highlike

Sam Twidale & Marija Avramovic

Sunshowers
(AI) infinite simulations
FILE FESTIVAL SP 2019
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‘Sunshowers’ is the third in our series of real-time animation artworks. It is inspired by the opening chapter of Akira Kurosawa’s film Dreams which follows a young boy as he explores a forest and stumbles across a fox wedding (Kitsune no Yomeiri). Our piece explores ideas of animism and techno-animism by assigning life in the form of artificial intelligence to all of the objects, both natural and man-made, within the virtual world. The piece unfolds in real time with the characters themselves deciding which paths they will follow.

Amigo & Amigo

Affinity
Affinity is an immersive interactive light and sound installation inspired by the human brain. Each light globe represented a memory, as people approached Affinity different memories could be heard. When people touched the memory a light would trigger, the longer they touched the further their light would travel throughout the sculpture. Affinity features 62 different colour combinations and 112 points of interaction.

ALWIN NIKOLAIS

Noumenon

A truly universal artist, the American Alwin Nikolais (1910-1993) devoted his life to a radical form of staged art he called “dance theater.” Inspired (perhaps unconsciously) by the experiments of Bauhaus members such as Oskar Schlemmer and László Moholy-Nagy in the 1920s, Nikolais devised a style of abstract dance that encompassed costumes, stage sets, choreography, lighting, and music, all under his control. Also in 1963, Nikolais met analog synthesizer pioneer Robert Moog, who was at the time just starting his business in New York. He was fascinated by the sounds of Moog’s machines, and with the money provided by a a Guggenheim Fellowship, Nikolais bought the first ever commercially produced Moog synthesizer. It was the primary sound-source for all of Nikolais’ scores from 1963 to 1975. The instrument is now housed at the Stearns Collection of Musical Instruments at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Kenny Wong

Squint
file festival
I was inspired by how the sunlight bounces around in our artificial forest.
“Squint” is a kinetic light installation consisting of 49 mirrors that reflect lights in a bright space. The mirrors track and reflect lights on audiences’ face with composed patterns of movements. It extends the generated perception by focusing on how lights pass across our visual senses physically, and combines with our perception of images through flickering. “Squint”, which extracts various daily experiences to an abstraction brings the audience to expand their interpretation of lights and perceived imagination into a non-linear experience.
“Squint” simulates light source and intentionally shines lights on audience’s faces. Bright light is projected in the gallery, a clean bright space.
Everyday people are dynamically moving around in the city. Sunlight reflects and flickers even when it is indirect and hidden behind the artifacts. While we are traveling, we are experiencing motion. We are also experiencing the shift of light intensity, visual patterns and textures. The varieties of light forms inspire the artist to explore the potential of light textures, select and sort out the combined complexity in urban space. The artist turns them into a minimal form of light experience, while maximizing its diversity of perception.

PEEPING TOM

32 rue vandenbranden
The script of physical actions is inspired by the Japanese film A ballad de Naraiama (1983), by Shohei Imamura, the one with tearing images, like that of the son carrying his mother on his back, embraced by the wind, climbing the mountain to put her on the summit until death, as the local tradition says that every septuagenarian must have an equal destiny. In the same village in the late 19th century, parents used to sell babies to survive. These material and spiritual miseries do not bring literals to the stage. Rather, they are essentials that make the show a fabulous visual poem written in and with the body and the scenic space. The song is also celebrated at the height, with moments such as Stravinski’s The Bird of Fire suite, and the song Fline on you crazy diamond, by the band Pink Floyd.

Richard Vijgen

WiFi Impressionist
Wifi Impressionist is a field installation that draws electromagnetic landscapes inspired by the cityscapes of William Turner. The work consists of a directional antenna on a pan-tilt mechanism that listens for WiFi signals and builds a three dimensional model of the signals around it. From this model a viewport is selected that defines the perspective and the frame. Signals that are picked up within the frame are visualised as waves emitted from a specific origin and drawn using a mobile plotter. The antenna and the plotter are both mounted on a tripod and can be placed in the field much like a painter would set up his easel. Once positioned and oriented a drawing becomes denser over time depending on the density of networks around it. Wherever there is a WiFi signal, the drawing will eventually fill the frame.

