Alexander Groves, co-Founder, A.A.Murakami, Ismail Tazi, Founder, TRAME Moderator: Tony Chambers, Studio TC & Friends
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TechTranscript
00:00Alex, welcome, Ismail. So we're going to be talking about ephemeral tech and
00:06ephemeral tech I believe is a name, a phrase you yourself and your partner
00:13Azumi came up with. Can you tell us about ephemeral tech? Yes, so ephemeral tech is
00:21really our approach to how technology can be used in the arts and this is a
00:28perfect example of what we call ephemeral tech which is our new spring
00:31project from 2017 and it consists of a large metal tree that is producing these
00:39mist filled bubbles that can be filled with scent, different scents you can
00:43explore around the tree and they remain unbroken on different fabrics or carpets
00:49and so it's a very delicate fleeting moment and there's a lot of code that
00:56goes in to the, there's a big kind of digital component that we work on but
01:02where you meet the work is not one that fills that technology and there's a
01:07lot of custom-made hardware as well so we engineer it all ourselves we don't
01:11use anything off the shelf but where you meet the work is this fleeting ephemeral
01:16moment it's not through your normal tech interfaces of screens or projections or
01:22LED arrays and so it's something that we're really passionate about is
01:27materials and the way that they make you feel and these kind of the tactile
01:32quality of the real world and yeah so that's... Beautiful. I was lucky to
01:43witness this a couple of times actually Saloni del Mobile when it debuted with
01:47COS but then it's also shown in art galleries at Pace. Yes. Correct isn't it?
01:53Yeah and COS actually toured it to Miami for Art Basel and then they took
01:58it to Shanghai to launch their online retail so it's been around the world and
02:04we continue to evolve this technology and then the project we did the
02:09following year 2018 was called Infinity Blue and it carried on this idea of
02:13ephemeral tech so Eden project is in Cornwall in the south of England and
02:18it's a big biodome in an old former China clay quarry it's an extraordinary
02:23place it's the biggest rainforest in captivity in the world and it's in these
02:28former China clay quarries and we wanted to use the material of China clay so we
02:34made a big ceramic sculpture and the brief of the project was you know excite
02:43people about the natural world and so we work with scientists down there we
02:48became interested with how life formed on earth and particularly with
02:52cyanobacteria so this is an algae that forms in our oceans it evolved 3.8
02:57billion years ago and it's the first organism to undertake photosynthesis so
03:03it's really responsible for oxygenating our planet for 70% of the oxygen we
03:08breathe now is from this extraordinary sign organism cyanobacteria so that blue
03:14green algae and it's yeah 70% of the oxygen we breathe is from this and yet
03:19most people don't know about it we didn't know about it until we researched
03:22it and our existence absolutely depends on it and so it was worth celebrating
03:28and we made a big monument that's in the shape of cyanobacteria this is a robot
03:323d printing clay and this is in the shape of cyanobacteria and the ripples
03:38through the surface of it are also like how cyanobacteria grows and yeah made
03:44these huge ceramic tiles it's a it's actually the biggest ceramic sculpture
03:47in the world it's 10 meters high but we didn't want to just make a sculpture the
03:52remarkable thing about cyanobacteria is what it does that it breathes and it we
03:57are exchanging breath with it so we wanted to add an element where we can
04:00visualize the fact that it's releasing oxygen in the form of these o-rings and
04:04so we made this technology that makes fog rings and they're populated amongst
04:09this tower that has these fog rings are embedded into the ceramic sculpture so
04:14that the technology is embedded in there in and then the clouding of the ceramic
04:18tiles goes on top and it's it was a huge undertaking and it has to operate every
04:25day except Christmas Day it's a million visitors a year there's some place what
04:29size again is this it's 10 meters high and weighs 20 tons and and this is
04:36inside it so it looks like a kind of submarine inside and then this is this
04:40isn't digitally manipulated or anything this is real photography that we took of
04:44it releasing these fog rings this is not a Botto image no that's a real photograph
04:50it's yeah from 2018 so yeah and Azusa Azusa yeah my wife and partner in the
04:57studio is standing there and this continually pumps out this yeah oxygen
