La Poussière de soleils (Dust of Suns)
In the semicircular conservatory is a tall standing sculpture. It’s called La Poussière de Soleils, the Dust of Suns. On its back are tubes full of murky amber fluid; sunlight that has yet to be illuminated, still yet to set fire. Its façade comprises three hexagonal panels filled with a magical alchemical solution of la poussière de soleils, of the artist’s own invention. Each appears filled with thick golden sunshine. The bubbles blown through them leave trails of light even brighter and more golden; like trails of light torn through the heavens, like pools of shooting stars.

Empyrean Passage

Empyrean Passage is reminiscent of both a theoretical black hole and portal into the celestial worlds. Empyrean (notice the pyre in the word) is the final and fiery level of heaven as depicted by Dante- or aether in Aristotle’s cosmology. The form is constructed like a giant hoopskirt and gracefully moves in the wind creating a gossamer lighting effect overhead. While this project is an oculus to the heavens, more focus is usually paid to more terrestrial stars in this neighborhood.The interior of the spiral is designed with aqua and black dashes. The dashed interior creates optical effects with the eyes and at certain times of the day shifts your perception of the sky’s color.This project utilizes extremely “green” electroluminescent lighting. The entire sculpture consumes less electricity than a household nightlight and operates on a photo cell. Special thanks to the City of West Hollywood, Andrew Campbell, Maria Lusia de Herrera, Greg Coons, Glen Bundrick / Luminous Film.

Fallen Water
Fallen Water explores questions about why humans are drawn to waterfalls and flowing water as a source for renewal. Waterfalls imbue subconscious associations with pristine and healthy drinking water, but what happens when the fountain can no longer renew itself? Is the water no longer pure? Cooley’s choice of subject matter strikes a deep chord with current social consciousness and anxieties about contemporary water usage and the drought crisis faced by the American West. Cooley references Blake’s famous quote from The Marriage of Heaven and Hell as context for the diametric opposites of the current water conundrum: our deep sense of entitlement to and dire dependence on this precious commodity, coupled with a pervasive obliviousness concerning the sources which supply it. As a way to connect with his personal water use, Cooley hiked into the mountains to see firsthand the snowpack (or lack thereof), streams, and aquifers which feed the water sources supplying his Los Angeles home. This multi-channel installation is an amalgamation of videos made over numerous trips to remote locations in the San Gabriel Mountains, the Sierra Nevada Mountains, and locales as far away as the San Juan Mountains in Southwestern Colorado. These disconnected video vignettes coalesce, constructing a large water landscape canvasing the gallery walls and floors – reflecting the disparate and widespread origin of Los Angeles’s drinking water. The colorspace within the videos is inverted, turning the water pink, orange and yellow—channeling an altered vision of water—in which something is definitely amiss: a stark reminder of the current water crisis in the state of California.
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SONNTAG aus LICHT

Sonntag aus Licht takes as its subject our solar system and the relationships of all the planets that orbit the sun. In this opera, the earth and life on it is represented as the result of the union of light and water. These two elements are presented in the first scene, and the rest of the opera celebrates the evolution of life, of plants, animals, humans, and above all this the planets, moons, and heavenly constellations. The opera has a pronounced ritualistic and meditative character, with very little that can be described as dramatic action.

Death Death Death
File Festival
“Death Death Death” is book written by an algorithm. It utilizes a word association study conducted by the University of South Florida between 1976 and 1998. It contains over 10,000 words and their associations to each other. “Death Death Death” traces a path from each word to the word death. The book starts off with the words most closely associated to death. The beginning reads like this: Life – Death Funeral – Death Coffin – Death. Later, it takes several associative leaps to get to death: Enthusiasm – Spirit – Soul – Death Folly – Funny – Sad – Death Bahamas – Paradise – Heaven – Death Waggle – Wiggle – Worm – Maggot – Death. Reading soon becomes humorous, as every line reads like a joke-death is always the punchline. “Death Death Death” is 405 pages, contains an index so you can find any word, and a detailed description of the algorithm. Death Death Death was nominated for the 2010 File Prix Lux in the Digital Languages category.
video

МЯО СЯОЧУНЬ
缪晓春
مياو شياو تشون
The large-scale nine-panel installation, Microcosm, is based on Hieronymus Bosch’s 15th century masterpiece, The Garden of Earthly Delights. Microcosm is an imaginative reinvention of the sumptuous landscape of sin, salvation, and tawdry visions of those who never made it to paradise. The structure and narrative pattern of Bosch’s triptych, such as the architecture of heaven, earth and hell, as well as the basic forms of Bosch’s pictures, have been preserved in Miao Xiaochun’s work. But new digital means and computer technologies have allowed Miao Xiaochun to explore a contemporary visual vocabulary. He abolishes the traditional fixed single-point perspective aesthetic, instead favoring the Chinese tradition of multiple points of view in a single landscape.

