KELLY NIPPER STUDIO
15KN.jpg

COSTUMES, SPACE STAGES, TANKS

Description

From 2020 to 2021, Kelly Nipper worked with graphic designer Geoff Kaplan to create Costumes, Space Stages, Tanks. The plans are to build full-scale objects that can be adapted for use on various projects. Initially conceived for Terre Mecanique—a mechanical land composed of hard and soft technologies—these works transform in response to environmental conditions, structural dynamics, and expressive movements.

The performance Terre Mecanique is a project that emerged from conversations over about 18 months with the Self-Assembly Lab at MIT, which began in 2015 while Nipper was teaching in the School of Architecture and Planning. Skylar Tibbits founded the lab, which explores cross-disciplinary practices between architecture and computer science. The performance included researchers, dancers, and engineers, a custom-designed architectural-scale 3D cable printer, space stage prototypes, diagrams, costumes, a hemisphere-shaped acrylic tank, and industrial-scale printed objects for use in manufacturing.

The screenprints serve as plans for constructing full-scale stages, costumes, and tanks. The titles of each piece are a compilation of Nipper’s notes that relate to the respective pieces, with a numbering system designed to organize the information while simultaneously obscuring it. Each print is housed in an archival folder, with the title printed on the front and typographic instructions for exhibition settings on the back. One print, space stage [bell], outlines a plan to create a large-scale bell suspended from a gantry. It serves as a transitional piece within the collection of objects, leading to a series of prints detailing plans for constructing gantries and floors.