Really, it’s more like human tissue, anatomical sections or irritated skin, or perhaps another part of the human body, especially at first glance, with a cover of metal.
This project “Artificial Matters” designed by Dave Bantz and Michael Gross, Rather than taking the “true” or literal approach to materials, this project attempts to adopt techniques mastered by artists and apply them at an architectural scale. Material in art is used as a representational device for effects and a gateway to sensation. The “Artificial Matters” studio, run by SCIARC professor Elena Manferdini, aims to provoke new sensations through texture, geometry, coloration, and finish. The studio began by 3D scanning literal materials (in this case a sliced peach) and modifying the raw data to produce a synthetic material with thepotential to create new sensations. The project footnotes artists such as Murakami for his use of distortion through an object in the landscape, while the attempt here is to implement distortion and blurring of contextand figuration. The conceptual pavilion proposal for the Milan 2015 Expo takes massing, which has traditionally been absolute and legible, and makes it simultaneously illusory and viscerally evocative. This is where fact and fiction coexist. The exterior causes a distortion and blurring of reality through refraction and density, blurringthe figure. While the indexical cut reveals the interior materiality of the pavilion and is concerned with more visceral and immediate sublime sensations.
More About the Concept :
By Dave Bantz / Michael Gross
Instructor: Elena Manferdini
SCIARC Fall 2010
