Spectra: The Art and Consequence of Collaboration presents eight Australian artists whose practices are characterised by a deep and innovative engagement with science. The exhibition explores the increasing convergence of art and science, and considers how each area can inform the other. The potency of cross disciplinary collaboration lies in its ability to spark new ideas, provide critical perspectives on some of the great questions of our time, and develop new forms of expression that speak to the sophisticated technological era in which we live.

Produced by ANAT

Curated by Experimenta

Curator: Jonathan Parsons

Associate Curator: Nicky Pastore

Spectra: The Art and Consequence of Collaboration presents eight Australian artists whose practices are characterised by a deep and innovative engagement with science. The exhibition explores the increasing convergence of art and science, and considers how each area can inform the other. The potency of cross disciplinary collaboration lies in its ability to spark new ideas, provide critical perspectives on some of the great questions of our time, and develop new forms of expression that speak to the sophisticated technological era in which we live.

Produced by ANAT

Curated by Experimenta

Curator: Jonathan Parsons

Associate Curator: Nicky Pastore

Spectra: The Art and Consequence of Collaboration presents eight Australian artists whose practices are characterised by a deep and innovative engagement with science. The exhibition explores the increasing convergence of art and science, and considers how each area can inform the other. The potency of cross disciplinary collaboration lies in its ability to spark new ideas, provide critical perspectives on some of the great questions of our time, and develop new forms of expression that speak to the sophisticated technological era in which we live.

Produced by ANAT

Curated by Experimenta

Curator: Jonathan Parsons

Associate Curator: Nicky Pastore

Transcripts:

A flat screen on the back of the front wall panel is showing a documentary on a loop:

BIOSPHERES AND THE RISE OF BOTANICAL CAPITAL

The documentary explores three large-scale enclosed complexes, which reproduce fully controlled sections of the natural world: The Eden Project in Cornwall England, the MELiSSA (Micro-Ecological Life Support System Alternative) in Barcelona and the Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Arizona.

Text reads: Since Climatron in St. Louis Missouri in the 1960s, large scale interiors housing whole biomes of climatic regions have emerged in recent years reflecting the hubris of late-modern capitalism in the heightened combination of entertainment and ecology within a controlled environment. These closed worlds are not only key sites of engineering and environmental production, but also revive what was previously considered a utopian project in the postwar period, to temper and fabricate the environment as a site of architectural production. Similarly to the botanical worlds of Eden and Biosphere 2, the Masdar Institute in the United Arab Emirates, the Dubai Ski Centre, the New Century Global Centre in Chengdu, China, as well as the integrated casino resorts in Macau, the recent revival of artificial manufactured natures is astonishing to witness and analyse, as a paradoxical response to the global energy crisis and the intensification of detrimental natural events.

Biospheres were born under the background of a persistent public belief that catastrophe, due to climate change and insufficient resources, is imminent and thus emulates a new technologically equipped type of “spaceship earth,” or a Noah's ark for the earth's depleting flora.

Lydia Kallipoliti and Daniel Ruan Sponsored by the Robert S. Brown’ 52 Faculty Fellowship Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, New York

Transcripts:

Living in an ecological microcosm virtual reality experienced by Amber Bartosh. The closed worlds VR experience positions you as a user within a virtual diagram of two ecological houses built in the 1970s in London and Sydney. Both houses were built as laboratories and living experiments. They were occupied by their architects as part of the experiment. Virtual reality initiates an experience through different sounds and perspectives to convey the conversion of waste to energy. Your involvement evolves as you move, following the flow of energy and materials inside the ecological microcosms there are two choices in the virtual reality headsets.

The ecological House and the Sydney autonomous house the ecological House/ Graham Caine London 1972. One of the earliest ecological houses the ecological house or street farm house was built in Eltham, south London in 1972, as a laboratory and living experiment by Graham Kane, a member of the anarchist group. Street Farmers, originally formed by Peter Crump and Bruce Hackett. The ecological house was a fully functional integrated system that converted human waste to methane for cooking as well as maintained a hydroponic greenhouse with radishes, tomatoes even bananas. Caine, then a 26 year old fourth year student at the Architectural Association of London, designed and built the ecological house on borrowed land from Thames Polytechnic, as part of his diploma thesis at the AA. He received a provisional two year permit from the borough of Woolwich district survey with the promise to build an inhabitable housing laboratory that would grow vegetables out of household influence and fertilise the land with reprocessed organic waste.

