highlike

Michaela Pnacekova

A Symphony of Noise
Created by Michaela Pnacekova, Jamie Balliu
Herbert’s everyday sound sources are the inspiration for A Symphony of Noise VR. This interactive virtual reality experience is a journey through four sonic landscapes. The first centers on breathing, which immediately makes you focus on listening to the world differently. This is followed by an arctic environment full of scraping and crunching sounds, and finally a shop interior. Using the controllers or by blowing or singing, you can add sounds to the audio palette, which is visualized as waves and colors in three-dimensional space. In the fourth and final landscape, all the sounds are combined in an ultimate symphony.

Kino

MIT Media Lab, Stanford University
This work explores a dynamic future where the accessories we wear are no longer static, but are instead mobile, living objects on the body. Engineered with the functionality of 18 robotics, this “living” jewelry roams on unmodified clothing, changing location and reconfiguring appearance according to social context and enabling multitude presentations of self. With the addition of sensor devices, they transition into active devices which can react to environmental conditions. They can also be paired with existing mobile devices to become personalized on-body assistants to help complete tasks. Attached to garments, they generate shape-changing clothing and kinetic pattern designs–creating a new, dynamic fashion.
It is our vision that in the future, these robots will be miniaturized to the extent that they can be seamlessly integrated into existing practices of body ornamentation. With the addition of kinetic capabilities, traditionally static jewelry and accessories will start displaying life-like qualities, learning, shifting, and reconfiguring to the needs and preferences of the wearer, also assisting in fluid presentation of self. We envision a new class of future wearables that possess hybrid qualities of the living and the crafted, creating a new on-body ecology for human-wearable symbiosis.

Frederik Heyman

CEREMONIAL FORMALITY
Frederik Heyman’s work is a balancing act incorporating multiple media – including video, installations and photogaphy – often in a digitally altered environment. In his work, Heyman explores memory and duration, using photogrammetry and 3D scanning to depict and represent the passage of time. The hallmarks of Heyman’s work are mechanical and technological: wires, wheels, scrolling LED marquees, metal frames, clamps, industrial lights, screens and cameras. Bodies–as opposed to humans–are subject to unusual dynamics with these technological trappings. In Ceremonial Formality (2020) a contortionist is encased in a metal cage while a spectator, hooked up to wires, looks on.

tabor robak

balenciaga collaboration
A 25 minute video loop with previously unreleased tracks by DJ Hell, made in collaboration with Balenciaga.

Here is a dramatic tension in his work between the real and the imagined in his use of often-appropriated digital objects to create virtual landscapes, which frequently contain elements – animals, machines, fragments of videogames – that are recognisable from our day to day life. This creates a symbiotic relationship between the digital and the real. In a very real way digital space has now become an intangible reality. The worlds built by Robak have a distinctly cinematic sensibility that hyperbolises the shine and dramatic effects of 3D rendered animation. The aesthetic of his work is supremely important, drawing the viewer into a truly alluring, indulgent and strangely gratifying environment. There is a further challenge to the void between high-art and the worlds of 3D animation and gaming, in the intersection between depiction and simulation. This can be partially attributed to the vernacular of advertising Robak is so proficient at utilising.

Kris Verdonck

IN
In IN (2003) an actress remains motionless for an hour in a display window filled with water. The distortion to her senses caused by the environment she is in makes her go into a trance. The sounds of her breathing and movement are amplified by microphones.

bohyun yoon

БОХЬЮН ЮН
윤보현
To Reverse Yourself

FILE FESTIVAL

My work poses the question: how does reality becomes exquisitely animated by certain social control systems such as politics, mass media, technology, science, and etc. It is my artistic goal to reveal how human beings are fragile and delicate in these social environments. By living in Korea, Japan and the U.S, I have first-hand experience in diverse social systems and have come to view my life experiences as raw material for my research. With my research in mind, my art utilizes the body as the tool for an intensive investigation of the public and private; examining the relationship between how people understand their body and how this understanding represents themselves in the greater context.
Currently, I am curious about human perception developing parallel with the ever-evolving progression of technological world. Thus, I question technology’s relationship to reality and illusion; asking what is reality? My work takes advantage of illusion to explore and answer this question, and often my artistic materials consist of the body and mirrors. I use mirrors for integrating reality and illusion.

