Chinneck has been working on a melting house to be built in Kent, England, in the summer of 2014, but recently demonstrated the concept by constructing a two-metre-high wax wall that gradually became a pile of drips and rubble over the course of a day.

"Architecture and light have such an inseparable relationship and a building is rarely designed or built without consideration to the sun's movement around it," the artist told Dezeen. "The melting house is being designed to describe this relationship in a literal and theatrical way because the sun physically shapes the form."

He continued: "I felt that my work was becoming so computer designed and engineered that I wanted to create a situation that sacrificed this kind of control. I like the idea of these wax structures being taken as far as a computer will allow before releasing the fate of the form to chance."

Each block used to build the wall was made from dyed paraffin wax, cast to the same dimensions of a standard brick used in the British construction industry. The artist added sand to the steel casting trays, giving each brick a subtly different texture with its own unique imperfections.

He documented the melting of the wall for Art Licks Magazine. Although it was designed to diminish in just one day, it took longer than expected and Chinneck had to use a blowtorch to accelerate the process, highlighting the unpredictability of the design.

The house will be installed in Margate, Kent, next summer. Unlike the wall, it is expected to melt slowly over a period of eight weeks. "I like the idea of spectacle having a subtlety, so this steady transformation feels pleasingly calm in contrast to the bold concept," added the artist.

Chinneck's past artworks include a series of identically smashed windows at a derelict factory.

See more art installations on Dezeen »

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by Alex Chinneck appeared first on Dezeen.

News: Hackney studio Sample and Hold 3D-scanned a living horse for a new sculpture by Turner Prize-winning artist Mark Wallinger.

Unveiled this week on The Mall in London, The White Horse is a scaled-down version of a 50-metre-high sculpture Wallinger eventually hopes to build in Ebbsfleet, Kent.

Technicians at Sample and Hold helped create the sculpture by using a white light scanner to produce a 3D image of a racehorse named Riviera Red.

By projecting a grid of white light onto the horse's body and recording the resulting distortions, the technicians built up a three-dimensional map of the animal's shape. The 3D image was then used to make a mould to cast the sculpture from a mixture of marble dust and resin.

The horse was unveiled this week outside the headquarters of the British Council, the cultural institution that commissioned the artwork, where it will remain for two years before going on an international tour.

Wallinger hopes the life-size sculpture will re-ignite interest in his larger project in Ebbsfleet, which was commissioned in 2009 but stalled when the UK went into recession. The costs of the project are believed to be between £12 million and £15 million.

Like 3D printing, 3D scanning is becoming increasingly accessible and affordable – earlier this week we reported on a prototype for a desktop scanner that would allow users to digitally scan objects they want to replicate with a 3D printer at home.

Photographs are by Frank Noon for the British Council.

Here's some more information from the British Council:

‘The White Horse’, a new sculpture by Mark Wallinger, was unveiled outside the British Council’s London headquarters on the Mall today. Made of marble and resin, the sculpture is a life-size representation of a thoroughbred racehorse created using state of the art technology in which a live horse has been scanned using a white light scanner in order to produce a faithfully accurate representation of the animal standing on a broad plinth of Portland stone and facing down The Mall.

Commissioned by the British Council Collection, this major work will stand on The Mall for two years before becoming available for international display.

In 2008, Mark Wallinger won The Ebbsfleet Landmark Project, an international competition to build a monument at Ebbsfleet in Kent. Wallinger’s winning entry, a white horse, 25 times life-size, and standing some 50 metres tall, was designed to look out over what was once Watling Street. The White Horse in Spring Gardens is a life-sized version of this sculpture.

The White Horse illustrates Wallinger’s continuing fascination with the horse, and its emblematic status in our national history. The origins of the white horse as the emblem of Kent can be traced from 'Horsa' - the derivation of the modern word horse - a semi-mythological Anglo-Saxon leader who landed near Ebbsfleet on the Isle of Thanet in the 6th century. The White Horse sculpture relates to the ancient history of hillside depictions of white horses in England but the pose is familiar from current depictions of thoroughbred stallions and has been replicated throughout the history of art from Stubbs’ painting of Eclipse to Wallinger’s own paintings of stallions from the Darley Stud.

The Thoroughbred was first developed at the beginning of the 18th century in England, when native mares were crossbred with imported Arabian stallions. Every racehorse in the world is descended from these animals. 90% from the Darley Arabian, the most dominant influence on the breed.

The proximity of the equestrian statues of Charles I and George IV on Trafalgar Square, and the Piazza’s location only a stone's throw from Horse Guards Parade, make the siting of this sculpture particularly resonant. As does the fact that The Mall remains a processional route of cavalry parades.

