Feathered Edge: A New Installation by Ball Nogues Studio

MOCA PRESENTS AMBITIOUS NEW SITE-SPECIFIC INSTALLATION BY BENJAMIN BALL AND GASTON NOGUES West Hollywood, CA—The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA), presents Feathered Edge: A New Installation by Ball-Nogues Studio, on view July 26 through November 15, 2009, at MOCA Pacific Design Center. In this site-specific installation by the innovative Los Angeles–based design and fabrication firm led by Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues, over 21 miles of colored strings configured in catenary curves span the gallery space to form a dynamic sculptural environment. Curated by Brooke Hodge and coordinated by MOCA Curator Alma Ruiz, Feathered Edge underscores the artists’ continuing investigation of the convergence of digital technology and hand-craft techniques, as well as their interest in automated design processes and fabrication and in transforming space using unconventional methods and materials. The third in a series of projects that the designers loosely refer to as “Suspensions,” Feathered Edge, the studio’s ambitious site-specific installation, is comprised of colored strings suspended as catenaries from the gallery’s double-height skylight. Each string is calculated to a slightly different length and is attached by hand to a printed mesh using a method inspired by the traditional craft of latch-hook rug making. The Suspension installations evolved out of a desire to modulate space without utilizing solid forms. To accomplish this, the artists design both the installation and the means to produce it in an approach that they call “designing the production.” Recognizing the limitations of conventional architectural design software, they worked with a software developer to create custom parametric modeling tools that enable them to explore spatial configurations utilizing catenaries. The software allows the designers to study the qualities of the installation, then simultaneously calculates the length, location, and color configuration for each string that is required to construct their desired form in a specific space. In the previous two Suspension installations, Echoes Converge (2008) and Unseen Current (2008), each string was cut by hand in preparation for hanging. For Feathered Edge, the artists mechanized the process of coloring and cutting the lengths of string by designing and fabricating a programmable machine that precisely air brushes and quickly cuts each string to the prescribed length. In the artists’ own words, “We can now make something much more intricate that has more potential content. We can work faster and more efficiently in the fabrication phase so we can spend more time refining and studying the design, insuring it produces the desired atmosphere and experience.” ABOUT THE ARTISTS Ball-Nogues Studio is an integrated design and fabrication practice that creates experimental built environments to enhance and celebrate the potential for social interaction through sensation, spectacle, and physical engagement. To achieve these results, principals Benjamin Ball and Gaston Nogues work with unusual materials, develop new digital tools, and apply architectural techniques in unorthodox ways. The partners share an enthusiasm for the fabrication process as it relates to the built object both physically and poetically—they let the properties, limitations, and economic scenarios associated with a material guide a structure’s ultimate form while developing methods to extend the intertwined boundaries of a material’s aesthetics, physical potential, and lifecycle. Ball-Nogues Studio’s past projects include Echoes Converge, created for the Venice Architecture Biennale (2008); an installation at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival (2008); the competition-winning Liquid Sky installation for P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center’s Young Architects Program (2007); the exhibition Rip Curl Canyon for Rice Gallery (2007); a commissioned environment for MOCA’s Skin + Bones: Parallel Practices in Fashion and Architecture Opening Night Fête (2006); Maximilian’s Schell at Materials & Applications in Los Angeles’s Silver Lake neighborhood (2006), and an installation for the launch of Frank Gehry’s collection for Tiffany & Co. (2006). Recently they completed the interior of Edward Cella Art + Architecture in Los Angeles. Current projects include a wildlife observation pavilion in New York as well as art projects for the City of Santa Monica; Los Angeles County; and Mercy Housing, San Francisco. Their work will be included in the exhibition Contemplating the Void at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York, in February 2010, and in an installation at the Indianapolis Museum of Art in spring/summer 2010. Feathered Edge: A New Installation by Ball-Nogues Studio is made possible by endowment support from The Ron Burkle Endowment for Architecture and Design Programs. Major support is provided by The MOCA Architecture & Design Council and the City of West Hollywood Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission. The exhibition is sponsored by Dwell. Additional support is provided by Environment. Generous support for MOCA Pacific Design Center is provided by Charles S. Cohen.