design42day

Originating from the fresh new technical-artistic group DanceHaus Susanna Beltrami and IED Milan, Body and Light this special project involves young artists and creative people from the two Milan schools and at the end of June opened to the public with an electrifying performance of dance and light.

150 students from the Istituto Europeo di Design Milan (three year courses in Interior Design and Set Design) having followed specialist training dedicated to designing light – coordinated by the teaching staff Paolo Calafiore, Gianluca Di Muzio, Mario Loprevite and Tommaso Zarini –  created light installations on key themes such as sustainability, recycling, creative reuse and the open system. Not only lighting designs but real, actual scenes made of light, of a dynamic nature that also transform the space in relation to what occurs there. Installations where light takes on the value of matter, scenery, space, architecture and art, calling to the visitors’ senses, embracing, leading, involving them and evoking emotion.

36 projects were developed by the young designers, each one with a story and an original artistic concept. They tell the story of man from birth to death, in his constant search for balance, his primitive relationship with nature and the erosive but also vital force of water. Others instead, with a play of mirrors, moving walls and elastic cubes tell a story that has yet to come.

Last 26 June, at the public event, the DanceHaus dancers and choreographers, experienced in the dialogue and contact with the most diverse and innovative current artistic and performing arts experiences, gave life to the light installations through new and original dance performances.

All the designs were realized with the coordination of the lecturer Gianluca Di Muzio, the Architect Caterina Malinconico and assistants Gisella Alfieri Sabattini, Federica Bosoni and Jole Lombardini.

ELASTIC CUBE

By Nicole Colella, Elisa Consonni, Roberta Guarnotta, Sarah Hamoui, (Interior Design students – IED Milan), the design is dedicated to the theme of balance and at the same time its opposite. The installation, which has a strong visual impact thanks to its particular lighting, was conceived to create interaction with the dancers from DanceHaus. The skeleton structure is a 3 by 3 metre cube, made from wooden beams. The facades are covered by a thick “net” of 5mm white nylon elastic threads. At the centre there is a trampoline with a 110cm diameter, making the installation more dynamic and entertaining.

The whole structure is positioned on a pedestal made of wooden boards, that allows for a uniform surface that gives continuity and fluidity to the dancers’ movements. The interaction with light is created through the use of 4 wooden lamps positioned on the four sides of the pedestal.

The light generated by the lamps only illuminates the elastic threads, making them extremely bright. To accentuate this effect and their movements the dancers will wear white clothes which will increase the contrast with the rest of the structure which is black.

Moving the elastic net to enter the cube will break the balanced effect of a very clean, linear geometry. Once inside the cube one can dance around the trampoline and jump on it freely. Below the trampoline there is a pressure switch, which will work as the dancer jumps, triggering 4 spotlights placed at the four upper corners of the structure thus contrasting the effect of the lamp with continually changing lighting effects.

BIRTH AND LIGHT

An idea by Laura Avellino, Hyunhwan Choi, Greta Cogni and Giulia Ripamonti (Interior Design students – IED Milan), the design explores the theme of the body, interpreting it as an organism that gives life to another organism, emphasising the moment of birth.

The installation takes the form of the female reproductive organ which is completed by a mirror placed throughout the base. The design consists of a first phase where the environment is reproduced as if the baby were in the maternal uterus, warm, welcoming and comfortable, created with soft materials which one can sit on. Here the lighting effect is created by a net of white lights that symbolise purity and on the walls a movement is projected to simulate water. After this idyllic phase the viewer arrives at the breaking point where one must pass through an elastic barrier leading to an environment where everything is much rougher, dark and difficult.

The viewer finds himself in a tortuous path that gradually becomes narrower and lower symbolising the difficulty in reaching the light: the huge effort made both by the mother and the newborn. The lighting effects are created by red lights that pulsate to recall the cruel aspect of birth.

Throughout the installation one can hear a heartbeat in rhythm with the flashing red lights, it is the symbol of maternal love and the beginning of a new life. In the final environment, the light is suffused, the only strong light source comes from a small opening at the end of the path, which one must open to be finally “born”. Once the canvas is pulled back a strong beam of light hits the viewer recalling the moment when the baby breathes alone and sees the world for the first time. Anyone can relive the moment of birth, something which no-one remembers but which is the fundamental force of life.

DRAWING AIR

Conceived by Silvio Bertacco, Margherita Bolognini, Barbara Cingolani, Magdalina Kadzhaya (Interior Design students – IED Design), DRAWING AIR is a journey that evokes the lightness of a breath of wind, joined with the essence of tea that recalls distant perfumes. It consists of a tulle wrapping in the shape of the trunk of a cone, within which a spiral shape develops, generated by fine threads suspended and anchored at their upper base, reminding one of a wind vortex transporting leaves and whatever else it finds in its path into the air.

Hanging from the threads are open teabags, as if they had been ripped open by the wind and the contents had fallen to the ground forming a new surface. Arranged on the transparent threads are drops made from silver paper reminiscent of water, a fundamental ingredient of tea, that create ever changing  reflections.

Three phases of light alternate in a tale of distant perfumes: the first represents water that is still cold and is formed by a white light, that causes a strong play of shadows on the opposite wall, enlarging and multiplying the hanging teabags as if they were leaves. The second situation represents boiling water, the scene is darker and the sources of light are like little bubbles, developing along transparent threads; finally the third scene reproduces the moment where the teabag is immersed in the water, the colour spreads and so the light becomes a warm amber glow.