Andrea Rose, Director Visual Arts, British Council, said: “A white horse in the centre of London is a wonderful sight. It sparks associations - ancient and modern; war and peace; rural and urban; sport and pleasure. I hope it puts a spring in the step of all who pass it on the Mall.”

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Congratulations to the winners! Michelle Watmough from the UK, Philip Conchie from the UK, Sarah Lyndall-Smith from the UK, Paul Sonnleitner from Austria and Tomasz Starczewski from the UK all won digital artwork by Yoko Ono.

Named Painting to Shake Hands, the five-minute-long piece was created specially for digital art platform s[edition] and filmed at the To The Light exhibition of Ono's work at the Serpentine Gallery in London, which took place from 19 June to 9 September 2012.

The work references a specific instruction from her book Grapefruit, published in 1964, where the artist produced a series of ‘event scores’, which an individual might or might not enact, as follows:

Painting to Shake Hands (painting for cowards). Drill a hole in a canvas and put your hand out from behind. Receive your guests in that position. Shake hands and converse with hands.

Yoko Ono has created conceptual and performance art for over fifty years. The exhibition winners will receive a file that can be downloaded and viewed without a watermark on a TV, iPad, iPhone and other digital screens.

This competition is now closed.

Five winners will be selected at random and notified by email. Winners’ names will be published in a future edition of our Dezeenmail newsletter and at the top of this page. Dezeen competitions are international and entries are accepted from readers in any country.

See all our stories about art »

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by Yoko Ono to be won appeared first on Dezeen.

The exhibition, called Erratum, will see Paradise Row transformed into a boutique selling objects produced by manufacturers around the world, under instruction from Jeremy Hutchison to insert errors into the designs.

"True luxury has no function," says the artist. "It is not something to be used or understood. It is a feeling: beyond sense, beyond logic, beyond utility."

Among the items for sale is a pair of aviator sunglasses that wouldn't fit over a nose and a wooden comb with no teeth, as well as a cheese grater with no holes and a stiletto shoe with two heels.

The artist worked with factories in China, India, Turkey and Pakistan, and asked workers to insert an error into the items they produced.

Also for sale at the gallery will be a pipe that can't be filled, a bent golf club and a skateboard with its wheels attached the wrong way.

Each product will be numbered and authenticated with a stamp of its provenance, detailing the names of the factory and workers who made it and its year of production.

This is the first solo show by Hutchison, who graduated from the Slade School of Fine Art last year.

Erratum will be open from 5–22 December at Paradise Row, 74a Newman Street London, W1T 3DB.

We previously featured a collection of useless objects that explored the boundary between art and design by removing their functionality.

Other art shows we've reported on recently include a gallery where it's always raining but visitors never get wet and an exhibition of paintings and furniture by architect Zaha Hadid in Madrid.

See all our stories about products »
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Photographs are by Jonathan Minster.

Here's some information from Paradise Row:

E R R A T U M® is a new collection of dysfunctional luxuries conceived by London-based artist Jeremy Hutchison. Each object has been made with an error that removes its original function.

“True luxury has no function. It is not something to be used or understood. It is a feeling: beyond sense, beyond logic, beyond utility. It is an ethic of perfect dysfunctionality .” says Hutchison.

Selecting factories across China, India, Turkey and Pakistan, Hutchison invited workers to insert an error in the items they typically produced. Each object is therefore the product of an individual worker’s design.

E R R A T U M® will launch on December 5th 2012 at a pop-up boutique at Paradise Row, on 74a Newman Street, London, W1.

Each limited edition product will be numbered, sealed and authenticated with the provenance (factory name, worker, year of production).

The collection will also be available to purchase via the E R R A T U M® e-commerce store at www.erratum.co.
E R R A T U M® is co-produced by Paradise Row.

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Jeremy Hutchison appeared first on Dezeen.

Located in The Curve gallery, Rain Room is a perpetual rain shower which lets visitors feel the moisture in the air and hear the sound of rain while remaining untouched by drops of water.

Cameras installed around the room detect human movements and send instructions to the rain drops to continually move away from visitors.

The water drips through a grid in the floor where it is treated before being sent back up to the ceiling to fall again.

Formed in 2005 by former Royal College of Art students Hannes Koch, Florian Ortkrass and Stuart Wood, rAndom International has created a number of installations involving audience participation.

"Rain Room is the first time that we've extended the level of our experimentation to the huge public space that is The Curve at the Barbican," rAndom International told Dezeen.

"Our other work has performed on a more intimate scale in terms of size and engagement, but what's common to most of our projects is that they extract interesting behaviour from the viewers," they added.

