INSTALLATION: Cerebral Hut by Guvenc Ozel & Alexandr Karaivanov

guvenc OZEL (Ozel Office): Cerebral Hut is a kinetic installation that works with an interface that measures brain frequencies and turns them into a reactive environment. In order to achieve this, we hacked and reprogrammed a commercially available device that can measure concentration levels and blinking, interpreted these data thresholds and wrote scripts that would translate them into motion. research on different folding patterns and geometric structures lead to the creation of an environment that can act as a vessel for movement.

As a result, “Cerebral Hut” becomes a game-space where the user controls the physical boundaries of his environment by his thoughts. As the user engages in activities that increases concentration levels, such as imagining movement, the environment responds real time and changes its configuration. “Cerebral Hut” plugs into a vein of contemporary research that explores kinetic surroundings and the relationship between technology, movement and space, but it is the first of its kind that conceives a moving architecture that directly responds to human thought. Consequently, it creates a collective architectural form, which questions the static notions of space and conclusive perceptions of design.

What if architecture could be form without form?

Liberation of form from form is the liberation of architecture from its physical context and the outside forces that determine its boundaries; a space that has silhouette but no figure. A kinetic architecture, by its ephemeral, seemingly amorphous yet programmed behavioral iterations is bound to “travel” between a multiplicity of such “contexts”. An architecture with a transforming design boundary with its outside world continuously contextualizes its context and content meanwhile disperses it. By allowing itself to be shaped by multiplicity of external forces, it gives form to its user and his/her environment. Form without form is not form without context, content or intent. It is design-space that temporally re-calibrates its relationship with the outside world, repeatedly and through time, either by actively transforming its physical and conceptual boundaries, or through translating its phenomenological perception by the user. That is precisely why “The Cerebral Hut” is content without context par excellence, as context is not a paradigmatic constant.

sP: What or who influenced this project?
gO: …

sP: What were you reading/listening to/watching while developing this project?
gO: Actress.

sP: Whose work is currently on your radar?
gO: Greg Lynn, Bart Hess, Daan Roosegaarde, Ebru Kurbak.

Additonal credits and links:

Currently on view until December 12th at Istanbul Museum of Modern Art, Cerebral Hut is exhibited in Istanbul Design Biennial “Musibet” show curated by Turkish Architect Emre Arolat, and is part of a group show called “Smudged”, co-curated by Esra Kahveci.

Cerebral Hut design, research: Guvenc Ozel, Alexandr Karaivanov.
Programming, mechanical design: Jona Hoier, Peter Innerhofer.
Installation team: Guvenc Ozel, Alexandr Karaivanov, Lena Krivanek, Peter Innerhofer.
Administrative support: Alexandra Graupner, Sabine Peternell.
Photography: Bengt Stiller.
Special thanks to: Greg Lynn, Gerald Bast, Klaus Bollinger, Esra Kahveci, Onur Sönmez.

Cerebral Hut is made possible with the generous support of University of Applied Arts Vienna, Institute of Architecture and Istanbul Foundation for Culture and Arts.

source: suckerPUNCH