Fans of the fashion and technology connection know quite well science-fiction artist Lucy McRae. Her short films and installations revolving around surreal explorations of the future are indeed often featured in exhibitions tackling different aspects of technology.
McRae usually combines art, biotechnology and architecture in her works: for the "Jamming Bodies Laboratory", her collaboration with Skylar Tibbits and MIT's Self-Assembly Lab commissioned by Storefront for Art and Architecture, she explored pneumatic architectural skins and their applications in the future of health, fitness and morphable architectures.
Her more recent projects include a futuristic day spa preparing the body to travel and allowing people to experience a low pressured vacuum chamber and the edible DIY bio laboratory recreated for the video of Aussie pop band Architecture In Helsinki (in the video a production line of miniaturised band members are transformed into edible, cloned body parts that are dipped and rotated on mass in huge vats of bacterial skin).
On 7th July McRae will debut her latest film, "The Institute of Isolation", at the Science Museum in London as part of the "Beyond the Lab" exhibition. McRae's new film explores the body beyond Earth's edge and through it the artist tests the effects extreme experience could have on evolving human capacity.
A series of sensory chambers simultaneously challenge the body and brain to adapt, while a microgravity trainer allows it to be suspended in mid–air and walk along a looped runway that is horizontal to the ground. The device conditions the body for possible life in space, while time spent in an anechoic chamber examines the psychoacoustics of silence.
It's interesting to see that McRae's quest into the future of health, beauty, biotechnology and science fiction continues, but it's even more intriguing to follow the ways in which her practice continuously keeps on evolving and transforming – just like science.
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