ISEA 2008, Singapore, 25 July – 3 August.ISEA, the International Symposium on Electronic Art initiated in 1988, is the world’s premier media arts event for the critical discussion and showcase of creative productions applying new technologies in interactive and digital media.
http://isea2008.org/
Intelligent Architecture – Complex Environmental Networks.
In this panel session the authors explore the potential of ‘Intelligent Architecture’ as a critical, reflexive and enabling tool to support social interaction, trans-disciplinary research and ecological strategies.
The panel uses the various iterations of the Arch-OS system (http://www.arch-os.com/) as a critical model for the manifestation of dynamic data (social, temporal, ecological and digital/electro/mechanical). The authors critique the role of these technologies and their ability to effectively model, communicate and modify human behaviour. Arch-OS explores the potential generated by the translation of dynamic data from physical and social interactions within a building into volatile and evolving interactive art interventions.
The conceptual underpinning of this panel centres on the affordences offered by dynamic generative data that would otherwise be invisible. With this approach we aim to convey the sense that a more meaningful ‘architecture’ is physically revealed by peeling back its skin and architectural surfaces and giving the feeling that the occupant is an integral part of the building.
The agenda is to create interventions that perform vital and integral roles in the development of trans-disciplinary research (for example; nanochemistry, applied chemistry, environmental science, biotechnology, and forensic science), ecological monitoring, visualisation and awareness (collaborations with the Centre for Sustainable Futures and the English National Opera) and the development of new architectural strategies. The artworks potential is to represent the visualisation of quantitative scientific research as a qualitative experience within the fabric of the architectural environment. Through large-scale visual projections, ‘personal computing’, intimate mobile interactions, and the multiple auditory experiences, these systems reveal subtle dialogues between the behaviour of the buildings inhabitants and their environment.
These strategies are demonstrated in two significant applications:
The original Arch-OS installation (http://www.arch-os.com/) in the University of Plymouth and Peninsula Medical School, Plymouth UK
and
the i-500 installation (http://i-500.org/) working with Woods Bagot Architects in Curtin University’s new Resources and Chemistry Research and Education Buildings, Perth Western Australia.
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The panelists are:
Shaun Murray work, as published in his book ‘Disturbing Territories’, is intended to allow the possibility of collaborative practice, and become a digitally networked creative enterprise. The integrity of his projects comes from a distributed network approach whereby the ethics of ecological sustainability needs to be realised. He has exhibited internationally and has developed some major architectural projects through his work with Alsop Architects. He teaches on the Masters programme in the Bartlett School of Architecture.
Mike Phillips is a Reader in Digital Art & Technology, director of i-DAT and heads the Nascent Art & Technology Research Group [www.nascent-research.net]. His trans-disciplinary R&D orbits digital architectures and transmedia publishing, and is manifest in two key research projects: Arch-OS [www.arch-os.com], an ‘Operating System’ for contemporary architecture (‘software for buildings’) and the LiquidPress [www.liquidpress.net] which explores the evolution and mutation of publishing and broadcasting technologies. These projects and other work can be found on the i-DAT web site at: www.i-dat.org.
Dr Chris Speed is a Reader in Digital Architecture at Edinburgh College of Art and a creative producer in i-DAT. Speed’s research focus is best characterised by his PhD activity which addresses the synthesis and tensions between Social Navigation, Digital Architecture and Human Geography. Operating as a ‘maker’ he has recently returned from an artists residency programme at Unitec, Auckland, where the work ‘Reading Rooms’ (http://x.i-dat.org/speed/readingrooms) was developed to visualise how a building might look if its architecture reflected the books that its inhabitants were reading. Operating in real-time the system combined social and architectural data with dynamic 3D computer modelling to generate a ‘social’ map of a place.
Dr Paul Thomas is currently a Senior Lecturer, Curtin University of Technology, Department of Art, he is coordinator of the Studio Electronic Arts (SEA) at Curtin University of Technology and is the founding Director of the Biennale of Electronic Arts Perth (BEAP). Paul Thomas has been working in the area of electronic arts since 1981 when he co-founded the group Media-Space, which was part of the first global link up with artists connected to ARTEX. His practice lead research is in collaboration with the Nanochemistry Research Institute at Curtin University and the SymbioticA Lab at the University of Western Australia. He is currently collaborating on a public art commission for the Curtin Mineral and Chemistry Research Precinct in collaboration with Woods Bagot Architects. He recently completed his PhD researching the reconfiguration of space. htttp://www.visiblespace.com
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