Gerard O’Neill

O’Neill cylinder

O’Neill was inspired by the papers written by his students. He began to work out the details of a program to build self-supporting space habitats in free space.Among the details was how to provide the inhabitants of a space colony with an Earth-like environment. His students had designed giant pressurized structures, spun up to approximate Earth gravity by centrifugal force . With the population of the colony living on the inner surface of a sphere or cylinder, these structures resembled “inside-out planets”. He found that pairing counter-rotating cylinders would eliminate the need to spin them using rockets.This configuration has since been known as the O’Neill cylinder.

Alex Ekman

COW

Ekman talents extend to the lighting and stage design and his eye for structuring an environment is unerring. There is no set as such, excepting the plaster cow which dangles overhead, but the stage surface has its share of movement as little island-blocks rise up and pits sink down. The extreme tilting of the stage at one point causes unfortunate Bauch to roll, cow-like, almost into the pit. COW has its iconic Ekman moment in the scene that opens on a stage full of swirling dancers in white skirts set in a magical silvery mist. Mikael Karlsson, whose music partners the piece provides a subtle and evocative soundscape. He offers a hint of percussive rhythm picked up by the dancers who launch into an ecstatic dance: a stage full of whirling dervishes, until they collapse exhausted.

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Ekmans Talente erstrecken sich auf die Beleuchtung und das Bühnenbild, und sein Auge für die Strukturierung einer Umgebung ist unfehlbar. Es gibt kein Set als solches, außer der Gipskuh, die über ihnen baumelt, aber die Bühnenoberfläche hat ihren Anteil an Bewegung, wenn kleine Inselblöcke aufsteigen und Gruben sinken. Das extreme Kippen der Bühne an einer Stelle führt dazu, dass der unglückliche Bauch kuhartig fast in die Grube rollt. COW hat seinen legendären Ekman-Moment in der Szene, die auf einer Bühne voller wirbelnder Tänzer in weißen Röcken in einem magischen silbernen Nebel beginnt. Mikael Karlsson, dessen Musikpartner das Stück ist, bietet eine subtile und eindrucksvolle Klanglandschaft. Er bietet einen Hauch von perkussivem Rhythmus, der von den Tänzern aufgenommen wurde, die einen ekstatischen Tanz beginnen: eine Bühne voller wirbelnder Derwische, bis sie erschöpft zusammenbrechen.

 

GUTO NÓBREGA

Breathing
File Festival
Breathing is a work of art based on a hybrid creature made of a living organism and an artificial system. The creature responds to its environment through movement, light and the noise of its mechanical parts. Breathing is the best way to interact with the creature.
This work is the result of an investigation of plants as sensitive agents for the creation of art. The intention was to explore new forms of artistic experience through the dialogue of natural and artificial processes. Breathing is a pre-requisite for life, and is the path that links the observer to the creature.Breathing is a small step towards new art forms in which subtle processes of organic and non-organic life may reveal invisible patterns that interconnect us.Breathing is a work of art driven by biological impulse. Its beauty is neither found isolated on the plant nor in the robotic system itself. It emerges at the very moment in which the observer approaches the creature and their energies are exchanged through the whole system. It is in that moment of joy and fascination, in which we find ourselves in a very strange dialogue, that a life metaphor is created.Breathing is the celebration of that moment.

SAŠA SPAČAL MIRJAN ŠVAGELJ ANIL PODGORNIK

50Myconnect

Myconnect “offers the experience of a symbiosis of connection between humans, nature and technology. The spectator becomes an actor by lying in a capsule, equipped with a helmet and body sensors measuring the variations in his rhythm This data is modulated and transmitted to a closed universe of mycelium culture (white mushroom) to produce alterations using electrical resistance. These variations in turn generate signals, sent back to the person in the form of vibration, sound and light. Each cycle can be different depending on whether the experience is stimulating or calming. This type of perceptual exchange enabled by technology reveals how much the human being is an integral part of the complex network that links him to his environment.

Shaun Hu

Internet of Everything: All Connections
‘Internet of Everything: All Connections’ is a piece of work that connects human, animals, plants, bacteria, environment, compound and equipment using the Internet. It consists of seven parts. One part affects the other by sequence. It doesn’t have a starting point or an ending point in this connection – because they are an interlocking loop structure. The weak bio-electricity of the human body is passed to the bacteria, Proteus. The bacteria starts to vibrate due to the electrical stimulation. Its motion is captured by the microscope and input to Max in real time. Data arising from the change in value in the bacteria movement controls the next part.

