MIAMI -- Rug and textile designer Liora Manné takes custom floor coverings to new heights of artistry in collaboration with renowned digital artist Anne Spalter, whose mixed augmented reality (AR) installation, 'Miami Marbles' will be on display at PULSE Miami Beach, a satellite fair held Dec.1-4, 2016 during Art Basel Miami.
Manné has created two floor elements for the Spalter installation. The largest is a custom design that accompanies a 16-foot sphere (shown in the CAD rendering above). The rug is reminiscent of a puddle reflecting the sphere's graphic exterior and will provide a tethered base over which the kaleidoscopic sphere will levitate several feet. Miami Marbles at PULSE will be on view at Indian Beach Park (4601 Collins Avenue).
The second Liora Manné rug will be incorporated into Spalter's installation of two spheres at the COMO Metropolitan Miami Beach hotel, 2445 Collins Avenue.
Named 'Tour of Titan', the floor element for Anne Spalter's Miami Marbles at PULSE digital landscape installation was designed in collaboration with Liora Manné and crafted in Manné's patented Lamontage felting process.
Earlier this year in June, Liora Manné introduced a rug and textile collection called Cosmic Cabanas in her first cross-media collaboration with world-renowned digital artist Anne Spalter (
read more). The new line marries Spalter's psychedelic digital landscapes with Manné's patented Lamontage felting process, and will be offered in a full range of interior textiles products.
"The Miami Marbles installation will have a 12-foot round rug based on Anne's art for the 16-foot sphere at the entrance to PULSE at Indian Beach Park, and a nine-foot rug at her second installation at the COMO Metropolitan hotel," Manné told RugNews.com. "The rugs have the water and the waves, the sand, and an umbrella -- all recreating the same art she is using on the sphere, which is actually a helium balloon hanging over the rug. She calls the spheres orbs, and there are nine of them in the installation. It is going to be really interesting with an augmented reality component."
Digital mixed media artist Anne Spalter with Liora Manné at the Liora Manné showroom in the D&D Building in New York during the launch of the Cabanas Collection of Lamontage rugs and textiles.
Brooklyn-based digital mixed media artist Anne Spalter is an academic pioneer and founder of Brown's and RISD's original digital fine arts programs in the 1990s. Selected as this year's PULSE Miami Beach's inaugural PROJECTS Special Commission recipient, she conceived Miami Marbles as a large-scale mixed reality installation created site-specifically for the fair.
The installation will mark the entranceway of PULSE Miami Beach 2016 with additional physical and virtual components throughout and beyond the fairgrounds in locations including the COMO Metropolitan Miami Beach hotel.
Shot with a Hasselblad medium format camera, the vivid, high-resolution imagery that comprises the source footage of the helium-filled orbs' kaleidoscopic exteriors has been captured during previous Miami Arts Weeks to create a public artwork embodying the cultural fabric of its surroundings.
The name itself, Miami Marbles, comes from the visual of a freeze frame if one were to throw down a set of giant marbles in front of the fair tent. Miami Marbles' augmented reality component, facilitated by a custom app created through sponsorship from Halifax-based Current Studios, will bring the works to life; when viewers look at each sphere through the custom Marbles app on a phone or tablet, the sphere will swirl with Spalter's kaleidoscopic video work of the same source footage as that of each unique sphere's graphic exterior.
A detail of the Lamontage floor element for the Miami Marbles installation at PULSE Miami.
In addition, virtual spheres (viewable only through the app) will be visible at certain locations indicated around the fair. For example, if you look out over the ocean at a marked hotspot just outside the PULSE tent, a swirling sphere will appear to float over the waves.
Following a VIP reception on Thursday, Dec. 1 from 10 a.m. - 1 p.m., Miami Marbles at PULSE will be on view at Indian Beach Park (4601 Collins Avenue) during public fair hours: 1 p.m. - 7 p.m. on Thursday Dec.1; 10 a.m. - 7 p.m. on Dec. 2 and 3; and 10 a.m. - 5 p.m. on Sunday, Dec. 4.