12
October
2016
|
12:00
Europe/London
Unique sculptural installation in the running for a major funding award
- Sculpture examines the metaphor between the body’s infrastructure needs and the country’s
- Developed by Dr Craig Smith, Senior Lecturer in Molecular Cell Physiology at The University of Manchester
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A massive breathing human body with a wooden skeleton and paper skin could soon be arriving at major railway stations and airports across the UK. iBody – an iconic sculptural interpretation of the country’s infrastructure represented as the homeostatic system of the human body – is now bidding for a major funding award to bring the vision to life.
The sculpture, designed to be installed temporarily at major transport hubs to bring home the metaphor between the body’s infrastructure needs and the country’s – the need for energy supply, communication, transport and waste management – has been developed by Dr Craig Smith, Senior Lecturer in Molecular Cell Physiology at The University of Manchester and a team of renowned collaborators.
The project has already received funding to develop a scale model of the proposed sculpture from the UK’s infrastructure think tank iBuild and arts Tipping Point.
As well as charting the similarities between infrastructures and systems, the iBody sculpture will have a significant interactive multimedia element; the paper skin will act as a canvas for back-projected films, various mechanical functions will randomly engage with passers-by and twin flip-dot screens on either side of the 50 foot high sculpture will relay additional information and graphics.
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We are close to creating an iconic interactive sculpture that will engage on every sense with commuters and other users of major infrastructure projects in the UK
Dr Craig Smith
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As well as Dr Smith providing the science behind the human infrastructure system, the sculpture’s team includes renowned interactive mechanical sculpture Andy Plant, Chris Squire, Director of participatory and digital arts specialists Impossible Arts, Dr Mark Powell from the School of Civil Engineering and Geosciences at Newcastle University and on the EPSRC and ESRC funded 'iBuild Project', and video artist Jason Payne of The University of Huddersfield.
“Thanks to the support of iBuild and Tipping Point, we are close to creating an iconic interactive sculpture that will engage on every sense with commuters and other users of major infrastructure projects in the UK,” said Dr Smith.
“iBody will really bring home the similarities of our bodies and our world. We are very confident that the final funding hurdle to bringing iBody to life is going to be cleared in a single bound of the iBody’s massive feet.”
A video outlining the project can be found here.
More details of the iBuild Project can be found here.