‘E-Static Shadows‘ is a practise-based experimental research project by designer Dr. Zane Berzina and architect Jackson Tan which creatively explores the speculative and poetic potential of static electricity found in our everyday environments, surrounding our everyday interactions. The aim of the project is to investigate how electrostatic energy could either be effectively utilised or play a part in the development of active, responsive and interactive textile systems which would be capable of detecting, translating and displaying this energy into dynamic audio-visual patterns. This design pilot project studies the possible translations of electrostatic energy into other types of energy such as light, sound and motion using specially engineered intelligent textile systems as mediators and displays for these processes.
The electronic textile acts as a static mirror responding to the usually invisible charges generated by people interacting with materials and making them visible. Equipped with tiny LED lights, transistors and woven electronic circuits seamlessly integrated into the electronic textiles structure, the installation is able to create transient shadows on the textile display in areas which detect a presence of electrostatic fields, feeding on the charges created by viewers and objects. Simultaneously it acts as a simple sonic instrument in response to the presence and intensity of charges and human proximity.
Static electricity is one of the oldest known physical phenomena. The ancient Greeks noticed the amazing ability of amber, once rubbed, to attract light materials despite gravitational forces. Because of its electrostatic properties amber in Greek means ‘electron’.
For a long time electrostatic continued to be a source of mystery and amazement, before the rational and scientific approach to understanding the world came about. In the early 17th century fascinating devices and machines that tread between the boundaries of magic and science, conceptually and perceptually, were evolved through the unravelling of static electricity, including the first electrostatic generator by Otto van Guericke. In 1901 various scientific experiments culminated into Dr. Nikola Tesla’s plan to wirelessly broadcast electrostatic power to the whole world from his facility at Wardenclyffe in New York.
Teslas Wardenclyffe Facility
Public electrostatic demonstrations and performances easily became one of the crowds’ favourite entertainments in the 17th to 19th century due to its seemingly miraculous, contradicting experiences. Just one example is Stephen Gray’s experiment premiered in London in 1730.
The famous “flying boy” used to demonstrate electrical polarity in suspended objects.
He suspended an eight year old boy in mid air, utilising the human body as a medium for static electricity, attracting paper and light objects to the boy’s negatively charged face and hands. This type of showmanship converged both artistic and scientific fields of endeavour creating discourse about the employment of human architecture as a medium for interactions with the environment within the context of electrostatics.
A Computer in the Art Room by Catherine Mason gives a detailed insight into the collaboration of art and cybernetics in Britain from the 1950s to the 1980s. With a historical focus, the author concentrates initially on the growth of the avant-garde artistic movement and the early computer industry, then moves on to give a fascinating view of the artists who took the technology of the time and consistently pushed the limits to produce the artworks they envisaged.
The narrative contrasts the difference between the conservative computer science establishment and the difficulties faced by pioneering artists who learned not only to use the computers of the time, but to write their own code and even build their own equipment, paving the way for the computer graphics industry as we know it today.
Images From Cybernetic Serendipity Exhibition, ICA London 1968
Daniel Chadwick’s principal works are mobiles made up of “Kinetic Solar Systems” that revolve using tiny solar-powered motors to propel perfectly balanced discs.
‘Beacon’, by Chris O’Shea & Cinimod Studio is a kinetic light installation with a mind of its own. An array of emergency beacon lights interacts with visitors, tracking their movement through the space, creating an immersive and playful experience.
The installation exploits a transfer of technologies from existing industrial products. The beacon lights have had their internal parts replaced with custom hardware, enabling the rotation of the reflector and lamp brightness to be individually controlled. Thermal imaging cameras have been adapted to track the participants’ movement through the space.
‘Beacon’ is orchestrated in real-time by a bespoke control system, which uses tracking information from the cameras to coordinate an interactive and highly responsive behavior.
Wall of Eyes by Adrian Baynes is an interactive public artwork, comprising of 225 mannequin eyes, which follow the viewer through space.
Its just one of the kinetic installations showing for the first time at Kinetica Art Fair opening today (Friday 27/02/09). More information to follow but if your about London this weekend, it looks worth a visit.
One of the special mentions in the VIDA 11.0 exhibition went to Carnivorous Domestic Entertainment Robots project by James Auger, Jimmy Loizeau, Alex Zivanovic, and Trevor Harvey currently exists as a series of five semi-operational prototypes: Mousetrap coffee table robot, Lampshade robot, Cobweb robot, UV fly killer parasite robot, and Flypaper robotic clock . The robots take the form of beautiful and fashionable furniture and household accessories, which perform functions that range from lighting a room to low-key (and admittedly dark) entertainment. But more primarily, the very process that allows the robots to run by supplying them with power also has the function of ridding the household of pests. Each robot has a microbial fuel cell that converts organic matter, ensnared by the robot, into electrical energy: a mechanized iris built into the top of a table traps mice, a lampshade has holes that allow insects in but not out, a small robotic armature picks flies from cobwebs that spiders build into it.
Mousetrap coffee table robot
The key design metaphor in use here is at once that of a novel energetic recyling machine, and a somewhat cruel spectacle of entrapment that mimics the sophistication of predatorial plants and insects. Although there is a strong element of irony in the project, it nonetheless seems only fitting that our relationships with domestic robots should incorporate some of the darker features that characterize relationships in nature.
Interactive Architecture covers emerging architectural and artistic practices where digital technologies & virtual spaces merge with tangible and physical spatial experiences. An active architecture, sensing, observing, feeling, listening, thinking, reacting, proposing, adapting, learning, even sometimes interacting. It is an architecture in constant flux best suited to prototyping and semi-perminant installations.
