radical everything

SKILLS : arduino, Construction, lasercutting, physical computing, processing, Prototyping

Architecture transforming into behavior.

Everyday our lives are full of invisible interactions that accumulate over time to lead to bigger things, and ultimately leads to the production of ideas, objects, work, play, relationships, etc.  To that end, we’ve had a life-long obsession with the idea that our environments shape us but less so with ideas of how we can re-enliven our spaces.  Radical Everything is a phenomenological approach to provoke these insights on a deeper, more emotional level, contributing to a larger discussion as to how our actions can now affect and dynamically change the environment we live in, rather than to be affected by it.   The heart of the installation is to foster crystal growth, a byproduct of our inert behaviors.  Our physical movements are the triggers that allow growth and new cycles to begin.

Why build spaces? Cultivate them.

We often look to nature as the master of all interactions; in that vein, Radical Everything revolves around the process of crystal formation for its ability to create patterns out of chaos. For all its intricacies and complex patterns however, the crystal is inherently static, and as such, has neither behavior nor function.  An emergent system however, can demonstrate the distinctive quality of growing smarter over time, responding to the specific and changing need of its environment.  It rarely settles on a single shape, but forms patterns in time as well as space.

Emergence is the notion of how a multiplicity of relatively simple interactions can give rise to complex systems and patterns.  Our own subconscious behaviors are consistent with this notion of emergence as we follow these simple rules, from traffic jam patterns to the formation of cities.

How it Works

Radical Everything thus mediates between our built environment and the natural one.  Constructed from thousands of laser-cut pieces and controlled using an Arduino microcontroller, each module stands on its own but would, in its proposed entirety, work together as a system to fill up a whole space.  As visitors move throughout the space, their movements are picked up through a series of distance sensors.  Once triggered, it starts to awaken the LED arrays, which light based on simple algorithms of proximity found in crystal accumulation.  From there, it deploys the solenoid valves to distribute the crystal-growing solution. In essence, acting as a reactive nervous system.  Collectively, the modules stimulate and replicate active growth in an environment, injecting once static patterns with dynamic behavior; and introducing into this process, methods of instability, adaption and movement.

Construction / Prototyping

Examining and defining the space around us, science has always been the practice of testing our imagination.  An artistic implementation on the other hand, is the link that speaks to our subconscious, encouraging us to radically create new paradigms in a world that is as multi-faceted as the crystal, wonderfully complex and yet inherently simple.

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