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ALWIN NIKOLAIS

Noumenon

A truly universal artist, the American Alwin Nikolais (1910-1993) devoted his life to a radical form of staged art he called “dance theater.” Inspired (perhaps unconsciously) by the experiments of Bauhaus members such as Oskar Schlemmer and László Moholy-Nagy in the 1920s, Nikolais devised a style of abstract dance that encompassed costumes, stage sets, choreography, lighting, and music, all under his control. Also in 1963, Nikolais met analog synthesizer pioneer Robert Moog, who was at the time just starting his business in New York. He was fascinated by the sounds of Moog’s machines, and with the money provided by a a Guggenheim Fellowship, Nikolais bought the first ever commercially produced Moog synthesizer. It was the primary sound-source for all of Nikolais’ scores from 1963 to 1975. The instrument is now housed at the Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

matthew bird

parallaxis
In a new moving-image work by Melbourne-based artist and architect Matthew Bird, two bodies move across the land, working with large cylindrical instruments. We witness them map and survey a terrain analogous to universal physical and psychological locations, each revolution marking a paradoxical attempt to pin an earthly position through perpetual movement. Playing on the human need to understand our relationship to the people and places around us, Parallaxis considers the potential for architectural processes and measurements to act as a foundation for structures of understanding.

UVA UNITED VISUAL ARTISTS

Entwurf
Blueprint umfasst die Beziehung und Parallelen zwischen Kunst und Wissenschaft und schafft Kompositionen durch die mathematischen Prinzipien der Logik, die das Leben stützen. UVA untersucht Analogien zwischen DNA und Computercode und hat die Blueprint-Serie entwickelt. Arbeiten, die Genetik und Code als Blaupausen künstlicher und natürlicher Systeme verbinden. Da sich die Arbeit im Laufe der Zeit langsam ändert, schwanken die Muster zwischen verschiedenen Komplexitätsgraden. Blueprint verwendet die Grundkonzepte der Evolution, um ein sich ständig veränderndes Bild zu erstellen. Während Zellen ihre Gene buchstäblich auf ihre angrenzenden anderen übertragen, fließt Farbe wie Farbe über die Leinwand. Blueprint erstellt jede Minute eine einzigartige farbenfrohe Komposition und präsentiert das unbegrenzte Ergebnis, das sich aus einem einzigen Algorithmus ergibt. ein einziges Regelwerk.

Antoine Catala

安托万·卡塔拉
Distant Feel
Antoine Catala répond à la très haute technicité des médias numériques actuels en s’aidant du lo-fi et de l’analogique. Parsemées d’humour et de jeux de mots qui dissimulent souvent une certaine gravité, ses œuvres s’enchaînent dans une continuité à la fois matérielle et conceptuelle et s’appuient aussi bien sur l’esthetique du projet de sciences que sur la sémiotique.

JORG NIEHAGE

Samplingplong
File Festival

Randomly selected, acoustically usable finds (electronic junk, relays, plastic toys,compressed air valves, pneumatically operated components) are combined with cables and tubes. Via a device controlled by computer, they are turned into interactive instruments. An improvised ensemble evolves, from which – per mouse-over and mouse-click -short miniature compositions of dense rhythmic clicks, hisses, whirs, hums and crackles can be elicited. A tapestry of sound bursts forth from the floral-like web of cables and tubes. The installation can be used by the projected mouse-cursor: rolling over the improvised instruments causes small sound events. Activating the installation by rolling over its parts enables the user to play spontaneous improvisations. Clicking these objects starts short programs of loop-like compositions. Small “techno-compositions en miniature”, rhythmic patterns of analog (or real) sounds; a physical low-tech simulation of electronic, digital music, perhaps an ironic comment on interactivity.

Verena Friedrich

Vanitas Machine

The installation VANITAS MACHINE addresses the desire for eternal life and the potential of life-prolonging measures. Based on a candle which – by means of technical intervention – burns down very slowly, vanitas machine creates a contemporary analogy to the endeavour of prolonging the human lifespan with the help of science and technology.Being one of the classical vanitas symbols, a burning candle recalls the futility of the moment, the transience of human life and the certainty of the end of all existence. But is this end really still inevitable?In the course of the last two centuries, average human life expectancy has increased significantly in the industrialised countries. Moreover, in the context of scientific research the biological causes of ageing are being explored. Numerous theories of aging have already been developed pointing both towards physiological as well as environmental factors.One of the first theories of ageing was the so-called »metabolism theory«, which claims that the lifespan of organisms is reciprocally related to energy turnover and therefore connected to calorie intake, oxygen consumption and heart rate: The higher the metabolic rate, the shorter the lifespan of the organism.

Amy Karle

Biofeedback Artwork

Amy Karle connects her body and consciousness to technology to create art, repurposing a Sandin Image Processor as an electrophysiological visualization device. While meditating, Amy Karle inputs her biofeedback into the historically significant Sandin IP analog computer to generate the output of image and sound in real-time. The artwork is both the long-duration performance as well as the experimental video art that is created in the process.

Sasha Waltz

Analogia Inusual Dance Performing
Lending itself to all sorts of metamorphoses, the body is a receptor and a symbol of myriad violations and affronts, a subject/object for all purposes, a depository and creative force for the projected imagination

benjamin bergery and jim campbell

Jacob’dream: a luminous path
San Francisco-based electronic-media artist Jim Campbell creates work that combines film, light emitting diodes (LEDs) and sculptural elements. His choice of materials is often complex, and he uses them to create imagery that is allusive and open-ended. His exploration of the distinction between the analog world and its digital representation metaphorically parallels the difference between poetic understanding versus the mathematics of data.