Tag Archives: Victoria & Albert Museum

Vancouver (Canada) Biennale and #ArtProject2020, a free virtual art & technology expo from November 11th to 15th, 2020

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It’s a bit odd that the organizers for an event held in Canada would arrange to have Remembrance Day for the opening day and not make any acknowledgements. (For those not familiar with it, here’s more about Remembrance Day (Wikipedia entry) and there’s more here on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s [CBC] Remembrance Day 2020 webpage and on this Nov. 10, 2020 ‘Here’s everything you need to know about the poppy’ article for the Daily Hive.)

The event description is quite exciting and the poster image is engaging, although ….

Courtesy: Vancouver Biennale

Did they intend for the blocks to the left and right (gateway to the bridge?) to look like someone holding both hands giving you the finger on each side? Now that I’ve seen it, I can’t ‘unsee’ it.

Moving on, there’s more information about the expo from a Nov. 9, 2020 Vancouver Biennale announcement (received via email),

The Vancouver Biennale announces a global invitation to #ArtProject2020, a free virtual art and technology expo about how the latest technologies are influencing the art world. The expo will run from November 11th to 15th and feature over 80 international speakers and 40 events offering accessible information and educational resources for digital art. Everyone with a personal or professional interest in art and technology, including curators, galleries, museums, artists, collectors, innovators, experience designers, and futurists will find the expo fascinating and is invited to register. Trilingual programming in English, Spanish, and Chinese will be available.

To reserve a free ticket and see the complete speaker list and schedule, visit www.artproject.io.

Curated by New York-based Colombian artist Jessica Angel, the expo will accompany the Vancouver Biennale’s first exhibition of tokenized art with new works by Jessica Angel, Dina Goldstein, Diana Thorneycroft, and Kristin McIver. Tokenized art is powered by blockchain technology and has redefined digital artwork ownership, allowing artists and collectors the benefit of true digital scarcity. The exhibition will be launched via the blockchain marketplace, Ephimera.

About the Expo

Panel Discussions, Artist Talks, Keynote Speakers: Innovators, curators, legal experts, and artists working at the leading edge of digital art will cover topics including What Is Cryptoart?, Finding Opportunity in the Digital, Women Leading the Art and Tech Movement, The Art of Immersion, Decentralising Power and Resources in the Art World, and Tools for Artists and Collectors. Speakers include The Whitney Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, Christie’s, Foundation for Art and Blockchain, SuperRare, and Art in America.

Learning: Barrier-free educational workshops will teach participants about using open-source and accessible innovative tools to create, monetize, and collect digital art. Workshops are integrated with various blockchain projects to drive adoption through experience. Featured presenters include Ephimera, Status, and MakerDAO. Indigenous Matriachs 4 will present from the Immersive Knowledge Transfer series for XR media creators, artists, and storytellers from diverse cultural communities.

Activities: A Crypto-Art Puzzle will drop clues every day of the event, and the Digital Art Battle will challenge artists to draw live. This gamified experience will offer winners rewards in different tokens. Participates can also join the Rare AF team on a Virtual Gallery Tour through the Metaverse, where gallery owners will share the inspirations behind their virtual spaces.

Anchoring the virtual expo is a future physical installation by Jessica Angel. Cleverly titled Voxel Bridge, this public artwork will transform the area underneath Vancouver’s Cambie Street Bridge into a three-layered immersive experience to transport visitors between physical and digital worlds. Working with the vastness of the concrete bridge as first layer, Angel adds her site-specific installation as a second layer, and completes the experience with augmented reality enhancements over the real world as the third and final layer. The installation is slated for completion in Spring 2021 as part of the Vancouver Biennale Exhibition.

“I never want to see the Biennale stuck in the past, presenting only static sculpture in an ever-changing world. We work with what comes next, the yet unknown, and we want to go where the future is heading and where public art has, perhaps, always been going. I am excited for this expo and the next chapter of the Biennale.”  – Barrie Mowatt, Founder & Artistic Director of Vancouver Biennale

“Art is a mobilizing force with the power to bridge seemingly dissimilar worlds, and Voxel Bridge exhibits this capacity. This expo transcends the enjoyment of art into a unifying and experimenting effort, that enables blockchain technology and established art institutions to examine ways of interaction. Join us in the virtual public space, to learn, and to cultivate new forms of participation.”             – Jessica Angel, Artist

Do check the schedule: http://www.artproject.io/ (keep scrolling) and don’t forget it’s free in exchange for your registration information. Enjoy!

