Posts filed under 'Visual'
I’m going to spend a couple of weeks looking at ideas around movement, in art and architecture, If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear from you. I’m going to start with some images from early works and lead up to whats been happening more recently.
above left - Naum Gabo’s Standing Wave, above right - an Alexander Calder Mobile
Kinetic art depends on motion for its effects. Since the early twentieth century artists have been incorporating movement into art partly to explore the possibilities of movement, partly to introduce the element of time, partly to reflect the importance of the machine and technology in the modern world, partly to explore the nature of vision. Movement has either been produced mechanically by motors or by exploiting the movements of people, air, water, and other kinetic forces in space. A pioneer of Kinetic art was Naum Gabo with his motorised Standing Wave of 1919-20. Mobiles were pioneered by Alexander Calder from about 1930. Kinetic art became a major phenomenon of the late 1950s and the 1960s.
Marcel Duchamp was the first artist in modern times to use actual movement to explore the mechanics of seeing. The above image is Rotary Glass Plates (Precision Optics), propellerlike pieces of glass painted with black and white lines and mounted on a sturdy metal rotating axle, made in 1920 with the help of his Man Ray. As the motor-driven axle turns, the lines on the separate pieces of glass appear to join up and form complete circles. The Rotary Glass Plates, however, set something of an aesthetic standard. Improvised from an unlikely assortment of materials, motorized, the movement cumbersome and somewhat alarming to watch (one dreads that a glass fragment will detach and become airborne), the overall effect remarkable–this was to become the pattern for many kinetic works over the next five decades.
Above Laszlo Moholy-Nagy’s Light-Space Modulator (1922-30), assembled from what looks like a selection of kitchen utensils, is a classic early successor, its collection of metal plates, wires and wooden balls revolving in the beam of two powerful spotlights to create a shadow dance on the adjacent walls.
November 13th, 2006
The ‘Power Aware Cord‘ transports electrical power while simultaneously visualizing energy usage. Electricial transfer is represented through glowing pulses, flow, and intensity of light.
The Power Aware Cord was developed by Anton Gustafsson and Magnus Gyllenswärd at Static!, a joint project between the Swedish Interactive Institute’s POWER and RE:FORM studios investigating interaction design as a means of increasing our awareness of how energy is used and for stimulating changes in energy behavior They believe that expressing the presence of energy through light can inspire people to explore and reflect upon the energy consumption of electrical devices in their home. The Power Aware Cord represents a different approach to green design- one not necessarily rooted in materiality, but focused on user experience and the visual representation of relevant issues. via inhabitat
November 8th, 2006
Building Design Magazine (BD) has published an article by Elaine Knutt discussing the potential for telematic experiences to be constructed in public spaces by the use of interactive architectural surfaces. Telematics (tele-communication and informatics) broadly explores how communication has transformed our experience of social connectivity and new emergining patterns of communication and power structures.
visualisation of how a waterfall image would look projected on to Canary Wharf.
Thanks to this article I was pleased to find out about a new group of artists and architects called bodydataspace ( b>d>s) created by Ghislaine Boddington and Armand Terruli who are exploring ‘the integration of interactive and body-intuitive interfaces into public sites. Bodydataspace have proposed that Canary Wharf, London’s tallest building 235m, have a giant projected waterfall cascading down its facade. The waterfall would not be a computer generated animation but a real-time projection of Angel Falls in Venezuela. the world’s highest free-falling waterfall at 979m.
BDS’s entry to the Lift New Parliament competition was for an inexpensive demountable structure-cum-projection-screen. Audiences inside these mobile venues — in London and Namibia, for instance — could be digitally connected
Ghislaine Boddington is an artist, director, curator and presenter, a specialist in dance/performance and the evolution of body responsive technologies, virtual physical body networks and interactive interfaces. Previously Ghislaine was director and founding member of the London based sound/movement research unit shinkansen (1989-2004). Armand Terruli is an architect of fifteen years who has diversified his design output through interactive exhibition design, audio/visual work and into responsive environments. Over the years Armand has notably designed and project managed galleries at the National Maritime Museum, the Saudi Arabian Pavilion at Lisbon Expo 1998 and the Faith Zone at the Millennium Dome.
