Vibrating Clouds | Design Society Exhibition
The exhibition Vibrating Clouds curated by Yixuan Cai, the winner of the Design Society Curator award, opens on April 30 at the Park View Gallery of the Sea World Culture and Arts Center in Shekou, China. 12 participating artists, architects, scholars and musicians come from seven countries: Argentina, Finland, the United States, Switzerland, Spain, New Zealand and China, presenting 12 pieces (groups) of works from multiple dimensions of meteorological science, artistic perception, and architectural design.
Curator: Yixuan Cai
Participants: Abelardo Gil-Fournier、Diller Scofidio + Renfro、Janine Randerson 、Jussi Parikka、Karolina Sobecka、Lei Sun、Philippe Rahm architectes、Tomas Saraceno、Xiaoxiao Zhao、Yiyuan Liang、Zelin Huang、Zherui Wang
Organizer: Design Society (Sea World Culture and Art Center, Shenzhen, China)
Despite being amorphous, air carries humidity, temperature, clouds, wind, lightning, radio waves, birds, pollutants, and dust. Air percolates through both the living and inanimate, buildings and mountains, spatial and virtual; binding the environments that we all breathe together. Synonymous with mobility, intimacy, sharing, and freedom, air sits in contrast with the trends of a world gripped by a pandemic; one of control, distance, global protectionism, and digital tracking.
As an open, public interface that flows freely across biospheres and boundaries, air is frequently appropriated by digital and capital-driven processes. Fossil fuel-based industries transform the atmosphere from natural to artificial; electromagnetic waves envelope the Earth; digital model builds infinite nature into a finite world of knowledge. In response, “Vibrating Clouds” raises a series of questions: how can we co-exist with a medium as intimate yet uncontrollable as air? How can designers intervene in the realms of climate regulation and space? How can we mediate between vastly opposing scales, from planetary computations to individual sensations?
The modern understanding of air as an arrangement of chemical compositions, and as a natural resource mobilized by state and capital-driven powers, is relatively new. Throughout history, in both the East and West, the philosophical notion of air was linked with cosmology and spiritual connections. The Taoist universe, for instance, believes that the world is governed through the movement of Qi (气, breathing material). The gathering and dispersion of Qi promotes and regulates the development of all matters in the universe, including living organisms. As chemistry and meteorology further our knowledge of the atmosphere and the cosmos, we ask how we can reconsider pre-modern concepts of “Breathing” and “Sky”.
Section I What is Air?
Clouds float in the sky; water contains in a bottle. As a universal, natural medium, air is perceived in radically different forms depending on its visibility, opacity, and proximity. We have arrived at our present understanding of air through a changing knowledge structure. Indigenous wisdom presents air as a spiritual medium, while modern technology maps the content of air as an arrangement of chemical compositions. We do not aim to establish a binary view between pre-modern and modern knowledge, but to understand how such advancements in knowledge can expose and reconstruct our place in the universe.
In A Memory, An Ideal, A Proposition, Swiss artist and researcher Karolina Sobecka re-assembled three clouds from history: a cloud formed above the Mount Tambora after volcanic eruption (a memory), a cloud formed in “cold box” at General Electric Research lab (an ideal), and a cloud proposed to counteract global warming (a proposition). By examining their material composition and the conditions in which they formed, the project aims to rethink the reality of the geological and social transformations they paved the way for.
New Zealand based artist Janine Randerson has exhibited two multi-media installation Albedo of Clouds and Fossils of Air. Albedo of Clouds is a conversation between cloud observers; the artist on the ground and a meteorological satellite. As well as mediating between different modes of cloud observation, the subjective nature of cloud gazing is investigated in terms of how different technologies ‘see’ clouds and how clouds might vibrate in sonic form.
Fossils of Air is a moving image work that explores the air in glacial ice from Haupapa/Tasman glacier; both real, imagined and animated. The video reveals tiny bubbles of the atmosphere — including greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane — pressed inside the ice. These air pocket “fossils” provide indications of what the atmosphere was like when each layer of ice formed hundred years ago.