ANOUK WIPPRECHT

PANGOLIN DRESS

The Pangolin Scales Project demonstrates a 1.024 channel BCI (Brain-Computer Interface) that is able to extract information from the human brain with an unprecedented resolution. The extracted information is used to control the Pangolin Scale Dress interactively into 64 outputs.The dress is also inspired by the pangolin, cute, harmless animals sometimes known as scaly anteaters. They have large, protective keratin scales covering their skin (they are the only known mammals with this feature) and live in hollow trees or burrows.As such, Pangolins and considered an endangered species and some have theorized that the recent coronavirus may have emerged from the consumption of pangolin meat.Wipprecht’s main challenge in the project’s development was to not overload the dress with additional weight. She teamed up 3D printing experts Shapeways and Igor Knezevic in order to create an ‘exo-skeleton like dress-frame (3mm) that was light enough to be worn but sturdy enough to hold all the mechanics in place

Stine Deja

Synthetic Seduction

Foreigner

Stine Deja and Marie Munk

The title of the exhibition was inspired by Sherry Turkle’s theory of how technology seduces us, making emotions “easy” by offering human relationships without the complexity of being together ‘face to face’. But if machines can become attentive and emotional, what is left to distinguish us as human beings? We are facing a paradigm shift in how we understand ourselves physiologically, as data and algorithms, and are being forced to question the role of our biological body. As the relationship between artificial and human intelligence becomes increasingly intermingled in our everyday lives, Synthetic Seduction provides immersive and timely insight into the limits of human empathy and intimacy. We are glad at SixtyEight Art Institute to host such a space for thought. We hope it will start conversations and maybe even encourage some intimacy among our visiting audiences in the coming weeks.

Ehab Alhariri

Futuristic Sustainable Mountain Pod
A Futuristic Smart Sustainable Mountain pod designed to utilize solar power using a petals mechanism that allows it to open up and close down to charge up the pod using photovoltaic cells mounted on the petals. Inspired by a flower motion, the petals when open allows for a 360° view of the surrounding, the mechanism could also potentially allow the pod to collect rainwater to be self-sufficient and of the grid hide out.

Ka Fai Choy

Synchrometrics

Can we design future memories for the body?
Is the body itself the apparatus for remembering cultural processes?Prospectus For a Future Body proposes new perspectives on how the body remembers and invents technological narratives. Central to the project is the study of body movement in dance: How it can evolve, adapt or re-condition to possible futures?Eternal Summer Storm explores the concept of muscle memory transfer as an alternative form of interactive cultural continuities. This concept prototype speculates on a future digital library of body movements or dance techniques that can be experienced beyond the audio-visual conventions. Eternal Summer Storm attempts to recreate legendary Japanese dancer Tatsumi Hijikata’s Butoh dance choreography and experience in ‘A Summer Storm’ (1973) from archival footages.Bionic Movement Research is a collection of experiments on the process of designing digital muscle memory for the body. Inspired by Luigi Galvani discovery (1780) of animal electricity in the human body, these experiments appropriate the techniques of electrical nerve stimulation to choreograph artificial muscle contraction and body movement.

alexander lehmann

Hybris – Garbage Truck
Inspired by chaos theory and non-linear dynamics, Hybris invested a few years sitting in the studio to create his debut, and the results of such an amount of time invested in it stand out at first glance because not only has his head blown of how much ordinary human being crosses his music in addition to blowing the minds of Noisia themselves (who surely do not have to be very easy people to surprise), it has also made UKF (the largest d & b / idm community the world) highlight his first single as a piece worthy of freezing in time and that somehow revitalizes and reinvents the d & b that in Hybris Garbage Truck has not only found a new form of expression with what you hear but also with what you see with his precise and perfectly timed video made by Alexander Lehmann.

Pierre-Jean GILOUX

Metabolism _ Invisible Cities
Pierre-Jean Giloux’s first monograph, the publication extends the eponymous video tetralogy inspired by the Japanese utopian architectural movement: Metabolism (1960-70).
The films of the Invisible Cities cycle are portraits of Japanese cities, superimposing filmed and photographed images of everyday, social and urban reality, with virtual images.
The book explores the links in Pierre Jean Giloux’s work that connect four Japanese cities with a rich architectural past (Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Kyoto). This jorney through Japan’s Megapolis traces the history of Japan and ends with the reconstruction of pavilions for the Osaka 70 Universal Exhibition and a virtual proposal for a smart city on the waters of Lake Biwa.
The metabolist utopia to which reference is constantly made in the work of Pierre Jean Giloux played a decisive role in the constitution of post-war Japanese cultural identity and had a notable influence on many contemporary architects.

video

Alisa Andrasek

Cloud Pergola
Inspired by the cloud formations and weather events, this mathematized cloud plays with visitor’s perception. Movement through the structure generates a series of dynamic interference views in its deep fabric, drifts and ruptures in visibility. A sea of redirecting vectors is pulling the visitor like an invisible gravity force through the fabric.

