vivisection

source: citakarchdk

Vivisection (2006)
A research collaboration between CITA and Simon Løvind, The Danish Design School.

Could a material gain behaviour? Could the wall sway or the floor bow as we venture to move across it? Could wallpaper flicker and tablecloths creep? How could our environment be imagined as a realm of self-organising inhabitants acting and reacting to shifts in their external and internal contexts?

Vivisection is an experiment in spatial formation within architecture and design based on the idea of a robotic membrane. Vivisection is the making of a live section, a sensing skin that acts and reacts on its inhabitation. As a spatial experiment it is the thinking of how a techtonic surface can embed a capacity for sensing and actuation. The fabric, a weave of silk and steel, is conductive thereby allowing us to pass electronic signals through it. By using antenna based sensor chips the fabric itself becomes a sensor, which feels the presence of its audience. The sensors inform a network of distributed micro-computers, that in turn control the fans, inflating and deflating internal bladders in the structure.

Vivisection explores the textile as a computational matrix. Collapsing the idea of the controlled and the controlling, Vivisection investigates the making of an intelligent surface creating a playful environment for interaction while probing at how a material itself could gain behaviour.
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source: jmmag

Vivisección Mette Ramsgard Thomse es un experimento espacial que explora cómo una superficie tectónicos pueden integrar una capacidad de detección y actuación. La seda y el tejido de acero es conductivo lo que permite a los arquitectos a pasar las señales electrónicas a través de ella. Mediante el uso de la antena basada en los chips sensores de la tela “siente” la presencia de la audiencia. Los sensores de informar a una red de distribución de micro-computadoras, que a su vez controlan los aficionados, inflando o desinflando vejigas internas en la estructura.

Cuerpo examina la relación entre el cuerpo humano, la experiencia espacial y el diseño.
Mette Ramsgard Thomse’s Vivisection is a spatial experiment that explores how a techtonic surface can embed a capacity for sensing and actuation. The silk and steel fabric is conductive thereby allowing the architects to pass electronic signals through it. By using antenna based sensor chips the fabric “feels” the presence of the audience. The sensors inform a network of distributed micro-computers, that in turn control the fans, inflating and deflating internal bladders in the structure.
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source: citakarchdk

Mette Ramsgard Thomsen’s research centres on the intersection between architecture and computer science. During the last 15 years her focus has been on the profound changes that digital technologies instigate in the way architecture is thought, designed and built. In 2005 she founded the Centre for IT and Architecture research group (CITA) at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts, School of Architecture, Design and Conservation. During the last 6 years she has successfully built up a strong international group In 2010 she became full Professor in Architecture and Digital Technologies.

In CITA she has piloted a special research focus on the new digital-material relations that digital technologies bring forth. Investigating advanced computer modelling, digital fabrication and material specification CITA has been central in the forming of an international research field examining the changes to material practice in architecture. This has been led by a series of research investigations developing concepts and technologies as well as strategic projects such as the international Digital Crafting Network that fosters interdisciplinary sharing and dissemination of expertise and supports new collaborations in the fields of architecture, engineering and design.
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source: onlinelibrarywiley

The robot and the textile seem like a contradiction in terms – the robot standing for everything that is automated and mechanical, and the textile for sensual materiality. Can it be possible to reconcile the two? Here Mette Ramsgard Thomsen demonstrates through her Vivisections and Strange Metabolisms projects, exhibited at the Centre for Information, Technology and Architecture (CITA) in Copenhagen, how it is possible to unite the seeming polarities of the digital and the physical, engaging‘intangible digital data with tactile physical material’. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.