Recursive Empyrean

DMTPortal

FILE SÃO PAULO 2025: SYNTHETIKA – Art and Technology – Shorts Films AI
Electronic Language International Festival

Recursive Empyrean – Canada

Recursive Empyrean merges fractal-based visuals with an original ambient soundtrack, guiding viewers through infinite loops of creation and collapse. Each cos mic structure reflects itself into eternity, unveiling deeper mysteries with every shift in perspective. Radiant geometry and ambient pulses draw awareness beyond time and space, where subtle patterns reveal gentle truths, echoing the hum of cosmic purpose.

BIO

John Dobbie, a Classical Animation graduate from Sheridan College in Canada, has spent over 20 years shaping digital worlds for franchises like Call of Duty and God of War. Now based in New York’s Capital Region with his family, he crafts immersive cosmic-themed works as DMTPORTAL, merging technology, mysticism, and decades of experience to expand perception beyond the ordinary.

Spiral of Time — Amazonas Brazil — UFAM

Edwin van der Heide

Interact with Spiral of Time — Amazonas Brazil — UFAM via FILE ARCHIVE

FILE SÃO PAULO 2025: SYNTHETIKA – Art and Technology – Installations
Electronic Language International Festival

Spiral of Time — Amazonas Brazil — UFAM – Netherlands

Spiral of Time captures and stages the diverse soundscape of a specific location over the course of several years. By documenting the unique natural, cultural, spatial, and temporal dynamics of a place, the work honors the contributions of all its actors. Every hour, a one-minute recording is made, resulting in a vast sonic archive over time. It is accessible online through a spiral-shaped interface, allowing listeners to explore the cyclical patterns revealed by navigating the material across different time intervals. 

Since July 17th, 2024, the artist has been recording the sounds of the square in front of MACBA (Museum of Contemporary Art of Barcelona). It is a very interesting, diverse, and vibrant urban space. The work is accessible online via https://www.macba.cat/en/spiral-of-time-placa-dels-angels/ and will also be presented physically in the museum starting July 10th, 2025.

Edwin is expanding the project to include other recording locations around the world—not only in urban contexts (dominated by humans) but also in areas governed by nature. The artist dedicated himself to a recording site in the Amazon region. Since February 11th, 2025 Spiral of Time has been installed at the Amazon Rainforest surrounding The UFAM (Federal University of Amazonas) in Manaus. It is home to one of the world’s largest urban forest fragments. Completely surrounded by the dense urban matrix of Manaus, this forest has been isolated since the late 1980s. The forest retains rich ecological features, including areas of mature terra-firme forest, late-stage secondary vegetation, and small patches of white-sand forests. This unique setting offers a rare opportunity to study tropical forest dynamics within a metropolitan environment. 

Spiral of Time-UFAM immerses the listeners in the acoustic life of one of the most biodiverse ecosystems on the planet. This contrast between the natural rhythms of the forest and the human-made patterns of the city enriches the broader narrative of the Spiral of Time, offering a deeper reflection on coexistence, change, and continuity across different environments.

BIO

Edwin van der Heide is an artist, composer, and researcher focused on sound, space, and interaction. His work pushes the boundaries of musical composition toward spatial, interactive, and interdisciplinary directions. He creates installations, performances, and immersive environments where the audience is placed at the center, encouraged to engage sensorially and investigatively.

Fractalicius

Julius Horsthuis

FILE SÃO PAULO 2025: SYNTHETIKA – Art and Technology – Installations
Electronic Language International Festival

Fractalicius – Netherlands

Exploring the mysterious connection between mathematics and art, Julius Horsthuis delves into the mesmerizing realm of fractal geometry. His animations reveal surreal landscapes generated by mathematical equations, inviting viewers to contemplate infinite worlds born from invisible patterns. These works reflect the harmony between numerical abstraction and visual beauty, transforming logic into poetic expression.