05:04rings yeah these fog rings and they can be centered as well and they can travel
05:1130 meters they can travel the length of this space and we've taken that
05:15technology and we've toured around the world actually so without the big
05:19ceramic thing we've been able to kind of tour it and so the next evolution of it
05:23is called passage of Ra we showed this in Paris in the Grand Palais and this is
05:27an extension this led from yeah and what we did here was we added a digital
05:33component so when the fog ring passes through the physical space it then hits
05:38a screen and it becomes a digital fog ring and it enters this live generated
05:42ocean it ripples the water so the physics of our world is affecting the
05:46physics of the the digital world and this fog ring that's so fleeting has
05:50this digital afterlife so and this is our project at M plus currently showing
05:58there until 2nd of February next year and it's called beyond the horizon and
06:03it's all about our love of bubbles again bubbles are always used as a kind of
06:06memento mori like a meditation on the fleeting nature of existence and they're
06:12also interestingly very like integral to science theory because you know there's
06:20this chicken-and-egg question what came first with the first cell the first
06:23living cell was it the cell wall that contained and protected that delicate
06:29chemistry from just dissolving and drifting off in the ocean or was it the
06:32nucleus that dictated build a cell wall and so it's a chicken egg right how
06:38could one come before the other but then there's these scientific experiments in
06:41the 50s Miller-Urey experiment so they recreated the primordial soup in a flask
06:45zapped it with some lightning and they found it was self-generating these fatty
06:51bubbles of amino acids the building blocks of life and out of that came this
06:56theory that the first living cells and our you know ancestors were actually
07:01bubbles and then they evolved to become to grow cell walls and so there's a
07:06fascinating kind of for all bubbles yes yes exactly wonderful and then we're
07:12also interested in clouds and clouds of a long tradition in Chinese art they
07:15age different Chinese art by the style of the clouds depicted and so we wanted
07:20to create a space where we had these giant foggy clouds kind of populating the
07:25space and much like the Emperor's robe that we just showed you and this is what
07:28we did at M plus and so we had these machines that make these clouds and they
07:34get strung to this truss and then they're spread around the space there's
07:4012 of them and they're all individually making these and clouds and they're
07:45really giant soap bubbles with fog inside them and when you make bubbles on
07:50that scale they lose their round shape and they become these amorphous shapes
07:54that are like the kind of auspicious clouds that you see so this is on at M
08:03plus yes yeah in a large-scale room to this yeah it's a it's the large space
08:11that they've got in B2 which is dedicated to immersive art and it's
08:19they're all working independently sometimes you go and it's dark and
08:23they'll just be one bubble emerging from this machine and then suddenly they all
08:26release at once so it's really it's really us using the medium of time as
08:34the kind of subject and as the medium because it's a kind of this fleeting
08:39moment and if you there's a moon gate in the space and then you go through to
08:43the next room which is the large version of passage of Ra the largest we've done
08:46and that is also about you know the fleeting nature of it the origin of the
08:53name it well Ra is the Egyptian Sun God that you know every day would go under
08:58us in a solar barge to rise each morning as the Sun and so it was really thinking
09:05about afterlife and the fact that in a way when we look at a fog ring we
09:12identify that I think this is really what gets to the nub of what we're
09:16interested in ephemeral tech is when you're experiencing something through a
09:20screen that thing is not gonna change it's not gonna age it's not mortal it
09:25doesn't have that vulnerable vulnerability that we have and when you
09:28experience nature like the falling of cherry blossom or the falling of snow
09:32there's a way an awareness that it's a fleeting moment in this kind of eternal
09:37universe and we ourselves are fleeting moments sharing one combined fleeting
09:41moment that will never come again and I think that gives you it a kind of
09:44profound power that is difficult to get through digital art that doesn't really
09:50change or age so this is core to what what we're gonna move on to now which is
09:56this conflation of digital digital being the origin of some work but not
10:01necessarily the conclusion and combining the two which will where we
10:06bring in Ishmael and A.M. Murakami's latest project just launched a few weeks
10:13ago in Martha Texas and Ishmael you're the founder of Tram Paris and a company
10:23that started focusing more on traditional craft young designers
10:28working with craftsmen and crafts women in the Mediterranean but you slowly
10:34started to embrace technology to really bring this concept to life please tell
10:40us a little more about your origin and what Tram does and how you come to
10:47commission this piece we're going to see. Sure so I started Tram in 2020 and as
10:54you said we focused on traditional craftsmanship I was as I was born raised
10:58in Morocco so in a city that is 12 centuries old the capital of craft
11:02capital of culture but since I was a kid I was always surprised that there hasn't
11:07been any innovation since in in in when you go to Fez the Medina the mosaic
11:13there's a leash the colors the materials so what some I was always interested in
11:17innovating in craftsmanship and what we were doing is digital craftsmanship one
11:22collection we did was a 3d printing clay hand glazed inspired by the
11:26mathematics the algorithms of Alain Bras in Andalusia in Spain and then we did
11:31generative tapestries in in Aubusson we did mirrors generative stained glass so
11:37for me it's about the on-chain so digital provenance and the off-screen
11:45and the physical aspects of the work and that's a concept that I bonded over with
11:50your middle period projects with Tram was working with digital artists again
11:55with digital provenance but not only making a digital artwork an NFT making a
12:01physical piece as well and you kind of were pioneering this I remember meeting
12:06Alex now and this project which we will now go into deeper called a thousand
12:13layers of stomach you debuted at at Marfa Texas the home of modernist
12:21minimalists the Mecca of modernist minimalists are Donald Judd very
12:25physical it's an incongruous I would have felt positioning but there is
12:31reason for this yes yes so Marfa is the home of our blocks gallery which is the
12:38leading generative art platform in the world and every year there is a
12:42pilgrimage a pilgrimage that happens in October November where you have
12:47hundreds of artists a generative art and generative design enthusiasts who go to
12:52Marfa and and for it makes total sense to actually launch this project there
12:58Alex also in the past has launched a project on our blocks on online so a
13:04generative art collection so it was it was actually it made total sense yeah
13:10and it is well let's talk about a thousand layers of stomach you come up
13:13with great titles well I I mean I have to say the best titles we get are
13:18actually from Chinese menus that have been translated into English and we've
13:23done a few and did we have it at lunch today no I don't think so but uh yeah a
13:29thousand less stomach I found it was a very poetic title very sublime and I
13:34love coming to Hong Kong for many years now and it really inspired this
13:39project so what I love is that you've got this kind of fishing village that's
13:43grown into this amazing city across the bay you've got Shenzhen and in between
13:49you've got this tidal mudflats with these kind of crawling with life when
13:54the when the tide goes out and the Sun comes up it's it's incredible and I'm
13:58particularly interested with clams and clams are like evolutionary wise 500
14:04million years ago they evolved and they haven't really changed much since and
14:07they don't have a brain they just have a kind of few nerves but they have this
14:11extraordinary ability they're like little 3d biological printers and they
14:16have this incredible generative code within them and they can make these
14:20exquisite abstract art patterns on their shells and we really studied the
14:27emergent patterns which goes into like a lot of maths and and stuff and we
14:31created our own code that can mimic the behaviors of these emergent patterns and
14:37each time you run the code it always comes out a completely different pattern
14:40but of course we didn't want to just leave it as a digital code we wanted to
14:43turn it back into our physical world and so we converted those patterns into knit
14:48patterns and these are the kind of knit knitting patterns ready to knit they're
14:54all using that algorithm that's based on nature and we made our own knitting
15:00machine that you can manipulate the code there's different dials so people in