After having lived in the house for two years with his family, Caine was asked to destroy it. In 1975 throughout the construction process Caine used himself and his family as a guinea pig in order to test the function of several components of the house. He experimented with his waste, his cooking habits, his use of water, monitoring closely every activity of daily practice until the day the house was demolished.

Caine was undoubtedly the steward of the house. He alone knew how to feed the house with the right nutrients how to chop wood grow plants supply the engines and water the greenhouse. The architect, therefore was an indispensable biological part of the house he built and portrayed himself as a combustion engine for generating electricity connected to the house in a diagram where excretion becomes a vital constituent of the system's sustenance in many respects, the house was more grown than constructed. It needed care from its caretaker and without human presence, it's living by a technical systems would degenerate and die describing his house as a life support system, Caine satirically argued that the architect now being involved with the House's biological cycles may now relate to his own shit.

Research by Lilia Kilipoliti.

The Sydney autonomous House Sydney 1974-1978

In the mid 1970s architecture students at the University of Sydney gave Australia its first autonomous house. Their ambitions were grounded in broad environmental and social concerns but more specifically responded to a global energy anxiety emerging from the 1973 oil crisis. Encouraged by. The charismatic and politically engaged lecturer Colin Chole James, around twenty excited students used scavenged and recycled materials to build a structure on campus that could test the integration of various technologies for domestic self-sufficiency. The project included a wind driven generator for power and the students own designs for a beer bottle Trombe-Michele greenhouse wall, flat plate solar hot water heater and methane digester. While the students embarked on a DIY showcas

Transcripts:

#3 1943 Aqualung Can Man become an Amphibian

Jacques Cousteau and Emile Gagnan / Paris, France 1943

Text reads: Even though devices already existed that enabled underwater breathing, the aqualung was significant in its ability to allow a diver to stay submerged for much longer periods of time.Invented by undersea explorer, researcher, and photographer, Jacques Cousteau and French engineer, Emile Gagnan, the Aqualung differed from other compressed-air devices at the time due to its demand regulator which delivered air to the diver at the appropriate pressure on demand. In order for humans to begin to freely explore the sea, Cousteau and Gagnan’s invention created a simple and safe device that opened the door for further exploration and interest in the undersea world.

Turning clockwise within the display tube at eye level, a panel of diagrams. Illustrations show the three-cylinder apparatus from different angles, with straps to harness it around the chest, and a mouthpiece for breathing into.

A flowchart on the right shows various symbols under the headings Closed Worlds, and Odum’s Energese, with corresponding definitions such as Conversion Energy Loss, and System Input/Output.

Numbered paragraphs further round on the right briefly outline various features and drawbacks of the project. For example: One- way exhaust valve: A valve used to enforce a one-way operation of a system, allowing waste to be expelled without the entrance of new material. A one-way exhaust valve was used in Jacques Cousteau’s Aqualung to enable a full exhalation of air into the surrounding water without any intake of water to the system.

Experimental Casualties / 1. While the Aqualung was a success, many deaths occurred while experimenting undersea breathing technology, from the Bends to embolisms. The Aqualung is still used in modern diving technology today in improved models.

Turning clockwise again within the cylindrical display unit, another series of illustrations and photographs from different periods. A dated looking drawing of an early version of a diving outfit depicts a man with webbed footwear and an large inflated balloon attached to his back. Patent drawings of Cousteau’s designs for demand regulator and mouthpiece. A photograph showing a hamster and a mouse suspended in supersaturated liquid oxygen containers.

Let’s jump into another cylinder...

#20 1972 The Ecological House What is The Power of Shit?

