Reactscape » installation

Responsive Systems Studio Fall 2011

bcantrell — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 20:11:47 +0000

I had the pleasure to teach one of the Advanced Topic studios this Fall at the LSU Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture and working with Frank Melendez in the LSU School of Architecture we had the students explore responsive technologies in sites within the Atchafalaya Basin. For those unfamiliar with the basin it is a distributary of the Mississippi and Red Rivers creating a large tract of swamps and wetlands. The Atchafalya River runs through the basin leading out to the Gulf of Mexico.

The studio was divided into two phases, in the first 5 weeks the students developed proposals for the City Sense competition. The students were asked to imagine how realtime sensing technologies would affect the basin in terms of settlement, ecosystem management and/or infrastructural strategies. Three site prototypes were selected as a cross section of settlement types; Morgan City (urban), Butte LaRose (rural), and the Hunting Camp (isolated).

The students worked in teams to submit 4 strong proposals. In general the proposals were broad but engaged the content nicely, I was surprised by the variety which was nice to see. One of the strongest proposals was entitled Ecolibrium that proposed a realtime visualization and management system that would create a new ecological equilibrium based on a system over hyper inputs.

Phase 01 Competition Proposals

The second Phase of the semester focused on getting the students more intimately involved with some of the responsive technologies prototyping hardware/software such as Arduino, Firefly and Grasshopper. Earlier in the first weeks of the semester the students had a chance to meet with Andy Payne when we were on a field trip to Cambridge/Boston and they were very excited about the possibilities that have been enabled using Firefly.

The students focused on tools for approximately two weeks working intensively with Michael McCune and David Merlin from DOTS here in Baton Rouge. The students engaged the technologies as they designed a device that would engaged environmental phenomena and begin to manipulate either the phenomena, space and/or ecological systems. This involved three stages.

The studio was extremely rewarding and I was really proud of the student’s work. The final review asked the students to re-imagine the original competition proposals in smaller teams. The final review guide can be found here.

The course page contains a brief syllabus and description of the phases. I will post some of the student projects in subsequent posts, links below.

The studio was filled with other great proposals as well, if I have time I will try to post as many as possible. The full set of proposals are in the linked PDF.

Augmented Sculpture – Grosse8 & Lichtfront

bcantrell — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 13:45:05 +0000

While not fully explored the use of projection as a temporal medium over static surfaces/datums always holds my interest. Similar to our Orleans Parish Model this sculpture uses projection to bring surfaces to life. The image correction used works extremely well to map the projection across the sculpture. (originally from interactivearchitecture.org) Augmented Sculpture – Grosse8 & Lichtfront | Interactive Architecture dot Org.

Mercedes Benz Museum Ventilation Tornado

bcantrell — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 16:29:44 +0000

While Geoff Manaugh has recently been obsessed with weather and glaciers an appropriate post on BLDGBLOG highlights the tornado phenomena created by the ventilation system at the Mercedes Benz museum. This architectural scale tornado forms from the combination of outtake fans at the top of the atrium and exterior ventilation throughout the space. The images and video are pretty incredible.

re-posted from bldgblog

Linyl

bcantrell — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 17:22:07 +0000

Interesting project from the Copenhagen Institute of Interaction Design that captures sound and light into a piece of vinyl, or linyl. As a person who has defined much of my experiences with associated music or sound I find that the merging of visceral and aural senses to be fascinating. The light becomes an abstraction that gains meaning with the musical accompaniment.

Linyl from Ishac Bertran on Vimeo.

Vectorial Elevation – Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

bcantrell — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 20:31:50 +0000

Vectorial Elevation – Rafael Lozano-Hemmer.

Vectorial Elevation is a new piece by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer that toys with the concept of collaborative environmental art. Light sculptures are constructed with 20 robotic searchlights controlled by a three dimensional interface.

Mississippi Basin Model

bcantrell — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:37:35 +0000

On Sunday I traveled with my representation seminar to the Mississippi Basin Model in Clinton, MS. I have been to the site several times and I am always amazed at the possibilities of such a device. As an armature the model provides an interesting datum to attach new content. The model is a perfect precedent for the illustrating ecologies course I am currently teaching, a mechanism of simulation which abstracts form in order to accomplish performative goals. An MBM post has been added to the {LAB} site.

My colleague at LSU Kristi Dykema is currently using the site for her undergraduate studio and some research. I am interested to see what the studio and her research tease out of this complex and unique site.

Recorder at the Atchafalaya station

Rusted inflow controllers

River channell and mesh used to simulate dense vegetation

Concrete surface, wire exposed

Temporary levee wall within the model

Cloud

bcantrell — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 00:29:27 +0000

An interesting installtion entitled Cloud by the design firm Troika, commissioned for the British Airways terminal at Heathrow Airport, London. The surface of sculpture uses ‘flip-dots’ that are individual addressable by proprietary software. More info about the software can be found at Pixel Sumo.