Chris Salter

n-Polytope: Behaviors in Light and Sound after Iannis Xenakis
N_Polytope: Behaviors in Light and Sound After Iannis Xenakis is a spectacular light and sound performance-installation combining cutting edge lighting, lasers, sound, sensing and machine learning software inspired by composer Iannis Xenakiss radical 1960s- 1970s works named Polytopes (from the Greek ‘poly’, many and ‘topos’, space). As large scale, immersive architectural environments that made the indeterminate and chaotic patterns and behaviour of natural phenomena experiential through the temporal dynamics of light and the spatial dynamics of sound, the Polytopes still to this day are relatively unknown but were far ahead of their time. N_Polytope is based on the attempt to both re-imagine Xenakis’ work with probabilistic/stochastic systems with new techniques as well as to explore how these techniques can exemplify our own historical moment of extreme instability.

Lin Hwai-min

cursive II
Ross MacGibbon
Cloud Gate Dance Theatre of Taiwan
Lin Hwai-min’s Cursive II is inspired by the aesthetics of calligraphy. Set to music by John Cage, it is an exquisite meditation on the balancing of opposites presented in delicate simplicity, allowing no distraction from the details of the dance.

marleen sleeuwits

object no. 9

Marleen Sleeuwits is inspired by impersonal environments—places that could be anywhere and nowhere—such as vacant zones in airports, unoccupied corridors of hotels, and empty rooms in office buildings. The Netherlands-based artist is attracted to these non-spaces for the lack of impression they leave on people; her work focuses on finding ways of visualizing the identity of these voids and connecting to them in novel ways. Through structural contradiction, illusion, and the manipulation of scale, she aims to transform viewers’ awareness of their surroundings.

Marta Revuelta

AI Facial Profiling, Levels of Paranoia

Inspired by the recent psychometric research papers who claimed to use an AI to detect the criminal potential of a person based only on a photo of his face, and taking the world of firearms as a starting point, we present a “physiognomic machine”, a computer vision and pattern recognition system that detects the ability of an individual to handle firearms and predicts his potential danger from a biometric analysis of his face. The device is based on a camera-weapon that captures faces as well as a machine with artificial intelligence and a mechanical system that classifies the profiled persons into two categories, those who present a high risk of being a threat and those who present a lower risk .

So Kanno

Lasermice
“Lasermice” is a swarm robotic installation that consists of 60 small robots, which inspired by synchronous behavior from insects like fireflies. Normally network of swarm is invisible, But in this case those robots creates visible network via laser light – photodetector communication. As a result, they generates rythme that continuously changing. The generated rhythm is made audible by solenoid which strikes floor. Combination of visible network and audible rhythm are deployed spatially.

Katja Heitmann

Eggs Are Good For Your Hair
Katja is inspired by the influence of everydays’ digital technologies on society and with that the arising questions about the identity of our human body. She fuses everydays’ technology, the dancers’ body and the presence of the audience into unconventional performances. Who moves who?

ELIŠKA SKY

Eco Warriors

A Beginner’s Guide for Eco Warriors is inspired by the current dramatic changes in Earth’s ecosystem due to the human impact, the so-called age of Anthropocene. This short film represent, with certain level of exaggeration, tips and inspirations how to lower your ecological footprint and contribute to the slowing down of global warming and the protection of natural habitats. This short film then becomes a small guide for Eco Warriors and urges for reflection and reaction from each of us.

Katja Heitmann

Me, My Selfie and I
Katja is inspired by the influence of everydays’ digital technologies on society and with that the arising questions about the identity of our human body. She fuses everydays’ technology, the dancers’ body and the presence of the audience into unconventional performances. Who moves who?

chun hua catherine dong

the double

The gestures in the performance are inspired by gargoyle, a legendary stone-carved grotesque with a spout that normally is designed to convey water from a roof. Mouth serves as the opening for food intake and in the articulation of sound and speech. However, when performers wear the mouthpieces, or when women’s mouth is forced to open, the mouth loses its function. In fact, it silences and disables the women because they are unable to talk when their mouths are widely pulled open. This performance explores another side of the unseen and unspoken—the vulnerability, struggle, shame, and suffering that we are uneasy to share and expose.
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Steve Fields

masks
“I have been inspired by many artists of the past and present to arrive at this moment of creativity. I have been inspired by some wonderful spiritual teachers to arrive at this moment of beauty and mystery. I invite you to share in my vision of this mystery“. Steve Fields