Graham Caine and the Street Farmers / South London, England, 1972

Text reads: In 1972, Graham Caine, a member of the anarchist group Street Farmers, built a house as a laboratory and a living experiment empowered by his own excrement. The Ecological House was not only a fully functioning integrated system that successfully converted human waste to methane for cooking, but was also built by its architect, who used himself and his family as a guinea pig.

Ecological House features a complex architectural diagram, and this project is also featured in the VR experience.

To hear more about the VR experience, go to the next link.

Transcripts:

This is an audio described tour of the exhibition ‘Closed Worlds’, at University of Technology Gallery Sydney - 7th May to 28th June 2019.

Curated by Lydia Kallipoliti.

Standing outside the gallery in the foyer space near the lifts, and looking into the gallery through the floor-to-ceiling glass wall that forms the front of the gallery - the extended title of the exhibition is featured in large black vinyl lettering applied to the glass.

The title reads:

The Architecture of Closed Worlds Or, What

Is the Power of Shit?

In a heavy uppercase sans-serif font, with each letter tightly packed against the next, and the narrow notches used to create the shapes of the letters in the thick black lines creating a compacted effect that is difficult to read close- up.

Looking through to the gallery within; to an open rectangular space with grey concrete floor, and white walls. The floorspace is clear, but the airspace within the room is filed with a series of suspended white cylinders, about 90 cm in diameter and 50cm deep, resembling large lampshades hanging from the ceiling. Each of these is open at the top and bottom, and hanging at varying heights above the ground. Each one features a different question in the same dense black font, such as:

How clean is your indoor air? Can the body plug into the computer? Can curved walls keep your house warm in 47 degree weather? Are fish reproductive in outer space? How feasible is a ‘zero-carbon city’ in the middle of the desert?

Just before entering the gallery, there is a free-standing wall on the left with a panel of text facing outwards. The text reads, in part:

Closed Worlds, curated by Lydia Kallipoliti, exhibits an archive of 41 historical living prototypes from 1928 to the present that put forth an unexplored genealogy of closed resource regeneration systems.

Prototypes are presented through unique discursive narratives with historical images, and each includes new analysis in the form of a feedback drawing that problematises the language of environmental representation by illustrating loss, derailment, and the production of new substances and atmospheres.

Each drawing displays a feedback loop, wherein man’s physiology of ingestion and excretion becomes the combustion device of an organisational system envisioned for humans, animals, and other live species.

The moments of failure portrayed when closed worlds escape the designed loop cycles raise a series of questions about the ontology of autonomous enclosures.

To read the text panel in full, go to the next link...

Transcripts:

Closed worlds

What do outer space capsules submarines and office buildings have in common? Each was conceived as a closed system a self-sustaining physical environment demarcated from its surroundings by a boundary that does not allow for the transfer of matter or energy. The history of 20th century architecture design and engineering has been strongly linked to the conceptualisation and production of closed systems. As partial reconstructions of the world in time and in space closed systems identify and secure the cycling of materials necessary for the sustenance of life. Contemporary discussions about global warming, recycling and sustainability, have emerged as direct conceptual constructs related to the study and analysis of closed systems. From the space program, to countercultural architectural groups experimenting with autonomous living closed worlds documents a disciplinary transformation and the rise of a new environmental consensus in the form of a synthetic naturalism, where the laws of nature and metabolism are displaced from the domain of wilderness to the domain of cities and buildings.

While these ideas derive from a deeply rooted fantasy of architecture producing nature, closed worlds displays their integration into the very fabric of reality in our contemporary cities and buildings. Closed worlds curated by Lydia Kalipoliti, exhibits an archive of 41 historical living prototypes from 1928 to the present that put forth an unexplored genealogy of closed resource regeneration systems. Prototypes are presented through unique discursive narratives with historical images and each includes new analysis in the form of a feedback drawing, that problematises the language of environmental representation by illustrating loss, derailment and the production of new substances and atmospheres. Each drawing displays a feedback loop wherein man's physiology of ingestion and excretion becomes the combustion device of an organisational system envisaged for humans animals and other life species. The moments of failure portrayed when closed worlds escape the designed loop, raise a series of questions about the ontology of autonomous enclosures.

