Dynamics of Air

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Dynamics of Air, RMIT Gallery, installation image photographed by Mark Ashkanasy

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Since 1997, RMIT Gallery has teamed with the Goethe-Institut to present 24 touring exhibitions, including the scholarly Gerhard Richter – Survey (1998) and Klaus Rinke’s recent drawings (2008) and the very popular 2017 exhibition, Fast Fashion: The Dark Side Of Fashion. The breadth of subject matter has been wide and the quality consistently outstanding.

Dynamics of Air is a partnership between the Republic of Germany’s worldwide cultural institute and RMIT Gallery. From the point of view of transcultural partnerships, this project, which included a comprehensive public program of visiting scholars and artists as well as a catalogue, is unique. We are delighted that along with the Goethe-Institut, we have been joined by the Austrian Embassy, Canberra; Australian-French Association for Research and Innovation (AFRAN); British Council; Instituto Cervantes; EU National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC), as financial supporters of this exhibition. The outcome has enabled us to showcase the best of Australian, German and European discourse around the shared and intangible atmospheric medium that is air.

The project has been driven by curators, Senior Lecturer Dr Malte Wagenfeld, RMIT University and Professor Jane Burry, Dean School of Design, Swinburne University of Technology. Along with their vision and research, RMIT Gallery is delighted to showcase the work of RMIT’s high-profile researchers with connections to industry.

I express my appreciation to Sonja Griegoschewski, Director, Goethe-Institut, Australia, for her strong support and belief in the curators’ vision. I also thank her colleague, Gabriele Urban, Cultural Program Coordinator, for her work across all aspects of the exhibition and public program.

Jane and Malte, the exhibition curators, are to be congratulated for the outstanding realisation of this project, as well as Nick Devlin and his team of installers; Evelyn Tsitas, Senior Communications and Outreach; Maria Stolnik, Gallery Operations Coordinator; Meg Taylor, Exhibitions Assistant and Gallery Assistants; Sophie Ellis, Thao Nguyen and Vidhi Vidhi.

Finally we warmly thank Professor Calum Drummond, DVC Research and Innovation and Vice-President; Professor Paul Gough, PVC and Vice President, College of Design and Social Context; Jane Holt, Executive Director, Research Office, Research and Innovation whose combined on-going support has enabled our program to flourish in 2018.

Helen Rayment Acting Director

Dynamics of Air, RMIT Gallery, installation image photographed by Mark Ashkanasy

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Dynamics of Air is a prime example of the Goethe-Institut’s active global network and our ongoing interest in stimulating and enriching international discussion about sustainability and the future of our cities. Building on the long relationship of cultural exchange with RMIT Gallery, this exhibition came about after two years of discussion, many trips and meetings between Europe, Sydney and Melbourne, as well as a consultation with the German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his delegation during their state visit to Australia in 2017.

The Goethe-Institut is excited to again partner with RMIT Gallery on this occasion to explore complex scientific research on air and the challenges faced when designing for urban environments. Sustainability has already been a focus of our last exhibition at RMIT Gallery in 2017: Fast Fashion: The Dark Side of Fashion. Dynamics of Air is yet another prime example of how the future depends on our vision and ideas for a healthy environment.

German engineers, architects and artists are well-known for their creative and sustainable approaches to design problems, and we are delighted to bring four of them to Melbourne for the exhibition and public program events: Professor Thomas Auer (Stuttgart/Munich), artist Edith Kollath (Berlin/Weimar), Professor Friedrich von Borries (Hamburg/Berlin) and his alter ego Mikael Mikael.

This project with RMIT Gallery evolved in the true spirit of our former collaborations, which have always been a joint effort to present the best ideas from Germany, Australia and elsewhere. The results will certainly initiate further exchange between designers, scientists, engineers, students and academics in Melbourne and elsewhere.

The Goethe-Institut would like to thank the inspired curators Dr Malte Wagenfeld and Professor Jane Burry, as well as our partners at RMIT Gallery for helping to realise this major new exhibition and the associated extensive public programs. In my role as the President of EUNIC Australia (European Union National Institutes for Culture), I am also happy to bring more European partners on board including Austria, UK and Spain. It was a great pleasure working with everyone involved in this project.

Sonja Griegoschewski Director Australia, Goethe-Institut

Dynamics of Air, RMIT Gallery, opening night

Centre for Information Technology and Architecture (Phil Ayres, Petras Vestartas, Danica Pistekova & Maria Teudt), Denmark, Inflated Restraint, 2016, coated textile membranes, fan unit, ducting, courtesy of CITA and the British Council

Foreground: Edith Kollath, Germany, nothing will ever be the same, 2009-2018, kinetic artwork: motors, programming, fabric, aluminium rod, courtesy of the artist and the Goethe-Institut

Background: Cameron Robbins, Australia, (L-R)

16 - 23 December 2013, Snake and Egg, 7 Days 2013; 21 February - 4 March 2014, Crocodile, 11 Days 2014; 3-12 December 2013, Gusty and Changeable, 9 Days 2013; 18 - 28 October 2013, Two Symmetrical Winds, 10 Days 2013; all works: pigment ink on paper, courtesy of the artist and the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart

Wagenfeld and Jane Burry

With our deepening awareness of human impact on global climate and the implications this holds, there has been a collective shift in the way we conceptualise air and atmosphere. We no longer think of it as part of the vast empty expanse of outer space; the earth’s surface ceases to define the periphery of our planet. The conceptual and perceptual planetary boundary has expanded, air and atmosphere are an indivisible part of our globe and our lived life, and how we deal with it has consequences.

Dynamics of Air taps into a growing international body of creative and scientific investigation into our relationship with, and experience of, air, atmosphere and climate, which reflects this conceptual shift from the material, solid and fixed towards the immaterial, fluid, transient and temporal; from cerebral aesthetic judgement to phenomenological experience; from a desire for certainty to an embracing of complexity.

The exhibition developed out of a mutual fascination for the dynamic qualities of air and atmosphere, which we have both been exploring in different ways for over ten years.

