Loom
Loom showcases abstract animations developed with data from real-time Google Trends. Popular queries appear momentarily as overlaid text before dissolving into a smoky abstraction. These terms are approached with an accidental lyricism —each word appears and disappears in a trail of saturation. Colors within the animation are determined by the prevalence of a specific topic; the more viral the search is online, the warmer the tones become. Stripped from headlines, graphic imagery, and statistics, each phrase inspires a contemplative experience, a chance for the viewer to ruminate on what is streaming through the collective consciousness at any given time. Loom weaves a social fabric, mixing the transcendental with the banal, to present the spirit of our time in generative motion.

The work of the Austrian artist Gerwald Rockenschaub, born in Linz in 1952, has been associated with Neo-Geo since the early 1980s, when a group of young artists concentrated on the formal vocabulary of the abstract avant-garde. Neo-Geo permeated the aesthetics of American minimal art with the consumeristic position of pop art. Rockenschaub’s art cannot be simply categorised in any particular style, however; in his animations, foil pictures, objects and site-related installations, he refers in equal measure to ideas and positions of modernism and to phenomena of everyday culture.

Shapeshifter Heartbreaker

Shapeshifter, Heartbreaker, is an installation on two levels composed of sculptural work and 3D computer animations that are both abstract and figurative. On the first level Pakui Hardware has designed an office desk using the typical components of a trading floor. However, this is not a work station for individuals; it is for computer aided trading, non-human activities which are approximated in the three channel videos atop desks noticeably lacking keyboards and mice. These activities often occur at an exceedingly fast pace, in the blink of an eye, an expression that lends its name to a video installed on the second floor. There, the blinks of a humanoid form have been accelerated to illustrate how fast the body would have to consciously react if it were operating at the speed of decision making that resulted in the stock market’s ‘flash crash’ of 2010.

Shapeshifter, Heartbreaker

Shapeshifter, Heartbreaker, is an installation on two levels composed of sculptural work and 3D computer animations that are both abstract and figurative. On the first level Pakui Hardware has designed an office desk using the typical components of a trading floor. However, this is not a work station for individuals; it is for computer aided trading, non-human activities which are approximated in the three channel videos atop desks noticeably lacking keyboards and mice. These activities often occur at an exceedingly fast pace, in the blink of an eye, an expression that lends its name to a video installed on the second floor. There, the blinks of a humanoid form have been accelerated to illustrate how fast the body would have to consciously react if it were operating at the speed of decision making that resulted in the stock market’s ‘flash crash’ of 2010.
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