CONCEPT 2003.10
Korean architectural review

featuring:

LAb[au]'s net-art // net-architectural projects including:
1_ i-tube, mnemotic space
2_ i-skin, electronic bodyness
3_ space navigable music, audio-visual performance


mnemotic space (i-tube)

LAb[au], laboratory for architecture and urbanism
M.Abendroth, J.Decock, N.Mestaoui

Category:
Net Architecture _ Media Architecture

Keywords:
Mixed Reality _ Hypersurface Architecture _ Avatar Architecture_ 3d hypertextual cartographies _ dnArchitecture _ e.space CONSTRUCTions mem.brains _ mnemoyic culture _ collective intelligence _ processual generative space _ cybrids

The project mNemoTIC SPACE is based on the idea of a databank open to a large public by involving each visitor into the process of information within a virtual environment.

The creation of an interface for a thematic databank is transposed to the creation of a specific space of social exchange within the electronic realm. The investigation of new knowledge transmissions and productions investigates the creation of the electronic medium as a collective space being essentially the issue of ''interfacing'. The project therefore is based on the concept of a 'communication chain' working out a global communication concept using each element of the chain as a dynamic vector of diffusion and access to information.

The development of the databank directly links the fabrication of a transportable pavilion with consultation bases and an interactive cd-rom which relates the experience of electronic realm to the concrete space, the city.

The design of the different interfaces is generated throughout the same process: membranes getting folded into space throughout user defined parameters. This data-processed environment constitutes the main space within which the user operates in order to get access to the different information.

The successive consultation of the databank forms, by assembling user defined membranes, a tunnel, the 'i-tube' offering the visitor to return at each moment to a consulted document as well as simply to voyage throughout the gravity-less space of information. The visitor can specify its research throughout the parameters of: space, time and theme influencing the geometry of each membrane between squared curved and angular. The membranes forms surfaces filtering requested information, its colors illustrate the precision of information - its permeability. This user-defined environment by the specific information it contains, just like genetic material, leads to the concept of the genetic code as a trace of the personalized lecture. Each assemblage of information forms a genetic code able to be stocked on a web site in order to create a personalized space for social exchange.

The representation of the individual in this virtual space, avatar, throughout the genetic code as well as a user definable search engine' the membranes' offers a playful intuitive and sophisticated manner to access for a large public highly specified information. In this manner the transposition of the experiences of video games in terms of interaction, immersion and representation of the individual within the electronic space, to the general issue of the organization and accessibility of information leads to the exploration of the electronic space as a social matrix.

i-skin, electronic bodyness

LAb[au], laboratory for architecture and urbanism
M.Abendroth, J.Decock, N.Mestaoui
Crstof, fashion desinger

Commissioned by
La Mission 2000, Paris France

Category:
Net Architecture _ Fashion design

Keywords:
Avatar Architecture _ dnArchitecture _ Hypersurface Architeture

The i-skin, electronic bodyness " project conceived and realized by the fashion designer CRSTOF and LAb[au] in the scope of Avignon 2000 exhibition ' La Beauté ' , investigates the themes of the body by confronting it with the social implications of modern communication and information technologies.

The question of identity and presence in electronic space reveals the one of information structures and displays which has lead to the setting of the project as a dynamic and interactive process building up the i-skin as a personal display and host of information. The processing of these specific forms combined with the archetypal display of the i-skin and the recording of behaviours even more extend the question of identity from visual, to cultural an social parameters. In this manner, the project proposes the presence of the individual in electronic space as a hybrid extension combining the codes and the functionalities of body, clothing and architecture. The fusion of these "3 skins" into a more mental than figurative representation of the human reveals the link between information processes and presence.

Extending the experimentation of a real world enhanced by the digital one, the installation scenography proposes the visitor to immerse into a space where the image turns into architecture, a mixed reality. The highly reflective Plexiglas pleat thus creates a game of multiple forms of presence between shadow, reflection and projection combining the physical experience of the body space with the mental and digital one.

space navigable music

LAb[au], laboratory for architecture and urbanism
M.Abendroth, J.Decock, P.Heremans, A.Plennevaux, E.Vermang

Category:
Net Architecture _ Media Architecture _ Spaze Music _ Performative Art _ Net Design _ Software Engineering _ Soundscapes-Sonic Space _ Connective Interfaces _ Shared information processes

Keywords:

Avatar Architecture _ Recombinant Realities _ E.motion Space

'space navigable music' is an online project investigating the impact of IC technologies and particularly, 3D Real Time modeling languages (such as VRML) in the construct of space. According to the objectives of LAb[au] the project constitutes as much a space for theoretical research as a space of experimentation on the forms of spatial, visual and sonic interactions in networked environments.The project thus explores the setting of hypermedia environments and electronic space combining architecture, music and cinema through users interactions - navigation within the digital matrix in order to build up connectivity.

In space navigable music, the object or architecture is generated in real time according to the position and movements of the user (mix color, mix image, mix sound). Operating on spatial (x,y,z), temporal (t-movements) sonic (frequency, pitch) parameters, each interaction by the user, navigation, transforms this visual and sonic space.

The established relation between the spatial, visual and sonic parameters constitutes a space, in which the user experiments cyberspace by dropping sounds into space, mixing music throughout space and navigation, record its movements to produce a kinetic music clip, a sharable sonic space, where the multi-user space extend the project to collaborative processes.