Section II How to Design Air?
Between the earthly and unknown, the scale of air is at once smaller and larger than our daily perception suggests, spanning from microscopic particles to macro phenomena. This dichotomy leads architects to reflect on how this richness of natural scales can be translated into architecture. Could spaces be shaped in accordance with their environment, rather than as an entity for economic gain? Such thinking evokes a paradigm shift, positing that the focus of design should switch from the solid to the void. The tools for design would therefore also shift from Euclidean geometry to a set of meteorological principles, such as convection, radiation, and pressure. This in turn leads to questions regarding the complexity and effects of artificial control over the natural.
To architect Philippe Rahm, architecture is the art of building climates. Man inhabits the invisibility of the air instead of the visibility of the walls. Through art, architecture modifies a portion of the natural climate, watering down a certain amount of the earth’s atmosphere, anthropizing a natural space. The mission of architecture is to modify the physical parameters of this climate to make it habitable for man. His concept video Meteorological Architecture unfolds on three different scales, physiology scale, meteorological architecture thermodynamic urban space.
New York based architecture firm Diller Scofidio + Renfro has designed the Blur Building as part of the Swiss Pavilion in 2002. Water is pumped from Lake Neuchâtel, filtered, and shot as a fine mist through 35,000 high-pressure nozzles, creating an architecture of atmosphere. Upon entering Blur, the visual and acoustic references are erased. The design poses an ontological challenge to architecture and our perception of the space relied on visibility. In this exposition pavilion there is nothing to see but our dependence on vision itself.
Architect and researcher Zherui Wang has brought a vision of respiratory architecture in his design Climate as Medium. He proposed a wearable device capable of air pollutants filtration when activated. The cloth wrapped around the body as a respiratory surface. The tectonic capitalizes the mediatic and mediation potential of hollow fiber membrane (a straw-like nanometer scale material) as a building material for a respiratory architecture. The collapse of air as a collective common has induced a new surface-to-volume relationship.
Argentine artist Tomas Saraceno and his Aerocene team has designed the first ever fuel-free hot air balloon, a poetic tool that imagines a renewed zero-carbon era without fossil fuels. It proposes a future of free floating, breathing and crossing borders without carbon emission. The exhibition presents the Aerocene packback for the first time in China, which is also intended to be borrowed or built autonomously for community.
Section III Vibrations on Multiple Scales
The space from terrene to ether is not empty. Rather, it is full of vibrations from natural phenomena and artificial infrastructures; from water vapor to cosmic rays, from humming drones to 5G and WiFi networks, from aerial operations to communication flows. The “Cloud Platform” is in fact analogous to a “Cloud”. The atmosphere is no longer purely natural, but has become an infrastructure shaped by global political, military, and economic entities. Meanwhile, our perception of these invisible surroundings relies on artificial viewpoints. It is only when we can look back at the Earth from outer space that the atmosphere becomes a tangible, recognizable entity. In this new paradigm, to occupy clouds and cloud platforms is as familiar as occupying the land and self.
Sentient Clouds by Xiaoxiao Zhao proposes new architectural mediums for interacting with the atmosphere. The project reflects on the environmental perception of a series of radiation waves, whether from cosmic rays, UV radiation, water vapor signals, or 5G mobile communication networks. A system of cloud-like clusters, proposed as collective sentient tools, flock at the varying altitudes occupied by different forms of radiation to capture their respective signal frequencies. Four types of clusters — a cosmic cluster, UV cluster, water vapor cluster, and 5G cluster, provide creative solutions to transform ecological crises into sustainable energy, while also rewriting the typography of the atmosphere.
