MEDIA ARTS

Nearly a century ago, with his Theater, Zirkus, Variété score, László Moholy-Nagy and the Bauhaus imagined a new kind of theater for the senses — a “Mechanized Eccentric” that would merge machine and organism. With SENSEFACTORY it is interpreted by a transdisciplinary team ranging from architecture and sound to olfaction and poetry: Erik Adigard, Sofian Audry, FM Einheit, Dietmar Lupfer, Chris Salter, Alexandre Saunier, Alex Schweder, Sissel Tolaas & Nikolai Vogel.

A colossal, ever transforming pneumatic environment The installation is structured in thee parts: ENTRY, EXPERIENCE and EXIT. In the center, a colossal, ever transforming pneumatic environment with printed flooring, multimedia, sound, smell, light and AI technology aim to produce a multi-sensorial experience that concludes with a conceptual map give-away. The original score is here reframed as a large conceptual fold-out that relates two «technological bodies», one seen as urban and the other as human. This hybrid map conveys the long unfolding continuum of humans, machines, sensors, and that which is sensed, as they merge to become an ever-greater totality.

In 1919 the Bauhaus started to explore how technology could help us reconfigure more enlightened societies and creations. 100 years later, data accumulation and monitoring are relentless and we breeze a mechanized atmosphere where we can barely hear the sounds of nature and feel our own senses? SENSEFACTORY explores the interplays between our senses and that of the systems we hold and navigate through – a milieu of sensors, triggers and networks we increasingly adopt as our own personalized extensions. In this unfolding machinic sensorium we do not easily see the tensions between the sensor and the sensed, the artificial and the organic, and the human and the machine. It is for humans, a call to consider the possibility of new forms of sensing.

» 30sec INSTALLATION OVERVIEW
ENTRY » “window” video w/composer FM Einheit & voive by Nikolai Vogel
EXIT » foldout w/ writer Nikolai Vogel [PDF] — intended to be read on four sides



A commission from the 2008 Venice Architecture Biennale, Out There: Architecture Beyond Building by Biennale Director: Aaron Betsky / AirXY (Air XY) was conceived by M-A-D, Erik Adigard + Chris Salter with Patricia McShane.

AirXY combines real time animation, sensors, haze, light and sound. Large-scale screen and floor projections confront and engage visitors passing through the 317 meter long Corderie dell’Arsenale. The screen is a clock and responsive real time capture of the presence of visitors while the floor projection gradually reveals a fleeting, ethereal architecture.

AirXY uses digital technologies to sculpt time, leading visitors from the flatness of a hypnotic screen-scape and towards a space of physical sensations. The installation situates itself at the intersection of architecture, media and communications where human and technical ecologies merge into a new perspective. In this way, AirXY introduces new spaces of meaning and presence: an architecture of in between moments-of air and the ephemeral.

project website: »airxy.org



DualTerm, is an online installation by Erik Adigard and Chris Salter (with Daniel Grigsby, Myles Kerwin and Jonathan Lebensold) that uses the platform and interaction framework of the networked 3-D virtual world Second Life. DualTerm explores the complex territory currently being mapped between physical reality and its simulacra within 3-D simulations, gaming environments, meta worlds and other data-driven representations of built space. More specifically, DualTerm aims to explore the tension of travelers in contemporary airports: the desire to be immersed in the public space of noise overload versus the craving for a quieter state of suspension, contemplation and silence before the act of flying.
The dramaturgy of the installation involves an interactive 3-D walk thru the Pearson Terminal by a visitor controlled avatar which makes experiential the staging of noise and silence. The visitor's Second Life avatar can thus enter into two potential zones: (1) a data space of frenzied and overwhelming sounds (2) a void space that leads visitors toward a surprising space and perspective on the architecture of DualTerm.

project website »dualterm.com



Chronopolis (w/Chris Salter) is a 1000sqft responsive media environment with a huge floor projection, sound and sensors that explores correlations between the changing notions of urbanism, information flows and time. It is a dynamic calendar/clock with streaming icons mark the passing of days, hours, minutes and seconds that shifts between a 365x24x60x60 grid and a 100x100 grid. The shifts are triggered by the number of visitors passing through.

It was commissioned for Villette Numérique, La Villette, Paris, France and the Muffathalle, Munich, Germany.

»project website / »essay