SCALE - site, surface and space

Venue : The Odeon cinema, Merrion Centre, Leeds
Date : Thursday 11th October 2001
Time : 1.00 - 6.00pm
Price : £10/£7 (Click here for booking information)


First produced in 1999 as part of National Architecture Week, the second Architecture and Interface seminar celebrates the establishment of the forum as a biennial trans-disciplinary event organised by the region's Royal Institute of British Architects Digital Futures Group, together with Lumen, as a strand within the Evolution Conference Programme.

For Evolution 2001, Architecture and Interface considers the sites and transitional zones of contemporary spatial experience: on-line, off-line and on-air as well as all around, on the ground and gravity bound.

Where the 1999 forum questioned the relevance of architecture in a media saturated age, here Architecture and Interface considers the conference theme of scale: a component of aesthetic discourse on architecture since antiquity and fundamental to both the poetics and pragmatics of construction. In so doing the aim of the forum is to reveal that in an increasingly immaterial world, architecture and materiality remain central to our experience, our 'sense' of place, our 'immersion' in an environment - whether this is considered to be 'virtual' or 'real' - potential, possible or actual - or somewhere else, a state between these. The seminar aims to first introduce and then explore the idea of scale in relation to architecture, the body and the tectonic potential of the virtual.

Architecture and Interface asks: Is architecture now 'scale-less' or 'scaleable'?

Scale in both 'visual' and 'tectonic' cultures will be introduced in presentations of works drawn from practice and by an invited discussion panel of leading researchers and practitioners who will each make a presentation of around 30 minutes addressing the theme and drawing from their own practice whether this be architecture, site-specific installation or virtual environment design. Audience and invited panelists will be asked for their reflections on the 'invisible but felt' ambiance's of the virtual and to speculate on the architectonic manifestation or embodiment of these as inter(sur)faces - both surface and interface.

Architectural space is an increasingly inter-activated space, with its intelligent skins and immaterial thresholds - if these constitute assemblages of bodies without organs, and if conceptions of architectural scale have until now been governed by the human body, then what of these new 'tectonic' bodies - what scale do these measure? Aimed at architects, under graduates and postgraduate students, artists, new-media practitioners and researchers, this one-day seminar will be presented against the backdrop of the Evolution conference.


Derek Hales
Chair
Architecture and Interface: Scale is programmed and chaired by Derek Hales, convenor of the Digital Futures Group for the Royal Institute of British Architects, Yorkshire. He is an architect and academic currently developing research into the impact of digital technologies on architecture and urban space, including networked mobile technologies, public interfaces and responsive tectonic systems with Huddersfield Media Centre and the University of Huddersfield, where he leads Bachelor of Arts degree courses in multimedia and virtual reality, as well as directing postgraduate architectural studies in digital media and creative technology.

Speakers

Steve Benford
Mixed Reality Boundary
Steve Benford is professor of collaborative computing in Computer Science and a Director of the Mixed Reality Laboratory at the University of Nottingham. The MRL is focussed on the development of techniques combining real and virtual environments to create 'mixed' realities. These are technology-rich environments where participants can interact with physical and digital information in an integrated, augmented-real/augmented-virtual way.

  
Steve Benford will illustrate the concepts and application of the mixed reality boundary, tectonic surfaces where virtual and physical environments are joined together through 'permeable' connections, exemplified in the 'rain-screen' developed for Blast Theory's Desert Rain installation/game/environment and subsequent projects.

Lucy Kimbell
Measurement
Lucy Kimbell is a London-based artist working at the intersection of contemporary art and contemporary business. Her experience ranges from making audio sculptures for public spaces such as the recent Countdown installation at Sheffield train station, to working as a management consultant. An invited panelist at 1998's Architecture and Interface event presenting an examination of the concept of agency within architectural space, including the use of active autonomous tectonic elements and audio in terms of place and intimacy.
This year Lucy Kimbell will discuss the recurring themes in her work of Systems, Objects, Agency in relation to mobility and ubiquitous networks. Providing an illustration of the architecture of cellular networks and the potential impact on perceptions of place and location.

Jen Southern
Can You Put Quake Through a Hot Wash?
What would virtual space look like if it were subjected to the equivalent of disuse, wear and tear, pollution, sunlight, corrosion or graffiti?
We use metaphors, images and simulations of architectural space as interfaces and within virtual environments, but our impact on that architecture at best results in the 'personalised' but never the personal in the way a pair of shoes become our own. If we are already cyborgs, we are also already living within 'virtual' environments. WAP phones, SMS, palm pilots, game boys and GPS systems give us the ability to be simultaneously active within both physical and digital spaces. What happens when the screen scale of the interface is mapped directly onto real space and becomes life sized?


Jen Southern explores these ideas through recent projects bridging real and virtual locations. Jen is an artist, a lecturer in Installation Art at Huddersfield University and History and Analysis of Video and Computer Games at Salford University and is an occasional curator and writer.

Stuart Nolan
Museums Without Walls


Ideas of the scope of a museum have changed dramatically in the last decade leading to changes in the scale of digital collections, networked study, and interactive education which form the three key functions of Museums Without Walls. Plans for the V&A Museum are a starting point for a consideration of how the wider information architecture of museums are changing and how this will affect both the curator and the visitor.
Stuart Nolan is an independent writer and technologist working primarily for Oyster Partners. As an Interactive TV developer he has produced enhanced versions of over 20 TV shows. He is currently writing a nonfiction book called Making TV Strange and a horticultural thriller called The Chinese Stud. Needlework, a feature-length screenplay is due to enter production in 2002.

Sixteen Makers
Sixteen Makers teach and research at the Bartlett School of Architecture. They are a collaborative unit of architects, artists, researchers and makers with an exploratory and experimental approach towards architecture and its periphery.
Phil Ayres, Nick Callicott, Chris Leung and Bob Sheil, lead the practice which was established in London (1994).
For Sixteen Makers, practice is informed by processes of making, demanding familiarity with physical tools, materials and electronic systems. Their recent project The Blusher forms a part of the touring exhibition Making Buildings organised by the Crafts Council of the UK. The Blusher explores the fusion of industrial fabrication and rapid prototyping technologies with 'smart' architectural components and our engagement with networked, local (gallery) and remote (web) environments. Whatever the product of design, how does the process of its 'making' effect the outcome? The practice examines the means by how and by whom architecture is made and experienced, as a model for architectural investigation and production.