Helena Wee
Tecton Colony
Tecton is the name of an architectural firm whose architect's included Berthold Lubetkin among others. They were responsible for designing the Penguin Pool at London Zoo. I found pictures of the penguin pool online and used or manipulated the pictures choosing parts suggesting organisms and life and used these to create animations which I then converted to a primitive format called animated gif. The pieces making up this installation are lenticular prints which move when a visitor's viewing angle changes. Parts of the pieces are suggestive of land, sea and air creatures or plants. The arrangement is that of a wave, a spiral, an ear perhaps. If considering it as DNA it would be a single strand, the other strand being created by the viewer moving around the work. When the visitor's viewing angle changes the prints move and it sometimes seems as if there is something living below the surface of the pieces. The work can only be completed with the interaction of the viewer. The back of the cards are blank suggesting these organisms can only be seen in two dimensions. The pieces themselves are shaped like small Tetris computer game blocks and seem to be emerging from the floor. They look like buildings and windows at the same time. Modernist influences are here reworked to produce something less cold and formalist, and more organic and ephemeral.