Vivarium

960, East 3rd Street, Los Angeles, CA, United States

Add To Collection

Other Projects by Matter Management

Add To Collection

Vivarium

960, East 3rd Street, Los Angeles, CA, United States

Firm

Matter Management

Type

Cultural › Gallery
Educational › University

YEAR

2010

SIZE

1000 sqft - 3000 sqft

BUDGET

$10K - 50K

Juan Azulay's experimental installation in the SCI-Arc Gallery at SCI-Arc explores the relationship between technology, media, and environmental preservation / dereliction. It incisively speaks to the inherent connection between technology and the environment by placing itself in the midst of processes of intense transformation within the ecosystem it has isolated. In recent years, Azulay has worked on hybrid designs that harness natural phenomena and connect them to new ideas about architectural problematization. This exhibition reflects a shift from the direst experience of life to the experience of media-augmented environment, in which flows of energy regulate processes and generate culture. Occupying the main floor of the gallery is a monolithic sunken pyramid that contains a 'vivarium,' or collection of organisms that, in this case, are real, robotic and/or simulated. As a collective, these organisms generate energy capable of transforming a freshwater ecosystem into a brackish one, a process made possible by the permeability controls that the skin of the pyramid produces and the behavior that the 'machine' generates. Virtual (digital) organisms mimic the behavior of both the living and robotic microorganisms to intensify and lubricate the process.Investigating the physical and metaphoric space between biology and architecture, the installation will fuse these organisms within the vivarium, creating a new hybrid ecology that will grow and self-stabilize throughout the exhibition period of three months.