Floating

FILE 2024 | Aesthetic Synthetics
International Electronic Language Festival
Leilanni Todd – Floating – United States

Floating explores the concept of surrendering and freeing oneself by allowing oneself to float, symbolizing overcoming adversity and mastering self-confidence. Inspired by her grandmother’s journey to overcome her fear of water through swimming, the work uses water and sea creatures as symbols of resilience and transformation. The personal narrative behind the work adds depth to its exploration of overcoming fears and discovering inner strength.

Bio

Leilanni Todd is an award-winning creative director with extensive experience in advertising, fashion and new media. Originally from Toronto and now based in New York, she harmoniously integrates art, technology and culture into her work. Through her FLOAM WORLD platform, Leilanni creates surreal narratives, reimagines traditional norms in fashion and advertising, and addresses complex human issues with humor and creativity.

ad/ab Atom

Kurokawa then analyses, filters and distorts this data into an artistic rendering of an atomic space in which the laws of quantum mechanics would theoretically be visible. “The term ‘ad’ in the title means ‘to/toward’ etymologically as a prefix in words of Latin origin and ‘ab’ means ‘away from'”. he explains. “It is recombinant of neologism ‘adatom/abatom’ which means ‘to atom/from atom’, where the laws governing nature blur“.

Three Supermarkets
Three Supermarkets is an infinite loop film with a shopping cart riding across multiple coexisting fictional supermarkets. As the first episode of the Phygital Supermarket Trilogy, this film explores the hybrid compositing of the emerging physical and digital media and techniques. The production process of this film uses industrial-grade six-axis Staubli robot arm as shooting equipment, green screen shooting, volumetric video capture, photogrammetry, Cinema 4D Mograph, Redshift shading & rendering, 2D/3D compositing, and other custom build techniques and workflows. Familiar but neglected objects, such as apples and snack bags, were scanned as either static models or animated model sequences from the physical world to the digital space.

SECHS
SECHS brings Bach’s heritage together with modern composition techniques and a refined kinetic light sculpture – emphasizing and re-interpreting his innovation in symmetry, repetition and composition. Following the likes of Wendy Carlos’ critically acclaimed ‘Switched on Bach’ — the first electronic interpretation of Bach’s work — and later re-interpreters such as Max Richter for Vivaldi, Acket & Vos present this completely new rendering of one of the world’s most influential composers. Together with the kinetic light sculpture by Christopher Bauder and spatial sound innovators 4DSOUND the composition is translated to a spatial immersive experience.

Bigfoot
While variety in composition and form is evident, Kelleher further experiments with material and color. Digital rendering techniques offer endless iterative opportunities. Multiple shifts in material, especially when applied to a singular form, allow for a variety of interpretations. Kelleher explains: ‘The visual expression I try to achieve is one that is open to interpretation. In one piece someone may see something playful, or whimsical, in another it may feel menacing.’

Morphogenetic Creations
Created by a mathematician, digital artist and Emmy award winning supervisor of computer generated effects – Andy Lomas, Morphogenetic Creations is a collection of works that explore the nature of complex forms that can be produced by digital simulation of growth systems. These pieces start with a simple initial form which is incrementally developed over time by adding iterative layers of complexity to the structure.The aim is to create structures emergently: exploring generic similarities between many different forms in nature rather than recreating any particular organism. In the process he is exploring universal archetypal forms that can come from growth processes rather than top-down externally engineered design.Programmed using C++ with CUDA, the series use a system of growth by deposition: small particles of matter are repeatedly deposited onto a growing structure to build incrementally over time. Rules are used to determine how new particles are created, and how they move before being deposited. Small changes to these rules can have dramatic effects on the final structure, in effect changing the environment in which the form is grown. To create these works, Andy uses the GPU as a compute device rather than as a display device. All the data is held in memory on the GPU and various kernel functions are called to do things like apply forces to the cells, make cells split, and to render the cells using ray-tracing. The simulations and rendering for each of the different animated structures within this piece take about 12 hours to run, Andy explains. By the end of the simulations there are over 50,000,000 cells in each structure.The Cellular Forms use a more biological model, representing a simplified system of cellular growth. Structures are created out of interconnected cells, with rules for the forces between cells, as well as rules for how cells accumulate internal nutrients. When the nutrient level in a cell exceeds a given threshold the cell splits into two, with both the parent and daughter cells reconnecting to their immediate neighbours. Many different complex organic structures are seen to arise from subtle variations on these rules, creating forms with strong reminiscences of plants, corals, internal organs and micro-organisms.

