People at Loop.pH

We are a core team of two people who have been working together since 2003 after collaborating on a multidisciplinary art and research project in the UK.

The team grows depending on the project and we often collaborate with other groups and individuals.

For more information about our work and backgrounds see below:

Rachel Wingfield

Rachel belongs to an emerging generation of designers redefining conventions of how, why and with what things are made. For Rachel, the convergence of design and science, and ultimately the synergy with nature, can serve to address some of today's most urgent problems by promoting energy independence, food security, and "metabolic thinking". Her approach to design and fabrication values the physical process of making as much as established research methodologies and theories. This allows for the reinterpretation and integration of forms engineered by humans and nature alike. Rachel is Research Fellow at Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design, London and co-director of the design studio Loop.pH. Together with Mathias Gmachl, they specialize in lightweight temporary architecture, responsive environments and creates new urban visions. Their portfolio spans the design, construction and fabrication of architectural, structural and responsive textiles for both private and public environments from hospitals, museums to parks and private collections.

• The Textile Futures Research Group website

Mathias Gmachl

Mathias Gmachl is a multidisciplinary artist and researcher. He is a founding member of farmersmanual, a pan-European, multisensory disturbance conglomerate that presents a stream of constructions since 1995, continuously expanding their practice from music concerts to interdisciplinary cultural, aesthetic and political experiments. Opposed to companies shifting the balance of fundamental rights and liberties he is using alternative collaborative structures based on sharing information, skills and resources among the partners.

Venues, festivals and museums Mathias presented include: Ars Electronica (1997, 1999), Sonar Festival Barcelona (1998, 1999, 2002), NTT/ICC Tokyo (1999), Montreal Festival for Film and New Media (1999, 2001), Centre Georges Pompidou (2000), What is Music? Festival Sydney (2001, 2002), The Venice Biennale (2001), Avanto Festival Helsinki (2000, 2001), Kunsthalle Schirn Frankfurt (2002), CCA Kitakyushu (2001, 2002)

Mathias is currently developing a sound research program together with Jon Wozencroft at the Royal College of Art. He sees to further the understanding of the relationships between arithmetic, geometry, music (harmony) and astronomy (cosmology) which are the universal languages of humankind.

farmersmanual has been attributed a prize by the New Media Jury of the Montreal International Festival of New Cinema and New Media 1999:

„The Jury would like to honour the pioneering work of Austrian Internet artists, FARMERS MANUAL, (URL is http://web.fm) who have succeeded in making the cybernetwork into a Net Work of awe and beauty. Self-reflective and transparent, they mixmaster soundcollage, streamed video and interNetional automation. Connnecting in realive time to the wired world, this collective has expanded the true democratic impulse of the internet, allowing public intervention and contribution at all levels, from software to content. Although working on the outer bounds of New Media, they evoke the mesmerizing energy and wonder rarely seen since the earliest days of the invention of cinema.“

farmersmanual's DVD release "RLA" won the BBC's Experimental Album Of The Year 2004
BBC review

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