Building and designing Digitalism’s Idealistic
We worked with Åbäke on the design of the Idealistic LP for Digitalism, released on Kitsuné. On the way, I discovered some nice things about idealism and utopia…
Digitalism’s Idealistic LP cover design: this post is a bit the shortened backstage of the building of the dome - originally designed by Buckminster Fuller. The dome has been setup in early summer 2007 in the Manor Gardens (aka the allotment) in London, near Hackney Wick. Since then, this very same allotment has been ripped off and destroyed by the works for the Olympics 2012 in East London…
Idealistic… yeah…
That was a month or so before my body improvement (i feel so GOOD now!), we worked with Åbäke on the building of the dome for the design of the Idealistic LP for Digitalism, released on Kitsuné.
After a few trials and error, we finally got it right and were able to erect the structure of the dome in the middle of my flat; the wooden bits were pierced and maintained to each other using some cable tightener.
One of the small model we realised at a smaller scale, juxtaposed here with a picture of geodesic dome
Our geodesic dome being build in between the office, the kitchen and the bathroom - ah! the pleasure of designing in an open spaces.
The cable tightener and how the wooden bits were holding each other: pretty rough but really effective. The advantage of that design is its flexibility.
Geodesic Domes designed by Buckminster Fuller for the Canada’s expo 67 in Montreal. Image by caribb - Creative Commons Licence
As Wikipedia states it, the utopia of Buckminster Fuller can be summarised by this sentence which went along all his life: “Does humanity have a chance to survive lastingly and successfully on planet Earth, and if so, how?”
‘Utopia Or Oblivion - the perspects for Humanity’ by R Buckminster Fuller. Image found on Utopia or Oblivion
Fuller was most famous for his geodesic domes, which can be seen as part of military radar stations, civic buildings, and exhibition attractions. Their construction is based on extending some basic principles to build simple tensegrity structures (tetrahedron, octahedron, and the closest packing of spheres), making them lightweight and stable. The patent for geodesic domes was awarded in 1954, part of Fuller’s exploration of nature’s constructing principles to find design solutions. The Fuller Dome is referenced in the Hugo Award winning novel Stand on Zanzibar by John Brunner, where a geodesic dome is said to cover the entire island of Manhattan, but, due to hot-air balloon effect of the large air-mass under the dome, (and perhaps its construction of lightweight materials), it floats on air.
Buckminster Fuller on Wikipedia
Some of his other covers are quite amazing:
Images found on Utopia or Oblivion
Additional resources
On wikipedia, you have a huge geometrical and mathematical design resource but it’s maybe with the Burning Man’s attendees that you might find some very specific and interesting documents, a bit more practical in case you would wish to build your own dome. One of the webiste we used, after the few trial and error at reduced scales, is the Desert Dome Calculator for 2V version. Also: help and interesting readings can be found at The Geodesic Club House, and also a practical How to build a Geodesic Dome out of Cardboard; just add a few searches on Flickr about Geodesic domes - just to make sure it would be possible
Life Island (or Life Is Land - I never know) is the website where the gardeners kept the fight, it still is on and rocking. if you live in East London and you search for a bit more of sustainable and green nature, art & culture, they’re worth the click: read them!
Also, after this nice chat i just had with her, I can’t help but link also to Miranda - who’s nickname is Dodeckahedron; she seems to have a certain fascination for things geometrically constructed, but you will discover all this by yourself if you read her design, urbanism and art oriented blog. Lots of interesting comments and exploration goes on there.
You can find:
More picture of the initial setup of the dome can be found on this Flickr set and Digitalism ‘Idealistic’ release on Kitsuné Music.
January 10th, 2008 at 11:09 am
well done, mate!
looks great!
a shame they don’t sell it around where i live!
January 10th, 2008 at 7:54 pm
what’s the idea with the dome on the cover of the album?
in ‘For the birds’ John Cage says in conversation:
JC: It’s possible that at the present time America is preparing a music worthy of the Fuller dome of the future! In the immense geodesic domes that Fuller as architect foresees covering large cities, the acoustic situations will be very different from those to which we are accustomed, and which have been forced on us by the necessarily small scale of our urban concert halls. But in a Fuller dome, you have a hard time making yourself heard. So, the old idea of art as communication will be thrown out the window; but there won’t even be windows any more.
DC: (…) but even in these gigantic domes, wouldn’t you still feel imprisoned? Some of Charles Ives’ works could be played not only on a mountain, but also echoed from one mountain to another…
(…)
DC: All of this is consistent with your insistence on the necessity of freeing time, as towards the end of your lecture on Indeterminacy. When you call for the superimposition or simultaneous performance of different works, it intensifies the feeling of space.
JC: Yes, then there is the confluence of several musics, as with Ives’ notion of different orchestras meeting at a cross-roads. Wandering around an orchestra which was playing in the square of a New England village, Ives was dumbfounded by the effect of spatial change on what he heard. I performed a similar experiment in Seville when I was seventeen. I found myself at an intersection and I felt a sudden joy upon realizing that I could hear different musics at the same time. In the lecture you were quoting, I also spoke of the need for separating the performers from each other as much as possible, in order to avoid ending up with a single work, as a result of not enough space between musicians. Crowded together, they can only play one thing at a time, which ultimately means that even in the most complex polyphony they play the same thing.”
Cage, John, 1976. For the birds. Marion Boyars, London.
Isn’t this insanely beautiful, this notion of sound/composition in relation to space?
July 25th, 2008 at 11:28 pm
Amazing work. Really cool to do an real geometric dome ! Congrats.
August 28th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
hello C’est beau !