Interview about Pinnannousu Robotic Ice Sculpture Performance, winner of the A' Interactive, Experiential and Immersive Design Installations Award 2024
A slowly melting sculpture performance, where an industrial robot carves a large ice block to a computational lens that refracts the spotlight to graphics on the wall, spelling plus two degree celsius, an ominous warning of global temperature rise. The artwork juxtaposes the high tech optimism with transient global challenges that know no bounds. The intervention only speeds up the process.
View detailed images, specifications, and award details on A' Design Award & Competition website.
View Design DetailsAs it is with creative process, many threads tend to get bundled to (ideally) elegant solutions. In this case, I had been working with computational caustics before, as well as ran some research grants in looking at snow and ice in the context of new media. When I was invited to create new work at the Sapporo International Art Festival, these threads convereged, and given the festival's theme "Last Snow", the different strands convereged, and a sense of purpose came together.
Well, quite simply, this is what I do. I might say that I am Claude Levi-Strauss's "bricoleur", a kind of hacker that combines technological and cultural means to convey meaning. My whole professional life, I have explored the liminal space between virtual and real. transferring the qualities of the digital to the physical and vice versa. From interaction design point of view, I like to explore theoretical questions in practical context, creating museum experiences, art in public space, or other forms where the story and the medium blend together.
In this interview, I am writing the answers in first person, but it should be implicitly clear, that these kinds of works are ALWAYS collaborations. So, in this case, my long time collaborators Mark Pauly from EPFL, and Rayform were instrumental in calculating the geometry needed for the image to emerge from refracted light. They have developed the techology over many years, and I've always marveled its beauty and elegance. At the same time, the project brought me together with AATB, an artist duo from Zürich, who create art with robots for living. So, all these technical challenges had very human solutions.
That's a tough one. Since there's so many strands that need to come together for a one-off experience, you cannot reshoot and changing things indefinitely. Therefore, it was really preparing the building blocks, (some custom code running on a raspberry pi as well as few off the shelf time-lapse cameras) individually, and then hoping they will capture the one off event, that can then be preserved in documentation. I must say, if I had a chance to do this again, I'd be better prepared for even better documentation.
It is infinitely satisfying to work with great team: there is this kind of empathy of each others' responsibilities, but also caring for what everyone can do to help across space and time(zones). I am used to think through complex installations, where through conversation and discussion you can hopefully avoid major pitfalls, but also make the time when everything come together as enjoyable as possible. In my experience, the kind of unforgiving perfectionism at the installation site is detrimental to the quality of the work, as the professional understanding of the different qualities across the different aspects of the work exists in different brains. You have to trust that.
Simply by bringing those two together and seeing what happens :) In other words, the aesthetics of the work is exactly in this interplay of theoretical model manifesting in "living" material, where the latter brings dynamic and changing nuance. It makes the work alive. I got a chance to work with AATB, EPFL and Rayform through a grant from ECAL called "Third hand – Creative Applications for Robotics" to prototype what we wanted to build. During this time, we could experience the aesthetic qualities of this combination, and then extrapolate the final installation with this knowledge in mind.
It was hugely influential, but in retrospect, also accidental. When I started working on this, I was imagining the work in more kind of white cube setting. But since the gallery, Isamu Noguchi's iconic glass pyramid was dealing with the same environmental questions, the festival director's genius connected the function of the snow storage as an unconventional exhibition space that turned out perfect for the work in its ambience and functionality.
I have done lot of experiments with different visual motifs with caustics over the years, and with this project, also did a broad series of indexical, symbolic and abstract visuals. But in the end, the natural caustics need very stark contrast in the encoded message, so typography works the best, as we as humans are wired to read meaning from these abstract symbols. The ominous IPCC 2 degrees temperature rise warning is a global cultural artifact, I felt that this would be the clearest way to let the audience then decipher the physical manifestation of the installation. By looking at the work, we know what will happen, and can see it in our mind's eye. Then extrapolating it to the global scale, there's no need for further words.
To be honest, I have no idea. Since the artwork is quite difficult to exhibit, and requires substantial cultural support framework, I am afraid it will not have that much impact in the grander scheme of things. I am afraid that it is destined to be "preaching to the converted". Of course, that is the power of art: you can give form to something abstract and omipresent in a way that it can be meaningful in many ways to many different people. Simply being present, and existing is already a lot. ... until all melts away ;)
I am undecided about this, but my experience is that you need to have strong internal conviction about the purpose of your work. Without this internal mindset, you only end up "wrangling" with the system. With environmental awareness, it is difficult to be optimistic these days, but that is something that I wish would be the fundamental tone that artists thrive for. We live in a complex world where I believe we should embrace the complexity, and not try to polarise everything to be right or wrong or good or bad. I hope with my work I got to create something ambivalent that makes the audience think in different levels. This is what art in this context should strive for.
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