The designers Tobias Kestel and Florian Puschmann first approached the explosive issue of lava as a material through site-specific interventions and installations in 2009 on Big Island. This was their first intensive examination of volcanoes and the topographies and spaces developed by lava. This remarkable start is now the basis of a promising follow-up project:
„Flow Field Orchestra“:
Volcanic lava flows represent one of the most interesting of all natural phenomena. Nothing else lets us feel nature’s forces so directly, or creates an environment so hostile to life. Simultaneously volcanic activity creates the basis for new life. It is this ambivalence that underlies this project.
At the beginning elementary questions have to be asked:
What is landscape?
Where does it come from? What is at the beginning of the “Topos“ and how is it decaying?
What is its relation to the time dimension? Can we observe the process of space-building?
The aspect of the cultural relevance of man and his surroundings accompanies these questions. The anthropocentric world-view is confronted with fictional spaces that will emerge in an unpredicted future.
The experimental arrangement:
A variety of different musical instruments will be installed on a (currently non-active) lava-flow-field they will be activated, when the lava flows over the area.
It is not possible to determine the point of activation: Flow Field Orchestra represents a long-term-arrangement, that will not sound for indefinite time. The time-factor appears incalculable and unmanageable.
While the installation is awaiting activation natural factors such as wind, rain, seeds and animals will influence and change the setting.
The Flow Field Orchestra is an arrangement that is allegorizing the invisible, undeterminable, distant and by geographical localization allocates a timely beginning and releasing itself entirely from human influence from the very start of the process.
The elements/instruments used are to be regarded as media, channelling the energy flux.
And what’s coming next?
Tobias Kestel, Florian Puschmann, Richard Eigner and Martin Krammer will strike camp on Big Island in April 2013 and start with the installation of the experimental arrangement.