These Responsive Installations Made Us Feel Like Magicians

The New York Future Forward series took off with great success: We had a full day to celebrate three interactive installations with artist tours, panel discussions, and a nighttime party. The three design studios, Doris Sung, VT Pro Design, and Nonotak, traveled to New York to bring their sculptures to life and we finally got to see  Drift,  Reach, and  Hoshi up close and personal, as well as talk to the artists firsthand. Check out our latest videos about their processes below. Join us this Saturday June 18 in Chicago for another free Future Forward event.

Doris Sung's heat-responsive chandelier, Drift, is made up of about 1,100 pieces of thermobimetal that curl and move in the heat of theatrical lights. The process is a poetic display of how natural materials, with the aid of a little bit of engineering, can actually make our future buildings smart and responsive. In her artist Q&A, Sung inspired us by speaking about the opportunities that low-tech materials and intuitive architecture can mean make for our future homes and cities.

Here, we experience VT Pro Design's kinetic wall at the first of the Future Forward events in New York City. We check out how this "hybrid" living wall, inspired by the all-new Prius' eco-heritage, springs to life, reacting uniquely to each audience interaction. Reach made viewers feel like they were magicians. Using the "reach" of one's arm, LEDs react to the movement of the audience while the tiles on the wall also shimmy in response. (It may be the closest we come to feeling the power of Harry Potter.) Admirers of the wall in person and through our Facebook Live, wanted to know about keeping the living and green part of the wall intact along with how the technology was site specific. Michael Fullman and Tyler Lamptree were on deck to answer all of our questions about the process of making the installation.

In this video, see what it's like to be inside Nonotak's Hoshi installation, inspired by the theme of design in the all-new Prius, at the very first Future Forward event: a completely immersive and otherworldly experience of sound and vision that turns the perception of space completely on its head. In the artists' live Q&A, Nonotak duo, illustrator Noemi Schipfer and architect/musician Takami Nakamoto, spoke earnestly about meeting in high school, connecting over a shared ability to speak Japanese (Nakamoto is Japanese while Schipfer is half-Japanese), and reconnecting a few years later after Schipfer had published her first book of illustrations and Nakamoto had started his architecture studies. "With Tak, I went from line drawing to using space, incorporating animation and videos," says Schipfer. Their installation Hoshi plays with lights, space, and sound to create an interactive experience for the audience.

The Future Forward event series presented by the all-new Prius will take place in Chicago on June 18th and in LA on June 25. We will be posting full-length behind-the-scenes video profiles leading up to the kickoff event in each city.RSVP for the Future Forward event series here.

Related:

Nonotak Studio Experiments with Illusions of Light and Infinity

A Look at the Making of a Hybrid Living Wall

Sculpting with Architecture's Third Skin