highlike

Liam Johnson

Liam was chosen for the scholarship by lead designer at Alexander McQueen, Sarah Burton. He spent his year in industry in Paris, working at Maison Margiela under John Galliano, working personally with the designer on both the artisanal and ready-to-wear collections. As a designer, his own collections often centre upon alternatives to normal fashion and instead offer remodelled silhouettes, bright colours, unexpected textures and sculptural, exaggerated forms.

BYOUNGHO KIM

БЙОНХО КИМУ
His Lucid Dream
“My artwork begins with an assumption that “mankind is in continuous pursuit of new desires.” All kinds of desires are exaggerated, minimized, and deleted in order to achieve a pre-established goal. And the more these desires gather together, the larger and more complicated the constructed being becomes. Thus, this is the constructed fantasy, a fantasy of desire, and a fantasy of our time.” – Byoungho Kim

ANN HAMILTON

アン·ハミルトン
앤 해밀턴
Filament

This piece consisted of a high curtained structure which circulated the material around in one space. It stopped every 15 seconds or so, enough time for one or two people to enter into the spinning vortex of linen material. Whilst standing inside the whirlwind of fabric I felt as though I myself were almost flying or being transported to another dimension or something (ok, this description might be slightly exaggerated, but I have quite an ambitious imagination!) Either way, I fully enjoyed the experience of the piece immensely.

La La La Human Steps

New Work
Mi Deng and Jason Shipley-Holmes perform

In “New Work” (dance), the viewer was best served by looking at the bodies’ wavering outlines, the women in strapless black leotards and tights, the men in black suits (though sometimes shirtless; costumes by Liz Vandal). Observe the strobe-like effect created by the ferociously waving arms and flexed hands, or the reflections that bounced off the ballerinas’ skin and pink toe shoes. Notice the exaggerated contours of sinewy muscles.

Haegue Yang

Boxing Ballet
Yang’s Boxing Ballet turns one half of the gallery into a reworking of Oskar Schlemmer’s 1922 costumed dance work Triadisches Ballett, with replicas of five of the Bauhaus teacher’s bulbous and exaggerated figures, from a female figure made of hoops to a circle that looks like a flattened stickman. Here, Schlemmer’s figures are reimagined as golden bell-covered shapes on wheels or wire frames hanging by a wire from the ceiling. As they all come with handlebars, it seems we are meant to provide the choreography, stiffly pushing, say, a giant roosterlike creature around like an awkward shopping trolley.

alex lysakowski

Antistructures
Amusing head-scratchers: a fitting description for the surreal, towering collection of architecture by photographer Alex Lysakowski in the series, Antistructures. Standing out against perfectly banal backdrops, Lysakowski creates structures of magnanimous and exaggerated proportions with a mix of photography and digital manipulation.

YING GAO

Living pod
file festival
Light, shape variations and mimicry meet in Living Pod. In front of the false twin pieces, the user can slowly set garment A in motion using a light source. Garment B then imitates piece A in an exaggerated and unbalanced fashion, changing structure through miniature electric motors activated by light sensors that are sown through the garment. Using flat-pattern cutting techniques, Ying Gao was able to give the process fluidity and flexibility. In addition to the mechanical movements of the garments, Living Pods underlines two fundamental aspects of today’s fashion system: confrontation and imitation. The garment plays a mediating role between man and his environment. By using light, Living Pod is similar to project Walking City, which uses air to make the pieces look like they are breathing.

TAKASHI MURAKAMI

تاكاشي موراكامي
村上隆
טקאשי מורקאמי
무라카미 다카시
Такаши Мураками

The works of Japanese artist Takashi Murakami have inspired both admiration and confusion. Inspired primarily by anime, Japanese animation, and manga, Japanese comics, Murakami’s paintings and sculptures feature bright, candy-colored images of cartoon-like characters, with large eyes and exaggerated body parts. His works are often decorated with smiling flowers, round, blinking eyes, and colorful mushrooms. Murakami’s creations defy traditional classifications, breaking down numerous barriers.

Philipp Schaerer

ФИЛИПП ШЕЕРЕР
Digital Bildbau No 02

The series of images with the title “Bildbauten“ deals with the effect and the claim to credibility of images of architecture that appear to be photographs. Frontal views of fictional architectures serve as an example. By means of their exaggerated and orchestrated way of representation, they model themselves on the object- like appearance and the formal language of contemporary architecture in a rather ironic way.

Susanna Hertrich

Jacobson’s Fabulous Olfactometer
Created by Susanna Hertrich, Jacobson’s Fabulous Olfactometer (JFO) is a sensorial prosthesis that mimics mammalian ‘flehmen’ when air pollution levels are high. The prosthetic is designed around a new human sense modeled after a mammalian sense organ called the vomeronasal or “Jacobson’s” organ. This olfactory sense organ enables certain animals to sense odourless chemicals. When a mammal senses chemicals, it lifts its upper lip to expose this organ. This behaviour is called ‘flehmen’ (wikipedia).Two air chemical sensors located at the top part of the prosthetic register small particles (smoke) and CO2 levels. This data is fed into an Arduino board. When air pollution levels are registered as ‘high’, two stepper motors on either side of the head set exaggerated bone gears in motion and the wearer’s lip is slowly pulled upwards. Thus, JFO enables its wearer to ‘sense’ airborne chemicals and modifies his/her face similar to mammalian flehmen.Sensing and data processing is achieved using an Arduino with a Smoke detector (fine particles) & a Co2 sensor. The device also includes Adafruit stepper motor shield, two stepper motors and a custom designed gears carved from camel bone.

ALEXANDRA DEMENTIEVA

Drama House
File Festival
“Drama house” is a house when the simple ring at the doorbell can have unpredictable consequences; event, one is stranger then another and in the same time all, what happens with habitants belongs to everyday life. Sometimes these circumstances are a little bit exaggerated. Spectator stands in front of low fence with a door-gate. There are 8 doorbells on it. The act of ringing provokes an action in an apartment window. Based on chance and the choices that viewers make, the project explores the contemporary trends in the construction of a narrative and the interplay between diverse informative sub-layers effected through the impact of digital, non-linear media. It also questions the very process of story telling and at the same time considers the way of audience reading. It investigates the differences of individual and collective perception. In other words, the sequence and choices that each viewer selects reflect his own perspectives and behavioral patterns, thus makes the viewer much more than an active participant. By interacting with the installation the viewer is engaged in the creative process: re-telling the ever-changing story through the utilization of the primary capability of the digitization: reshaping the information. Therefore, each participant walks away with a unique, slightly different vision, each shaped according to his own choices and directions. Interactive media and the digital environment of the DH and its narrative function through a recognizable metaphor that makes access to the information meaningful: a house as a conceptual society model and an apartment as a private space. This reference transforms the objects and stories in the project into the metaphors and reminds us of the art cultural function: as a site of memory of the social collective imagination and as a site of representation and power.