_Spiration: An International Research-Creation Workshop at ENSAD (Paris)
May 16, 2022
Researchers and students from Concordia, ENSAD, and University of Toronto join forces for an international Research-Creation Workshop on membranes, air, and soft robotics.
Researchers and students from Concordia, ENSAD, and University of Toronto join forces for an international Research-Creation Workshop on membranes, air, and soft robotics.
May 16, 2022
EnsadLab - the laboratory of École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (EnsAD, Université PSL) - welcomes art and design researchers from Concordia University's Research Chair in Critical Practices in Materials and Materiality, the University of Toronto Mississauga, the Royal College of Arts, and researchers and engineers from the Institute for Intelligent Systems and Robotics.
The workshop will focus on the operativity of membranes, such as their protective, porous and elastic capacities. The team will experiment with bio-inspired materials and soft robotics pneumatic systems to examine the reciprocal activities and behaviours of membranes and airflows. How can this coupling both transform the materialities and, in turn, act on and with the air?
EnsadLab - the laboratory of École nationale supérieure des Arts Décoratifs (EnsAD, Université PSL) - welcomes art and design researchers from Concordia University's Research Chair in Critical Practices in Materials and Materiality, the University of Toronto Mississauga, the Royal College of Arts, and researchers and engineers from the Institute for Intelligent Systems and Robotics.
The workshop will focus on the operativity of membranes, such as their protective, porous and elastic capacities. The team will experiment with bio-inspired materials and soft robotics pneumatic systems to examine the reciprocal activities and behaviours of membranes and airflows. How can this coupling both transform the materialities and, in turn, act on and with the air?
How can such devices and operations be considered in terms of their plasticity, functionality, aesthetics and symbolic power? Combining practice and theory through workshops, conferences, debates and meetings with the general public, some fifteen researchers, designers, artists and engineers will be working together on new ways of thinking and acting with these objects and materials, which embody both the power and fragility of life.
