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N T S 04 Foreword 06 Introduction 14 Malte Wagenfeld and Jane Burry 48 Artist bios + project descriptions

Dynamics of Air, RMIT Gallery, installation image photographed by Mark Ashkanasy F O R

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O R D Since 1997, RMIT Gallery has teamed with the Goethe-Institut to present 24 touring exhibitions, including the scholarly Gerhard Richter – Survey (1998) and Klaus Rinke’s recent drawings (2008) and the very popular 2017 exhibition, Fast Fashion: The Dark Side Of Fashion. The breadth of subject matter has been wide and the quality consistently outstanding. Dynamics of Air is a partnership between the Republic of Germany’s worldwide cultural institute and RMIT Gallery. From the point of view of trans- cultural partnerships, this project, which included a comprehensive public program of visiting scholars and artists as well as a catalogue, is unique. We are delighted that along with the Goethe-Institut, we have been joined by the Austrian Embassy, Canberra; Australian-French Association for Research and Innovation (AFRAN); British Council; Instituto Cervantes; EU National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC), as financial supporters of this exhibition. The outcome has enabled us to showcase the best of Australian, German and European discourse around the shared and intangible atmospheric medium that is air. The project has been driven by curators, Senior Lecturer Dr Malte Wagenfeld, RMIT University and Professor Jane Burry, Dean School of Design, Swinburne University of Technology. Along with their vision and research, RMIT Gallery is delighted to showcase the work of RMIT’s high-profile researchers with connections to industry. I express my appreciation to Sonja Griegoschewski, Director, Goethe-Institut, , for her strong support and belief in the curators’ vision. I also thank her colleague, Gabriele Urban, Cultural Program Coordinator, for her work across all aspects of the exhibition and public program. Jane and Malte, the exhibition curators, are to be congratulated for the outstanding realisation of this project, as well as Nick Devlin and his team of installers; Evelyn Tsitas, Senior Communications and Outreach; Maria Stolnik, Gallery Operations Coordinator; Meg Taylor, Exhibitions Assistant and Gallery Assistants; Sophie Ellis, Thao Nguyen and Vidhi Vidhi. Finally we warmly thank Professor Calum Drummond, DVC Research and Innovation and Vice-President; Professor Paul Gough, PVC and Vice President, College of Design and Social Context; Jane Holt, Executive Director, Research Office, Research and Innovation whose combined on-going support has enabled our program to flourish in 2018.

Helen Rayment Acting Director

Dynamics of Air, RMIT Gallery, installation image photographed by Mark Ashkanasy 05 I N T

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O N Dynamics of Air is a prime example of the Goethe-Institut’s active global network and our ongoing interest in stimulating and enriching international discussion about sustainability and the future of our cities. Building on the long relationship of cultural exchange with RMIT Gallery, this exhibition came about after two years of discussion, many trips and meetings between Europe, Sydney and , as well as a consultation with the German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier and his delegation during their state visit to Australia in 2017. The Goethe-Institut is excited to again partner with RMIT Gallery on this occasion to explore complex scientific research on air and the challenges faced when designing for urban environments. Sustainability has already been a focus of our last exhibition at RMIT Gallery in 2017: Fast Fashion: The Dark Side of Fashion. Dynamics of Air is yet another prime example of how the future depends on our vision and ideas for a healthy environment. German engineers, architects and artists are well-known for their creative and sustainable approaches to design problems, and we are delighted to bring four of them to Melbourne for the exhibition and public program events: Professor Thomas Auer (Stuttgart/Munich), artist Edith Kollath (Berlin/Weimar), Professor Friedrich von Borries (Hamburg/Berlin) and his alter ego Mikael Mikael. This project with RMIT Gallery evolved in the true spirit of our former collaborations, which have always been a joint effort to present the best ideas from Germany, Australia and elsewhere. The results will certainly initiate further exchange between designers, scientists, engineers, students and academics in Melbourne and elsewhere. The Goethe-Institut would like to thank the inspired curators Dr Malte Wagenfeld and Professor Jane Burry, as well as our partners at RMIT Gallery for helping to realise this major new exhibition and the associated extensive public programs. In my role as the President of EUNIC Australia (European Union National Institutes for Culture), I am also happy to bring more European partners on board including Austria, UK and Spain. It was a great pleasure working with everyone involved in this project.

Sonja Griegoschewski Director Australia, Goethe-Institut

Dynamics of Air, RMIT Gallery, opening night 07 Centre for Information Technology and Architecture (Phil Ayres, Petras Vestartas, Danica Pistekova & Maria Teudt), Denmark, Inflated Restraint, 2016, coated textile membranes, fan unit, ducting, courtesy of CITA and the British Council 08

Foreground: Background: Edith Kollath, Germany, Cameron Robbins, Australia, (L-R) nothing will ever be the same, 16 - 23 December 2013, Snake and Egg, 7 Days 2013; 2009-2018, kinetic artwork: 21 February - 4 March 2014, Crocodile, 11 Days 2014; motors, programming, fabric, 3-12 December 2013, Gusty and Changeable, 9 Days 2013; aluminium rod, courtesy of the 18 - 28 October 2013, Two Symmetrical Winds, 10 Days 2013; artist and the Goethe-Institut all works: pigment ink on paper, courtesy of the artist and the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart 10 11

Malte Wagenfeld and Jane Burry

With our deepening awareness of human impact on global climate and the implications this holds, there has been a collective shift in the way we conceptualise air and atmosphere. We no longer think of it as part of the vast empty expanse of outer space; the earth’s surface ceases to define the periphery of our planet. The conceptual and perceptual planetary boundary has expanded, air and atmosphere are an indivisible part of our globe and our lived life, and how we deal with it has consequences.

Dynamics of Air taps into a growing international body of creative and scientific investigation into our relationship with, and experience of, air, atmosphere and climate, which reflects this conceptual shift from the material, solid and fixed towards the immaterial, fluid, transient and temporal; from cerebral aesthetic judgement to phenomenological experience; from a desire for certainty to an embracing of complexity.

The exhibition developed out of a mutual fascination for the dynamic qualities of air and atmosphere, which we have both been exploring in different ways for over ten years.

