The Cage of Time

FILE 2024 | Installations
International Electronic Language Festival
Interactive installation that presents a kinetic instrument object and virtual reality glasses, functioning as a device that animates the illusion of the passage of time in virtual space. In the fabric of existence, time weaves a cage around our ephemeral moments, limiting our perceptions of the past, present and future. By embracing this paradox, we may discover that the cage of time becomes the crucible where the alchemy of experience transforms our understanding of existence.

Bio

Anna Vasof is a multi-award-winning artist who focuses on filmmaking, short videos, and time-based sculptures. VRinMotion is an artistic research project based at St. Pölten University of Applied Sciences in Austria that investigates how features of stop-motion animation and motion capture can be combined with virtual reality to enrich current artistic discourse.

Credits

VRinMotion Team: Franziska Bruckner, Christoph Schmid, Clemens Gürtler, Matthias Husinsky, Christian Munk, Julian Salhofer, Stefan Nebel, Vrääth Öhner.
Concept by: Anna Vasof.

CEREMONIAL FORMALITY
Frederik Heyman’s work is a balancing act incorporating multiple media – including video, installations and photogaphy – often in a digitally altered environment. In his work, Heyman explores memory and duration, using photogrammetry and 3D scanning to depict and represent the passage of time. The hallmarks of Heyman’s work are mechanical and technological: wires, wheels, scrolling LED marquees, metal frames, clamps, industrial lights, screens and cameras. Bodies–as opposed to humans–are subject to unusual dynamics with these technological trappings. In Ceremonial Formality (2020) a contortionist is encased in a metal cage while a spectator, hooked up to wires, looks on.

Momentum
Momentum shows the rhythm and registers the passage of time. The installation, accompanied by the actions of the artist, describe the bittersweet feelings of transience. In a four meter long iron construction pigments drip slowly, drawing circles on a water surface.

퐁 치 웨이

‘Time is a Dimension’

The beauty of photography, in its essence, is conveyed by capturing a moment in time and freezing it out of its context. Singapore-based photographer Fong Qi Wei, however, uses photography to show the passage of time. In his time lapse series called ‘Time is a Dimension’, Fong doesn’t use a typical long exposure trick. He captures the passing time by layering different photos of the same spot with clear edge lines of each frame. Each collage is digitally cut and created from pictures Fong takes within 2 to to 4 hours. Fong usually works at sunrise or sunset, as the light and color palettes are most varied at those times.
“The basic structure of a landscape is present in every piece. But each panel or concentric layer shows a different slice of time, which is related to the adjacent panel/layer. The transition from daytime to night is gradual and noticeable in every piece, but would not be something you expect to see in a still image. Similarly, our experience of a scene is more than a snapshot,” explains Fong.

基督教波尔坦斯基
בולטנסקי
クリスチャン·ボルタンスキー
Кристиан Болтански

Homage

R.I.P 1944-2021

Preoccupied with collective memory, mortality, and the passage of time, Christian Boltanski creates paintings, sculptures, films, and mixed-media installations that approach these themes in a range of styles, symbolic to direct. Boltanski often makes metaphorical use of found objects, as in No Man’s Land (2010), an enormous pile of discarded jackets set to the soundtrack of thousands of human heartbeats, suggesting the anonymity, randomness, and inevitability of death. In Monuments (1985), electrical bulbs cast a seemingly bittersweet light on pictures of child holocaust victims. Describing his interest in personal histories, Boltanski has said, “What drives me as an artist is that I think everyone is unique, yet everyone disappears so quickly. […] We hate to see the dead, yet we love them, we appreciate them.”

To make a time
“To make time” deals with the passage of time, not just as a symbol or an idea, but as a subjective experience; I need to find time to make time. Making times takes time.

Spectres
Lang explores the power of the figurative sculpture in this as in many other projects, its use as a tool for propaganda or political power. Her work with ancient statues draws attention to the object itself, which emerges from their original use and purposes as a thing in itself, through the passage of time.more…

to make time
“To make time” deals with the passage of time, not just as a symbol or an idea, but as a subjective experience; I need to find time to make time. Making times takes time.

PILLARS OF HOME
A SEARCH FOR BALANCE WITH A PROBLEM SOLVING ATTITUDE CHARACTERISES MY WORK. WITHIN MY CURRENT PRACTICE I CAREFULLY EXAMINE AND DECONSTRUCT PERSONAL CHALLENGES SUCH AS PARENTHOOD, GENDER, AND THE MALLEABILITY OF SELF IDENTITY THROUGH THE PASSAGE OF TIME.

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.

Linie II
One second of white rope is traveling through time and space. The white rope is moving at a constant pace along the contours of an imaginary shape, traversing the whole space in several directions and angles. For following that second in the vast space, it requires the viewer to look up while moving his whole head. While passing through long distances as a straight line, it appears to be slow and content. Other passages require quick shifts of direction and the perception changes to fast and sudden movements.

Flypast Sunset
“In this series of animated artworks, which are essentially slowed down versions of the series Time in Motion, I invite you to experience the passage of moments across a landscape. Perhaps understanding that even though all moments are transient, all moments are equally worthy of our respect because they are parts of a larger whole. Each Time Loop is made manually. I captured every moment across a sunset or sunrise using a digital camera, and manually stitched these moments into Time Paintings. Finally, different sequential time paintings were put together to create a sense of motion  almost imperceptible in some of the works, in the manner of clouds drifting across a sky.” Fong Qi Wei

رون اراد
阿拉德
רון ארד
ロン·アラッド
론 아라드
РОН АРАД
evocative proposal
For the canadian national holocaust monument competition, Ron Arad Studio teamed up with david adjaye associates to envision an evocative proposal commemorating the events, victims, and survivors of a grave moment in human history. Avoiding the use of direct symbols, the design places 23 sinuous and slender walls parallel to one another, creating a field of canyon-like passageways. Spaced 120 centimeters (47 in) apart, visitors are only able to pass through each crevice in single file. The partitions rise to a height of 14 meters (46 feet), drawing the eye upward toward the framed sky. This isolated journey is complemented by the shared experience of reflecting back on the monument’s significance.

goldberg variations
Bach’s Goldberg Variations—a set of 30 contrapuntal variations beginning and ending with an aria—were outside the standard piano repertoire, having been recorded on the instrument only a few times before, either on small labels or unreleased.The work was considered esoteric and technically demanding, requiring awkward hand crossing at times when played on a piano (these passages would be played on two manuals on a harpsichord). Gould’s album both established the Goldberg Variations within the contemporary classical repertoire and made him an internationally famous pianist nearly “overnight”. First played in concert by Gould in 1954, the composition was a staple of Gould’s performances in the years following the recording.

TERMINAL
Terminal is a light space, that shines alone at night, separate from the outside world and yet open at both ends, a passage and a space of other kind at the same time, that dissolves in light. In art, light means enactment and dramatization, in this way the light space is a stage on which one gets isolated from the outside world as a spectator, but stands in the spotlight at the same time seen by everyone. At nights the Terminal is a light source: a star, that shines on the square, a shining riddle, that strangely isn’t media nor street light, pointless, but therefore very poetic[…]