Chamberworks, 1998
Installation at the RAM - Gallery, Oslo, Norway

This project was done in the context of the OCEAN design research association

Chamberworks was a temporary installation in a gallery in Oslo in June 98. The installation consisted of welded steel rods and tubes painted white; an motion-triggered, interactive light-scheme; a soundscape using 4 loud-speakers, one positioned in each corner of the room; and a video showing advanced 3D modelling of vortex phenomena. The continueous curved and linear steel elements were pre-formed and welded together in the gallery. The floor and walls of the gallery were painted white. The aim of the project was to create a space with complex and changing interaction between the visitor, the spatial frame of the gallery and the material, structural, and ambient constitutive systems in the installation. The overall product was seen to reflect, in a simple and microscopic fashion, the ever-changing intensities and flows of contemporary urban space. The project provided a space for the unfolding of a simple, dynamic relationship between visitor, spatial frame of the gallery and the material and ambient constitutive systems of the installation. The available space for the visitors' movement was articulated as a knotted loop allowing for various routes through the installation. The ambient conditions produced by the motion-triggered light and sound systems resulted in changing virtual space characterised by varied intensities and distribution of light and sound relative to the visitors' movement. A visitor's choice of route through the installation was partly influenced by these ambient effects - again triggered by the co-presence of other visitors in the gallery.

The choreography of the linear and curved physical elements produced perceivable inter-relations between sub-spaces in the gallery that changed from affiliate to non-congruent according to exact geometrical boundary conditions drawn by the tubes and rods. The bundle of linear and curved elements engendered a transparent topology of emergent forms.