Hasta La Ideas

Revital Cohen on the design of “artificial biology”

Repurposing a retired greyhound racer as a human respirator or a pet sheep as a human dialysis machine represent the type of concepts that irreparably change your understanding of what design can do. How about an electricity-generating human organ that can be implanted to replace the appendix? Such is London-based designer Revital Cohen’s specialization: pushing the applications of design into the realm of what seems like science fiction, holding back just before it leaves reality. Fictional ideas might be all too easy to dismiss as flights of fancy, but Cohen does not just pluck them from the sky—hers are consciously based on the newest scientific research.

A 2008 RCA Design Interactions graduate, Cohen is now in the process of establishing a collaborative studio with partner and fellow graduate Tuur van Balen. Over the past four years, her work has been included in seminal exhibitions, such as MoMA’s Talk To Me exhibition in 2011 and the Why Design Now? triennial at the Cooper-Hewitt in 2010.

Her most recent work, The Immortal, entails a dialysis machine, heart-lung machine, infant incubator, chemical ventilator and a cell saver all hooked up to each other in a seamless exchange of air and “blood” (salty water for these purposes). We recently asked Cohen about this project and more. See the interview below.

The Immortal has been in the making for quite a few years now, where did it all begin?

It started as a thought experiment and has now become a reality. I have been fascinated in these objects since my Life Support Project . They are so meaningful but we never see them unless we use them, which means we never really discuss them in the context of material culture or design — how they are designed, by whom and what their design problems are. They are one of the most important and significant things we will ever use but they never get much attention beyond the engineering and technicality. I wanted to do this experiment to make people see these things and think about these machines.

Your fascination with these objects also comes out in your video, The Posthuman Condition. Are these projects related?

Actually the video is the research that became Life Support Project and was shot in a dialysis ward in a hospital. These stories first inspired the Life Support Project. Secondly it made me think that there are these objects that live secret lives, which normally people don’t ever see. That stayed with me and has now become The Immortal. As a designer it is interesting to think not only about redesigning these objects and how they are made, but also about the stories they tell.

What are the stories being told in The Immortal?

For one thing, these particular machines tell the story about how we perceive our bodies in Western culture. For example, this type of machine has never been invented in China because in Chinese medicine, their perception of the body is completely different. The machines in The Immortal emphasise that Western medicine sees the circle of life to be the heart and lungs. We completely ignore the digestive system. Chinese medicine looks at the body on a more chemical level and places a huge emphasis on the digestive system.

So these objects really tell social and cultural stories. They are also objects that make us think about ethics and questions of prolonging life, cheating death, living an artificial life, euthanasia, living on machines when electricity consumption is bad for the planet… They just have so much grey area surrounding them.

You have described this project as “artificial biology”. What does that mean?

These machines reflect human attempts at biology. However it can’t really be done through mechanics or, if it is done through mechanics, it is so removed from anything that is biological. The installation takes up a whole room and it’s not even all the functions we carry in our little bodies everywhere. When we try to replicate biology, it’s amazing how complicated things have to be.

What really interests me is the point of connection between the natural and the artificial — how we try to design organic things using artificial materials and how we try to control nature. All of the tools we have are designed — everything in our houses, as well as our cars and even roads. Once we have the tools to design the natural world, the question is how will we apply our artificial tools to biological material?

Would you ever redesign the actual medical life support machines?

I have thought about that as a potential future project. Maybe, but at the moment for me it’s more about telling a story that makes the audience come out of the room thinking about these questions and objects.

What are the applications and purpose of your design practice?

That’s something I’m reviewing all the time. It’s always been to inspire people. To keep myself interested by asking questions I don’t know the answer to. To explore the nature of objects and the design of biology.

Design biology is still a very conceptual thing to look into, but it is going to become a reality in years to come. What my and Tuur van Balen’s studio’s work will engage with are the implications of these new applications, imagining how they will be used and looking into the grey areas of designing bodies, biology and nature, and the meaning of nature whether designed or not. We’re trying to bring these questions up and make them part of the design debate.

