highlike

Jessica Packer

Train Performance
Recently, I have found that traveling has made my anxiety peak. I suddenly feel trapped on a train, or in a car, and start being unable to breath. In order to both face this fear as well as do a performative piece about it, I taped myself up on a train. This is putting in to a literal sense the emotions I feel when traveling.

Kevin Cooley

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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DI MAINSTONE AND TIM MURRAY-BROWNE

Serendiptichord

The result of a cross-disciplinary investigation spanning fashion, technology, music and dance, the Serendiptichord is a wearable musical instrument that invites the user (or movician) to explore a soundscape through touch and movement. This curious device is housed in a bespoke box and viewed as part of a performance. Unpacked and explored on and around the body, the Serendiptichord only reveals its full potential through the intrepid curiosity of its wearer. Adhering to the body like an extended limb, this instrument is best described as choreophonic prosthetic. Referencing the architectural silhouette of a musical instrument and the soft fabrication of fashion and upholstery, it is designed to entice the movician to explore its surface through touch, physical manipulation and expressive movement. Although this acoustic device can be mastered alone, it also holds subtle openings for group interaction.

Irina Dzhus

DZHUS SS21
Now that sustainable consumption is a more relevant topic than ever, DZHUS has created a collection inspired by the variety of packaging, to draw attention to the importance of recycling. The SS21 designs interpret the visual and structural peculiarities of boxes, packets and wraps of all kinds. Multi-purpose use of clothing has always been crucial to DZHUS, as a revolutionary method to minimise customers’ shopping and diversify their wardrobe at the same time. All pieces from the spring/summer line are transformers, and most garments can be modified into bags in a swift and playful manner.

RAFAEL LOZANO-HEMMER

Sphere Packing: Bach
“Sphere Packing: Bach” ist eine Kugel mit 3 m Durchmesser aus Aluminium und Holz, die eine Anordnung von 1.128 Lautsprechern trägt, von denen jeder eine andere Komposition von Johann Sebastian Bach spielt. Das Stück soll Bachs gesamtes musikalisches Schaffen in einer dichten Mehrkanalstruktur bündeln, die Besucher betreten können. Zu jedem gegebenen Zeitpunkt werden alle Kompositionen gleichzeitig abgespielt und erzeugen eine polyvokale und komplexe Klangumgebung, die sich auf das Zentrum der Kugel konzentriert; von Zeit zu Zeit werden die Lautsprecher nach und nach in Wellen stummgeschaltet, um einen Lautsprecher hervorzuheben, der eine einzelne Komposition spielt.

Marcos Mauro

Pasionaria

Pasionaria represents the consequences of our current way of life, as conceived by choreographer Marcos Morau. A future where human beings would have lost their vitality through individualism and transhumanism. The gloomy universe of the spectacle thus seems sanitized of all affect, all passion, and consequently, humanity. All that remains is the labor force that is tirelessly busy vacuuming or handling packages of products. Ringing phones, doors or other objects constantly capture the attention of the protagonists who have become puppets. Manipulated by outside forces, instead of being driven by their deep desires, the humans of this dystopia merge into simple working robots.

Haruhiko Kawagushi

Flesh love all
I want to express love through my work. Because everything in the world is based on love[…] Based on such an idea, I started a project to vacuum pack a couple and everything around with a landscape. Not only a couple who loves each other but also everything around them is vacuum-packed, and eventually the whole landscape is vacuum-packed, creating an image where everything in the world is one existence. The shooting location is the most important place for them. The things you love will be one, and the world will be one. I think that is an ideal form of love. In order to participate in this project, you need to be ready for death and love next to you, and I need to be prepared for it too.

LAWRENCE MALSTAF

shrink
File Festival
Two large, transparent plastic sheets and a device that gradually sucks the air out from between them leave the body (in this case the artist himself) vacuum-packed and vertically suspended. The transparent tube inserted between the two surfaces allows the person inside the installation to regulate the air flow. As a result of the increasing pressure between the plastic sheets, the surface of the packed body gradually freezes into multiple micro-folds. For the duration of the performance, the person inside moves slowly and changes positions, which vary from an almost embryonic position to one resembling a crucified body.

