Radiant Soil
ALIVE / EN VIE exhibition at Espace EDF Fondation
Paris, FR 2013
The word ‘soil’ might speak quietly of secure mass and compression and resource for framing human territory, but this contemporary soil seethes with a myriad of seeded viscera, miniscule fragments gathering and efflorescing, redolent with chorusing oceans of growth to come. The soil covers, and retreats. Soil consumes space, erasing and consuming daily circumstance within its unspeakably silent, primal fertility. The ambivalence latent within soil makes it a monstrous doppelganger for architecture.
Radiant Soil forms interlinking clouds of industrial design biomimetic components of polymer, metal and glass, arranged in suspended filter layers contain a near-living carbon-capture metabolism. Frond-clusters fitted with shape-memory alloy mechanisms react to viewers as they approach, flexing and setting off bursts of light that stimulate the protocells and trigger chains of motion that ripple throughout the environment. Scent-emitting glands attract viewers and encourage interaction with the system, providing stimulus that increases air circulation and protocell formation.
Project Leads
- Philip Beesley
- Andrea Ling
- Jonathan Tyrrell
Collaborators
- Rachel Armstrong
PBAI Studio
- Sue Balint
- Eric Bury
- Martin Correa
- Pedro Garcia
- Jonathan Gotfryd
- Jayden Lee
- Anne Paxton
- Mingyi Zhou
Production (Toronto)
- Mariella Amodio
- Martina Ferrera
- Yonghan Kim
- Brownyn Loucks
- Sydney Morrison
- Sarah Stephens
- William Yam
- Production (Paris)
- Jessica Anoche
- Marjorie Artières
- Olivia Aspinall
- Jade Boyeldieu d’Auvigny
- Lydia Chang
- Polina Ershova
- Fabio Latino
- Hanaa Della Lama Taouzri
- Rachel Trattles