Body Data Space’s 3m diameter balloon acts as a projection screen for digital images. It is kept inflated by an integral fan at the top, but is supported by lightweight metal cabling.
November 6th, 2006
While I was looking through maoworks website I noticed they’re working on a project called Sensorama with engineers ARUP, Imperial College, British Telecom and my old art school Central Saint Martins. Unfortunately no information is revealed but it reminded me of the project of the same name developed by Morton Heilig in the 1950’s.
The Sensorama (See Patent Application) was a machine that is one of the earliest known examples of immersive, multi-sensory (now known as multimodal) technology. Morton Heilig saw theater as an activity that could encompass all the senses in an effective manner, thus drawing the viewer into the onscreen activity. He dubbed it “Experience Theater”, and detailed his vision of multi-sensory theater in his 1955 paper entitled “The Cinema of the Future” (Robinett 1994). He built a prototype of his vision, dubbed the Sensorama, along with five short films to be displayed in it. Predating digital computing, the Sensorama was a mechanical device, which still functions today.
Howard Rheingold (in his 1992 book Virtual Reality) spoke of his trial of the Sensorama using a short film piece that detailed a bicycle ride through Brooklyn, created in the 1950s, and still seemed quite impressed by what it could do more than 40 years later. The Sensorama was able to display stereoscopic 3D images in a wide-angle view, provide body tilting, supply stereo sound, and also had tracks for wind and aromas to be triggered during the film. Oddly enough in hindsight, Heilig was unable to obtain financial backing for his visions and patents, and the Sensorama work was halted and today remains primarily a curiosity in the expansive lore of Virtual Reality.
November 3rd, 2006
Imagine a physical sculptural version of a dynamical system in 3d space or a complex particle simulation, the kind that appears as a floating gas vapour. Using a technique called ‘chromastrobic light’ Paul Friedlander conjures spectacular light sculptures that are the ultimate incarnation of the late 60’s light-show aesthetic bought into the now. They also sit nicely in the lineage of waveform art - everything from early artist experiments with oscilloscopes – Laposky, Whitney, Bute et al to recent computational art concerning attractors, particles and Bezier acrobatics.
The work ‘Dark Matter’ appears as a 3 dimensional iridescent waveform, the result of chromastrobic light projected onto a rapidly spinning rope reflected off a Mylar mirror (flexible mirror surface). Because the rope spins at up to 600 rpm the human eye perceives a three dimensional multicoloured image. It doesn’t stop there - spectators can interact with the piece via two high frequency sound beams which alter the speed of the rope’s vibrations and the colour of the light.
Freidlander’s most recent installation, Timeless Universe concerns itself with the alternative cosmological ideas of English physicist Julian Barbour. 10 different kinetic pieces are arranged in groups illuminated by projections showing images from 3 different computers all generating real-time animations that modify, modulate and transform the chosen subject matter.
videos of his earlier work
Its comes as no surprise that Friedlander was an acolyte of the original psychedelic light shows scene the first time round - he built his first light sculptures while a physics student at the University of Sussex before graduating in 1972. via dataisnature
October 16th, 2006
Adam Richards Architects have designed a wind breaker with a difference. Created for a priest to shelter him whilst writing sermons on his roof terrace in central London, this project is conceived as an electronic Annunciation. An undulating screen of woven stainless steel mesh veils a continuous wall of blue polycarbonate panels held in a steel frame which is cantilevered from the building’s roof structure. In the morning the stainless steel blazes with reflected sunlight, whilst in the afternoon natural light causes the polycarbonate to glow blue through the mesh.
At night the polycarbonate is illuminated by hundreds of light emitting diodes integrated into the frame. These are linked to a Geiger Counter, which has been tuned to detect cosmic radiation, the fluctuations of which are registered as pulsing waves of blue light moving across the wall like the aurora borealis.
Sensors detect the movement of people near the screen, translating it into an electronic shadow in the LEDs. In this way the human and cosmic realms are brought to visibility within the same frame, which in turn embraces the space of the terrace whilst revealing the distant skyline of the city.
October 13th, 2006
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