Implant Matrix treats an architectural building
skin as a responsive textile akin to a natural system. This assembly
creates mechanical functions that offer active exchanges with building
occupants. The project challenges our relationship with nature by
creating an artificial system that shows a mechanical empathy.
The components of this systems are mechanisms that react to human
occupants as erotic prey. The elements respond with subtle grasping
and sucking motions. Arrays of ‘whisker’ capacitance
sensors and shape-memory alloy actuators are used to achieve sensitive
reflexive functions. The interactive elements operate in chained,
rolling swells, producing a billowing motion. This motion creates
a diffuse peristaltic pumping that pulls air and organic matter
through the occupied space. The result could be a hybrid ecology
that digests surrounding matter and accumulates a new kind of living
turf.
Implant Matrix includes capacitance sensors, shape-memory
alloy wire actuators and toothed mylar filtering valves within the
lightweight polymer structural system. The work uses laser cutting
direct from digital models and simple interactive systems based
on distributed Peripheral Interface Controller ‘PIC’
microprocessors. The processors, sensor and actuator systems support
a primitive intelligence that animates the structure.
Preceding installations within an ongoing series of
sculpture installations titled Reflexive Membranes demonstrate evolving
details being incorporated within the Implant Matrix installation.
The approach Orpheus Filter, installed at the London Building Centre
in 2004, is a stratified ‘reflexive’ membrane that derives
its strength from two overlapping geometric systems, one ordered
and planar, the other pillowing and tangled. Orgone Reef, installed
at the Cambridge Gallery, Ontario, 2004-5, is a hovering canopy
that responds to occupants using a myriad of miniature interlinked
elements. Current work is being developed in collaboration with
mechatronics specialist Rob Gorbet at the University of Waterloo,
extending collaborations with systems designer Stephen Wood and
interactive artist Diane Willow.
