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Marco Barotti

The Egg
Ten thousand years ago, there were 1 million people living on the planet, fifty years ago there were 3 billion of us and, by the end of this century, we are estimated to reach a population of 10 billion people! We have modified almost every part of our planet and, as we continue to grow, our need for vital resources increases exponentially. We human beings are the main force behind every global problem we face. The work is a kinetic sound sculpture resembling an egg. The cycle of life, reflected in the shape of the sculpture with neither beginning nor end, symbolizes fertility and reproduction – and thus questions the impact of overpopulation. Driven by real-time data generated by the Worldometer, the sculpture constantly changes its shape.

Yuge Zhou

Underground Circuit
Underground Circuit is a collage of hundreds of video clips shot in the subway stations in New York. Station to station, the movement of the commuters in the outer rings suggests the repetitive cycle of life and urban theatricality and texture. The inner-most ring includes people sitting on the bench waiting; the central drummers act as the controller of the movement, inspired by the concept of the Four-faced Buddha in Chinese folk religion, the god who can fulfill and grant all wishes of its devotees. For the installation, the video is projected onto the gallery floor and mapped onto a cube with relief in the middle of the projection area. The installation invites audiences to sit on the central cube as Voyeur-gods, to observe the anonymous characters in the projected urban labyrinth.

Moritz Simon

Glitch Robot
The Installation consists of several robotic actors. When the actors make contact with their instruments, they produce a sonic impression of an omnipresent texture of modern life: electronic music. The music robots used in this performance consists of recycled and 3D-printed parts such as harddisks, relays, tongues, motors and solenoids. Glitch Robot connects mechanical, visible movements to audible sound by using small sound-producing robots. Thus, the installation highlights the origin of the sound in a way no conventional medium of electronic music production is able to. Typically, electronic music eliminates the haptic aspect of sound-generation, creating a void in understanding of how sound, and thus music, is mechanically created.

Lech Majewski

The Roe’s Room
opera movie

In this “absolutely singular autobiographical film opera” (Time Out London), multi-talented composer, writer, director and artist Lech Majewski presents a stunning, intimate, and ultimately magical work of unbridled creativity. A ravishing ode to the imagination, THE ROE’S ROOM is a place where the energy of youth and the eternal power of the natural world triumph over the banalities and deprivations of the commonplace.Within their apartment, a father, mother and son bear the dulling yoke of an ordinary urban life. His mind and heart borne aloft by the cycle of the seasons and the images and music within him, the son transforms his cloistered existence into a richly poetic emotional utopia. As autumn arrives, cracking flakes of plaster become falling leaves. With spring, a cold hard floor comes alive with meadow grass and love beckons in the form of a beautiful young girl’s outstretched hand.

DOUG AITKEN

Underwater Pavilions
Underwater Pavilions is artist Doug Aitken’s large-scale installation produced by Parley for the Oceans and presented in partnership with The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA). The work consists of three temporary underwater sculptures, floating beneath the ocean’s surface that swimmers, snorkelers, and scuba divers swim through and experience. Geometric in design, the sculptures create underwater spaces synthesizing art and science as they are constructed with carefully researched materials and will be moored to the ocean floor. Part of each structure is mirrored to reflect the underwater seascape and create a kaleidoscopic observatory for the viewer, while other surfaces are rough and rock-like. The environments created by the sculptures will constantly change with the currents and the time of day, focusing the attention of the viewer on the rhythm of the ocean and its life cycles.

REVITAL COHEN & TUUR VAN BALEN

The Immortal
A number of life-support machines are connected to each other, circulating liquids and air in attempt to mimic a biological structure.
The Immortal investigates human dependence on electronics, the desire to make machines replicate organisms and our perception of anatomy as reflected by biomedical engineering.
A web of tubes and electric cords are interwoven in closed circuits through a Heart-Lung Machine, Dialysis Machine, an Infant Incubator, a Mechanical Ventilator and an Intraoperative Cell Salvage Machine. The organ replacement machines operate in orchestrated loops, keeping each other alive through circulation of electrical impulses, oxygen and artificial blood.
Salted water acts as blood replacement: throughout the artificial circulatory system minerals are added and filtered out again, the blood gets oxygenated via contact with the oxygen cycle, and an ECG device monitors the system’s heartbeat. As the fluid pumps around the room in a meditative pulse, the sound of mechanical breath and slow humming of motors resonates in the body through a comforting yet disquieting soundscape.Life support machines are extraordinary devices; computers designed to activate our bodies when anatomy fails, hidden away in hospital wards. Although they are designed as the ultimate utilitarian appliances, they are extremely meaningful and carry a complex social, cultural and ethical subtext. While life prolonging technologies are invented as emergency measures to combat or delay death, my interest lies in considering these devices as a human enhancement strategy.This work is a continuation of my investigation of the patient as a cyborg, questioning the relationship between medicine and techno- fantasies about mechanical bodies, hyper abilities and posthumanism.

Maotik

Erratic Weather
Despite some world leaders skepticism, climate change is a reality and the world isn’t just warming, in some parts of the planet the weather is becoming more erratic. During the last years, our generation has started to observe the effects and consequences of this shift, witnessing violent and unexpected climate phenomenons. Erratic Weather is a digital art project aiming to represent changing atmospheric conditions into an immersive multimedia experience. During the performance, the system uses various source of weather information retrieved from an online database and processed on real time to generate a visual and a surround sound composition. During 30 minutes the audience will experience the life cycle of swirling phenomenons such typhoon, hurricane and tropical cyclone , demonstrating the devastating power of the nature and the emergency to preserve it.

