The proposed installation for BAP! 2022 orchestrates connections between various disciplines, bridging art and science.
The project combines textile design, sound programming, and solar capture to reveal the solar energy and light intensity along the wall of the Cour des Fontaines through sound.
The project was created by EN BAUKUNST, a Brussels-based architecture office founded by Adrien Verschuere.
Combining art and technology, and engaging in dialogue with various forms of knowledge, BAUKUNST is committed to exploring architecture as a medium for both thinking about building (BAU) and building ways of thinking (KUNST).
In this context, the installation is designed to address one of the main architectural components of the Cour des Fontaines, engaging in a dialogue with the historical and heritage dimensions of the site. The wall's surface is covered with a device capable of capturing incident solar energy.
The upper element, a strip of CIGS photovoltaic film manufactured by Solar Cloth, allows solar capture by providing a flexible, light, and adaptable photovoltaic module. This element serves as the support for i-Mesh textile, produced for the Biennale in close collaboration with textile designers Chevalier Masson.
i-Mesh is a veil that reveals the trace of the incident sun on the wall through its weaving pattern and materiality, composed of a mesh of natural volcanic rock fibers. Echoing the ornaments crowning many buildings in Versailles, four artifacts located at the top of the wall transmit the captured energy through sound programmed by Julien Dutertre, which fluctuates according to the intensity of light and energy produced by the textile.
Like an allegory, the installation performatively reinterprets the symbolic codes and energetic disposition of its environment to make the invisible visible through energy.