John Tavener

We shall see Him as He is
”Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is”. the First Epistle of St John, Chapter 3 verse 2
Tavener converted to the Russian Orthodox Church in 1977.[13] Orthodox theology and liturgical traditions became a major influence on his work. He was particularly drawn to its mysticism, studying and setting to music the writings of Church Fathers and completing a setting of the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, the principal eucharistic liturgy of the Orthodox Church: this was Tavener’s first directly Orthodox-inspired music

Andrew Kudless

p_ball
This project investigates the self-organization of two materials, plaster and elastic fabric, to produce evocative visual and acoustic effects. Inspired by the work of the Spanish architect Miguel Fisac and his experiments with flexible concrete formwork in the 1960-70s, p_wall attempts to continue this line of research and add to it the ability to generate larger and more differentiated patterns. Starting from an image, a cloud of points is generated based on the image’s grayscale values.

KEIICHI TANAAMI

田名網敬一
Keiichi Tanaami is a graphic designer, illustrator and video artist whose work could usually be considered some form of psychedelic pop art. Tanaami was born in in Tokyo in 1936. He was heavily influenced by the psychedelic culture and pop art of the 1960′s and was greatly inspired by the work of Andy Warhol. He was a member of the Neo-Dada organization, one of the defining art movements of postwar Japan.

OLI SORENSON

video pistoletto
FILE SAO PAULO 2015

Inspired from the live works of Italian artist Michelangelo Pistoletto (1933-) of meticulously ransacking large mirrors, Sorenson revisited the classical traditions of vanitas under new materials together with one of the more celebrated exploits of Arte Povera.

KOHN PEDERSEN FOX ASSOCIATES

Yongsan IBD Block H
Inspired by crystalline growth patterns found in nature, the tower’s three tiered wings radiate out from the building’s center. Unlike the design of most Y-type high-rise towers, the design of Block H “steps” each wing asymmetrically so there is a low-wing, a mid-wing and a high-wing. The three wing configuration also enables each apartment to have a corner view from the living space, while maximizing its privacy from the adjacent unit.

MICHAEL JOHANSSON

マイケル·ヨハンソン
Майкл Йоханссон
The Move Overseas

Created by contemporary Swedish artist Michael Johansson, these “real life Tetris” installations see other people’s unwanted objects methodically and painstakingly packed together into neat, colour co-ordinated blocks. Inspired by real life coincidences, such as two people passing each other dressed in the same outfits, Johansson has been constructing the sculptures since 2007, installing them in public areas like tight alleyways and strangely shaped doorways as well as showing them at group and solo exhibitions all over the world. Speaking to PINCH magazine, Johansson said:

“These irregularities, or coincidences, are a great source of inspiration for me. I have also as long as I can remember been fascinated by flea markets. And in specific a fascination by walking around to find doubles of seemingly unique, though often useless objects I have already purchased at another flea market. There is something irresistible in the knowledge that if you don’t buy that particular object right away, the opportunity might never come back. I think the same rules compelling me to select things at flea markets are also central to my art practice, that you need to combine something very familiar with something very unique to create an interesting art experience.”
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Rafael Lozano-Hemmer

Sphere Packing
“Sphere Packing” is a series of 3D-printed pieces designed to concentrate the entire musical production of a composer in a single dense multi-channel device. The size of each sphere is directly proportional to how prolific the composer was, for example the sphere for Johann Sebastian Bach has 48 cm diameter and holds 1100 loudspeakers playing simultaneously Bach’s 1100 different compositions, while the sphere for Hildegaard Von Bingen only has 11 cm diameter and 69 loudspeakers. The project presents at a glance the comparative production volume of many composers. As people are a couple metres away from a sphere they hear a quiet murmur of sounds, but as they approach and put their ear up close to individual speakers they can hone in on specific compositions. The series is inspired by American composer Charles Ives’ practice of simultaneity as a compositional tool.

