highlike

The Andromeda Strain

Less faithful to the original text than Robert Wise’s 1971 film, the current version, whose executive producers include Tony and Ridley Scott, retains the essential elements of the plot: a government satellite on an intergalactic germ-related fact-finding mission crashes into a small town out West, emitting a deadly pathogen that kills everyone nearby save for an unhealthy older man and a baby whose survival is an epidemiological mystery. The military is called in to contain the disaster, and a team of high-status scientific researchers is assembled to determine the capacities of whatever is causing this plague and thus forestall the end of civilization.

cinema full

PARMEGIANI

ベルナール・パルメジャーニ
La Creation du Monde
This is a sprawling, ambitious painting in sound modeled on the birth of the universe. Moving from roiling, gaseous clouds of hiss and static through sharp peels of detailed, unrestrained texture, this is acousmatic music at its very finest, literally creating a universe of sound out of thin air.

ecoLogicStudio

BioBombola
The Coral
Home Algae Garden
In June 2020 ecoLogicStudio has devised BioBombola, a pioneering project that invites individuals, families and communities to cultivate a domestic algae garden – a sustainable source of vegetable proteins. BioBombola absorbs carbon dioxide and oxygenates homes more effectively than common domestic plants while fostering a fulfilling daily interaction with nature. Each BioBombola is composed of a single customized photobioreactor, a one metre tall lab grade glass container, filled with 15 litres of living photosynthetic Spirulina strain and culture medium with nutrients.

Kate Cooper

Infection Drivers
Infection Drivers (2019) explores the body under attack. In this work, a CGI figure struggles to move and breathe in a translucent suit, which takes her body through transmutations of stereotypically masculine and feminine physiques as it inflates and deflates. In a time of increased public surveillance through facial-recognition software and biometric data  mining, Cooper’s high-definition world invites us to investigate and perhaps find freedom in the technologies often used to constrain us.

Juuke Schoorl

Liquid Skin
‘Liquid Skin’ is a visual research towards the changing boundaries between the physical world of the human body and the digital world. By borrowing techniques found in touch screen technologies, but instead of following the cold underlying logic of present day devices, it proposes a situation where this border becomes liquid and sensual with an emphasis on the fluidity of touch and movement. Turning the skin itself into a medium of visual expression without the constraint of the technical grid.

Doug Aitken

Sonic Mountain
As a unique site-specific commission for the Donum Estate, Los Angeles-based artist Doug Aitken has created the ethereal work Sonic Mountain (Sonoma), three concentric circles of suspended stainless-steel pipes whose differing lengths form a wave at their base, mirroring the free Euler-Bernoulli shape that describes the chime’s frequency. Installed in the eucalyptus grove, measuring forty-five feet in diameter and twice human height, and comprising 365 chimes — one for each day of the year — Sonic Mountain (Sonoma) works with one of Donum’s most persistent elements, the Carneros breeze that cools the grapes and creates a temperate zone for growing Pinot Noir. Each day, the warm wind begins its soft whisper, rustling through the vines and trees, building in strength through the day until mid-afternoon, and then gradually diminishing in force. Known to have been used since at least the ancient Roman period in Europe and the second century in India and China, wind chimes create chance, inharmonic music. At Donum, Aitken has teamed up with his friend the composer Terry Riley to compose chords in the chimes to be played by the wind , depending on how it blows, so the lyrical work sounds throughout the estate, demonstrating the artist’s practice of making installations that synthesize many media and are never constrained by tradition.
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HENTSCHLÄGER AND LANGHEINRICH

Akemi Takeya
Granular Synthesis

“From a few expressions on the face of the performer Akemi Takeya to a frenzied exploration of the alter ego, any known context of meaning ends in the dissolved movements, is stalled in denaturalized redundancy, in machine pain. The semantic void is too loud to be amenable to meditative reception. The frontal images, the rhythmic structures generate contradictory emotions and great strain.”

AURÉLIEN BORY

PLEXUS
Aurélien Bory is a Toulouse-based choreographer working at the intersection of dance, circus and visual art. In Plexus, he encloses the Japanese dancer Kaori Ito in a forest of tensioned vertical cables. It’s as if she’s in a transparent cuboid cage. We can see her, but her image is blurred by the shimmer of Arno Veyrat’s lighting as it moves across the cables. Ito strains against these confines, writhing, flailing and hurling herself against the cables. Every sound is hugely amplified, so with her every movement we are assailed by a high-tensile jangling and groaning. At intervals she subjects her environment to furious challenge, racing backwards and forwards within the limited inner space so that the cage rocks on its axis. At other times she positions herself between the cables so that they bear her weight, and hangs there like an exhausted insect, faintly articulating her limbs.

