porto07 ebook

A B S T R A C T

ABC DE A. Find Three Objects: Bialetti Moka Express.Stove-top espresso maker. B. Vivisection: Toastess electric espresso machine. C. Demonster/monster: du Still, detail of water tank. D: Adaptive Strategies: Interior facade of installation. E: Adaptive Strate- gies: Exterior facade of installation.

The first project introduced me to the force behind 19th century industrialization: steam power. The dissection of the espresso machinerevealed the various components of the machine and made its inner workings intimately familiar to me. I drew the machine schematically as a means of mastering it and completed this aim by reassembling themachine in a different order that still allowed it to function.I became interested in the properties of steam: as a force to changebodies, and as a material to shroud, distort, alter our sense of space – all this from a barely materially tangible object. The second project led me to compare the structures of water andsteam. The idea was to make the machine issue sufficient amount of steam that the nimbus of condensation surrounding the machine wouldrender the machine invisible. The name of the project was MythicalBeast with Many Heads, a reference to the Hydra – ie. the espressomachine that was supposed to issue steam cloud from all its many openings. It didn’t work because I didn’t understand the mechanics of fog creation and the limited capacity of my machine; I was trying tomake the machine work in a way that it wouldn’t or couldn’t. Trying tofigure out how to solve my problem – the production of the steam cloud – I began to investigate the process by which water is transformedinto steam.During the third project, I abandond the espresso machine in favor ormaking a new steam machine. I focused on showing the process by which water becomes steam rather than merely the end product. The objectiveof Montreal was to get the machines working together. How could my machine’s outputs – steam, heat and drops of water – get the nextmachine, a typewriter, to start functioning.For the final project of the term, I inserted the machine into atypical architectural context. It became part of the plumbing infrastructure. The idea was that it removed water from the existing plumbing system and transforms it from liquid to vapour then back again to liquid. Water’s natural, unseen cycle is played out for the viewer in a sectioned wall. The transformation is also the result of forces that also generally go unseen, even though the effects of theseforces are powerful, most notably air currents. The challenge for the upcoming term is to translate this interest inchanges of state, and making invisible things manifest, from an artinstallation into a potentially integral part of an architecturalproject.Gregory Beck RubinDecember 17 , 2007

I N D E X

Course OutlineSeptember

Find three object / Statement of obsession

Vivisection

MachinaKafeSchool of Architecture, University of ManitobaWinnipeg, ManitobaOctober

Acadia Conference

CNC Ceramics WorkshopNova Scotia College of Art and Design & Dalhousie University Halifax, Nova Scotia

Demonster/Monster

Manufactured DevicesSchool of Architecture, University of ManitobaWinnipeg, ManitobaNovember & December

Grotesque Perturbations

Topological Media Lab and Dedale Studio Workshop &ExhibitionBlack Box Theatre, Hexagram/Concordia University Montreal, Quebec

Adaptive Strategies

Machine Installation &Architectural InterventionSchool of Architecture, University of ManitobaWinnipeg, Manitoba Appendix: Vivisection DVDGrotesque Perturbations DVD