BIO

Julius Horsthuis is a digital artist known for his hypnotic fractal animations that blend abstract complexity with cinematic beauty. With 15 years of experience in the Dutch film and entertainment industry as a visual effects supervisor, he transitioned into fractal animation and became a pioneer of a distinct visual language that has captivated audiences worldwide.

Unreal Pareidolia

Scott Allen

FILE SÃO PAULO 2025: SYNTHETIKA – Art and Technology – Installations
Electronic Language International Festival

Unreal Pareidolia – Japan

Pareidolia is a perceptual tendency where the human mind sees familiar patterns in objects. In this work, images and captions are generated in real time from the shadows of everyday items and toys, stimulating individual imagination. The piece acts as an entity that triggers mental associations rather than focusing on human output.

BIO

Scott Allen explores the link between imagination, visual devices, and technology. His installations and performances physically manipulate projection mechanisms, creating imagery from altered everyday objects and AI. He received the Best Works Award at the CVPR 2024 AI Art Gallery and the Grand Prize at the Digital Choc Award 2019.

Silo 468 Light Art Helsinki

INTERACTIVE LIGHT ART FOR URBAN REDEVELOPMENT SILO 468 HELSINKI Disused oil silo has been converted into mesmerizing light art piece and a public space with the aid of swarm intelligence and interactive lighting. The project is a conversion of oil silo into light art piece and a public space designed by Madrid based Lighting Design Collective (LDC). It sits by the sea facing central Helsinki, Finland. Prevailing winds well known to residents are strongly present. The natural light, wind and the movement of light on the water formed the principles for the lighting concept. Walls are perforated with 2012 holes referring to the Helsinki World Design Capital 2012 year. The lighting signifies the start of a major urban redevelopment for the City of Helsinki. It functions to draw focus to unknown district and creates a landmark and a marketing device for the City. Maybe most importantly through the use of natural and artificial light it created a unique civic space for the citizens to use. Furthermore, it set a precedent for a new district for 11000 people to become the “district of light”. During the first years the silo is mainly viewed from distance when the area starts to get build. 1280 LED domes in 2700K white are fitted inside the silo behind the cut-outs and visible from several kilometres away. LDC developed a bespoke software using swarm intelligence and nature simulating algorithms that refresh responding to parameters such as wind speed, direction, temperature, clear night and snow. System dials out every 5 minutes for new data. The patterns are fluid, natural in feel and never repeat. They are slow but speed up in relation to the wind speeds creating constantly changing mural of light. At midnight the exterior turns deep red for 1 hour. The colour refers to the former use of the silo as a container of energy. At 02:30 when the last ferry goes past to Suomenlinna lights go off. The interior gains importance as the area gets populated. Inside is painted deep red. Daylight seeps through the pattern derived from original rust patterns on the walls. North facing wall has no perforations. 450 steel mirrors moved by winds are fitted behind the holes. With sunlight the silo appears to glimmer and sparkle like surface of water.The warm white LED grid reflects light indirectly via the red walls into the space. The moving patterns read as halos racing across the walls. The Silo is a civic space for the citizens of Helsinki. Floor was added and rigging infrastructure, power, water and emergency & cleaning lighting. Light intervention has created a new space for people.

Bots
FILE 2024 | Installations
International Electronic Language Festival

Bots presents a computer-controlled society through a series of algorithmically controlled humanoid avatars that appear on physical carpets using augmented reality (AR). Real-time performances synthesize human behavioral patterns into a formalized digital social study. Omnipresent, combined with our devices and incorporated into virtual environments, the work reminds us of our own digitalized world, in which we are surrounded by invisible bots.

Bio

Giulia Bowinkel (born 1983) and Friedemann Banz (born 1980) live in Berlin and have worked together under the name Banz & Bowinkel since 2009. In 2007 they graduated from the Art Academy with Albert Oehlen and started making art with computers . His work encompasses computer-generated imagery, animation, augmented reality, virtual realities and installations.

