While combing through London Design
Festival's events page, I found out about the Prism tour at the V&A.
The event was described in such way that once I was done reading
about it, I knew less than when I began. It apparently had something
to do with London. I booked a ticket on the website and the day after
I was there 30 minutes early, charged with curiosity.
Prism is an installation commissioned
and sponsored by champagne brand Veuve Clicquot to architect Keiichi
Matsuda. It is located in an area of the V&A that was opened to
the public for the first time for this event. To get to it, tours are
scheduled every 20 minutes or so, and the visitors are led up to a
narrow, to say the least, spiral staircase. Then, you find yourself
in a round room, on top of the ceramics section of the museum.
The installation, hanging in the
middle, has the shape of an irregular prism, and each face has a
different colourful pattern. The prism works as London's hub: it
receives real time data from all over the city, and then the data is
decoded into animated patterns that react to it accordingly. The data
includes how many barclays bikes are available in certain location,
and how much energy is being used at 10 Downing street. The V&A
was chosen as the location for the hub as it is London's centre of
culture and design. The function of the installation is to connect
the contemporary world of data and information to art, craft and
design.
I believe the figure in the picture above is Keiichi.
The
best part of the tour, was being able to speak to Keiichi Matsuda,
the mastermind responsible for the project. This was really helpful
to understand the idea behind each choice better, as well as how the
final piece was achieved. Keiichi is always looking for new
challenges and innovative ideas, this is why he was excited to work
on this project. He explained me that 15 minds are behind the
designs of the patterns: each of them researched London and the V&A
to come up with a figure that relates well to the chosen data. Once
the patterns are put together they create a patchwork-like
composition. Japanese paper is used for the faces of the prism, as
its rough finish, along with the patchwork effect, gives the
installation a “craft” look, that links back to the museum. Five
projectors inside the prism project the patterns onto the faces.
To finish the tour, the visitors are
led to a terrace located high up, on top of the building, which
allows a beautiful 360 degrees view over London. It felt like reading
a book, and then watching the film based on it. Passing from a
virtual view of London, to the real one. The tour was like a jigsaw:
everything works perfectly together once you have all the pieces. I
was also really lucky to have Keiichi giving hints on where to place
each of them. And at the end of it, I really did feel like it was
completed.
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