Posts filed under 'Interactive'
Philip Beesley - Implant Matrix
In a couple of weeks, I’m flying of to this years ACADIA Conference held in Nova Scotia, Canada where I will be presenting my recent installation Performative Ecologies as well as taking part in the Metabolic Network sensory workshop which looks like its going to be really interesting. The workshop will accommodate up to 25 participants who are interested in some of the following areas: concept of interactivity, modeling of dynamic systems, software craft, sensors and actuators, fabrication and textile arts. Details of the workshop can be found below and if that sounds of interest to you contact Acadia07workshops@dal.ca
SeaUnSea - Mette Ramsgard Thomsen In collaboration with dance choreographer Carol Brown
Metabolism, in living systems, has two aspects: anabolism (which means building up), and catabolism (or breaking down). These processes, part of all living systems, carry a particular resonance with respect to present-day concerns about sustainable environments. This two-day workshop, on the theme of “Metabolic Network”, brings together five researchers working in the area of electronic sensing in art and design, with a special focus on textiles and architectural-scale applications. The network will be a large installation made from a field of suspended fibers that have different properties: such as elasticity, conductivity, dissolvability, or luminosity. By joining the fibers together, a field of possibilities open up and patterns within the field emerge. The use of sensors and actuators, both electronic and mechanical, will provide dynamic and responsive features in the network. The result will be a metabolic network that emerges, acts and self-destructs over the course of the two-day period.
Loop.pH Sonumbra
The metabolic network will serve as a playground to explore the potentials of sensors and actuators hooked up to a responsive architecture. It will serve as the common medium for the work of the five invited researchers, each expert in some aspect of electronic sensing, textile design or architectural form-making.
Workshop leaders are:
- Philip Beesley (architect and artist, associate professor and co-director, Integrated Centre for Visualization, Design and Manufacturing, University of Waterloo)
- Carole Collet (course director MA Textile Futures, Central Saint Martins College of Art, London)
- Mette Ramsgard Thomsen (architect and researcher, head of Centre for Interactive Technologies and Architecture at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen)
- Rachel Wingfield and Mathias Gmachl (Wingfield is an electronic textile designer and lecturer at Central Saint Martins and the Royal College of Art, London; Gmachl is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher. Together, they form the design research studio Loop.ph, based in London)
September 17th, 2007
At the Tate last saturday Jason Bruges Studio talked about a number of their recent projects including this one called ‘wind to light’ which you may have seen featured in the press earlier in the summer, Jason described how it was created to inspire people to think creatively about the spaces that surround them and explore the sustainable alternatives to developing our built environment.
‘Wind to light’ is a custom built, site-specific installation consisting of 500 miniature wind turbines directly generating the power to illuminate hundreds of integrally mounted LEDs (light-emitting diodes). the effect is to create ‘firefly-like fields of light’ where the wind can be visualized as an ephemeral electronic cloud in the atmosphere. the turbine and LED modules are attached to their base by flexible poles which allow them to slightly sway in the wind, animating the movement of the wind by a digital, electronic means.
The self-powered, autonomous installation illustrates the simplicity and directness of wind power and its potential, literally and symbolically closing the gap between power generation and consumption. wind to light presents wind power in a visually tangible way and one that is characterised primarily by its resultant output rather than process. it eloquently illustrates the silent power of wind. Wind to light presents the perspective that wind power can be an attractive or even potentially beautiful addition to the landscape, contrary to many widespread opinions that wind turbines are a man-made, visual and physical intrusion upon scenery and its natural beauty.
The relocation of wind power from the rural environment to urban surroundings literally brings it closer to us and suggests that as our requirements from wind power have evolved since the use of windmills so should our attitudes towards its application and location. perhaps wind turbines are more suited within the man made environment than nature where they are alien and their need is divorced from them.
September 16th, 2007
Its been a busy past week in London with events at the Tate and the very interesting 2 day conference on Media Architecture held at Central Saint Martins. I”ll cover these in detail over the coming days. Meanwhile, on Sunday I managed to catch up with Daan Roosegaarde for a few drinks and talk about his most recent interactive installations including Flow 5.0 (pictured above). Daan describes Flow as "An interactive sculpture made out of hundreds of ventilators which are reacting to your sound and motion. By walking and interacting an illusive landscape of transparancies and ‘artificial wind’ is created. Moving through Flow 5.0 the visitor becomes conscious of himself as a body, in a dynamic relation with space and technology. Currently Flow 5.0 is further developed as a large architectural intervention commissioned by TodaysArt.”
What I find interesting about Daan’s approach is that his installations are not simply built and shipped off to various exibitions so that everyone sees the same work. Instead, he is continually developing his existing installations adapting the software and materials to new contexts, and strategies of interaction. He’s also open about how his work is very much a team effort with the support of programmers, engineers and production assistants who are all given the freedom to push their interests within the work which he conceives of, and creatively directs. I look forward to seeing what Flow 6.0 looks like soon.
