Chronobiology
& Art
The Centre for Chronobiology
UPK Basel has been involved as consultant to a number of unusual projects:
DIURNISME - PHILIPPE
RAHM
Musée National
d’Art Moderne Centre Pompidou
Airs de Paris Group show April 25 - August 15, 2007
Curators : Alfred Pacquement - Art : Christine Macel et Daniel Birnbaum -
Design, Paysage, Urbanisme et Architecture : Valérie Guillaume
The introduction of street
lighting in the city during the 19- century was at the origin of one the most
important social and political revolution of the urban practice and of the
form of the city. The ambition was demiurgic: to make day during the night.
The street lighting caused new urban typologies (the boulevard for example)
but was also the cause of new behaviors, those of the noctambulism, sauntering
the evening on the boulevards, dancing in the balls. It is an ambition of
the same order that we want to produce today but more contemporary, more ambiguous:
that to create the night during the day. Our project is that to reinvent the
night in this continuous artificial day, producing the night during the day,
physically. It’s a perverted answer to the perpetual day created by
modernity, Internet and contemporary globalization. After the ”Noctambulisme”
we would like to invent the “Diurnisme”, using a yellow bright
light which wavelengths, upper than 600 nanometers, are perceived by the body
through the melatonin rhythm as a true night. The room becomes a paradox between
the visible and the invisible: a night which looks like a bright day.
Photo: © photo Adam
Rzepka, Centre Pompidou
SUBTILE UMWELTEINFLÜSSE AUF STIMMUNG, SCHLAF UND WACHHEIT
Offener Workshop und Podiumsdiskussion
im Kunsthaus Graz am 20. Oktober 2006.
Michael Terman, Department
of Psychiatry, Columbia University/New York in einer Diskussion mit Anna Wirz-Justice,
Zentrum für Chronobiologie, Psychiatrische Universitätsklinik/Basel,
Michael Lehofer, Medizinische Universität/Graz und Colin Fournier,
Architekt/London.
Die TeilnehmerInnen an
dieser Podiumsdiskussion werden zwei grundsätzliche Umweltfaktoren durchleuchten,
die sich zur Verbesserung unseres Lebens, unserer Leistungsfähigkeit
im Berufsleben und unseres Wohlbefindens in einfacher Weise manipulieren lassen:
Licht und die Ausgewogenheit des Anteils negativer Luftionen.
Sachgerechtes Beleuchtungsdesign
und entsprechende (Zeit-)Planung sind keine belanglosen Themen, da die gegenwärtige
architektonische und innenarchitektonische Praxis für gewöhnlich
am Ziel vorbeischießt. Die Ausgewogenheit des Anteils negativer Luftionen
ist ein nicht wahrnehmbarer aber umso relevanterer Umweltfaktor, der sich
auch zu unserem Wohle manipulieren lässt. Die DiskussionsteilnehmerInnen
werden aus einer medizinischen/psychiatrischen Perspektive heraus Richtlinien
diskutieren.
Kunsthaus
Graz
Panel Discussion with
(from l to r) Michael Lehofer (Medizinische Universität Graz), Colin
Fournier (architect Kunsthaus Graz, University College London), Anna Wirz-Justice
(Psychiatric University Clinics Basel), Michael Terman (Columbia University
NY).
Philippe Rahm Polarized
Kunsthaus (PDF-File)
ARCHITECTURE INVISIBLE
- PHILIPPE RAHM
Various installations to visualize the non-monumental, "invisible" elements of architecture.
Find out more about this art & science project: pdf-file (french)
click thumbnail to see full-size picture
MELATONIN ROOM
Melatonin Room
is a physiological architecture which acts on the space itself by transforming
its electro-magnetic make-up. This room is defined as a space of hormonal
stimulation. Two climates are produced, turn by turn. The first is defined
by the emission of an electroma-gnetic radiation at 509 nm, at an intensity
of 2000 lux, which eliminates the production of melatonin by the pineal gland.
When secreted, this hormone provides information associated with tiredness
and sleep. The space becomes a physically motiva-ting place, which is also
chemically stimulating. The second climate is a dissemination of ultraviolet
rays which, on the contrary, stimulate the production of melatonin. Melatonin
Room is a space without representation, which reduces to a maximum the medium
between the emitter and the receptor, and acts on the chemical mechanisms
of things between each other. It works on the new forms of communication created
by the biotechnologies and by genetics, together with the analogical, the
poetic, the aesthetic and the rhetorical.
Décosterd &
Rahm, associés
A very different, very
provocative installation on the ways in which technology, art and architecture
are merging is offered in ''Melatonin Room, 2001,'' by a team of Swiss architect
Jean-Gilles Decosterd and Philippe Rahm. To understand what's happening it's
necessary to know that melatonin regulates levels of alertness in the human
body. A high level induces sleepiness, a low level greater alertness. The
work consists simply of two small rooms into which a visitor may crawl.One
of them contains bright green light, which purportedly lowers the level of
melatonin in the body. The other bathes the visitor in soft blue light, which
purportedly raises the level of melatonin. Such ''physiological architecture,''
as the team calls these rooms, explores the ways environments can change consciousness.
Whether the effects can be felt or not -- this visitor didn't feel them --
it's a conceptually fascinating proposition.
(c) SAN JOSE MERCURY NEWS
Sunday, March 11, 2001
Take a look at the website of Décosterd & Rahm associés:
www.philipperahm.com/
Art in technological times,
Installation
SFMOMA (Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, USA)
"Hormonarium"
Light Room in the Swiss Pavillon, Venice Biennale of Architecture 2002
(picture: J.-M. Landecy)
download the catalogue
ACTIMETRY
Science in culture: Rhythms and reflections life represented in architecture by the artist Andreas Horlitz.
Read the Nature article Anreas Horlitz monograph
click thumbnail to see
full-size picture
left and middle panels: Project in the Gerling Insurance Building in Düsseldorf.
Seven years of actimetry from a single individual transferred to a 25 metre
neon- lit round steel column.
right panel: Project in the WWK Insurance Building in Munich.
Metal and glass light
panels of actimetry throughout the ages of man: from a 6 month old baby, 4
and 8 year old children, a teenager, student, pregnant woman, 2 shiftworkers,
a housewife, an office worker, a middle-aged jet-lagged manager, and 60, 83
and 95 year old subjects.
