Enabling: The Work of Minimaforms :: February 27 - March 19, 2010 :: Machina Speculatrix (A Machine that Watches) performance with Mira Calix, February 26, 7:30 :: Architectural Association, London.

The forthcoming exhibition Enabling: The Work of Minimaforms puts forward a series of questions: Can architecture facilitate new forms of communication? Can design enable? Can we construct models of interaction as forms of conversations? Using design as a mode of enquiry, the projects by experimental architecture and design studio Minimaforms explore these questions with the aim of opening up the discussion. Founded in 2002 by brothers Stephen and Theodore Spyropoulos, Minimaforms explores ideas of social and material interaction. The exhibition shows recent work including the (War Veteran) Vehicle, a collaboration with Krzysztof Wodiczko; a pavilion developed with Stelarc; a contemporary redesign of Archigram member David Greene’s seminal Living Pod Project; and Memory Cloud, Minimaforms’ critically acclaimed light installation in London’s Trafalgar Square.

Memory Cloud, named one of the top ten public art projects by the Daily Telegraph, was a transient light environment that transformed Trafalgar Square over three nights in October 2008. Based on one of the oldest forms of visual communication – smoke signals – Memory Cloud invited the public to participate by sending text messages that were grafted onto plumes of smoke. The (War Veteran) Vehicle is a mobile environment that becomes a communication vehicle, projecting the testimonies of the veterans who engage with it. The vehicle creates a public space of conversation as it ‘opens up’ its shielded envelope to stimulate engagement between the veteran and the immediate public.

A full-colour publication documenting the projects will be launched at the exhibition opening. Also titled Enabling: The Work of Minimaforms, it includes contributions from Stelarc, David Greene, Krzysztof Wodiczko, Brett Steele, Bronac Ferran, Andrew Benjamin, Marie-Ange Brayer and Roger F Malina.

Minimaforms will collaborate with composer and Warp recording artist Mira Calix on an opening night performance titled Machina Speculatrix (A Machine that Watches). Theodore Spyropoulos is Co-Director of the AA Design Research Lab and a visiting Research Fellow at MIT. Stephen Spyropoulos is Design Director for the online fashion house Gilt Groupe. Work by Minimaforms has been acquired by the FRAC Centre (France), Signum Foundation (Poland) and the Archigram Archive (UK). They have exhibited internationally.