Wang & Söderström — Rehousing Technosphere
ABOUT THE PROJECT:
Rehousing Technosphere explores an adaptive environment in the distant future, teeming with life. Through a richly textured and vividly coloured 3D animated world, Wang & Söderström have explored a symbiosis of organic and technological matter – resulting in a landscape that is both alien yet familiar. Mirroring our current age where digital and physical worlds are together forming new ecosystems, Rehousing Technosphere introduces a more nuanced notion of life and the living. Combining visuals and sound, the piece aims to stoke a sense of curiosity in the viewer, poetically providing an opportunity for introspective analysis and association.
Material and dimensions:
3D animation, sound.
Year:
2022
PHOTOGRAPHY BY:
Anders Sune Berg
VIDEOGRAPHY BY:
Benjamin Lund
LONG DESCRIPTION:
Rehousing Technosphere was born out of a larger exhibition, and later book by Wang & Söderström titled ‘Royal Chambers – Home as Host, Host as Home’. The five works produced for the exhibition delve into the role of our planet as a host for humans and billions of other life-forms, while concurrently exploring our bodies own role as host for billions of microbes and bacteria. Rehousing Technosphere investigates the physical and technological remnants of humans as hosts, speculating on how life on earth could adapt and evolve once we are gone. Working alongside sound artist Samad Bougalam, the 3D animated film plays as an homage to the underwater fauna documentaries of French filmmaker Jean Painleve. Much like Painleve’s work, extended scenes allow a poetic sense of movement as life-forms interact. Texturally rich and full of colour, living organisms have re-purposed the remnants of human centred society, forming a post-human landscape full of movement and constant change.
DESIGNER BIO:
Wang & Söderström
Anny Wang
Artist and designer, born 1990.
Tim Söderström
Artist and architect, born 1988.
With their studio sitting between the sea and the city just to the south of Copenhagen, the work of Wang & Söderström builds bridges between the human body and nature, the tangible and the digital. Oscillating between physical and digital mediums, they aim to bring a sensuality to a body of work that combines nature and technology, with outcomes that explore a symbiosis between the body, our senses and the planet. While animation allows their abstract visions to come alive through movement and notions of light and gravity, the use of 3D printing technology transforms their digital approach into physical creations – linking their work back to earlier studies in design and architecture. The work of Wang & Söderström challenges pre-conceived notions of separation between the physical and digital, instead placing a focus on how each can stimulate and enhance the other.
EDUCATION:
Tim Söderström
2015: The Royal Danish Academy, School of Architecture, Copenhagen, Denmark.
Anny Wang
2014: HDK, Academy of Design and Crafts, University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg, Sweden.
GRANTS AND HONOURS:
2023: Publication, ‘Royal Chambers’, Arvinius + Orfeus Publishing.
2022: Three-year Working Grant, Danish Arts Foundation, Denmark.
2022: Grant, Danmarks Nationalbanks Jubilæumsfond af 1968, Denmark.
2021: Working Grant, Danish Arts Foundation, Denmark.
2020: Winner, Public Award, Emerging Designer of the Year, Dezeen Awards, International.
2020: Finalist, Still Image and Nordic Award, Lumen Art Prize, International.
2020: Working Grant, Danish Arts Foundation, Denmark.
EXHIBITIONS:
2023: Group Exhibition, Food Age, The Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Rome, Italy.
2023: Group Exhibition, The Biennale for Craft and Design, Copenhagen, Denmark.
2023: Group Exhibition, Generation WHY, Risør Kunstpark, Risør, Norway.
2022: Solo Exhibition, Royal Chambers – Home as Host, Host as Home, inter.pblc, Copenhagen, Denmark.
2022: Group Exhibition, Weird Sensation Feels Good, The Design Museum, London, England.
2022: Group Exhibition, Watch and Chill, MMCA National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, South Korea.
2022: Group Exhibition, Mino Soil – Transfigurations of Clay, Karimoku Commons, Tokyo, Japan.
2021: Group Exhibition, The Roaring Twenties, Museum Kranenburgh, Bergen, Netherlands.
2021: Group Exhibition, Sustainable Societies for the Future, Malmo Konstmuseum, Malmo Sweden.
COLLECTIONS:
2021: Permanent Collection, Malmo Art Museum, Malmo, Sweden.
2020: Permanent Collection, Rohsska Museum, Gothenburg, Sweden.
COMISSIONS:
2020: Permanent Digital Installation, Danish Architecture Center, Copenhagen, Denmark.
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