Slow Furl

Talk: Tuesday 3 July at 7:30pm - Mette Ramsgard Thomsen introduced 'Slow Furl' and its development, from concept to construction, and spoke about researching and developing interactive architecture work and its creation.

'Slow Furl' was a collaboration between Mette Ramsgard Thomsen and Karin Bech of the Centre for Interactive Technology and Architecture, Copenhagen, and the School of Architecture and Design, University of Brighton.

'Slow Furl' is a room-size textile installation that acts and reacts on its inhabitation. The installation existed as a soft and pliable skin that lines the Lighthouse space; the skin shifts. As guests entered and moved within the foyer, the skin moved imperceptibly at deep timeframes, creating new cavities and spaces, revealing slits and apertures.

The project explored the notion of flow. Rather than fixing the digital in a responsive relationship to the user, where every call defines a reply, Slow Furl finds its temporality outside the immediately animate. The thick skin envelops the space in a deep furl. Like a glacier, this robotic membrane, is formed by its slow action, reacting imperceptibly to its inhabitation.

Slow Furl is playful environment that engages the physical presence of its guests. Users are invited to touch, to sit, or lie within its soft skins. As they do they feel the slow pulse of its movements. As a landscape, a cloud formation or an ice wall, it forms and reforms around the body of its user.

Slow Furl was an INTERArChTIVE commission. INTERArChTIVE is a consortium of Architecture Centre Network, Interactive Architecture dot Org, Lighthouse and RIBA Sussex Branch.