*Epiphyte Chamber* explores a new generation of interactive and responsive spaces, raising fundamental questions about how architecture might behave in the future. Might future buildings begin to know and care about us? Might they start, in very primitive ways, to become alive? The work is conceived as an “epiphyte,” an aerial plant species that can grow without the support of soil. Across each floating island, densely interwoven structures and delicate canopies made of thousands of lightweight digitally fabricated components are drawn together in nearly synchronized breathing and whispers. Audiences walk into highly sensual, intimate sculptural spaces that support small clusters of activity interlinking into larger gathering areas. The installation was part of the inaugural Aleph Exhibition at the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul, Korea, November 12, 2013, to March 14, 2014.

*Epiphyte Chamber* features interactive lighting systems and kinetic mechanisms that use dense arrays of microprocessors and sensors. The work contemplates the ability of an environment to be near-living, to stimulate intimate evocations of compassion with viewers through artificial intelligence and mechanical empathy. Like any ecology and any material system, these environments are partial, reacting only to certain excitements and evincing awareness only of certain things. The viewer will become aware of subtle impacts: air, moving around the body, perhaps changes in surrounding magnetic fields that one disturbs as they pass. The work offers dimensions scaled close to the human body, revealing subtle phenomena and complex organizations within scales that work progressively outward from hand and body-based dimensions toward forms of small groups and collective meeting spaces.
*Epiphyte Chamber* has evolved from Philip Beesley’s *Hylozoic Series*, where hylozoism refers to the ancient belief that all matter has life. The new installation offers a deeper exploration of the interpersonal and collective physical exchanges between audience and installation through investigations into human-scale gesture and auras. This pursuit points to practical work, and also an examination of the psychology of encountering and working within an interactive environment.


Links: http://www.philipbeesleyarchitect.com/sculptures/1312_MMCA_Epiphyte-Chamber/index.php

Epiphyte Chamber: Martin Correa, Jonathan Gotfryd, Andrea Ling

Collaborators: Rachel Armstrong, Brandon Dehart, Rob Gorbet

PBAI Studio: Sue Balint, Matthew Chan, Vikrant Dasoar, Faisal Kubba, Salvador Miranda, Connor O’Grady, Anne Paxton, Eva Pianezzola, Sheida Shahi, May Wu, Mingyi Zhou,

Supported by: Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada, Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Waterloo Architecture, Ontario Arts Council

Philip Beesley (CA) is a Toronto-based interdisciplinary artist and experimental sculptor/architect who pursues near-living qualities in immersive interactive sculpture environments. Beesley is also a professor of architecture at the University of Waterloo. Dedicated to expanding the role of the arts integrated within architecture, for the past three decades Beesley has worked in sculpture, next-generation digital media and cross-disciplinary experimental visual art. His experimental projects over the past decade have increasingly focused on immersive digitally fabricated lightweight “textile” structures, while the most recent generations of these works feature interactive kinetic systems that use dense arrays of microprocessors, sensors and actuator systems to explore interactions between individuals and environments.