For this year’s annual Concéntrico 08, the International Festival of Architecture and Design of Logroño, S K U L L Studio designed Prior – a functional sculptural object and color-filled playground. Incorporating the insights from neuroscience, the installation pushes the playground’s function as it acts as a tool for developing skills, learning and perceiving art.
Prior’s spatial layout is conceived with the targeted intention of stimulating different functions of the human physical and mental apparatus. The combination of optic and haptic sensations in a parallel scenario conveys the visitor, the participant, into an unusual situation. The result of the stimulation is a disruptive reaction, which initiates the organism’s adaptation process. Adaptation is a key mechanism that connects play, learning, and the perception of a work of art, and research into learning processes has produced the findings that the effectiveness of learning is multiplied when it takes place outside of the comfort zone.
The colors, in combination with the spatial scheme, provoke and unbalance the sensory apparatus. The human brain orients itself within space on the basis of priors, which can be conceived as points of anchoring that the senses pick up on – vision, hearing, touch, etc. Prior then forms the foundation for the development of a predictive model. A predictive model is a conception of a state of the physical world. Should a discrepancy arise between the conception and the actual state, then we refer to a “prediction error”.
The color composition of the work is designed for the purpose of impacting upon the sense of vision. The direct, full colors arranged in an irregular rhythm, one next to the other, vibrate to the point where the eyes are overwhelmed. A further, by no means merely imaginary layer of the color composition is amplified by the design in the form of a play with color filters.
The object is installed in a unique location made accessible for the festival visitors only this year. This autumn commences on the plot construction of a new technology center designed by Kengo Kuma.
Photography by Bet Orten, Josema Cutill.
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