Reflecting on the contemporary conditions emerging between the digital and the physical realms, the collaboration of Winderen and Fornes collapses sound, light and form in an object with intrinsic sensorial behaviors, inviting visitors to question the properties of matter and the built environment surrounding us. The installation is a vibrating sound experiment that aims to transform the architecture into animated sensible form.

Conceived as a sound object that absorbs and contrasts the site specificity of the Storefront Gallery with abstract, spatial, formal and acoustic variations and compositions, Situation NY raises questions about context, sensorial readings, estrangement and the uncanny tangentially resonating with contemporary debates around the ontology of objects.  

“Situation Room” an installation by MARC FORNES / THEVERYMANY and Jana Winderen

Situation Room by MARC FORNES / THEVERYMANY is a light-weight, ultra-thin selfsupported shell structure augmented by artist Jana Winderen's engineered sounds. The overall form is an aggregate of twenty spheres of incremental diameters, combined to create an envelope of experiential tension, a sort of sublime dialogue between the comfort of the known and an uneasy interaction with the unknown. The resultant morphology resonates with a series of distributed transducers and lighting sources playing out through streams of porosity derived from structural stress flows across the elements.

The envelope is created out of boolean operations merging the spheres and lending rigidity through the inherent double curvature, while best allowing for storage through nesting of incremental radii. The inverted curvature of smoothed sphere-intersections provide additional reinforcement while blending with a series of internal rhizomatic networks derived from convergent sphere points. The internal networks subdivide and recombine, eventually resolving into columns to carry down-loads to the ground. The apparent complexity of the internal morphology is a direct result of the dense aggregate of spheres, creating a rich repertoire of spatial conditions exemplified by compression/expansion, hierarchies and branching, knotting, coves...

Stress flows from structural analysis are used for directional fitness by a series of distributed agents crawling its morphology. Their trails are eventually materialized into non-linear aluminum stripes, while gaps within the force flows are translated into aperture.

The spatial experience is augmented through ten-channels of resonant sounds propagated across the structural surface, operating here as a membrane for distributed transducers. The system set-up provides a large scale inhabitable instrument-apparatus of play for both composer and visitor.

Spatial envelope, acoustic-membrane, structural-performance, assembly-parts and distributed lighting are unified and amalgamated through a coat of neon-effect, blurring one's perception of the known.

Where.- Storefront for Art and Architecture NYC. USA.
When.- October 4 – November 21, 2014.

An installation by MARC FORNES / THEVERYMANY and Jana Winderen.

On the occasion of Situation NY and the launch of World Wide Storefront / wwstorefront.org.

Sound composition by Jana Winderen.
Computation/Assembly by MARC FORNES / THEVERYMANY.
Fabrication by bengal.fierro.
Commissioned by Storefront for Art and Architecture.
With the support of Robert Rauschenberg Foundation.
Additional and generous support has been kindly provided by Brooklyn based fabrication consultant bengal.fierro including prototyping, laser cutting the 2000 unique parts and developing the powder coating of the customized neon pink color of the installation.

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Jana Winderen is an artist educated in Fine Art at Goldsmiths College in London, and with a background in mathematics, chemistry and fish ecology from the University in Oslo. She has an installation in Park Avenue Tunnel, New York City in the summer of 2014 and exhibited at MoMA, NYC in 2013. Jana is artist-in-residence at the TBA21 Academy and releases her audio-visual works on Touch.

In 2011 she won the Golden Nica, Ars Electronica, for Digital Musics & Sound Art. Amongst her activities are immersive multi-channel installations and concerts and has performed all over the world. She currently lives and works in Oslo.

Jana Winderen researches the hidden depths with the latest technology; her work reveals the complexity and strangeness of the unseen world beneath. The audio topography of the oceans and the depth of ice crevasses are brought to the surface. She is concerned with finding and revealing sounds from hidden sources, both inaudible for the human senses and sounds from places and creatures difficult to access.

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Marc Fornes is a registered “Architect DPLG”. As fine connoisseur in computer science he designs through writing text files, or codes. Hiding under his long time label THEVERYMANY™ he is a recognized figure in the development of computational protocols applied to the field of design and fabrication. His extensive body of research on ways to describe complex curvilinear surfaces into a series of flat elements has defined a field of Computational Skinning for architecture. Researching through practice in NYC, he self-defines his studio’s agenda as a quest for ”Explicit and Encoded” and “Precise Indetermination”.

As THEVERYMANY™ – Marc has designed and built over the last 10 years an extensive body of experimental, highly organic, large scale and self-supported structures, between art and architectures. His prototypical work has been acquired and displayed as part of the permanent collection of the Centre Pompidou (Paris), the FRAC Centre (Orleans, FR), the CNAP and some private collections. He has exhibited work at the Guggenheim (Contemplating the Void), Miami Art Basel /GGG, Art Paris and sold at auction at Phillips De Pury.

Marc is a TED Fellow. He has been invited to talk within institutions across the globe, including the MoMA (NYC). In 2012 he has been the recipient of the Artist residency at the Atelier Calder(FR) and his studio has been awarded the New Practices New York 2012 by the American Institute of Architects. His architectural work for Louis Vuitton is the recipient of the A+ Jury Award in the Pop Up category, the Architectural League Prize (2013), Design Vanguard by Architectural Record (2013) and the WAN 21 for 21 Award.

Involved in academia, Marc -together with Francois Roche- started “(n)Certainties”, a graduate studio at Columbia University (NYC) with visiting semesters at the University of Southern California (Los Angeles) and at Die Angewandte (Vienna). He since taught at Princeton,Harvard/GSD and the University of Michigan. In parallel of academia, Marc is teaching a numerous of scripting workshops (in Python) for Robert McNeel (Rhino3d).

In 2007 he designed and launched http://www.scriptedbypurpose.net the first exhibition exclusively focusing on scripted processes within design, and curated in 2008 the European section for the Architecture Biennale in Beijing.


Marc Fornes

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