SITUATION

Room11 are pleases to announce our involvement in the RMIT Symposium and Exhibition  SITUATION.  We are working closely with artists Keith Deverell and Marcus Cook.

The 7th IDEA international symposium hosted and convened by RMIT Interior Design.
RMIT Design Hub, Melbourne, Australia
31 July to 3 August 2014
With Keynote Situators Ed Hollis & Bianca Hester

Please come along friday night to view our installation TEST_001

RMIT Design Hub Level 2 ( Rm11 work on roof! )
July 23 – Aug 3
Drinks Friday Aug 1
6 – 8pm

SITUATION brings attention to the designing of interiors as a practice engaged in spatial and temporal production; a practice that works in the midst of social, cultural, historical, political forces; a practice open to contingency, chance and change; a practice engaged with singularity and specificity. SITUATION highlights ideas of event and the eventful nature of interiors, lived space-time compositions in constant change; atmospheric compositions as distinct from artifacts; ephemerality; uniqueness; one-offs; a multiplicity of experience.

TEST_001

Test_001 offers an elsewhere ecology, a place of no context that permits an individual’s participation in its evolution. The work maps movement and mood, amplifying one’s sense of self in space. Minimal digital manifestations of light and sound are generated through an intensely raw and textural interface, combining algorithms with rubble; code mixes with dust. Test_001 explores how technology may affect the most basic of materials and, in turn, establish an intensely empathetic relationship between person and place.

An ongoing investigation into how materials can possess a defined and coded artificial intelligence is key to the development of Test_001. The questions lie in a future experience where materials can map, interpret and translate their surrounds and those that interact with them. The work begins by providing a landscape of urban dissonance where personalities in materials are born from use. At play is an opportunity for an audience to develop a sympathetic partnership with their environment; from a destabilised ground plane to a subtly shifting light and soundscape. Particular experiences are triggered through the movement and pace of the user. Calm movements trigger a subtle compositional shift; however, if a person moves aggressively through the space, their actions will trigger a more dramatic change in their environment – a disturbance, an evolution, and a level of resistance. In this back and forth engagement of user and space, the work will regulate itself and aim to then adapt its users through artificial means. If many people enter and over-stimulate/overload the system it will flare up and respond in kind, offering its own defensive shutdown. The intensity should build. An overbalance should be stated. Materials and technology produce a situation where discord and balance can be achieved through a learned approach that morphs and adjusts over time.

An attempt is made here to locate a person within an elsewhere site and to generate a situation that short-circuits the traditional signifiers of past and future, and offers, perhaps for at least a short time, a moment of suspended affect; an activated and open present.i Behind this project is an intense fascination with the latent possibilities and the chaotic uncanny powers of cities and buildings in flux, of an architecture of the incomplete. A narrative is there that speaks of dust having memory, of rubble having intelligence, and of reification becoming standard, whereby the experienced perception contains more explicit spatial information than the sensory stimulus on which it is based.

Test_001 has been developed by Room11 Architects in collaboration with artists and sound producers Keith Deverell and Marcus Cook, and with kind sponsorship from Warwick Fabrics, Lovelight Blinds, Light Project and Mackie Audio.

 References
i Barakin, A. Parallel Presents: The Art of Pierre Huyghe. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2012.

Keith Deverell
Keith Deverell is an Australian/UK video, sound and installation artist residing in Melbourne, Australia. Keith’s background spans video art, installation art, graphic design, interaction design and experimental programming. Keith’s work is highly poetic in its exploration of gesture and politics, observational and documentary forms, and the relationship between place and identity.

Marcus Cook
Marcus Cook is an emerging sound artist (Default Jamerson, Pewter Snake Necklace, Nokes & Cook) and a professional sound/video/electronics technician. Marcus runs Shogun Lodge Services, which offers technical support to artists and events, and is also a co-founder of the Sabbatical Records label.

Steering Committee

Dr Suzie Attiwill, associate professor, Interior Design, RMIT University
Roger Kemp, program director, Interior Design, RMIT University
Christopher Cottrell, associate lecture, Interior Design, RMIT University
Caroline Vains, associate lecturer, Interior Design, RMIT University
Nick Rebstadt, RMIT Interior Design graduate.

Symposium Convenors/Arrangers

Dr Suzie Attiwill, associate professor, RMIT Interior Design
Philippa Murray, lecturer, RMIT Interior Design

Exhibition Curatorium

Dr Suzie Attiwill, associate professor, RMIT Interior Design
Simon Maidment, Curator of Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Victoria
Kate Rhodes, Curator of Design, Design Hub, RMIT University
Sven Mehzoud, program director, Interior Architecture, Monash University

Juhani Pallasmaa visits GASP

A recent trip to the state for the Tasmanian Architectural Narratives Workshop, allowed Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa, author of ‘The Eyes of the Skin – Architecture and the Senses‘, to visit the Glenorchy Arts and Sculpture Park with Thomas Bailey.

Room11’s Thomas Bailey and Megan Baynes were guest speakers at the event alongside Dr Carmen Fiol-Costa, Richard Leplastrier, John Wardle, Craig Rosevear & Juhani Pallasmaa – a full list of the guest speakers can be seen here and a review of the event here.