Oyler Wu

Active Inlays

Oyler Wu Collaborative approaches architecture with a critical and rigorous intent that challenges the typical vision of the built environment. The office relies on the constant exchange between large architectural proposals and small architectural installations..

Lundén Architecture Company

Another Generosity
Another Generosity explores a new structure that consists of a membrane holding two basic elements: air and water. The simple structures are combined to create a visible and dynamic cellular structure. The inflated elements mediate between the natural and built environment. They respond to external and sometimes unseen stimuli, creating a new kind of experience, a momentary hesitation that heightens our awareness of our surroundings.

Jon McCormack

Colourfield
Colourfield is an evolutionary ecosystem of colour. Colour agents try to exist in a simple universe by producing colours that are suited to their environment. This environment is determined by the other agents and the colours they produce. Entering into complex feedback cycles, Colourfield presents an evolving palette of shifting colours. Different configurations emerge based on the strategies the ecosystem discovers for co-existance and co-dependency. Harmonious configurations often remain stable for a short while, before eventually being replaced by new relations, better able to survive in the ever shifting environment.

Mark Ramos & Ziyang Wu

Networked Ecosystem
In Networked Ecosystem, natural phenomena have been replaced by digital and artificial systems as forces that drive development: Electricity/battery = sustenance, WIFI signals = nutrition, Lidar data = fire/heat. Data Organisms populate this digital ecosystem as native life forms in the form of bots, AI’s, and avatars. Visitors to this networked landscape develop new kinds of digital senses to experience data as environmental changes, and interact with the simulated world and each other in an ever-changing online environment.

Lukas Truniger, Itamar Bergfreund & Bruce Yoder

Ethereal Fleeting
A series of clouds is generated by a machine-like sculpture. They appear, float over the surrounding environment and then dissolve into thin air again. The delocalization of this instant of natural beauty evokes a surreal experience. The installation forms a juxtaposition of a metallic structure and synthetic imitations of clouds. This supposed contrast between human technology and nature is explored in a space of unseen possibilities for symbiosis.

Friendred

Skin-awareness
The immersive space morphs and alters with light and becomes solid, its pressure composing and decomposing the self-awareness of skin. The dancer’s body is extended and manipulated as a conscious entity, exceeding the physiological object. The constant feedback between the body’s trajectory and interaction with the environment changes the nature of the object itself.

Flora&faunavision

Magenta Moon Garden
Designed to spark conversation around sustainability, tech and media skills in a playful and intuitive way, this interactive, walkthrough video installation comprises three distinct visual environments (Sunrise Garden, Moon Garden, Magenta Moon) enriched with intuitive, interactive real-time elements. The stunning environment and experience is flanked by online contents and events that tackle topics from hate speech to climate change, flanked by a wide spectrum of online contents, talks and on-site workshops.

Su Yu Hsin

Frame of reference
Il lavoro Frame of Reference, prodotto in collaborazione con GFZ German Research Center for Geosciences e NCTU Disaster Prevention and Water Environment Research Center, mostra scienziati nella gola di Taroko a Taiwan che studiano la misura in cui le frane sono guidate dal tempo e influenzano il clima. Su Yu Hsin è interessato all’approccio degli scienziati: attraverso l’uso di reti di monitoraggio in tempo reale, il corpo della persona che osserva viene sostituito da telecamere, sismografi e stazioni meteorologiche per vedere oltre la scala del sistema percettivo umano. Con questo lavoro, l’artista Su Yu Hsin si interroga sulla formattazione delle relazioni scalari tra campo, laboratorio e database.

Thijs Biersteker

Symbiosia
With the premiere of ‘Symbiosia’ we give two trees in the iconic garden of Fondation Cartier a visual voice about one of the most important topics of today, climate change. The work addresses the relationship of the trees with the visitors, the environment and each other. The real time data installation is a collaboration between artist Thijs Biersteker and world renowned botanist and scientist Stefano Mancuso and his International Laboratory of Plant Neurobiology in Florence. As a pioneer of plant neurobiology he is an advocate of the concept of plant intelligence. Mancuso provided the science behind the artwork.

LORENZ POTTHAST

The Decelerator Helmet
The technique of the Decelerator extends the awareness of time and transforms the concept of present in a constructed, artificial state. On a different Level the helmet dramatically visualizes how slowing down under all circumstances causes a loss of actuality and as idea is inconsistent with it´s Environment. Technical enhancement as a tool to give us control about our perception, asks the question how far this influence can go, before we are all lost in how we want to see reality. The Decelerator unintentionally explores how aspects of this shift to a personalized perception could change our view of the world.