David Spriggs

Vision II
David Spriggs’ Vision artwork series have a distinct focus on the senses. Accentuated by an affinity between its subject matter and the fragmentary nature of the medium, there is a tension created between form and emptiness. Appearing both as an implosion and as an explosion depending on the one’s perception, the viewer has the sense that he/she is observing a form in becoming, yet at the same time breaking down. The immersive experience created by Vision provides the audience with the impression that they are in the midst of witnessing an event, something of monumental proportions akin to the Big Bang. In changing viewpoints by navigating around the work, Vision is continually altered, breaking down at the sides so that the viewer can only see the edge planes of multiple sheets, begging the question: Is there in fact a form, or just individual images?

Doug Rosman

Self-contained II
A neural network, trained to see the world as variations of the artist’s body, enacts a process of algorithmic interpretation that contends with a body as a subject of multiplicity. After training on over 30,000 images of the artist, this neural network synthesizes surreal humanoid figures unconstrained by physics, biology and time; figures that are simultaneously one and many. The choice of costumes and the movements performed by the artist to generate the training images were specifically formulated to optimize the legibility of the artist within this computational system. self-contained explores the algorithmic shaping of our bodies, attempting to answer the question: how does one represent themselves in a data set? Building on the first iteration of the series, the synthetic figures in self-contained II proliferate to the point of literally exploding. Through the arc of self-contained II, this body that grows, multiples, and dissolves never ceases to be more than a single body.

Heather Dewey-Hagborg & Phillip Andrew Lewis

Spirit Molecule
Spirit Molecule II, engages local community members as DNA donors to be memorialized in a site-specific commission for the Broad Museum at Michigan State University, created in collaboration with University scientist Dr. Bjoern Hamberger. The work consists of a large mound of moss growing in the gallery, with four embedded cylinders containing genetic memorial plants. In this iteration we embed both human DNA and a gene for the scent of patchouli into lab-strain moss Physcomitrella patens.

Rosie Danford Phillips

Opulent Virulence
“My collection is inspired by my fascination with nature; an interpretation of the complexity and unrestrained beauty of nature, which I express through complex layering, colour and a maximalist aesthetic that takes joy in abundance and opulence. I create my own ecosystems of layered and built fabrics in knit, print and unconventional embroidery. My clothes are in a state of rewilding – I infect the silhouettes with rich colourful textiles, giving them life. I grow my embroideries over graphic and sculptural silhouettes to emphasise and contrast the organic and the built landscape.” Rosie Danford Phillips

VTOL

Silk
The installation is tracking the real time changes in the market activities related to cryptocurrencies Bitcoin and Litecoin – independent and uncontrolled by any state peer-to-peer payment systems. Constantly changing currency rate of of Bitcoin against major world currencies is influencing the strain of strings in installation and the way the picks are hitting them. The robotic system of the artwork is directed by a computer algorithm: influenced by dynamic changes of data, the installation sounds like a complex sound instrument.

John Becker

Clothing Hangers A+B
Anatomical forms surgically reconfigured as surrogates for the human body. The contortion is forced by medical instruments constraining the body, pinning it into a stabilized functional object. Each hanger is calibrated to the appropriate size of the clothing it carries for a custom fit. The body is constructed of a solid silicone composite form and surgical steel hardware. This hanger was created as an element of a larger project.

MAD Architects

Shenzhen Bay Culture Park
“I want to create a surreal atmosphere, so that the people who visit, relax or exercise here have the possibility of engaging in a dialogue with the past and the future. Time and space are dissolved and placed against each other, manifesting a sense of weightlessness, and unrestrained imagination,” Ma Yansong

Ephraim Henry Pavie Architects and Design

Ephraim Henry pavie, french borned architect has definitly freed his concepts from the regular geometrical constraints. First there are the free shapes, the smoothness of the curves and openings, and the shiny and polished skin of his “handmade” pieces. Inspired by the art of feng shui, the shape of his architecture is like an interface between the inside energies and the outside natural environment. The architect’s creative work has been published in national and international magazines, online and on national television.

JOGGING

Brad Troemel and Lauren Christiansen
JOGGING uses the microblogging platform Tumblr as a stage for immaterial works of art both real and digitally manipulated. The site functions as an evolving sketchbook in which ideas are conceived and executed with a speed and immediacy unconstrained by physical or institutional limitations, with as many as twenty pieces of work posted per day. This is in deliberate contrast to personal websites and curated portfolios in which an artist limits his or her production in an attempt to carve out an identifiable brand. Instead, JOGGING sees itself as both artist and art object, composed of multiple pieces or individual works but functioning as a single schizophrenic body, an abstract machine.

