The Concordian

Issue date: 3/18/08 Section: Arts

Media Credit: Topological Media Lab The audience ceases to become an audience by being able to touch, influence and see itself in the "Remedios Terrarium" installations.

Modernity runs through every corridor of the EV building. Even when the main hall is full of students, there is an overarching sense of indifference - even hostility - to living things.
In 2007, architectural project manager Alain Champagne said, "The only way you'll be able to grow anything green in this building is to put it in a terrarium."
That is precisely what Professor Sha Xin Wei and his team plan to do. Born as a playful response to Champagne's challenge, "Remedios' Terrarium" is an experiment in transformative space. The final product will consist of several installations assembled into a wide-ranging, but coherent whole.
"Remedios' Terrarium" is a collaborative effort between graduates and undergraduates from programs like electroacoustics, architecture, and fibre arts, artists, and researchers from the Topological Media Lab (TML).
The TML is best described as an atelier-laboratory that studies subjective experience in responsive environments.
"For the last seven years, the TML has explored the question, 'How do you make an event that is compelling?'" said Sha, who holds the Canada Research Chair in New Media Arts. "Our goal is not to create artifacts, but to encourage a dialogue."
In "Remedios' Terrarium," visitors will encounter both the technological and the organic: fiber, water, suspended plastic cells, plants, moving light, responsive video, and sound.
Interactivity and variability are crucial to the work. The audience ceases to become an audience by being able to touch, influence and see itself in the installations, thus breaking down the traditional barriers associated with art museums. In other words, people complete the terrarium by becoming part of it.
The title "Remedios' Terrarium" is in reference to Remedios Varo (1908-1963), a Spanish-Mexican surrealist painter who borrowed heavily from philosophy. Among other things, she was fascinated by alchemy as a metaphor for self-knowledge.
"Alchemy is about the transformation of dead matter," said Sha. "Dead matter can refer to the EV building, the exhibition space, or computer media itself."

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