CHRISTO

Христо
big air package
Big Air Package is the largest indoor sculpture in the world. It measures 90 meters in height and 50 meters in diameter. Visitors can enter the inner space of the balloon through airlocks. Inside, Big Air Package reminds of a cathedral that is filled with a diffuse light. Big Air Package is the first project realized without Christo’s late wife and artistic partner Jeanne-Claude.

CHIU CHIH

Voyage on the Planet
Designer Chiu Chih imagines a possible future where our cities have fallen into disrepair and the air is poisoned. In this wasteland, a woman wanders through the rubble, breathing with the help of a companion plant. The project, titled “Voyage on the planet,” consists of a clear box worn like a backpack. Two breathing tubes connect a face mask to the box. Inside, the box holds a potted plant, acting like a portable filter.

AmorphouStudio

Amorphoustudio’s ‘symbiotic towers’ in Jumeirah Gardens, Dubai consists of a residential, a hotel, and an office tower, connected on the ground level by a double-deck pedestrian shopping plaza. The connecting plaza creates two environments that can be used throughout the different seasons. The first environment, the lower deck, is a lavish green semi-shaded oasis level that is packed with trees and water to provide gathering zones for people during the hot summer season. It is located on the natural landscape level to be accessible to pedestrians from all sides.

Danny Hillis

parallel supercomputer
Connection Machine CM-1(1986) and CM-2 (1987)

The Connection Machine was the first commercial computer designed expressly to work on “artificial intelligence” problems simulating intelligence and life. A massively parallel supercomputer with 65,536 processors, it was the brainchild of Danny Hillis, conceived while he was a doctoral student studying with Marvin Minsky at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab. In 1983 Danny founded Thinking Machines Corporation to build the machine, and hired me to lead the packaging design group. Working with industrial design consultants Allen Hawthorne and Gordon Bruce, and mechanical engineer consultant Ted Bilodeau, our goal was to make the machine look like no other machine ever built. I have described that journey in this article, published in 1994 in the DesignIssues journal and republished in 2010 in the book The Designed World.

video

KIM JOON

韩国艺术家
김 준 예술가
КИМ ДЖУН
fragile mermaid

“Kim Joon uses the technique of “skinning” against perfected illusion and toward an erotic but uncanny dislocation. In doing so the artist undermines the value of conformity in both embodiment and consumption. These bodies are not sealed packages, they are uneven surfaces reflecting our conflicted self-creation—in the artist’s words, “multi-layered composites of desire and will, emotion and action, pain and pleasure of self and other… a complex system of complicit activities”

Aleksandra Domanović

HeLa on Zhora’s coat
Aleksandra Domanović’s work is concerned with the circulation and reception of images and information, particularly as they shift meaning and change register, traversing different contexts and historical circumstances. Her works create strange taxonomies and manic associative chains that poke and prod at copyright laws, unpack the geopolitical implications of web domains, or explore, for instance, the model of exhibitions

HILARY FAYE

Хилари Фэй
What isn’t Hilary Faye good at? After looking at her extensive collection of imperial artistic talents, I couldn’t decide in which medium she showed more strength. Her online catalog showcases her fine skill in: collage, mixed media, photography, animation, typography, illustration and packaging design. In founding all of this, she has a proclivity for beautiful imagery and visual symphonics.

BOUNCE STREETDANCE COMPANY

Insane in the brain

‘Insane in the Brain’ is a reworked producion of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as a feast of stunning street dance. Injecting a healthy dose of contemporary styles fused with breathtaking hip hop moves. ‘Insane in the Brain’ features a pulsating soundtrack with cuts from Missy Elliot, Dizzee Rascal, Gotan Project, David Holmes and Cypress Hill. Inventive set design and choreography are mixed with film and multimedia sequences to produce a fast-paced show that is funny, moving and packed with high-octane dance.

