Historical Context. Two stories, one art historical the other cultural and contextual.

The works in the Cone collection are distinguished in two ways, their merits as important works of art in an era of great change and their association with a strong and emblematic story of American industry, affluence, cultural transformation, suffrage and patronage.

The Baltimore sisters Claribel and Etta Cone began collecting art in the early 20th century and ultimately amassed approximately 3,000 objects, which were displayed throughout their Baltimore apartments at.

In 1898, Etta Cone initiated the sisters’ career in collecting with the purchase of five paintings by the American Impressionist Theodore Robinson for the family home at the behest of her brothers Moses and Caesar, proprietors of the successful Cone textile business, ultimately a major supplier of jean materials to the Levis Strauss Company.

Claribel and Etta traveled Europe to purchase art. They often visited Gertude and Leo Stein in Paris and were thus introduced to artists, musicians, and writers who would guide and influence their collecting.

Etta Cone met Matisse in 1906, and her initial purchase of several drawings marked the beginning of a life-long passion for his art. The Cone sisters were patronesses of Matisse’s work throughout his career and purchased a total of 42 oil paintings, 18 sculptures, 36 drawings, 155 prints, and seven illustrated books, as well as 250 drawings, prints, and copper plates from the artist’s first illustrated book, Poésies de Stéphane Mallarmé. The acknowledged centerpiece of the collection is these 500 works by Matisse including Matisse’s Blue Nude (1907) and Large Reclining Nude (1935)

The sisters also collected works by Picasso, Cézanne, Gauguin, and Van Gogh, in addition to textiles, jewelry, furniture, and African and Eastern art. They collected 114 works by Picasso, including works from the artist’s early years in Barcelona to his Rose period in Paris (1905–1906.) and Picasso’s Mother and Child (1922). Highlights of the collection also include Paul Cézanne’s Mont Sainte-Victoire Seen from the Bibémus Quarry (c. 1897), and Paul Gauguin’s Vahine no te vi (Woman of the Mango) (1892).

At Incorporated, it is our belief that the complex play of the multiple narratives of both the art and its context will make for a rich elevating exhibition, one that can be approached and enjoyed on many levels depending on the interest, taste and preferences of the spectator.

EON-Reality’s-ICube-system

EON-Reality’s-ICube-system

Immersive Experience. Installation design and immersive experience.

Theoretical discourse related to installation design has often gone beyond the confines of traditional museological strategies for inspiration in the development of engaging curatorial experiences. Technology, historical context, multi-media and interactive media have all become hallmarks of the modern installation design tool box.

At Incorporated we have become fascinated by the contemporary explosion of digital virtual experience and in the development digital gaming theory and are mining this arena as inspiration for our work.

In the hands of contemporary gaming designers and conceptualists such as Ernest Adams, Staffan Björk and Jussi Holopainen, the hallmarks of the immersive digital gaming experience have been reduced to several and often simultaneously mobilized categories that are interesting when considered in relation to engaging and multilayered installation design. These are tactical, cognitive, narrative, spatial, emotional and sensory immersions.

Tactical immersion is experienced when performing operations that involve skill. Players feel “in the zone” while perfecting actions that result in success.

Strategic or cognitive immersion is associated with mental challenge. Chess players experience strategic immersion when choosing a correct solution among a broad array of possibilities.

Narrative immersion occurs when players become invested in a linear narrative arc similar to what is experience of reading a book or watching a movie.

Spatial immersion occurs when the simulated world is perceptually convincing. The player feels that he or she is “there” and that a simulated world looks and feels “real” or has communicative spatial language that is coherent and understandable.

Emotional or psychological immersion occurs when a player identifies with or becomes emotionally connected to characters, environments or conflicts registered within the virtual environment.

The experience of entering into the three-dimensional environment becomes intellectually stimulating as the player experiences a symbolic language fuses with a cogent image medium, which affects impression and awareness.

In the well developed gaming experience most or all of the above are brought to bear allowing the gamer to plug-in to the game in a manner that suits the personality and interests of that gamer. Tactical, cognitive, narrative, spatial, emotional and sensory immersion described in this way, can be seen as a foundation of good installation design. This multivalent approach that allows the viewer to engage and, as it were, “design their own experience” by attaching to one or more of the “levels” of the immersive environment, is a strong model for the purely “real” and analog arena of installation design.

