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Cyberia

Performance & live computer generated simulation

A postmodern fairytale, Cyberia takes place somewhere in a cold distant East, stretching between and endless imaginary realm and a vast physical space. It is a westwards journey towards a promised future with no arrival and no return. There is no here or there, only a twilight zone between a departure point and a simulated destination. Between digital video projections and a physical setting, using the mechanics of a video-game engine with a motion capture suit, Cyberia is the simulation of an endless pre-climax state where a performer and a CG avatar dance as one to the rhythms of an imaginary West. In a world oversaturated by digital data –mysticism and paranormal are as popular as ever. Emerging technologies are increasingly incorporated in a form of postmodern spiritualism, as Arthur C. Clarke points out: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

FLORA 2

The animation in FLORA is generated by overlapping sine waves that travel through a string of lines. This wave principle often appears in nature when energy is transmitted through a medium like water, air or simply a rope. It can also be observed in the locomotion of animals and human-beings, in which kinetic energy is transmitted successively through joints.
The FLORA algorithm of is based on the discovery that a simple system of rotating lines can create endless variations of abstract shapes – ranging from curved harmonious lines to edgy and chaotic patterns. The resulting aesthetics combine computational accuracy with an organic playfulness, and tend to trigger diverse associations in the mind of the viewer.

FILE FESTIVAL
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Wyne Veen is a Dutch artist working in the photographic medium. Veen’s work consists of sculptural arrangements, utilizing everyday objects and their isolated materials. The work possesses an aesthetic and absurd appeal. Inspired by all things overly developed, Veen is fascinated by our highly manufactured lives, while also endlessly drawn to all steps of the production process. Veen graduated from the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in 2008 and maintains a studio in the Red Light district of Amsterdam

Gallim Dance
Founded by choreographer Andrea Miller, Gallim Dance burst onto the New York dance scene in 2007 and immediately caught the attention of the New York dance community. The company includes an ensemble of dancers hailed for their quick wit and technical virtuosity. The mission of Gallim Dance is to play inside the imagination, to find juxtapositions of the mind and body that resonate in the soul, to investigate our limitations and pleasures, and to realize the endless human capacity for inspiration.

POF 51
Fabrice Hyber sets out to examine the way we communicate and mimic the endless affinities between ideas. What interests Hyber is engaging people with everyday life to invent new modes of behavior. In his mental spa with Faust, he deploys one of his POF’s (Prototypes d ‘Objets en Fonctionnement, created between 1991-2012) to interpret and resolve the complexity of reality by constantly searching for possible, or impossible, hypotheses, a kind of activism to explore endless possibility and infinite variations for art-making.

פיונה טאן
フィオナ·タン
Фиона Тан
فيونا تان
Rise and Fall
Fiona Tan explores storytelling, memory, and the part they play in the formation of identity throughout this exhibition of five video installations, various associated sketches and one single-channel video. Rise and Fall (2009), elongated projections onto two large, side-by-side screens, is a wordless meditation, set to music, of a woman no longer young but still conscious of her looks; she was clearly a beauty in her youth. As the video proceeds we gather that the young woman pictured on the second screen is the memory of her younger self. They often move through domestic activities (sleeping, bathing, dressing) in parallel; this is inter-cut with scenes of violently rushing water (shot at Niagra Falls, it turns out). It’s a hackneyed metaphor – the water’s endless surging as an image of time’s relentless uni-directionality – but in Tan’s hands that doesn’t seem to matter; she creates extraordinarily emotional work out of simple stories and well-worn themes.

Reface [Portrait Sequencer]

Reface [Portrait Sequencer] by Golan Levin and Zachary Lieberman (2007) is a surreal video mash-up that composes endless combinations of its visitors’ faces. Based on the Victorian “Exquisite Corpse” parlor game, the Reface installation records and dynamically remixes brief video slices of its viewers’ mouths, eyes and brows. Reface uses face-tracking techniques to allow automatic alignment and segmentation of its participants’ faces. As a result, visitors to the project can move around freely in front of the display without worrying about lining up their face for the system’s camera. The video clips recorded by the project are “edited” by the participants’ own eye blinks. Blinking also triggers the display to advance to the next set of face combinations. Through interactions with an image wholly constructed from its own history of being viewed, Reface makes possible a new form of inventive play with one’s own appearance and identity. The resulting kinetic portraiture blends the personalities and genetic traits of its visitors to create a “generative group portrait” of the people in the project’s locale.

Canoe
The work here in Dawson is like an old vehicle in which I’ve put a new engine. Entitled Canoe, it consists of an approximately 20 foot long trough of water, that resembles some kind of boat. This provides a means for a gunwales tracking mechanism to slowly, endlessly paddle its way back and forth. It was first constructed in 2001 in a studio beside Halifax harbour. It draws visual inspiration from the bridges and water vessels of this port. Conceptually, it grew from an interest in technological obsolescence: how things (like canoes) make shifts from utility to leisure.
It has experienced several major rebuilds since 2001. Most of them have been practical, but for Dawson I’ve opted for an experimental configuration that changes significantly the nature of the work. Previously, Canoe has only ever been shown indoors. Normally in runs on rechargeable batteries, with a continuous, smooth motion. In Dawson, it is shown outdoors, alongside the Yukon river, showing up in an absurd way the paleness of its artificial river. Here, the primary source of power is sunlight.
Making use of the long northern day, solar panels receive light, storing energy in an array of super-capacitor cells. At this time, Canoe remains still. A custom circuit monitors the amount of charge, and when a predetermined trigger point is reached, it is dumped into Canoe’s electric motor in a burst, allowing it to make a few strokes. Then Canoe rests, while the charging cycle begins again. Motion is intermittent, entirely dependent on the amount and intensity of sunlight. It ranges from near standstill in overcast conditions to perhaps 1 or 2 strokes every minute in full light. The technical term for this type of circuit is a relaxation oscillator. I like this term because, if you remove it from its technical context, it points back to ideas about leisure and utility.

in transit
Two swift beams of light travel through a room creating infinite shadows on a series of floating white frames. This is In Transit X, a darkened, room-based installation that alludes to an endless void.The dizzying effects of In Transit X place the viewer into a monochromatic man-made space. The fifty-foot-wide animated light installation by artist Hc Gilje was originally made for the Wood Street Galleries in Pittsburgh in 2012, and recently went on display last month at Kulturkirken Jakob in Oslo. Using block-like frames and light as the mediums, Gilje creates dynamic visual dimensions that lend themselves to a mesmerizing noirish experience.

Coronado
File festival
“Coronado” was inspired by a visit to the Coronado beach in California, which was an awe inspiring moment never experienced in other beaches. The soundscape present in Coronado seemed to be coming from all directions with layers and layers of sound waves. I decided then that I would make a sound work to translate this experience. The sound installation is characterized by the interplay of the analog and digital sound sources which layers over one another, exploring the idea of a seascape. The center of the installation is an ocean drum controlled with mechanical arms that creates and simulates the sound of sea waves. This is picked up by the microphone, reprocessed through the computer and sent out to the 6 channel surround speakers in different time. The interplay and sense of endlessness in the layering the analog and digital are my interpretation and response to the wonderment I found in Coronado.