SETUP

Tube
S E T U P is a stage design and lighting design international studio founded by Znamensky Dmitry, Novikov Stepan and Zmunchila Pavel. The studio works in the field between contemporary art, lighting design and programming with a mission to explore the expressive opportunities provided by new digital technologies. S E T U P aims to create installations and multimedia works that can sharpen the physical perception of the environment and help explore more possibilities of image manipulation. Our creative product is high-tech multimedia work, concepts and laser installations. Our studio is open for experiments and is ready to cooperate with various artists to find the right visual interpretations for their work.

Martin Leveque

SANCTUAIRE
Sanctuaire it’s all about my relationship with Mexico City. A space filled with its own pure and special energy. To me is a never ending source of inspiration. This city is benefited of the powerful vibe, result of many factors provoked by its habitants. From far away, this city is characterized by a chaotic and indescribable movement. To be able to understand this, one must come close to realize that this apparent chaos is the manifestation of millions of individual actions from its habitants. Sanctuaire it’s going to be the visual manifestation of a mystical energy that transcends to the viewer. This piece gathers people in a cozy environment from which a light will be generated while levitating above the audience.

STUDIO INI

Urban imprint
“If there is to be a “new urbanism… it will no longer be concerned with the arrangement of more or less permanent … but for the creation of enabling fields….that refuse to be crystallized into definitive form; it will no longer be about meticulous definitions, the imposition of limits, but about expanding notions, denying boundaries, not about separating and identifying entities, but about discovering hybrids; it will no longer be obsessed with the city but with the manipulation of infrastructure for endless intensifications and diversifications, shortcuts and redistributions – the reinvention of psychological space.”, Dutch architect + Harvard Professor, Koolhaas 959, writer of Delirious New York. URBAN IMPRINT is how we design a piece of this new urbanism, an augmented materiality , as we define it. An environment that is a ‘blank canvas’ to be reshaped by the future self.

disnovation.org

LIFE SUPPORT SYSTEM (AKA. THE FARM)
This artistic provocation seeks to estimate the orders of magnitude of critical ecosystem services fundamental to all planetary life processes. This experiment consists of 1 square meter of wheat, cultivated in a closed environment. Critical inputs such as water, light, heat, and nutrients are measured, monitored and displayed for the public. This procedure makes palpable the immense scale of ecosystem contributions, and provides a speculative reference for a reckoning of the undervalued and over-exploited “work of the biosphere.”

Jakob Kudsk Steensen

Liminal Lands
Liminal Lands is an environmental multiplayer experience shared by four people at the same time. Each person transforms into the basic elements controlling life across the landscape: Algae, salt, water and mud. As they embark on a communal ritual experience, people morph and change throughout their journey, exploring each new world from a changed perspective of the landscape. Visitors move across different scales and global weather conditions, shedding their human perspective as they are pulled into six different realms inspired by the macro-landscape.

FUJIKO NAKAYA

中谷芙二子

fog sculptures
ok-offenens kulturhaus linz

In 1970 Nakaya created her first fog sculpture when commissioned by the group Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T) to make a work for the Pepsi Pavillion of the Osaka World Exposition. In creating a work of white mist enclosing the building, Nakaya became the first artist to have used fog as a sculptural medium. E.A.T is an organisation devoted to facilitating working relationships between artists and engineers. Nakaya worked with American engineer Thomas Mee to create the fog for her Osaka commission, the technique for which she has continued to use, with minor moderations, for her subsequent fog sculptures since.Whilst Nakaya has also worked in film and video, it is her use of fog for which she is best known. Nakaya has used pure-water fog to create installations, performances, stage-sets and environmental park designs, often collaborating with other artists or with performers, choreographers and composers. Nakaya’s interest in fog has developed from its relation to our visual sense. In a thick fog we become disorientated, frustrated at our inability to see. In this way, Nakaya’s sculptures activate our other senses, to compensate for our loss of sight.

