To enhance the experience for music lovers and dancers, the stage and lighting design for Zhaodai on Leave 2024 will undergo a comprehensive upgrade. In this issue, we have specially invited the stage design team - Culm-Innate × Solar Punk Studio, a space and installation design studio, to share the creativity and inspiration behind this stage design, as well as their own "Tracks for Travel."
Culm-Innate × Solar Punk Studio, an international green design cooperative founded by Holland, Andrei, and Ngan, is dedicated to promoting sustainable alternatives through architectural art and research. Their stage designs blend sculptural and architectural elements, creating inspiring objects and spaces that connect people with nature. This approach enhances the use of sustainable materials and minimizes industrial components. While others may see these elements as conflicting, they find harmony and showcase natural aesthetics through modern methods.
For this Zhaodai, they skillfully applied advanced mathematical concepts such as hypercubes and multi-dimensional cubes, combined with carefully selected materials like steel connectors, bamboo poles, and plywood, to create a stage that is both stable and artistic. By perfectly merging these innovations and inspirations, Culm-Innate × Solar Punk Studio will present a unique visual experience for everyone.
Now, let's step into the creative world of Culm-Innate × Solar Punk Studio and start our conversation!
BAIHUI:Q1: Friends from Culm-Innate x Solar Punk Studio, welcome to our interview! Take us back to the initial stage of designing the stage. When you first sketched out the blueprint in your minds, what creative ideas and inspirations emerged for this significant stage in China?
Culm-Innate x Solar Punk Studio:
We went through a variety of design concepts in the beginning but eventually settled on two key mathematical concepts that we felt match the individualism and aesthetic of Zhao Dai audiences. For the macro arrangement of the space, we applied the mathematical concept of polycubes, which can be understood as the three-dimensional polyomes that you might know from the famous game of Tetris. This concept is part of the mathematical field of object packing. Once we got the global arrangement of our polycubes, we implemented our second mathematical concept of a tesseract or better known as the hypercube, which mathematicians use to visually conceptualize the four-dimensional world, much like the Klein bottleneck. As the music allows us to feel beyond the mundane three-dimensional space, the "hypercubes" can further help the audience grasp what lies beyond the perception of our eyes.
BAIHUI:Your design work has always centered around sustainability and environmental consciousness. What are your views on sustainable design? How have you incorporated these principles into the "Zhaodai On Leave" stage?
Culm-Innate x Solar Punk Studio:
To make our designs greener, both the materiality and the methodology are imperative to consider. Both Culm-Innate and Solar Punk studios favour bamboo as the material of choice. A rapidly growing giant grass with strength comparable to steel makes it a challenging, yet a fun material to build with. We love to work with round bamboo poles, which unlike most construction materials, undergo very minimal augmentation since its original form when harvested. Bamboo is hollow, not perfectly straight, and doesn't have a consistent width, forcing the design to implement careful decisions. We embrace these challenges and celebrate the wabi sabi nature of this material. The ephemeral structure asks for a modular system, that considers fast assembly and disassembly, and the re-use of the material in the future. For this, we join bamboo pieces together with metal hubs made out of steel, which also fuses the vernacular bamboo with an industrial aesthetic, that goes along with the music and overall essence of Zhao Dai.
BAIHUI:What has your daily routine been like during the stage setup? Could you describe the general process of your construction work? Have there been any interesting or unusual incidents?
Culm-Innate x Solar Punk Studio:
Working in a new place is always challenging as you are unfamiliar with the building team and local suppliers. We've been pleasantly surprised by the diligence and attention to detail of our contractor team, who made the build much smoother. Despite the language barrier we managed to navigate through the construction process pretty effortlessly, which goes to show how excellent the workers are. We even learnt a bunch of words in Chinese to connect with the team! The work is tough and the days are long, but we have been enjoying the whole process and seeing how the setup starts to look more and more like the 3D model we made is both rewarding and motivating.
BAIHUI:Can you introduce us to the final stage setup you plan to present? Which part of the design is your favorite, and why?
Culm-Innate x Solar Punk Studio:
I think we are most excited about the sculptures we made. The tilted hypercubes with radiating light can be seen as shards of the polycubes that flew away from the main structure and landed on the beach.
BAIHUI:Lastly, we have our "tracks for travel" segment. Imagine the journey to "Zhaodai On Leave" from various places. Which five songs do you think would perfectly capture the beauty and essence of this trip?
Culm-Innate x Solar Punk Studio:
The music that we feel captures the trip.
Guadua - Makoto San
Last one - Mezerg
Come on girl - break3000
Privacy in a public time - Brent
Techno v6.5 - RJ-45M2