Mixer transforms a concrete mixer into an intimate media cocoon. The most recent construction by LOT/EK, Mixer offers a contemporary meditation capsule at once connected to, and separate from, the world beyond its thin steel walls. Terrain is an unprecedented exhibition of two related projects by visionary architect Lebbeus Woods: notebooks from the period 1975 -2000, and Terrain, a recent suite of works on paper.
Mixer transforms a concrete mixer into an intimate media cocoon. The
most recent construction by LOT/EK, Mixer offers a contemporary
meditation capsule at once connected to, and separate from, the world
beyond its thin steel walls. The hollow mixer, about 8-ft. in diameter
and 10-ft. tall, provides a readymade vessel that LOT/EK adapts to
accommodate lounging, viewing, listening, and dreaming.
Fitted with advanced technological equipment, Mixer reaches beyond
the enclosure of the vessel to networks of information beyond. Inside
the capsule, viewers recline on plush, blue foam and gaze up towards
a ring of monitors that serve as electronic windows. Remote controls
enable those inside to sample and mix different audiovisual input‹much
like a DJ in a mixing booth from a range of sources including satellite
television, playstations, digital video, and surveillance and sound
systems. Two surveillance cameras, one on the outside of Mixer and
another on the roof, import live footage of the gallery interior and the
surrounding city to further mix inside and out.
LOT/EK is the New York studio of Ada Tolla and Giuseppe Lignano. As
they traverse the territory that joins art, architecture, and
entertainment, LOT/EK's projects comprise architectural
commissions, interior and exhibition designs, and public art
installations. Their TV-TANK has been exhibited nationally and
included in the Cooper-Hewitt Design Triennial, and their TV-LITE
belongs to the collection of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Current projects include a new building for the University of
Washington, several galleries in New York, a shop in Seoul, and a
multimedia gallery for the New Museum of Contemporary Art. Their
recent book, Mixer: Installation and Assembly Manual, with an essay
by Mark Robbins, will be simultaneously released by Edizioni Press.
Mixer has been produced with generous support from Joystick Nation.
Terrain is an unprecedented exhibition of two related projects by
visionary architect Lebbeus Woods: notebooks from the period 1975
-2000, and Terrain, a recent suite of works on paper. Woods believes
that architecture is a form of knowledge and drawing a mode of
research, and he aims, through drawing, to propose alternative
evolutions of the present cultural situation. His notebooks, the most
direct and spontaneous record of this research, mix travelogue and
personal reflection with sketches and inventions. Fragments of the
notebook sketches and writings reemerge in the Terrain drawings-ten
abstract works, executed in ink, pencil, pastel and print, that fuse text
with crystalline visions of imagined terrains.
Lebbeus Woods was born in 1940. After working in the office of Eero
Saarinen, he entered private practice and, in 1976, made a decisive
turn towards advanced design research. Co-founder of the Research
Institute for Experimental Architecture and longtime professor at the
Cooper Union, he currently teaches at Pennsylvania State University.
Woods has exhibited, lectured on, and published his projects
internationally. His most recent book is Radical Reconstruction; others
include AnArchitecture: Architecture is a Political Act (Academy,
1992); Centricity (Aedes, 1987); and OneFiveFour (Princeton
Architectural Press, 1989). His drawings belong to many private and
institutional collections, including the Getty Research Institute, the
Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, the Carnegie Museum of Art,
the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and the Museum of Applied
Art (MAK) in Vienna.
GALLERY ONE: Mixer by LOT/EK
GALLERY TWO: Terrain by Lebbeus Woods
Henry Urbach Architecture
526 West 26th Street NYC NY 10001
tel: (212)627-0974
image: LOT/EK