highlike

Robert Breer

Float
The Floats – or floating sculptures – that Robert Breer took up producing again at the end of the 1990s, emerged in 1965. The word “float” meaning something floating – a marker, fishing float or buoy – and which also describes those carnival vehicles whose pretend wheels give them the appearance of floating above the tarmac, enabled Robert Breer to apply this principle to works of a new genre. Primary shapes, neutral colours and, for the most recent, an industrial aspect, the Floats were then made with polystyrene, foam, painted plywood, and, more latterly, out of fibreglass. At first glance, these simple structures appear immobile. In fact, they are moving, imperceptibly, within the space they inhabit. Motorised and on mini-rollers – which raise them slightly above ground, giving them an air of weightlessness – they glide unbeknown to the visitor, following random paths that are interrupted by the slightest obstacle that they encounter.

Kohei Nawa

Throne
This work attempts to express that premonition as an immense “floating vacant throne”. If instances of power and authority have ruled since ancient times, and the pyramids provide one example—we must ask what the future will hold. Created with reference to the forms of festival floats and portable shrines that appear in the rituals and festivities of the East, the sculpture fuses today’s 3D modeling techniques with gold leaf applications that date back to ancient Egypt. In the frontal center is an empty room, space enough for a 2 to 3-year-old child to sit, suggesting that the new intelligence is still in a young state. Shining, spherical mirrors placed at the center in front and back. Made of platinum foil, they represent “the eyes overlooking the world”, where the frontal one faces the future and the back reflects into the past.

Broersen & Lukács

Point Cloud Old Growth
Forest on Location
In the video work Forest on Location, we see the avatar of the Iranian opera singer Shahram Yazdani walking through a forest. One moment, the forest wraps around him protectively, the next moment the trees crumble away into loose pieces of bark, or melt into a static green mass. At the same time, the forest as a whole floats around in darkness, uprooted. It is a forest without a location, except on our screen. The young man’s avatar appears to be wandering around there aimlessly. It is a wonderland that he exits from towards the end of the video, when his body slips straight through the green wall. This finally breaks the spell of the illusory forest, and everything is revealed to be no more than staged decor. But the forest does exist as a real forest, somewhere. This virtual green world is a digital back-up of Bia?owie?a Forest: the last remaining stretch of primeval low land forest that once covered much of Central Europe. Inspired by what the historian Simon Schama wrote about Bia?owie?a in Landscape and Memory (1995), Persijn Broersen and Margit Lukács journeyed to Poland to capture the forest suffused by old-Germanic nostalgia and mythical atmosphere.

Clouds Architecture Office

AVATAR X Lab
The project is a partnership between ANA Holdings Inc. and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA); a part of AVATAR X, a collaborative program for the advancement of space exploration and development. ANA and JAXA are both experts at launching vehicles into the atmosphere, the feeling of suspension or ‘being in the air’ is natural for both entities. The AVATAR X Lab Building is designed as a suspended building floating above a moon-like crater. The multi-story structure floats eighteen meters above the crater bottom, and is accessible by a bridge. When astronauts board a spacecraft they cross a bridge; when we board a plane we walk across a jet bridge between the terminal and airplane. This is our last contact with familiar ground before taking off for someplace new. The suspended building embodies this crossing of thresholds: after passing over the bridge you are transported to a new place, the AVATAR X Lab Building, where technological innovation will change how we see the world.

KEITH ARMSTRONG

Shifting Intimacies
An interactive/media artwork for one person at a time. Each participant enters a large, dark space containing two circles of projected film imagery presented within an immersive sound environment. One image floats upon a disc of white sand and the other on a circle of white dust. Participants’ movements direct and affect the filmic image and spatialised audio experience. Throughout the work a layer of dust (an artificial life form) slowly eats away and infuses itself deep into the imagery and sound. Each person has 10 minutes alone with the work. Their movement through the space continually affects speed, quality, balance and flow within the work. At the end of the experience they are invited to climb a lit platform and cast dust back onto the images below.

RYOJI IKEDA

池田亮司
이케다 료지
Редзи Икеда
Transfinite
test pattern [n˚2] presents flickering black and white imagery that floats and convulses in darkness on two screens, one on the floor and another floor to ceiling, in time with a stark and powerful, highly synchronised soundtrack. Through a real–time computer programme, Ikeda’s audio signal patterns are converted into tightly synchronised barcode patterns on the screens. Viewers are literally immersed in the work, and the velocity of the moving images is ultra–fast, some hundreds of frames per second, providing a totally immersive and powerful experience. The work provides a performance test for the audio and visual devices, as well as a response test for the audience’s perceptions.

JULIUS VON BISMARCK

top shot helmet
The Top Shot Helmet alters one’s spatial perception. Wearers see themselves from above and must guide their movements and orient themselves from this perspective. The device consists of a round helmet, above which floats a helium balloon attached to the helmet with strings. The balloon carries a small video camera operated by radio signal, which points downward with a wide-angle lens. The view captured by the camera is projected onto a pair of video glasses in the helmet. Wearers of the helmet can only see the image produced by these glasses and must use this to make their way through a given space. By moving the head, the person wearing the helmet can turn and tilt the balloon and camera. A handle on the helmet makes it possible to adjust the height of the balloon and thereby adjust one’s field of vision.

John Tavener

Darkness Into Light
Anonymous 4
Chilingirian Quartet
“Despite critics tagging Tavener as a “holy minimalist,” Anonymous 4 member Susan Hellauer says “that his music is very difficult to perform — but very beautiful as well. It actually floats. It appears out of nowhere, and then it floats back into nowhere” Anastasia Tsioulcas

David Lynch

Дэвид Линч
ديفيد لينش
大卫·林奇
デビッドリンチ
데이비드 린치
Дэвид Линч
Eraserhead
The Man in the Planet (Jack Fisk) pulls levers in his home in space, while the head of Henry Spencer (Jack Nance) floats in the sky. A giant spermatozoon-like creature emerges from Spencer’s mouth, floating into the void. The Man in the Planet appears to control the creature with his levers, eventually making it fall into a pool of water.
cinema

vincent leroy

文森特·勒罗伊
北极光环
Pebble

The ‘pebble’, conceived by vincent leroy, occupies a space with an incredible aesthetic experience. This gigantic elliptical mirror floats with utmost grace, softness and voluptuousness, like this example inside the ‘grand palais’ in paris. The installation forms a sensory experience rather than a visual one. With the mirrored effect, the ground and horizon move slowly until they disappear, making you lose your mark. French artist vincent leroy slows down time and displays his magical mechanism, using the same technology as his boreal halo: inflatable with steel cables in slow rotation.