My captivation with the matter and poetics of air lies in a lifelong curiosity about environmental forces and the kinetic, dynamic, temporal and experiential. Following a lengthy investigation into air phenomena, how we experience climate and how we might design with air, I am now investigating and designing experiential ‘air’ environments and, integral to this work, my intention is to stimulate people to think about interior air environments more openly – to let go of the concept of ‘comfort’ and embrace the richly diverse and ever changing qualities of air: atmosphere and experience; and to inspire a move away from energy intensive and often unhealthy hermetically sealed, mechanically conditioned air. This requires innovating more desirable alternatives, but it also requires a shift in expectation and mind-set, away from the highly predictable, solid-state and neutral towards the dynamic, sensorially rich and temporally variable. Malte Wagenfeld

For me it is about how the architectural design process can bring about much needed changes to both the phenomenal experience of the atmospheric interior that Malte has alluded to and the urgently needed revolution in the way we service and consume energy, and contribute heat from buildings. A principal role of architecture is to modulate

14 the atmosphere. As buildings have gotten fatter, and expectations of temperature and constancy have changed, the atmosphere within has become more mechanically and numerically controlled, and less part of the overall architectural conception and design. Design technologies give us the opportunity to move beyond just flexibly modelling what can be seen in architecture to being able to link the behaviour of air and what you feel to our design models. Air is a very complex phenomenon to model. To do this meaningfully, architects and designers have to work with aerospace and mechanical engineers, computer scientists, and others to develop ways to simulate environments and design with them both virtually and physically. Jane Burry

The exhibition is a live research lab where these ideas and concerns are staged in ways that enable visitors to experience and explore, and to be sensorially and intellectually stimulated. Rather than an end in itself, the exhibition is a site of investigation in which participants audition ideas, curate experiences of air and atmosphere, observe and discover, as a critical part of an ongoing conversation.

The work presented involves a broad transdisciplinary group of artists, designers, scientists, and theorists who were asked to develop new original works in response to the curatorial ideas. Collectively the works expose the manifest qualities and concepts of air as experienced through the senses: visually, through movement, through the skin, breath and the lungs, sound, smell and intellectually.

The six distinct gallery spaces allowed us to curate the work thematically as an assemblage of experiences with different levels of sensory through to intellectual engagement.

CITA’s almost weightless but geometrically complex Inflated Restraint, which explores air as generative structure, was juxtaposed into the heavy-walled neo-classical stairwell of the gallery foyer.

Moving into the lofty Gallery 1 and adjacent Gallery 4 spaces, the visitor is immersed in the poetics of breath, wind and air-movement, rendered as a visual experience though such phenomena are normally imperceptible to the human eye. Edith Kollath’s nothing will ever be the same makes visual the chaotic shifting form of the air through a free falling, translucent cloth that assumes a unique shape on each descent in response to air movement.

15 Cameron Robbins’ wind drawings lyrically plot the capriciousness of wind while in Little Wonder’s 10 Kinds of Fog air moves through different perforated membranes becoming animated as an array of delicate mist-like aerial nymphs. Breath, rhythmic but never repeating, is evoked through the sound of Edith Kollath’s addressable volume while her liminal passage confronts the visitor with the opportunity to share a breath, passed through water, with a stranger; bringing into consciousness the intimate sharing of air between lungs that occurs constantly in shared space and, on a larger scale, the notion of atmosphere being globally shared. In Chris Cottrell’s Sounding the Air, a helium balloon balanced by a repurposed FM receiver, traces the gentle gallery winds to broadcast quotes about air and ambient recordings of air. Natasha Johns-Messenger and Leslie Eastman’s Airlightform, a large spinning centreless disc, generates a rhythmic optical mirage, flickering between the material and non-material, positive and negative space, becoming a form of quasi-thing (Hermann Schmitz) while pulsating warm breath-like parcels of air from its tubular opening. In Fluidifying… exploding body, event in the making, Helen Dilkes presents a work capturing the open-ended moment of an explosion in both form and sound.

Complementing these explorations are two architectural projects presented as video scenarios. Philippe Rahm’s Interior Gulf Stream is a proposition for an architecture that circulates thermodynamic phenomena throughout an interior with the spaces and functions programed according to the desired thermal living conditions. In Particle Sections, Eric Ruiz-Geli dematerialises the notion of architecture altogether. Breaking it down into nanoparticles, he studies the environmental forces on a building as nanoparticles to re-materialise an architecture that dynamically responds and interacts with its environment.

In Galleries 2 and 3, two experiential environments allow visitors to dwell and explore the nuanced shifts in microclimates. The skin and its extension into the lungs are engaged through breathing in the humid, salty and fragrant air of Breathe Earth Collective’s Aerosol, a rethinking of a traditional vernacular ‘machine’ for creating health-giving air, which was developed in salt mining regions in Austria, Germany and Central Europe.

16 In conceiving Outside_In Malte Wagenfeld consulted with Transsolar to create dual interacting atmospheres—the cool moist air of a forest gorge and the hot dry experience of the beach—within a single space. These two atmospheres morph at the edges, impacting on each other to create a spectrum of transient microclimates. As visitors slowly move through the space, they experience subtle sensory shifts in atmosphere.

The projects in Gallery 5 explore the science of air. In Bio-inspired Sensing for Micro Flight Vehicles Professor Simon Watkins and his team demonstrate how their research on how birds navigate turbulent air is informing the design of more stable microlight vehicles that can, like birds, sense turbulent events before they impact on their flight. Scientific photographer Phred Peterson uses the optics of Schlieren photography in A Visible Wind to capture the nano temporality of air phenomena while Daniel Prohasky’s Pulsometer studies the limits of our physical perception of air movement. Architect Mehrnoush Latifi uses an array of sensors and augmented reality to visualise in real time how the air is modulated by her prototype for a ceramic tiled architectural skin.

