AirLightForm

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Background: The curators Malte Wagenfeld (RMIT) and Jane Burry (Swinburne) for the Dynamics of Air asked the selected artists, designers and scientists to address experiential engagement with the intangible atmospheric medium of air. With an emphasis on bodily perception we sought to conjure a vivid imagery to formulate conceptual models that capture the dimensional complexity and temporal capriciousness of air. Philosopher Lucy Irigaray (1999) even asks, “Is air thinkable?”
Contribution: AirLightForm was a collaborative response to these themes between myself and Natasha Johns-Messenger. The work produced for The Dynamics of Air commenced with a conflation of two investigations. The first explored the currents of air produced between the work and the beholder as a result of movement—rotation—of the work. The first investigation revealed optical qualities, in particular an ambiguous image oscillating between solid and void, surface and volume, resulting in a second enquiry that combined with the first. The work was a meeting of movement, air and light, producing an innovative ambiguous ever-changing experience for the viewer of form air and void. The bringing together of optics and atmosphere was a novel approach to a dematerialised image of air or atmosphere, a complex image of the experience of air and breath in a circulatory manner intended to spark new ways of thinking about the interrelationship of atmosphere and perception.
Significance: The novel and timely theme of this exhibition and the international profile of the proposed exhibitors attracted a high level of interest and well over 5000 attendees across academia, art and design practice and the general public, in particular attendance from Architects, Industrial Designers, Interior Designers, Landscape Architects, Engineers, Design academics and researchers, Undergraduate, postgraduate and graduate students, School groups, Technology and Fabrication specialists.