Louise Lawler, 1993, Metro Pictures

Physical Context. Art context and meaning.

In his description of Louise Lawler’s entry into the 2008 Whitney Biennial, Todd Alden focuses on Lawler’s attention to the context of art.

“Lawler puts a frame around the contexts that define art and the audience’s relationship to it. Aiming her self-reflexive lens primarily at art’s institutions—museums, galleries, auction houses, private collections, art fairs, art storage, and other post studio contexts”. He goes on to write that “her ‘pictures present information about the ‘reception’ of artworks’…….Lawler’s closely cropped photographs also frame specific ambiguities, too, including art’s relationship to the inchoate economies of desire, exchange, prestige, gender, and power.”

In this description Mr. Allen is zeroing in on the core of Lawler’s work. Her art is reveled in the depicting of the impact of the context in which art is found. Her art is about the context of art. At Incorporated we approach installation design in much the same way that Lawler approaches her art. Or rather we believe that the physical context in which art is presented can be as communicative as the art works presented.

Louise Lawler, 2008, Metro Pictures

An Approach. Context & Immersive Experience.

The Cone Collection is fertile ground for the exploration of the historical, physical and cultural context of the works and their collectors and for the development of an immersive curatorial experience that can illuminate the importance of the art objects.

Four Parallel Stories.
In the development of the Cone Collection installation, four parallel stories can be told to develop a rich and multivalent experience.
The Art
First and foremost the works themselves would be installed to delineate their formal importance as works of art both autonomously and in a hierarchical relationship to each other to shed light on their relative art historical impact. All this would be facilitated through “A” level text descriptions and documentary materials such as photographs and formal curatorial critique.

The Collection.
Secondly, the “story” of the context of the collection in the description of the sisters, their lives and their accumulation of the collection can be told through the inclusion of a “B” level text narrative supported by documentary materials such as photographs, letters and ephemera.

The Era.
Thirdly, the purely historical “story” an era of great change and an emblematic one of American industry, affluence, cultural transformation, suffrage and patronage can be described within a “C” level text.

The Context.
Finally, and no less importantly the physical context of the works as they moved from the private studios of the various artists, to the apartments of the sisters and then finally on to the Baltimore Museum can be evoked through the creation of spaces scaled to relate to these various artistic, domestic and institutional environments.

In the play of these four simultaneously tactical, cognitive, narrative, spatial, emotional and sensory immersions a rich and full picture will emerge of the Cone sisters, the world in which they lived and the art about which they were so passionate.•

In decorating, we do not just get select any chair (HP, Dell) or only minimalist chairs (Apple), we find one that fits the character of the room.  Yet sitting prominently on our desks are the ugliest and most highly branded contraptions we own.   In an office where we typically hide all traces of the technology, computers are outside this rule.

These images are provoking  because they question whether a computer has too look modern.    The Victorians celebrated technology making an elaborate reflection of their ideals which is why I find these Steampunk items so interesting.  Now someone has reinvoked those ideas by rebranding them.  This is not redecorating, it is rebranding.   It brings all the contextual values of the Victorian era to your desktop.

1. Download the install file here.
2. Install accepting defaults.
3. Open the application, Framer.
4. From your image editing software,  copy the image you want framed onto your clipboard (CTR+C).
5. Drag in an image to use as the frame.  Be sure it is big enough.
6. In the framer, click the paste button.
7. Adjust your frame and matte sizes as desired.
8. Click the generate button to transfer the info onto the clipboard.
9. Back in your image editing application, paste the framed image (CTR+V).

This application was developed as a proof on concept for AIR for a specific workflow under the GNU license.  If you are a mac person, apparent software has developed a great  native mac app with a lot more features.

On view at The Jewish Museum from September 13, 2009 to February 7, 2010

About the Exhibition Design

For the design of this installation Incorporated introduced the notion of “exhibition as ritual.” Formal elements of ritual, like repetition, order, and symmetry have been mobilized in the organization of the exhibition to reinforce the curatorial mission.

“Exhibitions, like ritual, make claims on the body, and can operate on a number of different emotional and intellectual levels simultaneously. The exhibition design takes full advantage of this.”
- Daniel Belasco, Exhibit Curator, The JM

Another major element of the exhibition design is the system of tables, bases, and panels that were designed to display the range of art and design objects included in the exhibition. Raw plywood is cut and slotted so the pieces smoothly join together as tables, bases and panels. The plywood boards are held together by gravity; there is no glue or nails to affix them. After the exhibition closes in New York, all the cases and panels can be popped apart, stacked, and shipped to San Francisco Jewish Museum, where they will be reinstalled.