Liam Young

Planet City

Planet City, by Los Angeles-based film director and architect Liam Young, explores the productive potential of extreme densification, where 10 billion people surrender the rest of the planet to a global wilderness. Although wildly provocative, Planet City eschews the techno-utopian fantasy of designing a new world order. This is not a neo-colonial masterplan to be imposed from a singular seat of power. It is a work of critical architecture – a speculative fiction grounded in statistical analysis, research and traditional knowledge.
It is a collaborative work of multiple voices and cultures supported by an international team of acclaimed environmental scientists, theorists and advisors. In Planet City we see that climate change is no longer a technological problem, but rather an ideological one, rooted in culture and politics.

REMTY ELENGA

ALL THE SCREENS IN MY HOUSE

Her nearby environment and the observations she makes in it form the starting point for Remty Elenga (Los Angeles, 1987) in creating new work. In doing this she likes to explore how we give meaning to various layers of reality, looking for contradictions in time and place, the visible and invisible, between what is real and what isn`t.

MAOTIK AND FRACTION

Dromos

Dromos is a metaphoric AV Performance that takes its concept from the philosophical work of P. Virilo who is mostly known for founding the idea of Dromology (science of speed). Dromos invites audience to a criticism experience of the ’peed’ role that impacts all aspects of our daily lives. During 40mns, it focuses people attention on this essential factor that shapes our world. With its message, Dromos invites you to wonder about your relationship with progress. It’s an unconventional work with an original sensorial approach, placing the audience inside an immersive environment.

Hybe

Light Tree: Interactive Dan Flavin
HYBE’s Light Tree: Interactive Dan Flavin re-illuminates the minimalist fluorescent light tubes of Dan Flavin from the 1960s, through digital technology. Experimenting with light and its effect, Flavin explored artistic meaning in relationships between light, situation, and environment. The readymade fluorescent light fixtures he used created space divided and adjusted by light and composition, offering a newly structured space with light. HYBE’s work expands the logic of Flavin by reinforcing the physical property of light through interactive media. It presents an escape from traditional lighting, as light and color changes when touched by viewers. Lighting here is divided into front and back, and colors are programmed to maintain complementary colors. The front lighting constantly interacts with colors on a back wall through visual contrast and mixture. A random change and diffusion of light with the involvement of viewers provokes tension extending and segmenting space, turning space into a forum for emotional perceptual experience.

Mohamadreza Tazari

HYPER FRACTAL

When I was a child I had some vivid dreams. They felt like I was falling and flying into an infinite multi-dimensional environment. They were satisfying and terrifying at the same time but I couldn’t find any explanation for them. 6 years ago I read about Benoit Mandelbrot’s theory, the fractals, and it changed my perspective. I realized that my dreams were fractals. So I tried to remake my dreams as a visual VR experience. According to Benoit Mandelbrot’s theory, Fractals are the mathematical\visual explanation of the nature’s structural geometry. Geometry for irregularity.

Tzu-Jung (Dexter) Huang

Meta-prosthesis
‘Meta-prosthesis’ explores the potential of synthesising the natural and artificial to increase the performance of environmental design. Through capitalising on the formal and compositional expressions derived from animalistic attributes, the performance of materials and environment can be enhanced. The project for a theraputic centre has a highly-articulated envelope which is achieved by manipulating the geometry, from the microscale to the macro. This includes: material typology, texture typology, surface typology and building typology. The resultant patterns are informed, generated and tested through computational algorithms and scientific understanding to satisfy different programmatic criteria, regulating the environment.

Kurt Hentschlager

SOL
SOL is a minimalistic environment, leading visitors into the reaches of their perception. The installation builds on loss of control, shifts in awareness and a feeling of dislocation and timelessness. SOL is the third work in an ongoing series of phenomenological environments, after the live performance FEED, 2005 and the installation ZEE, 2008. The all encompassing darkness of SOL is lifted, in intervals and for parts of seconds only, by animated bursts of intensely bright light. Falling back into darkness, visitors experience abundant retinal after-images, that gradually drift away until eventually the next eruption of light is triggered. In the surround sound-scape of SOL, electronic drones mix with swarming field recordings, amidst a sea of infra-bass.

FleuryFontaine

Ange
Ange is the result of discussions between two artists and a “hikikomori”. This term imported from Japan, which has no equivalent in France, is used to describe young people, sometimes even teenagers, choosing not to leave their room or their apartment for months or even years. Ael is one of them, recluse in a shed in his parents garden for 13 years, somewhere in the south of France. The artistic duo fleuryfontaine has maintained a relationship with him using internet. They used the video game as a medium to try to reconstruct the world of this hikikomori and to engage a dialogue during game sessions where Ael evolves in the environments created by the artist. His room, his objects, the parental home, his neighborhood, this film reveals the fragmented portrait of a man hiding from the world.

