Enigmatica Mars

source: spookmag

Kit made his first foray into creating projection works having studied sound art, he said. “I discovered new media art by myself. I was living in Korea in 2007 and had a lot of time on my hands. And I discovered this amazing world of new media art in Japan and Europe, and London and America but in Australia there’s not a lot of new media art, which is basically taking technology and art and combining it. So I started experimenting with projection, and just found out that there are all these interesting ways that light can bend across surfaces, and it can illuminate objects.”

Projections, light sculptures, whichever you’d prefer to call it, the art world has stood to attention while the collision of technology and craftsmanship has become increasingly complex. And practicing new media has taken Kit far afield. In France as you read, Kit is showing off Enigmatica to the masses at Scopitone, a new type of festival in Europe that combines electronic music and digital art. He adds it as a notch on his touring belt, having shown it in Brazil and Switzerland, “and that’s been awesome,” he said, “Scopitone is right down my alley so I’m really excited about it. All the artists that are playing I think are awesome, so it’s really exciting for me to be next to them.”

His latest project was creating ATLAS at Fringe. Erected outside Melbourne Town Hall, his light sculpture took the shape of a diamond, formed with two projectors. “The diamond shape also represents preciousness, and I guess beauty and wealth, and that in itself is why it’s called unity – if you’re unifying the symbol each face of the diamond connects in a symmetrical, geometric way.”

But a man like Kit never rests on his artistic laurels. He has begun to materialise his next project already, building a range of small-scale sculptures that use geometric crystals. They’re attached to an LCD screen which becomes a light box that sways and morphs through changing colour spectrums. In layman’s terms, it’s awesome.

While the technical details can at times be startling – Kit explains his work’s theoretical basis and it all starts to get a bit sci-fi – the result is nothing short of stunning. You’ll wish you’d thought of it first, and then had the skills to master a projector.
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source: bellaarnotthoare

Ethereal visions plastered across the architectural facades of buildings have gained momentum in the art world, and one young Melbourne media art practitioner, Kit Webster, is leading the way.

The new media artist is responsible for installations at The Gertrude Street Projection Festival, Mars Gallery, Sugar Mountain, French festival Scopitone and more recently The Chamber Made Opera, but the man of vision shows no signs of slowing his invention. Like many creative souls he is restless, with endless reams of ideas and often without the means to facilitate them.
“I can have all these great ideas but then it’s a lot of negotiation about practically what’s possible. There’s always a balancing act between reality and illusion I guess, what you can actually achieve in reality,” he laments.

His sculptural mapping and projections resemble the innards of a computer, technological dreamscapes with neon refractions. In all its glory, his creations are quite unique and the signature geometric shapes have become increasingly recognisable.
His work with the Chamber Made Opera, Ophelia Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, was a new experiment in theatrical design for the artist, who was proposed the project by past lecturer Darrin Verhargen. He video mapped a suburban kitchen for the ensemble, adding elements of the supernatural by changing the colour of the room, projecting lifelike growing floral arrangements and blood dripping from the walls – a visual composition to counteract its sonic elements.

And possibilities continue to emerge as technology develops. He will head to Brazil next March to replicate his Enigmatica light sculpture, a viral video of neon light squares that fluctuate in colour and light to match audio, but meanwhile is also working in partnership with Luna Park to combine virtual reality and rollercoasters. Headsets will transport ride-goers into psychedelic wormholes and intricate virtual environments. Through his many engagements, he’s dipping his toes into an ever expanding medium.

“The demand is growing (for new media art) as people start to catch on, it depends what field you’re talking about. I’ve been contacted by Obscura Digital, and they want me to come to New York to work on a Nike campaign next year. That’s still in negotiation, and while I’m there they want me to set up a little Enigmatica installation for their clients.”
His discovery of the artform, Kit says, began as “a gradual digression from sound.” “It was just really seeing all these amazing things on the internet that people were doing, and going, there’s this whole world of new media that I had no idea existed. (At university) it didn’t really touch on immersive environments and LEDs and all these crazy concepts. So I went and discovered this crazy world on my own.”

One thing he discovered was the technical process of sculpture mapping. “You build a sculpture that is suitable for projecting onto. So it has to be white and the angles of the sculpture have to be lined up to the projector, and then you take the sculpture and illuminate it digitally. It usually involves mapping onto the various surfaces of the sculpture in different ways.”

Kit will feature some of these works at the upcoming Sugar Mountain Festival this January. “For sugar mountain, we’re thinking maybe a couple of pyramids or some mountains, or even some really abstract geometric suspended sculptures above the performers’ heads and scattered across the stage, and weird geometric things.” And he continues to imagine works that push the boundaries of possibility. An ongoing project of his has been an invention of projection created by refracting crystals. “My practice is shifting to the crystals a little at the moment. I’m still trying to work out how to create this piece, I’ve built the prototype but I’m looking for financial backers that can help me produce this really crazy intricate version in my head.”

It seems new media artists like Kit are burdened by their own creativity – and waiting for the rest of the world to catch up.
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source: vacioesformaformaesvacioblogspot

Kit Webster después de obtener en 2008 su BFA en Artes Media/Sound en la universidad RMIT de Melbourne, Australia, ha dedicado su tiempo a la creación de imágenes por ordenador y proyectándolas o transfiriéndolas sobre diferentes soportes. Desde el site-specific proyecciones hasta esculturas sinestéticas, el trabajo de Kit utiliza varias técnicas de programación y visualización para crear conceptos experimentales diseñados para exponer las posibilidades de una nueva estética audiovisual.

Enigmática Mars es una plataforma experimental para la combinación de luz, sonido y espacio.Una serie de fotogramas suspendidos disminuyen de tamaño a lo largo de la galería, actuando como un lienzo para la visualización de secuencias proyectadas en superficies específicas. Dentro de este inter-dimensionality construido y mediante el desarrollo de secuencias visuales y acústicos mi objetivo es crear un ambiente enigmático ilusorio demostrando el potencial de nuevas formas de escultura digital.