Future Cities Lab’sXeromax Envelop{e}s installation will be exhibited in New York’s Pratt Gallery from March 5-May 5, 2010. This interactive installation consists of an intricate geometric surface that plays host to clusters of tiny energy-seeking robotic parasites. The suspended surface was fabricated from thousands of interlocking luminescent parts that pulsate in response to the shifting proximity of gallery visitors.
Pratt Manhattan Gallery 144 West 14th Street, 2nd floor, New York, NY 10011
March 5-May 5, 2010
Tuesday-Saturday 11am-6pm
Project Credits:
Design: Jason Kelly Johnson and Nataly Gattgeno (Future Cities Lab). Primary Project Assistants: Andrei Hakhovich, Jon Acosta. Project Assistants: Diana Acosta, Wendy Ju, John Hobart Smith, Mark Campos, Michael Ageno, Anthony Diaz, Bo Wonkalasin, Rip De Leon, Paul Fromm, Kezia OFiesh, Taylor Burgess. Photographer: Zechariah Vincent
Curator: Christopher Hight.
“Envelopes” will explore new and sustainable potentials of the architectural surface in terms of the skin of a building and also as a sensorial space that envelops the body. “Envelopes” will feature full-scale, interactive models accompanied by architectural renderings in the form of drawings and computer animations, and documentation of the process of investigation into these models from eight international firms and designers.
Participating Architects: HouMinn Practice (Satterfield/Swackhamer); OCEAN Design Research (Michael Hensel); Future Cities Lab (Nataly Gattegno and Jason Kelly Johnson); Philippe Rahm; Servo (Marcelyn Gow, Ulrika Karlsson, and Chris Perry); Weathers (Sean Lally) and more.
Exhibition text by Christopher Hight:
Future Cities Lab is an experimental design and research office based in San Francisco and led by principals Jason Kelly Johnson and Nataly Gattegno. Their work hotwires large scale urban organizations with intensive and responsive interfaces, examining how contemporary technology and social ordering no longer follows the divisions of scale and divisions of public and private that governed the industrial metropolis and out of which the modern typologies of spatial division and specialization of architecture precipitated. Today, the movement from the intimate sensorial envelopes of touch to the extensive envelope of vision no longer traces the gradient of private to public in the way it once did. Indeed, in an age of biotechnology, remote sensing, Facebook and recent Supreme Court rulings, what was once thought private is increasingly in the public domain even as public space has been utterly enfolded into the private extended body of corporate territory. Future Cities Lab’s contribution to this exhibit, XEROMAX is a quarter-scale experimental beta test for a responsive desert envelope that is calibrated, tuned, and responsive to its arid environment. Part robotic structure, part experimental interface, and part analytical drawing instrument, it registers energy cycles and interactions over time while harvesting light, wind and water to produce a habitual space without traditional walls and roofs. The model weaves ultra thin custom actuators , arrays of light and proximity sensors, with a customized interactive graphic display. During the course of the exhibit, its behaviors will change as it registers and catalogues the events and changing conditions around it. The configuration of the wall therefore becomes a register of the environmental history as well as the present conditions, feeding this information back into the realm of public imagination and discourse.
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 Aurora Project - Coming Summer 2009
New York Prize Fellowship - Van Alen Institute NYC
During their fellowship term, Gattegno and Johnson will design and fabricate a large-scale interactive installation entitled Aurora. The installation will superimpose the ephemeral qualities of the Arctic ice field with the dynamic behavior of visitors in the Institute’s Manhattan gallery. Connected to real time data parsed from Arctic sensor buoys, the shifting dimensions of the ice shelf will be translated into immersive LED auroras and responsive skins. Feedback loops between remote and locally sensed data will intensify the interplay between these connected, yet physically separated conditions. Aurora will function both as index of an emerging global condition, and as indicator of our impact on conditions beyond our limited field of perception. It will suggest a new approach to design that is simultaneously globally informed and locally responsive.
Super Galaxy NYC > Tropospheric Refuge, Hotel and Leisurescape
Super Galaxy is an architectural system saturated in atmospheric and electronic phenomena. It is a nomadic enclave in an endless state of spatial and material flux. As it fluctuates between states of varying coherence (solidity, liquidity, and gaseousness) its inner structure maintains an invisible, yet definable pattern. It is a responsive system capable of dynamically interacting with its surroundings on many levels. It is in a constant state of motion as it calibrates and recalibrates relative to both real-time global datasets (weather, pollution, warfare, etc.) and local datasets (desired micro-climates, heat exchange, light and sound). Project Credits: Jason Johnson, Nataly Gattegno with Carrie Norman, Beth Haber, Thomas Kelly
