Matthew Bird (Studiobird), The Thorax Snug, 2015.

Since 2008, emerging Melbourne-based atelier Studiobird has developed a creative spatial practice in the mediums of sculpture, installation, scenography, photography, interior design, architecture, and site-specific interventions. Studiobird projects have been completed in residential, commercial, and retail locations and presented in galleries, museums, theatres, and festivals.
Studiobird’s founder, Matthew Bird, practices architecture by profoundly reinterpreting the decorative arts. His designs, ranging from retail to resort complexes, transcend normative expectations by using contemplative geometries, ready-made materials, and immersive colour. His practical approach identifies historical lineage to esoteric designers Verner Panton, Carlo Mollino, and Bruce Goff, and how their ancient preoccupations are supported and refreshed by the age of the Internet and access to multifarious ideas. Studiobird’s projects conceptually push everyday boundaries, distorting conservative ideals and questioning what is real and desirable. Evocative, paradoxical, and highly stagey outcomes manifest.
Studiobird presents Sleep Sarcophagus, an interactive sculpture that invites audiences to experience an immersive environment of simulated sleep-states. This multidimensional architectural installation renders creative curiosities of biological and induced respite, challenging a range of aesthetic, cultural, and behavioural concerns. Users are invited to physically occupy the installation offering an unusual interactive experience within a gallery context.
Studiobird’s recent sculptural installation Palanquin, exhibited in Sydney, materialised a study of an early iteration of the Sleep Sarcophagus project. This project anachronistically assembled concepts of the lit-clos' (bed box) and the proportions and materiality of mid-twentieth century case study homes through the use of everyday construction supplies: paint rollers became plush walls and fly screens echo linen enclosures. Palanquin is a witty and erudite transgression of Duchamp’s boîte-en-valise (box in a suitcase) giving thought to the meaning of global art heritages and the way in which they bind themselves to a specific time and place.
Palanquin provoked an aspiration to develop interactive installations that further confront preconceptions of bedchamber aesthetics and customs and to challenge the normally singular and private experience through a communal chamber that evokes an esoteric dialogue. Sleep Sarcophagus accommodates visitors in an immersive structure that is formed as an elaborate interconnected tomb constructed from uncanny readymade materials (similar to Palanquin) but further expanded through the integration of stimulating sonic and light compositions. The outcome is intended to manipulate sleep behaviours of participants through a crossover of visual art mediums: sculpture, installation, architecture, lighting, and sound composition.
The external form and appearance of Sleep Sarcophagus is enigmatically ornate, drawing from a range of historic, symbolic, and material interests. In contrast, the interior is enclosed and snug, with the appearance restrained and sterile, evoking a mortuary storage unit. The experience is dynamic with the interior slowly transforming with the aid of inbuilt technology, filling the intimate chamber with abstract moving light and sound.