“Squid Capsule” opens June 19th at Materials & Applications (M&A)
Los Angeles, CA – “Squid Capsule”, an installation by the Los Angeles design partnership Layer, opens June 19th at Materials & Applications (M&A). The project will transform the outdoor courtyard into a weather island that isolates and amplifies subtle changes in Los Angeles’ placid, if somewhat monotonous, summer climate. “Climate change” is enacted here as a delicate drama of temperature and humidity, with air as the medium and water as the agent of change.
The capsule is composed of 40 transparent vinyl membranes hanging from the sky and grazing the courtyard floor. A field of fog envelops the plump tentacles, suspending the entire piece in a vapor cloud. Visitors are invited to speculate on the physical and visual representation of air. Water appears in its myriad states- atomized as fog, vapor, and mist, or in its liquid permutations, as condensation, or dew. The piece floats over a field of micro-inflatables upon which visitors can lounge as they observe the air.
“Squid Capsule” will be open daily from June 19th through September. Admission is free to the public. Over the course of the summer, the environment inside the capsule will range from cool & refreshing to hot & steamy. It will register changes in temperature and transparency between morning and night, and throughout the summer. Visitors are encouraged to touch, lounge, explore, and experience this newest installation at Materials & Applications.
In the community spirit of Materials & Applications, the public is invited to take an active part in the construction of this installation with Emily White and Lisa Little of Layer. Participants are encouraged to come to the M&A courtyard the weekend of June 5th and 6th, 12 pm to 5 pm, to witness and help install “Squid Capsule”.
M&A and Layer invite the public to the opening of Squid Capsule. The opening will be held on June 19, 2010, from 12 pm to 4 pm. The M&A exhibit courtyard is located at 1619 Silver Lake Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90026.
Layer is a Los Angeles based design partnership founded by Lisa Little and Emily White. Layer’s work ranges from buildings to installations to drawings made by robots. Recent work includes Art Los Angeles Contemporary and residential projects in Echo Park and Manhattan Beach. Layer’s installation “Fat Fringe”, which was produced through M&A’s MatterApp series, was featured on the cover of the April 2010 issue of Interior Design magazine. “Fat Fringe” will be visible to the public again at the California De- sign Biennial at the Pasadena Museum of California Art beginning on July 18th.
Materials & Applications is a research and exhibition center dedicated to pushing new and underused ideas in art, architecture, and landscape into view. Semiannual installations are produced in collaboration with designers in the public courtyard. The organization’s public design-build workshops, named Mat- terApp events, regularly invite the public to participate in the development of unique construction projects where the final outcome is the result of experiments and interactive construction instead of preplanned, centralized designs. M&A’s latest installation “Bitter Melon” bamboo trellis is on display at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art until November 2010, and was featured by business magazine Fast Company. www.emanate.org