Physical Experiences and the Quest for Spatial Augmentation Masterclass

Our daily interaction with our environments is mediated through a vast universe of electronics, sensors and interconnected systems. The ongoing global pandemic has increased the human-machine-environment entanglements at an unseen rate, having a large impact on our daily habits and physical and mental health. These systems are not an isolated form of material media, but they constitute an interdependent landscape that shapes the material complex surrounding us.

Information is increasingly acquiring form. Design, art, and science fields continuously explore the merging of the physical and digital and are invested in the fusion of data and matter. How does this search for spatial augmentation affect our daily experiences?

The use of sensors and actuator systems has made it possible to create dynamic spatial structures of inhabitation. From the human enacting on the predetermined possibilities the space affords, these fields of inquiry explore how the space itself offers opportunities for meaningful interaction. 

Being exhibited at IE Creativity Center's from Feb 23rd to March 10th, the multisensory, interactive installation Synesthesia is a project by Severino Alfonso and Loukia Tsafoulia, as part of their research at the Synesthetic Research and Design Lab, Thomas Jefferson University, College of Architecture and Built Environment — a multidisciplinary praxis that evokes a discourse between design, art, technology, digital culture, and health. 

Formally, the structure consists of a flexible skeleton — a series of interconnected poles —  that carries the installation’s sensor-y infrastructure and tightly stretches its soft skin. A series of portals act as peeking holes and in blinking light patterns and sounds invite human participants to come closer. These portals are simultaneously the “eyes'' of the installation that in turn look back at the participants. Upon interaction, the participants’ eyes are captured and projected in real-time on the skin of this artificial body. Simultaneously, the interactions are live streamed in the SR&DLab’s webpage, creating an active exchange between the installation, the participants and the wider public and thus, cutting across local and extraterrestrial, virtual scales. 

As an atmospheric, soft interface Synesthesia invites the participants in a game of curiosity as it is conceived to activate different levels of participation and wonder at different scales since the viewer is confronted with its distorted geometry, its otherworldly form that contrasts the surrounding space. 

Thanks to collaboration with Jefferson University and IE Architecture & Design School, IE Campus Life is inviting professor Severino Alfonso to offer students a unique approach to the insights of such an amazing art piece.

Designed as a traveling experience, Synesthesia engages a variety of people, communities, and places. The inclusive nature of the work reinforces narratives of diversity and collectivity.  As an uncurated event, it instantiates a symbolic space of exchange. The installation’s afterlife moves beyond its physicality and amplifies the cultural interactions triggered by it.  

Synesthesia has been exhibited at the European Cultural Center, as part of the 17th Venice Architecture Biennale (May-November 2021) and at the Municipal Theater of Piraeus in Athens, Greece (December 2021-January 2022). Before traveling to Europe, the project launched MICRO • GALLERY,  an experimental space of the HOT • BED art gallery in Philadelphia, USA (February – March 2021).

IE Creativity Center | Website | View More Events
Co-hosted with: IE Campus Life

Contact the organizers