Interspersed between these is a series of counterpoints. Friedrich von Borrie’s playful but poignant work signals the implications of interfering with weather patterns, such as seeding of clouds and raises questions of our global responsibility for climate and the ownership of clouds. This is further explored through his alter ego Mikael Mikael and in his whimsical White Clouds of Sugar in which a dancer (Deanne Butterworth) distributes cotton candy clouds throughout the gallery spaces according to a loosely composed score. Jane Burry’s Air presents an evocative series of literary quotes tracing our collective contemplation about air and atmosphere from the late Enlightenment with Luke Howard’s naming of clouds and the poetry of Wordsworth, which have shaped our sensory imagination.

Dynamics of Air brings together a broad community of practice. Artists, designers and scientists from many different disciplines explore shared concerns: how we relate to, live with and understand air, climate and atmosphere; how we can use this knowledge as a force for our creative practice; and how we can shape our lived environment to harness these forces. Our intention is to provoke a vibrant dialogue around these concerns between participants and visitors, and to inspire further collaborations, new insights and, we hope, much needed changes in our appetite for atmosphere.

17 Edith Kollath, Germany, addressable volume, 2018, five channel video installation, duration: 0:04:45, courtesy of the artist and the Goethe-Institut 18

Above and opposite page: Edith Kollath, Germany, liminal passage, 2018, glass, distilled water, mouthpieces, courtesy of the artist and the Goethe-Institut

Right: wandering breath, 2018 eucalyptus breath, glass object, steel rods, courtesy of the artist and the Goethe-Institut

22 Natasha Johns-Messenger and Leslie Eastman, Australia, Airlightform, 2018, steel, aluminium, three-phrase motor and variable speed drive, programmed LED lighting, cardboard tubing, paint, courtesy of the artists 23 24 Cameron Robbins, Australia, Sonic Wind Section Instrumental, 2014, digital video (stills), duration: 0:05:30. courtesy of the artist and the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart 25 Cameron Robbins, Australia, (L-R) 16 - 23 December 2013, Snake and Egg, 7 Days 2013; 21 February - 4 March 2014, Crocodile, 11 Days 2014; 3-12 December 2013, Gusty and Changeable, 9 Days 2013; 18 - 28 October 2013, Two Symmetrical Winds, 10 Days 2013; all works: pigment ink on paper, courtesy of the artist and the Museum of Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart 26 27

Chris Cottrell, Australia, Sounding the Air, 2018, latex balloon, helium, electronics, FM transmission, duration: 0:35:20 looped, courtesy of the artist Screen left: Screen middle: Screen right: Enric Ruiz-Geli, Spain, Philippe Rahm Architects, Cameron Robbins, Australia Expo Pavilion, 2017, France & Switzerland, Sonic Wind Section Instrumental, 2014, digital video, duration: 0:00:29, Interior Gulf Stream, 2009, digital video (stills), duration: 0:05:30. courtesy of the artist, Cloud9 Architects digital video, duration: 0:13:01, courtesy of the artist and the Museum of and Instituto Cervantes courtesy of Philippe Rahm Architects Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart and A_FRAN Top: Middle: Bottom: Enric Ruiz-Geli, Spain, Enric Ruiz-Geli, Philippe Rahm Architects, Expo Pavilion, 2017, Particle Sections, 2011, France & Switzerland, digital video, duration: 0:00:29, digital video, duration: 0:00:50, Interior Gulf Stream, 2009, courtesy of the artist, Cloud9 Architects courtesy of the artist, Cloud9 Architects digital video, duration: 0:13:01, and Instituto Cervantes and Instituto Cervantes courtesy of Philippe Rahm Architects and A_FRAN

Helen Dilkes, Australia, Fluidifying… exploding body, event in the making, 2018, iridescent foil, acrylic, 925 silver, audio, 44 x 44 x 38 cm, courtesy of the artist 33 Mikael Mikael, Germany, White Clouds of Sugar, 2018, digital prints, digital video documentation of performance, courtesy of the artist and the Goethe-Institut 34 Mikael Mikael, Germany, White Clouds of Sugar, 2018, performed by Deanne Butterworth, documentation videography by Taylor Bennie-Faull 35 Little Wonder (Gyungju Chyon & John Stanislav Sadar), South Korea & Canada, Ten Kinds of Fog, 2018, acrylic, wood, textiles, electronics, foggers, fans, water, courtesy of the artists 36 37 Breathe Earth Collective, Austria, Aerosol, 2018, timber, water, pumps, fans, Murray River pink salt, melaleuca bush, courtesy of the artists, Austrian Trade Commission, Sydney and the Murray River Salt Company 38 39 Above: Opposite: Friedrich von Borries, Germany, Jane Burry with Swinburne Bureau, Australia, UN MAHAC, 2018, Air, 2018, paper, staff identification card, digital print on 200gsm matte uncoated paper, manuals, hat, t-shirt, stamp, six posters: 118.9 x 84.1 cm each, courtesy of the artist and the Goethe-Institut courtesy of the artist and Swinburne University of Technology 40

Malte Wagenfeld & Transsolar (Thomas Auer), Australia & Germany, Outside_In, 2018, high pressure ultrafine foggers, IR heat lamps, LED lighting, micro-processors, timber, board, courtesy of the artists and the Goethe-Institut and RMIT School of Design SRC 42 43 Mehrnoush Latifi, Australia, Making the Invisible Visible, 2017-2018, ceramic tiles, sensors, electronics, HoloLens, Mixed Reality app (Mixed8), courtesy of the artist 44 Daniel Prohasky, Australia, Pulsometer, 2018, robotic 3D print, laser cut acrylic, mechanical components, electronics, sensors, pulsatile airflow, courtesy of the artist 45 Daniel Prohasky, Australia, Mini Interactive Wind Tunnel, 2018, 3D print, CNC milled timber, projection mapping, virtual wind, courtesy of the artist 46 Top: Middle, bottom: Phred Petersen, Australia, Simon Watkins, Australia, A Visible Wind, 2018 Turbulence Modelling, 2015 Schlieren photography: digital video (still) digital video (still) Duration: 0:04:59 Duration: 0:01:47 Courtesy of the artist Courtesy of the artist 47 A R T

