Flow Matrix

VJAA + Houmin + Diane Willow were selected as the winning team among the four finalist teams for the Weisman Art Museum curated Mississippi River Bridge Plaza Project. Flow Matrix is a study for a dynamic video with frames of real time video interspersed within the matrix of archived video. Together these present moment and recorded views will display a continuous, non-linear flow of an annual cycle.

Jury: Edwin Chan /Gehry Partners, Cinda Gilliland / SWA Group, Hilde Hein, PhD / Public Scholar | Brandeis University, William Pedersen / Kohn Pedersen Fox.

Flow matrix is inspired by the modes of flow co-existing on the site of the Mississippi River Bridge Plaza Project and the strata formation that overlays the directional movement of the river, the two-way thrust of vehicular traffic, the streaming of people on foot and on wheels, and the grand gestures of the atmosphere above.

This active video matrix portrays the concurrent and changing energies of
flow on each of the four levels or strata of the site: river, vehicles,
people, sky. Compiled from on-site recordings, it is presented as a matrix
view that includes multiple-frames of flow across each of the four vertical
levels. This visual matrix can be programmed to present one continuous
visual story or reconfigured to present a series of changing perspectives
that may include dynamic, in the moment video views.

Ever changing yet ever constant, the layers of flow visible in this
extraordinary site are directional. We may look over, up, under, down, or
around. Each time we re-focus on a new view, this new perspective is separate
and distinct from the first one. It is not possible to experience multiple concurrent views on site,

The Flow matrix presents a simultaneous view across time and space, creating a contemplative medium that invites us to experience flow as an atmosphere, an ambient energy, an ever-present movement that creates eddies of calm in its wake.