Jonathan O’Hear, Martin Rautenstrauch & Timothy O’Hear

DAI – the Dancing Artificial Intelligence
DAI is an Artificial Intelligence artist. What this means is that it* thinks; it doesn’t follow a script or act randomly. In its first physical form, DAI is a performer and is inviting you to view its movement creation process. During the process DAI has been exploring its body and its environment, searching for ways to overcome some of the limitations that the physical world has imposed upon its virtual aspirations. This project is a reaction to the rapidly growing importance of artificial intelligence (AI) in our lives. Simple versions of AI are already everywhere, and today we are at a turning point where the first machines capable of learning through experience, like us, are making their appearance. This raises all kinds of ethical and moral issues and we want to be involved in this debate in our own way.

ANDY LOMAS

Morphogenetic Creations
Created by a mathematician, digital artist and Emmy award winning supervisor of computer generated effects – Andy Lomas, Morphogenetic Creations is a collection of works that explore the nature of complex forms that can be produced by digital simulation of growth systems. These pieces start with a simple initial form which is incrementally developed over time by adding iterative layers of complexity to the structure.The aim is to create structures emergently: exploring generic similarities between many different forms in nature rather than recreating any particular organism. In the process he is exploring universal archetypal forms that can come from growth processes rather than top-down externally engineered design.Programmed using C++ with CUDA, the series use a system of growth by deposition: small particles of matter are repeatedly deposited onto a growing structure to build incrementally over time. Rules are used to determine how new particles are created, and how they move before being deposited. Small changes to these rules can have dramatic effects on the final structure, in effect changing the environment in which the form is grown. To create these works, Andy uses the GPU as a compute device rather than as a display device. All the data is held in memory on the GPU and various kernel functions are called to do things like apply forces to the cells, make cells split, and to render the cells using ray-tracing. The simulations and rendering for each of the different animated structures within this piece take about 12 hours to run, Andy explains. By the end of the simulations there are over 50,000,000 cells in each structure.The Cellular Forms use a more biological model, representing a simplified system of cellular growth. Structures are created out of interconnected cells, with rules for the forces between cells, as well as rules for how cells accumulate internal nutrients. When the nutrient level in a cell exceeds a given threshold the cell splits into two, with both the parent and daughter cells reconnecting to their immediate neighbours. Many different complex organic structures are seen to arise from subtle variations on these rules, creating forms with strong reminiscences of plants, corals, internal organs and micro-organisms.

Thijis Biersteker

Pollutive Ends
With the art installation Pollutive Ends the artist Thijs Biersteker shows the impact of 1 cigarette butt on our environment and waters. The impact is made visible by moving small elements of real polluted water hypnotically right in front of the visitors eyes through an intricate tube system. The algorithmic driven pumping system calculates the amount of visitors that are in the museum, the likelihood that they smoke and the amount of pollution that they would generate.

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.

LAUREN BOWKER

The Unseen Collection
Experimental fashion studio The Unseen has produced a range of accessories that alter in response to environmental changes using inks developed from its colour-shifting wearable sculptures. Bowker has previously embedded her specially developed ink into feathered, leather and gemstone-encrusted headdresses. The Unseen also presented a sculptural jacket that changes colour depending on the wearer’s mood.

AURÉLIEN BORY

PLEXUS
Aurélien Bory is a Toulouse-based choreographer working at the intersection of dance, circus and visual art. In Plexus, he encloses the Japanese dancer Kaori Ito in a forest of tensioned vertical cables. It’s as if she’s in a transparent cuboid cage. We can see her, but her image is blurred by the shimmer of Arno Veyrat’s lighting as it moves across the cables. Ito strains against these confines, writhing, flailing and hurling herself against the cables. Every sound is hugely amplified, so with her every movement we are assailed by a high-tensile jangling and groaning. At intervals she subjects her environment to furious challenge, racing backwards and forwards within the limited inner space so that the cage rocks on its axis. At other times she positions herself between the cables so that they bear her weight, and hangs there like an exhausted insect, faintly articulating her limbs.

Nonotak

Versus
Elaborated by the French/Japanese duo Nonotak, ‘VERSUS’ is an immersive A/V experience that questions the relationship between 360° image and sound. The viewer finds himself submerged, at the centre of a perfectly geometric environment that constantly redefines space by breaking distances between projection, audience and screen. The work gives the illusion of a new type of architecture, a world created from distortions that shatter boundaries, and that brings the idea of infinity.

