-in-residence at CEMA (Centre for Electronic Media Arts), Monash University.In 2006 Richard was invited by Edinburgh Informatics to be their first Research Artist in Residence. In this role, he has developed projects combining art, informatics and communications research.
Here are a selection of projects of his but you can see many more at the Pask Present Exhibition.
Electromagnetic Time Machine 1983
An electromagnetic kinetic sculpture using the cybernetic principle of regulatory feedback to generate complex oscillatory behaviour. Each electromagnetic relay is physically coupled to a vertical pendulum and electrically influenced by its immediate neighbour. When a relay closes it causes the relay in front to close only if the relay behind is open, thus creating a regulatory feedback loop with unstable oscillations due to the differing physical weightings of the vertical pendulums. A simple PIR sensor activates the work, the pulsing lights indicating the closing and opening of each relay.
Cybernetics concerns itself with any type of system that involves sensing and feedback, biological, ecological, mechanical and chemical. Gordon Pask created cybernetic feedback mechanisms using electromechanical and analogue components in his works, such as “Colloquy of mobiles” in the same vein, Time Machine represents an alternative paradigm to the digital.
Dendritics I, II and III
The Electrochemical System is inspired by Gordon Pask’s early experiments with electrochemistry. The central negatively charged copper electrode of each glass is surrounded by four positively charged copper electrodes. Copper dendrites grow from the central electrode reaching out to the outer electrodes. The plates are connected so that each glass is in competition with the other, more charge being consumed by the fastest growing dendrite. Each outer electrode is connected via an LED whose brightness indicates the voltage difference.
This work represents an experiment in using dendritic growth as self regulating switching mechanisms, as a dendrite grows, it consumes more potential in competition with other dendrites trying to grow from the same power source. Pask describes the possibilities of chemical computing, the energy systems involved and illustrates a number of circuit possibilities for dendritic circuits on pp 105–108 in his book “An approach to Cybernetics”, Pask 1961.
March 24th, 2008
Here’s an interesting wind powered streetlight from the Panasonic Center in Tokyo that I found on hyperexperience blog run by Leonardo Bonanni of MediaLab. I’m a big fan of using these Vertical Axis Wind Turbines for integrating into urban skylines when traditional propellers often seem too dramatic.
January 28th, 2008
Michael Wihart explored how ecologies of small machines made of nanotechnological and biotechnological elements might be able to swarm together to create architectural space and developed notions of how these spaces might reconfigure over time. Here’s some images of his work and some thoughts of his on the issues he raises.
“The decadence and redundancy of the integrity of architectural thinking needs to be constantly questioned in order to reveal if architecture can be a source for the sentimental titillation. The embarrassing meanders of architecture into the challenge of the feasibility must be extended into the poetry of spatial mediation. the process of designing can no longer be solely functional and operational. The creation of an architecture which is embedded in the mythical knowledge of the future enables us to extend the sentiment of in-habitation into the realm of co-existence.”
“Certainly this vision can be engaged to fulfil the concupiscence of a few heroic models but the question if this architecture can establish a casing of affirmative cultural emergence which is the source and site for the engagement of individuals with the fate of their co-habitants, is a different one. Architecture therefore stands for the manifestation of the ambivalence of the transience and the after-effect of the notion of co-existence. But when architects by themselves abandon and forget to realise fantasies which have always already been lost in the dawn of the socialisation, where then will we find the sites for the staging of our sentiments?”
January 18th, 2008
Marcos Cruz is a practising architect who lives and works in London. He is a co-founder of marcosandmarjan, as well as a Lecturer at the Bartlett UCL (Unit 20). His individual research is dedicated to a future vision of the body in architecture, questioning the contemporary relationship between the human flesh and the architectural flesh. In a time when a pervasive discourse about the impact of digital technologies risks turning the architectural ‘skin’ ever more disembodied, his aim is to put forward the notion of a Thick Embodied Flesh by exploring architectural interfaces that are truly inhabitable.
Conceptually his work delves into the arena of disgust on which the notion of an aesthetic flesh is standing, and it explores new types of ‘neoplasmatic’ conditions in which the future possibility of a neo-biological flesh lies. He proposes Synthetic Neoplasms as new semi-living entities that are identified as partly designed object and partly living material, in which the line between the natural and the artificial is progressively blurred. Hybrid technologies and interdisciplinary work methodologies are required, leading to a revision of our current architectural practice. In his research Marcos Cruz proposes Flesh as a concept that extends the meaning of skin as one of architecture’s most contemporary metaphors.
He recently was awarded his doctorate at the Bartlett for a series of investigations into flesh. Here’s a synopsis of the projects
and here’s an interesting conversation i found between Marcos and his Partner Marjan Colletti on Inhabitation of the Body and Toys
January 17th, 2008
Architects ‘The Living‘ did a great presentation on their design approach to rapid low cost prototyping of interactive environments and construction techniques last year at the ‘Interactive Architecture & Media’ symposium I organised at Eyebeam last February. They’re currently having an exhibition at the Van Alen Institute gallery in New York running till January 18th, so if your in the area I recommend having a look. Below is a synopsis on their research. Using three parallel tracks of research they are exploring three definitions of the Living City.
Video Introduction to Living City
1. The living city – a platform for the future when buildings talk to one another
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“In the future, buildings will talk to one another. In the era of ubiquitous computing—as sensors disappear into the woodwork and all kinds of data is transferred instantly and wirelessly—buildings will communicate information about their local conditions to a network of other buildings. Architecture will come to life. Living City is an ecology of facades where individual buildings collect data, share it with others in their social network, and respond to the collective body of knowledge.”
2. An exploration of the vitality of the city through new forms of public space—air and facade
“In the future, public space in the city will be everywhere. Air will be public space. Building facades will be public space. Both will belong equally to everyone in the city, no less valuable than the traditional fixed public space of parks and streets. At the intersection of air and facade, public space will be distributed and dynamic. Architecture will come to life. Living City is a definition of air as public space and building facades as public space.”
3. A prototype facade that breathes in response to air quality
In the future, walls will breathe. Construction materials and systems that have been inert for thousands of years will respond in real time to the dynamic conditions of their surroundings and to a larger network of data. Buildings will host public interfaces to air quality and make visible the invisible conditions of the environment. Architecture will come to life. Living City is a full-scale building skin designed to open and close its gills in response to air quality.”
January 14th, 2008
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