soft inversions
an installation
August 2006 , The Turbine Hall, Cockatoo Island, Sydney Harbour

The Tokyo art group ‘Responsive Environment' (who are also practicing architects) argue that an understanding of the spatial and experiential effects of the materials of the interactive medium must be understood before too much sensor-based interactivity is implemented.

We recently collaborated with them to create an installation in a massive abandoned turbine hall on an ex-maritime, ex-convict island in the Sydney Harbour.

The design goal was to enhance the existing attributes of the space and allow the audience to become aware of the complexity and grandness of the structure through the installation. This was addressed using the most simple, cheap and sustainable methods that could achieve the greatest result.

Firstly, we chose to break the viewing of the installation into two parts: by daylight and by dark. In both parts, the entire floor of the hall (1000m2+) was covered with a shallow layer of water, such that the 25m high structures of the space could also be seen in the mirror reflection, creating a spatial experience of effectively 50m in height. In the night viewing, a fragmented animation was projected from behind the structural walls of one side of the hall, with the effect of complicating and confounding the already spatially complex architectural forms. The entire ceiling of the hall became a virtual spider web of moving structures. While this projection was not responding to human movement in the space, it sufficiently played with the perceptual and contextual systems of the viewer to produce a highly engaging and immersive experience.