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SpY

DATA
In “DATA”, SpY offers a reflection on the rapid and widespread inclusion of algorithms in numerous aspects of our lives. In this audio-visual work, digital abstraction is used to explore and interpret how predictive tools operated through algorithms and artificial intelligence are highly beneficial in terms of aspects such as communication, research and medicine, but can also lead us to lose some of our freedoms if they are not used ethically.
Through this immersive audio-visual format, SpY explores new tools such as the holographic fabrics used to give the graphics an amazing sense of weightlessness. A 15-metre high screen made from this fabric was installed in one of Madrid’s smallest streets between the walls of the buildings.

Doug Aitken

Mirage Gstaad
“Mirage Gstaad by Doug Aitken uses the frequency of light to reflect the sublime Alpine landscape as part of a continually changing encounter in which land and sky, subject and object, inside and outside are in constant flux. Standing in contrast to the surrounding chalet’s the ranch-style structure suggests a latter-day architectural version of Manifest Destiny, the westward migration that began in Europe and finally settled in California. With every available surface clad in mirror it both absorbs and reflects the landscape around in such ways that the exterior will seemingly disappear just as the interior draws the viewer into a never-ending kaleidoscope of light and reflection.

Patricia Olynyk

Oculus
Oculus is a large-scale, collaborative light sculpture that depicts a colossal abstracted drosophila eye, replete with compound faceted surfaces. It both recalls the circular opening at the apex of a cupola and alludes to a surveillance device or drone hovering in mid-air. Oculus is inspired in part by a series of scanning electron micrographs produced in a transgenic lab while researching human and non-human sensoria. The work evokes affective encounters with scale such as viewing miniature particles through the lens of a microscope or wandering through monumental physical environments. As each viewer’s reflection plays across the sculpture’s undulating surface, the apprehension of the self affects both individual and collective behavior in unexpected ways. This affective dynamic plays on the precariousness of our coexistence with other lifeforms in the world, one that is always contingent upon viewers’ bodies and the variability of the environment around them. The act of gazing at Oculus also puts into play the reciprocal condition of both seeing and being seen.

Carsten Nicolai

reflektor distortion

The installation reflektor distortion – conceived as a rotating, water-filled basin – is inspired by the shape of a parabolic mirror that ‚rotates‘ water via centrifugal force. The work consists of the three main components mirror, reflection and distortion. Both curve and distortion of the water surface is affected by speed and integrated resistors that generate a permanently new and re-organizing mirror reflection. The water surface will be supplementary distorted via speaker by resonating low sound frequencies. The function of the mirror is hereby eminent: The mirror surface is the medium that reveals reality as distorted reflection. Rising the question of the observed and the real image the installation plays with the artist’s thesis that we all have a permanent distorted perception of reality.

Akane Moriyama + Jasper Carlsen

Reflected Roof
A series of fans gently shape the textile into a sequence of changing forms that although programmed will never exactly repeat. The daylight, cast from above, falls onto and through the fabric and as it’s angle changes throughout the day creates ever changes in colour, shadow and reflection.