PBB

Watermark is a series of mock-ups of façade panels for a cluster of buildings with divergent functions; a music hall, a national soccer museum, a fast food restaurant, a school, a wellness center and several outdoor activity shops for Middelburg, a Dutch city close to the sea. The panels are embodiments of moods that relate to leisure, crossed with various different characteristics of water: desire-whirl, arousal-cohesion, thrill-humidity, satisfaction-drop, curiosity-drifting, relaxation-rain, joy-floating, excitement-boiling, welcoming-wave, anticipation-ripple.

NIO architecten is a design studio, set up at 2000 by Maurice Nio and since 2003 also led by Joan Almekinders. Maurice Nio (1959) and Joan Almekinders (1969) both graduated as an architect in at the Faculty of Architecture of the Delft University of Technology. Projects include the enormous beetle/waste incinerator of Hengelo (The Hulk), the sound-barrier houses in Hilversum (The Cyclops), the Hoofddorp busi station (The Amazing Whale Jaw), the Wasco warehouse on the outskirts of Rotterdam (Black Mothafucka), the cake-like penthouse (A House for Brad Pitt) and the grey-red tunnel in Pijnacker (Touch of Evil).

An interpretation of the traditional camera obscura that uses an antenna fabricated from an empty can of Japanese wasabi horseradish. This is mounted on a robotic head to scan the environment and uncover the increasingly present wireless networki signals in our environment.

Usman Haque has created responsive environments, interactive installations, digitali interface devices and choreographed performances. His skills include the design of both physical spaces and the software and systems that bring them to life. He was a researcher at the Interaction Design Institute Ivrea, Italy, an artist-in-residence at the International Academy of Media Arts and Sciences, Japan and has also worked in USA, UK and Malaysia. Until 2005 he was a teacher in the Interactive Architecture Workshop at the Bartlett School of Architecture, London.

This is a sound object that you will crave to touch. You don’t hear Ibuki with your ears but by vibrations transmitted through the body. The material used and the shape of the object invites the visitor to embrace it and to rest their chin on it. Vibrations are transmitted through the jaw and the sound can be heard. The experience generates an overwhelming sense of the small object’s huge presence.

Masaru Tabei was born in 1978 in Gumma, Japan and is currently studying an M.A. in Interactive Media at IAMAS (Institute of Advanced Media Art and Science), Japan. Yasuno Miyauchi was born in 1980 in Tokyo, Japan and is currently studying time-based media at IAMAS and also studied Music Composition at Tokyo Gakugei University. Ibuki – Presence in a Sigh has previously been shown in the exhibition Source of Life – IAMAS in Yokohama in 2006.

Throughout the exhibition are fourteen pairs of hand-made electro-magnets that tap out Morse codei texts from or about self-help manuals with titles such as ‘A Guide To Getting’, ‘Confidence, Trust and Loving’ and ‘Grow Rich’. The piece reflects Woodeson’s ongoing interest in technology, communication and how we treat and/or trust information. The Morse code, although recognisable, offers the visitor impenetrable self help.

Born in London, Ben Woodeson studied at Chelsea College of Art and Glasgow School of Art. His other interests include CCTV, voice activated transmitters, bugs, surveillance, received information, magnetic fields, form following function, subversion, reinvention, manifestation and transference of energy, redesigning for inefficiency, maximum effort for minimal achievement and methods of exchange.