090820_ALOBLUMS (Chile)

ALOBLUMS | Valparaiso (Chile) | August 2009

Design: THEVERYMANY
Design Team: Marc Fornes, Skylar Tibbits, Mathew Staudt
Assembly team: collective BANGS and many students from the workshop...





ALOBLUMS SUM OF ITS PARTS:
sphereoid - 2m (6') approx. diameter...
70 modules (4 types)...
12 sheets of golden anodized aluminum...
cnc cut in Philadeplhia (Continental Signs)...
3700 rivets...
all packed with me on the plane as 2 check in bags (40 and 35 pounds)...



MORE TO COME SOON......

Many thanks to the collective BANGS for the invitation - especially Marcela Godoy for making that workshop happen...

Students:
Eduardo Hirose, Daniel Concha, Diego Moreno, Juan Pablo Klempau, Felipe Valdebenito, Pablo Banda, Francisco Quitral, Hermann Zbindenn, José Luis Guzmán, Victor Bunster M., Drago Vodanovic, Claudio Troncoso, Tomas Jacobsen, Miguel Aravena, Pablo Silva
Francisco Calvo, Camila Rock De Luigi, Francisco Lara, Oscar Terrazas , Gabriel Santander, Oscar Ignacio Contreras, Hernán Castro, Natalija Boljsakov, Brian Miller, Manuel Díaz, Rodrigo Ramírez, Gonzalo Andrade, Andre Geoffroy, Matias Carrera...

BANGS:
Pablo Barría, Begoña Arellano, Claudio Astudillo, José Narea,, Marcela Godoy, Linda Schilling

Extras:
Pablo C. Herrera, Tristan Al Haddad...

090804_Echinoids_(re)configured

NEW YORK | Bridge Gallery | Echinoids (re)configured


How many people do actualy believe in "failures"?

I do! - while giving talks/lectures I am often arguying about it - "operative failures" - in philosophy, empiricism is a theory of knowledge which asserts that knowledge arises from experience - one of many ways to gain experience is through test and trials - and within the recent jump in scale of the digital craft and the "Do it yourself" paradigm - experience requires failures...

Experiencing failure within prototypes - yes! - and despite often being displayed within art gallery THEVERYMANY's "constructs" are partly installation partly prototypes - though not so much prototypes to see if the systems is actually going to fail? - but rather when? - can failures be expected? - even better anticipated up to embodied within the geometrical system tested potential response?


"the lion sat" - a localized part of Echinoids v1.0 slowly saddled - it didn't break but suffered from "fatigue" - unexpected failure? - blind future? - I would argue for curated ones...

Temporary installation are related to time - but also budget - aggregate systems and their inherent qualities are highly depending on numbers - unfortunately numbers are often the exact opposit vector to time/budget - then if no budget the system requires carefull compositionnal search methods to maintain a scale large enough to be experienced by its viewer as architectural artefact - homogeneity could be one way to go - unfortunately spreading the elements all accross the construct while maintaining structural integrity often requires down sizing...


"until where can one go too far?"

Echinoids system is based on "calculated risk" - calculated risk is different from denying risk or maximising efforts to avoid falires - here the aggregate is designed through variation of desnties - balancing strengh and weakness - fully closed macro-systems as stable larger parts and low density members at transitional areas - a curated aggregate system allowing within its own geometric nature possible partial re-configuration - "explosion" as safe away exit strategy - allowing second lifes for a piece: from construct to environment...


That (re)configuration is only the first one possible - and therefore to be followed along the summer for eventual other ones...