My captivation with the matter and poetics of air lies in a lifelong curiosity about environmental forces and the kinetic, dynamic, temporal and experiential. Following a lengthy investigation into air phenomena, how we experience climate and how we might design with air, I am now investigating and designing experiential ‘air’ environments and, integral to this work, my intention is to stimulate people to think about interior air environments more openly – to let go of the concept of ‘comfort’ and embrace the richly diverse and ever changing qualities of air: atmosphere and experience; and to inspire a move away from energy intensive and often unhealthy hermetically sealed, mechanically conditioned air. This requires innovating more desirable alternatives, but it also requires a shift in expectation and mind-set, away from the highly predictable, solid-state and neutral towards the dynamic, sensorially rich and temporally variable.

Malte Wagenfeld

For me it is about how the architectural design process can bring about much needed changes to both the phenomenal experience of the atmospheric interior that Malte has alluded to and the urgently needed revolution in the way we service and consume energy, and contribute heat from buildings. A principal role of architecture is to modulate

Malte

the atmosphere. As buildings have gotten fatter, and expectations of temperature and constancy have changed, the atmosphere within has become more mechanically and numerically controlled, and less part of the overall architectural conception and design. Design technologies give us the opportunity to move beyond just flexibly modelling what can be seen in architecture to being able to link the behaviour of air and what you feel to our design models. Air is a very complex phenomenon to model. To do this meaningfully, architects and designers have to work with aerospace and mechanical engineers, computer scientists, and others to develop ways to simulate environments and design with them both virtually and physically.

Jane Burry

The exhibition is a live research lab where these ideas and concerns are staged in ways that enable visitors to experience and explore, and to be sensorially and intellectually stimulated. Rather than an end in itself, the exhibition is a site of investigation in which participants audition ideas, curate experiences of air and atmosphere, observe and discover, as a critical part of an ongoing conversation.

The work presented involves a broad transdisciplinary group of artists, designers, scientists, and theorists who were asked to develop new original works in response to the curatorial ideas. Collectively the works expose the manifest qualities and concepts of air as experienced through the senses: visually, through movement, through the skin, breath and the lungs, sound, smell and intellectually.

The six distinct gallery spaces allowed us to curate the work thematically as an assemblage of experiences with different levels of sensory through to intellectual engagement.

CITA’s almost weightless but geometrically complex Inflated Restraint, which explores air as generative structure, was juxtaposed into the heavy-walled neo-classical stairwell of the gallery foyer.

Moving into the lofty Gallery 1 and adjacent Gallery 4 spaces, the visitor is immersed in the poetics of breath, wind and air-movement, rendered as a visual experience though such phenomena are normally imperceptible to the human eye. Edith Kollath’s nothing will ever be the same makes visual the chaotic shifting form of the air through a free falling, translucent cloth that assumes a unique shape on each descent in response to air movement.

Cameron Robbins’ wind drawings lyrically plot the capriciousness of wind while in Little Wonder’s 10 Kinds of Fog air moves through different perforated membranes becoming animated as an array of delicate mist-like aerial nymphs. Breath, rhythmic but never repeating, is evoked through the sound of Edith Kollath’s addressable volume while her liminal passage confronts the visitor with the opportunity to share a breath, passed through water, with a stranger; bringing into consciousness the intimate sharing of air between lungs that occurs constantly in shared space and, on a larger scale, the notion of atmosphere being globally shared. In Chris Cottrell’s Sounding the Air, a helium balloon balanced by a repurposed FM receiver, traces the gentle gallery winds to broadcast quotes about air and ambient recordings of air. Natasha Johns-Messenger and Leslie Eastman’s Airlightform, a large spinning centreless disc, generates a rhythmic optical mirage, flickering between the material and non-material, positive and negative space, becoming a form of quasi-thing (Hermann Schmitz) while pulsating warm breath-like parcels of air from its tubular opening. In Fluidifying… exploding body, event in the making, Helen Dilkes presents a work capturing the open-ended moment of an explosion in both form and sound.

Complementing these explorations are two architectural projects presented as video scenarios. Philippe Rahm’s Interior Gulf Stream is a proposition for an architecture that circulates thermodynamic phenomena throughout an interior with the spaces and functions programed according to the desired thermal living conditions. In Particle Sections, Eric Ruiz-Geli dematerialises the notion of architecture altogether. Breaking it down into nanoparticles, he studies the environmental forces on a building as nanoparticles to re-materialise an architecture that dynamically responds and interacts with its environment.

In Galleries 2 and 3, two experiential environments allow visitors to dwell and explore the nuanced shifts in microclimates. The skin and its extension into the lungs are engaged through breathing in the humid, salty and fragrant air of Breathe Earth Collective’s Aerosol, a rethinking of a traditional vernacular ‘machine’ for creating health-giving air, which was developed in salt mining regions in Austria, Germany and Central Europe.

In conceiving Outside_In Malte Wagenfeld consulted with Transsolar to create dual interacting atmospheres—the cool moist air of a forest gorge and the hot dry experience of the beach—within a single space. These two atmospheres morph at the edges, impacting on each other to create a spectrum of transient microclimates. As visitors slowly move through the space, they experience subtle sensory shifts in atmosphere.

The projects in Gallery 5 explore the science of air. In Bio-inspired Sensing for Micro Flight Vehicles Professor Simon Watkins and his team demonstrate how their research on how birds navigate turbulent air is informing the design of more stable microlight vehicles that can, like birds, sense turbulent events before they impact on their flight. Scientific photographer Phred Peterson uses the optics of Schlieren photography in A Visible Wind to capture the nano temporality of air phenomena while Daniel Prohasky’s Pulsometer studies the limits of our physical perception of air movement. Architect Mehrnoush Latifi uses an array of sensors and augmented reality to visualise in real time how the air is modulated by her prototype for a ceramic tiled architectural skin.