Empyrean: In ancient cosmologies, the Empyrean Heaven, or simply the Empyrean, was the place in the highest heaven, which was supposed to be occupied by the element of fire (or aether in Aristotle’s natural philosophy). The word derives from the Medieval Latin empyreus, an adaptation of the Ancient Greek empyros (ἔμπυρος), meaning “in or on the fire (pyr)”

Empyreum  (The Divine Comedy, Gustave Doré )

The Empyrean was thus used as a name for the firmament, and in Christian literature for the dwelling-place of God, the blessed, celestial beings so divine they are made of pure light, and the source of light and creation. Notably, at the very end of Dante’s Paradiso, Dante visits God in the Empyrean.

أراتا إيسوزاكي
이소자키 아라타
矶崎新
АРАТА ИСОДЗАКИ
qatar convention center
Arata Isozaki’s initial concept was based on the holy Islamic Sidra Tree, which symbolizes the end of the seventh heaven. Huge steel columns create a tree-like appearance and an illusion of two trees supporting the roof canopy. The columns of the building grow from two concrete bases along the façade and divide into four branches. These have octagonal cubes as structural cores.

Tannhäuser
“Tannhäuser, a minnesinger from the court of Hermann, Landgrave of Thuringia, has been at the Venusberg for some time now and is the lover of the goddess of love. In the midst of a bacchanal, the singer recalls his earlier life among humanity. He decides to leave Venus and her heavenly kingdom to return to earth. Venus tries to hold him back. But only when he calls to the Virgin Mary does the Venusberg let him go.[…]”

Hope I won’t get bored in heaven

Heaven’s Carousel
Mit dem »Heaven’s Carousel« scheint im Herzen der Karlsruher Innenstadt vor dem Naturkundemuseum ein leuchtendes Klang-UFO gelandet zu sein, das antike Sphärenmusik unter den Vorzeichen der Astrophysik des 21. Jahrhunderts neu interpretiert.In zehn Metern Höhe schwebt an einem Kran eine luftige Karussell-Konstruktion, von der an zwölf Strängen insgesamt 36 kugelförmige, leuchtende Lautsprecher hängen. Das »Heaven’s Carousel« hebt in den Abendstunden ab: In Rotation versetzt, drehen sich die in Leuchtkugeln integrierten Lautsprecher mit einem Durchmesser von bis zu 16 Metern über den Köpfen der BesucherInnen. Sie sind eingeladen, sich unter der Installation frei zu bewegen, um das sich kontinuierlich verändernde Klanguniversum zu erkunden. Auch wenn aus den einzelnen Lautsprechern »nur« reine Töne erklingen, so rekombinieren sich diese im Raum zu komplexen Klanggebilden. Aufgrund des Doppler-Effekts klingt dabei ein Ton höher, wenn die Klangquelle auf die BesucherInnen zufliegt, und tiefer, wenn sie sich wieder entfernt.Die Illumination der Lautsprecher vervollständigt das als Auftragsarbeit der Europäischen Raumfahrtagentur (ESA) für das Hubble Space Telescope entstandene Gesamtkunstwerk. Die Helligkeit zeigt nicht nur die relative Lautstärke und Aktivität einer Klangkugel an, sondern die gespielte Tonhöhe wird auch in eine spektrale Farbe übersetzt.

高田冬彦
torture in heaven

Aether

Aether celebrates the five Platonic solids representing the elements of earth, air, water, fire and the heavens, without which there would be nothing. Using the Octave’s 14 projectors with a combination of projection mapping techniques, motion capture and wave field synthesis technologies to create an absorbing audiovisual space is to presented for and explored by a single vistor immersive single-person experience.