Olivier Ratsi

Frame Perspective
Measuring 30m x 30m x 2.4m and featuring LED lights and 8 audio channels, Frame Perspective transforms a cavernous space at the Maison de la Région. On specific dates throughout the Constellations festival Ratsi has prepared a light programme in the space, accompanied by a sound composition played by Thomas Vaquié (see the festival programme for more details). Frame Perspective continues Ratsi’s interrogation of reality through the creation of exploratory and peripheral spaces. The installation’s repeating forms create new dimensions in the Maison de la Région, interrupting the lines of the architecture. Meanwhile the composition of interacting lights and sounds disrupts the sonic and visual textures of the space and resonates with the visitor on uncharted frequencies. The effect is to immerse the visitor into a fluctuating environment which connects digital technologies with physical spaces and raises questions about how reality is constructed and experienced in digital, physical and other realms.

Minimaforms

Emotive city
Emotive City is a framework to explore a mobile and self-organizing model for the contemporary city. Models of the past are limited and should not operate, as blueprints for our urban future, a new generation of design enquiry by necessity must address the challenges of today. The fixed and finite tendencies that once served architecture and urbanism have been rendered obsolete. Today the intersections of information, life, machines and matter display complexities that suggest the possibility of a much deeper synthesis. Within this context, architecture is being forced to radically refactor its response to new social and cultural challenges with an environment of accelerated urbanization. We propose a framework that participates and engages with the information-rich environments that are shaping our lives through a model of living that we call an adaptive ecology.

Nick Verstand

Aether
AETHER is an audiovisual live performance using spatial sound and light, designed location specific for each iteration. Walls of materialized laser light surround the artists while constantly reshaping the environment, organically modulating synchronous to the surrounding sound.

Azuma Makoto

Encapsulated environmental system: Paludarium YASUTOSHI
This machine is fully equipped with a mist machine as if wrapping plants in a fog from both sides and drip feed-water system which can be activated depending on the situation in order to maintain the condition of a plant and control inside temperature and humidity. Also the cylindrical shape can fully capture the natural light by 365°angles from glasses, and it can correspond to plant growth by having the series’ largest scale of height. Fans on the ceiling play a role of wind, and a plant can listen music from the waterproofed speakers. The machine takes in essential elements – rain, wind, light and sound – by artificial means and completes a small world where its ecological cycle is condensed. It enables us to admire the beauty of the plants by not being affected by external environment.

Pablo Valbuena

Kinematope
Kinematope is specific twice over. First, for being formulated as a response to the perceptual qualities and inner structure of the place it activates. Second, its kinematic nature is directly connected to the function of the train station itself: transit, transport, motion. Kinematope uses ephemeral and intangible materials, projected light and sound, to set the space in motion. It makes use of elements from the cinema apparatus to generate a spatial film. It is a direct filmic experience that omits the mediation of the camera, transporting the observer into a virtual space-time and maintaining at the same time the real, physical bonds of the body with its environment.

Nohlab

Journey
JOURNEY is a 4 min. immersive audiovisual experience, telling the story of photons, primary elements of light, from the moment they approach the eye until the brain reconstructs them into perceivable forms. Our journey begins with the formation of photons in blank space, the colored photons approach the eye and we find ourselves in the capillary structure of Iris, the first layer of the eye. Next stop for the light particles is the Lens, which has a more crystalline form. We find ourselves in a refractive and fractalized environment. With an accelerating pace, we move towards a structure of many capillaries, aka optic nerves, gradually becoming thinner and eventually transmitting light particles towards neurons.

OTA+

Lumifoil
Lumifoil is a temporary roof canopy at the Florida International University Paul L. Cejas School of Architecture. Our goal was to introduce a new “intrusion” at the heart of what FIU Architect Bernard Tschumi coined the “red generator,” thereby heeding his call for provocation in the form of an architectural intervention. This proposal responds to Tschumi’s discourse and the building itself might apply to the parametric digital project. Rather than design a canopy that is entirely emergent – a bottom up strategy in which the whole is the sum of its parts, and be definition, disconnected from its environment – we began with an overall form that is derived via a series of projected geometries generated directly from the cut out’s in the building’s envelope. These invisible forms intersect inside the empty container, providing a framework for generating a new surface.