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ARAKAWA + GINS

Yoro Park – Site of Reversible Destiny
“The couple first fully explored Reversible Destiny in what is regarded as their seminal gallery piece, “The Mechanism of Meaning,” an ever-evolving manifesto-cum-artwork begun in 1963, comprising 80 panels that they refined and added to over decades, many of them high-concept diagrams and puzzles with instructions and text (“A Mnemonic Device for Forgetting,” “Think One, Say Two”), made primarily of acrylic and mixed media on canvas. In an accompanying précis to the work, which was exhibited at the Guggenheim in 1997, they prescribed “no more irretrievable disappearances” and declared death “old-fashioned.” Critical opinion differs on how seriously the pair, whose work is in the collection of the Museum of Modern Art and Paris’s Centre Pompidou, took the grandiose quest to end death. But if it was intended as metaphor, neither of them ever let on. Indeed, though Arakawa himself died at 73, in 2010, and Gins four years later, at the age of 72, defying death became the defining work of their lives.”

Hugo Arcier

Ghost City
The installation Ghost City is built around a reinterpretation of the set of the famous game GTA V. The spectator is plunged into an environment without any population that disappears as we move closer. It is a meditative and captivating experience. The focus is put on architectural and graphic elements. This virtual universe solicits both the present (the experience of the artwork) and the memory. The disappearance, before our eyes, of this virtual universe feeds the terror that one day all our digital life – ephemeral cloud.

thomas lebrun

Avant toutes disparitions
“Before any disappearance“, it is urgent to live, to dance, especially to transmit. By continuing his playful exploration of the history of dance and in particular by defeating the codes of ballroom dancing, the current director of the Center chorégraphique de Tours once again imposes an intergenerational vision of his art.

JEFFREY SHAW

Disappearance

In this work the movement of a large video monitor mounted on an industrial fork-lift truck creates a virtual representation of a larger than life size ballerina. As the forklift moves the monitor up and down the ballerina is presented from head to toe, and as the forklift truck rotates the ballerina also appears to turn. In this way the monitor functions as a window that gradually reveals the virtual presence of the ballerina who is dancing in the same axis as the rotating forklift truck. Also visible inside the motor compartment of the forklift truck is a small rotating ballerina figurine in front of which a video camera moves up and down. This mechanism is electronically synchronised with the movement of the forklift itself and provides the closed circuit source for the video image of the ballerina that is seen on the monitor screen. Disappearance evokes and celebrates the memory of the ballerina on a music box (a first generation robot) and generates her virtual reconstruction to the extent that the machinery of reproduction itself now incarnates her pirouettes.
video

PAUL DESTIEU

Fade out
The project focuses on the progressive burying of a drumset under a gravel flow. Each impact is amplified in contact with the different instrument’s parts. The gravel flow produces a rythm section which turns into a sound and visual chocking. In opposition with the process of traditional music composing, the instrument is taken away from the hands of musician towards a rough experience. The sequence shot proposes an experimentation around the technical state of Fade-out, by materializing the decrease of sound and visual signal, until a complete silence and disappearance.

TAKAHIRO MATSUO

تاكاهيرو ماتسو
松尾高弘
타카히로 마츠오
Такахиро Мацуо
Phantasm
file festival

To explore a fantasy world experienced sometime and somewhere in our memory. Phantasm is an interactive installation in which participants light up in a small dreamlike world in space. As you take hold of a glowing sphere that releases a pale light, the area lights up in pale blue light, and white butterflies appear from nowhere as a soft piano melody flows. Butterflies fly slowly and gloriously, gathering toward the sphere, and chase you as you move the sphere. The sphere is the key to the real world and fantasy. Participants can experience the nostalgia of playing with butterflies by moving around or holding the sphere in the air. Beautiful white butterflies draw wing strokes in the air as if they are symbols of a fantasy world; they delicately lead you into their world. If you cover the sphere with your hands to shut out the light, the butterflies gradually disappear, leaving silence and lingering light, bringing you back to reality. You will find yourself perplexed as if it were a fleeting dream. Technical statement of “Phantasm” LEDs are used as the light source for the sphere which is the interface, so that the sphere glows in uniformity and allows the interaction of participants hiding the light or releasing the light with their hands. Light, color tone, and the position of the sphere are monitored with a sensor camera placed on the ceiling, and by connecting with real time CG, the butterfly movements (appearance, disappearance, gathering, and chasing) become possible.