This project was postponed until next year due to the weather not being cold enough for them to do the freezing they wanted.
The Rochester Art Center in Minnesota will host an outdoor construction event led by Materials & Applications (M&A), a Los Angeles-based architecture and design research organization led by Jenna Didier and Oliver Hess. Participating artists include Matt Bakkom, Susan Lynn, and Mark Wojahn who will construct temporary forms and structures of ice on the Rochester Art Center grounds over the weekend of January 7th-8th, 2006.
M&A was founded by Rochester native, Jenna Didier, who graduated from Mayo High School. She now lives in Los Angeles and is the principal of a fountain design company. Her interest in the use and enhancement of public space led her to found M&A, a non-profit research space that explores the viability of experimental techniques and materials for architecture and landscape. While researching the work of Heinz Isler and his mastery of thin shell structures in concrete, Didier discovered the models he makes out of ice in his backyard in Switzerland in the winter.
Unlike typical ice constructions that use blocks of ice to build more traditional structures, or blocks of ice as a solid medium for carving sculpture, Isler's models take advantage of two properties of water: its fluidity while in a liquid state, and its strength in a solid or frozen state. Using a garden hose, a spray attachment, and rubber coveralls, Isler creates both beautiful sculptures and functional shelters in ice. He sets up simple supports in the snow, drapes them with a light mesh fabric, and sprays them with layers of fine mist until an icy shell forms. He explains that there is only one rule when playing with the transformation of water into ice; "one has to listen and obey what the water/ice wants to do!"
In this spirit of creative play M&A will recreate some of Isler's experiments and create some new ones at the Rochester Art Center in Minnesota. Last year's event brought together innovators from the various disciplines of art, architecture, and industrial design to produce stunning results using weather balloons and great skeins of lightweight mesh. In 2006, the experimentation will continue!
In these experiments, the pieces created will stay until the heat of the sun melts them away, gradually changing their contours and beauty as they go through the process.