Their proposal to create a rain shower inside the gallery didn't faze the curators. "The curatorial team around Jane Alison has not blinked once in view of the actual implications of realising the Rain Room at The Curve – a never-done-before project featuring thousands of litres of water above a BBC recording studio and right next to a theatre and concert hall in a public art gallery."

The designers have also collaborated again with British choreographer Wayne McGregor, whose Random Dance company will perform short 'interventions' in the Rain Room to a score by Max Richter on selected Sundays during the exhibition.

"Working with Wayne and Random Dance has always been very rewarding, as his perspective seems to complement our way of working extremely well," said the designers. Earlier this year Dezeen featured their collaboration for the Future Self project at MADE in Berlin, in which a lighting installation mapped and replicated human movement.

Rain Room isn't the first weather-related art installation to appear on Dezeen – we've also featured a moving cloud of raindrops in a Singapore airport and an LED sign in a London park displaying yesterday's weather.

See all our stories about weather »
See all our stories about art »
See all our stories about the Barbican »

Photographs are by Felix Clay.

Here's the full press release from the Barbican:

Rain Room by rAndom International at The Curve, Barbican Centre, London
Admission Free
4 October 2012 – 3 March 2013

The exhibition is supported by Arts Council England. Rain Room has been made possible through the generous support of the Maxine and Stuart Frankel Foundation for Art.

Known for their distinctive approach to digital-based contemporary art, rAndom International’s experimental artworks come alive through audience interaction. Their largest and most ambitious installation yet, Rain Room is a 100 square metre field of falling water for visitors to walk through and experience how it might feel to control the rain. On entering The Curve the visitor hears the sound of water and feels moisture in the air before discovering the thousands of falling droplets that respond to their presence and movement. Rain Room opens in The Curve on 4 October 2012.

Kate Bush, Head of Art Galleries, Barbican Centre, said: The Curve has previously played host to guitar-playing finches, a World War II bunker and a digital bowling alley. rAndom International have created a new work every bit as audacious and compelling - Rain Room surpasses all our expectations.

At the cutting edge of digital technology, Rain Room is a carefully choreographed downpour – a monumental installation that encourages people to become performers on an unexpected stage, while creating an intimate atmosphere of contemplation. The work also invites us to explore what role science, technology and human ingenuity might play in stabilising our environment by rehearsing the possibilities of human adaptation.

rAndom International said: Rain Room is the latest in a series of projects that specifically explore the behaviour of the viewer and viewers: pushing people outside their comfort zones, extracting their base auto-responses and playing with intuition. Observing how these unpredictable outcomes will manifest themselves, and the experimentation with this world of often barely perceptible behaviour and its simulation is our main driving force.

Finding a common purpose as students at the Royal College of Art, rAndom International was founded in 2005 by Hannes Koch, Florian Ortkrass and Stuart Wood. Today the studio is based in Chelsea – with an outpost in Berlin – and includes a growing team of diverse talent. With an ethos of experimentation into human behaviour and interaction, they employ new technologies in radical, often unexpected ways to create work which also draws on op art, kinetics and post-minimalism.

rAndom International have gained international recognition, inspiring audiences from broad multidisciplinary interests. A breakthrough work of 2008, Audience, marked rAndom’s first installation with audience participation. Motorised mirrors disconcertingly respond to human activity in their midst in inquisitive, synchronised movements, with the viewer becoming both active agent and subject of the piece. Swarm, a light work of 2010, emulates the behaviour of birds in flight: the sound created by the presence of visitors causes the abundant individual light sources to respond in swarm-like formations. With Future Self, a new commission by MADE Berlin in 2012, the studio explores the direct interaction of the viewer with the full body image of the self, represented in light in three-dimensions.

Other notable commissions include Reflex, a large scale light installation that inhabited the windows of London’s Wellcome Trust for one year, and the studio’s scenography for Wayne McGregor’s production, FAR, presently on world tour. rAndom International’s kinetically responsive sculpture Fly was premiered at the last Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, while intelligent light installation Swarm Study / III is on display permanently at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.

rAndom International are represented by Carpenters Workshop Gallery, London and Paris. An overview of their work, Before the Rain, is on show in Paris 8 September – 21 December 2012. Prior to this they have exhibited at Tate Studio at Tate Modern, Pinakothek Der Moderne, Munich and Museum of Modern Art, New York. They have won a number of awards including Designer of the Future 2010, Prix Ars Electronica – Honourable Mention, CR – Creative Futures Award, Wallpaper* Award and were listed in the Observer’s Top Ten Creative Talent in the UK. Earlier works form part of the permanent collections at the Frankel Foundation for Art, the Victoria & Albert Museum and the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

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at the Barbican appeared first on Dezeen.