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N S Breathe Earth Collective Centre for Information Technology and Architecture: Phil Ayres, Petras Vestartas, Danica Pistekova & Breathe Earth Collective is a think-and-do-tank, Maria Teudt developing new ways of dealing with interrelations Denmark of architecture, natural ecosystems, air and climate. Inflated Restraint 2016 Founded in 2015, the collective functions as an open Coated textile membranes, fan unit, ducting network of transdisciplinary designers drawing on their Courtesy of CITA and the British Council specialized skillsets to experiment and design with different ecosystems. A current project involves merging Inflated Restraint represents the importance of using forest and architecture into the design of the Czech advanced computational techniques to determine forestry administration’s new headquarters. Breathe pattern cutting for designing pneumatic structures Earth Collective has also developed a series of small- (powered by air). The natural tendency of pneumatic scale typologies of climate pavilions, called ‘Airships’, systems is to ‘push outwards’ which results in synclastic, which explores the potential of tackling air pollution and or domed, curvature. The shape of Inflated Restraint providing natural cooling in urban spaces. expresses the role of the membrane, and its underlying cutting pattern, in steering this natural tendency towards Breathe Earth Collective comprises: Lisa Maria a design target. Enzenhofer (ecosphere.institute/Green4Cities), Markus Jeschaunig (Agency in Biosphere) and Bernhard König Edith Kollath (ecosphere.institute/Green4Cities) as well as Karlheinz Boiger (Hohensinn Architektur) & Andreas Goritschnig Multimedia artist Edith Kollath, who has a MFA in Time (Studio AG) Related Media and Sculpture from HFBK University of Fine Arts (Hamburg), is constantly questioning the Breathe Earth Collective visualization of uncertain states and their social and Austria theoretical contexts. During three years in New York, Aerosol 2018 Kollath was an active member of the hacker collective Timber, water, pumps, fans, Murray River pink salt, NYC Resistor and participated in several exhibitions Melaleuca bush and projects. Her installations, objects and works Courtesy of the artists, Austrian Trade Commission, on paper have since been exhibited in Germany and Sydney and the Murray River Salt Company internationally. A PhD candidate at the Bauhaus University in Weimar since 2015, Kollath continues Aerosol, a sensual and immersive breathing experience, to work in diverse media including video, installation, explores evaporation processes and traditional concepts objects and paper to explore how thought processes of conditioning air with natural essences and aerosols. can be traced back in an object or installation or made Inspired by traditional ‘Graduation Tower’ typologies, to radiate from it. the installation invites visitors to experience a vernacular health and wellbeing practice which was developed Edith Kollath in salt mining regions in Austria, Germany and Germany Central Europe. nothing will ever be the same 2009-2018 Kinetic artwork: motors, programming, fabric, CITA - Centre for Information Technology and aluminium rod Architecture Courtesy of the artist and the Goethe-Institut

CITA is an innovative research establishment A translucent cloth is set in motion, lifted and released exploring intersections between architecture and by an automatic mechanism. Similar to the human digital technologies, and how digital culture impacts respiratory rhythm of inhalation, exhalation and pause, architectural thinking and practice. CITA examines the action is repeated and yet results in a subtly different how architecture is influenced by new digital design visual outcome each time. and production tools, as well as the digital practices that are informing societies culturally, socially and addressable volume 2018 technologically. Using design and practice-based Five channel video installation research methods, the centre works through Duration: 0:04:45 the conceptualization, design and realization of Courtesy of the artist and the Goethe-Institut working prototypes. CITA is constantly creating new collaborations with interdisciplinary partners from Breath assures us of the presence, warmth and fields including computer graphics, human computer immediacy of the other. Air not only moves in us, but also interaction, robotics and artificial intelligence as well as between us, but is not visible. The art of glass blowing industry sectors such as furniture design, fashion and forms objects by enveloping breath. In Addressable textiles, industrial design, film, dance and interactive arts. Volume, glass bubbles symbolize the split cycle of breathing air, from their gradual expansion through to

49 their shattering. The immateriality of the air becomes so Empuriabrava, an organically formed, ecological and powerful that the glass shell becomes fragile and must futuristic house; the Millennium Project in Valladolid, be destroyed to release its contents for the other. an urban retrofitting; elBulliFoundation for the chief Ferran Adrià as a living laboratory in Cap de Creus; and Glassblower: Ralf Reichert the Media-TIC building in Barcelona, awarded World Camera: Heiko Rahnenführer Building of the Year by World Architecture Festival Post-production: Maxim Matthew 2011 for its zero net energy rating and competitive Sound: Gavin Hoare & Douglas Henderson construction cost. Performers: Dejan Bu in, Christina Dusch, Tahera Hashemi, Tom Mahnke, Eliza Mewanu, Katja-Marie Voigt, Enric Ruiz-Geli Ursula Werner and Tom Wlaschiha Spain Media-TIC Building, Nitrogen Fog Creation 2010 liminal passage 2018 Digital video Glass, distilled water, mouthpieces Duration: 0:01:14 Courtesy of the artist and the Goethe-Institut EXPO Pavilion 2017 Rarely is the breathing process visualized, that Digital video continuous inhaling and exhaling of air molecules that Duration: 0:00:29 previously passed through the bodies of others. In Liminal Passage, breath is passed through the glass Particle Sections 2011 object, cleaned of viruses and bacteria through the Digital video water, and pure breathing gas absorbed on the opposite Duration: 0:00:50 side via a sterile mouthpiece. To make this a reciprocal All courtesy of Enric Ruiz-Geli, Cloud 9 Architects and process, the positions of the donor and recipient are Instituto Cervantes then reversed. Enric Ruiz-Geli believes architecture begins with wandering breath 2018 thinking about particles, their energy and dynamics: ‘Our eucalyptus breath, glass object, steel rods architecture becomes part of a discourse that makes no approx. 120cm x 50cm x 30cm distinction between objects and products, buildings and landscape, sea and mountain, but which understands The fast-growing eucalyptus tree has been planted reality as performing particles.’ In this series of videos, outside of its native country Australia for quite some time Ruiz-Geli visualizes the process of his designs. In due to the high demand in the wood and paper industry Media-TIC Building, a nitrogen curtain is activated in worldwide. But in large-scale plantations the extreme the cushions by sensing the sun to control the building’s water requirements of eucalyptus don’t bring only internal climate. advantages as the groundwater level drops alarmingly. Furthermore, other plant constituents such as leaves Friedrich von Borries cannot be utilised, since only the native Australian koala is able to digest them. The immigration of eucalyptus is Friedrich von Borries is an architect and Professor of therefore looked upon critically. Design Theory at the Hochschule für bildende Künste (HFBK) in Hamburg, Germany. He studied architecture Yet, the tree’s essential oil has been widely used for at the Berlin University of the Arts, the ISA St. Luc in alleviating respiratory problems. For the installation Bruxelles and the Technical University Karlsruhe, where wandering breath, a glass object was filled in a he received a PhD in 2004. Von Borries operates chemistry laboratory in Berlin with the breath of the between the blurred boundaries of urban planning, artist after consuming eucalyptus-containing products architecture, design and art. A theoretician who such as respiratory spray or cough drops, sealed and concerns himself with the social and political aspects transported to this exhibition. The vessel, modelled on of design, his practice unfolds by asking questions and a human lung, which seems exhausted after its long posing provocations, often based on fictional elements. journey, brings both, a foreign breath as a guest, and the He is interested in how design can produce positive eucalyptus back home. change, especially from a social perspective.