The Legend of Ogie

FILE 2024 | Aesthetic Synthetics
International Electronic Language Festival
SurrealismToday.com – The Legend of Ogie – United States

What worlds exist beyond Einstein’s speed limit? Inspired by Eric Weinstein’s theory of Geometric Unity, the work explores the idea that space-time is like a melody playing over an eight-dimensional universe. Abstract and metamorphic forms transition from organic forms to parastatic patterns, creating a dance of visuals and sounds that merge into an immersive experience of fractal unfolding.

Bio

SurrealismToday.com is an artist collective and educational platform dedicated to the proliferation of surreal and visionary ontologies in contemporary art. The group began as an esoteric cargo cult dedicated to discovering the beautiful, the fantastic, and the transcendent in the pseudo-philosophical landscape of the art world. His methods include searching for gems in the digital world and infusing mystical enchantments into generative diffusion models.

Brain Entity

FILE 2024 | Interator – Sound Synthetics
International Electronic Language Festival
Luigi Novellino (aka PintoCreation) – Brain Entity – Italy

In a laboratory, a brain-like organism grows rapidly, integrating with technology and evolving into a giant entity that manipulates objects with its mind. He hypnotizes the city, absorbing energy and creating patterns. Efforts to stop him fail, signaling a battle to understand existence. This symbolizes a new era of coexistence, urging us to embrace interconnectivity and navigate a more integrated world.

Bio

Fascinated by the limitless domain of AI, Luigi Novellino adopts the title syntographer, a term that resonates deeply within the community. The artist often asks himself: “am I an artist?” Art, in his view, defies rigid definitions or limits; it represents a fluid expression of creativity that transcends labels. The artist’s ultimate goal is to awaken something in the viewer, provoking thoughts and evoking emotions.

Credits

Music: Odyssey by John Tasoulas

简宁汉
מרס קנינגהם
マース·カニングハム
머시 디스 커닝햄
dance
Мерс Каннингем
Paul Kaiser
Shelley Eshkar

Dancer Matthieu Chayrigues

Compagnie Centre National de Danse Contemporaine-Angers.

Photo: Charlotte Audureau.
BIPED

“Ever the experimentalist, Cunningham collaborated with digital artists Paul Kaiser and Shelley Eshkar using motion capture technology to create BIPED. As the name suggests it’s in its most basic sense an exploration of the biped, the ambulatory two-legged body.
Eshkar and Kaiser place a scrim in front of the dancers on which they project a moving décor of lines and patterns.” Lisa Traiger

Hardwired
FILE FESTIVAL
“Hardwired” consists of around 18,000 LED-lights that symbolize the transfer of knowledge. Individual luminous pixels connect and then disappear. In a process of constant transformation, new patterns, interrelations and complexities emerge.
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Chess Auto-Creative (Self-Replicating)
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‘Chess Auto-Creative (CHEAC)’, takes the form of a cube where each face corresponds to an 8 x 8 chessboard. The six chessboards can also be arranged in a line to make them easier to see. There are 16 white pieces and 16 black pieces on each of the chessboards, made up of elements such as: kings, queens, bishops, knights, castles and pawns, each of which moves according to the rules of the game. However, instead of the pieces being arranged as normal, they are first set out in patterns where each element is repeated […]Each time a piece is moved to a new position, symmetrically or asymmetrically, a new variation of proto-chess is produced – in other words, a new game emerges. All games generated in this way are, in principle, variations of proto-chess – including the official chess game itself. This means that ‘Chess Auto-Creative’ is not a variant of the official chess game, but its origin.

FILE SAO PAULO 2019

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.

Where X and Y
File Festival

Utilizing the commercial genre of movie trailers, this video deals with generalizations, patterns, emotional triggers and the constant need for higher climaxes, bigger surprises and deeper emotional responses.

