FoAM - illumine

Vlaamse Overheid

maja — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 12:24:36 +0000

Exercises in Colloquial Luminescence

maja — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 17:00:59 +0000

surface dialogue

nik — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 09:53:04 +0000

Start: 2003-12-05 09:51 Europe/Brussels

End: 2003-12-11 09:51 Europe/Brussels

Rachel Wingfield creates reactive, luminous surfaces and objects through the use of new technologies enabling familiar products to take on a new dimension.

http://loop.ph

Rachel's research explores electronically reactive, light emitting surfaces as a form of visual communication in built spaces. The flat light source, electroluminescence is applied to traditional interior textiles in order to create sensed environments and with the use programming and sensors surfaces can be made responsive to their surroundings, providing a visual and luminous reflection of its environment. One of the key concerns is how light can be used to relieve the problems of sufferers of seasonal affect disorder, SAD, as the absence of daylight can cause severe medical problems. Light has a profound impact on our emotional and physiological being and by integrating illumination into our everyday objects and surfaces we can enhance our lives for a sense of well being. Work is created that visually illustrate the constant dialogue that occurs between our environment and its materiality. Biomimetics and growth are key elements alongside a strong reference to a textile heritage and its possible new role.

Flat display technologies are used to form reactive skins of spaces. The initial work uses fixed printed imagery of electroluminescence but with further research looks to produce an active dot-matrix print where the forms and patterns are generated solely from the sensor data, resulting in actual image growth across the surface. Like the actual physical world of living plants and organisms the material surface too will rely on environmental inputs to live and grow. This development would incorporate a more sophisticated display material. By treating the material surface as a screen with a dot-matrix function systems of growth can be achieved using simple graphic L-Systems that can be programmed to evolve naturally depending on their sensory input. The material would be biomimetic in behaviour and function in the built environment, surfacing and containing space with a continuing flow even extended to the exterior of our bodies bringing a richer visual language to the our skin, as can be seen in nature with aquatic organisms that luminesce with morphing communicating patterns.

Under the name loop Rachel Wingfield launched Digital Dawn, a reactive window lamp at 100% Design in London September where she was short listed for best new comer 2003 in the 100% Design Blueprint Awards. Digital Dawn functions as an ambient lighting product that illuminates in response to its surroundings. The window lamp digitally emulates the process of photosynthesis using electroluminescent technology. Light sensors monitor the changing ambient light levels of a space triggering the growth of organic foliage on the blind. The darker a space becomes the brighter the blind will glow maintaining a balance in luminosity. A natural environment will appear to grow and evolve on the window lamp, exploring how changing light levels can have a profound and physiological effect on our sense of well being.

In Brussels, Rachel will also exhibit the Light Sleeper, a silent alarm clock. An illuminating, personalised alarm integrated into your bedding that gently wakes you and you alone in the most natural way. Ever since the beginning of time light has controlled our body clock telling us when to sleep and when to wake. As lifestyles are rapidly changing with increased travel and demands on our time, people's natural body clocks are out of sync. This pillow and duvet simulates a natural dawn that eases you into your day. Light Sleeper Bedding is made with electroluminescent wire hand couched between silk and cotton wadding and maintains a traditional soft textile aesthetic.

Artist's Biography

Rachel Wingfield graduated from the Royal College of Art in 2001 with an MPhil in textiles. She now works as a freelance designer and researcher working with the integration of electronics and display technologies into textiles and interior surfaces, addressing future living concepts. Rachel was a finalist for the Peugeot Design Awards winning the development prize in 2002 for Light Sleeper Bedding and featured on BBC's Tomorrows World 'Best New Invention 2003'

Digital Dawn was commissioned by Future Physical in collaboration with the Royal College of Art's Innovation Unit and Firstsite Gallery and was presented at the Eco-Technology strand in February 2003. The Eco-Technology strand explores the physical body in the natural environment in a digital age, focusing on the creative use of technology to facilitate sustainable and responsible use of the environment. Future Physical commissions represent some of the most pioneering and cutting edge digital work being created globally today.

syncop tic structure

nik — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 09:50:24 +0000

Start: 2003-09-21 09:48 Europe/Brussels

End: 2003-09-23 09:48 Europe/Brussels

Excercise 02: syncop tic structure

A public space made of syncoptic sound-space gaps, darkness and holes waiting for the player to interact with the each other through light dynamics and to define the space from a multiplicity of constellations, in an innocent game in which skill and chance are no longer distinguishable. The instability of the boundaries of the physical space and the low visibility slow down the player's movements, until he adapts his body to the new environment. An apparent space of nothing is grown to incorporate the player into its expanding reality, and reveals its multiple qualities by assigning them to the primary elements of Syncoptic structure, the players. The Here, at each point (x,y), is identified through the z direction - light. The Now builds itself at each point by repetitive rhythms of sound in a continuous domain of space and time. The luminous transit tube is an extension of the gallery space into the surrounding urban space, the region of transformation of the private into the public. The tube will host documentation of the Artist in residence project and information about the constellations and stars and their use in art.

