Gold Installation Design · 2024
Pinnannousu Robotic Ice Sculpture Performance
- A' Design Award 2024 Gold Winner in Installation Design
- Awarded April 15, 2024
- Estimated Number of Design Views: 192,884
- Verification code 1508D7C503 · Verify this award
About Pinnannousu Robotic Ice Sculpture Performance
A slowly melting sculpture performance, where an industrial robot carves a large ice block to a computational lens that refracts the spotlight to graphics on the wall, spelling plus two degree celsius, an ominous warning of global temperature rise. The artwork juxtaposes the high tech optimism with transient global challenges that know no bounds. The intervention only speeds up the process.
Jussi Angesleva's Pinnannousu Robotic Ice Sculpture Performance represents a compelling intersection of automated precision and material ephemerality, positioning itself within contemporary discourse surrounding human-machine collaboration and the poetics of transformation. The installation captures a robotic arm engaged in the ancient craft of ice sculpture, yet reimagines this practice through the lens of computational choreography and programmed gesture, suggesting an evolution of artistic making where technological systems become creative agents rather than mere tools. The work's formal achievement lies in its masterful orchestration of contrasts: the warm, almost biological presence of the chartreuse-clad mechanism against the cool industrial void; the permanent metal armature against the inevitably melting ice; the precise digital control against the unpredictable behavior of frozen water. The dramatic backdrop, inscribed with luminous characters that appear etched in frost or light, introduces layers of temporal and linguistic meaning, perhaps recording the process parameters, environmental conditions, or poetic annotations that accompany the sculptural act. This documentation format emphasizes the performative dimension of the work, inviting viewers to consider sculpture as durational event rather than static object. The reflective wet floor extends the visual field while acknowledging the material's destiny—ice transformed to water, solid to liquid, form to formlessness. Such meditation on transience connects this technologically advanced practice to ancient philosophical traditions concerning impermanence and the beauty of passing phenomena. The industrial setting, stripped to essential architectural bones, functions as a secular cathedral where this ritual of creation unfolds with ceremonial gravity. How might we understand creativity itself when the making hand belongs to a programmed machine, and what new aesthetic categories emerge when algorithms encounter the irreducible unpredictability of natural materials?
Press Kit
- Unique Properties
- A slowly melting sculpture performance, where an industrial robot carves a large ice block to a computational lens that refracts spotlight to graphics on the wall, spelling “+2℃”, an ominous warning of global temperature rise. The artwork juxtaposes the high tech optimism with transient global challenges that know no bounds. The intervention only speeds up the process.
- Dimensions & Packaging
- Universal Robots UR5 robotic arm
High power LED flashlights
100 x 50 x 25 cm clear ice blocks.
Raspberry pi 5 timelapse capture and projection display. - Tags
- performance, computational design, robotics, new media, caustics, sculpture
- Production Technology
- An industrial robot equipped with a drill and a flashlight alternates between carving the ice block and illuminating it from different angles. The target geometry for the CNC milling is design algorithmically so that when the spotlight is placed on a specific location, the ice refracts lightrays to a predefined caustic image: “+2℃” on the wall. A timelapse camera records the few weeks of melting, and the slowly unfolding morph.
- Design Challenge
- Where the artwork was inherently a physical and material process, the team was distributed across the world. Working virtually with experimental physical research posed a major challenge. Also, when the work was unfolding, capturing it on film was also a challenge: every moment was unique, and there was no way of replaying anything due to the living material.
- Project Duration
- The project was developed and exhibited at Sapporo International Art Festival between January 20 and February 11 in the Snow Storage of the Glass Pyramid at Moerenuma Park, Sapporo, Japan.
- Operation Flow
- The artwork unfolds in two stages: First, a robotic performance carves the block of ice, occasionally illuminating the block from different angles with the flashlight. After completion, the block slowly melts, and is captured with a timelapse camera.
- Research
- Where the intent of the artwork was to leverage the innate qualities of melting ice as the messenger, it was challenging to find a balance between the "idealised" use of technology with this amorphous material. The computational design of the lens geometry expects perfect planar surfaces, but melting ice is never planar, and the carved surface keeps changing. Loosing control, and embracing the accidental lead to the elegant result.
- Inspiration
- I use advanced technologies to design bespoke experiences, in this case industrial robot and computational design. The aesthetics and the urgent metaphorical meaning of melting ice embodies the qualities I wanted to communicate with the work. I try to celebrate the beauty of nature, but also the human ingenuity in art that makes people think. The spectacular high tech performance, and the resulting melting sculpture should stop us to think where we stand together in facing the near future.