Interspersed between these is a series of counterpoints. Friedrich von Borrie’s playful but poignant work signals the implications of interfering with weather patterns, such as seeding of clouds and raises questions of our global responsibility for climate and the ownership of clouds. This is further explored through his alter ego Mikael Mikael and in his whimsical White Clouds of Sugar in which a dancer (Deanne Butterworth) distributes cotton candy clouds throughout the gallery spaces according to a loosely composed score. Jane Burry’s Air presents an evocative series of literary quotes tracing our collective contemplation about air and atmosphere from the late Enlightenment with Luke Howard’s naming of clouds and the poetry of Wordsworth, which have shaped our sensory imagination.

Dynamics of Air brings together a broad community of practice. Artists, designers and scientists from many different disciplines explore shared concerns: how we relate to, live with and understand air, climate and atmosphere; how we can use this knowledge as a force for our creative practice; and how we can shape our lived environment to harness these forces. Our intention is to provoke a vibrant dialogue around these concerns between participants and visitors, and to inspire further collaborations, new insights and, we hope, much needed changes in our appetite for atmosphere.

Edith Kollath, Germany, addressable volume, 2018, five channel video installation, duration: 0:04:45, courtesy of the artist and the Goethe-Institut

Above and opposite page: Edith Kollath, Germany, liminal passage, 2018, glass, distilled water, mouthpieces, courtesy of the artist and the Goethe-Institut

Right: wandering breath, 2018 eucalyptus breath, glass object, steel rods, courtesy of the artist and the Goethe-Institut

Natasha Johns-Messenger and Leslie Eastman, Australia, Airlightform, 2018, steel, aluminium, three-phrase motor and variable speed drive, programmed LED lighting, cardboard tubing, paint, courtesy of the artists

Cameron Robbins, Australia, Sonic Wind Section Instrumental, 2014, digital video (stills), duration: 0:05:30. courtesy of the artist and the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart

Cameron Robbins, Australia, (L-R)

16 - 23 December 2013, Snake and Egg, 7 Days 2013; 21 February - 4 March 2014, Crocodile, 11 Days 2014; 3-12 December 2013, Gusty and Changeable, 9 Days 2013; 18 - 28 October 2013, Two Symmetrical Winds, 10 Days 2013; all works: pigment ink on paper, courtesy of the artist and the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart

Chris Cottrell, Australia, Sounding the Air, 2018, latex balloon, helium, electronics, FM transmission, duration: 0:35:20 looped, courtesy of the artist

Screen left: Enric Ruiz-Geli, Spain, Expo Pavilion, 2017, digital video, duration: 0:00:29, courtesy of the artist, Cloud9 Architects and Instituto Cervantes

Screen middle: Philippe Rahm Architects, France & Switzerland, Interior Gulf Stream, 2009, digital video, duration: 0:13:01, courtesy of Philippe Rahm Architects and A_FRAN

Screen right: Cameron Robbins, Australia Sonic Wind Section Instrumental, 2014, digital video (stills), duration: 0:05:30. courtesy of the artist and the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart

Top: Enric Ruiz-Geli, Spain, Expo Pavilion, 2017, digital video, duration: 0:00:29, courtesy of the artist, Cloud9 Architects and Instituto Cervantes

Middle: Enric Ruiz-Geli, Particle Sections, 2011, digital video, duration: 0:00:50, courtesy of the artist, Cloud9 Architects and Instituto Cervantes

Bottom: Philippe Rahm Architects, France & Switzerland, Interior Gulf Stream, 2009, digital video, duration: 0:13:01, courtesy of Philippe Rahm Architects and A_FRAN

Helen Dilkes, Australia, Fluidifying… exploding body, event in the making, 2018, iridescent foil, acrylic, 925 silver, audio, 44 x 44 x 38 cm, courtesy of the artist

Mikael Mikael, Germany, White Clouds of Sugar, 2018, digital prints, digital video documentation of performance, courtesy of the artist and the Goethe-Institut

Mikael Mikael, Germany, White Clouds of Sugar, 2018, performed by Deanne Butterworth, documentation videography by Taylor Bennie-Faull

Little Wonder (Gyungju Chyon & John Stanislav Sadar), South Korea & Canada, Ten Kinds of Fog, 2018, acrylic, wood, textiles, electronics, foggers, fans, water, courtesy of the artists

Breathe Earth Collective, Austria, Aerosol, 2018, timber, water, pumps, fans, Murray River pink salt, melaleuca bush, courtesy of the artists, Austrian Trade Commission, Sydney and the Murray River Salt Company

Above: Friedrich von Borries, Germany, UN MAHAC, 2018, paper, staff identification card, manuals, hat, t-shirt, stamp, courtesy of the artist and the Goethe-Institut

Opposite: Jane Burry with Swinburne Bureau, Australia, Air, 2018, digital print on 200gsm matte uncoated paper, six posters: 118.9 x 84.1 cm each, courtesy of the artist and Swinburne University of Technology

Malte Wagenfeld & Transsolar (Thomas Auer), Australia & Germany, Outside_In, 2018, high pressure ultrafine foggers, IR heat lamps, LED lighting, micro-processors, timber, board, courtesy of the artists and the Goethe-Institut and RMIT School of Design SRC

Mehrnoush Latifi, Australia, Making the Invisible Visible, 2017-2018, ceramic tiles, sensors, electronics, HoloLens, Mixed Reality app (Mixed8), courtesy of the artist

Daniel Prohasky, Australia, Pulsometer, 2018, robotic 3D print, laser cut acrylic, mechanical components, electronics, sensors, pulsatile airflow, courtesy of the artist

Daniel Prohasky, Australia, Mini Interactive Wind Tunnel, 2018, 3D print, CNC milled timber, projection mapping, virtual wind, courtesy of the artist

Top: Phred Petersen, Australia, A Visible Wind, 2018 Schlieren photography: digital video (still) Duration: 0:04:59

Courtesy of the artist

Middle, bottom: Simon Watkins, Australia, Turbulence Modelling, 2015 digital video (still) Duration: 0:01:47

Courtesy of the artist

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Breathe Earth Collective

Breathe Earth Collective is a think-and-do-tank, developing new ways of dealing with interrelations of architecture, natural ecosystems, air and climate. Founded in 2015, the collective functions as an open network of transdisciplinary designers drawing on their specialized skillsets to experiment and design with different ecosystems. A current project involves merging forest and architecture into the design of the Czech forestry administration’s new headquarters. Breathe Earth Collective has also developed a series of smallscale typologies of climate pavilions, called ‘Airships’, which explores the potential of tackling air pollution and providing natural cooling in urban spaces.