IN MEMORIAM
Joachim Sauter

1959-2021

R.I.P

ART+COM Studios

MOBILITY
THE INSTALLATION SPANS A CORRIDOR OF 7-METRES WIDTH. ON THE LEFT WALL ONE HUNDRED PROSTHETIC HANDS ARRANGED IN A MATRIX REVOLVE AROUND THEIR OWN VERTICAL AXIS, THE MOVEMENTS BEING CONTROLLED BY MOTORS. THE MIRRORS THEY HOLD REFLECT THE BEAM OF A STRONG LIGHT ACROSS THE SPACE AND ONTO THE OPPOSITE WALL. WHAT INITIALLY SEEMS LIKE AN ASYNCHRONOUS, CHAOTIC PATTERN OF MOVEMENT SOON REVEALS ITSELF AS A COMPLEX, COMPUTATIONAL
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流动性
该安装跨越了7米宽的走廊。在左墙上，排列成矩阵的一百个假肢手绕其自身的垂直轴旋转，其运动由电动机控制。他们持有的镜子将强光光束反射穿过整个空间并射向对面的墙壁。最初看起来像是一个异步的，混乱的运动模式，很快就显示出一种复杂的计算编排：首先，一百个光点围绕一个中心点移动，类似于行星的天体动力学或昆虫群的飞行模式。并创造出三维空间的印象。然后突然之间，这种有机振动会聚成一个表示运动和动作的汉字。

S/S 20 Womenswear
La sensibilità della giovane designer definisce i fondamenti culturali del mondo contemporaneo: matematica, letteratura, arte, filosofia si trasformano in elementi ornamentali e pattern ellenistici

eCLOUD
The eCLOUD is a dynamic sculpture inspired by the volume and behavior of an idealized cloud. Made from unique polycarbonate tiles that can fade between transparent and opaque states, its patterns are transformed periodically by real time weather from around the world. It is a permanent sculpture between gates 22 and 23 at the San Jose International Airport and was a collaboration between Dan Goods, Nik Hafermaas, and Aaron Koblin.

Dazzle Camouflage
Dazzle Camouflage is a mode of camouflage that uses confusion rather than concealment as its method. Developed in the early 20th century, Dazzle Camouflage was often added to naval ships, which were painted to feature perplexing black and white patterns. In these uncertain times with access to immense amounts of information and when terms such as fake news, deep fakes, alternative facts are becoming part of our lexicon, we often find that the true meaning of our inquiries as with all our desires is concealed by confusion. To participate a user can enter a search word or hashtag to search Twitter. The frequency of the word on Twitter is used to generate black and white patterns. The software will continue to search for the word on twitter and create more complex patterns as the frequency of the word increases.

Supernova
Supernova is an experimental 4K art film directed and designed by Maxim Zhestkov and made in Zhestkov. Studio Everything around and inside us was conceived in a huge explosion of a star billions of years ago… and, probably, recycled from other matrices myriad times. In this eternal carousel of matter, particles gather, form complicated structures and then burst into all directions fusing atoms together and producing new elements and points of view, new colours and patterns of perception.

Atmospheric Forest
Atmospheric Forest is a large scale VR point-cloud installation that visualizes and sonifies the relations between the forest and climate. It reveals the interaction patterns between the pine-tree emissions in Pfynwald, an ancient Swiss Alpine forest, and weather conditions in this valley, effected by drought. The trees do not only produce oxygen, but they are living bodies who breath too. I.e., they emit part of carbon dioxide, sometimes even up to 20 perc. from what they have consumed. When trees die, they release all the carbon they have collected during their lives back into the atmosphere. Atmospheric Forest explores the effects of drought on local forest ecosystems, and how such stress situations influence production of resin and volatile emissions (such as usual pine-tree scent).

Specimen Box

The OCR began work on Specimen Box in 2014 at the request of Microsoft’s Digital Crimes Unit. Microsoft’s Cybercrime Center monitors communications coming from hundreds of millions of PCs around the world that have become infected by botnet malware. Employing data sonification together with advanced visualization techniques, Specimen Box provides a configurable multi-sensory presentation of botnet signal activity in real time. It also features a multitouch gesture-based interface for navigating, exploring, selecting, and examining the billions of signals that have previously been collected. Users can access the collected signals based on their activity levels, the geographic locations of their sources, or their daily activity patterns over time, using clustering to group sources with similar behavior.

