This past month we completed the installation of Catherine Widgery’s artwork entitled Interface for the Innovation Center at Iowa State University. This site responsive art installation touches two areas of the building with two distinct designs.
Pictured: Renderings of the vestibule design and courtyard design that comprise Interface.
As one enters the building they first encounter the vestibules whose pleated dichroic glass walls break up and reconfigure our surroundings, so we see ourselves in relation to the world around us in a transformed way. Anyone passing through the vestibules is reflected multiple times in shifting fragments, a visually rich and always changing experience.
Pictured: Details of the vestibule design post installation.
The artwork located in the interior courtyard on the second level is a series of suspended ‘floating’ lacy copper screens. The thin copper panels have been cut in a chevron pattern which echos forms found in the buildings facade while referencing the pleated forms of the vestibule artwork. This canopy of suspended panels can be seen from windows above and below and within the courtyard itself.
Pictured: Detail of the copper panels.
Each panel is embedded with thousands of LED lights linked via computer software to an anemometer mounted to the building’s roof. The anemometer measures wind speed and direction so the lights dim and brighten sequentially in real time in response to the shifting winds.
Pictured: The suspended courtyard panels illuminated in the evening.
The art embodies the interface of technology at the threshold between the natural and the human built world, reflecting SIC’s wish for innovative technology to be part a of students’ exploration. What brings ‘life’ to the artwork is our capacity to monitor, record and translate information digitally. Technology translates into a visual experience the invisible energies that bring us alive to our environment through art. Interface also offers the possibility of bringing an interactive component into the lives of the students who will be able to ‘hack’ into the program and control the lighting in ways we can’t yet imagine.
For more fabrication and installation images of this project click here.
Select text from Catherine Widgery and select images courtesy of Elmendorf Geurts.