Breathe Earth Collective comprises: Lisa Maria Enzenhofer (ecosphere.institute/Green4Cities), Markus Jeschaunig (Agency in Biosphere) and Bernhard König (ecosphere.institute/Green4Cities) as well as Karlheinz Boiger (Hohensinn Architektur) & Andreas Goritschnig (Studio AG)

Breathe Earth Collective

Austria

Aerosol 2018

Timber, water, pumps, fans, Murray River pink salt, Melaleuca bush

Courtesy of the artists, Austrian Trade Commission, Sydney and the Murray River Salt Company

Aerosol, a sensual and immersive breathing experience, explores evaporation processes and traditional concepts of conditioning air with natural essences and aerosols. Inspired by traditional ‘Graduation Tower’ typologies, the installation invites visitors to experience a vernacular health and wellbeing practice which was developed in salt mining regions in Austria, Germany and Central Europe.

CITA - Centre for Information Technology and Architecture

CITA is an innovative research establishment exploring intersections between architecture and digital technologies, and how digital culture impacts architectural thinking and practice. CITA examines how architecture is influenced by new digital design and production tools, as well as the digital practices that are informing societies culturally, socially and technologically. Using design and practice-based research methods, the centre works through the conceptualization, design and realization of working prototypes. CITA is constantly creating new collaborations with interdisciplinary partners from fields including computer graphics, human computer interaction, robotics and artificial intelligence as well as industry sectors such as furniture design, fashion and textiles, industrial design, film, dance and interactive arts.

Centre for Information Technology and Architecture: Phil Ayres, Petras Vestartas, Danica Pistekova & Maria Teudt

Denmark

Inflated Restraint 2016 Coated textile membranes, fan unit, ducting Courtesy of CITA and the British Council

Inflated Restraint represents the importance of using advanced computational techniques to determine pattern cutting for designing pneumatic structures (powered by air). The natural tendency of pneumatic systems is to ‘push outwards’ which results in synclastic, or domed, curvature. The shape of Inflated Restraint expresses the role of the membrane, and its underlying cutting pattern, in steering this natural tendency towards a design target.

Edith Kollath

Multimedia artist Edith Kollath, who has a MFA in Time Related Media and Sculpture from HFBK University of Fine Arts (Hamburg), is constantly questioning the visualization of uncertain states and their social and theoretical contexts. During three years in New York, Kollath was an active member of the hacker collective NYC Resistor and participated in several exhibitions and projects. Her installations, objects and works on paper have since been exhibited in Germany and internationally. A PhD candidate at the Bauhaus University in Weimar since 2015, Kollath continues to work in diverse media including video, installation, objects and paper to explore how thought processes can be traced back in an object or installation or made to radiate from it.

Edith Kollath Germany

nothing will ever be the same 2009-2018 Kinetic artwork: motors, programming, fabric, aluminium rod Courtesy of the artist and the Goethe-Institut

A translucent cloth is set in motion, lifted and released by an automatic mechanism. Similar to the human respiratory rhythm of inhalation, exhalation and pause, the action is repeated and yet results in a subtly different visual outcome each time.

addressable volume 2018 Five channel video installation Duration: 0:04:45

Courtesy of the artist and the Goethe-Institut

Breath assures us of the presence, warmth and immediacy of the other. Air not only moves in us, but also between us, but is not visible. The art of glass blowing forms objects by enveloping breath. In Addressable Volume, glass bubbles symbolize the split cycle of breathing air, from their gradual expansion through to

their shattering. The immateriality of the air becomes so powerful that the glass shell becomes fragile and must be destroyed to release its contents for the other.

Glassblower: Ralf Reichert

Camera: Heiko Rahnenführer

Post-production: Maxim Matthew Sound: Gavin Hoare & Douglas Henderson

Performers: Dejan Bu in, Christina Dusch, Tahera Hashemi, Tom Mahnke, Eliza Mewanu, Katja-Marie Voigt, Ursula Werner and Tom Wlaschiha

liminal passage 2018

Glass, distilled water, mouthpieces

Courtesy of the artist and the Goethe-Institut

Rarely is the breathing process visualized, that continuous inhaling and exhaling of air molecules that previously passed through the bodies of others. In Liminal Passage, breath is passed through the glass object, cleaned of viruses and bacteria through the water, and pure breathing gas absorbed on the opposite side via a sterile mouthpiece. To make this a reciprocal process, the positions of the donor and recipient are then reversed.

wandering breath 2018 eucalyptus breath, glass object, steel rods approx. 120cm x 50cm x 30cm

The fast-growing eucalyptus tree has been planted outside of its native country Australia for quite some time due to the high demand in the wood and paper industry worldwide. But in large-scale plantations the extreme water requirements of eucalyptus don’t bring only advantages as the groundwater level drops alarmingly. Furthermore, other plant constituents such as leaves cannot be utilised, since only the native Australian koala is able to digest them. The immigration of eucalyptus is therefore looked upon critically.

Yet, the tree’s essential oil has been widely used for alleviating respiratory problems. For the installation wandering breath, a glass object was filled in a chemistry laboratory in Berlin with the breath of the artist after consuming eucalyptus-containing products such as respiratory spray or cough drops, sealed and transported to this exhibition. The vessel, modelled on a human lung, which seems exhausted after its long journey, brings both, a foreign breath as a guest, and the eucalyptus back home.

Enric Ruiz-Geli

Enric Ruiz-Geli and his interdisciplinary architectural team, Cloud 9, work at the juncture of architecture and art, digital processes and technological material development from their home base in Barcelona. The award-winning architects’ multifaceted projects include stage designs, buildings, installations and patents. Important projects include the Villa Nurbs in

Empuriabrava, an organically formed, ecological and futuristic house; the Millennium Project in Valladolid, an urban retrofitting; elBulliFoundation for the chief Ferran Adrià as a living laboratory in Cap de Creus; and the Media-TIC building in Barcelona, awarded World Building of the Year by World Architecture Festival 2011 for its zero net energy rating and competitive construction cost.