Creatures on canvas, cast in metals, suspended in air and more at Switzerland’s massive show

Whether the main subject of a taxidermy-inspired sculpture or an allegorical reference within a larger composition, animals are an evergreen source of inspiration among a diverse range of media and genres. The pivotal role creatures play was apparent in fresh, provocative ways at this year’s Art Basel, where we encountered several works that shed new light on a classic subject. See the works that got our goat below.

The “Nice Bird of Prey Shoe” (1975) was constructed by Austrian artist and avant-garde feminist Birgit Jurgenssen. The surrealist escape offered by Juergenssen’s work aims to appease the tension wrought by the socio-cultural turmoil of the 20th century. Constructed of metal, feathers, and chicken claws, the unsettling accessory is from Galerie Hubert Winter in Vienna.

The Swiss arts foundation Not Vital, which promotes preservation and exchange between cultures, presents “Peking Duck” (2009-2011), a glossy update of the Chinatown staple in 18k gold. The sculpture is on view at NYC’s Sperone Westwater Gallery.

“Kuriere” (2012) by German artist Dirk Lange combines pencil, colored pencil, and ink to create an abstract portrait of a war general and his pigeon. Sweet pastels juxtapose the subject’s obliterated face for a conceptual riff on the stately pose. The piece is available at Berlin’s Galerie Michael Haas.

Both a hunter and an artist, Marc Swanson has established a body of work around a breathtaking set of bedazzled crystal deer-antler sculptures. According to the gallery, Swanson’s five-piece “Untitled (Crystal Hooking Left)” (2011) edition stems largely from his personal history, started as a way to “explore, both physical and spiritually, the duality of masculine identities he was experiencing.” The piece was constructed from polyurethane foam and crystal, and is from Richard Gray Gallery.

“Snow White and The Seven Dwarfs (or The Witches)” (1985) by Swiss artist Jean Tinguely fuses together a hodgepodge of metals into eight motorized sculptures. From wrought iron bits and scrap to bicycle frames and axles, the seemingly creaky contraptions are laced together with strips of fabric and animal skulls for a slightly macabre vibe. The piece, made in the late years of Tinguely’s life, is from Galerie Hans Mayer in Düsseldorf, Germany.

Known for his irreverent sculptures, Athens-based artist Dionisis Kavallieratos turns to oil on canvas in the detailed work “A Ballad for Chicken Banana” (2010). In monochromatic gray tones he manages to cast a subject that’s at once mighty and absurd. The piece was on view at Athens’ Breeder Gallery.

“Pollinator” (2011) by E.V. Day casts the reproductive organs of flowers—specifically those from Claude Monet’s famous lily pond in Giverny—into a demonstration of the animal-like ability to reproduce through pollination. Day sifted through a pile of clipped flowers (those that are weeping in the garden are cut by the gardeners) and then pressed and scanned and ultimately processed the best of each type of flower into three-dimensional form. The sculpture is made of a resin core, with polished nickel-plated copper and is from Carolina Nitsch in New York.

Spotted at the W Hotels Designers of the Future exhibit, the aptly titled “Go-Round” by Tom Foulsham comprises a balance of a miniature giraffe kissing a miniature whale on a single sharpened point. Rather than being propelled mechanically, it is moved by everyday objects like hair dryers, fans, balloon dresses, or by simply blowing.

A tabletop is transformed into an illusion of a deep-sea abyss with “Octopus (Krake)” (2012) by Swiss-born, Munich-based artist David Bielander. The limited-edition cast-bronze candelabra is available at the Ornamentum Gallery in Hudson, New York.

Images by Josh Rubin

Pasta boxes become microscopic museums

A collection of dioramas by artist Kenji Sugiyama, “Institute of Intimate Museums” proved to be one of the most engaging displays at Scope Basel 2012. Spanning the artist’s output from 1999 to 2008, the works serve as clever variations on traditional diorama art—cramped consumer boxes containing lilliputian scenes of museum-goers standing in halls of shrunken art. Within the setting of the fair, Sugiyama’s museums forced attendees to reflect on the nature of observance and perspective in the contemporary art scene.

