NEST

Inspired by Homer’s Odyssey
Loosely based on Homer’s The Odyssey, Marshmallow Laser Feast’s light installation lit the primary performance space within the chapel’s hazy internal dome. Grid-like projections crossed with mobile structures (designed by the architectural practice Studio Weave) as agile bodies crept over, in and through the many lit towers and surfaces. This first act was seen by the audience from the left and right balconies above. The second act, down flights of rope-lined staircases in the concrete basement, was more disorienting, lit only with triangular neon tubing and an eerie glow that seeped from an open door. The style of dance, in keeping with the more rapid and percussive score, by Canadian composer Christopher Mayo and electronic music composer / performer Anna Meredith, confronted the audience and was staged without boundaries dividing the dancers (some of whom were in street clothes) and viewers.

birdgirl
It’s hard to pin down what media German artist Alma Haser actually works with: Her series involve photography, cut-up collages, rephotographing prints, and weaving together multiple images to strike a balance of time and space. Take I Always Have To Repeat Myself, for example. Each piece layers two or more prints either physically (weaving or overlaying strips of different photographs to add a sense of depth and dimension) or within a new frame—a number of the pieces feature sitters manipulating photographs of themselves, playing with perspective to offer and dizzying and disorienting fresh take on portraiture and image making.

Exploded Chair
This piece takes traditional conception of what a chair is, dismantles it, and places it in clear perspex containers. The maple-wood chair that sits loosely within its crystalline sarcophagus looks much like the archetypal kitchen seat. As the ‘Exploded Chair’ is moved, its wooden pieces rattle around inside their compartments. The piece is both familiar and disorienting, playful and disconcerting — a dichotomous piece on which to seat yourself.

Au Bout Du Souffle
Stéphane Thidet is a French artist who takes regular, everyday objects and transforms them into absurd, fantastical, slightly disorienting installation pieces. Although his work may be slightly off-putting at first, Thidet’s consistently humorous touch lends his installations a sense of accessibility and charm. Thidet is a multimedia contemporary artist, who apart from installations, also works in photography, video and sculpture. Many of his pieces were inspired by toys or games from childhood and play with ideas in popular culture and entertainment.

“These photos are a result of how intriguing the concept of distortion translates to architecture. It creates a sense of falling into itself, like capturing a moment of demolition. I can destroy titanous steel structures with the click of a mouse and create new twisted versions of reality. I was also inspired by San Francisco. I had just moved here and being a new city was disorienting and exciting and I wanted to capture how my whole world had changed.”

Джулиан Хобер
DEMON HILL, A DISORIENTING OPTICAL ILLUSION

فلوريان هيكر
フロリアン·ヘッカー
Sound Installation
In his installations, live performances and publications, Florian Hecker deals with specific compositional developments of post-war modernity, electroacoustic music as well as other, non-musical disciplines. He dramatizes space, time and self-perception in his sonic works by isolating specific auditory events in their singularity, thus stretching the boundaries of their materialization.
Their objectual autonomy is exposed while simultaneously evoking sensations, memories and associations in an immersive intensity. Some of his works incorporate psycho-acoustic phenomena, disorienting listeners’ spatial perceptions and expanding their conception about sound. Hecker’s most recent recording, Speculative Solution ( Editions Mego, 2011), brings together Hecker’s sonic practice and psychoacoustic experimentation with philosopher Quentin Meillassoux’s concept of ‘hyperchaos’ – the absolute contingency of the laws of nature.
During his residency at MIT, Florian Hecker will research a new sound piece that takes the concept of the “auditory chimera” as point of departure. Originally developed at MIT by Bertrand Delgutte, senior research scientist at the MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics, the concept of the auditory chimera inspires an exploration of the relationship between pitch perception and sound localization. Hecker will create a text and sound piece that incorporates the recordings of material read by students. Using an anechoic chamber he will work with students to explore the experiential nature of psycho-acoustic practice.