Crack in Space - a sculpted portal

Debuted a new category of home furnishings at the fine furnishings and crafts show RI, 2010

The artwork

An artwork that exists beyond it's own boundaries.

Granted art and design are generally defined by an object that has no function and an object that has one. Bauhaus is an example of where we have seen design merged with art. The Crack in Space is Sandy Knoll Works' (SKW) evolution of their language by creating an artwork that by its nature functions as a device but lives as an artwork, thereby eliminating the struggle between art and design.

By Combining SKW's artist, engineering and artisan skills, we created a limited edition of the Crack In Space. This Crack behaves as an artwork, and as all the artwork SKW has created, it has no purpose except to invoke engagement and anticipation. When one uses the crack as a portal it behaves as a functional device returning when finished to the art state.

The experiment

The Crack In Space is SKW's experiment in combining its next generation liquid surface and creating an object that is both an original sculpture and a device. When looking at SKW's modular approach to installation art one can imagine the possibilities. The experiment is defined in two parts.

The first part of our concept is to create a floating liquid surface that bundles the art and technology into a self contained artwork. The Crack In Space continually shows liquid surfaces crafted by Doris Weiner using the technology that has evolved from our early work with robotics in the Neon Playground II to our living walls. This allows the surface to continually change with a rhythm creating anticipation and engagement, unlike a static painting or video screen saver.

The second part is that the Cracks in Space is built on a sculpted portal, a device that has eyes and ears as well as you can see and hear it.

Sculpted portals

The Crack in Space is built on our sculpted portal platform. We at SKW seem to have stumbled on a new category of home furnishings, sculptured portals. The portal embodies 2-way sound and sight. We floated a disk in the air, added audiophile quality sound down to 60 hz and high quality sight and ears to create a multi purpose portal. As we were developing our Crack in Space edition we realized that we used our portal as: a portal to audio (browsing albums through iTunes), a portal to video (netflix, YouTube, etc), a portal to chat programs (skype, logitech Vid).

The interesting part, from the new home furnishing category point of view, it is an entirely new experience when performing these functions through the sculpted portal as when performed on the devices normally associated with them. For example, selecting and listening to your iTunes music from your computer, watching a show on tv, sitting at a workstation/notebook to video chat has a totally different nature when done through a sculpted portal.