Yakuza Lou
Eddy Sykes

Open daily until March 2009

Eddy Sykes’ Yakuza Lou is a site-specific installation that uses the relationship between the natural and mechanical notions of landscape, to create a unique garden with pushing and folding topographic surfaces and a robot cloud that floats overhead creating a volume in constant pseudo-natural flux.

This fusion of natural and man-made elements into a carefully thought-out practical application allows viewers to re-evaluate advanced systems of design.

This multi-system consists of a self-articulating, undulating landscape that utilizes hydrodynamics, motors, and growth patterns to constantly redefine a system of octagonal vegetative mats. Aided by a hinge-mounted motor, each octagonal palette expands and contracts much like an origami, fortune-telling toy. The opened shape promises to be a beautiful three-dimensional grass floret. The landscape coexists with an artificial Cumulonimbus cloud, which hovers overhead and transforms over time.

Artist

Eddy Sykes is the principal of ChersonProm-- a multidisciplinary 3D design firm that specializes in the development and manufacture of kinetic architectural systems. Mr. Sykes is a sculptor and architect. His career has engaged him in a wide spectrum of esoteric engineering activities-- ranging from kinetic architectural systems for high-speed rail in China, to consultation work on “blast-rated” doors, and his current endeavors in experimental architecture.

To accompany Yakuza Lou, Dorsey Dunn has built a reactive, evolving sound field which is keyed to the movements of the "garden".

Embedded Within

This installation was built by Eddy Sykes and volunteers like: Nick Blake, Rob Kelbley, Dave O'Brien, Nate Hess, Brian Janeczko, Lindsey Mysse, Peri Shefik, Andrew Lyon, Beverly Tang, Astrid Diehl, Joanne Bloomfield, Glen Kinoshita, Jennifer Fiedler, Libby Cookie, Dennis Dollens, Ramses Sorrell, Linda Graveline, Lilly Sparks, Tony Hudgins, Adam Wolf, Max Guirana, Blair Ellis, Christine Eyre, Deana Justkys, Gaston Nogues, Dianne Wright, Chris Crotty, Howard Chiang, Julian Gilbert-Davis, Tim Rossi, Jeremy King, Beebo Tse, Becky, Thong Nguyen, Gabe Olson, Jessica Fleishman, Kelly Schmoker, Oliver Hess and Jenna Didier... so far, you can join in the fun and learn new skills, email us.



Announcements

Fun video

A pretty funny sped up video of Yakuza Lou from Dan Shaddick that he uploaded to youtube.

Dublab Health videos

Some cool videos were put together by the dublab team and filmed at M&A, Triceratops, Crimewave


OMG, BFF! M&A has a Facebook group. Please consider joining for an alternative way to give feedback and keep up with what is going on.


Our ongoing lecture series will return in December with another exciting night of speakers.

Slow it,Spread it,Sink it

Even if you missed the workshops we created for the Environmental Affairs Department this summer you can still learn how to use rain as a resource in LA from the exciting website.

Inputs

Yakuza Lou emerges from the cracks of two tectonic plates, all too gradually grinding their matter together. T he principals of ecological design and robotic architecture merge into a mechanical self sustaining system becoming a more believable concept through experimental progress. With less landscape there is more need for efficiency, and more need to steward what little landscape we are trying to protect and develop for it's cultural value. Like an impractical island or a precious jewel Yakuza Lou's twitching transformations and alien gesticulations remind us where all this could be going. Further evidence: Big Dog, a very real military machine who's very functional animation seems almost too strange to be believable, until these things are wandering down your street keeping the peace.