September 14th, 2007
Performative Ecologies Film 15Mb
Development of Performative Ecologies Film 25Mb
Website
Well here’s whats been keeping me busy these past months. I got the opportunity to share my most recent collection of responsive environments, collectively called "Performative Ecologies" at the We Love Technology conference a couple of days ago and now I’ve finally found the time to distill a considerable amount of ideas and speculative installations into something manageable to read along with a short film about the culmination of the work as well as a longer film about the development of the project.
Some of the questions at the center of my work are: Fundamentally, what is interactivity? How can we build environments that are interactive as apposed to reactive? What does an interactive architecture offer us over a reactive architecture? What does interactive architecture offer us over the lifetime of the buildings and wider landscape we inhabit? These questions go back much further than this particular project, and in fact, were the reason I started this blog in the first place.
If I was to try and sum it up in a sentence, it is fundamentally about giving our architecture the ability to enter into dialog with us, rather than simply respond with fixed behaviours to fixed commands from us, to learm from its experiences and adapt its behaviours, to suggest new spatial configurations and see how we respond. Very often I find that so called ‘interactive environments’ rarely enable the architecture to negotiate its behaviours , but rather follow pre-choreographed routines when triggered. More broadly, a great deal of misuse of the term ‘interactive’ is common in art, design and architectural discourse and I believe that this has diluted its true meaning and huge potential. My description of “Performative Ecologies” should reveal some of the ideas I’ve developed, and present where I think the most interesting possibilities exist. Please let me know what you think.
Full description of Project
July 20th, 2007
As part of the Interactive Architecture event at Eyebeam in January, Marek Walczak spoke about his own work and collaborations with Martin Wattenberg who together make up MW2MW and his collaborations with Jakub Segen and Michael McAllister who together make up Kinecity.
Marek’s collaborations span between physical and virtual spaces. Larges scale responsive architectural facades, interactive tables, new forms of data visualizations and virtual environments are within their combined repertoire but for the purposes of this post I’m just going to show a few pieces of work off that Marek presented at Eyebeam.
The Podium Light Wall
currently in construction check out this interactive demo
The Podium Light Wall is located on the South and North facades of 7 World Trade Center. As people wander on the pavement below a strip of blue light gracefully follows them. This strip of blue light is 7 floors tall and is visible from Freedom Park.
The Podium Wall accentuates the individual, and the patterns that are created as many pass by together. Kinecity designed the interactive element of the design for James Carpenter Design Assoc. who were the responsible for the wall as an art piece.
Shimmer Wall
The Shimmer Wall is located in the link between the two buildings of the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City. A place of contemplation designed by James Carpenter Design Associates, the wall projects the subtle shimmering light as the sun plays with the Hudson River.
Kinecity have designed the camera recognition system that recognizes the shimmer on the water. Moving and zooming throughout the day on a very slow orbit, the artificial intelligence system tracks the beauty of light reflecting off water, through which on occasion a ferry or yacht passes by.
Dialog Table
Dialog Table is a shared interface where you use hand gestures to discover more about any dynamic information. Several people can gather around and together explore the table’s movies, narratives and 3D journeys. The table provides an opportunity for people to discuss with each other their thoughts on what they have seen, whether it be an artwork. a game or a service. The first Dialog Table was commissioned by the Walker Art Center as a permanent installation in their museum. The table won an international design competition to promote social interactions among visitors, to provide access to the Walker’s multidisciplinary collections, and to facilitate learning about art.
March 5th, 2007
David Benjamin and Soo-in Yang of ‘The Living’ Architects presented their recent work at the Interactive Architecture event I organised at Eyebeam last month. They have just released 2 lovely little books called ‘Life Size‘ 1 & 2 which explore the possibility of creating open source design processes. The first volume of Life Size includes ‘DIY directions for making a responsive kinetic system, an energy self-sufficient display, and a collapsible framing structure out of weak materials.’ & the second volume of this series includes essays by Yoseph Bar-Cohen, Livia Corona, Holly Kretschmar, Seth Mnookin, William Wu and SISYPHUS.
Whats most interesting for me about David and Soo-ins work is their methodology they call "flash research," which they define as an architectural research project with a budget under $1000 and a ninety-day timeline, expected to result in a fully functioning, 1:1 scale prototype. To me this seems a challenging approach that forces you to consider low tech solutions rather than spending a fortune on answering problems often with unsustainable answers.
When interviewed by Metropolis Magazine David discussed how each Flash Research project is driven by a specific query. “The initial question for Living Glass was: What if architecture responded to you?” Benjamin says. “ We asked, What if good architecture and bottom-line development were the same thing?” Rather than simply creating computer models, they decided that to prove their solution they would need to test it, down to the exact thickness of the plywood or joint necessary for a design to be successful.
David and Soo-in run a graduate class at Columbia Architecture school where with their students, they continue to experiment with these ideas of rapid experimentation often in the context of responsive & kinetic spatial design. Check out their website where you can find out more about their projects such as living River Glow, a network of pods that act as an interface between the water quality of the river and local inhabitants awareness of environmental conditions and Living Glass, a silent transforming and transparent surface that responds to inhabitants proximity.
Also check out his video interview with David and Soo-in
February 28th, 2007
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