-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Heterochrony -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2012 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Project by fabric | ch -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Art competition by invitation: outdoor installation for Festival de la Cité (CH). 1st prize -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Location: Lausanne (CH) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Exhibited during the Festival de la Cité, summer 2012 (Lausanne, CH) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Perceptual shift - Split public park environment, two mediated times - Architecture as a sensing and recording device - Molecular monitoring of a user’s activities and presence - Data “shadow” of park and activities -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- - Heterochrony interfaces and software. Environmental monitoring/recording -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [Img. 1] [Img. 2, 3] [Img. 4] [Img. 5] [Img. 6] [Img. 7] [Img. 8] [Img. 9] [Img. 10] [Img. 11] [Img. 12] [Img. 13, 14, 15] [Img. 16] [Img. 17] [Img. 18] [Img. 19] [Img. 20, 21, 22, 23, 24] [Img. 25] [Img. 26] [Img. 27] [Img. 28] [Img. 29] [Img. 30] -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Image captions: [Img. 2] An "observer" at two different "observation points," overlooking the surrounding environment and, while doing so, triggering unwittingly the illumination of a strong projector on the park and its users, as well as the recording of dedicated data. [Img. 4] The passageway architecture over the park, with observation points, probes, strong spot lights to illuminate the observed areas. The deck organizes semi-fluid areas in the square with dedicated pop-up or emergent uses over time (a bar, a scene, a park, a street, rest areas, and so on). Each of these areas/functions is topped by an observation point on the deck. [Img. 7] The passageway architecture over the park, an area that can become a scene. [Img. 8] Inside the observation deck: a long central pathway connecting the entrance of the square to its exit, with radiating paths toward observation points or the "control room." [Img. 9] Inside the observation deck: view from the other end. [Img. 10] The overall lighting of the 52 LED bars is driven by data analytics in such a manner that the data are produced by the monitored environment. The lights on the platform behave like a data graph in the sense that the more data which is collected in an area (observation point), the stronger the lighting. The overall lighting remains the stable though, meaning that the data mitigate the intensity of the lighting in different areas. At some time (every three hundred inputs), a "glitch" occurs in the lighting to reset and synchronize everything. [Img. 13] Observation points on the deck, with their spot lights (oriented towards the surrounding environment) activated by the presence of observers, also triggering the recording of the data on the servers. The probes which equip each observation point are able to detect a presence, molecular and gas composition, temperature, humidity, pressure, light and noise. They also have title panels showing what’s getting monitored, observed and replayed in loops ("(...), around the beginning of the 21st century"). [Img. 17] “Control room" with screens, interfaces, live data variations and visualizations. [Img. 18] On stage in Caen (FR). [Img. 19] Detail on "Control room" with screens, interfaces, live data variations and visualizations. [Img. 20] The website of the project remains accessible and the recorded data downloadable (www.heterochronie.cc). It runs now in loops, endlessly replaying the week of the experience. [Img. 25] A probe equipped with various wireless environmental and presence sensors. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Txt -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Heterochrony -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Heterochrony is a temporary architectural device and new project designed by fabric | ch, office for architecture, interaction & research. It has been completed, exhibited and lived during the Festival de la Cité 2012 (Summer 2012) in Lausanne. "Two distinct times, two "presents" were observing each other, close to one another: the present of a public park with its "scene", its "garden", its "bar", its "festival-goers" and the present of a second place, the footbridge or "almost archeological" path that overlooked the whole, allowing one to openly structure, observe, sense and record it. Seen from this observation platform, a possible scientific device equipped with a multitude of presence detectors, of atmospheric and gas sensors, the present time of the park and its users seemed to be situated in an indefinite past or maybe in a parallel present, at a different time. Or was it rather that all these recorded events were replaying in loops for a long time? The traces left by comings and goings, the ones of the molecules of the "party" and the present moment had indeed been monitored and recorded, stored and kept indefinitely on a data server, somewhere, for a utopian future or past, replenishment. (...)" Heterochrony consists of a 40m-long passageway, or rather an "archaeological" observation deck: an architectural device that overlooks a public park (existing) which connects paradoxically its entrance directly to the exit – so as to have the opportunity to become an "observer" of what is happening in the park and walk through the square without really entering it, as in archaelogical gangways -- ... , opens to contrasting atmospheres and tries to reorganize the different spaces/common uses on the grounds with minimal physical touch and maximal visual transparency. The peculiarity of the project consists in the fact that it also tries to generate a dual perception and a temporal disruption, which leads to the title of the work, Heterochrony: if the present time of the park and its users is, in fact, the "archeology" to be observed and monitored from the deck as well as recorded on the project's servers and therefore a potential "past," then the present time of the passageway becomes a possible "future" viewed from the ground ... It's an attempt to materialize such a mysterious temporal zone, induced by the combination of two different referentials in the same space. The architectural device itself (the deck architecture) is equipped in five selected areas (observation points) with many multisensory monitoring devices. The sensors record as much data as possible over time, these being generated by the everchanging conditions, presences in and uses of the park (its climate, atmosphere, molecular and gas composition, sounds, users, usages). The data are then stored on Heterochrony's servers and endlessly replayed in loops on the computers in the form of bits of information as part of the overall architecture. It is a "recorded moment," in some ways "frozen" on data servers, which can potentially replay itself forever or is waiting for somebody to reactivate it. The data are kept publicly accessible on the servers, with the utopian aim that they could allow one to regenerate the "present" in another time (if a present, indeed, can still be identified within this project), thus reinforcing the feeling of time disruption. A "data center" on the deck, with its set of interfaces and visualizations screens, lets the visitors-observers follow the process of recording. The work could be considered to be an architectural proposal that is built upon the idea of a massive production of data which will very soon come out (be monitored) of our environment, be stored, mined (for whatever -- good or bad -- immediate, near and far-future uses). Every second, our world and lives are producing/will produce massive amounts of data, stored “forever" in some distant data centers, like old bubbles of gas trapped in the ices of the polar caps for millenia... The project can undoubtedly be seen as a reference to the novel of A. Bioy Cassares, “The Invention of Morel,” which resonates with the idea of monitoring/recording the real (and also, to some extent, to the recent “The City and the City," by China Miéville, for its dual and densified space). As such, the project tries to introduce doubt about its true nature: could it be, in fact, possible that what is observed from the platform is already a recorded present from the past? A ghost situation? A present regenerated from the recorded data by an unknown scientist or maybe by the machine itself (the architectural recording device)? Could it, in fact, also run endlessly in loops for years? fabric | ch, September 2012 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contact -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- fabric | ch (97-19) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Architecture/Art direction: Patrick Keller Christophe Guignard Technical/Technological direction: Christian Babski Stéphane Carion Collaborators: Sinan Mansuroglu Nicolas Besson Maxime Castelli David Colombini Partners: Computed·By (coding creative projects) PCM SA Échafaudages -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Contact: fabric | ch 6, rue de Langallerie 1003 Lausanne Switzerland www.fabric.ch t. +41(0)21-3511021 // f. +41(0)21-3511022 // m. info@fabric.ch