Ham Radio Hacker
“Amateur Radio operators have shown an insatiable curiosity to explore and populate the high frontiers of the electromagnetic spectrum.” Not only that, but when disaster strikes, ham radio operators are usually called upon to provide and/or help emergency communications.
They’re not dependent on cell phone towers or overloaded systems in times of crisis; they’re distributed and long range. They help, they learn, and they share information. Diana is the type of person you need when you want to tap in to the space station to hear it go by or when you need to coordinate rescue plans when a hurricane drops in.

Modern Guru
Modern Guru is a translucent ovoid with four huge digital eyes, floating above a ceremonial ring of LEDs. From his mouth flows a ream of absurdist messages, and in a statement about the true nature of lived experience, a new message is delivered when visitors take a photo of Modern Guru – a missive produced only for those who seek to photograph life rather than live the moment. This immersive new media art installation uses the intersection of art and technology to explore modern paths to happiness through unique interactions with characters along a mystical journey of discovery. Visitors are asked to commit to the path – a tight and winding trail with subtle points of connection along the way – a glowing landscape of oversized, whimsical mountains that chant incantations and blink innocently from digital eyes.
Having communed with the Guru, visitors then weave their way back through this warped and strange world full of illusions and delusions, perceptions and deceptions, all the while bathing in luminescent light; embracing big, gentle forms; and following their own path up the pink tongue staircase to meet the one who oversees the whole fantastic dominion, the Sun God.

Kelly Luck
Strangeland 1 (excerpt)

FILE 2024 | Aesthetic Synthetics
International Electronic Language Festival
Kelly Luck – Strangeland 1 (excerpt) – United States

From a surrealist point of view, the main attraction of generative AI, for the artist, is its lack of memory. At any given moment, she only has the current frame and instructions on how to proceed, similar to free association in dreams. This work is part of a series of long-term environments designed to immerse the viewer in a constantly evolving and never-ending landscape, inviting relaxation and engagement.

Bio

As part of the first generation to grow up around computers, Kelly Luck quickly became fascinated with the creative possibilities of this new technology. Her journey has ranged from pixel art and graphic ‘hacks’ to the 90s demoscene, 2D and later 3D graphics, and now the modern tools of digital art. With the emergence of generative AI, it endlessly explores how technology continues to blur the line between imagination and reality.

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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Machine Tree
Machine with Tree is a kinetic sculpture combining dead trees with metal machinery. It is designed to use the object’s center of gravity to achieve a movement where the tree appears to float in midair. In Machine with Tree, a dead tree is placed at the end of a long, sharp rod on the machine. The tree slowly moves back and forth with the machine’s movements, as though floating in midair. Through its creation of artificial, bizarre movements controlled by machinery, it illustrates a melancholy contemplation of the strange and contradictory things woven together by our reality.

Urban imprint
“If there is to be a “new urbanism… it will no longer be concerned with the arrangement of more or less permanent … but for the creation of enabling fields….that refuse to be crystallized into definitive form; it will no longer be about meticulous definitions, the imposition of limits, but about expanding notions, denying boundaries, not about separating and identifying entities, but about discovering hybrids; it will no longer be obsessed with the city but with the manipulation of infrastructure for endless intensifications and diversifications, shortcuts and redistributions – the reinvention of psychological space.”, Dutch architect + Harvard Professor, Koolhaas 959, writer of Delirious New York. URBAN IMPRINT is how we design a piece of this new urbanism, an augmented materiality , as we define it. An environment that is a ‘blank canvas’ to be reshaped by the future self.

Hot Pink Turquoise
Janssens’ works range wide, but they can all be described as sculptures that use the space as a stage for sensory activity. The simple white architecture of Louisiana’s South Wing becomes a resonating surface for Janssens’ both fragile and dizzying art – fragile because the works and their components are very simple while their effect elevates them above the material. Janssens herself often uses the word ‘fluid’ to describe the effect of her works – even for example when they consist of a 6.5 metre long iron girder polished at the top so the room is reflected and it is hard to fix your gaze on the object. Janssens seeks no control of either works or viewers, for as the Dutch theorist Mieke Bal has said, Janssens’ artworks are at one and the same time object and event. Many of the works in the exhibition can evoke the sensation of standing at the threshold of something. They stress transitions and transformations between on the one hand a material level – evoked by glass, colour, liquids and not least light – and on the other hand a dynamic experience of time and space.

Valla claimed to have collected a series of 60 “surrealistic” images, or that, at least, give that impression, during a long period “playing” in Google Earth.“The images are a kind of mirrors for a fun house.They are strange illusions and reflections of the real ”Despite the strong distortions, which easily resemble a surrealist painting, the images of the work do not have any manipulation of tools like Photoshop, for example.”The images are screenshots of Earth with basic color adjustments”, “This is a construction of 3D maps on two-dimensional bases, creating these fabulous and unintended distortions”.

