Studio Roosegaarde
Towards A Sensual Architecture,
Interview with Daan Roosegaarde by Adele Chong
Images courtesy of Studio Roosegaarde
Dutch artist and architect Daan Roosegaarde wants to fast-forward ahead into the 22nd century and take over the world one futuristic installation at a time – AND he also wants to take you along with him.
Tell me something about yourself and what you do.
I am a young sculptor/architect working in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. I graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts (AKI) in Enschede and the Berlage Institute, a Postgraduate Laboratory of Architecture in Rotterdam.
My work explores the dynamic relationship between architecture, people and new media. Various projects have been widely shown at international exhibitions at V2, Netherlands Media Art Institute & 5th Triennale in Slovenia and published in IdN, Items and AD/Wiley. In 2006, I launched Studio Roosegaarde which is an initiative primarily involved in the research and development of interactive installations in collaboration with various material manufacturers, software programmers and other whiz kids. My goal is to create freaky and innovative environments.
Your first commissioned works were public sculptures which did not incorporate any kind of physical movement, when and why did you decide to work on ‘interactive objects’?
For me, the whole process of making objects is extremely dynamic - from the traveling, sketching to communicating and building. Somehow a work of art that remains physically static feels like a reduction of this process. People can look at the work and like it or not like it – to me, the options are more limited because the relationship is a passive one. I am a freak for dynamics - when things are in motion they have more of the capacity to change, to adapt to their environment and become smarter, more sensitive and perhaps even more dangerous. For too long, the concept of architecture has been a diluted to encompass a sum of walls, doors and windows. I have always felt a need to make work which could function as an activating mediator. After finishing large sculptures such as ‘22beds’ and ‘Spiral’, I began thinking about a new body of work and in 2003, I came up with the idea to create spaces which could adapt to human sounds and motion - forms which the visitor could continuously change with each individual input.
The Dune 4.0 installation feels like a cross between Star Trek and a form of mutated plant-life - would you consider nature to be a strong influence in your installations?
I am more interested in the relationship in which the body has with nature rather than nature in a birds and trees sense. I would like to attempt to upgrade nature or this idea of it. Dune 4.0 functions as a second layer of information and experience over the existing architecture of where it is installed. Also, it acts as a mediator between people, creating links
between individuals who are in the landscape. This idea of interactivity within a landscape is the basic ingredient of the installation, functioning
as a kind of ‘Nature 2.0’.
Although the physical make-up of Dune 4.0 is high-tech, it is always about creating a sensual experience in which technology is a necessary yet invisible tool. By reacting to your sounds and motion, the installation enables you to personalize space in real-time, almost as an extension of your skin. Within this experience, the visitor becomes conscious of his or her dynamic relation with the surrounding space. This way, there is a direct relation between the behavior of the visitor and the appearance of the landscape. The experience is completely ‘natural’ – natural, of course, in a 22nd century sense.
Where has Dune 4.0 been exhibited?
Dune 4.0 started off as a commission from the municipality of Rotterdam for a public work of art beside the Maas River. The objective is to eventually embed the upgraded version of the installation in the public space along the river. For a show at the Netherlands Media Art Institute, a first pilot was developed as a 20-meter, site-specific installation in the main corridor of the museum. This type of installation will be exhibited worldwide at media festivals in Beijing and Sydney. These exhibitions enable us to see how people react to the landscape and of course, how the landscape reacts to them. The constant dialogue between the viewer and the installation inspires me and influences the developments that ensue between myself and the software and electronic engineers of Studio Roosegaarde. Currently we are working on version 4.1
of Dune which includes some extra sensual elements for your hands. This
will result in a corridor of 80 meters for a presentation in Mumbai, India.
As a young person running a relatively new studio, what kind of challenges do you continually face?
Running Studio Roosegaarde requires a series of mental and physical juggling. I am constantly moving between artistic, pragmatic and financial approaches. But I love the dynamic of this kind of fuzziness. It allows me to materialize all the ideas more intuitively. Studio Roosegaarde is like a wild animal which needs to be tamed on a daily basis.
My objective is not to turn into the kind of artist whose existence is only dictated by the will of an art critic long after he is dead, but to operate in the now. I am interested in engaging with social and artistic issues that concern us today. Some disadvantages to devoting yourself entirely to your own practice include systematically having a small social life and a lot of unpredictability in terms of your finances. However, I personally think this is
a small price to pay to be enabled the opportunity to materialize the dreams
in my brain.
Why do you do this?
I love to put myself in a situation that I am totally unfamiliar with and in doing so I also force myself to discover an updated grammar of expression. I do not always know exactly how to do things yet that’s why I do them!