Seed, Image, Ground is a video essay that addresses techniques of air, wind, and growth, created by Abeardo Gil-Fournier and Jussi Parikka. The work unfolds with a series questions: how does wind become an image? — the work continues: how do you fabricate wind? How are surfaces of air and atmospheres addressed and implied in our technological culture? How do you fabricate growth, from agriculture to data culture? The work investigates the link between seeds, aerial operations, photographic images and the transformation of earth surfaces into data. It demonstrates how the history of botanic knowledge and visual surveys of green surfaces is a history of images, and as such, a history of circulation, speed and motorised aircraft.
The exhibition has commissioned an architectural installation and a generative sound system, filling the void with sound and light, conveying a sensory experience of breath flow.
Independent sound artist Lei Sun presents a sound-generative system titled Warm Water Waits Wind, with six unique channels constantly changing to create a sound environment that encompasses the entire gallery. Meanwhile, experimental music compositions by musician Yiyuan Liang titled JiaHai and YiWu are also on display.
Architect Zelin Huang has contributed to the exhibition with an atmospheric transparent “floor” in the venue’s double-height space, titled Interarea. As fundamental surfaces for living, the installation asks why the richness of artificial surfaces, such as floors, are presented differently from those of natural surfaces, such as seas, land, or clouds, With the void space as a main subject, and the architectural membrane as a boundary, an undulating surface forms a floating floor against the backdrop of surrounding emptiness, evoking the richness of natural phenomena in space. The installation marks an extended reflection and exploration of new possibilities for some of architecture’s most fundamental elements.
Exhibition Information
Vibrating clouds
2020–2021 Winning Curating Design Plan
Duration: April 30th, 2021-September 21rst, 2021
Venue: Design Society, Park View Gallery
Address: 1187, Wanghai Road, Nanshan District, Shenzhen, 1st Floor, Sea World Culture and Arts Center
Curator: Yixuan Cai
Participants: Abelardo Gil-Fournier、Diller Scofidio + Renfro、Janine Randerson 、Jussi Parikka、Karolina Sobecka、Lei Sun、Philippe Rahm architectes、Tomas Saraceno、Xiaoxiao Zhao、Yiyuan Liang、Zelin Huang、Zherui Wang
Curatorial and Research Team: Conversazione
Project Manager and Public Relations: Pan Jinxin; Researcher: Cao Xuefei, Chen Silui; Media Coordinator: Xu Di; Curator Assistant: Daedalus Li Guoning, Weng Jingyan, Xiao Yaxi, Zhang Ruiqi
Design Team:
Exhibition Designer: Zhao Xiaoxiao; Design Assistant: Li Sihan, Luo Sen, Nie Zilun; Graphic Design: POCCA; Graphic Design Assistant: Shi Jing
Design Society Teams:
Director: Zhao Rong; Brand Director: Gu Ling; Curator: Tang Siyun; Curator Assistant: Zhang Rui, Chen Pei; Exhibition Manager: Zhou Chenchen; Exhibition Assistant: Pan Xuan
About Curator
Yixuan Cai
Independent Curator, Designer and Creator. Also work as curator, researcher and project manager at MAD Architects. Founder for Beijing based cross-disciplinary art organization Conversazione(CVSZ). She is interested in a range of subject matters, including spatial politics and media technology, gamified theater space, and geopolitical ecologies. Yixuan’s practice ranges from architecture design, short films to experimental theater. Her short film Poetic Gaze has won the bronze plate in 2019 MEIHUDO International Youth Film Festival. Her curatorial project “QiWu:Natural Footprints in Geospatial Vicissitude” has entered the 2020 OCAT research-based exhibition. As founder of CVSZ, she has organized nearly 100 forums, screenings and theater workshop in New York and Beijing.
Initiator & Organizer: China Merchants Shekou (CMSK) | The Sea World Culture and Arts Center
Presented by: Design Society
Co-organizer: C Foundation, China Merchants Foundation, Design Society Culture and Arts Foundation
Supported by: Zhaoshang Sub-district Office of Shenzhen Nanshan District
Partner: School of Design, Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA); Institute of Contemporary Art and Social Thought, School of Inter-Media Art, China Academy of Art; Art Museum of Guangzhou Academy of Fine Arts