The form of becoming
In this abstract system, each intelligent agent is embodied as a motor, the states in its environment is represented as an angular range of rotation and the actions as one of two directions in which each agent can move a linear actuator. Each linear system holds a segment of a long black string, this translates as a point in the represented line. Once the system runs, each agent learns, from informational equivalents of pain and pleasure, to move towards the highest values within its environment, this means ultimately to displace its position from point A to B. In order for an agent to learn, it needs time, generations of exploration, each agent will get punished for bad decisions and rewarded for appropriate ones. Every time a learning generation is finished, a light will blink for that particular agent, indicating the end of a cycle and the achievement of new knowledge; the agent becomes more intelligent. Once all agents learned to be and stay in point B, the system, as a collective, has successfully mutated into a stable, balanced, symmetric and silent form; a straight line. Finally, after a few seconds, the sculpture forgets, all agents are rebooted and the cycle of creation, chaos and order restarts, this time with a totally different and unique behavior.

CHBL Jammer Coat
The CHBL Jammer Coat is a piece of clothing that enables its user to disappear: Google cannot find you anymore. The piece is made of metallized fabrics, which are blocking radio waves and shielding the wearer against tracking devices. You are no longer reachable on your mobile phone and no information from your credit card can be captured. The Wave Circle pattern of the fabric gives an illusion of strange multiple body parts, which hides and frees the individual physicality.

克劳斯奥伯迈尔
the concept of … (here and now)

In front of a giant screen, two dancers interact with a cohort of cameras… Their movements are captured by infra-red sensors and projected onto the screen, whereby their bodies become the canvas on which new images take shape. The result is a shifting kaleidoscope of strange, living, quasi-mathematical visual worlds which sometimes seem to be emanating or even escaping from the dancers’ bodies. “Who decides which movement to make: the man or the machine?” Blurring the line between the real and the virtual, Klaus Obermaier loves to subsume his performers’ bodies and physicality in a disconcerting digital universe. With his latest creation, the choreographer/artist has taken a bold new step. He has constructed a system of projectors and infra-red sensor-cameras, trained upon the movements of two dancers. The performers thus find themselves thrown headlong into a living, moving graphical universe: their movements are projected onto the screen, but at the same time their bodies are illuminated by more projected images. This is a true artistic performance, pushing well beyond the frontiers of a standard dance recital, or even a contemporary dance show. A corporeal, temporal performance. A choreography which makes subtle use of its raw materials, deftly combining lights, video, perspectives and the real-time power of bodily movement.

TOGETHER APART BILLUND
Together Apart Billund consists of 375 coated mesh fabric ribbons stretched between the roofline of the Billund community building and the ground. Connected to the ground along an undulating line that curves in on itself, the ribbons create a series of cellular spaces. While the surface generated by the ribbons separates the individual spaces, its porosity provides visual interconnectivity between them. With the top and bottom anchoring patterns aligned symmetrically to the building facade, the installation is situated to have an axial relationship with surrounding buildings. The interplay between the linear top anchor positions and curved ground anchor pattern gives rise to differentiated and complex conditions of visual overlap, density, and transparency. The bright orange color of the installation creates a focal point and invites curious passers-by to interact with the work.

Weight of insomnia
With his new series of paintings, Liu uses a machine programmed to capture movement in public spaces and translates this to marks on canvas. The machine has no heart, no desires, no ulterior motive. It does not sleep but obeys its instructions for as long as the artist decides. And yet the results have a strange power to move us. It seems that, despite all efforts, subjectivity can never truly be extinguished. Join Liu as he discusses this latest painting project, the conflict and changes in Chinese society that have influenced his artistic approach and how we might all be affected by the ‘weight of insomnia’.

Карлом Кляйнером
Tulips Postures
Carl Kleiner creates sleek editorial content for fashion and lifestyle brands, and that sensibility shows in his photo and video series Postures which features artfully arranged tulips. Using minimal metal rods, bent at strategic ends and angles, Kleiner showcases the graceful curves of the flowers’ long necks and gently ruffled petals and leaves. A further sense of movement is instilled through the stop-motion video, which combines still photos of the blossoms’ subtle changes into a dramatic dance.

Bottle with the Image of Its Own Making
Gary Hill (b. 1951, Santa Monica, CA) has worked with a broad range of media – including sculpture, sound, video, installation and performance – since the early 1970’s, producing a large body of single-channel videos, mixed-media installations, and performance work. His longtime work with intermedia continues to explore an array of issues ranging from the physicality of language, synesthesia and perceptual conundrums to ontological space and viewer interactivity.