Öyvind Fahlström

Packing the Hard Potatoes
« L’artiste est comme un agent, comme un espion ou un membre d’une organisation clandestine. Auparavant je pensais que je pourrais peindre à certains moments, et me distraire à d’autres. Mais dernièrement j’ai réalisé que, en tant qu’artiste, l’on n’est jamais au repos, que la chasse et la pêche continuent perpétuellement, et comme un membre de la résistance, on ne peut jamais se détendre, dès lors que l’on sait qu’on pourrait venir frapper à votre porte à tout moment pendant la nuit ». Les observations réunies dans cette anthologie forment ainsi comme autant de rapports de cette activité ininterrompue, celle d’un artiste entendu comme agent double, ou espion, tour à tour savant fou (Benway) et explorateur (Livingstone).
« Je n’ai jamais vu d’autre artiste capable, comme lui, de peindre tout en regardant la télévision », disait Pontus Hulten.

Jason Yi

terraform 01

“A sense of location within one’s physical space, culture and history plays a crucial role in the creation of my work. While images and ideas often begin with the landscape, I am also drawn to the incorporation of non-art materials (e.g., foam, packing peanuts, bubble wrap and PVC tubes) and the juxtaposition of ambiguous imagery, deliberately subverting viewer’s visual expectations. My work invokes the paradoxical notion of “harmonious conflict” where compositional/conceptual relationship of materials and images are questioned and yet valued.”

Strijbos & Van Rijswijk

rocking chairs
Strijbos & Van Rijswijk invite you to sit back, relax and enjoy making music in a one-of-a-kind sonic rocking chair, where physical movement diffuses and modifies sound emanating from specially developed sensorpack and loudspeaker technology. Swaying back and forth produces an interactive, personalized performance where the compositions you hear are directly shaped by your individual movements and ability to coordinate and work in unison with your fellow rockers.

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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GIUSEPPE RANDAZZO

Джузеппе Рандаццо
stone fields (Using computer algorithms)

This project has started from a search for a 3d-objects optimal packing algorithm over a surface, but evolved in something rather different. I love the work by Richard Long, from which this project takes its cue. The way he fills lonely landscapes with arcaic stones patterns and its eroic artistic practice, in his monumental vision, is in strong contrast with this computational approach that – ironically – allows virtual stones creation and sorting in a non physical, mental way, a ‘lazy’ version, so to speak. The virtual stones created from several fractal subdivision strategies, find their proper position within the circle, with a trial and error hierarchical algorithm. A mix of attractors and scalar fields (some with Perlin noise) drives the density and size of the stones. The code is a C++ console application that outputs a OBJ 3d file.

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.

GENERAL MOTORS AND RALPH MOSHER

Walking Truck -Cybernetic Anthropomorphous Machine

In den 1960er Jahren bauten General Electric und Ralph Mosher einen 3000 Pfund schweren Vierbeiner namens “The Walking Truck”. Obwohl sich der Walking Truck nie durchgesetzt hat, können Sie sich immer noch fantastisches Filmmaterial dieses vierbeinigen Versorgungsfahrzeugs in Bewegung ansehen. Jahrzehnte bevor Roboter wie Big Dog und Quattroped auf die Bühne kamen, untersuchten Robotiker die praktischen Anwendungen von Lauffahrzeugen. Im Jahr 1962 stellte The Times Record fest, dass die US-Armee ein Roboter-Pack-Biest untersuchte: Der Mechanismus, für den der Boston Ordinance District einen Studienvertrag vergeben hat, würde als “Pedipulator” bezeichnet. Es wäre für unwegsames oder schlammiges Gelände ausgelegt und seine 12-Fuß-Beine würden mit einer Geschwindigkeit von 35 Meilen wandern. Der menschliche Bediener, der direkt mit dem Mechanismus verbunden wäre, würde in die große Maschine gehen und die 12-Fuß-Beine würden nehmen die gleichen Schritte. Die Arme der Maschine würden den Bewegungen der Arme des Bedieners folgen.