Sonic Mountain
As a unique site-specific commission for the Donum Estate, Los Angeles-based artist Doug Aitken has created the ethereal work Sonic Mountain (Sonoma), three concentric circles of suspended stainless-steel pipes whose differing lengths form a wave at their base, mirroring the free Euler-Bernoulli shape that describes the chime’s frequency. Installed in the eucalyptus grove, measuring forty-five feet in diameter and twice human height, and comprising 365 chimes — one for each day of the year — Sonic Mountain (Sonoma) works with one of Donum’s most persistent elements, the Carneros breeze that cools the grapes and creates a temperate zone for growing Pinot Noir. Each day, the warm wind begins its soft whisper, rustling through the vines and trees, building in strength through the day until mid-afternoon, and then gradually diminishing in force. Known to have been used since at least the ancient Roman period in Europe and the second century in India and China, wind chimes create chance, inharmonic music. At Donum, Aitken has teamed up with his friend the composer Terry Riley to compose chords in the chimes to be played by the wind , depending on how it blows, so the lyrical work sounds throughout the estate, demonstrating the artist’s practice of making installations that synthesize many media and are never constrained by tradition.
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Mist Encounter
Mist Encounter is a summer pavilion stands in the large outdoor plaza in front of the Taipei Fine Art Museum. The summer sun and breeze will drift in and animate the scaffold and mesh structure. An indistinct mist will arise from the outer square and draw visitors to come closer. As visitors walk from the outer to inner square, they will be gradually enveloped by the mist, and things will appear and disappear as the mist alternately gets heavier and lighter. The effect will be similar to an experience of passing through a heavy fog in a magical forest.

Watage
An interactive installation using naturally-generated power rather than man-made sources like electricity. Dandelion fluff (watage in Japanese) soaked in water to form drop-like shapes, untreated fluff, and so on serve as modules, bonded with liquid paste to be reconstructed. The fluff sways in response to viewers’ breath or movement, even in the absence of breeze, immaculately revalidating the viewer’s own existence by making their influence on surroundings visible without use of technology. Using its surrounding environment to send off its seeds, the dandelion has achieved a lightness and form in its fluff specialized to the purpose and sprouts up each year no matter how the world may change. Having been drawn into the quietly-paced world of plants, the artist looked to dandelion fluff for a new form of expression able to hold its own against showy, rapidly evolving technological expression.

This installation, for a restaurant in San Francisco, responds to three large skylights high overhead in a long, narrow space. The design is an interpretation of “extruding” the skylights down through a partial false ceiling and into the more intimate space below. For this project, we pushed our glass “fabric“ techniques (used in the Capella Hotel and the IHG Lobby installations) one step further, heating the woven glass fabric in a kiln for further shaping. This lets us deform the tubes in the fabric as well as flex the overall matrix to create large continuous glass surfaces that billow like sheets in a breeze.

Cloud Light III
“Kinetic sculpture resides at the intersection of artistic inspiration and mechanical complexity. The making of one of my pieces relies on creative expression, metal fabrication, and a slow design process in equal parts. It aims to alter one’s experience of time and space when witnessed. It also needs to weather winds of 90 mph and still move in a one mile per hour breeze and do so for hundreds of years.” Anthony Howe

Flying sculptures
Thomas Lanfranchi uses lightweight materials to create environmentally responsive sculptures. Many of his projects have been wind blown, taking the form of kites or wind socks. He has installed these pieces at sites across France and on buoys at sea. On a recent visit to Australia he made a journey around the outback, creating and documenting a new airborne sculpture each day to suit the site. Working with a type of plastic commonly used for shopping bags, Lanfranchi is able to make very large structures that are capable of being supported by the lightest breeze.

Structure volante

Thomas Lanfranchi uses lightweight materials to create environmentally responsive sculptures. Many of his projects have been wind blown, taking the form of kites or wind socks. He has installed these pieces at sites across France and on buoys at sea. On a recent visit to Australia he made a journey around the outback, creating and documenting a new airborne sculpture each day to suit the site. Working with a type of plastic commonly used for shopping bags, Lanfranchi is able to make very large structures that are capable of being supported by the lightest breeze. When they are destroyed after the exhibition an object the size of a blue whale collapses into a carrier bag.