Mikaela Du Pomzamparc Graduate Academy of Finland.
Area of specialty: Thawing the frozen poetry of architecture. Light, space and the materials of utopia.
Member of Imaginary Foundation since 1978
Pierre Mâché Baccalauréat Lausanne University
Area of specialty: Exploring the horizon of the human imagination, Assistant to the Director since 1993
Isadore Muggli Bauhaus Drop out
Area of specialty: Stimulating the neural mechanisms of visual perception. IF Co-ordinator of optical consistency since 1976
Kamilla Rousseau Groupe de Recherche Musicale
Area of specialty: Chaotic harmony, cultivated disorder and the atonal structure of infinite beauty. Imaginary since 1978
Neville Bennette Professor Emeritus Saint Petersburg State University
Area of specialty: Experimentally demonstrating the elaborate logic underpinning nature's awesome machinery. At the IF since 1991.
Everett Ruskin MA of Octameter Odes Stanford
Area of specialty: Surfing the undulating waves of novelty reflected downstream from the impending Singularity.
Welcomed into the Imaginary Foundation 1981
"Bonkers" Bainbridge Elongated sabbatical
Area of specialty: Profound absurdity and the ever multiplying wisdom of the cosmic joke.
Estranged from the Imaginary Foundation 1974 reunited 1998
Rufus Daintree Oxbridge expulsion committee
Area of specialty: Examining the interplay of cultural and biological evolution through the lens of the metabolic metaphor.
Enchanted by the imagination since the dawn of the Foundation.
Prof. Harold Rass Graduate Kingston Institute of Higher Education,
Area of specialty: Applied vapor research and it's coextending cosmic implications.
Associate Imaginary Foundation 1982
Andre Garnier L’Université Paris Descartes
Area of specialty: Anticipatory rearrangements of tomorrow via the wealth of yesterday's experience.
With Imaginary since 1979
The Director Graduate University of Zürich
Area of specialty: Deep Pattern Structures, Conciousness and the Articulation of the Possible.
Founder of Imaginary Foundation, 1973.
Danish filmmaker Kaspark Astrup Schröder offers this preview for his forthcoming documentary about traceurs and freerunners. These athletes challenge the intentions of architecture and manmade environments as they use surface areas of buildings for recreation and physical exploration. In the film, Schröder gives an in-depth look into the development of the first parkour park (located in Copenhagen), designed for the sole use of this burgeoning physical artform.
Founded upon Albert Einstein's E=mc2 equation, nuclear fusion is finally producing results after more than 50 years of research. New experiments are giving researchers the confidence that a milestone will be achieved sometime this year. This process of atomic binding, which occurs naturally in stars, has been the focus of experiments at the National Ignition Facility, with the aim of producing controlled fusion power for the production of electricity. Einstein's original vision of nuclear energy was not for destructive uses like the H-bomb, but for the good of humankind. Let's hope his dream will be realized.
Artist Caleb Larsen's radically thought-provoking A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter (2009) is an extraordinarily profound multimedia work that questions the relationship of media, culture, technology and commerce. Although Minimalist in form, its content is complex and interactive. Within the black acrylic cube lives a device that allows the box to perpetually attempt to sell itself on eBay. Every 7 days, the box begins a new auction and monitors the bidding progress of each auction. Larsen's experience with scripting programs and open-source codes is vital to the success of the work, as it continues to independently sell itself online. The artist's stringent purchase agreement for bidders (listed on the eBay page) provides a structure that protects the box's ownership rights, but can also lead to great profit for both the "collector" and the artist.
Banksy's new film "Exit Through The Gift Shop" is a film-within-a-film that begins as a chronicle of guerrilla art and its most prominent creators but morphs into a sly satire of celebrity, consumerism, the art world and filmmaking itself, “Exit Through the Gift Shop” is a nearly impossible work to categorize. That doesn’t begin to describe the contradictions that surround the new movie that’s both about — and made by — the controversial and hugely popular artist.
The last five years had witnessed an unprecedented craze for contemporary art, in which works of art sold for record-breaking prices. It all climaxed in September 2008, when Damien Hirst sold 111 million pounds' worth of his art at an auction at Sotheby's – the very day Lehman Brothers collapsed, bringing down the financial markets of the western world. The art auctions in October and November 2008 were a disaster and the art world was in shock. By early 2009, the contemporary art auction market was down 75 percent. Auction houses recorded record losses and were rapidly downsizing. In this inside eye-witness journey into the art world, filmmaker Ben Lewis visits auction houses, art fairs, galleries, and the homes of billionaires across the world, searching for the reasons behind the greatest rise and fall in financial value of art in history.
