Studio Heech's Ritual Machine proposes an experiment, presenting a model that strips architecture to its bare minimum—the movement of bodies in space. The architectural model, which functions like a Rube Goldberg machine¹ was designed as an abstraction of the building it is placed within, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Gwacheon, South Korea. Writing about the machine and its rationale, the Seoul-based designers state, "Machines and devices have often allowed architects to push the boundaries of scale, budget, and materials, enabling the designers to experiment with and test their architectural ideas.”

In abstracting the material volume of the art museum, it brings to the fore the rhythm of each space, likening the movements of visitors (which in the case of this machine is represented by marbles) to pilgrims. The interactive installation explores how architecture mediates movement, and how movement in such a controlled setting can be akin to a ritual. Through the model, the designers also highlight the performativity related to ritual practices. Each subject moves in a set way.

An experiential Interlude

A marble drops. Nestling into a narrow ledge as a gear turns, it slowly moves upwards. Dropping into a funnel, it slides down, pushing past a turnstile as other marbles follow. First one, then another, then a third, coming through the turnstile and the tunnel. Once it’s through, it zips down a snug lane, turning around bends with breakneck speed. The first one finds its way across a rotunda. It spirals down, continuing its ritual path.

As the second marble turns a bend, it takes an unexpected turn and leads down a bend in its path. It finds its way to the next funnel, spiralling down it. Down it goes another rotunda. Following in the path of the first, the third marble finds itself at a crossroads and tumbles down a new path. Rounding curved paths, and hopping down a staircase, it joins the first two marbles in a roundabout the ritual machine.

Movement and volume

The different geometric forms that the machine employs reference the rotunda, spiral ramp, atrium, and circular garden of the MMCA. In a way, these are also reflective of typical museum architecture. For instance, the spiral ramp design that is supposed to be a reference to the museum in Korea is most famously associated with the Guggenheim Museum in New York. Each volume, corresponding to a section of the sculptural installation represents a different movement pattern, each dictated by the space’s design. Through the project, the sequences of spaces in the museums are compared to the sequence of spaces in cathedral architecture.

The designers explain, “Just as the priests burn incense and lead the congregation to participate in the sacrament according to the precedent procedure of the ritual…visitors viewing artworks in the art museum come to experience the artworks according to the intended order and route in the space, in the planned direction of the curator.”

Movement becomes one of the primary ways we actively interact with built space. Hardly ever is this relationship one of unexpected encounters. By implying that the organised way we move through space is ritualistic, the designers also question the inherent way the built environment moulds and shapes us, how we think and how we act. The machine demonstrates how rituals become a way of organising collective consciousness.

Movement and free will

Illustrating how built space manipulates us, the design for the game-like sculpture (for want of a better categorisation) also depicts a visitor’s agency and free will (or lack thereof) in manoeuvring through a building. One after another, each marble is destined to go down one of three designed paths. Over and over. In writing about the act of walking in a city, French theorist Michel de Certeau argues that it can be a form of resistance. By navigating new routes and engaging with the city in individual ways, he shows how people produce spatial stories of the city, reclaiming the urban environment as their own.

Read in this way, the design installation brings into question how humans act when faced with controlled spaces. How we move through train stations, exhibitions, and malls: liminal spaces where we only exist in moving through them. It demonstrates how free will plays into the experience of a place. Where in the case of Ritual Machine’s abstract museum, there can only be three predestined outcomes.

Movement and ritual

The comparison of a museum’s paths with that of a church by the designers is telling. A ritual, by its very definition, operates through symbols, patterns, and cultural beliefs: anything that attributes meaning to existence. Often, ritual practices are described as collective catharsis: the sublimation one feels in the presence of a crowd, all experiencing the same emotion. Like there is catharsis in congregation and prayer, there is a sense of release in looking at and engaging with art. Visiting the church or a museum are also activities that are removed from everyday life. Studio Heech explicitly states this idea as a “ritual experience” further underscoring the idea of performance related to each.

To this end, there is a distinct element of play and performance in the studio’s design for Ritual Machine. By their very nature, Rube Goldberg machines embody a sense of function coupled with play. By bringing that to the fore, the project underscores the connection between play and space, and play and ritual. It seems to ask, what practices does ritual give rise to? How do we inherently relate to our surroundings?

In the conception and realisation of the architectural game of space, Studio Heech conceives of a way of reading architecture through narrative, play, ritual and path. The play of space continues with place as the backdrop. Down the other end, a marble drops.

References

^1.The Rube Goldberg machine, named after the American cartoonist is a device meant to perform a simple task but through a convoluted contraption (which usually relies on a chain reaction)