INSTALLATION: La Machine à écrire (2008)

Produced through the likes of a type-writer, the hypothetical Turing Machine, and/or player-piano this performative installation critically explores the technologies of the analogue and the digital—while juxtaposing music through mechanical recital.

This piece is based on a pneumatic mechanism within a feedback loop which examines whether the artist is controlled by the music, or rather that the music is directed by the artist.

Definition: La Machine à écrire

Une machine à écrire est une machine permettant d’écrire des documents avec des caractères imprimés. Elle se présente sous la forme d’un clavier comportant un certain nombre de touches représentant les caractères qui seront imprimés sur le papier.

Elle a été utilisée de la fin du XIXe siècle jusqu’à l’apparition de l’ordinateur et des logiciels de suite bureautique, qui sont aujourd’hui principalement utilisés. Les écrivains Max Gallo et Pascal Bruckner utilisent toujours des machines à écrire.

Commissioned by:
Mme Marion Tournon Branly, AA
Ecole D’art Americaine, Fontainbleau, France

Completed: 2008

Location: Fontainebleau, Paris, France

Size: 5 m2

Type: Performance / Installation

Medium/Format:
Mixed-Media / Video /2D / 3D / Prototype

Design Team:
Wendy W Fok

Performance Team:
Wendy W Fok, Sue Biolsi, Gen Tomuro (Piano), Lorin Torbitt (Electronic), Bianca Clayton (Video)

Posted 5 months ago & Filed under La Machine à écrire, installation, art, design, calligraphy, France,

About:

spatial / geometrical / mathematical / material processing

The endeavours of Wendy W Fok's research-based projects are dedicated to the creation of designs interlaced within the principals of procedural-based mathematics, logics, and material studies, within the field of architecture, digital media, and design. Her designs are substantiated through explorations between the cross-pollination of spatial installation arts and novel architectural innovations embedded within urban cityscapes.

Wendy W Fok, director/founder and team member of WE-DESIGNS.ORG, LLC (Architecture) and atelier//studio-WF (Art), winner of the Hong Kong Young Design Talent Award (2009), and a selected designer of the Perspective 40 under 40 Award (2011), has a Master of Architecture & Certification of Urban Policy/Planning from Princeton University, and a Bachelor of Arts in Architecture, with a concentration in Economics (Statistics) from Columbia University. Notably, WE-DESIGNS.ORG, LLC has been selected by Twenty+Change (co-curated by Heather Dubbeldam and Lola Sheppard) as one of twenty Emerging Canadian Design Practices (2011) in Canada.

Fok has an international background from Vienna, New York, London, Paris, Tokyo, Beijing, Hong Kong & Canada. Her art installations have been displayed in Dubai, Vancouver, Toronto, Hong Kong, Shanghai, New York, Athens, Venice, & Prague, and has worked on several international architectural projects, exhibitions, & competitions-- including the HKSZ Bi-City Biennale 2012, 12th La Biennale di Venezia 2011, the Shanghai Expo 2010, Athens Fringe Festival 2009, & Lower East Side Tenement Museum 2004/05.

Fok's interests are toward the investigations of contextual and content-related natures of fabrication, partnered with cradle-to-cradle material investigations that compliment scaled prototypes within architectural design. Meanwhile, her design methodology is to challenge the dynamic significance in structuring and mapping the ideals of art, architecture, and urbanism within the processes of [design | optimisation | fabrication] for resilient planning, material research, and alternative methods of fabrication with progressive aims within the built environment.

On her spare time, Fok is the founder & administrator of (C)ODE-(C)OLLECTIVE-- a collective forum for Grasshopper, Rhino, Parametric Modeling, & other digital media / design tools, which pose as an educational & developing archive site to formulate the critical utility of digital design-- an Associate Member of the HKPDA (Hong Kong Parametric Design Association), and Contributing / Overseas Editor for the a+a magazine, published by the Architectural Society of China.