London-based sculpture Kate MccGwire employed the help of hundreds of supporters to collect tens-of-housands of found pigeon feathers, which she laboriously crafted into mythical creatures that resemble both bird and serpent. There is a strong sense of pattern-seeking in the artist's work. This, in combination with her exploration of materials and her broad definition of beauty, allows the humble pigeon feather to transcend nature and become an integral part of a supernatural design that is both beautiful and grotesque. Sluice, 2009 Sluice (detail), 2009 Vex, 2008
One of our favorite local Swiss product designer's Nicolas Le Moigne was commissioned by the city of Geneva to create a Public Clock, which serves as both a site-specific art installation and a practical centrally-located timepiece. The clock tells time in words instead of numbers, and changes every minute.
Auto-Tune is a pitch correction plug-in that's used to fix a singer's off-key vocals. This hilarious short by know your meme traces the phenomenon of Auto-Tune, from its introduction to the industry, to its overexposure, parody and remix, and then to a postulated equilibrium. All with the help of "Weird Al" Yankovic.
Maurizio Cattelan is a self-taught sculpture, satirist, and curator. His work does not take a moral stand, but instead challenges viewers, often through the use of humour and absurdity, to reach their own conclusions. Cattelan's Frank and Jamie inverts icons of authority, rendering them powerless. The complexity of their position mirrors the complexity of society's justice systems. The ambiguity of the work leads to an unending trail of questioning. "What would happen IF the system was turned on its head?" is good place to start.
Robert ParkeHarrison combines photography, collage, sculpture, and performance to create imaginary worlds that tell very real stories of "loss, human struggle, and personal exploration within landscapes scarred by technology and over-use." The artist further states that he strives to "metaphorically and poetically link laborious actions, idiosyncratic rituals and strangely crude machines into tales about our modern experience." Parkeharrison's Architect's Brother series serves as a reminder of the importance (and power) of the imagination.
Mary Hale's Itinerant Home marks a poignant moment in the history of inflatable structures, mobile architecture, and city rebuilding in the face of disaster. Marrying the three, she created a mobile dwelling place that focuses on mobility, community, shelter, and survival. The work, which was commissioned by the New Orleans Chapter of the American Institute of Architects and was on view during DesCours week in December, symbolizes and stimulates ways of thinking about architecture of the home and the future of New Orleans as a city. Preceding Hale's work, and serving as an influence, is the 1992 Refuge Wear project (pictured below) by Lucy Orta, which popularized the term "body architecture." Itinerant Home in its completion One of Itinerant Home's body suits in progress A piece from Lucy Orta's Refuge Wear project
Brooklyn-based painter Alyssa Monks creates images that have the detail and fine resolution of a photo, yet are crafted from oil and brush. Whereas her photorealist predecessors (such as Denis Peterson and Chuck Close) create paintings based on a single photograph, 31-year-old Monks works within the constraints of hyperrealism, a new genre that gave rise in the 2000s and can be considered an extension of photorealism. Hyperrealist painters employ similar techniques to create photo-like surfaces, textures, lighting and shadow, but their paintings depict a moment that exists only in itself, borne from the imagination of the artist.
Pictured here, a roll cloud extends far into the distance above Las Olas Beach in Maldonado, Uruguay (January 2009). These rare long clouds may form near advancing cold fronts. A downdraft from an advancing storm front can cause moist warm air to rise, cool below its dew point, and so form a cloud. When this happens uniformly along an extended front, a roll cloud may form.
Japanese artist Tadashi Kawamata has been challenging sculptural and architectural logic since 1986, when his first solo exhibition was shown in Zug, Switzerland. His work has grown to enormous physical scale, surpassing and sometimes encasing the buildings that house his asymmetrical sculptures, as well as intellectual scope. Kawamata's polymorphous sculptures have been compared to the composition of fractals, in that they have properties of self-similarity and are susceptible to various interpretations while providing a foundation for deep scientific and philosophical questioning.
Daniel Czapiewski, Polish businessman and philanthropist, built this house as an artistic statement about the Communist era and current state of the world. Many tourists who visit Upside Down House complain of mild seasickness and dizziness after just a few minutes of being in the structure.
Joshua Allen Harris creates inflatable animals and mythical creatures that are in a constant pattern of living and dying. The air that fills then depletes them rises from the underground subways of New York City, where the re-structured garbage bag designs reside atop sidewalk grates. Harris' use of soft sculpture, popularized by Swedish-American pop artist Claes Oldenburg's 1974 Lipstick (Ascending) on Caterpillar Tracks, lends the works a fragile tactility, similar to a person's skin, which can be easily torn or damaged by the elements.