Syncoptic artists: Karmen Franinovic, Yon Visell
Textile Artist: Lina Kusaite

Location: FoAM lab Koopliedenstraat/Rue des Commercants 60-62, 1000 Brussels
Opening: Sunday, 21st September, 18.30 - 22.30
Opened to the public: Monday 22nd and Tuesday 23rd of September
free entrance, accessible for children from 6 years old.

supported by:
Flemish Ministry of Culture
GAI - Associazione Circuito Giovani Artisti Italiani / Movin'Up Program
IDII Interaction design Institute Ivrea

thanks to the Inflatable group IDII (Walter Aprile, Massimo Banzi, Dario Buzzini, Eyal Fried, Daniele Mancini and Stefano Mirti) and especially to Massimo Banzi, Eduardo Brambilla and Gert Aertsen

artist biographies:
Karmen Franinovic received her Bachelor of Architecture degree from at Institute of Architecture of Venice. She worked as Design Director on architectural projects with AltenArchitekten, ArchA, Studio Sottass, Isozaki and Ove Arup. In 2000 Karmen co-founded NU_zero lab, which designed several award winning projects, including Amnio(p)tic surface and MutePlateau. Her theoretical research on hospitality, city, sacred, exile, borders, eversion, body-action, home, anarchy and order in collective events and interaction is formalized in digital projects, theatre plays, videos and installation/events and was published in various books/reviews 'Defining Digital Architecture', New York; 'Gommora_territori e culture della metropoli' Roma; 'Possible Futures', Miami etc. Through interactive electronic objects and immersive media environments Karmen is bringing the concepts of slow technology into urban gaps and studying emergent social behaviors in public spaces. She is currently doing her Master at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea.

Yon Visell works with concrete and abstract signals, their physics and geometry, especially computer sound; responsive and sensory systems; inhabitable and virtual computational or non-computational geometries and quantization. He has worked with FoAM in Brussels and elsewhere, formerly led DSP development at Ableton AG in Berlin, worked in engineering research at Loquendo Inc, and, before all that, immersed himself in the physics and noncommutative geometry of superstrings at the University of Texas at Austin.

Evelina Kusaite, M.A is a designer who combines art, movement and technology with her exploration of the potential of conceptual illustration. In addition to illustration she is working on the techno-textile research is aimed at the production of new fabrics, and one of her aims will be to give to the clothes that she is creating a real sense of moving as the body moves. The aim is for the clothing to come alive, inspired by biological and chemical processes in nature. She studied illustration and fashion design at the Vilnius Academy of Arts and at the Utrecht Arts Academy; she completed her European Masters of Fashion and Textile design in Utrecht and Paris at the Institute Francs de la Mode, Paris, France. Evelina's has worked extensively with several dance groups and choreographers, as well as photographers, film makers, architects, hardware and software engineers, applying her knowledge in creating and manipulating fabrics, colors and shapes in various contexts.

ebb and flow of stubborn matter

nik — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 09:48:05 +0000

Start: 2003-09-02 19:30 Europe/Brussels

Residency of Isabel Rocamora and Camila Valenzuela

A public experiment exploring the convergences of (anti)-gravity performance, movement and media.

'The first corporeal form which some call corporeity is in my opinion light.' - Robert Grosseteste, 'On light or the beginning of forms'

This informal gathering is organised as a closure of the artist-residency of two aerialists/anti-gravity artists Isabel Rocamora and Camila Valenzuela at FoAM, within the 'illumine' programme. The two artists in residence are joined by Stevie Wishart and several FoAM collaborators in a jam-session with matter and media.

The experiment is conceived as an open studio, where the audience is invited to meet the artists, exchange ideas and experiences, spawn new collaborations or simply slow down, transported into a dense, charged, luminescent sphere. Throughout the evening the public can witness small experiments in which the boundaries of choreography are nibbled on by media systems, suspended bodies move through costumes designed as minuscule wearable spaces, live improvised sounds converse with computer generated media in a 'camera obscura', where gravity seems reversible and the architecture turns into illuminated walkways.

