B/E on twitterGilda Williams and Maria Walsh join Matt Hale to discuss ways in which artists utilise the difference between ruined buildings and the merely derelict, and how Hannah Sawtell’s films analyse entropy in the age of the digital.
http://www.artmonthly.co.uk/magazine/site/events/gilda-williams-maria-walsh-talk-show-may-2010/
Feel the Force: Experiments in Energy with World Leading Scientists,
Architects and Artists at the AA School
ENERGY, the unseen powerful force that shapes every aspect of life from our cellular structure to our economy will be explored through a unique free exhibition and series of events that bring together world leading scientists, architects and artists at the Architectural Association School of Architecture, 36 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3ES from 3 – 28 May 2011.
The show and events are part of Beyond Entropy, an ambitious two-year project from the AA School involving 24 leading scientists, architects and artists working together to explore and broaden the ways we think about energy. Before coming to London, Beyond Entropy has been shown in Europe including at the Venice Architecture Biennale 2010 and Societe de Lecture, Geneva.
Work on display.
A giant self-balancing mechanism, a working time machine, an impossible pinball machine, thermal replication, the concept of ownership of the air and energy and forensic photography that captures your movements before the picture was taken are just some of the works on show. Each work explores a different type of energy and is created by a team consisting of an artist, architect and scientist. [Exhibition highlights and a list of participants below].
Events:
1.  The energy of Mies van der Rohe: 13:30hrs, Tuesday 3 May
Vittorio Pizzigoni, founder member of Italy’s famous Baukuh architectural practice and Beyond Entropy participant, discusses how Mies van der Rohe, one of the most influential architect’s of the 20th century used industrialisation to simplify energy use in construction.
2.  John Stezaker on the potential in meaning: 13:30hrs, Tuesday 10 May
Taking a break from his current show at the Whitechapel Gallery artist John Stezaker discusses his work and explores the relationships between potential in meaning and potential energy and how different ways of seeing the world produce different forms of energy.
3.  The City as Creative Energy:  18:30hrs, Friday 13 May
Speakers including international architect Carlos Villanueva Brandt, explore the concept of a creative city.  What conditions are required for a city to expand the creative potential of the human brain?  London is a melting pot of cultures, thinking and activity Рa hive of energy powering a creative centre of excellence recognised across the globe.  How do we stay on top of the creative world and help the city and its people be ever more creative?
4. Lino Bo Bardi; Primitivism and Sustainability,  13:00hrs, Tuesday 17 May
Art historian Dr Silvia Davoli from the Warburg Institute discusses the life and work of Lino Bo Bardi, an architect famous for her organic and surreal designs that broke new ground in both the concept and practice of sustainable buildings – often proposing construction methods that reflected the buildings and methods of Brazil’s native peoples.  Her well known designs include Sao Paolo’s famous Museum of Modern Art.
5.  Time Travel РShamanism to the Space age: 18:30hrs, Friday 20 May
The team behind the exhibition’s Time Machine Prof. Andrew Jaffe, Cosmologist, Imperial College London and architect Shin Egashira, join photographer Goswin Schwedinger to explore the human desire to alter our past and futures.  The ability to engage with other people of other times, planets and dimensions is a dream of science but is also found in some cultural and religious practices.  The event will explore the fascination of time travel, the desire to explore other realms from Shamanism to interplanetary travel and whether science fiction is any closer to becoming science fact.
Stefano Rabolli Pansera, Director of Beyond Entropy, at the Architectural Association School of Architecture said: “Cities are alive, living, breathing, energy filled beings.  The exhibition and events fuse hard science with artistic freedom and interpretation to explore new ways of thinking about energy in all its forms.
“From time machines to global issues surrounding the ownership of energy, the combination of science, architecture and art working together have created thought-provoking and sometimes startling work to explore issues of energy – from the mega city, to your own mind.  Come and be energised!”
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PUBLIC BOOKING INFORMATION
Beyond Entropy 3 – 26 May 2011
Location:  AA School, 36 Bedford Square, London, WC1B 3ES
Opening times: Monday to Friday 10:00 – 19:00hrs; Saturday 10:00 – 15:00hrs
Tickets: Entrance is FREE.  Tickets are not required for exhibition, seating at events is allocated on a first come first served basis.
FURTHER INFORMATION & PICTURES
William Kallaway, email: william@kallaway.com Tel:  020 7221 7883
Pictures of the exhibits: http://tiny.cc/b9a7n
EXAMPLE WORKS ON SHOW
Time machine: A working exploration of mechanical energy using 19th Century French writer, Alfred Jarry’s pseudo-science Pataphysics.  Jarry theorised a time machine made of giant mechanical flywheels and gyroscopic action to transport the user through time and space.  Team: Prof. Andrew Jaffe, Cosmologist, Imperial College London and Shin Egashira, architect.
Creating and destroying mass: A collision of physics and multi-media.  Giant self-balancing machine swings a vast pendulum of destruction and creation in which a building is created and then destroyed as the pendulum swings.  Chaos and order are brought through each swing as the machine tries to balance itself and therefore bring stillness to the creative cycle.  Team: Rubens Azevedo, architect; Ariel Schlesinger, artist; Vid Stojevic, Researcher, Institute of Theoretical Physics, University of Hamburg.