The Search of The Glow
Sprinkling the mist while attaching the tree trunk. Interweaving a scenery with the forest which is inside the deep mountain. Sight with clarity or blur. Light stream lead the mysterious mist to venture the forest. Found a light object under the crowd of trees which is constructed by blend woods. Wood sticks are overlapping and winding as a hollow pinecone. Its construction and pattern go well with the line of the treetop. It’s a whispering between human and the nature.

Moncler’s Genius 2020 Collection
The british fashion designer reinterpreted the brand’s iconic expression as a series of monochrome designs resembling padded samurai armour and brightly colored inflatables[…] Injecting flat sheets with down quilting, Craig Green uses a series of zips that allow the body to inhabit the garments and give them volume. Further defined by outlines printed on the outside, each piece is clad in ripstop nylon, a light-weight nylon fabric with interwoven ripstop reinforcement threads in a crosshatch pattern.

Wind of Boston: Data Paintings
Wind of Boston: Data Paintings is a site-specific work that turns the invisible patterns of wind in and around Boston into a series of poetic data paintings within a 6’ x 13’ digital canvas. By using a one-year data set collected from Boston Logan Airport, Refik Anadol Studios developed a series of custom software to read, analyze and visualize wind speed, direction, and gust patterns along with time and temperature at 20-second intervals throughout the year.

BEHAVIOURAL COMPLEXITY

Design Research Laboratory (AADRL) and the experimental design studio Minimaforms examining a behavior-based agenda that engages experimental forms of material and social interaction. Cybernetic and systemic thinking through seminal forms of prototyping and experimentation will situate the work through continued experiments that have manifested since the early 1950s as maverick machines, architectures and computational practices exploring the generative potential of self-regulating phenomena as proto-architectural environments. Through explicit models of interactions, observable patterns and proto-animalistic agency; the research will discuss the capacity of these systems to evolve, adapt and self-structure through computation.

Chess Auto-Creative (Self-Replicating )
‘Chess Auto-Creative (CHEAC)’, takes the form of a cube where each face corresponds to an 8 x 8 chessboard. The six chessboards can also be arranged in a line to make them easier to see. There are 16 white pieces and 16 black pieces on each of the chessboards, made up of elements such as: kings, queens, bishops, knights, castles and pawns, each of which moves according to the rules of the game. However, instead of the pieces being arranged as normal, they are first set out in patterns where each element is repeated […]Each time a piece is moved to a new position, symmetrically or asymmetrically, a new variation of proto-chess is produced – in other words, a new game emerges. All games generated in this way are, in principle, variations of proto-chess – including the official chess game itself. This means that ‘Chess Auto-Creative’ is not a variant of the official chess game, but its origin.

FILE SAO PAULO 2019

FLORA 2

The animation in FLORA is generated by overlapping sine waves that travel through a string of lines. This wave principle often appears in nature when energy is transmitted through a medium like water, air or simply a rope. It can also be observed in the locomotion of animals and human-beings, in which kinetic energy is transmitted successively through joints.
The FLORA algorithm of is based on the discovery that a simple system of rotating lines can create endless variations of abstract shapes – ranging from curved harmonious lines to edgy and chaotic patterns. The resulting aesthetics combine computational accuracy with an organic playfulness, and tend to trigger diverse associations in the mind of the viewer.

FILE FESTIVAL
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ppp-creatures-generator
Asao Tokolo studied at the AA School of Architecture in London following graduation from Tokyo Zokei University in 1992. His decorative patterns based on the concept of ‘connection’ stem from September 11, 2001, and he continues to work in fields straddling art, architecture, and design. He designs and creates simple geometric crests and patterns that can be drawn with a ruler and compass, and three dimensional forms using the same principles.