Call it eco-functionalism: the old modernist ideals of rationality stripped of ornament, combined with the postmodernist values of environmentalism and sustainability.

Finally, the Piano Nobile (2nd floor) of the Warburg Mansion have been beautifully restored for this exhibition. •

About the Exhibition

New York, NY — Artists and designers’ rising interest in ritual since the 1990s inspires Reinventing Ritual: Contemporary Art and Design for Jewish Life, the first international exhibition to survey this phenomenon.

Reinventing Ritual features nearly sixty innovative works, created between 1999 and 2009 by leading artists in diverse media.  Visitors will see outstanding examples of industrial design, architecture, installation art, video, drawing, metalwork, jewelry, ceramics, comics, sculpture, and textiles, revealing the intersections of creative freedom and Jewish life.

A mix of emerging artists and accomplished leaders in the field, most of whom are American and Israeli, with a smaller number of Europeans and South Americans, are represented.  Among the 58 artists are Oreet Ashery, Jonathan Adler, Helène Aylon, Deborah Grant, Sigalit Landau, Virgil Marti, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Karim Rashid, Galya Rosenfeld, Lella Vignelli, and Allan Wexler.

All incorporate an active experimentation with contemporary Jewish life and culture into their work.  Following its New York City showing, Reinventing Ritual travels to the Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco, where it can be seen from April 22 through September 28, 2010.•

This structural material uses the simple, “just add water” approach.  The possibilities for architectural designs are endless.  We are currently exploring draped furniture and dimensional wall panels.  Currently, it is only available in the UK, but Material Connexion in New York may pick it up.  It is relatively affordable at around $4 per square foot. According to the manufacturer:

“The cloth comes in rolls for orders from 1m lengths to orders of over 5km. The cloth width is 1.1m wide and available in three standard thicknesses (CC4, [4mm], CC8, [8mm] and CC13 [13mm]). The material pricing is heavily volume dependant. For a relatively small order under 80sqm, Concrete Cloth costs £32.0/sqm for CC4, £37.10/sqm for CC8 and £41.15/sqm for CC13 ex. works. For larger orders, the pricing drops significantly. CC8 is £21.44, CC8 is £24.95 and CC13 is £28.34 respectively in orders of over 2500sqm. ”

We are ordering our first sample to start exploring and hope to have some progress photos soon.

Metropolitan Home’s Design 100

Metropolitan Home celebrates, once year, “one hundred of the best homes, architects, designers, buildings, materials, furnishings, house wares, trends, shopping venues, restaurants, green goods, activists, accessories, ideas and more from the many worlds that make up the design universe.” This year included a stunning collection of things “from those made by hand with fine materials to mass-produced, “democratic” designs.”

Texas Hill Road Residence

Texas Hill House is a portrait of the owners’ disparate experiences each being of European, and Asia descent respectively and was developed sustainably to fit naturally into the site. The form of the house directly responds to its site conditions. A ten foot eave cantilevers off the south western garden façade, protecting the interior from heat gain in the summer months along with leafed trees that filter the direct afternoon sunlight. In the winter the afternoon sun warms the interior to reduce heating loads. The primary roofing and siding material was selected for its recycled content, durability and affordability. To maintain privacy and to diminish the structure’s apparent scale from the road, the entrance façade is low and primarily closed inspired by the traditional Japanese farm house (Machiya) that similarly screens its interior from the public thoroughfare. The rear or garden façade emphasizes a shifting experience by opening up to the view beyond, offering a change in scale that responds to the landscape, and that becomes the fourth wall of an outdoor “room” bound on three sides by the green walls of the forest. The design of Texas Hill consciously integrates oppositions: of Eastern and Western traditions, built space and natural space. In its reinterpretation of historical strategies through the lens of contemporary, sustainable materials and construction methods, a unique phenomenology infuses the project. Ultimately, Texas Hill is a synthesis, whose individual parts, coexist as a portrait of its owners’ personal, globalized aesthetic.

