Design Commissions
Rudy Guedj designed the graphic layer and visuals for the exhibitions _I See That I See What You Don't _See, Garden of Machines and _Fashion Data. He also _created the house style for Het Nieuwe Instituut's education programme.
I See That I See What You Don't See
The Dutch contribution to the 2019 Milan Triennial by Het Nieuwe Instituut uses the complex relationship between light and darkness, and between seeing and not seeing, as the starting point for a better understanding of the contradictory effects of that relationship on people, the earth and other organisms. The project focuses on the all-encompassing nature of the rational landscape, which at the same time manages to make itself relatively invisible.
The installation I See That I See What You Don't See employs the form of a panorama as an extension of the real landscape. "The four sections of the project slowly evolved from four ways of looking at the landscape," says Rudy Guedj. These landscapes are projected onto the wall of the panorama. "There is constant zooming in and zooming out, from a cartographic picture of the world to the scale of a room - like the famous film Powers of Ten by Ray and Charles Eames from 1977," he explains. One section addresses light pollution, another concerns global communication networks, and one is about the cosmos and how, in densely populated areas, we no longer see the stars at night.
Guedj always starts with the content of a project and arrives via research at a visual way of presenting it. "In this case, that was a modular form," he says. "A circle that can assume different meanings, such as a full or eclipsed moon, a star or a starry sky, or a bacteria or molecule, depending on the scale. I was able to use the circle as a module in all kinds of ways and on different scales, and to deploy it in different quantities. The star and the bacteria represent the infinitely large and the infinitely small. In addition, the module can be a light source or a black vanishing point."
Guedj worked closely with the architect Olivier Goethals on the production of_ I See That I See What You Don't See_. "We worked together to give the story a form," he says. "Editing large quantities of information formed an important part of the work. We could really play with the different layers in the presentation." Their shared goal was to give the visitor a sensory experience in the panorama. The successive brightly illuminated and dark landscapes, with light and darkness as the main visual resources, together comprise a rich, poetic, dreamlike and somewhat mysterious installation.
Garden of Machines
The exhibition _Garden of Machines_ speculated on a new ecosystem in which technological and organic beings learn to live together. Rather than presenting an array of awe-inspiring machines, Garden of Machines staged the technological promise, with a new, optimistic story of progress for the 21st century as an underlying theme.
"The Garden of Machines was built around a narrative highlighting the many points of connection between technology and nature in our daily environments," says Guedj. Placed in a decor that aimed to simulate several natural habitats, various machines and other technological items inhabited a surrealistic garden that visitors could explore.
"To shape the exhibition communication, a 3d model was assembled using renderings of plants and other electronic components," Guedj explains. "The resulting virtual space suggested a dystopian environment in which nature and technology were intertwined. Appearing at times organic, mechanical or architectural, depending on the scale in which it was viewed, the single line drawing was a way to suggest a kind of speculative digital nature.
Many of the machines presented in the exhibition borrowed characteristics from nature, mimicking specific movements or forms. Making a 3d scan of each of them using a smartphone application created an interesting tension between the resulting digital aesthetic and the highly organic feeling of the models generated. The uncontrolled morphological alterations caused by rendering errors - technical failures - were the reason for this. It was a way to show the machines through the lens of technology itself, and to play with that self-reflective process. Furthermore, the structure of the 3d models created an interesting analogy with botanical studies. Each file scanned contained a set of texture maps that were catalogued in a sort of mechanical herbarium, a folder that functioned as a map to the garden, a caption to the exhibition."
Fashion Data
_Fashion Data_, part of the _Temporary Fashion Museum_, examined some of the terrifying realities of the fashion system. The social and ecological consequences of the clothing industry's global production process were presented in clear data visualisations.
"Fashion Data presented the negative aspects of the fast fashion industry today through a series of facts and statistics," says Guedj. "These data visualisations were displayed along with an installation by Conny Groenewegen, a gigantic machine that was used to weave endless amounts of waste fleece.
Usually thought of as a long, linear sequence, the data was printed onto a series of loosely hung oversized posters, a way to turn the reading into a spatial experience. The line became the basic structural element of each visualisation, turning data into drawing, or vice versa. As a stable unit, the line was used to count and represent quantities while also transforming itself into thread, fabric, water or shade.
Wooden panels were introduced for each of the work stations that were part of Conny's intervention as a way to clearly mark what belonged to the data story line and what belonged to the step-by-step guide to the weaving machine. This way, both the data and the installation intertwined and echoed each other, highlighting the massive amounts of textiles that are wasted every year."
Education
In Het Nieuwe Instituut, young visitors discover that everything around them has been designed. They can also experiment with new techniques themselves. Based on his illustrations, Guedj's house style for the education programme reflects the fact that, whether designing chairs, clothes or computer games, designers always attempt to develop something new, even if that innovation resides in an inconspicuous detail or an invisible technique.
Rudy Guedj
Rudy Guedj works as a graphic designer and illustrator on both commissioned and autonomous projects. For Guedj, drawing is a way of generating storylines and typographic, architectural or abstract signs, and an opportunity to explore the many possibilities of the single line. Since graduating from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie in 2013, he has designed books, exhibitions, animated films and installations.