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DOUG AITKEN

ダグエイケン
道格·艾特肯
sonic fountain

A large round hole—if it were a hot tub, it would be comfortably orgy-sized—has been gouged roughly out of the slick concrete floor of 303 Gallery and filled with milky gray water. Attached to the black duct-work and girders of the ceiling directly above it is a square of pipe surrounded by a speaker array. In the center of the square and at each of its corners is a computer-controlled spigot, dripping, spitting or jetting out, in a rhythmically complex 15-minute cycle, milky water pumped up from the pit in a closed circuit. This is Doug Aitken’s Sonic Fountain.

Ronald van der Meijs

A Time Capsule of Life
FILE FESTIVAL
The sculpture is created from plastic bags, a contemporary mode of collecting daily goods. When connected together they form a transparent structure of cells and conduits. By connecting the bags with air tubes the bags will be pumped up. This is put in motion by the movement of the audience who become part of the system, allowing the seed to grow out as a mature structure. By vacuum the balloon structure growth and decay alternate in a process of which man forms a natural part. When the sculpture is growing or reducing it causes a cracking sound because of the sort of plastic the shopping bags are made of.

CONTRAPTION PAINTING MACHINE

françois xavier saint-georges
Assembled from chinese brushes and medical equipment, the low-tech automata creates ‘endless line’ ink paintings. Created by canadian designer François Xavier Saint Georges, ‘contraption’ is an autonomous painting machine, capable of creating a ‘never-ending line’ of paint. The low-tech device is composed of medical equipment like syringes and tubing, chinese brushes, and paper with an electric motor, that together continuously run a roll of paper along the wall, to be ‘painted’ upon by ink pumped into the set of brushes. Random variations in the ink’s consistency and viscosity at a given moment produce different effects on the paper, and different colours can be fed into the unit or layered on top of previous ‘paintings’. We will show you more projects from this guy, so if you like it you will see more about him. Enjoy it!

SPLITTERWERK

bio intelligence quotient house
Dubbed the Bio Intelligent Quotient (BIQ) House, the approximately €5 million building was designed by Splitterwerk Architects and funded by the Internationale Bauausstellung (IBA), a long-running exhibition series showcasing cutting edge techniques and architectural concepts, for this year’s International Building Exhibition – 2013.
A total of 129 algae culturing tanks are affixed to the East and West sides of the building via an automated external scaffolding structure that constantly turns the tanks towards the sun. The plant cultures are fed through an integrated tubing system, CO2 is pumped in as well.According to Arup’s Europe Research Leader, Jan Wurm, who collaborated with Splitterwerk on the project:The algae flourish and multiply in a regular cycle until they can be harvested. They are then separated from the rest of the algae and transferred as a thick pulp to the technical room of the BIQ. The little plants are then fermented in an external biogas plant, so that they can be used again to generate biogas. Algae are particularly well suited for this, as they produce up to five times as much biomass per hectare as terrestrial plants and contain many oils that can be used for energy.Not only do these tanks provide shade for every level of the building during the summer and biogas for heating during the winter, the facade itself collects excess heat not being used by the algae, like a solar thermal system. That heat can then either be used immediately or stored in 80-meter-deep, borine-filled borehole heat exchangers located under the structure. Total fossil fuels used in this process: zero.