MIT Media Lab, Stanford University
This work explores a dynamic future where the accessories we wear are no longer static, but are instead mobile, living objects on the body. Engineered with the functionality of 18 robotics, this “living” jewelry roams on unmodified clothing, changing location and reconfiguring appearance according to social context and enabling multitude presentations of self. With the addition of sensor devices, they transition into active devices which can react to environmental conditions. They can also be paired with existing mobile devices to become personalized on-body assistants to help complete tasks. Attached to garments, they generate shape-changing clothing and kinetic pattern designs–creating a new, dynamic fashion.
It is our vision that in the future, these robots will be miniaturized to the extent that they can be seamlessly integrated into existing practices of body ornamentation. With the addition of kinetic capabilities, traditionally static jewelry and accessories will start displaying life-like qualities, learning, shifting, and reconfiguring to the needs and preferences of the wearer, also assisting in fluid presentation of self. We envision a new class of future wearables that possess hybrid qualities of the living and the crafted, creating a new on-body ecology for human-wearable symbiosis.

中谷芙二子

fog sculptures
ok-offenens kulturhaus linz

In 1970 Nakaya created her first fog sculpture when commissioned by the group Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T) to make a work for the Pepsi Pavillion of the Osaka World Exposition. In creating a work of white mist enclosing the building, Nakaya became the first artist to have used fog as a sculptural medium. E.A.T is an organisation devoted to facilitating working relationships between artists and engineers. Nakaya worked with American engineer Thomas Mee to create the fog for her Osaka commission, the technique for which she has continued to use, with minor moderations, for her subsequent fog sculptures since.Whilst Nakaya has also worked in film and video, it is her use of fog for which she is best known. Nakaya has used pure-water fog to create installations, performances, stage-sets and environmental park designs, often collaborating with other artists or with performers, choreographers and composers. Nakaya’s interest in fog has developed from its relation to our visual sense. In a thick fog we become disorientated, frustrated at our inability to see. In this way, Nakaya’s sculptures activate our other senses, to compensate for our loss of sight.

Planet City

Planet City, by Los Angeles-based film director and architect Liam Young, explores the productive potential of extreme densification, where 10 billion people surrender the rest of the planet to a global wilderness. Although wildly provocative, Planet City eschews the techno-utopian fantasy of designing a new world order. This is not a neo-colonial masterplan to be imposed from a singular seat of power. It is a work of critical architecture – a speculative fiction grounded in statistical analysis, research and traditional knowledge.
It is a collaborative work of multiple voices and cultures supported by an international team of acclaimed environmental scientists, theorists and advisors. In Planet City we see that climate change is no longer a technological problem, but rather an ideological one, rooted in culture and politics.

Meta-prosthesis
‘Meta-prosthesis’ explores the potential of synthesising the natural and artificial to increase the performance of environmental design. Through capitalising on the formal and compositional expressions derived from animalistic attributes, the performance of materials and environment can be enhanced. The project for a theraputic centre has a highly-articulated envelope which is achieved by manipulating the geometry, from the microscale to the macro. This includes: material typology, texture typology, surface typology and building typology. The resultant patterns are informed, generated and tested through computational algorithms and scientific understanding to satisfy different programmatic criteria, regulating the environment.
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One Two Three Swing!
One Two Three Swing! challenges society’s apathy towards the political, environmental and economic crises of our age. The installation is experienced in three states: apathy, production and movement. The state of apathy compromises a large pendulum suspended by a 20 metre cable from ceiling and swinging above a 770 square metre carpet in a colour scheme inspired by British currency. Occupying the far end of the hall is the state of production, a factory station where swing seats are assembled, stamped and stored prior to distribution and use. Emerging from the state of production, an orange line formed of sets of interconnected, three-seated swings invite and frame the movements of users.

Нед Кан
Tornado
A 10-foot tall vortex is formed by air blowers and an ultrasonic fog machine inside a sculpture installed in the atrium adjacent to the Winter Garden. The vortex continually changed shape in response to the surrounding air currents.These fluctuations gave the vortex an erratic and life-like appearance. Viewers were encouraged to alter the shape of the vortex with their hands. The calm, central core of the vortex is clearly evident.
Kahn’s interactive scientific projects leave little doubt about his command of meteorological processes. Through his immense technical ability, he demonstrates the versatility of turbulent systems, such as the vortices of wind and water. He employs diverse mechanical, pneumatic and electrical technologies to design, build and refine his installations. This is how he constructs dazzlingly complex but comprehensible images of nature that respond to viewers, conform to architectural structures, and reveal environmental conditions.

THINK AND SENSE

Under the theme of Zen, this artwork represents a part of the philosophy of Zen with three-dimensional data created with photogrammetry technology composed of the most minimalistic landscape of “dots” and the soundscape of “undulations,” with the cooperation of Toryo Ito, vice priest of Ryosokuin, Kennin-ji Tacchu temple, Kyoto. The generated image reflecting the environmental information of the exhibition space creates “interaction between the environment and the image,” just like the trees and leaves swinging in the silence in the garden of a Zen temple.

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Credit Concept / Technical Direction: Shuhei Matsuyama Point Cloud System Design:Takamitsu Masumi Sound Design: Intercity-Express (Tetsuji Ohno) Photogrammetry Shooting: Naoya Takebe Photogrammetry Engineering: Katsuya Sakuma

The Unseen Collection
Lauren Bowker describes herself a materials alchemist. After developing a pollution sensing compound while studying at Manchester School of Art, she went on to study textiles at the Royal College of Art in London and created a series of inks which change colour in response to heat, light, wind and environmental changes.

Limbo
Arnt Jensen
File Festival
FILE GAMES

Limbo is a 2D sidescroller, incorporating the physics system Box2D to govern environmental objects and the player character. The player guides an unnamed boy through dangerous environments and traps as he searches for his sister. The developer built the game’s puzzles expecting the player to fail before finding the correct solution. Playdead called the style of play “trial and death“, and used gruesome imagery for the boy’s deaths to steer the player from unworkable solutions.

Taipei Museum of Contemporary Art
This building proposal challenges the traditional definition of a museum and the conventional relationship between building and site. The ground floor of the building is reduced to a nominal footprint, enclosing only enough space for basic services, structure and ticketing functions. The ground plane is primarily reserved for exterior public space, including an art park, Hall of Fame, and garden walk. The bulk of the program and building mass are split by the open ground floor. Half of the building is coupled with the earth while the other half hovers in the air. The purpose is twofold; to minimize the damaging effects of extreme local weather by harnessing environmental flows toward productive outcomes and to re-conceptualize the identity of a modern art museum. The manicured roof plane of the below ground program is pocketed with water absorbing vegetation and catchment systems, while the hovering museum above expands to form open atriums, allowing diffuse light to brighten the space and passive airflow to comfortably condition the building.The program of the museum is interconnected. The Contemporary Museum of Art, Children’s Museum of Art and Administration are located within the floating mass. The lecture hall, parking, art resource center, library and classrooms are located below ground. The programs below ground are easily accessible and directly connected through vertical circulation tubes, providing both structural support for the floating mass above and space for movement systems, such as escalators, stairs and elevators between levels. All of the below ground programs are flooded with diffuse light passing through skylights that penetrate the landscape.

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.