Sargasso

Luminato Festival

Toronto, Canada - 2011

Commissoned by the Luminato festival, Sargasso refers to the vast, tangled floating masses of living matter and cast-off material that drifts at the centre of the Atlantic. The environment within the sweeping atrium of the Santiago Caltrava’s Allen Lambert Galleria made a canopy that slowly shifted and floated above the city. The canopy formed a forest-like hovering field, kin to primitive life-forms within dense jungles and ocean reefs.

The outer canopy layer was formed from a hexagonal meshwork of acrylic and mylar fronds that stretched east and west into the heights of the public hall. This surface met the ground at the centre of the installation. The sloping and curving membrane framed a pool of space that functioned as an open room for public gathering. An inner canopy layer was suspended over this central area, containing an aerial grotto of kinetic bladders and glasswork.

In this expanded aerial soil, embedded machine intelligence triggered breathing and swallowing motions, accompanied by waves of overlapping faint recorded voices housed within an array of embedded miniature speakers. Empathic motions rippled out from hives of kinetic valves and pores, creating a diffuse pumping that pulled moist air and stray organic matter through the filtering membranes. Glands containing synthetic digestive liquids and salts were clustered throughout the system. Engineered protocells, which are liquid-supported artificial cells that share some of the characteristics of natural living cells, were arranged in a series of embedded flasks.

Philip Beesley: Installations at a… – TheStar.com
Hylozoic Tools – CFC Media Lab
Beauty Blows onto Bay St. – National Post

Sargasso

Artist

  • Philip Beesley

Engineering

  • Rob Gorbet

PBAI

  • Eric Bury
  • Elisabeth van Overbeeke
  • Carlos Carrillo Duran
  • Zachary Fluker
  • Hayley Isaacs
  • Liav Koren
  • Jonathan Tyrrell
  • Anne Paxton
  • Kristie Taylor
  • Erica Yudelman

Consultants

  • Laird Macdonald
  • Rachel Armstrong
  • Brandon DeHart

Assembly

  • Steven Ischkin
  • Martin Correa Irarrazaval
  • Jon Lau
  • Marina Fathalla
  • Ji Hee Choi
  • Alexandra Doumouras
  • Gina Gallaugher
  • Christina Elizabeth Hall
  • Marianna Marchiorso
  • Douglas Robb

Fabrication

  • Toronto Laser Services
  • Sawdust and Noise
  • KJ Laser Micromachining
  • Antech Technologies Inc.
  • Louise Yu

Installation

  • Zoe Alexis Abrams
  • Nadaa Baqui
  • Ashley Bartlett
  • Christina Benn
  • Victoria Beltrano
  • Yiu-Bun Chan
  • Ayesha Chatterjee
  • Priscilla Chong

  • Rhonda Cohen
  • Jessica Craig
  • Mona Dai
  • Jam Derrick
  • Anna Freeman
  • Emad Ghattas
  • Christina E. Hall
  • Andrea Hunniford
  • Leslie Hutcheson
  • Ping Jin
  • Carol Kaifosh
  • Heain Kim
  • Alan Duncan Kobayashi
  • Andrea Krejcik
  • Rebecca Lai
  • Liz Laing
  • Elena Lau
  • Andrea Ling
  • Aloysia Litanidara
  • Alison Little
  • Lina Lum
  • Mary Anne McKiechan
  • Christian Muise
  • Tara Nicholson
  • Vincent Pape
  • Diem Phan
  • Jennifer Phan
  • Ann Pogue
  • Paula Popa

  • Taia Postolati
  • Elizabeth Richardson
  • Anne Sewell
  • Stephen Smith
  • Victor Smith
  • Allison Soong
  • Siobhan Sweeny
  • Andreea Toca
  • Doreen Urbanczyk
  • Roberto Valte
  • Jennifer van Overbeeke
  • Maria Wu

Sargasso

This work was made possible with the generous support of the following organizations: