Philip Beesley et Diane Willow

Reflexive Membranes

Philip Bessley, Orgone Reef, 2003.

Orgone Reef is a hovering mass that explores a new kind of near-living architectural skin that expands and responds to viewers using a myriad of miniature interlinked elements.

Courtesy of the artist.

Philip Beesley, Orgone Reef, 2003.

Orgone Reef was produced using laser cutting direct from digital models and is currently installed at the University of Manitoba.

Courtesy of the artist.

Philip Beesley, Orgone Reef, 2003.

Courtesy of the artist.

Philip Beesley and Diane Willow, Orgone Reef, 2003.

Arrays of proximity sensors linked to vibrating actuators were fitted to a version of Orgone Reef mounted at Haystack Mountain School for the Crafts at The Digital and the Hand symposium in 2002 in collaboration with Diane Willow. These elements employ the 'cricket' microprocessor technology developed by MIT's Media Lab, allowing dense accretion of miniature networks.

Courtesy of the artists.

Philip Bessley, Orgone Reef, 2003

Philip Beesley and Diane Willow are again joining forces after helping produce an "interactive geotextile" during the symposium The Digital and the Hand held at the Haystack Mountain School for the Crafts in 2002 (Deer Isle, Maine, United State). Their new project, Reflexive Membranes, will spawn an enormous hybrid fabric. The fabric will be made up of elements structured according to recursive geometry to ensure its cohesion and will be equipped with sensors controlled by actuators. The project will draw on both Beesley's knowledge of architectural textiles (honed at the University of Waterloo's Integrated Centre for Visualization, Design and Manufacturing) and on the expertise of Willow, who specializes in integrating flexible miniature computer components (microprocessors, sensors, actuators) at the MIT Media Lab.

Reflexive Membranes will be used within immersive installations in which visitors will encounter textiles that they can touch and that touch back. These textiles will transform over time. They will appropriate the materials that come into contact with them, integrate and "digest" these materials, and adopt a new appearance. In this sense, these "reflexive membranes" will evoke living creatures. The project stems from a reflection on what's called the "hand," in other words, such tactile qualities as softness or hardness. The work aims to confirm and expand the notion that textiles can themselves react in a more concrete and perceptible manner.

Central to this reflection is the desire to harmonize the artificial world and natural processes and to expose the similarities of the act of creation in man and nature. The project seeks to provoke intense emotional and psychological responses in visitors so that they question the boundaries between nature and artifice and examine their own organic condition as they interact with technology.