Atomic objects

by Stefano Caggiano

No longer definite forms, but free groupings of particles that seem ready to change their look at any time. These are products of ‘liquid design’, the contemporary expression of a new sensibility that makes instability a true design reference point.

There are two ways to generate forms: by definition from outside, or expansion from inside. The first is the way of the sign, that congeals and circumscribes the formless pulsation of matter. The second is the mode of pre-aesthetic forces that do not attempt to contain, but allow inner contradictions to emerge. And in our liquid era, without any stable, recognizable stylistic sign, the latter approach seems to be more fertile for design research. So it is no surprise to find a designer of proven brilliance like Richard Hutten working along these lines. In his recent works like the Air Spheres Bench – a ‘molecular’ bench covered with foam rubber, designed for the Plusdesign gallery in Milan – and the Cloud Chair – a die-cast nickelplated aluminium seat made for the Ormond gallery in Geneva – he delves into the “grace of nature born” (Leopardi), in an original encounter between poetry and design. But Hutten is not alone. Other projects are moving in this direction, like the BB Chair by Asif Khan, and can rightfully be dubbed ‘atomic objects’, because they do not appear as ‘forms’, but as free groupings of atoms or, as in the case of the Brick chair by Pepe Heykoop for Dutch Individuals, as aesthetic ‘quanta’ that break the object down into blocks of figures and colors. The atom is composed of a nucleus surrounded by electrons that spin at a speed close to that of light, and like all quantum-mechanical particles they behave like both waves and bodies. Consider the blades of a fan that seem to be in multiple points at the same moment as they spin; the electron that orbits around the nucleus really is in multiple points in the same moment. In fact, were we to enlarge an atom to the size of a football field, the nucleus would be as big as a dime, at the center, and the rest of the space would be filled only with the orbits of the electrons. This means that the ‘solidity’ of matter, that indefinable property thanks to which we can touch reality, and not sink through the floor when we are upstairs, is nothing more than the sum of a great many ‘voids’. This is nicely represented in the elusive aesthetic of a project like the Sliced Lamp by Studio Mango, a lamp that intertwines its presence with its absence, taking on the same consistency as the light it emits. The volumes of the Grove-Revolving Trees of Studio Raw-Edges are also in tune with this approach. These are small ‘domestic trees’ in Fabriano paper and plywood, whose fuzzy density is similar to what atoms would be like if we could see them. But we cannot see atoms, just as we cannot see any quantum-mechanical particles. We can, however, observe their effects in everyday life, including the fusion between the web and the real world, made perceptible by objects like Chairpixels by Vittorio Venezia (prototype made by Meritalia), a real, not virtual seat that breaks down into its constituent atom-pixels, spiky in appearance but soft to the touch. A similar ploy is behind the Pixelated Chair by Studio Makkink & Bey, where the same idea of ‘electronic’ dismantling is applied to a traditional material like wood. Great conceptual elegance shapes the Soundplotter project by Johannes Tsopanides and Johanna Spath, where the dance of particles is associated with sound waves, thanks to a rapid prototyping machine that translates the sound of an instrument or a voice into true three-dimensional objects. Many things can be imagined thanks to this new approach to matter, including ‘physical-chemical’ design experiments, like Matteo Manenti’s Insomnia seat for the group Dorothy Gray, where the Aristotelian hierarchy of form and matter is inverted, turning the logical structure of the object insideout: “In practice – Manenti says – it is as if the cushion on the chair had exploded, or been absorbed in a mutation. Or maybe I just forgot to trim my chair so it became like this”. This reference to biological growth, like hair, is no coincidence. In Greek the term that indicated “form”, morphé, also meant “corpse”, because form becomes stable only in rigor mortis. Material, on the other hand, is rebellious and vital, so instead of ‘signs’, i.e. design phenotypes, in all these experiences we can see the impact of design genotypes, the emotional-conceptual impulses that arise from the depths of the anthropological situation to urge the appearance of what, for convenience’s sake, we continue to call ‘objects’, though they are actually temporary aggregations of post-forms in the fluid state, “always ready and willing to change form” (Bauman). It must have been such phenomena, like the blossoming of a flower, that Nietzsche had in mind when he suggested that we can think of nature as an entity based on laws, but by virtue of the same evidence, we can also think of the course of nature as necessary and calculable “not because it is dominated by laws, but because the laws are absolutely lacking, and every power, in every moment, reaches its extreme consequence”. The form emanated by matter may be the wavefront of an amorphous energy that gives substance to the nebulous physical character of things. And that calls on design to free the hot magma of possibility trapped beneath the frozen crust of solidity. Not to reach an end, but to get further away from the end in which all things that cannot dream must fall.