WET: “West End Terminal” is an interactive art piece that showcased at SEAT, an outdoor chair show located at Ft. Mason in San Francisco, in June 23rd, 2011. The show was presented by Fort Mason and Seam Studio . Over 40 designers, artists and architects were asked to participate in creating seats that will be on display for over a year in various locations around Fort Mason and during the 2012 America’s Cup. Nilus Designs was one of the firms chosen to participate.
WET challenges the historical context of Fort Mason by inserting an object that although foreign in form and function to its immediate surroundings, is suggestive and illustrative of the nautical ecology in which it situated. It serves as a beacon both in that it draws people out to the pier from the pedestrian approach and it also signals to vessels out at sea much like a light house. The piece plays with concepts of real and virtual experiences and with analog and contemporary forms of gathering information.
Material decision-making was based on emphasizing the elements at Fort Mason. Constructed of 208 vertical topographical sections of clear twin wall poly-carbonate, the seat’s cellular surface acts as a test tube accumulating salt deposits and other site debris. Mirrored acrylic is used around the base of the seat, reflecting the site’s unpredictable sky and also giving the illusion of an underwater inhabitable topography eluding to the maritime features of the site.
In addition to these two materials, WET is internally wired with LEDs that glow when activated by visitors. By stepping on the inscribed dot and dash “buttons” of the seat’s mirrored platform, WET glows in pulses, allowing visitors to “write” in Morse code and send messages to those in their visual vicinity.
W.E.T’s mirrored surface is also embedded with a newer form of communication. The surrounding acrylic functions as a contemporary billboard where visitors can use their smart phones to read inscribed QR codes that will navigate their phones to websites with relevant information of Fort Mason, WET, donors and the America's Cup.
3D surfacing RHINO. CNC machined. NILUS DESIGNS 2011