ADS6: The Deindustrial Revolution – Garden of Making
Jade Tang
During her time at the RCA, Jade has been exploring alternative ways of sensing and perceiving phenomena and the built environment. Jade is interested in a multidisciplinary approach, where her work to date has employed a variety of mediums, particularly sound, moving-image, performance and architecture. Jade’s work is strongly driven by embodied experience and a rich engagement with both new technologies and traditional tools, allowing her to explore alternative readings of experience and disrupt our existing relationships with space. After graduating from the RCA, Jade intends to pursue these interests further.
Jade previously completed her BSc Architecture at The Welsh School of Architecture, Cardiff University in 2016, having been taught by Professor Peter Salter in her final year. She then worked as an architectural assistant in London (2016-2018) where she gained experience on private-residential and commercial projects. During this period, Jade had also taken part in voluntary design and build projects for local communities in Indonesia with her ex-collegues at CAUKIN Studio (2016), and in Japan as part of the Architectural Association Visiting School (2018).
Jade's first year project at the RCA with ADS12, 'Listening to the Void', was shortlisted for the RIBA West Award (2019) where a selection of her work was also exhibited at the 2019 Seoul Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism. Jade also exhibited a selection of her second year project, 'Spaces of Reciprocity', with ADS6 in Seminario 12 Mexico City (2020).
'Spaces of Reciprocity'
When exposed to its immediate environment, the human body undergoes a series of unnoticeable transformations, most of which are widely overlooked. Despite this being an active exchange, we nevertheless seem increasingly detached from our physical body, and the significance of its situation in space.
With this gap ever widening, the project explores reciprocal relationships between the corporeal and the digital, and how these can begin to trigger alternative understandings of producing and perceiving space. Jorn Utzon’s seminal project 'Can Lis', is recorded via a series of experiments through bodily and technological means , documented and explored through film. Moments of reciprocity between these two perspectives are materialised and performed through the design of three scenarios, in order to imagine how an ‘other’ architecture may emerge through these alternative encounters between body and technology. In doing so, they challenge the Western body-environment dualism and instead consider Eastern principles based on an interconnectedness between human and nature, particularly questioning concepts such as form, circulation and ambience. These alternative scenarios allow us to speculate how the reconsideration of ocular experience, aural perception and emotion has the potential to reshape our relationship to the environment and the human body, using architecture as a fundamental tool.
The project is framed as a series of 3 gestures:
GESTURE 1: Shìjué/Sight, is situated in the cave beneath Can Lis. This gesture explores the reciprocities between two ways of seeing: digital scanning technology and ocular experience. It considers the potential of performative fabrication as a real-time design method that consists of an interrelated network between technology, body and place, challenging Western body-environment dualism in the generation of form.
GESTURE 2: Tīngjué/ Sound, is situated in the Living room of Can Lis and explores the reciprocities between binaural recording technology and live aural experience, questioning ideas of circulation. It questions how this method of sonic construction can be employed as a real-time collective design tool that considers a coexistence between site, technology and the body, reconnecting us to the rhythms and sonic condition of the earth.
GESTURE 3: Qi/Air, is situated in the observatory and explores the reciprocities between two expressions of emotion: the pulse and breath. These two forms of expression, are documented and materialised through film, exploring the potential of using emotion as a material to explore ambience.
Medium:
FilmSize:
9:00 Minutes
3D Scanning in the Cave, Santanyi — Film still
Cave walkthrough animation — Film still
Point cloud of the Cave — Film still
Performative fabrication — Film still
These two perspectives, are superimposed, materialised and performed through a process of fabrication. The robot arm follows the original topography of the cave, and is interrupted by live movements of my hand at specific time intervals, which are based on my experience of the cave. This generates a new superimposed set of toolpaths.
This process considers the potential of performative fabrication as a real-time design method that consists of an interrelated network between technology, body and place, challenging Western body-environment dualism in the generation of form.
Binaural recording in the Living Room in Can Lis — Film still
Knocking on surfaces in the Living Room in Can Lis — Film still
3D Soundscape Experience — Film still
This overlapping of the situated and the constructed, breaks down the distinction between the stage and the screen, proposed and realised. It questions how this method of sonic construction can be used as a real-time collective design tool that considers a coexistence between site, technology and the body, reconnecting us to the rhythms and sonic condition of the earth.
The Observatory, Can Lis — Film still
Walking through the Observatory — Film still
Low pulse and breath rate
High pulse and breath rate
The speed and movement of salt and flour particles are determined by the live breath rate of the body during the filming process, while the rhythm of the projected light is based on the recorded pulse rate experienced in the observatory, therefore defining when the particles are illuminated and visible to the camera. The ambience of the film is defined by these two forms of expression, demonstrating a process where body, technology and place work collaboratively to generate an image.