Flying Stone No.2
Zhan Wang’s most celebrated work to date is his series of “artificial rocks” – stainless steel replicas of the much-revered “scholar’s rocks” traditionally found in Chinese gardens. The mirrored surfaces of these often monumental objects absorb the viewer and its surrounding environment, enticing them to become part of the work, an abstraction and distortion of reality, thus creating a visual interplay between positions of tradition and modernity.

Distortions of The Past

FILE 2024 | Aesthetic Synthetics
International Electronic Language Festival
Michael Sadowski (aka derealizer) – Distortions of The Past – Austria

Fractal elements that resemble cosmic structures evoke the illusion of traveling through a fractal universe. Rules, in the form of prompts, and chance interact with each other to create a visual fantasy.

Bio

Using Stable Diffusion, a visual synthesizer, the artist turns fantasies into videos using just a PC, similar to the invention of printing 600 years ago. Exploring the interplay between software algorithms that create visual worlds and the artist’s mind guiding this process is incredibly exciting. Unlike traditional cinema, there is no ‘reality’ or humans involved, making it a satisfying medium for creating visual art.

Credits

Visuals: Michael Sadowski
Music: Distortions of the Past by Dreamstate Logic

reflektor distortion

The installation reflektor distortion – conceived as a rotating, water-filled basin – is inspired by the shape of a parabolic mirror that ‚rotates‘ water via centrifugal force. The work consists of the three main components mirror, reflection and distortion. Both curve and distortion of the water surface is affected by speed and integrated resistors that generate a permanently new and re-organizing mirror reflection. The water surface will be supplementary distorted via speaker by resonating low sound frequencies. The function of the mirror is hereby eminent: The mirror surface is the medium that reveals reality as distorted reflection. Rising the question of the observed and the real image the installation plays with the artist’s thesis that we all have a permanent distorted perception of reality.

“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.”

DAYDREAM V.02

DAYDREAM is an audiovisual installation that generates space distortions. Relationship between space and time, accelerations, contractions, shifts and metamorphosis have been the lexical field of the project. This installation aimed at establishing a physical connection between the virtual space and the real space, blurring the limits and submerging the audience into a short detachment from reality. Lights generate abstract spaces while sounds define the echoes of virtual spaces. Daydream is an invitation to contemplation. The frontality of the installation leads the visitors to a passive position.

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.