A STRING THEORY
In our increasingly sedentary reality, we must find moments for active lifestyle throughout our daily routines. For children, moments of play are a commonly sought after reality. While we as adults often save these for intense moments for the gym or sport fields. This investigation seeks to integrate bursts of activity in our everyday life.
The installation picks up on research done for a project now under construction in Shenzhen, Forest Park [a 650 hectare park, 50% larger than central park in New York, adjacent to the Guangming high speed rail station]. The research investigated the evolving reality of sport and leisure. The project in Guangming creates a series of ‘multi-fields’ that embrace new and old forms of sport. It interprets the layers of use that can be seen in a singular play space throughout the day, week, month and year.
The research illuminated that what may seem like something static – sport – is actually constantly evolving. Sport has lead to innovations in technology – clothing, the tools [ball, racket], and space. Now it may seem like a simple list of basketball, football, tennis etc; but over centuries sport has generated a myriad of spatial practices for reinterpreting our daily lives and everyday spaces. Perhaps most iconic is the way in which skateboarding has given a new reading to the modernist, often leftover, spaces of the contemporary infrastructural city. Further, sport has lead to an inward investigation of the body. Previously this was about muscles/tendons/etc and today has generated innumerable systems for understanding the science of simple breathing, nutrition and sleep.
The installation generates a form to activate numerous muscles throughout the body. It does this by creating a ‘crawl space’ for folks to climb, wiggle, and generally find their way through. The colorful straps frame a series of sequentially layered spaces open for interpretation. This encourages not just strength and fitness, but also the embrace of the unknown and the tactile. The experience is akin to that of a worm crawling and shifting through an interpretable colorful web.
In a larger sense, this installation seeks to further the layers of our everyday lives. Simple planning designations of work, live, and nature do not speak to the complex relationship with have with civilization and nature in our modern society. The psychology of play has been used in a number of ways recently. Even the idea of ‘gamifying’ our places with AR/VR has come to light. We seek something more raw, more basic, more fundamental. We don’t need to augment space digitally, we and augment it physically.
The installation is not just about a play of light, color and space; it challenges the participant to dare to enter, and to find their own way forward.
A STRING THEORY
In our increasingly sedentary reality, we must find moments for active lifestyle throughout our daily routines. For children, moments of play are a commonly sought after reality. While we as adults often save these for intense moments for the gym or sport fields. This investigation seeks to integrate bursts of activity in our everyday life.
The installation picks up on research done for a project now under construction in Shenzhen, Forest Park [a 650 hectare park, 50% larger than central park in New York, adjacent to the Guangming high speed rail station]. The research investigated the evolving reality of sport and leisure. The project in Guangming creates a series of ‘multi-fields’ that embrace new and old forms of sport. It interprets the layers of use that can be seen in a singular play space throughout the day, week, month and year.
The research illuminated that what may seem like something static – sport – is actually constantly evolving. Sport has lead to innovations in technology – clothing, the tools [ball, racket], and space. Now it may seem like a simple list of basketball, football, tennis etc; but over centuries sport has generated a myriad of spatial practices for reinterpreting our daily lives and everyday spaces. Perhaps most iconic is the way in which skateboarding has given a new reading to the modernist, often leftover, spaces of the contemporary infrastructural city. Further, sport has lead to an inward investigation of the body. Previously this was about muscles/tendons/etc and today has generated innumerable systems for understanding the science of simple breathing, nutrition and sleep.
The installation generates a form to activate numerous muscles throughout the body. It does this by creating a ‘crawl space’ for folks to climb, wiggle, and generally find their way through. The colorful straps frame a series of sequentially layered spaces open for interpretation. This encourages not just strength and fitness, but also the embrace of the unknown and the tactile. The experience is akin to that of a worm crawling and shifting through an interpretable colorful web.
In a larger sense, this installation seeks to further the layers of our everyday lives. Simple planning designations of work, live, and nature do not speak to the complex relationship with have with civilization and nature in our modern society. The psychology of play has been used in a number of ways recently. Even the idea of ‘gamifying’ our places with AR/VR has come to light. We seek something more raw, more basic, more fundamental. We don’t need to augment space digitally, we and augment it physically.
The installation is not just about a play of light, color and space; it challenges the participant to dare to enter, and to find their own way forward.