DANIEL CANOGAR

SIKKA MAGNUM
File Festival
Sikka is a sculptural video installation constructed from 360 used DVDs. This multi-thematic piece was inspired by “sikka”, the gold coins sewn to clothing dating back to Babylonic times that eventually became the shiny plastic objects we know today as sequins. By projecting the contents of the DVDs back onto their surfaces the artist continues to investigate both new uses for discarded objects as well as his interest in combining the phantasmagorical properties of cinema with its physical elements. In this case, film segments were selected from each of the DVDs for their color, shape and movement value, forming a digital palette from which the final projected loops were constructed. The accompanying self-generated soundtrack is the resulting “accidental composition” created by layering the soundtracks from the actual segments being projected. The final effect is that of an audio-visual mosaic. Historically, sikka were worn to remind onlookers of the wealth and power of those wearing them while also evoking the light of the divine. Similarly, the surfaces of the DVDs flash back at us images born from the glamorous world of Hollywood where image is converted to a kind of currency.

Cod.Act

振り子の合唱団
CYCLOID-E

This piece, which comprises a series of tubular pieces arranged horizontally and activated by a motor, generates a particular sound through its movement, which is unexpectedly harmonic. The artists have taken their interest in the mechanisms that generate wave motions as a starting point to create this sculpture: five metal tubes joined together feature sound sources and sensors that allow them to emit different sounds based on their rotations.
The sculpture runs through a series of rhythmic movements, like a dance, creating, in the words of the artists themselves, “a unique kinetic and polyphonic work, in the likeness of the “Cosmic Ballet” to which the physicist Johannes Kepler refers to in his “Music of the Spheres” in 1619.” This work is part of the reflection on the possible interactions between sound and movement developed by the artists since 1999, using electronic devices and inspired by the aesthetics of industrial machinery.

ANNIE OK

My Life as an Avatar 06.08
File Festival – Machinima

Annie Ok is an interdisciplinary artist. Her work is an expression of entropic congruity and organic abstract deconstruction, inspired by nature, science, mathematics, evolution, dysfunction, ambivalence and ambiguity.

MANUELA DONOSO AND LUISA PEREIRA

The Harmonic Series

File Festival

Created by Manuela Donoso and Luisa Pereira, The Harmonic Series is a collection of mechanical devices , software, sculptures and prints that explore the relationship between musical and visual harmony.Inspired by the nineteenth century mathematician Jules Lissajous who invented a device to visualize sound vibrations using two tuning forks and a beam of light reflected from one mirror to the next to a screen, Manuela and Luisa have re-created and extended this experiment using recent tools. An electronic version of the device replaces the tuning forks with microphones and speakers, allowing people to sing different musical intervals, and contrast the resulting figures with the more chaotic ones generated by percussive sounds. An application plays groups of three notes and plots 3d Lissajous figures for their frequency ratios. The frequency ratios for major, minor and diminished chords are 4:5:6, 10:12:15 and 20:24:29 respectively. These chords were plotted using the app, and then printed as posters and sculptures that reveal a tight relationship between aural and visual harmony.

TORAFU ARCHITECTS

Crystal Aqua Trees
Installed in Sony Square in Tokyo and on display until January 14, the ‘Crystal Aqua Trees’ is a crystal work of art inspired by the concept of a fountain that can be seen as a spray of water as well as a Christmas tree. Designed by Torafu Architects, the project was inspired by the Trevi fountain in Rome, the “Ai no Izumi” (Fountain of Love) charity drive, which has been held by Sony every year since 1968. For this edition, the architects proposed a new embodiment as an interactive installation. More images and architects’ description after the break.In response to changes in the landscape of the street and the actions of people, the illumination will play beautiful music in harmony with a gorgeous light display. The movement of people is picked up by a sensor camera, which prompts the pillars of light illuminated by LEDs to change colors to create a glimmering structure.Whenever coins are deposited in the crystal donation box placed in front of the square, the installation responds by switching to a special performance, as if acknowledging the contributions made. Like water in a fountain, the polished black floor surface of the stage reflects the illumination, creating a wonderful scene in the middle of the streets of Ginza.

Kian-Peng Ong

Coronado
File festival
“Coronado” was inspired by a visit to the Coronado beach in California, which was an awe inspiring moment never experienced in other beaches. The soundscape present in Coronado seemed to be coming from all directions with layers and layers of sound waves. I decided then that I would make a sound work to translate this experience. The sound installation is characterized by the interplay of the analog and digital sound sources which layers over one another, exploring the idea of a seascape. The center of the installation is an ocean drum controlled with mechanical arms that creates and simulates the sound of sea waves. This is picked up by the microphone, reprocessed through the computer and sent out to the 6 channel surround speakers in different time. The interplay and sense of endlessness in the layering the analog and digital are my interpretation and response to the wonderment I found in Coronado.