Grove
Venice Biennale 2021
Venice, IT 2021
Grove is a new kind of gathering place that offers a vision for inclusive open building. Instead of rigid walls and territories that divide us, can we live in open,worlds? The installation invites visitors to gather among forest-like shadow plays and fields of voices surrounding a projection pool containing a vision of worlds in formation.
The film that forms the centerpiece of the circular projection pool is a collaboration with Warren Du Preez and Nick Thornton Jones. The film explores the polarities of life and death, using an astral, dreamlike vision to re-examine humankind’s relationship with nature. Within the environment, a child-like being emerges. A multichannel sound environment composed by LASG collaborators Salvador Breed with Amsterdam-based 4DSOUND includes multiple whispering voices that surround the child.
The physical testbed of the Meander environment in Cambridge, ON forms the basis of the film environment. Advanced modeling and expanded-reality processing is used to offer a spectrum that ranges from delicate, distant fragments to deeply saturated and immersive fields of highly structured cellular tissues and skeletons. Surrounding Grove’s projection pool is a cluster of custom omnidirectional speakers mounted in totem-like cages. Hovering above these is an undulating canopy of lace-like skeletons with suspended liquid-filled jewel-like vessels.
Principal
Philip Beesley
Project Lead
Timothy Boll
Curator
Sascha Hastings
Collaborators
Warren du Preez
Nick Thornton-Jones
Salvador Breed
Poul Holleman
Iris van Herpen
Codrin Talaba
Partners
Living Architecture Systems group (LASG)
4DSOUND
EnTimeMent
Gorbet Design Inc.
Immortal Productions
Atelier Iris van Herpen
Riverside Architectural Press
Rock Paper Robot
Wicked Pixels
LASG Executive
Matt Gorbet
Rob Gorbet
Ellie Hayden
Michael Lancaster
Anne Paxton
Stephen Ru
LASG Studio
Bria Cole
Kevan Cress
Mackenzie van Dam
Mark Francis
Ilana Hadad
Lisa Jiang
Glenn Lu
Bianca Weeko Martin
Nikola Miloradovic
Nathan Shakura
Meghan Won
Production
Gwynne Allanford
Filipe Costa
Dima Ghazal
Angie Kwon
Kailey Moulson
Ashley Peebles
Tahir Pervaiz
Julia Richard
Dalia Todary-Michael
Xinyi Zhang
Venice Installation Manager
Davide Tiso
Supported by: Acrylite™, Canada Council for the Arts, Embassy of Canada to Italy, Christie Digital Systems, Gaslight Events Company, HIP Developments, La Biennale de Venezia, Mitacs, Pierre Lassonde Family Foundation, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), Stimuleringsfonds, Toronto Arts Council, University of Waterloo. This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation Programme under grant agreement No 824160.