BY DALE EISINGER | SEP
8, 2013
How often is it that Slavoj Zizek, the radical
Slovene philosopher, gets cited in sculpture and green design these days? At
least once, by the multi-faceted ecoLogic Studio, on their new
project, meta-Follies for the Metropolitan Landscape. Responding to
Zizek's call for a "new terrifying form of abstract
materialism," the design collective has created this vaguely terrifying
pavilion that's hard to pin down: is it sculpture, commentary, interactive art?
Whatever it is, it's beautiful.
EcoLogic used algorythmic, organic methods in the initial
design. The concept behind these incubator-like clusters has to do with a
narrative the studio developed, about seekers of the sustainable forgoing their
search for refuge and instead taking up residence in this "shanty"
version. Made recycled materials , embedded with hundreds of reactive piezeo
buzzers. It's a heady, high-concept piece. Here's how
the makers describe it, in part:
"[...] within this paradigm aesthetic codes are
redefined; the beauty of nature, the proportion of the classic and the
idealization of the early ecologists are substituted by the abstraction of
digital meta-fields, of mathematical minimal paths, which define an algorithmic
manual for the assemblage of new material systems made of processed industrial
waste, post-consumer recycled plastic, bundles of electrical wires, solar
photovoltaic cells and cheap reused Chinese sound kits.
Such an improbable assemblage of ‘urban trash’ is pushed to the limit and
engineered to reveal a new Eden, a new aesthetic, spatial and behavioral
milieu, a new urban eco-language."
It will soon go on view at the FRAC Centre in Oreleans,
France.
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