Enric Ruiz-Geli Spain

Media-TIC Building, Nitrogen Fog Creation 2010 Digital video Duration: 0:01:14

EXPO Pavilion 2017 Digital video Duration: 0:00:29

Particle Sections 2011 Digital video Duration: 0:00:50 All courtesy of Enric Ruiz-Geli, Cloud 9 Architects and Instituto Cervantes

Enric Ruiz-Geli believes architecture begins with thinking about particles, their energy and dynamics: ‘Our architecture becomes part of a discourse that makes no distinction between objects and products, buildings and landscape, sea and mountain, but which understands reality as performing particles.’ In this series of videos, Ruiz-Geli visualizes the process of his designs. In Media-TIC Building, a nitrogen curtain is activated in the cushions by sensing the sun to control the building’s internal climate.

Friedrich von Borries

Friedrich von Borries is an architect and Professor of Design Theory at the Hochschule für bildende Künste (HFBK) in Hamburg, Germany. He studied architecture at the Berlin University of the Arts, the ISA St. Luc in Bruxelles and the Technical University Karlsruhe, where he received a PhD in 2004. Von Borries operates between the blurred boundaries of urban planning, architecture, design and art. A theoretician who concerns himself with the social and political aspects of design, his practice unfolds by asking questions and posing provocations, often based on fictional elements. He is interested in how design can produce positive change, especially from a social perspective.

Friedrich von Borries Germany

UN MAHAC 2018 Paper, staff identification card, manuals, hat, t-shirt, stamp Courtesy of the artist and the Goethe-Institut

UN MAHAC (the United Nations Management and Harvesting of Clouds) is a secret, transnational

institution that researches weather manipulation and ownership through law, climate justice and scientific research. UN MAHAC maps the changes in global cloud structures and poses the questions, ‘Who owns the clouds?’ and ‘How can we manipulate the weather for military advantage, climate control or as an agricultural tool?’.

Mikael Mikael

Mikael Mikael is an artist. He lives everywhere and nowhere, probably currently in Berlin. Mikael Mikael works independent of media and material, using objects, film and photos to document his interventions within the physical and discursive public space. Installations are documented through photography and video, whereas the documentations also stand as self-contained works.

Mikael Mikael Germany

White Clouds of Sugar 2018 Digital prints, digital video documentation of performance

Courtesy of the artist and the Goethe-Institut

Mikael Mikael’s playful approach to the phenomenon of clouds asks us to consider the ownership of weather systems and ecologies. This performance-based work gives shape to the dispersal of White Clouds of Sugar throughout the gallery space, performed by renowned dancer Deanne Butterworth.

Dancer & Choreographer: Deanne Butterworth

Fiming & Production: Taylor Bennie-Faull

Little Wonder: Gyunju Chyon & John Sadar

Little Wonder, led by artists Gyungju Chyon and John Stanislav Sadar, challenges the status-quo by creating new experiences and relationships between humans, artefacts and environments through engaging natural phenomena, new materials and processes, and sensorial experiences. Chyon is a New York-based designer and Assistant Professor of Product and Industrial Design at Parsons School of Design. She completed a BA in Industrial Design at Hongik University in Seoul, an MA in Furniture Design at Aalto University in Helsinki, and is currently a PhD candidate at RMIT University. Sadar, Course Director of Architecture at Swinburne University of Technology, earned a BA from McGill University in Montréal, an MA from Aalto University in Helsinki, and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. He previously taught in the MFA Interior Design program at Parsons School of Design, coordinated architectural technologies at Monash University, and managed design studios at the University of Melbourne.

Little Wonder (Gyungju Chyon & John Stanislav Sadar) South Korea & Canada

Ten Kinds of Fog 2018

Acrylic, wood, textiles, electronics, foggers, fans, water Courtesy of the artists

Ten Kinds of Fog explores and demonstrates how the depthless, formless phenomena of fog can assume different and distinct qualities. Through its form and inner structure, fog can take on different textures, weights and movements; it can be wispy and buoyant, or heavy and slithering; it can be bouncy, turbid, and tempestuous, or it can be calm, eerie, contemplative and still.

Technical Assistant: Jason Ng

Philippe Rahm Architects

Swiss architect Philippe Rahm is the principal of Philippe Rahm Architects based in Paris. His work, which expands the field of architecture from the physiological to the meteorological, has received international acclaim in the area of sustainability. Rahm was chosen to represent Switzerland in 2002 at the 8th Architecture Biennale in Venice, was nominated for the Ordos Prize in China in 2009, and in both 2008 and 2010 was ranked in the top 10 for the International Chernikov Prize in Moscow. He has participated in several exhibitions worldwide and in 2007 had a solo exhibition at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montreal. Recent works include first prize for the 70 hectares Taichung Gateway Park in Taiwan; a convective condominium for the IBA in Hamburg, Germany; White Geology, a stage design for contemporary art in the Grand-Palais in Paris in 2009; and a studio house for the artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster in 2008.

Philippe Rahm Architects

France & Switzerland

Interior Gulf Stream 2009

Digital video Duration: 0:13:01

Courtesy of Philippe Rahm Architects and A_FRAN

This video presents Philippe Rahm Architects’ research for the Interior Gulf Stream project. The thermodynamic phenomena of the Gulf Stream is a model for thinking about architecture that offers an escape route from the homogenization of the modern space. The climatic phenomenon is created by the polarization in the interior space of two different thermal sources, one cold and one hot, generating a convective movement of air which defines different zones with distinct temperatures for certain living conditions.

Thomas Auer

Thomas Auer is partner and Managing Director of Transsolar, an engineering firm with offices in Stuttgart, Munich, Paris and New York. A specialist in energy efficiency and environmental quality, Auer has developed concepts for buildings and districts around the world noted for their innovative strategies. Professor for

Building Technology and Climate Responsive Design at the TU of Munich since 2014, his focus is on bridging academia and environmental design. His research focuses on form and materiality, and their influence on performance and environmental quality at different scales.