The “Institute of Intimate Museums” filled the entire booth held by Japanese gallery Standing Pine Cube. Sugiyama’s impeccably detailed interiors are head-scratching for their complexity, and his choice of packaging—that of a post-consumer food containers—likewise had viewers guessing. The most visually complex piece involved an angled mirror doubled the miniature world when viewed correctly. The artist went to great lengths when remaking the art world’s hallowed halls, covering them in everything from inlaid wood to dated wallpaper.

Scope Basel 2012 marked one the few times that the full spectrum of Sugiyama’s dioramas has been on display, and the collection provided us the opportunity to see his experimentation over time with voyeurism and the spectator’s role in art.

See more images of the “Institute of Intimate Museums” in our slideshow.

Images by Josh Rubin

The eccentric art of taxidermy explored in a new book

Taxidermy has risen in the contemporary design scene over recent years, mounted on the walls of shops and restaurants as well as defining a certain throwback aesthetic in modern homes. The venerable form of animal preservation marries actual scientific study with an undeniably eccentric sensibility that has endured across generations, though not everyone decorating with a bust might be fully versed in the origins of the craft. Rachel Poliquin’s “The Breathless Zoo: Taxidermy and The Cultures of Longing” delves into that rich history, exploring the motivations behind the art of taxidermy across cultures and centuries.

Taxidermy, says Poliquin, poses creatures in such a way that presents the “irresolvable tension” of “animal or object” that characterizes the art. One particularly definitive example comes from the 2004 exhibition “Nanoq: Flat Out and Bluesom” at Spike Island in Bristol, England. The author begins the introduction by describing the show as a culmination of Bryndís Snæbjörnsdóttir and Mark Wilson’s three-year quest to photograph every single mounted polar bear in the UK. The event showcased 10 taxidermic polar bears in a set of glass cases, after, Poliquin writes, they had been “taken from their native landscapes at some stage of life or death and manhandled into everlasting postures.”

The uneasiness of such an aberrant display of specimens is a function of taxidermy itself. Poliquin ventures to outline the many reasons for the motivation to taxidermy species, from science and fashion to a showcase of virility. Poliquin offers “seven incentives—what I call narratives of longing—that impel the creation of taxidermy: wonder, beauty, spectacle, order, narrative, allegory, and remembrance…As the very word longing suggests, fulfillment is always just beyond reach.”

Each chapter of “The Breathless Zoo” is devoted to one of these longings and provides historical origins with a fascinating variety of photographs of taxidermic animals. The chapter focusing on “spectacle” as motivation covers Henri Rousseau‘s famous jungle and savage lion attack paintings, which were modeled after taxidermic displays, and continues to explain the anatomical and cultural aspects of the taxidermic lion. Poliquin’s book searches to find and explain truths about an ancient and continuing art that transcends time and place.

“The Breathless Zoo” is expected to be published 17 August—other taxidermy galleries and resources are available on Poliquin’s website.

Exclusive photographic series “Caps” and “Payphones”

Dirk Westphal has worked in several mediums throughout his career, putting images of goldfish on surfboards and creating copious volumes of collages, but he is probably best known for his photography, and his ability to combine of images and objects that explore and convey what he calls “perceptions of beauty” in society.

Westphal now becomes the latest addition to the designer roster at Maison 24, which will exclusively debut the artist’s latest works. The store will unveil two new photographic series, four pieces from Westphal’s “Caps” and three “Payphone” works. Only seven of each has been produced as large-scale C prints, reverse-mounted on Lucite.

Westphal’s newest exploration of color has come to fruition in a body of plastic caps that his wife and two sons have been collecting for the past three years. Four color stories in blue, white, red, and green create a vibrant, monochromatic punch using repurposed caps of different shapes and sizes.

“Payphones” marks Westphal’s compilation of photos of graffitied booths that he took in the early ’90s, possibly presuming the impending uselessness of the invention in the coming modern age.

Both series will be unveiled at Maison 24 Bridgehampton store 15 June 2012. “Payphones” are priced from $6,000 and “Caps” from $7,800 each.