Enric Ruiz-Geli Friedrich von Borries Germany Enric Ruiz-Geli and his interdisciplinary architectural UN MAHAC 2018 team, Cloud 9, work at the juncture of architecture Paper, staff identification card, manuals, hat, t-shirt, and art, digital processes and technological material stamp development from their home base in Barcelona. Courtesy of the artist and the Goethe-Institut The award-winning architects’ multifaceted projects include stage designs, buildings, installations and UN MAHAC (the United Nations Management and patents. Important projects include the Villa Nurbs in Harvesting of Clouds) is a secret, transnational

50 institution that researches weather manipulation and Acrylic, wood, textiles, electronics, foggers, fans, water ownership through law, climate justice and scientific Courtesy of the artists research. UN MAHAC maps the changes in global cloud structures and poses the questions, ‘Who Ten Kinds of Fog explores and demonstrates how the owns the clouds?’ and ‘How can we manipulate the depthless, formless phenomena of fog can assume weather for military advantage, climate control or as an different and distinct qualities. Through its form and agricultural tool?’. inner structure, fog can take on different textures, weights and movements; it can be wispy and buoyant, Mikael Mikael or heavy and slithering; it can be bouncy, turbid, and tempestuous, or it can be calm, eerie, contemplative Mikael Mikael is an artist. He lives everywhere and and still. nowhere, probably currently in Berlin. Mikael Mikael works independent of media and material, using objects, Technical Assistant: Jason Ng film and photos to document his interventions within the physical and discursive public space. Installations are Philippe Rahm Architects documented through photography and video, whereas the documentations also stand as self-contained works. Swiss architect Philippe Rahm is the principal of Philippe Rahm Architects based in Paris. His work, Mikael Mikael which expands the field of architecture from the Germany physiological to the meteorological, has received White Clouds of Sugar 2018 international acclaim in the area of sustainability. Rahm Digital prints, digital video documentation of was chosen to represent Switzerland in 2002 at the performance 8th Architecture Biennale in Venice, was nominated for Courtesy of the artist and the Goethe-Institut the Ordos Prize in China in 2009, and in both 2008 and 2010 was ranked in the top 10 for the International Mikael Mikael’s playful approach to the phenomenon of Chernikov Prize in Moscow. He has participated in clouds asks us to consider the ownership of weather several exhibitions worldwide and in 2007 had a solo systems and ecologies. This performance-based work exhibition at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in gives shape to the dispersal of White Clouds of Sugar Montreal. Recent works include first prize for the 70 throughout the gallery space, performed by renowned hectares Taichung Gateway Park in Taiwan; a convective dancer Deanne Butterworth. condominium for the IBA in Hamburg, Germany; White Geology, a stage design for contemporary art in the Dancer & Choreographer: Deanne Butterworth Grand-Palais in Paris in 2009; and a studio house for Fiming & Production: Taylor Bennie-Faull the artist Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster in 2008.

Little Wonder: Gyunju Chyon & John Sadar Philippe Rahm Architects France & Switzerland Little Wonder, led by artists Gyungju Chyon and John Interior Gulf Stream 2009 Stanislav Sadar, challenges the status-quo by creating Digital video new experiences and relationships between humans, Duration: 0:13:01 artefacts and environments through engaging natural Courtesy of Philippe Rahm Architects and A_FRAN phenomena, new materials and processes, and sensorial experiences. Chyon is a New York-based designer and This video presents Philippe Rahm Architects’ research Assistant Professor of Product and Industrial Design for the Interior Gulf Stream project. The thermodynamic at Parsons School of Design. She completed a BA in phenomena of the Gulf Stream is a model for thinking Industrial Design at Hongik University in Seoul, an MA about architecture that offers an escape route from in Furniture Design at Aalto University in Helsinki, and the homogenization of the modern space. The climatic is currently a PhD candidate at RMIT University. Sadar, phenomenon is created by the polarization in the interior Course Director of Architecture at Swinburne University space of two different thermal sources, one cold and of Technology, earned a BA from McGill University one hot, generating a convective movement of air which in Montréal, an MA from Aalto University in Helsinki, defines different zones with distinct temperatures for and a PhD from the University of Pennsylvania. He certain living conditions. previously taught in the MFA Interior Design program at Parsons School of Design, coordinated architectural Thomas Auer technologies at Monash University, and managed design studios at the . Thomas Auer is partner and Managing Director of Transsolar, an engineering firm with offices in Stuttgart, Little Wonder Munich, Paris and New York. A specialist in energy (Gyungju Chyon & John Stanislav Sadar) efficiency and environmental quality, Auer has developed South Korea & Canada concepts for buildings and districts around the world Ten Kinds of Fog 2018 noted for their innovative strategies. Professor for