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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Canoe
The work here in Dawson is like an old vehicle in which I’ve put a new engine. Entitled Canoe, it consists of an approximately 20 foot long trough of water, that resembles some kind of boat. This provides a means for a gunwales tracking mechanism to slowly, endlessly paddle its way back and forth. It was first constructed in 2001 in a studio beside Halifax harbour. It draws visual inspiration from the bridges and water vessels of this port. Conceptually, it grew from an interest in technological obsolescence: how things (like canoes) make shifts from utility to leisure.
It has experienced several major rebuilds since 2001. Most of them have been practical, but for Dawson I’ve opted for an experimental configuration that changes significantly the nature of the work. Previously, Canoe has only ever been shown indoors. Normally in runs on rechargeable batteries, with a continuous, smooth motion. In Dawson, it is shown outdoors, alongside the Yukon river, showing up in an absurd way the paleness of its artificial river. Here, the primary source of power is sunlight.
Making use of the long northern day, solar panels receive light, storing energy in an array of super-capacitor cells. At this time, Canoe remains still. A custom circuit monitors the amount of charge, and when a predetermined trigger point is reached, it is dumped into Canoe’s electric motor in a burst, allowing it to make a few strokes. Then Canoe rests, while the charging cycle begins again. Motion is intermittent, entirely dependent on the amount and intensity of sunlight. It ranges from near standstill in overcast conditions to perhaps 1 or 2 strokes every minute in full light. The technical term for this type of circuit is a relaxation oscillator. I like this term because, if you remove it from its technical context, it points back to ideas about leisure and utility.

于爾根·邁爾
يورغن ماير
위르겐 마이어
יורגן מאייר
ユルゲン・マイヤー
Юрген Майер
finalizes mixed-use sonnenhof complex

J Mayer H Architects has completed a housing and office complex in Germany, covered with graphic patterns that extend down from facades to create the impression of elongated shadows.The four buildings that make up the Sonnenhof complex range in height from five to seven storeys, and are clustered around a central courtyard.All four buildings feature faceted monochrome facades. Skewed pentagonal and square windows are outlined by grey aluminium panelling, contrasting the stark white plasterwork.In homage to this detailing, J Mayer H chose to paint different areas of the courtyard black and white, creating the illusion that dark shadows are cast onto the ground.Wedge-shaped planters with integrated benches contribute to this effect.The Sonnenhof complex is located in Jena, a town in the Saale river valley in eastern Germany.

In Voluptas Mors

“In Voluptas Mors” (“Voluptuous Death”), is probably one of the most complex portraits I have ever seen alongside Halsman’s “Dali Atomicus” which took 28 attempts! “In Voluptas Mors” is again a carefully considered and planned out portrait of the surrealistic Spanish artist Salvador Dalí, made in collaboration with photographer Philippe Halsman (1951). The image depicts Dalí posing beside a giant ‘skull’, a tableau vivant (or “living picture”) comprising of seven nude female models in beautiful mind blogging poses. As you can imagine it took a considerable amount of time to create this wonderful photograph. It took all in all Halsman and Dali three hours to arrange the models according to Dalí’s precise sketch.

فيليب ستيرنز
Impact Study No. 1
Impact Study #1 is a light installation consisting of 24 white neon tubes of varying length. These tubes are installed along a wall, each oriented vertically and arranged according to a horizontal contour. Tubes vary in size from 3.5 ft to 8 ft and are spaced 1.5ft. The overall dimensions of the work as documented are 36 ft wide and 8 ft tall.The tubes are lit sequentially according to hybrid analog-digital control circuitry. The circuitry detects radioactivity and translates it into a pattern of signals that are visualized as light moving along the formation of neon tubes. The effect will be that of rippling waves of light moving back and forth through the formation. The ambient lighting cast by the installation resembles light reflecting off the surface of a body of water.

فريدريك هيمان
弗雷德里克·海曼
פרדריק היימן
フレデリックヘイマン
ФРЕДЕРИК ХЕЙМАН
Dans son travail délicieusement étrange, Frederik propose des ensembles fantastiques faits à la main avec des accessoires à base d’urine, ainsi que des campagnes de mode haut de gamme très, très nettes. Non content de demander à de beaux modèles de faire le travail visuel à sa place, Frederik enfonce des cigares dans leur bouche, peint des chevaux dessus ou allonge leurs bras dans de gros tubes charnus. Voir un gars qui est si doué dans ce qu’il fait mais avec un gros élément de «Je ferai tout ce que je veux» est rafraîchissant, hilarant et très impressionnant.

“Hannes Van Severen makes the connection between reality and imagination in his work. The artist starts with an existing, everyday object, usually a piece of furniture, which he then transforms and changes. In this way, he deprives the object of its original functionality and allows its aesthetic value to prevail. As a result, the original usefulness of the everyday object no longer predominates, but his work nevertheless continues to be a visual reference to the original. With this paradoxical construction, Hannes Van Severen creates a fictitious world of images with alternative, intrinsic meanings and potential. The observer has to let go of the explanatory and allow his or her imagination to take flight. In combination with the personal experience of the observer, a richer dimension of the reality experienced will emerge with the new reading and interpretation of things that are apparently obvious. With this transformation, Van Severen wants to break down our recognition, to question the obviousness of our reality, and to show us the absurdity that surrounds us. Like the cubists and the surrealists, the artist divides into pieces and rearranges  an existing reality, which means that he can be described as a saboteur of the obvious.” Stef Van Bellingen

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.