From Ceràmica Cumella: Shaping Ideas – an exploration of the artistic and scientific innovations emerging from the studio of Toni Cumella – to Frozen Relic: Arctic Works – a series of re-fabricated real world scenarios using millimetre perfect 3D scanning technology to stage and capture transitory moments on location across the world – the AA's year-long exhibition programme casts a wide net across geographies, histories and cultures to investigate the realm and role of architecture and its unique relationship to the school.
Head of Exhibitions
Vanessa Norwood
Exhibitions Project Manager
Lee Regan
Exhibitions Coordinator
Sebastian Craig
Frozen Relic: Arctic Works By ScanLAB
AA Gallery & Front Members' Room
12/1/2013 - 9/2/2013
Frozen Relic: Arctic Works is a series of re-fabricated real world scenarios by London based designer/makers ScanLAB Projects. Using millimetre perfect 3D scanning technology ScanLAB stage and capture transitory moments on location across the world. In the Frozen Relic: Arctic Works series these moments are digitally archived and reproduce out of context and out of time.
Whilst working with Cambridge University aboard the Greenpeace Icebreaker ‘The Arctic Sunrise’ ScanLab documented a series of ice floes in the Fram Strait North West of Svalbard, Norway. During the course of two expeditions to the Arctic the team captured a total of 26 floes in forensic detail, mapping their surfaces, analysing core samples of the ice and mapping their drift through the fluxing ice pack.
Frozen Relic: Arctic Works temporarily recreates this landscape in the AA Gallery in its natural material - frozen saltwater. Each piece is a digitally fabricated scale replica of the original ice floe which was 3D scanned from above and documented using underwater sonar from below. The completed digital survey model is used to guide a cnc robotic arm, which carves the moulds in which each replica is cast. The replicas float in the Gallery space, with eye level replacing sea level.
Photos by Sue Barr