Anna Dumitriu

Bacteria Dress
Using one of the most unusual materials you could imagine, artist Anna Dumitriu transforms superbugs into unique items of clothing. The artist sterilizes strains of deadly bugs that kill tens of thousands of people across the US each year. She then uses the strains to embroider into dresses and quilts. Her work has a fascinating concept behind it, exploring the complex relationship between humans and bacteria.

LAWRENCE LEK, ONUR OZKAYA, JESSE RANDZIO AND STUDENTS

3013 Installation
Created by summer students at the architectural association school of architecture in london, ‘3013 installation’ was based on a simple premise: in a thousand years, london will be saturated. Constrained by the green belt around it and freed from restrictions on building skyscrapers, the city will grow inwards and upwards.

JOGGING

Brad Troemel and Lauren Christiansen
soup base

JOGGING uses the microblogging platform Tumblr as a stage for immaterial works of art both real and digitally manipulated. The site functions as an evolving sketchbook in which ideas are conceived and executed with a speed and immediacy unconstrained by physical or institutional limitations, with as many as twenty pieces of work posted per day. This is in deliberate contrast to personal websites and curated portfolios in which an artist limits his or her production in an attempt to carve out an identifiable brand. Instead, JOGGING sees itself as both artist and art object, composed of multiple pieces or individual works but functioning as a single schizophrenic body, an abstract machine.

AMBER ISABEL

Dutch photographer Amber Isabel has such a creative imagination that all you could do is stare with awe at her portfolio. Her mixed media photography showcases her true talents and hypnotizes you as you strain your eyebrows, attempting to understand her pictures. Be it either the dark shadow figures or the white dotted veils that cover the faces of these melancholic characters, each picture tells a story filled with emotion. If Amber Isabel is able to convey strong messages through these pictures, one could only wonder what the rest of her portfolio holds.

Florian Hafele

弗洛里安·海福樂
フロリアンハーフェレ
Флориан Хафель

The central theme of artist Florian Hafele, born 1979, is the observation of the body, which reflects many questions about our social environment and its related phenomena. Hafele’s work translates into sculptures of deformed creatures, human as well as object, which develop a multi-interpretable essence through various contortions. Embracing this aspect a variety of his works deal with performance in our social environment like the “Champion” which is a synonym for the over-strained human, in an achievement oriented society, or the exhausted tools which treat themselves to a break.

DOMINIK STRZELEC

FREESTYLE WANDERING MACHINE
Driven by its immediate surrounding, little by little, the machine deposits material while sensing and moving within its territory. Traces left by its passing alter the landscape it operates within, step by step. Instant decisions solidify, aggregate and therefore shift or constrain its possible future trajectories.

olivia locher

how to wear heels
How To’s particular brand of satire relies on the restraint and subtly of Locher’s wit. This isn’t a photo series about tragic errors made by buffoons but about tiny miscalculations that result in everything rituals turning out only marginally awry. more

Vincent Callebaut

Венсаном Калебо
Mangrove Towers

as the name indicates, the design of ‘mangrove towers’ references the shape and form of the distinctive tree. to be built at paris’ busy gare du nord railway station, the structures will accommodate a mixed program of offices, hotels and housing dedicated to international and traveling customers. the station’s platforms will be full of piezoelectrical captors polarizing under the action of the mechanical constraints generated by its inhabitants. the tubular façades will be composed of grätzel cells forming a photo-electrochemical skin.

JAKE STOLLERY

Oracle

Oracle is an amalgam of concepts tied together by the common thread of the user interface.To that end, it is a reflection of AI and UI as they exist in society’s consciousness: On first glance masculine, cold and austere; yet muted in its austerity and restrained by a warmth that is undeniably feminine.

Undercurrent architects

Leaf House Sydney

Leaf House is building that allows users to be inside and in-the-garden at the same time. It is a self contained cottage forming part of a coastal residence in Sydney; a Pavilion for experiencing Nature. The building integrates the environment and reflects qualities of the landscape: its canopy structure blends into the foliage; its podium base shapes the terrain. The design is characterised by curved copper roof shells resembling fallen leaves and a vine-like structural system channelling dynamic growth inside. Daylight filters through porous roof shells onto a podium deck and the open plan living areas. Views and reflections subtly modulate the surrounding garden through an enclosure of moulded glass. Private spaces offer introspection inside the sandstone podium buried in the terrain. The project entailed design and building roles as methods were improvised to achieve high technical complexity within cost constraints.