徐震
Eternity
Xu Zhen is one of the most interesting and promising artists working in China today. An irreverent artist with a voracious appetite for global information and a unique ability to produce work across multiple platforms and media.Xu Zhen is a conceptual artist whose work often takes the form of provocative sculptures, installations and interventions that confront sociopolitical taboos in contemporary China and freely manipulate western expectations of Chinese art and commerce.

Reverse Blinking
Imagine that your head is captured inside a photo camera. It is completely dark. Only when the shutter opens en closes, you see the world in a flash. The shutter moves so fast that nothing has time to move. Everything where you point your gaze at, becomes like a photograph. A memory. Something that has been, but isn’t anymore. You see people as frozen figures, whole streets as untouched moments. Life as a sort of dia show. “Reverse Blinking” creates this experience. It is a completely closed helmet with two shutters in front of the eyes. They are controllable by the user. Reverse Blinking works on batteries and can be freely used in or outside the museum. It is best used where there is a lot of movement and people. “Reverse Blinking” is part of a series of art works, through which the artist tries to add video and photographical effects to our natural way of seeing.

Drawhearts
Drawhearts eternally repeats the act of steaming up a pane of glass and lining out a heart, slowly fading away each time. A pulley system freely moves the body of the machine across the pane of glass, with its main part consisting of a miniature fog machine to steam up the glass and an articulated drawing arm.

the psychotron installation
Now one of Doug’s stunning installations is available in edition format. The Psychotron Framed – a video piece based on the 12-petal lotus flower symbolising eastern spirituality’s heart chakra – has been harnessed into a purpose-built viewer that can hang on a wall or stand freely on a flat surface. The piece is currently only available by collection from The Outsiders London gallery. Order now and Doug will assemble the materials in two weeks.“For centuries, circular figures containing symmetrical patterns have been used as a tool for meditation,” says Doug of his original Psychotron on display at Bedlam. “The mandala, the yantra and visualisations of the various chakras, all conform to radial design principles that have been refined throughout the ages. Now those principles have been ruthlessly plundered for the creation of The Psychotron.

siderea
We presented our interpretation of a gravitational anomaly, entitled Siderea, an unknown force at the outer fringes of the Universe, in the centre of the Great Attractor. Beyond anything our eyes or our minds are capable of imagining and using geometric and scientific coordinates to create a palpable world to scale, we wanted to tell a deeply immersive tale exploring the emotions that the discovery of such a stellar phenomenon might rouse. Freely inspired by the explorations and incredible advances made in astronomy, we transformed the venue into the point of observation of this extraordinary celestial body, in the literal sense of the term.

黒川良一
octfalls
Octfalls consists of eight hanging HD screens displaying images of a silver waterfall cascading down a cliff, while the sound of the water rushing over rocks plays over a pair of speakers attached to each screen. These screens are distributed throughout the space at varying heights, encouraging our eyes to wander freely through the installation. The stunning images and highly refined sounds immerse our senses and play tricks on our perceptions. The waterfall suddenly vanishes in vain, then reappears, shifting to another screen, a complex combination of loops in a unique sequence of orchestrated play.

Zee
File Festival 

Immersive Audiovisual Environment Artificial Fog, Stroboscopes, Pulse Lights and Surround Sound, 2008

ZEE proposes a state of tabula rasa and unfolds without a narrative or reproducible imagery.The audience wanders freely in a space filled with extremely dense fog that fully obscures all of its boundaries. Stroboscopic- and pulse lights illuminate the fog, in a softened and evenly dispersed manner, creating kaleidoscopic three-dimensional structures in constant animation. An ambient and minimal sound-scape connects to the imagery, without directly synchronizing to it.The core visual impression of ZEE is of a psychedelic architecture of pure light, an abstract luminescent landscape enveloping the visitor. Time appears to stand still.

Network Time

“Network Time consists of several wifi routers set up in an exhibition space to be freely accessed by any mobile internet device. Attached to each router is a slender fiber optic cable, aligned to absorb and magnify the incessant flicker of its traffic LED. The visualized data exchange creates a space viewers can interact with not only physically, but also informationally.” Gregor Quack

루아리 글린
Performative Ecologies
Each one of the four crude and very technically appearing devices is fitted with a punctually attached, luminous rod of fibreglass, which moves back and forth arrhythmically and freely. This installation’s poetry lies in the choreography of the little robots. They continuously try to gain the observers attention and impress him by waving their luminous tails. They recognise the reactions and movements of their human audience, learn from failure and share their experience with their robotic neighbours – a social structure of humans and machines.
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whispers
Blue lightening discs seem to hang freely in a darkened space. They’re the horns of five more than man-sized ceramic trumpets, arranged in various directions. The white inside is radiated with blacklight, as it turns out when your eyes have adapted to the darkness. The horns transmit words, fragments of sentences, laughter, alternated with noise and a strange crackles and sputters. Each trumpet has it’s own repertory of expressions, of which the meaning is hard to probe. And each has it’s own characteristic sound, due to their difference in length.

rotary tumble
File Festival
“Rotary Tumble” is an experiment in projection mapping onto a moving tangible object. We start with a freely spinning disc that viewers can touch and spin by hand. With an optical rotary encoder the system detects the exact speed, direction, and position of the spinning disc in real-time. This feedback data is used to drive a physics simulation of tumbling shapes which is then projection mapped back onto the spinning disc itself.

a far cry
concerto grosso no 1
V. Rondo: Agitato
Alfred Schnittke’s haunting first Concerto Grosso for 2 violins, harpsichord, prepared piano and 21 strings,
violinists; Nelson Lee & Meg Freivoge
harpsichord & prepared piano: Andrus Madsen