Malte Wagenfeld

Dr Malte Wagenfeld is Senior Lecturer of Industrial Design at RMIT University as well as a researcher and practising industrial designer whose explorative designs and texts have been internationally exhibited, distributed and published. His current research investigates designing ‘immaterial’ interior climates through exploration of sensory experiences of dynamic atmospheric encounters with air: breezes, humidity, temperature, sound, light and smell. This is a recasting of the current practice of standardized air-conditioned interior climates towards something richer in experiences and connected to geography, season, time-of-day and patterns of use. Wagenfeld’s aim is to create spatial living and working environments which are healthier, relaxed, productive, environmentally responsible and engender delight.

Malte Wagenfeld & Transsolar (Thomas Auer)

Australia & Germany

Outside_In 2018

High pressure ultrafine foggers, IR heat lamps, LED lighting, micro-processors, timber, board Courtesy of the artists, the Goethe-Institut and RMIT School of Design SRC

Quantifying the aesthetics of air is extremely difficult. An investigation of the nature of something as seemingly unremarkable as a breeze reveals a complex dynamic at work. Air is always changing direction and intensity, and is entirely unpredictable. However, it is incredibly localized. Outside_In is designed to capture outside sensorial experiences of air inside a gallery. The installation consists of dual interacting atmospheres, the cool moist air of a forest gorge and the hot dry experience of the beach, these morph at the edges to create a spectrum of transient microclimates. As visitors slowly move through the space, they perceive subtle sensory shifts in atmosphere.

Cameron Robbins

Castlemaine-based artist Cameron Robbins focuses on elemental forces of the natural world and in producing collaborations between art and nature. Represented in Melbourne by MARS Gallery, and in Kyneton by Stockroom Gallery, Robbins has been producing exhibitions, residencies and commissions in Australia, Europe and Asia since 1990. These include shows at the Museum of Old and New Art (Hobart), National Gallery of Victoria (Melbourne), Setouchi Festival of Art (Japan), Artspace (Sydney), Australian Centre for Contemporary Art (Melbourne), Perth Institute of

Contemporary

Cameron Robbins Australia

RMIT Alumni

18 - 28 October 2013, Two Symmetrical Winds, 10 Days 2013 75 x 502.5 cm

3-12 December 2013, Gusty and Changeable, 9 Days 2013 75 x 508.5 cm

16 - 23 December 2013, Snake and Egg, 7 Days 2013 75 x 478 cm

21 February - 4 March 2014, Crocodile, 11 Days 2014 75.5 x 509 cm

All works: pigment ink on paper

Courtesy of the artist, with thanks to the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart where artwork was created June 2013 – April 2014

These self-devised wind drawing machines are a collaboration between Robbins and nature. Using wind speed to drive the pen, wind direction to swivel the drawing board, and time and electricity to move the paper, the devices are installed in different locations to collect wind energy and translate it into a strangely readable format of ink drawings on paper. An entire weather system leaves its trace, with around five metres equating to ten days.

Cameron Robbins Australia

RMIT Alumni

Sonic Wind Section Instrumental 2014 Digital video Duration: 0:05:30

Courtesy of the artist, with thanks to the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart where artwork was created June 2013 – April 2014

This film documents a series of performances in which musicians and Robbins’ Wind Drawing Machine both respond to the weather patterns of the Derwent Estuary in Hobart, Tasmania.

Chris Cottrell

Chris Cottrell, a Senior Lecturer in Design at Monash University, operates across installations and performative art, architecture and interior design. He proposes ‘architectural judo’ as a way of gently destabilizing environments, working with buildings and interior spaces as events comprised of an ecology of relations. This was developed and articulated through his recently completed PhD in the School of Architecture and Design at RMIT University. Cottrell’s practice is informed by his architecture training at the University of Auckland and further studies in fine art at the Edinburgh College

Art, Latrobe Regional Gallery (Morwell), Gallery Barry Keldoulis (Sydney), East China Normal University (Shanghai) and Hong Kong/Korean International Art Fairs.

of Art. His work has been exhibited extensively in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom and he has held artist residencies in Piran, Slovenia, the Orkney Islands, Scotland and Fox Glacier, New Zealand. His writing has been published in Leonardo, IDEA Journal, International Journal of Interior Architecture + Spatial Design and Interstices: Journal of Architecture and Related Arts.

Chris

Cottrell

Australia

RMIT Alumni

Sounding the Air 2018

Latex balloon, helium, electronics, FM transmission Duration: 0:35:20 looped Courtesy of the artist

The uplift of a large helium balloon is balanced with a battery-powered audio speaker, creating a buoyancy neutral assemblage that is sensitized to the slightest changes in air movement and temperature. The work circulates, rising and falling through the gallery space in response to the qualities of air. The speaker plays an audio work of ambient recordings of air interspersed with different voices reading quotes related to thinking through air.

Helen Dilkes

Helen Dilkes explores how artistic practice coincides with Henri Bergson’s philosophical concepts of duration and multiplicity. Combining jewellery studio skills with digital techniques, she investigates non-Euclidean (Riemannian) geometrical depictions of body, object and space. With experience in music performance and soundscape research, Dilkes brings the ephemeral of duration and technique into the supposed concrete of substance, in works that range from small-scale object installations to larger composite installations. Dilkes completed a PhD at RMIT University’s School of Art in 2017 with practice-based research titled Non-Euclidean transformations: multiplicity in a contemporary art jewellery practice. She holds an MFA (Gold and Silversmithing) from RMIT University; MEd (Visual and Performing Art) from the University of Melbourne; and BMus (Performance) from the University of Western Australia. Dilkes has exhibited solo in Melbourne galleries, and in selected group shows in the Netherlands, Japan and China.

Helen Dilkes

Australia

RMIT Alumni

Fluidifying … exploding body, event in the making 2018 Iridescent foil, acrylic, 925 silver, audio 44 x 44 x 38 cm

Courtesy of the artist

This work looks at the forces at play during an explosion. Dilkes proposes there is no single moment of exploding, no beginning nor ending, but rather a happening. Her

work draws attention to the incremental change in the Earth’s (exploding) atmosphere.