51 Building Technology and Climate Responsive Design at Contemporary Art, Latrobe Regional Gallery (Morwell), the TU of Munich since 2014, his focus is on bridging Gallery Barry Keldoulis (Sydney), East China Normal academia and environmental design. His research University (Shanghai) and Hong Kong/Korean focuses on form and materiality, and their influence International Art Fairs. on performance and environmental quality at different scales. Cameron Robbins Australia Malte Wagenfeld RMIT Alumni 18 - 28 October 2013, Two Symmetrical Winds, 10 Dr Malte Wagenfeld is Senior Lecturer of Industrial Days 2013 Design at RMIT University as well as a researcher 75 x 502.5 cm and practising industrial designer whose explorative 3-12 December 2013, Gusty and Changeable, 9 Days designs and texts have been internationally exhibited, 2013 distributed and published. His current research 75 x 508.5 cm investigates designing ‘immaterial’ interior climates 16 - 23 December 2013, Snake and Egg, 7 Days 2013 through exploration of sensory experiences of dynamic 75 x 478 cm atmospheric encounters with air: breezes, humidity, 21 February - 4 March 2014, Crocodile, 11 Days 2014 temperature, sound, light and smell. This is a recasting 75.5 x 509 cm of the current practice of standardized air-conditioned All works: pigment ink on paper interior climates towards something richer in experiences Courtesy of the artist, with thanks to the Museum of and connected to geography, season, time-of-day and Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart where artwork was patterns of use. Wagenfeld’s aim is to create spatial created June 2013 – April 2014 living and working environments which are healthier, relaxed, productive, environmentally responsible and These self-devised wind drawing machines are a engender delight. collaboration between Robbins and nature. Using wind speed to drive the pen, wind direction to swivel the Malte Wagenfeld & Transsolar (Thomas Auer) drawing board, and time and electricity to move the Australia & Germany paper, the devices are installed in different locations Outside_In 2018 to collect wind energy and translate it into a strangely High pressure ultrafine foggers, IR heat lamps, readable format of ink drawings on paper. An entire LED lighting, micro-processors, timber, board weather system leaves its trace, with around five metres Courtesy of the artists, the Goethe-Institut and RMIT equating to ten days. School of Design SRC Cameron Robbins Quantifying the aesthetics of air is extremely difficult. Australia An investigation of the nature of something as seemingly RMIT Alumni unremarkable as a breeze reveals a complex dynamic Sonic Wind Section Instrumental 2014 at work. Air is always changing direction and intensity, Digital video and is entirely unpredictable. However, it is incredibly Duration: 0:05:30 localized. Outside_In is designed to capture outside Courtesy of the artist, with thanks to the Museum of sensorial experiences of air inside a gallery. The Old and New Art (MONA), Hobart where artwork was installation consists of dual interacting atmospheres, created June 2013 – April 2014 the cool moist air of a forest gorge and the hot dry experience of the beach, these morph at the edges to This film documents a series of performances in which create a spectrum of transient microclimates. As visitors musicians and Robbins’ Wind Drawing Machine both slowly move through the space, they perceive subtle respond to the weather patterns of the Derwent Estuary sensory shifts in atmosphere. in Hobart, Tasmania.

Cameron Robbins Chris Cottrell

Castlemaine-based artist Cameron Robbins focuses on Chris Cottrell, a Senior Lecturer in Design at Monash elemental forces of the natural world and in producing University, operates across installations and performative collaborations between art and nature. Represented art, architecture and interior design. He proposes in Melbourne by MARS Gallery, and in Kyneton by ‘architectural judo’ as a way of gently destabilizing Stockroom Gallery, Robbins has been producing environments, working with buildings and interior spaces exhibitions, residencies and commissions in Australia, as events comprised of an ecology of relations. This Europe and Asia since 1990. These include shows was developed and articulated through his recently at the Museum of Old and New Art (Hobart), National completed PhD in the School of Architecture and Gallery of (Melbourne), Setouchi Festival of Design at RMIT University. Cottrell’s practice is informed Art (Japan), Artspace (Sydney), Australian Centre by his architecture training at the University of Auckland for Contemporary Art (Melbourne), Perth Institute of and further studies in at the Edinburgh College