15:05Marfa could go up to the screen they could change the parameters on it and
15:08then when they get to a pattern they like they can press knit and it goes
15:12into a knitting queue and it gets knitted immediately so it's very
15:15immediate and it's very intuitive and did you say you made this knitting
15:22machine yourself well I mean yeah it's a knitting machine so it's a 1980s
15:27Japanese knitting machine that we stripped back recased changed the
15:31computer had to write our own there's a very closed program that ran it so we
15:35had to write our own operating software for it and everything has changed except
15:40the kind of mechanism basically and this is it knitting a textile yeah on site in
15:46Marfa yeah based on the algorithms based on the clan and I think this is
15:53something we bond over is the future of how generative can come into production
15:58because there isn't really a reason why sometimes with clothed lines that they
16:02all have to look the same they could always be unique the same code but
16:07generating a different pattern and also kind of knitting on demand rather than
16:13you know over production and so this applies actually to all digital
16:18fabrication and manufacturing tools so I think as you mentioned earlier I think
16:25the future is where artists and brands and designers will actually express
16:30their creative vision both digitally and physically from day one and we will be
16:34able to produce in series unique pieces yeah and as an artwork we're envisaging
16:40having several machines come together to form these giant autonomous knitting
16:45robots that will be you know suspended in a large space and knitting out these
16:51textiles and what we saw in Marfa was its first iteration its first proof of
16:57concept yeah but this is a maquette for something that could happen yeah in
17:02Basel yeah so we're gonna bring the project to Hong Kong in March for Art
17:07Basel and then it's gonna go to Beijing and and then to Europe to different
17:11museums and each time it's gonna grow the textile yeah and this is a in your
17:19practice a Murakami but also studio swine your other studio filmmaking is
17:26integral to the documentation I suppose was these fleeting tech moments and then
17:33turning into physical artifacts but documenting the process has always been
17:37a key element and you called yourselves once designers of mass communication
17:45rather than mass production which I'm intrigued by but tell us a little more
17:50about the filmmaking angle yeah and how important it is yeah absolutely I mean
17:55we graduated at a time where it was very much like the feeling was we don't need
17:59another chair we've probably got more chairs than people and so like how can
18:04you justify being a designer and kind of adding to the amount of stuff out
18:08there but then we always thought that the reason why you need new chair
18:14designs is like you need new love songs or poetry is that you've got to express
18:19your times but we don't need to make a lot of them you can you you can actually
18:24make films that would be traveling the world telling the story of how
18:28something's made using design as a form of journalism or almost and the film can
18:34be the thing that gets viewed millions of times and maybe you just make a few
18:38chairs or whatever we end up making so yeah we're interested in this and we
18:44love working with film well it creates not only a document so it's does you say
18:51journalistic but it creates another artwork in a sense it's a yes another
18:54layer of the story and the future of are you going to be working together more
18:58this project will as you've hinted should be showing in our puzzle and the
19:04thing will grow but have you since your relationship developed have you inspired
19:09any other ideas amongst yourselves to work on because the core to this as we
19:14said is digital provenance but physical conclusion yeah Alex actually sits at
19:20that intersection of design and web 3 web 2 and web 3 totally gets it like is
19:25one of the few designers and who works with our blocks and he's native to what
19:32web 2 and web 3 so we have many many ideas he totally gets what we're trying
19:37to achieve and I think you know you introduced us actually in Singapore and
19:42only over a drink thank you for that so yeah we have some more ideas that we
19:48share in the future well we can't wait to see how this the world's biggest
19:51textile I would imagine it's going to evolve over the next few months or few
19:56years and see what else you get up to but thank you so much for this
20:01extraordinary introduction to ephemeral tech Alexander Groves Ismail Tarzi thank
20:07you so much thank you