Please Adjust (2011) by Corban Walker
Corban Walker’s most recent installations are now up at the Irish Pavilion, more about unhealthy located at Istituto Santa Maria della Pieta for the 2011 Venice Biennale. His work is site-specific and utilizes a variety of materials; the installations are generally minimalist in composition, incorporating mathematical formulas to intervene in space. For the pavilion he installed three pieces Transparent Wall, Please Adjust, and Modular. Each of the three works address the precariousness of one’s perspective and transforms viewers relationship to the space. Transparent Wall impedes the view on one end of the building by floating a grid of black squares on the window. This simple addition forces viewers to consider the street below from an unexpected geometric perspectives.
Modular (2011) by Corban Walker
Modular is composed of lines that correspond to Corban’s four foot tall line-of-sight and distorts the viewers sense of scale as they walk along the buildings back stairs.Please Adjust,a pile of interlocking steel cubes, is the center piece of the Pavilon. The cubes are open-framed and their connections are flexible which means that the sculpture can assume different forms and will be different each time it is installed. Accompanying the Irish Pavilion is a mobile app/exhibition guide available for both Android devices and iPhone/Ipad/Ipod Touch can be found by searching for Corban Walker Irish Pavilion. It contains information on Walker, the Pavilion, the building and a video interview with the artist. Its implementation is rough but this type of digital guide will soon become the norm to supplement many art exhibitions.
Please Adjust (2011) by Corban Walker
Corban Walker’s most recent installations are now up at the Irish Pavilion, unhealthy located at Istituto Santa Maria della Pieta for the 2011 Venice Biennale. His work is site-specific and utilizes a variety of materials; the installations are generally minimalist in composition, incorporating mathematical formulas to intervene in space. For the pavilion he installed three pieces Transparent Wall, Please Adjust, and Modular. Each of the three works address the precariousness of one’s perspective and transforms viewers relationship to the space. Transparent Wall impedes the view on one end of the building by floating a grid of black squares on the window. This simple addition forces viewers to consider the street below from an unexpected geometric perspectives.
Modular (2011) by Corban Walker
Modular is composed of lines that correspond to Corban’s four foot tall line-of-sight and distorts the viewers sense of scale as they walk along the buildings back stairs.Please Adjust,a pile of interlocking steel cubes, is the center piece of the Pavilon. The cubes are open-framed and their connections are flexible which means that the sculpture can assume different forms and will be different each time it is installed. Accompanying the Irish Pavilion is a mobile app/exhibition guide available for both Android devices and iPhone/Ipad/Ipod Touch can be found by searching for Corban Walker Irish Pavilion. It contains information on Walker, the Pavilion, the building and a video interview with the artist. Its implementation is rough but this type of digital guide will soon become the norm to supplement many art exhibitions.
Transversing the Bay is a study of the San Francisco Bay Area that utilizes mass transit systems, see
particularly the Bay Area Rapid Transit system and local ferries. By framing the movements of people and the spatial and affective domains created by these systems, price
our aim was the documentation and distillation of the emotional resonances and ephemeral qualities of place found in this region. There is a unique social ecology that revolves around each transit hub that informs the surrounding landscape, salve
varying by the age of the line and the density of the location.
The photographs and sound that we captured were constrained by a one mile diameter within walking distance of the various transit hubs and reflect our particular experiences. It became obvious over the course of our study that the core/periphery relationship is a crucial one and our documentation is a reflection of movements from the furthest flung suburbs inward. In addition we found that the core urban centers are oversaturated by photography, by an almost blinding amount of representative documentation that can be found within seconds, so a prioritization of the over-looked peripheral spaces of everyday life become the primary focus of the photographs.
This project was part of the Transit/Stasis Exhibition at the San Francisco Art Institute in May of 2011.
See more from Transversing the Bay at the project site: transversing.net
Please Adjust (2011) by Corban Walker
Corban Walker’s most recent installations are now up at the Irish Pavilion, unhealthy located at Istituto Santa Maria della Pieta for the 2011 Venice Biennale. His work is site-specific and utilizes a variety of materials; the installations are generally minimalist in composition, incorporating mathematical formulas to intervene in space. For the pavilion he installed three pieces Transparent Wall, Please Adjust, and Modular. Each of the three works address the precariousness of one’s perspective and transforms viewers relationship to the space. Transparent Wall impedes the view on one end of the building by floating a grid of black squares on the window. This simple addition forces viewers to consider the street below from an unexpected geometric perspectives.