52 of Art. His work has been exhibited extensively in New work draws attention to the incremental change in the Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom and he has Earth’s (exploding) atmosphere. held artist residencies in Piran, Slovenia, the Orkney Islands, Scotland and Fox Glacier, New Zealand. His Jane Burry writing has been published in Leonardo, IDEA Journal, International Journal of Interior Architecture + Spatial Professor Jane Burry is the Dean of the School of Design and Interstices: Journal of Architecture and Design in the Faculty of Health, Arts and Design at Related Arts. Swinburne University of Technology, and formerly Professor and Director of the Spatial Information Chris Cottrell Architecture Laboratory (SIAL) at RMIT University. Australia Burry’s research focuses on mathematics and RMIT Alumni computing in contemporary design. She is lead author Sounding the Air 2018 of The New Mathematics of Architecture, editor of Latex balloon, helium, electronics, FM transmission Designing the Dynamic and co-author of Prototyping Duration: 0:35:20 looped for Architects. Recent research explores opportunities Courtesy of the artist for leveraging digital fabrication with simulation and feedback to create more sensitive, human-centric The uplift of a large helium balloon is balanced with a spaces. By manipulating geometry and materiality within battery-powered audio speaker, creating a buoyancy the design, architecture can fine tune the acoustic, neutral assemblage that is sensitized to the slightest thermal and air flow aesthetics for higher quality, energy changes in air movement and temperature. The work efficient environments. Burry has practised, taught, circulates, rising and falling through the gallery space supervised and researched internationally, including as a in response to the qualities of air. The speaker plays an project architect in the technical office at Antoni Gaudí’s audio work of ambient recordings of air interspersed Sagrada Família Church in Barcelona. with different voices reading quotes related to thinking through air. Jane Burry with Swinburne Bureau Australia Helen Dilkes RMIT Alumni Air 2018 Helen Dilkes explores how artistic practice coincides Digital print on 200gsm matte uncoated paper with Henri Bergson’s philosophical concepts of duration Six posters: 118.9 x 84.1 cm each and multiplicity. Combining jewellery studio skills with Courtesy of the artist and Swinburne University digital techniques, she investigates non-Euclidean of Technology (Riemannian) geometrical depictions of body, object and space. With experience in music performance and Literary atmospheres enter the conceptual and soundscape research, Dilkes brings the ephemeral of phenomenal lexicon in the late enlightenment with duration and technique into the supposed concrete of Luke Howard’s naming of clouds and the poetry of substance, in works that range from small-scale object Wordsworth as ‘the pneumatic investigator who had installations to larger composite installations. gone furthest in his investigation of aerial poetics’. Dilkes completed a PhD at RMIT University’s School This series starts to dissolve the words into the of Art in 2017 with practice-based research titled variously charged atmospheres that the named Non-Euclidean transformations: multiplicity in a authors have penned into existence, and into contemporary art jewellery practice. She holds an readers’ sensory experience. MFA (Gold and Silversmithing) from RMIT University; Thomas H Ford, Wordsworth and the Poetics of Air, MEd (Visual and Performing Art) from the University of 2018 Melbourne; and BMus (Performance) from the University of Western Australia. Dilkes has exhibited solo in Leslie Eastman Melbourne galleries, and in selected group shows in the Netherlands, Japan and China. Leslie Eastman is a graduate of Melbourne University and RMIT, and works as a Senior Lecturer in the Helen Dilkes Department of Fine Art at Monash University. Eastman Australia has held more than 30 solo and collaborative RMIT Alumni exhibitions nationally, at venues such as Australian Fluidifying … exploding body, event in the making 2018 Centre for Contemporary Art, Linden, Experimenta, Iridescent foil, acrylic, 925 silver, audio and internationally. He has received grants from the 44 x 44 x 38 cm Australian Film Commission, the Australia Council for Courtesy of the artist the Arts and Arts Victoria. His installation works utilize a range of media including lenses and light, large scale This work looks at the forces at play during an explosion. mirrors, drawing and video to explore our presence Dilkes proposes there is no single moment of exploding, in, and perception of, the world. Eastman was a key no beginning nor ending, but rather a happening. Her member of Light Projects, an experimental project

53 space in Melbourne which housed over 30 exhibitions Experiencing space and recognizing it as a dynamic by local and international artists addressing themes of material for design is still challenging because of the psychoanalysis and perception. multiplicity of involved parameters, whether complicated and invisible environmental factors or human sensory Natasha Johns-Messenger input and perception. Making the Invisible Visible is an interactive Mixed Reality visualization and series Natasha Johns-Messenger produces site-determined of Schlieren photographs, used to engage visitors in spatial installations that activate an experience of visualizing the invisible and dynamic micro-climatic perceptual paradox. By employing a complex system of changes around surfaces. The wall setup is made from strategically placed material devices, such as periscopic a series of ceramic tiles designed on airflow analysis. A mirrors, live-video projections, architectural mimicry and Mixed Reality app is used to visualize datasets that are cuts and site-determined photography, her work creates superimposed onto the scene, using a head-mounted disorienting pictorial planes in real space. Viewers HoloLens device and an embedded grid of sensors are unaware of what is real and what is virtual. Three behind, and in front of, the ceramic tiles. conceptual objectives underpin her works: to dissolve parameters between art object and its context by Technical Collaborators: Alizera Bolandnazar, Jane Burry, using the exhibition site as subject; to change the way Judith Glover, Phred Petersen, Daniel Prohasky, Ehsan immediate space is perceived by developing modes of Shams, Malte Wagenfeld representation such as real-time image capture inside This installation is part of Mehrnoush Latifi’s PhD project optical viewing structures; and to create artworks that ‘Skin Patterning: Towards Morphing Microclimates’ are predominantly experiential. RMIT University Grant Acknowledgement: Higher Degree by Research Natasha Johns-Messenger and Leslie Eastman Publications Grant (RMIT) and ARC Discovery Australia (DP130103228) RMIT Alumni Airlightform 2018 Phred Petersen Steel, aluminium, three-phase motor and variable speed drive, programmed LED lighting, cardboard tubing, paint Phred Petersen is a Senior Lecturer in Photography Courtesy of the artists. Leslie Eastman wishes to thank at RMIT University, where he has been teaching for the support of Monash Art Design and Architecture. 20 years. Petersen specializes in applications of photography for scientific and industrial research Airlightform is a collaborative experimentation with a and has worked across a broad range of applied motorized disc and lighting to construct a dynamic photography topics including photomacrography, kinetic perceptual work of visual and tactile components. photomicroscopy, infrared/ultraviolet photography, high- The visual centres on notions of positive and negative speed imaging, and Schlieren or shadowgraph methods. space through the use of movement and light on the His works have been included in five consecutive juried disc, suggesting an oscillation between presence and Royal Photographic Society exhibitions, the ‘International void. The tactile is articulated through the current of air Images for Science Exhibition’. Most of his current work produced by motion. uses high speed video to help understand the nature of transient events. Research collaborations include Mehrnoush Latifi the study of fuel sprays for green engine technology, behaviour of liquid metal alloys for microfluidic Mehrnoush Latifi, an Australian researcher with 10 applications, flow visualization for micro air vehicles, years’ experience in the architecture industry, is currently and the effects of human movement on environmental working as an Industry Fellow at RMIT University, School air quality. of Design. Her research shows how the physical design language of colour, geometry and materiality can be Phred Petersen creatively combined to form ‘Smart Skins’, which can Australia regulate temperature and airflow. Her scientific-artistic RMIT Staff approach has led to the design of a series of ceramic A Visible Wind 2018 tiles with unique three-dimensional features, exhibited Schlieren photography: digital video in Craft ACT 2015 and 2016. Latifi believes designers Duration: 0:04:59 of space are always making decisions for a reality that Courtesy of the artist consists of unexpected dynamic factors. Schlieren photography is a highly technical visual Mehrnoush Latifi process involving two optically matched parabolic Australia mirrors to create photographs and videos which reveal RMIT Alumni invisible changes in air. This compilation of Schlieren Making the Invisible Visible 2017-2018 photographs captures supersonic motion and flow Ceramic tiles, sensors, electronics, HoloLens, Mixed visualization, allowing us to see what is transparent. Reality app (Mixed8) Courtesy of the artist

