EXPO 2017 — ANYNAME

Title: Stage Buoys, EXPO 2017

Where: Chicago, IL

Type: Exhibition

Size: Varying

With: Studio Gang Architects + Nick Cave

Client: Navy Pier Chicago

When: September 2017

Designed for Here Hear Chicago, a series of performances by artist Nick Cave, Stage Buoys are mobile objects that collectively define a space for performance; a movable platform.
Throughout its semantic history, a platform gives room for and shape to a significant cultural function. Cultural functions may entail performances, speeches, rituals, spectacles, reenactment et.c. that convey some sort of meaning. Thus, by assigning meaning to a piece of its environment, the human cultural unit carves places out of spaces . In other words, an interior place is abstracted from the exterior space.
For the Here Hear Chicago performances, different configurations of more than 200 Stage Buoys demarcate different open spaces.Their self-balancing,subtle oscillations around their base can result in different spontaneous patterns informed by the different performaces and energies of the visitor.

Dancers and stage buoys interact at Navy Pier Wave-Wall, photo by Tom Harris

Performance Space By Negative Space

1 Duplication

2
Aggregation

3 Demarcation

Physical model - Experimenting with the motion

Physical Model Simulation of the real-size roly-poly movement. As the visitors and dancers walk through the field the vertical stalks will react to the movement. Here, the notion is tested using a set of magnets underneath the base-board