Anti-Gravity Artists: Isabel Rocamora and Camila Valenzuela
Live Sound Improvisation: Stevie Wishart
Media Designers: FoAM / Nik Gaffney, Maja Kuzmanovic
Costume Designers: FoAM / Cocky Eek, Lina Kusaite

Artists in residence biographies:

Isabel Rocamora is an anti-gravity artist based in London. Her background is in theatre, dance, physical performance, aerial skills and film (training: Jacques Lecoq, Masaki Iwana, CNDD (Netherlands), Circus Space and Bristol University). In 93 she co-formed Momentary Fusion Aerial Dance Theatre with the aim to explore the body1s defiance of gravity pull. The company1s theatre and site-specific work toured extensively to sell out audiences in the U.K and worldwide. Since 2000 she works as an independent artist, having founded Infinito, home to the meeting point between performance, video and new technology. Three main areas have driven the work: The dialogue between the hanging body and architecture has been at the heart of her investigations over the last 10 years. Recent site-specific commissions include: "The Rapture of matter" (Architecture Week/ V&A), "Inpermanence" (Greenwich and Docklands Festival) and "Passage" (Colchester Arts Centre). Aerial choreography for film and television has lead to a series of diverse collaborations including: "Fairy Tale" (dir. Charles Sturridge, Paramount Pictures, General Release), "Chocolate Acrobat" (dir. Tessa Sheridan, Channel Four), "Karmacoma" (dir. Jonathan Glazer, General Release) and "Passage" (Dir. Marcus Behrens, Arte TV, Germany/ France, dance film - highest viewer rating of the season). Currently preparing "Nomad", an anti-gravity on film, to be shot in Summer 04. The meeting point of the anti-gravity body, science and technology has recently opened up new collaborative potential and methodologies. Research and production over the last 18 months has allowed for an investigation into areas of neuroscience, medical research, classical physics, motion capture, sensor and wearable technology and their transposition into the performance field. Commissioned works include: "Fluctuation" (Tate Britain), "Memory Release" (Future Physical/ Essex Dance), " Requiem and Deliverance" (Queen Mary Medical Library, Retroscreen Virology) and "The ebb and flow of stubborn matter" (Foam, Belgium). Isabel is an Associate Artist at dance.tech (essex dance, UK), she is also First Flight Officer of the International Necronauts Society (necronauts.org).

Originally from Peru, Camila Valenzuela was brought up in Chile. She studied Biology in the Universidad de Chile, Circus Skills and Physical Theatre in Circomedia, Bristol and Corporeal Mime in London. Camila works as a Performing artist specialising in Aerial Dance. She has previously performed her solo pieces at the Matucana 100 (Chile), Area 10 (London), Glastonbury Festival and others. In the past year, she collaborated with the anti-gravity artist Isabel Rocamora, performing site-specific aerial works in internationally renown venues, such as V&A museum of London, Greenwich and Dockland Festival and Queen Mary Medical Library. Camila is interested in the body as an abode for life, the moving body as an instrument of expression and the suspended body as a metaphor of human transcendence.

'Sound Modulated Light #1' by Edwin van der Heide

nik — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 09:45:22 +0000

Start: 2003-06-05 09:43 Europe/Brussels

'Sound Modulated Light #1' is environment of light and sound. The sound is not present acoustically but is radiated by the lights. The light sources are the carriers for the sound. The space consists of a design of multiple lights. Every light source has a double role. It's part of the light design and part of the sound design. The sound is modulated on top of the light by means of intensity modulation. The lights are flickering but mostly with a speed which not perceivable with the eye.

The visitors of the installation get a special hand held device which makes the modulated light audible as sound on a headphone. It can be seen as a light receiver instead of a radio receiver. The balance between the different sounds depends on the light falling on the receiver. By moving (the receiver) in space the different (combinations of) lights are sensed. The sound changes according to the movements because every light is radiating a different sound. The space itself is dynamically changing over time. The light composition is changing and the interrelated sound composition as well.

'Sound Modulated Light #1' is an environment in which the visitors are invited to explore and interact with the space.

In the year 2000 Edwin van der Heide realised the first version of 'Radioscape'. There are certain similarities between 'Sound Modulated Light' and 'Radioscape'. 'Radioscape' however is designed for the public space and not related to light nevertheless it has resulted in the first experiments for 'Sound Modulated Light'

This installation was co-produced with Argos (for the Argos festival 2003) and was supported by the Flemish Ministry of Culture.

Illumine

nik — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 09:42:18 +0000

Exercises in Colloquial Luminescence

'The first corporeal form which some call corporeity is in my opinion light.' -Robert Grosseteste

Illumine explores the relationship between light, luminescence and communication. Subtle ambient changes of illumination that can extend gestures, make invisible visible and respond to weather patterns. How can we play light as a musical instrument? Can we use light to make our bodies lighter, even weightless? Can we extend our gestures and paint with light while dancing? What can we learn from bioluminescent organisms, to design our environments more life-like?