Impossible pinball: Over 1,000 balls in play, but out of reach, with the slight possibility of being able to strike one – the impossible pinball machine is a frustrating example of potential energy.  The machine is charged by the would be player, storing potential energy until the balls finally come into play.  Team:  Julian Loeffler, architect; Peter Liversidge, artist; Dr. Roberto Trotta, Lecturer in Physics in the Astrophysics Group of the Imperial College in London.
Thermal energy replicated: Rows of identical 3D copying-machine components see the copier become copied.  Each appears identical but is slightly different from the last, made unique through an imperfection created by energy transfer during the copying process. Team:  Ines Weizman, Architect; Wilfredo Prietro, artist; Dr David Clements, Astrophysicist, Imperial College, London.
Responsibility of energy: Whose energy is responsible for the melting of the polar ice cap or the pollution of London’s air?  Issues over the ownership and release of energy are  explored through a montage of images, news events and stories investigating the personal and national concept of ownership of energy.  Team: Nina Canell, artist: Dr Amanda Chatten, Lecturer and Researcher at the Department of Physics at Imperial College London and  John Palmesino & Ann-Sofi Rönnskog, architects.
ABOUT BEYOND ENTROPY
Beyond Entropy, sponsored by Digital Technology Solutions/Olivetti, RePower and supported by Bersi Serlini, is set in the context of the urgent requirement of global energy and how this issue impacts on politics, economics and cultures across the globe.
The programme is a world first, bringing together 24 leading artists, architects and scientists led by AA School architect Stefano Rabolli Pansera, pioneering an enquiry that fuses science, architecture and artistic collaboration to develop new ways of thinking about energy.
List of participants in Beyond Entropy and their areas of investigation
Beyond Entropy Director: Stefano Rabolli Pansera, AA School architect
Electric energy:
Mechanical energy,
Potential energy:
Mass energy
Sound energy
Thermal energy,
Chemical energy
Gravitational energy
The AA School (http://www.aaschool.ac.uk/)
The Architectural Association School is the world’s most renowned international and influential school of architecture. Since 1847 it has pioneered a belief in architecture as profession, culture and form of human enquiry and is credited with fostering the creation of worldwide leaders of architecture. AA School alumni include architectural leaders Zaha Hadid, Rem Koolhaas, Lord Rogers, Will Alsop and many others. Through its unique, year-long, unit based system of teaching, direct intervention in cities and its intensively collaborative team based approach to learning, the school brings together disconnected worlds, fresh ideas and inspiring insights. The AA School is celebrated worldwide as an imaginative setting for architectural culture.
Stefano Rabolli Pansera, Director, Beyond Entropy, AA School
Stefano Rabolli Pansera graduated with honours from the AA School in 2005 and then worked for two years at Herzog & de Meuron. He has been AA Intermediate 5 Unit Master since 2007 and has lectured in Naples, Seoul, Barcelona, Berlin, Almaty and Cagliari. He is the founder of Rabolli Pansera Ltd, an architectural practice with projects in the UK, Italy and Lebanon.
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BEYOND ENTROPY:
Every year the AA School of Architecture commissions a research cluster on a specific theme proposed by members of the school. This research is entitled “Beyond Entropy, When Energy becomes Form” and it promotes the collaboration of artists, architects and scientists on the making of bespoke installations on a specific type of energy.
The theme of the cluster derives from the urgency with which energy has been raised in the recent years in the political, economical, scientific debates, but not quite in the cultural ones. Indeed, within the architectural debate, energy has often been considered either an exclusively technical issue (to be solved by engineers or by highly specialised technicians) or as something relating to the rethoric of sustainability like “green architecture”, and therefore it was treated from a social, ecological and ultimately technical point of view.
This programme of research offers the architects the opportunity to re-appropriate this theme within the discipline of Architecture and to address the debate on one of the crucial issues of our time toghether with artists, scientists, politicians, philosophers and entrepeneurs. In fact, we aim to consider energy in its wider cultural aspect: rather than focusing on the implications and the consequences of energy in relation to the built environment, the ambition is to consider the very notion of energy, before any conventional form of architectural application.
As Aldo Rossi described at the beginning of “Scientific Autobiography”: Max Planck was thrilled by the fact that work is not dissipated but it remains stored for many years, never diminished, latent, in a block of stone until when, a day, it may happen that this same block falls upon a passer-by and kills him. (…) Indeed, in every artist or scientist, the principle of continuation of energy is interlinked with the research of happiness and of death. Even in Architecture this research is related to the Material and to Energy, without this observation it is not possible to understand any construction neither from the static point of view nor from the formal point of view”
RESEARCH CLUSTER DIRECTOR:
Stefano Rabolli Pansera After graduating with Honours from the AA in 2005, he worked for two years for Herzog & de Meuron where he was involved in projects in Italy, the US and Spain. He is currently teaching at the AA. He has lectured at Naples and Cambridge Universities, and has been visiting professor at Cagliari. He has taught in AA visiting schools in Berlin, Seoul and Barcelona. He is founder of Rabolli Pansera Ltd.
B/E review Quando l’energia diventa forma posted on 29th October.
Reiner de Graaf speaks preservation and energy in a relation to architecture during the conversation with Pilar Pinchart.
The article CLOSE-UP: Reiner de Graaf is posted on Skfandra, October 28th.