Modular (2011) by Corban Walker
Modular is composed of lines that correspond to Corban’s four foot tall line-of-sight and distorts the viewers sense of scale as they walk along the buildings back stairs.Please Adjust,a pile of interlocking steel cubes, is the center piece of the Pavilon. The cubes are open-framed and their connections are flexible which means that the sculpture can assume different forms and will be different each time it is installed. Accompanying the Irish Pavilion is a mobile app/exhibition guide available for both Android devices and iPhone/Ipad/Ipod Touch can be found by searching for Corban Walker Irish Pavilion. It contains information on Walker, the Pavilion, the building and a video interview with the artist. Its implementation is rough but this type of digital guide will soon become the norm to supplement many art exhibitions.
Transversing the Bay is a study of the San Francisco Bay Area that utilizes mass transit systems, see
particularly the Bay Area Rapid Transit system and local ferries. By framing the movements of people and the spatial and affective domains created by these systems, price
our aim was the documentation and distillation of the emotional resonances and ephemeral qualities of place found in this region. There is a unique social ecology that revolves around each transit hub that informs the surrounding landscape, salve
varying by the age of the line and the density of the location.
The photographs and sound that we captured were constrained by a one mile diameter within walking distance of the various transit hubs and reflect our particular experiences. It became obvious over the course of our study that the core/periphery relationship is a crucial one and our documentation is a reflection of movements from the furthest flung suburbs inward. In addition we found that the core urban centers are oversaturated by photography, by an almost blinding amount of representative documentation that can be found within seconds, so a prioritization of the over-looked peripheral spaces of everyday life become the primary focus of the photographs.
This project was part of the Transit/Stasis Exhibition at the San Francisco Art Institute in May of 2011.
See more from Transversing the Bay at the project site: transversing.net
Transversing the Bay is a study of the San Francisco Bay Area that utilizes mass transit systems, dosage
particularly the Bay Area Rapid Transit system and local ferries. By framing the movements of people and the spatial and affective domains created by these systems, order
our aim was the documentation and distillation of the emotional resonances and ephemeral qualities of place found in this region. There is a unique social ecology that revolves around each transit hub that informs the surrounding landscape, varying by the age of the line and the density of the location.
The photographs and sound that we captured were constrained by a one mile diameter within walking distance of the various transit hubs and reflect our particular experiences. It became obvious over the course of our study that the core/periphery relationship is a crucial one and our documentation is a reflection of movements from the furthest flung suburbs inward. In addition we found that the core urban centers are oversaturated by photography, by an almost blinding amount of representative documentation that can be found within seconds, so a prioritization of the over-looked peripheral spaces of everyday life become the primary focus of the photographs.
This project was part of the Transit/Stasis Exhibition at the San Francisco Art Institute in May of 2011.
See more from Transversing the Bay at the project site: transversing.net
Environmental Health Clinic & Sentient City
The Environmental Health Clinic + Lab (X-clinic) is an interdisciplinary, diagnosis experimental, community-based project with institutional backing from New York University. It is directed by Natalie Jeremijenko, an artist, educator, and scientist who for over two decades has brought together disparate disciplines with a particular sense of graceful convergence.
The X-Clinic’s operating principle is to turn the idea of health care on its head, shifting the idea from internal medicine to external interventions for health. They ask the question, what can we do in the face of collective and recurring damage? This particularly ecological model lends itself to broad-based experiments and solutions to community problems. The X-Clinic’s projects are oriented towards long-term future thinking fusing art, design, hard sciences (chemistry,biology, ecology) and community participation. Many of the projects serve a practical short and medium-term goals such as sequestering toxins, recording environmental data, plantings, etc.
It is difficult to ascertain whether their endeavors are well received, because they are either extremely successful or are simply experts at image management, but the perception is that Jeremijenko and company deftly fuse a number or different disciplines to great effect. Their website seems dormant since late last year leaving it unclear if it is still an active project but either way it represents an intriguing way forward for the integration of arts, sciences, and structured community participation.
One project of note was the X-clinic and The Living’s collaboration, Amphibious Architecture. The project involved the design and installation of environmental sensors in the Hudson and East rivers (on either side of new york city). The stated goals were not only the implementation of a DIY sensor network that could record environmental data like the speed of current, the prescence of pollution and of fish and other water-based wildlife. The sensors also lit up when fish brushed up against them. There was also a SMS transmitter built into the sensor array in which people could SMS the fish and also receive sensor data. This interactivity is only nominal as fish or the rivers in which they reside cannot send text messages. The interactivity component is however part of the overall goal, to generate public interest in the rivers health and well-being.
X-Clinic’s Amphibious Architecture is one of the projects featured in Towards a Sentient City, the recently released book from the 2009 exhibition of the same name. All five case studies in the Sentient City exhibition shared the same sense of hybrid practice that informs the work of Jeremejenko and her collaborators. This seems like a fruitful form of practice for future work-the experimental and contingent hybridization of scientific research, technological experimentation, structured involvement with community members and ecological concerns. This is distinct from the notion of “social practices” which often is about social interactions for their own sake and not for a useful or desirable outcome with the potential for positive long-term effects.