The Farmhouse

Our Farmhouse runs on an organic life-cycle of by products inside the building, where one processes output is another processes input: Buildings create already a large amount of heat, which can be reused for plants like potatoes, nuts or beans to grow. A water-treatment system filters rain- and greywater, enriches it with nutrients and cycles it back to the greenhouses. The food waste can be locally collected in the buildings basement, turned into compost and reused to grow more food.Our Farmhouse is an attempt to reconnect people in the city with the process of growing our food.

astrid krogh

АСТРИД КРОГ
Ikat I
Fascinated by the interplay of textiles and light, Denmark-based artist Astrid Krogh explores the dialogue between natural and artificial illumination when paired with fibers. While studying at the Danish Design School, Krogh explored her interest in textiles, which shines through in the craftsmanship, patterns, and ornamentation of her work. Inspired by cycles of life in nature, many of Krogh’s neon.

REYNOLD REYNOLDS

레이 놀드 레이놀즈
РЕЙНОЛЬД РЕЙНОЛЬДС
Secrets Trilogy
Secret Machine

Secret Machine is the second of the Secrets Trilogy; a cycle exploring the imperceptible conditions that frame life and is preceded by Secret Life (2008) and followed by Six Easy Pieces (2010)
In Secret Machine a woman is subjected to Muybridge’s motion studies. She is treated in the same fashion as in the original Muybridge photography: with Greek aesthetic in a Cartesian grid. A short time after Mybridge’s studies, Duchamp painted Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2 (1912) attempting to show time on a flat surface. He is expanding cubism and painting into another dimension: time. Time is about movement and change, like our experience of reality. Without change life does not exist. Photography does not capture this experience. In Secret Machine different filming techniques are compared to the motion of the body. The film camera becomes another measurement tool in a way a video camera cannot. The intention was to make an art piece from the point of view of a machine, specifically a camera.
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COCOLAB

Cycles

Created by COCOLAB from Mexico and commissioned by ARCA, Cycles is an audio visual installation comprised of a series of laser projectors to visualise short cycle audio compositions by a collection of A/V artists including Julian Placencia – Disco Ruido (MX), Shiro Schwarz (MX), Eduardo Jiménez (MX), Tijs Ham (NL) and Sebastian Frisch (DE). The concept of the installation relies on the idea that our lives are ruled and defined by cycles. Cycles which at their core appear to be chaos, however at a distance they reveal to us the harmony and beauty of each repetition and their infinite possibilities. Our daily interaction with life’s cycles is an invitation to take the space and reflection time necessary to change our perspective.

DOUG FOSTER

MOONLAND
The gravitational pull of the Moon creates tides in the Earth’s oceans and distorts the Earth’s crust. It was instrumental in the evolutionary journey of life from the sea to the land. The reproductive cycles of many flora and fauna still follow the rhythms of the Moon.

GILBERTO ESPARZA

Nomadic Plants
Vegetation and microorganisms live in symbiosis inside the body of the Nomadic Plants robot. Whenever its bacteria require nourishment, the self-sufficient robot will move towards a contaminated river and ‘drink’ water from it. Through a process of microbial fuel cell, the elements contained in the water are decomposed and turned into energy that can feed the brain circuits of the robot. The surplus is then used to create life, enabling plants to complete their own life cycle. As Gilberto wrote in our email conversation, “The nomadic plant is a portray of our own species. It also deals with the alienated transformation of this new hybrid species that fights for its survival in a deteriorated environment.”

Joon Y. Moon

Augmented Shadow
File Festival

Augmented Shadow is a design experiment producing an artificial shadow effect through the use of tangible objects, blocks, on a displayable tabletop interface. Its goal is to offer a new type of user-experience. The project plays on the fact that shadows present distorted silhouettes depending on the light. Augmented Shadows take the distortion effect into the realm of fantasy. Shadows display below the objects according to the physics of the real world. However, the shadows themselves transform the objects into houses, occupied by shadow creatures. By moving the blocks around the table the user sets off series of reactions within this new fantasy ecosystem. In this installation, the shadows exist both in a real and a virtual environment simultaneously. It thus brings augmented reality to the tabletop by way of a tangible interface. The shadow is an interface metaphor connecting the virtual world and users. Second, the unexpected user experience results from manipulating the users’ visual perceptions, expectations, and imagination to inspire re-perception and new understanding. Therefore, users can play with the shadows lying on the boundary between the real, virtual, and fantasy. Augmented Shadow utilizes this unique interface metaphor for interactive storytelling. Maximizing the magical amusement of AR, it is embedding an ecosystem where imaginary objects and organic beings co-exist while each of them influences on each other’s life-cycle, even though it is not in use by users. Light and shadow play critical roles in this world’s functions causing chain reactions between virtual people, trees, birds, and houses. A set of tangible blocks allows users to participate in the ecosystem. Users can influence on the system by playing with the blocks or observe the changes of the shadows as if kids were playing with an ant farm.

JEAN TINGUELY

让汤格利
ז’אן טינגלי
ジャン·ティンゲリー
장 팅겔리
Жан Тингели
homage to new york
JEAN TINGUELY’S “Homage to New York” was billed as the ultimate homemade gadget — a towering contraption composed of found junk, dismembered bicycles, dismantled musical instruments, glass bottles, a meteorological balloon and electric motors in questionable condition. It was slated to come to life and spectacularly self-destruct in a one-night-only performance for some 250 patrons and reporters in the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden at the Museum of Modern Art on March 17, 1960. And self-destruct it did, but not quite according to plan.Mr. Tinguely’s self-destructive sculpture had failed — and thereby, in a sense, succeeded. Mr. Tinguely, a Swiss artist who died in 1991, was by 1960 well known for such Dada-inflected works; he posed with the wreckage after the performance and took a bow.