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“It’s a piece by Alfred Schnittke, a Russian polystylist composer who spent most of his life behind the Iron Curtain. Schnittke is underrated. This is perhaps due to his post-modern tendencies, which for lesser composers can be a veil for lack of substance. That’s not the case in this piece. Take a listen to the fifth movement of his Concerto Grosso No. 1 (1977).  It is a great example of how Schnittke freely takes from disparate styles to create an unpredictably effective result”. David Werfelmann

colourscape
Colourscape is a large labyrinth of colour and light. It’s a sculpture of pure colour that the public actually go inside. Everyone puts on a coloured cape to become part of the colour experience and enters into a new world where one can freely explore the potentials of light, colour and space. There’s also music, dance and theatre taking place inside. Originally created by artist Peter Jones in the early 70s, Colourscape is a walk-in structure of nearly 100 interlinked chambers.

Verges
In Pia Männikkö’s installation Verges the gallery space is completely filled with white tulle fabrics that hang from a grid of metal wires. Viewers are invited to enter the installation. The fabrics are open on all sides so the viewer can freely choose which way to go. The white surroundings affect the viewer’s sense of the space and as a result the viewer cannot exactly locate the edges of the room. Adding to the sense of disorientation, other people moving in the space seem like silhouettes disappearing gradually into the whiteness.

阿恩史云逊
Арне Свенсон
THE NEIGHBORS
Arne Svenson is self taught as a photographer, but his sensibility was largely formed by his early work as a therapist/educator working with severely disabled children. His vision embraces the unusual, quirky individuality of people and places and represents them with beauty, clarity and reverence. He creates most of his work within the controlled environment of the studio, and even when he ventures out to record the world, his vision is informed by the interior quality of his studio. Svenson works serially and obsessively on discrete projects which vary greatly, yet share these qualities. A sense of humor and fatalism allows Svenson to move freely from one obsession to the next, always manifest with extreme craft, diligence and love.

Outlook

“We all need the opportunity to see the city more playfully, as a world dominated by the interplay of very basic color and shape,” says Nihalani. “I try to create a new space within the existing space of our everyday world for people to enter freely, and unexpectedly ‘disconnect’ from their reality. “I’m not trying to push a certain highbrow logic or philosophy or purposefully communicate through the esoteric medium of art. I work instinctively, trying to follow my gut about the sensation of color and space, and have fun doing it.”

Dark Matter
“Dark Matter” is a series of combined, sculptural objects modeled in Maya and 3D printed to form humorous juxtapositions.; The objects chosen for the first series are the objects/things that are forbidden or un-welcome in Iran by the government. The objects that in many other countries people use or own freely but under Iranian government laws (for several reasons) are forbidden or discouraged to use.

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.

Paranoid Panopticum

The viewer activates the «Paranoid Panopticum» by entering its small corridor between two «walls». Recorded through the mirrored wall by a video camera, the viewer’s image is projected onto the opposite wall, where it becomes part of a story freely adapted by Alfred Kreijemborg in his play titled «An Echo Play» (1923), based on the Greek myth of Narcissus. Instead of returning the affections of the nymph Echo, the protagonist falls in love with his own reflection. Like with the image of Narcissus on the water, the viewer’s own reflection appears now – and the viewer observes only himself. The Panopticum, the terminus of a circulatory prison complex, is controlled from a watchtower not visible for the prison inmates. Having consciousness controlled here causes in effect the self-control among the prisoners. The paradox in this experience – control and society’s surrendering to its own mechanisms – forms the basis of Maat’s installation. Whether as the observer or observed, the viewer is consistently extradited to the panoptic omnipresence of his own all-pervading reflection.

videomaton
File Festival

The initial idea was to engage audiences with the classical paintings. The installation tries to transform the classical portraits into memorable and playful experiences. In short, by looking into a mirror a face of participant is captured by the system. Next, the captured face travels into one of the classical portraits. Hence, the viewer is invited into the gallery in order to recognize him or herself in one of the paintings. In other words, the art piece replaces the original painted faces by the faces of the audience. To be more specific, the authors have created an original face-morphing that integrates itself into the well-know portraits, like Meninas by Goya. To put in a nutshell, the common experience of modern art is replaced by a novel, playful and enjoyable encounter. The installation creates a framework of expression where audience spontaneously and freely interact in front of a mirror knowing that they are recorded. The results are experience by all audience in the gallery. The project was produced in 2011 as a commission of interactive art project for the new City Council of Madrid curated by Chema Conesa. “Videomaton” was presented in the opening of new City Council of Madrid located in the Cibeles square. The installation was exhibited for a year in the institution. The aim of the exhibit was displaying the famous art pieces of Madrid museums in a novel way.

Elucidating Feedback
File Festival

The more we look, the more we see, the more we see the more we look. “Elucidating feedback” is a brain-controlled installation about the creativity inherent in the act of observation. The more attention that is paid to the installation, the more order is reflected in the video and audio. The idea is that we create the finer details of our experience through the act of being attentive. The more we observe our environment, the more we discover, and the result of this active process is the creation of the rich details of our experience. The project uses neuro feedback supplied through interaction between the user and a BCI (brain-computer interface) device. The mindset (the BCI device) reads your brainwaves and this alters how the installation creates form from static. The more attention is paid, the more pattern is formed; as less attention is paid, the pattern breaks back into static. This is intended to form a feedback loop between the user’s attention and the subject of their attention (the projected patterns). The audio-visual aspect of the installation produces pattern, order and detail in direct proportion to the attention that the user is currently paying. If the user is in a state where the mind is freely wandering and not focused on any one thing, the patterns decay into static, bringing the installation back to a state of stasis.