- Image Credits
- IMAGE CREDITS:
Image #1: ©Sapporo International Art Festival 2024, Photo by KUSUMI Erika
Image #2: ©Sapporo International Art Festival 2024, Photo by KUSUMI Erika
Image #3: ©Sapporo International Art Festival 2024, Photo by KUSUMI Erika
Image #4: ©Sapporo International Art Festival 2024, Photo by KUSUMI Erika
Image #5: ©Sapporo International Art Festival 2024, Photo by KUSUMI Erika
Video Credits: ©Sapporo International Art Festival 2024,
PATENTS/COPYRIGHTS:
Computational Caustics: Rayform & EPFL Geometric Computing Laboratory
Robotics: AATB
Technical Planning: Arsaffix
Supported by: Sapporo International Art Festival 2024
Research support: Part of the research Project “A Third Hand – Creative Applications for Robotics”, ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne, Switzerland
Funding Support: ProHelvetia
Ice Field recording: Jonna Jinton - Patents
- Computational Caustics: Rayform & EPFL Geometric Computing Laboratory
Robotics: AATB
Technical Planning: Arsaffix
Supported by: Sapporo International Art Festival 2024
Research support: Part of the research Project “A Third Hand – Creative Applications for Robotics”, ECAL/University of Art and Design Lausanne, Switzerland
Funding Support: ProHelvetia
Ice Field recording: Jonna Jinton
Colors of Pinnannousu Robotic Ice Sculpture Performance
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Grand Interview about Pinnannousu Robotic Ice Sculpture Performance
As it is with creative process, many threads tend to get bundled to (ideally) elegant solutions. In this case, I had been working with computational caustics before, as well as ran some research grants in looking at snow and ice in the context of new media. When I was invited to create new work at the Sapporo International Art Festival, these threads convereged, and given the festival's theme "Last Snow", the different strands convereged, and a sense of purpose came together.
Well, quite simply, this is what I do. I might say that I am Claude Levi-Strauss's "bricoleur", a kind of hacker that combines technological and cultural means to convey meaning. My whole professional life, I have explored the liminal space between virtual and real. transferring the qualities of the digital to the physical and vice versa. From interaction design point of view, I like to explore theoretical questions in practical context, creating museum experiences, art in public space, or other forms where the story and the medium blend together.
In this interview, I am writing the answers in first person, but it should be implicitly clear, that these kinds of works are ALWAYS collaborations. So, in this case, my long time collaborators Mark Pauly from EPFL, and Rayform were instrumental in calculating the geometry needed for the image to emerge from refracted light. They have developed the techology over many years, and I've always marveled its beauty and elegance. At the same time, the project brought me together with AATB, an artist duo from Zürich, who create art with robots for living. So, all these technical challenges had very human solutions.
That's a tough one. Since there's so many strands that need to come together for a one-off experience, you cannot reshoot and changing things indefinitely. Therefore, it was really preparing the building blocks, (some custom code running on a raspberry pi as well as few off the shelf time-lapse cameras) individually, and then hoping they will capture the one off event, that can then be preserved in documentation. I must say, if I had a chance to do this again, I'd be better prepared for even better documentation.
It is infinitely satisfying to work with great team: there is this kind of empathy of each others' responsibilities, but also caring for what everyone can do to help across space and time(zones). I am used to think through complex installations, where through conversation and discussion you can hopefully avoid major pitfalls, but also make the time when everything come together as enjoyable as possible. In my experience, the kind of unforgiving perfectionism at the installation site is detrimental to the quality of the work, as the professional understanding of the different qualities across the different aspects of the work exists in different brains. You have to trust that.
Simply by bringing those two together and seeing what happens :) In other words, the aesthetics of the work is exactly in this interplay of theoretical model manifesting in "living" material, where the latter brings dynamic and changing nuance. It makes the work alive. I got a chance to work with AATB, EPFL and Rayform through a grant from ECAL called "Third hand – Creative Applications for Robotics" to prototype what we wanted to build. During this time, we could experience the aesthetic qualities of this combination, and then extrapolate the final installation with this knowledge in mind.
It was hugely influential, but in retrospect, also accidental. When I started working on this, I was imagining the work in more kind of white cube setting. But since the gallery, Isamu Noguchi's iconic glass pyramid was dealing with the same environmental questions, the festival director's genius connected the function of the snow storage as an unconventional exhibition space that turned out perfect for the work in its ambience and functionality.
I have done lot of experiments with different visual motifs with caustics over the years, and with this project, also did a broad series of indexical, symbolic and abstract visuals. But in the end, the natural caustics need very stark contrast in the encoded message, so typography works the best, as we as humans are wired to read meaning from these abstract symbols. The ominous IPCC 2 degrees temperature rise warning is a global cultural artifact, I felt that this would be the clearest way to let the audience then decipher the physical manifestation of the installation. By looking at the work, we know what will happen, and can see it in our mind's eye. Then extrapolating it to the global scale, there's no need for further words.
To be honest, I have no idea. Since the artwork is quite difficult to exhibit, and requires substantial cultural support framework, I am afraid it will not have that much impact in the grander scheme of things. I am afraid that it is destined to be "preaching to the converted". Of course, that is the power of art: you can give form to something abstract and omipresent in a way that it can be meaningful in many ways to many different people. Simply being present, and existing is already a lot. ... until all melts away ;)
I am undecided about this, but my experience is that you need to have strong internal conviction about the purpose of your work. Without this internal mindset, you only end up "wrangling" with the system. With environmental awareness, it is difficult to be optimistic these days, but that is something that I wish would be the fundamental tone that artists thrive for. We live in a complex world where I believe we should embrace the complexity, and not try to polarise everything to be right or wrong or good or bad. I hope with my work I got to create something ambivalent that makes the audience think in different levels. This is what art in this context should strive for.