Life in limbo. (Design Review).Lenticular lenticular /len·tic·u·lar/ (len-tik´u-ler) 1. pertaining to or shaped like a lens. 2. pertaining to the lens of the eye. 3. pertaining to the lenticular nucleus. screen technology is put to imaginative use in this diverting installation for an airport arrivals corridor. Despite the increasingly varied distractions of shopping, eating and drinking, airports have become modern versions of limbo where travellers exist in a kind of suspended animation sus·pend·ed animation n. A temporary interruption of the vital functions resembling death. in order to get from one place to the next. Typical of this limbo landscape is the long 'sterile' international arrivals corridor; sterile in the sense that it is both featureless and that those passing through it cannot and must not be contaminated contaminated, v 1. made radioactive by the addition of small quantities of radioactive material. 2. made contaminated by adding infective or radiographic materials. 3. an infective surface or object. by the presence of the outside world. Peculiar to the highly regulated and regulatory nature of contemporary air travel, such spaces are intermediate non-places, populated by world citizens in no man's land and defined by a constant one-directional movement towards customs and passport control passport control n → control m de pasaporte passport control passport n → contrôle m des passeports passport control . To try and mitigate the dreariness of such spaces, a group of artists was invited to produce site specific artworks for the new Terminal 4 at New York's JKF JKF Japan Karate Federation JKF Johan Kooij Fellowship Airport. Among them were Diller + Scofidio, who were commissioned to make a permanent installation in the long corridors of the International Arrivals Building. Their brief was that it should enliven en·liv·en tr.v. en·liv·ened, en·liv·en·ing, en·liv·ens To make lively or spirited; animate. en·liv  en·er n. and animate the space, but involve minimal maintenance, so ruling out a video or electronic project. Their response was to create an installation of screens using lenticular technology on which unfold a series of fictional narratives based on passengers suitcases and their contents. Thirty-three screens are evenly spaced along the 1800 linear feet of the arrivals corridor. Each screen holds one second of action animated by the speed of the moving viewer. The succession of lenticular screens builds into a sequence of micro movies, with the spaces between the screens forming time lapses. So travellers walking along the corridor inadvertently engage with a real-time cinematic narrative in tiny instalments. Each lenticular screen is an extruded lens in sheet form. Used in conjunction with offset printing, it can generate an image with both depth and motion. The ribbed lens sheet consists of hundreds of optical quality cylindrical lenses. A number of interleaved parallel images are compressed beneath each rib or lens. As the eye moves across the lenticular image, the lens refracts the images beneath it, revealing a sequence of images and generating a three-dimensional effect (similar to the principles of stereoscopic vision stereoscopic vision n. The single perception of a slightly different image from each eye, resulting in depth perception. in which the illusion of depth is obtained by superimposing two slightly different images). A sensation of movement is also produced as the eye moves past the lens and registers sequential frames of animation. Sophisticated and inventive, Diller + Scofidio's installation transforms the drab arrivals corridor into a journey of light, colour, imagination and dreamlike intrigue. Architect Diller + Scofidio, New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of Photographs Joshua Bolchover |
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