the unswept table: a picture containing window, sitting, water, air

Graduation Project 2020

MIARD

Piet Zwart Instituut

Rotterdam

The project defines the importance of visual representation of various environmental hazard. The research concerns the modification of the surface of a familiar object for the acknowledgement of far environmental actions.

Seeing is the primary act for establishing knowledge and making sense of the environment in which we are living: what happens when human-driven environmental threats have potential catastrophic effects that are far from us in time and space and are hardly possible to represent? Where representation misses out, humans become blind, ignoring and neglecting potential violence on distant environmental bodies.

In Myopia, the text, I analyze how the change in the surface of a body is responsible for a reaction and a realization of the body's existance, of the environmental forces acting on it and its consequent modifications.

When dealing with environmental hazards, of both biological and ecological nature, these modifications of the surface are to be found and recognized on the Globe surface, on the human body, on the skin.

In my design project, I identify the kitchen table as the archetype for the incorporation of distant biological and ecological hazards and actions into the domestic realm. Through the introduction of food, nourishments and matter inside our homes and bodies, the kitchen table becomes the hinge between body and the environment, geography and architecture.

During the contemporary pandemic, the home became a space that is meant to include, embrace toxicity and cultivate it until its decay: the domestic territory is transformed into a paradox of safety and defence.

Domesticity integrates catastrophe.

I worked on the surface of the kitchen table to render it an active physiological element, able to modify its appereance reacting to the environment around it.

The surface of the table is treated with two mediums that are able to activate an interaction with weight, touch and light.

The table becomes a new space of investigation for the understanding and acknowledgement of the wider environment. The domestic and the global, universal scale are merged on a surface that brings together the people that are sitting at the table and the matter placed on it, as they perform together a choreography.

myopia : the publication

the kitchen table is rendered an active and reactive surface with the use of two different mediums

cyanotypes are photograms obtained with chemical reagents. when combined, the obtained solution becomes light sensitive. the treated surface interacts with the objects placed on it, their weight and the gravity acting on them. The surface incorporates and impresses the trace of the objects on it. UV rays activate the solution that captures the rims and shadows of the matters.

the obtained photogram is closely related to the atmospheric conditions of the space in which it was developed

the strength of the sun light and the exposure time, the duration and place of the operation influence the outcome in its appereance and faithfulness to reality

the photograms embed environmental residuals and events

after atmospheric and environmental actions have actively modified the surface, the residuals of the light sensitive medium are washed away with running water, to avoid the overexposure of the image

some of the chemicals remain captured into the fibers of the surface, allowing it to change according to its geolocation slowly, for longer time

interested in finding a surface that could give back an ongoing narrative, and express a reaction to continous iterations, I covered the impressed table surface with blue pigments sensible to temperature

every time the table is used, or something is placed on it the thermochromic ink reacts to the temperature, weight and shape of the matter and changes the appereance of the structure

how do we cope with change?

the visual ecosystem that the kitchen table creates expresses the narrative of the value of the vital matters inhabiting our world that are introduced every day in our domestic realms and in our bodies. the reactive surface enables the understanding of the weight, quality and importance of these matters