Organic Cube
GIF
In early 2011 I was exploring the relations of geometry, nature and the human being in a series of 25 pictures that I called ”Fractal Experience”. This is part two – continuing the exploration of geometric shapes, patterns, and fractals with an added element: space-time. This time I’ve worked in 3D and produced a set of animated looping gif’s.
I’ve limited each animation to at most 48 frames, most are around 10-15 frames – to keep the file size small and to maximize the creativity with in these frames.

w for w
Hansje van Halem has run her studio in Amsterdam since 2003. In between deadlines for book designs, she fills time gaps with type drawings and empty book space with patterns. With a “practice makes perfect” mind-set, she taught herself not to be afraid of failure. Her time gaps soon took the upper hand and became her core business. While working on commissions from patterns for endpapers, architectural typography, and all scales in between, she creates a lot of overproduction.

FILE SAO PAULO 2017
THE FLOOOR
“The Flooor” is a collaborative music instrument and a social meeting place. 36 sensors under a carpet, connected to a music computer mounted under the floor and loudspeakers mounted in the ceiling.
The patterns printed on the carpet invite people to explore different combinations. 6 groups with different instruments, 6 zones in each group. By standing or dancing on different combinations of the 6 zones, 64 different loops can be triggered.

Fall 2018
Even though he was only given a few days’ notice of the royal’s attendance, Quinn lived up to the expectations. He maintained his focused vision, shining the spotlight on his impressive printwork and flair for standout, dramatic silhouettes. An array of abstracted floral prints — all created in-house at the designer’s print studio in Peckham — were mashed up on loose halterneck dresses, delicately pleated chiffon skirts and oversize bomber jackets, to create a visual feast of color and pattern.

crocheted membrane

‘Crocheted Membrane’ experiments with creating a momentary fiction through fashion artifacts. Starting with the physical needs of one individual human body in an outdoor temperature of 10 degrees Celsius, seven hand-crocheted body forms were produced. The clothing’s texture got thinner or opened up completely on areas of the body that needed less warmth and were thicker where warmth was lacking. In this way, a fundamental change in the aesthetic and function of clothes was displayed. Fixed forms, such as trousers, were recreated into new, unique body forms. Instead of one uniform surface, the textures became alive and inimitable. “Her concept of clothing does not derive in the same way as most fashion design, from shape or historically patterned form with embedded social hierarchy and material richness, but is instead determined by the needs and sensations of the human body – performing in the same way that bacteria populations individually respond.” (Villeré 2014) The resulting fictional artifacts illustrate how we could use knowledge about our unique bacteria population to create a novel layer.

Tokamak Asdex Upgrade Periphery | Max Planck IP,Garching
Since the end of the 1970s Thomas Struth dedicates his work to the world of buildings and constructions as a visible, physical and sculptural symbol of our civilisation.
Struth’s earlier works mainly comprised architectural shots of deserted streets, squares and houses which he aimed to capture by the term unconscious places. His more recent work, however, reveals his interest in sites of high technology and places of exhibition and display. Both his work Tokamak Asdex Upgrade Interior 2 (2009) which was taken at the Max-Planck-Institute in Garching and his photography of a massive concrete construction at the Acropolis Museum, Athens (2009) bear evidence of this new focus.
This excellent selection of Struth’s works enables us to trace his development as a Photographer from small-sized prints from his time as a student of Bernd and Hilla Becher to large-sized photographic tableaus, and to experience Struth’s sculptural understanding of architecture. In addition to that the installation is supplemented by his largest work, a shot of visitors in front of the Aquarium, Atlanta, Georgia (2013) which follows the pattern of his Museum shots.

레오 비야 레알
Лев Вильярреал
multiverse

Multiverse is one of Villareal’s largest and most complex light sculptures. It is experienced by visitors as they pass through the Concourse walkway between the East and West Buildings. The work features approximately 41,000 computer-programmed LED (light-emitting diode) nodes that run through existing channels along the 200-foot-long space. The programming both instructs the lights and allows for an element of chance, so that it is very unlikely that any pattern will repeat during a viewer’s experience.