1998 Installation at RAM Gallery, Oslo, Norway
Project Team: Kim Baumann Larsen, Johan Bettum (Project Coordination), Michael U. Hensel, Markus Holmstén, Birger Sevaldson, Dan Sevaldson, Kivi Sotamaa.
Video: Øyvind Andreassen (Norwegian Defense Research Establishment); Sound: Audun Strype (Strype Audio); Photography: Ole Musken.
Sponsored by: Oslo Kommune; Hensel Bauträger Cologne; Hi-Fi Klubben, Oslo.
Chamberworks was a temporary installation in the space of RAM Gallery in Oslo. The gallery is a 115 m2 space with pitched roof in a building from the turn of the century.
The installation consisted of steel rods and tubes painted white; an motion-triggered, interactive light-scheme; a sound-scape using 4 loud-speakers, one positioned in each corner of the room; and a video showing advanced 3D modelling of vortex phenomena. The floor and walls of the gallery were painted white.
The aim of the project was to create a space with complex and changing interaction between the visitor, the space of the gallery and the material, structural, and ambient systems in the installation. The project staged – in a simple and microscopic fashion – dynamic and synergistic relations, not unlike the ever-changing intensities and flows of contemporary urban space.
Chamberworks produced a transient and transparent space with a multiplicity of emergent qualities that belied the apparent material simplicity of the installation. The choreography of the linear and curved physical elements produced interrelations in the space of the installation and the gallery that changed from affiliate to non-congruent. The bundle of linear and curved elements engendered a transparent topology of emergent forms.
The design process was based on digital particle animations. The resulting animated sequence of changing densities and formations of particles was analyzed, and informed the lay-out for the lighting-scheme, circulation, and concentration and the geometry of the physical installation.
