Ad Infinitum
Ad infinitum is a parasitical entity which lives off human energy. It lives untethered and off the grid. This parasite reverses the dominant role that mankind has with respect to technologies: the parasite shifts humans from “users” to “used”. Ad infinitum co-exists in our world by parasitically attaching electrodes onto the human visitors and harvesting their kinetic energy by electrically persuading them to move their muscles. The only way a visitor can be freed is by seducing another visitor to sit on the opposite chair and take their place. Being trapped in the parasite’s cuffs means getting our muscles electrically stimulated in order to perform a cranking motion as to feed it our kinetic energy. This reminds us that, in the cusp of artificially thinking machines, we are no longer just “users”; the shock we feel in our muscles, the involuntary gesture, acknowledges our intricate relationship to uncanny technological realm around us.

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.

Requiem

In REQUIEM choreographer Nanine Linning imagines the tension between life and death, the profane and the sacred, the carnal and the spiritual. Themes, which are inextricably linked together and are at the same time absolute opposites. Inspired by Fauré’s “Requiem”, Dante’s “La Divina Commedia” and the absurd and surreal images of the artist duo “Les Deux Garçons”, Linning is searching for her own paradise on earth.REQUIEM is a multidisciplinary production with 25 dancers, live orchestra, two soloist singers, a choir, a sound artist and video. It is a triptych where the public will first walk on stage through dance installations; the dancers create a frozen, silent world.In the second part Fauré’s “Requiem” is being performed while singers and dancers follow Linnings choreography in a world of immense video images on stage. In the last part a Sound Artist will break apart Fauré’s “Requiem”. The frozen world of part one will melt and the energy of life will be released in a dynamic choreography for the choir and dancers.

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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sound cloud
London-based designer kazuhiro yamanaka has created the ‘sound cloud’ a light-emitting quantum glass speaker system installation for saazs ‘a glass house’ program. the structure is composed of five interactive monolithic glass panels, formed with the intention of modelling the integration of innovative glass within architecture and design. the sound and light radiating from ‘sound cloud’ shift in unison, their synchronization may be altered by the viewer as they adjust their aural and visual experience by means of a touch-screen controller.
yamanaka aspired for the visitors to ‘be able to hear the sound move from one to another, jumping back and forth and echoing from the panels.’
a sound module is attached to each panel. as it vibrates,the three layers of glass move at a frequency, which creates optimum sound quality. the sound for the installation was developed by the france-based sound designer, gling-glang. yamanaka and gling-glang devised a soundscape by which ‘sound cloud’ visitors were able to sense the sculptural construction of the music in walking through the installation’s glass-paneled pathway.
the glass is outfitted with a light-emitting system known as ‘LED in glass’, invented by quantum glass. through this technology, the panels become a source of light. the ‘sound cloud’ is illuminated as the LED bars are fitted around the edge of the panel in order to direct beams of light through the edge of the extra clear glass sheet. as a result, light refraction occurs from the front side by means of a white enamel screen print on the opposite side.
yamanaka chose to slightly obscure the brightness of the glass sound system by creating a thin layer from millions of light dots, culminating in a cloud-like shape.

INTERFACE I
Interface I investigates the boundary between two interacting systems rendered into the physical. Each system is a compound of motors, strings and elastic bands arranged horizontally. The two units face each other vertically (one on the top, one on the bottom). Each motor of one level (top, bottom) is connected to its opponent with a string, meeting in the center. Both motors pull their string in the opposite direction (like in a tug of war). At the junction of the strings, a mesh of elastic bands connects the string to its neighbours. The mesh couples each element to its surrounding elements in order to achieve a local emergent behaviour.