A Victoria & Albert Museum installation integrates of biomimicry, robotic fabrication and new materials research in architecture

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The Victoria & Albert Museum (V&A) in London, UK, opened its Engineering Season show on May 18, 2016 (it runs until Nov. 6, 2016) featuring a robot installation and an exhibition putting the spotlight on Ove Arup, “the most significant engineer of the 20th century” according to the V&A’s May ??, 2016 press release,

The first major retrospective of the most influential engineer of the 20th century and a site specific installation inspired by nature and fabricated by robots will be the highlights of the V&A’s first ever Engineering Season, complemented by displays, events and digital initiatives dedicated to global engineering design. The V&A Engineering Season will highlight the importance of engineering in our daily lives and consider engineers as the ‘unsung heroes’ of design, who play a vital and creative role in the creation of our built environment.

Before launching into the robot/biomimicry part of this story, here’s a very brief description of why Ove Arup is considered so significant and influential,

Engineering the World: Ove Arup and the Philosophy of Total Design will explore the work and legacy of Ove Arup (1895-1988), … . Ove pioneered a multidisciplinary approach to design that has defined the way engineering is understood and practiced today. Spanning 100 years of engineering and architectural design, the exhibition will be guided by Ove’s writings about design and include his early projects, such as the Penguin Pool at London Zoo, as well as renowned projects by the firm including Sydney Opera House [Australia] and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Arup’s collaborations with major architects of the 20th century pioneered new approaches to design and construction that remain influential today, with the firm’s legacy visible in many buildings across London and around the world. It will also showcase recent work by Arup, from major infrastructure projects like Crossrail and novel technologies for acoustics and crowd flow analysis, to engineering solutions for open source housing design.

Robots, biomimicry and the Elytra Filament Pavilion

A May 18, 2016 article by Tim Master for BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) news online describes the pavilion installation,

A robot has taken up residence at the Victoria & Albert Musuem to construct a new installation at its London gardens.

The robot – which resembles something from a car assembly line – will build new sections of the Elytra Filament Pavilion over the coming months.

The futuristic structure will grow and change shape using data based on how visitors interact with it.

…

Elytra’s canopy is made up of 40 hexagonal cells – made from strips of carbon and glass fibre – which have been tightly wound into shape by the computer-controlled Kuka robot.

Each cell takes about three hours to build. On certain days, visitors to the V&A will be able to watch the robot create new cells that will be added to the canopy.

Here are some images made available by V&A,

Elytra Filament Pavilion arriving at the V&A, 2016. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Elytra Filament Pavilion arriving at the V&A, 2016. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Kuka robot weaving Elytra Filament Pavilion cell fibres, 2016. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Kuka robot weaving Elytra Filament Pavilion cell fibres, 2016. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

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Elytra Filament Pavilion at the V&A, 2016. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Elytra Filament Pavilion at the V&A, 2016. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London

Here’s more detail from the V&A’s Elytra Filament Pavilion installation description,

Elytra Filament Pavilion has been created by experimental German architect Achim Menges with Moritz Dörstelmann, structural engineer Jan Knippers and climate engineer Thomas Auer.

Menges and Knippers are leaders of research institutes at the University of Stuttgart that are pioneering the integration of biomimicry, robotic fabrication and new materials research in architecture. This installation emerges from their ongoing research projects and is their first-ever major commission in the UK.

The pavilion explores the impact of emerging robotic technologies on architectural design, engineering and making.

Its design is inspired by lightweight construction principles found in nature, the filament structures of the forewing shells of flying beetles known as elytra. Made of glass and carbon fibre, each component of the undulating canopy is produced using an innovative robotic winding technique developed by the designers. Like beetle elytra, the pavilion’s filament structure is both very strong and very light – spanning over 200m2 it weighs less than 2,5 tonnes.

Elytra is a responsive shelter that will grow over the course of the V&A Engineering Season. Sensors in the canopy fibres will collect data on how visitors inhabit the pavilion and monitor the structure’s behaviour, ultimately informing how and where the canopy grows. During a series of special events as part of the Engineering Season, visitors will have the opportunity to witness the pavilion’s construction live, as new components are fabricated on-site by a Kuka robot.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find more technical detail, particularly about the materials being used in the construction of the pavilion, on the V&A website.

One observation, I’m a little uncomfortable with how they’re gathering data “Sensors in the canopy fibres will collect data on how visitors inhabit the pavilion … .” It sounds like surveillance to me.

Nonetheless, the Engineering Season offers the promise of a very intriguing approach to fulfilling the V&A’s mandate as a museum dedicated to decorative arts and design.