Process Images from early-August 2009 [above] - many more images below
The Aurora Project
Jason Kelly Johnson and Nataly Gattegno
The Van Alen Institute 2008-09 New York Prize Fellows
Opening Party: Wednesday, Sept 16 at 6:30pm (through Saturday, Oct 17, 2009) VAI Gallery: 30 W 22nd St # 6, New York, NY 10010
The Aurora Project is an index of shifting territorial resources in the Arctic and a speculative vision for a massive new energy infrastructure and settlement pattern. Aurora suggests an alternative approach to the exploration, exploitation and eventual colonization of the region. It is simultaneously a projection of an imminent environmental condition, and the materialization of how contemporary political, social and ecological trends might be channeled towards a more productive future.
The Aurora installation on view in the Van Alen Institute gallery superimposes the ephemeral qualities of the Arctic ice field with the dynamic behavior of visitors, translating the shifting dimensions of the ice into an immersive system of flickering auroras and responsive luminescent skins. Presented alongside Aurora is a map room (“Terra Incognita”) consisting of original drawings, diagrams and other materials that provide a view into how the Arctic region has been represented, claimed, and mythologized in the past and present. A smaller interactive instrument (“The Glaciarium”) engages visitors’ senses through the sight and sound of a melting ice core.
Project Credits [as of 1/1/10] Future Cities Lab: Jason Kelly Johnson and Nataly Gattegno with Carrie Norman, Thomas Kelley. Project Collaborators + Assistants: Troy Rogers (Sound and Interaction), Noah Keating from mathbeat industries (Interactive + Programming Consultant) Kezia Ofiesh, Paul Fromm, Sarah Fugate, Hank Byron, Taylor Burgess, Ed Yung, Ben Fey. Poster/Pamphlet Design: Dayoung Shin. Also helping out were: Kyle Kugler, Jim Staddon, Gin Harr, Yuki Staddon, Matt Young, Brad DeVries, Kyle Sturgeon (UMich setup).
Institutions: The Van Alen Institute (NY Prize Fellowship in Systems and Ecology); The University of Michigan TCAUP (Research Through Making Grant) - Dean Monica Ponce de Leon, The University of Michigan Map Library; Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts Grant, Columbia University Avery CNC Fabrication Lab (David Kwon, Christo Logan, Nicole Seekely, Philip Anzalone - Assistant Director of Avery Fabrication); NYC College of Technology - CityTech @ CUNY (Carmen Trudell, Joseph Lim, Felix Baez).
The following is a dialogue between Monica Ponce de Leon and Jason Kelly Johnson / Nataly Gattegno on the occasion of the opening of the Aurora Project at the Van Alen Institute on Sept 16, 2009.
RESEARCH THROUGH MAKING
MPdL: ON REPRESENTATION
The Aurora Project works with the idea of referencing a territory but transforms conventional notions of mapping. Unlike cartography, the Aurora Project charts non-fixity. The installation does not attempt to freeze geography in time, but accepts change as an essential condition to be mapped. For the Aurora scale is not important. Like cartography, representation is still the intention, but ephemeral qualities trump dimensional portrayal, thus precluding appropriation.
JKJ+NG: We both share a deep interest in maps of atmospheric phenomena - wind, air pressure, electromagnetism etc. We were fascinated to discover that early attempts to explore and map the Arctic were complicated by the complexities of mapping the invisible, the ephemeral, the changing. Edges literally shifted and disappeared along the paths of explorers. Many of these maps incorporated time, through the use of overlapping lines, animated edge shifts, displacement trajectories and the drifting of ice. Today the Arctic is one of the most studied and mapped terrains, with sensor buoys arrayed across its entire surface and capturing the changing morphology of ice hourly. The Aurora installation is an unstable and susceptible system that enables the visitor to degrade the system and trigger - willingly or unwillingly - change.
MPdL: ON NON SUSTAINABLE BOUNDARIES
The Aurora installation and the Glaciarium oscillate between architecture and interactive design. For the project to thrive, materialization must be disrupted. Like the Arctic original, visitors determine its shifting shape in time. It is through this interaction that the project succeeds in embodying an environmental condition. Shifting materiality incarnates environmental conditions, in turn, making them corporeally accessible. In the Aurora Project, ecological commentary moves away from sustainability lessons. The Aurora Project turns abstract global issues into an intimate experience. The environmental imperative is no longer argued as a scientific reality, and is instead rendered personal.
JKJ+NG: The Aurora Borealis is an indicator of a distant system’s interplay with the local environment. The dancing Northern Lights are a signal of remote processes interacting with local conditions. The Aurora Project borrows this relationship as an impetus to explore the impact of degrading environmental conditions at the scale of the individual; and attempts to render that relationship spatial. The reality of our precipitous global climate change is beyond dispute and visitors are confronted with their impact. Rather than behave as a performance piece, it signals a more delicate balance and reciprocity between a field and its environment.
MPdL: ON CRAFTED TECHNOLOGIES
The traditional opposition between craft and technology is erased in the Aurora installation. The very effects and references at the heart of the Aurora installation are akin to craft but highly dependent on advanced materials and technology. Variation and change are skillfully calibrated and mediated through technological precision. The ephemeral quality of the Arctic is arrived at through material effects, and its changing quality is enabled through sophisticated mechanisms. The “human hand” is present not in its maker but in its visitor.
JKJ+NG: There was a deliberate attempt to explore the intersection of cutting edge materials and computation technologies with the simplicity of folding, sewing, casting, soldering, etc. The machined parts serve to articulate the proliferation of the larger field, while manual joints serve to heighten the tension and precariousness of the individual pieces. The parametric model enabled us to explore a variety of intersections and iterate through many variations that had both tectonic and conceptual consequences. This visual and material richness is a critical part of our work which we hope deepens its ability to communicate the larger questions raised by the work. The ephemeral and shifting effects of the auroras allow for a certain reciprocity between these material effects. They also shift one’s position from viewer to participant, revealing the consequences of one’s actions – both individually and collectively – in real time.
Monica Ponce de Leon is Dean, Taubman College, University of Michigan; and Design Principal, Office dA.
