2015 » Spain » Student Section

Through the Crystal. The Kaleidoscope and the Theatre of the Mind

The Spanish students’ stand at the Prague Quadrennial 2015 has been designed as a “device for interaction” in which both the design team and visitors to the exhibition will be able not only to investigate and experience directly the relation between the space and human proportions, but also to note and enjoy the tracks left by this process of collaborative creation and teaching, through small displays, screens and projection areas included in and attached to the structure itself.

An interactive space envelops visitors, inviting them to share the fun and allowing them to travel inside the mind of a stage designer, following the various stages of the process – from the first sensory impressions to the physical arrangement on a stage. Each of these is associated with one of the four elements and is located in one of the parts / scenes into which the installation is divided: 1. Air (as an image of the preliminary stage of research and brainstorming, presented in the form of light, translucid elements hanging from the ceiling at the start of the visit), 2. Fire (the stage of selection and sifting of information, represented by a door that swings through 180º), 3. Water (the organization stage is built in the form of a musical score on a small ramp leading to a glass ‘table’ with small display stands) and 4. Earth (presentation and final exhibition in the space that takes the form of a horizontal chill-out area set up beneath the counter).

The stylized image of a kaleidoscope built from the triangular window included in the G38 space in Kafka’s home, and the materials we worked with (wood, gauze, sand and mirrors) function as the conceptual ideogram of a proposal that refers not only to theatrical tradition, but also to mirror neurons, the laws of chaos and the principles of collaborative empathy and link them physically to the pre-existing architecture with the attic roof and the wooden beams supporting it, which thus become an important esthetic feature.

The whole process takes place in a network, handcrafted and live (as in the theatrical tradition with which we wish to preserve our links), but coordinated and amplified by using today’s new information and communication technologies. This documentation forms part of the display, aiming to communicate the complexity of a learning process that, due to its very nature and initial conditions, goes beyond strictly academic timing and space to become involved in personal, artistic and professional life.