The exhibition archive, designed by Pentagram, showcases a timeline of the 41 prototypes that illuminates the ways in which they have contributed to the idea of net zero in our contemporary culture of sustainability. The timeline highlights the evolution of total circular resource regeneration from military research and the experiments of NASA's space program to more contemporary manifestations such as the benefits of the housing industry, countercultural practice for autonomous living in the city, nostalgia of the homesteading movement and ecological tourism and environmental capitalism.

An adjacent display of speculative projects reflects upon a parallel historical narrative of enclosed spaces, figures of man and legislation related to closed systems. An expanded lexicon on environmental history derived from the study of the 41 prototypes is available online at www dot close worlds dot net. As part of this exhibition, the documentary Biospheres and The Rise of Botanical Capital. presents three large scale enclosed complexes which reproduce fully controlled sections of the natural world. The Eden Project in Cornwall,England, Amazon's New Biospheres in Seattle and the Biosphere 2 in Oracle, Arizona.

Finally the closed worlds VR experience positions you as a user within a virtual diagram of two ecological houses built in the 1970s in London and Sydney. Both houses were built as laboratories and living experiments. They were occupied by their architects as part of the experiment. This exhibition was originally commissioned by the store front for art and architecture in New Yo

Transcript:

This is an audio described tour of the exhibition ‘Closed Worlds’, at University of Technology Gallery Sydney - 7th May to 28th June 2019.

Curated by Lydia Kallipoliti.

Standing outside the gallery in the foyer space near the lifts, and looking into the gallery through the floor-to-ceiling glass wall that forms the front of the gallery - the extended title of the exhibition is featured in large black vinyl lettering applied to the glass.

The title reads:

The Architecture of Closed Worlds Or, What Is the Power of Shit?

In a heavy uppercase sans-serif font, with each letter tightly packed against the next, and the narrow notches used to create the shapes of the letters in the thick black lines creating a compacted effect that is difficult to read close- up.

Looking through to the gallery within; to an open rectangular space with grey concrete floor, and white walls. The floorspace is clear, but the airspace within the room is filed with a series of suspended white cylinders, about 90 cm in diameter and 50cm deep, resembling large lampshades hanging from the ceiling. Each of these is open at the top and bottom, and hanging at varying heights above the ground. Each one features a different question in the same dense black font, such as:

How clean is your indoor air? Can the body plug into the computer? Can curved walls keep your house warm in 47 degree weather? Are fish reproductive in outer space? How feasible is a ‘zero-carbon city’ in the middle of the desert?

Just before entering the gallery, there is a free-standing wall on the left with a panel of text facing outwards.

The text reads, in part:

Closed Worlds, curated by Lydia Kallipoliti, exhibits an archive of 41 historical living prototypes from 1928 to the present that put forth an unexplored genealogy of closed resource regeneration systems.

Prototypes are presented through unique discursive narratives with historical images, and each includes new analysis in the form of a feedback drawing that problematises the language of environmental representation by illustrating loss, derailment, and the production of new substances and atmospheres.

Each drawing displays a feedback loop, wherein man’s physiology of ingestion and excretion becomes the combustion device of an organisational system envisioned for humans, animals, and other live species. The moments of failure portrayed when closed worlds escape the designed loop cycles raise a series of questions about the ontology of autonomous enclosures.

To read the text panel in full, go to the next link.

A flat screen on the back of the front wall panel is showing a documentary on a loop:

To read the Video wall text panel, go to the next link.

On entering the gallery, which is 14.5m long x 12m wide, there is a large floor-to-ceiling poster hanging on the left-hand wall. This is made up of four panels of tarpaulin, printed with scattered panels of text, images and large- font titles. This poster displays speculative design projects, various figures of types of man and buildings designed by architects, and references to relevant legislation and closed system guidelines.

Wrapping around the far long wall and shorter one at the end of the room is a timeline spanning both walls - 24 metres in length.

This timeline features all 41 projects featured in the exhibition in a horizontal trajectory that includes black geometric symbols to indicate project types, and coloured vertical bars to show types of net zero impact There is a clear perspex rack containing printed pamphlets with information about each project that can be selected for further reading by visitors.