54 Daniel Prohasky Technical collaborators: Simon Watkins and Jane Burry Robotic fabrication courtesy of Swinburne University Architectural engineer Daniel Prohasky is a PhD This installation is part of Daniel Prohasky’s PhD candidate with RMIT University’s School of Aerospace project ‘On the Human Perception of Pulsatile Airflow’ Engineering through the Spatial Information Architecture RMIT University Laboratory (SIAL), and is currently championing the Grant Acknowledgement: ARC Discovery new Architectural Engineering program at Swinburne (DP130103228) University. Prohasky has taught across RMIT’s architecture and engineering schools in cross- Simon Watkins disciplinary studies and has led multiple international workshop clusters including: SmartGeometry 2016 Simon Watkins, a graduate of Bristol University’s ‘Sensory Detectives’ in Sweden; CAADRIA 2016 Aeronautical Engineering Department, worked at ‘Microscopes and Macroscopes’ in Melbourne; British Aerospace UK and City University London SmartGeometry 2014 ‘Private Microclimates’ in Hong before arriving in Australia in 1983. Watkins undertook Kong; ‘Sense and Sustainability’ at the Technical a PhD at RMIT University in 1990 and is now a University of Catalonia in Barcelona and multiple Professor in the Department of Mechanical and MDIT digital design and fabrication studio intensives Automotive Engineering. His research focuses on at RMIT University. His research focus is to further measuring and replicating atmospheric turbulence as the development and implementation of physical experienced by ground-based vehicles. sensing platforms for advances in the understanding of environmental dynamics in architectural design. Simon Watkins Australia Daniel Prohasky RMIT Staff Australia Turbulence Modelling 2015 RMIT Alumni Digital video Miniature Interactive Wind Tunnel 2018 Duration: 0:01:47 3D print, CNC milled timber, projection mapping, Bio-Inspired Sensing for Micro Flight Vehicles 2014 virtual wind Digital video Courtesy of the artist Duration: 0:02:27 Autonomous Soaring UAS 2014 Computer simulations of wind can be difficult to Digital video comprehend and without a level of interactivity, Duration: 0:01:25 designers need to incorporate wind data into design Courtesy of the artist processes to ensure spaces are thermally dynamic. The Miniature Interactive Wind Tunnel represents wind as Watkins’ expertise spans aerodynamics, experimental visualized through animated colors and virtual smoke. fluid dynamics and turbulence. This compilation of This system was designed to communicate troubled videos presents his research into the modelling of regions in cities that are negatively affected by wind, and turbulence and flow visualization to study the effects to encourage architects and designers to factor wind of winds on the urban environment, structures and flow in to the design process. unmanned flight vehicles. These are innovative approaches to reduce the effects of turbulence and for Technical collaborators: Akira Ode-Smith, Marcus Cher, harvesting energy from the environment. Rafael Moya Castro, Simon Watkins & RMIT MDIT Studio ‘Virtual Realities of Wind’ Grant Acknowledgement: ARC Discovery (DP130103228)

Pulsometer 2018 Robotic 3D print, laser cut acrylic, mechanical components, electronics, sensors, pulsatile airflow Courtesy of the artist

Similar to our perception of the colours of light, we can also experience differing airflows through pulses of air. In this work, the frequency of pulse is communicated through the equivalent colours of the visible light spectrum. These colours are made apparent through embedded lights within the translucent structure of the Pulsometer.

55 Dynamics of Air Curated by Malte Wagenfeld with Jane Burry

RMIT Gallery 14 September – 17 November 2018

Acknowledgements: Special thanks to the participating artists and designers for their Exhibition Assistant: generous support, insight and commitment to the exhibition. Meg Taylor

We thank Sonja Griegoschewski, Director Australia; Gabriele Collections Assistant: Urban, Cultural Program Coordinator and their colleagues at the Ellie Collins Goethe-Institut for their partnership and generosity. Administration Assistants: We also thank our exhibition sponsors for their assistance and Sophie Ellis support: the Austrian Embassy, Canberra; Australian-French Thao Nguyen Association for Research and Innovation (AFRAN); British Vidhi Vidhi Council; Instituto Cervantes; EU National Institutes for Culture (EUNIC); Murray River Salt Company and Kooks Winery. RMIT Gallery Interns & Volunteers: Calum Alexander Appreciative thanks also to Professor Calum Drummond, DVC Celeste Astorino R&I; Professor Paul Gough, PVC DSC; Jane Holt, Executive Nicole Ganker Director R & I; Professor Laurene Vaughan, Dean School of Christine Gjelstrup Design; Erik North, RMIT Design Hub. Caitlin Littlewood

Malte Wagenfeld and Jane Burry would also like to thank: Austrian Ambassador His Excellency Dr Bernard Zimburgh, RMIT Gallery / RMIT University RMIT School of Design and School of Design, Swinburne www.rmitgallery.com University of Technology. 344 Swanston Street, Melbourne, Victoria 3000 Tel: +61 3 9925 1717 Fax: +61 3 9925 1738 Email: [email protected] Acting Director & Senior Exhibition Coordinator: Helen Rayment Gallery hours: Monday-Friday 11-5 Thursday 11-7 Saturday 12-5. Senior Advisor Communications & Outreach: Closed Sundays & public holidays. Free admission. Evelyn Tsitas Lift access available.

Exhibition Installation Coordinator: Nick Devlin Catalogue published by RMIT Gallery November 2018, Edition 200 Installation Technicians: ISBN: 978-0-9925156-8-3 Fergus Binns, Beau Emmett, Robert Jordan, Ford Larman, Simone Tops Graphic design: Sean Hogan, Trampoline Catalogue editor: Evelyn Tsitas Curator, Collections: Catalogue photography: Mark Ashkanasy Jon Buckingham Printed in Australia by Bambra Press

Gallery Operations Coordinator: RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung Mamie Bishop / Maria Stolnik and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nations on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present.

RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business.