Jane Burry

Professor Jane Burry is the Dean of the School of Design in the Faculty of Health, Arts and Design at Swinburne University of Technology, and formerly Professor and Director of the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL) at RMIT University. Burry’s research focuses on mathematics and computing in contemporary design. She is lead author of The New Mathematics of Architecture, editor of Designing the Dynamic and co-author of Prototyping for Architects. Recent research explores opportunities for leveraging digital fabrication with simulation and feedback to create more sensitive, human-centric spaces. By manipulating geometry and materiality within the design, architecture can fine tune the acoustic, thermal and air flow aesthetics for higher quality, energy efficient environments. Burry has practised, taught, supervised and researched internationally, including as a project architect in the technical office at Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Família Church in Barcelona.

Jane Burry with Swinburne Bureau Australia RMIT Alumni Air 2018

Digital print on 200gsm matte uncoated paper Six posters: 118.9 x 84.1 cm each Courtesy of the artist and Swinburne University of Technology

Literary atmospheres enter the conceptual and phenomenal lexicon in the late enlightenment with Luke Howard’s naming of clouds and the poetry of Wordsworth as ‘the pneumatic investigator who had gone furthest in his investigation of aerial poetics’. This series starts to dissolve the words into the variously charged atmospheres that the named authors have penned into existence, and into readers’ sensory experience.

Thomas H Ford, Wordsworth and the Poetics of Air, 2018

Leslie Eastman

Leslie Eastman is a graduate of Melbourne University and RMIT, and works as a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Fine Art at Monash University. Eastman has held more than 30 solo and collaborative exhibitions nationally, at venues such as Australian Centre for Contemporary Art, Linden, Experimenta, and internationally. He has received grants from the Australian Film Commission, the Australia Council for the Arts and Arts Victoria. His installation works utilize a range of media including lenses and light, large scale mirrors, drawing and video to explore our presence in, and perception of, the world. Eastman was a key member of Light Projects, an experimental project

space in Melbourne which housed over 30 exhibitions by local and international artists addressing themes of psychoanalysis and perception.

Natasha Johns-Messenger

Natasha Johns-Messenger produces site-determined spatial installations that activate an experience of perceptual paradox. By employing a complex system of strategically placed material devices, such as periscopic mirrors, live-video projections, architectural mimicry and cuts and site-determined photography, her work creates disorienting pictorial planes in real space. Viewers are unaware of what is real and what is virtual. Three conceptual objectives underpin her works: to dissolve parameters between art object and its context by using the exhibition site as subject; to change the way immediate space is perceived by developing modes of representation such as real-time image capture inside optical viewing structures; and to create artworks that are predominantly experiential.

Natasha Johns-Messenger and Leslie Eastman

Australia

RMIT Alumni

Airlightform 2018

Steel, aluminium, three-phase motor and variable speed drive, programmed LED lighting, cardboard tubing, paint Courtesy of the artists. Leslie Eastman wishes to thank the support of Monash Art Design and Architecture.

Airlightform is a collaborative experimentation with a motorized disc and lighting to construct a dynamic kinetic perceptual work of visual and tactile components. The visual centres on notions of positive and negative space through the use of movement and light on the disc, suggesting an oscillation between presence and void. The tactile is articulated through the current of air produced by motion.

Mehrnoush Latifi

Mehrnoush Latifi, an Australian researcher with 10 years’ experience in the architecture industry, is currently working as an Industry Fellow at RMIT University, School of Design. Her research shows how the physical design language of colour, geometry and materiality can be creatively combined to form ‘Smart Skins’, which can regulate temperature and airflow. Her scientific-artistic approach has led to the design of a series of ceramic tiles with unique three-dimensional features, exhibited in Craft ACT 2015 and 2016. Latifi believes designers of space are always making decisions for a reality that consists of unexpected dynamic factors.

Mehrnoush Latifi

Australia

RMIT Alumni

Making the Invisible Visible 2017-2018

Ceramic tiles, sensors, electronics, HoloLens, Mixed Reality app (Mixed8)

Courtesy of the artist

Experiencing space and recognizing it as a dynamic material for design is still challenging because of the multiplicity of involved parameters, whether complicated and invisible environmental factors or human sensory input and perception. Making the Invisible Visible is an interactive Mixed Reality visualization and series of Schlieren photographs, used to engage visitors in visualizing the invisible and dynamic micro-climatic changes around surfaces. The wall setup is made from a series of ceramic tiles designed on airflow analysis. A Mixed Reality app is used to visualize datasets that are superimposed onto the scene, using a head-mounted HoloLens device and an embedded grid of sensors behind, and in front of, the ceramic tiles.

Technical Collaborators: Alizera Bolandnazar, Jane Burry, Judith Glover, Phred Petersen, Daniel Prohasky, Ehsan Shams, Malte Wagenfeld

This installation is part of Mehrnoush Latifi’s PhD project ‘Skin Patterning: Towards Morphing Microclimates’ RMIT University

Grant Acknowledgement: Higher Degree by Research Publications Grant (RMIT) and ARC Discovery (DP130103228)

Phred Petersen

Phred Petersen is a Senior Lecturer in Photography at RMIT University, where he has been teaching for 20 years. Petersen specializes in applications of photography for scientific and industrial research and has worked across a broad range of applied photography topics including photomacrography, photomicroscopy, infrared/ultraviolet photography, highspeed imaging, and Schlieren or shadowgraph methods. His works have been included in five consecutive juried Royal Photographic Society exhibitions, the ‘International Images for Science Exhibition’. Most of his current work uses high speed video to help understand the nature of transient events. Research collaborations include the study of fuel sprays for green engine technology, behaviour of liquid metal alloys for microfluidic applications, flow visualization for micro air vehicles, and the effects of human movement on environmental air quality.

Phred Petersen Australia RMIT Staff

A Visible Wind 2018

Schlieren photography: digital video Duration: 0:04:59 Courtesy of the artist

Schlieren photography is a highly technical visual process involving two optically matched parabolic mirrors to create photographs and videos which reveal invisible changes in air. This compilation of Schlieren photographs captures supersonic motion and flow visualization, allowing us to see what is transparent.