About Incorporated Architecture & Design

We are an open source, multi-disciplinary, vertically integrated, Architecture and Design studio dedicated to the incorporation of the design disciplines. With a 20 year knowledge archive and as a member of the US Green Building Council, we approach each project as an individual portrait with distinctive attributes to be filtered through our design lens bringing joy, utility, and craft to each.•

Adam Rolston
Incorporated Architecture & Design

See more photos of the Texas Hill Residence on our Incorporated’s main site in the Residential section.

So this is a continuation of a series of posts concerning the use of a Branching Algorithm that Incorporated Developed in collboration with Guy Snover at the Steven’s Institute of Technology.  You can check out the earlier posts Branching Furniture Algorithm, Branch Algorithm Growth Movie, and Annoucing the Launch of IncorporatedProduct by lerival.

We have finished our first full scale prototype, which will be shown at ICFF this year in lerival’s booth.  The Branch Table was developed by running several iterations of the branch algorithm using a flat surface for the control.  The branches were then combined to form the top and bottom pieces.  Finally working with RedEye Arc, a digital fabrication company, the Branch Table was fabricated using a stereolithography process to 3D print the piece.  Since like most Architect’s we don’t use traditional product design modeling software like Solid Works, we had some trouble with getting a watertight model even though we were using Rhino, which is considered one of the better software packages out there for 3D fabrication.  It turned out that RedEye Arc was able to properly convert the Rhino file instead of using the files that we exported directly.

You can see renderings of the proposed table and then some photos of the final prototype in the gallery below.

New York, NY, May 1, 2009 – Incorporated Architecture & Design (www.incorporatedny.com) announced today the launch of Incorporated Product by lerival.  lerival will participate in the 2009 ICFF International Contemporary Furniture Fair and will be licensing, manufacturing and distributing four designs by Incorporated Product, the Hex upholstery series, the Hex Table series, the endless sofa and the branch side table.

• Incorporated’s Hex Table is an accumulation of stainless steel units, offering infinite possibility for its ultimate configuration and size. Functionally, the table embraces the modern need for flexibility. Theoretically, it offers a visual metaphor for a design process that allows open-endedness. The form of the Hex Table is indebted to the timeless geometry of nature and to the historic discourse of American minimalism.

• Incorporated’s Hex Chair extends the Hex series into the realm of upholstered goods. The series originated with the Hex Table which explores systemic ordering and modular relationships, offering infinite possibility for an endless landscape of Hex furnishings in ever changing configurations.

• Incorporated’s Endless Sofa re-defines the modular sofa. The self-contained, functional parts of a traditional modular seating system have been reduced to a vertical segment of five inches in width. A limitless number of slices may be added, allowing the sofa to reach, in theory, an infinite length.

• Incorporated’s Branch Side Table explores systems of branching and random order to create a side table of unique design. A tree grows in Beta. Mimicking the geometry of a tree, the Branch Table was developed in collaboration with the Stevens Institute of Technology, the oldest engineering school in the United States. The Branch Table utilities a randomizing computer algorithm to grow one of a kind branching objects. Fabricated using stereo lithography 3D printing technologies, each Branch Table is a single iteration of endless random geometric possibilities.

About Incorporated Architecture & Design
Product design is one facet of Incorporated’s design practice. The firm believes that the studio’s design approach applies to work of any size. Thus, furniture and product design are small-scale explorations for their architectural counterpart and vice versa. We are an open source, multi-disciplinary, vertically integrated Architecture and Design studio dedicated to the incorporation of the design disciplines. With a 20 year knowledge archive, we approach each project as an individual portrait with distinctive attributes to be filtered through our design lens bringing joy, utility, and craft to each. Incorporated is a member of the US Green Building Council.

About lerival
lerival is a gallery dedicated to selling and showcasing furniture designed by today’s top architectural talent. A new source for contemporary furniture, lerival offers direct access to untapped, ground-breaking design from the global architecture community. Through lerival, the consumer is never more than one step away from the architects themselves, and our products reflect this; merging cutting-edge aesthetics with close attention to construction and detail, lerival offers its clients true design alternatives, and the chance to invest in a part of tomorrow’s design history today.

MEDIA CONTACT:  Adam Rolston
Incorporated Architecture & Design
40 West 29th Street, #404
New York, NY 10001
212.673.1695 x 101 Telephone
arolston@incorporatedny.com
www.incorporatedny.com