LONDON.- Metropolitan Works, London’s first Creative Industry Centre, launches its £4.5 million building on 4th February 2009 with an exhibition of exciting new work by leading figures from across the creative industries, exploring the extraordinary potential of digital manufacturing technology. Digital Explorers: Discovery will feature exhibits including Antony Gormley’s magnificent suspended iron figure; Tord Boontje’s speakers crawling with rapid prototyped insects; and Timorous Beasties’ bricks etched with scenes from urban landscapes.
The Centre, designed by award winning architects Cartwright Pickard, will be the only place in London to provide technology, training and workspaces for designers, artists, engineers and other businesses to develop and realise creative and innovative ideas, all under one roof.
Located on the edge of the City in London’s Creative Quarter, Metropolitan Works Creative Industries Centre provides a comprehensive Bureau service offering manufacturing and prototyping across a wide range of £2 million state-of-the-art digital technology. The Bureau is supported by a team of specialist technicians and complemented by an extensive range of training courses, talks and support packages. The Centre will also offer a flexible and highly economical alternative to renting fixed term workshops and studios, by providing fully equipped project workspace, CAD desks and meeting rooms on a Pay and Go basis.
Digital Explorers: Discovery, features work by nine exhibitors. Antony Gormley, Tord Boontje, and Timorous Beasties are joined by Michael Marriott, Committee, Guy Beggs, JAM, Charlotte De Syllas and Smart Geometry, who used Metropolitan Works’ digital design and production machinery to develop new aesthetics or find fast production solutions.
Antony Gormley made use of digital manufacturing for the first time to cut the master for his figurative sculpture. Previously made by hand, the process would often take up to 3 weeks. Using digital technology was both faster and resulted in a more accurate model. His stunning iron sculpture was CNC (Computer Numerically Controlled) Routed from modelling foam, before being cast in iron and finished by hand. The figure is suspended from a beam adjacent to the CNC machine used to create it, within the Centre’s imposing machine hall.
“The idea was to see if the volume of the body could be re-described as a bubble matrix: a tight packing of polyhedral cells that transform anatomy into geometry," Antony Gormley.
Tord Boontje has designed a pair of stereo speakers crawling with rapid prototyped insects and flowers. As an analogy with music, real flowers and insects are 3D scanned and then digitally sampled, cut, mixed, scaled and re-arranged to create a new piece. The fully functional speakers are then created in stainless steel on the Centre’s Rapid Prototyping machine.
Designers Timorous Beasties are known for their surreal and provocative textiles and wallpapers. This exhibition sees them using a laser cutter for the first time, to etch onto the surfaces of bricks. Several ranges of tessellating patterns have been created including ‘Escapeland’ – (scenic) – Windfarm featuring people sat on grassland with a windfarm in the background, and Escapeland (scenic) – Urban Animals, depicting a city scene of foxes, telephone boxes and electricity cables.
Painter Guy Beggs' revolutionary piece Fallen Leaves is a three dimensional development of a painting inspired by the sight of fragile leaves trapped in a steel grid. Built entirely in nylon this work demonstrates the surprisingly delicate effects that can be achieved using Rapid Prototyping technology.
Creative studio JAM produced a piece inspired by the excitement and anticipation of the 2012 Olympic Games. Working with aspiring athletes, JAM asked each individual to put forward meaningful objects integral to their training experience. The selection process resulted in a collaboration with swimmer Daniel Fogg, who brought a training kick board to the project. A 3D scan of the kickboard was then used to carve a larger, more permanent version of the original using cutting edge digital technology. The final piece will be seen in a photographic portrait of Daniel Fogg with the oversized kickboard, at the site of the future London games.
Inspired by Hydra – the many headed snake from Greek mythology, designers Committee have used a range of artefacts including decorative objects, mundane household items and anonymous industrial parts to create a sculptural form. Each individual item has been 3D scanned so that a perfectly fitting extrusion flows from it in another material. These extrusions then twist and turn and fuse together in such a way as to hold the objects in space, creating an abstract composition.
Product designer Michael Marriott maintained his trademark theme of using honest materials by creating a carved wooden stool from a solid block of timber.