Daniel Prohasky

Architectural engineer Daniel Prohasky is a PhD candidate with RMIT University’s School of Aerospace Engineering through the Spatial Information Architecture Laboratory (SIAL), and is currently championing the new Architectural Engineering program at Swinburne University. Prohasky has taught across RMIT’s architecture and engineering schools in crossdisciplinary studies and has led multiple international workshop clusters including: SmartGeometry 2016 ‘Sensory Detectives’ in Sweden; CAADRIA 2016 ‘Microscopes and Macroscopes’ in Melbourne; SmartGeometry 2014 ‘Private Microclimates’ in Hong Kong; ‘Sense and Sustainability’ at the Technical University of Catalonia in Barcelona and multiple MDIT digital design and fabrication studio intensives at RMIT University. His research focus is to further the development and implementation of physical sensing platforms for advances in the understanding of environmental dynamics in architectural design.

Daniel Prohasky

Australia

RMIT Alumni

Miniature Interactive Wind Tunnel 2018 3D print, CNC milled timber, projection mapping, virtual wind Courtesy of the artist

Computer simulations of wind can be difficult to comprehend and without a level of interactivity, designers need to incorporate wind data into design processes to ensure spaces are thermally dynamic. The Miniature Interactive Wind Tunnel represents wind as visualized through animated colors and virtual smoke. This system was designed to communicate troubled regions in cities that are negatively affected by wind, and to encourage architects and designers to factor wind flow in to the design process.

Technical collaborators: Akira Ode-Smith, Marcus Cher, Rafael Moya Castro, Simon Watkins & RMIT MDIT Studio ‘Virtual Realities of Wind’ Grant Acknowledgement: ARC Discovery (DP130103228)

Pulsometer 2018

Robotic 3D print, laser cut acrylic, mechanical components, electronics, sensors, pulsatile airflow Courtesy of the artist

Similar to our perception of the colours of light, we can also experience differing airflows through pulses of air. In this work, the frequency of pulse is communicated through the equivalent colours of the visible light spectrum. These colours are made apparent through embedded lights within the translucent structure of the Pulsometer

Technical collaborators: Simon Watkins and Jane Burry Robotic fabrication courtesy of Swinburne University This installation is part of Daniel Prohasky’s PhD project ‘On the Human Perception of Pulsatile Airflow’ RMIT University

Grant Acknowledgement: ARC Discovery (DP130103228)

Simon Watkins

Simon Watkins, a graduate of Bristol University’s Aeronautical Engineering Department, worked at British Aerospace UK and City University London before arriving in Australia in 1983. Watkins undertook a PhD at RMIT University in 1990 and is now a Professor in the Department of Mechanical and Automotive Engineering. His research focuses on measuring and replicating atmospheric turbulence as experienced by ground-based vehicles.

Simon Watkins

Australia

RMIT Staff

Turbulence Modelling 2015

Digital video Duration: 0:01:47

Bio-Inspired Sensing for Micro Flight Vehicles 2014 Digital video Duration: 0:02:27

Autonomous Soaring UAS 2014 Digital video Duration: 0:01:25 Courtesy of the artist

Watkins’ expertise spans aerodynamics, experimental fluid dynamics and turbulence. This compilation of videos presents his research into the modelling of turbulence and flow visualization to study the effects of winds on the urban environment, structures and unmanned flight vehicles. These are innovative approaches to reduce the effects of turbulence and for harvesting energy from the environment.

Dynamics of Air Curated by Malte Wagenfeld with Jane Burry

RMIT Gallery 14 September – 17 November 2018

Acknowledgements: Special thanks to the participating artists and designers for their generous support, insight and commitment to the exhibition.

We thank Sonja Griegoschewski, Director Australia; Gabriele Urban, Cultural Program Coordinator and their colleagues at the Goethe-Institut for their partnership and generosity.

We also thank our exhibition sponsors for their assistance and support: the Austrian Embassy, Canberra; Australian-French Association for Research and Innovation (AFRAN); British Council; Instituto Cervantes; EU National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC); Murray River Salt Company and Kooks Winery.

Appreciative thanks also to Professor Calum Drummond, DVC R&I; Professor Paul Gough, PVC DSC; Jane Holt, Executive Director R & I; Professor Laurene Vaughan, Dean School of Design; Erik North, RMIT Design Hub.

Malte Wagenfeld and Jane Burry would also like to thank: Austrian Ambassador His Excellency Dr Bernard Zimburgh, RMIT School of Design and School of Design, Swinburne University of Technology.

Acting Director & Senior Exhibition Coordinator: Helen Rayment

Senior Advisor Communications & Outreach: Evelyn Tsitas

Exhibition Installation Coordinator: Nick Devlin

Installation Technicians: Fergus Binns, Beau Emmett, Robert Jordan, Ford Larman, Simone Tops

Curator, Collections: Jon Buckingham

Gallery Operations Coordinator: Mamie Bishop / Maria Stolnik

Exhibition Assistant: Meg Taylor

Collections Assistant: Ellie Collins

Administration Assistants: Sophie Ellis Thao Nguyen Vidhi Vidhi

RMIT Gallery Interns & Volunteers: Calum Alexander Celeste Astorino Nicole Ganker

Christine Gjelstrup Caitlin Littlewood

RMIT Gallery / RMIT University www.rmitgallery.com 344 Swanston Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3000 Tel: +61 3 9925 1717 Fax: +61 3 9925 1738 Email: rmit.gallery@rmit.edu.au

Gallery hours: Monday-Friday 11-5 Thursday 11-7 Saturday 12-5. Closed Sundays & public holidays. Free admission. Lift access available.

Catalogue published by RMIT Gallery November 2018, Edition 200 ISBN: 978-0-9925156-8-3

Graphic design: Sean Hogan, Trampoline Catalogue editor: Evelyn Tsitas Catalogue photography: Mark Ashkanasy Printed in Australia by Bambra Press

RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nations on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present.

RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business.