I just got back from Lisbon where I saw, amongst other things, the Gulbenkian Museum. Ok… it has very little to do with interactive architecture, but I was so inspired by it that I decided to write about it anyway.
The thing that really struck me walking through the museum was the balance throughout. I don’t mean in a the-building-is-almost-falling-down-but-not kinda way: I’m referring to an unusually great combination of art and architecture, and how it felt.
The museum building was designed by a team made up of the architects Ruy Jervis d’Athouguia, Pedro Cid and Alberto Pessoa and hints (rather strongly) at inspiration from Mies van der Rohe. The building’s minimalist concrete form sits in a beautifully landscaped park, concealing bunker-like yet welcoming rooms of marble and wood floors and ceilings. Blinds obscuring the view to outside through floor to ceiling windows reduce the outside image almost to paintings.
Inside, one of the most amazing art collections I’ve ever seen is actually given the space it deserves. The minimalist architecture is the perfect backdrop for an intricately crafted collection which includes everything from Egyptian treasures to Chinese and Japanese tapestries and ceramics, to Rembrants, Rubens’, and Monets. I’m not an art historian, by any stretch of the imagination, but clearly only the best was good enough for this collector.
That one man managed to gather this collection is unbelievable. That it has all ended up together in this setting is even more amazing. In a time when I’m thinking more and more about interactive and reactive installations, and the opportunities an increasing number of permanent commissions will bring, 2 hours walking through the Gulbenkian has reminded me in the significance of balance. Although completely static, save the variation of the small amount of natural light entering the museum, I would dare describe the resulting feeling of being in this museum as immersive. The combination of light, minimal architecture, a subtle connection to the surrounding landscape and an extremely detailed collection of artworks, drew everyone in a way I’ve rarely experienced. I could go on about this forever but I won’t – I guess I just look forward to seeing more and more interactive installations that find this balance too.
Another great project by LAb[au], “fLUX binary waves” is an urban and cybernetic installation based on the measuring of infrastructural ( passengers, cars…) and communicational ( electromagnetic fields produced by mobile phones, radio…) flows and their transposition into luminous, sonic and kinetic rules.
This relation between the installation and the urban activity happens in real time and sets each person as an element of the installation, as a centre of the public realm. The installation fLUX, binary waves is constituted by a network of 32 rotating and luminous panels of 3 meter-high and 60 centimetres wide, placed every 3 meters to form a kinetic wall.
The panels rotate around their vertical axis, and have a black reflective surface on one side, the other being plain mat white. Their rotation is controlled by microprocessors, allowing to determine precisely the rotation speed and angle, while their networking allows to synchronise the movement of the 32 panels.
The microprocessors are connected to infrared sensors, capturing the surrounding infrastructural flows, defining the frequency and amplitude of the rotation. According to this set up, each impulse is transmitted from one panel to the other, describing visual waves running from one side of the installation to the other, and then bouncing back while progressively loosing oscillation. All these principles relate the ‘micro-events’ happening in the area to a unified play of light, colours and sounds directly derived from the rhythm of the city flows.
As such, the installation proposes an urban sign having as subject the ‘urban’ and as message to be a catalyst of urbanity via the transcription of urban flows in a contemporary play of kinetics, lights and sound.
Materials & Applications is a research center that I’ve written about a couple of times because of the wonderful large scale installations that are built there every year. It is a residential space “dedicated to pushing new and underused ideas for art, landscape and architecture into view.”
Above and below is a recent installation Density Fields an “extreme cantilever” built from aluminum and polypropylene rope hung over the courtyard between October 2007 – March 2008. Defying classification as either sculpture or architecture, the piece flexed with a gesture that extends imaginary lines of force beyond the small courtyard, seeming to pierce buildings and the neighborhood.
I just found a little video by Cool Hunting that takes a closer look at the works that have been shown there, from the golden vortex of Maximillian’s Schell to “Bubbles,”by Foxlin (Michael Fox and Juintow Lin), NONDesigns (Miao Miao and Scott Franklin) and Brand Name Label (Gabriel Renz) with Axel Kilian, Darius Miller, and numerous talented volunteers.
Sitting down with Materials & Applications founder Jenna Didier and technical director Oliver Hess, the short video shows the story behind their innovative space for experimental architecture.
Installation artist Shih Chieh Huang transforms spaces with everyday objects. His most recent project “EX-I-09″ currently on show at the Beall Center for Art + Technology focuses on exploring the unusual evolutionary adaptations undertaken by creatures that reside in inhospitable conditions.
Huang creates analogous ecosystems made from common, everyday objects. “I source my wholly synthetic materials from the mundane objects that comprise our modern existence: household appliances, zip ties, water tubes, lights, computer parts, motorized toys and the like. The objects are dissected and disassembled as needed and reconstructed into experimental primitive organisms that reside on the fringes of evolutionary transformation: computer cooling fans are repurposed for locomotion; Tupperware serves as a skeletal framework; guitar tuner rewired to detect sound; and automatic night lights become a sensory input. ”
Korean artist, Choe U Ram, creates massive, precision engineered sculptures with an eerie organic feel. He uses cut and polished metals, machinery and electronics to create kinetic sculptures inspired by sea creatures and plant life.
Exploring the boundaries of archeological discovery and developmental morphology, Choe’s explanations and Latin titles for these creations follow the linguistic traditions of scientific nomenclature.
Telling stories using gestural transformation and the tracing of imagined evolutionary stages, these pieces take on the silhouette of actual life forms, as intricate automata express a refined delicacy and weightlessness.
Unexpected and fantastical, Choe’s kinetic simulations cyclically breathe with movement that recalls aquatic propulsion, flight and ritualistic courtship displays.
About once every couple of months one of my students sends me a video of ART+COM‘s mechatronic installation, made up of 714 metal balls for the BMW museum. ART+COM describe it as “a spatial translation of a design process. Seemingly weightless and guided solely by the power of the mind, the sculpture moves through a cycle of free abstractions and typical BMW vehicle forms.”
I just came accross the work of Joe Gilbertsons formally similar kinetic installation and thought I’d place the two side by side. While one is majestic in its use of precision motors and software systems, there is something equally majestic in Gilbertson’s use of simple motors and cranks.
