The A.P.M. (Ambient Party Machines) exhibition has just opened at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs et du Design de Bordeaux (MADD) before moving to Paris at the Palais de Tokyo next April.
By Evelyne Resnick
If you like magical agreements between electro music and visual effects, the work of two young French designers, Roman Weil and Tom Formont, will enchant you. Both graduates of the National School of Industrial Creation and the Central School, Tom and Roman brilliantly combine technology, music and design. They received the 2019 Audi Talent Awards for their research and design work.
Far from the ordinary effects of smoke surrounding an artist on stage and concentrating the attention of spectators, Tom and Roman invented, according to their expression “nomadic machines, dismountable and adjustable for festive counterspace”. As Tom Weil explains, “we don’t work on everyday life, but on excitement and the extraordinary”.
The spaces created thus play on the effects of light to the rhythm of the music: a luminous roller reproduces the relaxing effects of water projected on a wall. A circle sends jets of vapor at ground level or in the atmosphere … This creates a new spatial organisation of the event where the eyes, the mind and the body can (re)pose for a moment at the height of an event.
It is generally either the room design or the technical equipment manufacturer that takes precedence for the creation of ambiences, within the framework of skillfully subdued interior architectures. A.P.M. reintroduces the question of industrial creation into the equation with technical but aesthetic devices that can replace any other interior design proposal to reveal and fully liberate space, to leave room for voids while taking a role of animation.
Beyond the design of devices, this project is an intrusion into space, where festive objects, synchronous or asynchronous (compared to music for example), establish a dialogue between them, with individuals and space, creating different areas within an area. This spatial organization makes it possible to position humans in relation to the machine, in the words of the two designers, thus making it possible to alter their feelings about the environment, about their senses, about space.
A festive event, a fashion show or a shop window are often governed by a set of invisible and distant machines, where only the visual and sound effect counts. In contrast, A.P.M proposes to bring these machines closer to the public, and thus to create a multitude of more localized events. This possibility will be presented in more detail during the exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo with the addition of a few more interactive machines.
Practical Informations
From January 29 to March 1, 2020 – exhibition at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs et du Design (MADD) in Bordeaux, 39 rue Bouffard
From April – exhibition at the Palais de Tokyo in Paris.
For more informations, visit : madd-bordeaux.fr