MegaFacces
Valentin Spiess di iart, spiega come funziona il sistema. «Dietro il telone ci sono più di 10mila cilindri telescopici estensibili, sormontati da una sfera con il LED colorato. Quando la persona da ritrarre entra nel gabbiotto per il selfie, vengono scattate 5 immagini che un computer assembla in un rendering 3D. Una volta terminato il disegno, le informazioni vengono inviate al sistema che regola il posizionamento dei cilindri telescopici che si mettono nella posizione giusta per far apparire il viso prescelto». Il sistema è stato costruito in modo da poter essere riutilizzato. Come una specie di Mount Rushmore mobile e per tutti.

White Water and Dust
White Water and Dust, a rare double bill by the internationally renowned choreographer Lin Hwai-min, brings great intensity of contrast between the two works. While White Water, set to piano music by Erik Satie, flows like a movable celebration of life, Dust, to a powerful rendering of Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8, evokes a memory of Goya’s Black Paintings.

Signals
SIGNALS is a collaborative project by artists Nicolas Sassoon and Rick Silva that focuses on immersive audio-visual renderings of altered seascapes. Sassoon and Silva share an ongoing theme in their individual practices; the depiction of wilderness and natural forms through computer imaging. Created by merging their respective fields of visual research, SIGNALS features oceanic panoramas inhabited by unnatural substances and enigmatic structures. The project draws from sources such as oceanographic surveys, climate studies and science-fiction to create 3D generated video works and installations that reflect on contamination, mutation and future ecologies.

I / II / III / IIII

In I/II/III/IIII, choreographer and visual artist Kris Verdonck transforms the stage into a life-size dollhouse. Four female ICK-dancers – not unlike marionettes – are floating in mid-air, suspended from a huge machine. A solo, a duet, a trio and a quartet follow one another in this choreography of identical movements. A game of surrendering to the machine and at the same time, searching for control. The images evoked by I/II/III/IIII are confusing and ambiguous: the dancers almost look like graceful, fragile swans … but they also remind us of animal carcasses being dragged along, floating angels, falling human bodies and everything in between.

strange attractors
Dr. Brian Wissman is an Associate Professor of Mathematics at the University of Hawai’i. His work includes creating mathematical visualizations using the Chaoscope program; a 3D rendering software used to create a comprehensible image to explain strange attractors with mathematical sciences. The results are both scientifically informed, and aesthetically beautiful.

Skid
Pushing further his exploration of a more intense and intimate relationship of the body to the force of gravity, Damien Jalet created “Skid” (2017) for the Gothenburg Dance Company. The dancers performed for 40 minutes on a 34 degree inclined platform of 40 square meters. Together with dancer Aimilios Arapoglou and other members of the company, they developed an alphabet of new physical possibilities, alternating control and surrendering, of accelerations and slow motions, to be performed alone or with partners.

Beetle in Undergrowth
“I have a strong background in zoology and botany. When I’m rendering realistic or fanciful depictions of flora and fauna, I constantly fall back on my studies and research. Since all of my artwork involves 3D computer imaging, I rely heavily on organic geometry and algorithms that govern natural branching and growth patterns. My art mimics nature in more ways than one.” Michael Frank

منير فاطمي
Evolution or Death
Fatmi inverts spectacular representations of identity by rendering them mundane and within reach of a subject that may scramble any conclusive narrative. Fatmi’s work counters strategies of interpellation that identifies a subject with an ideology prior to that subject’s ability to place their identity in or beyond a particular ideology. Fatmi parodies the various interpellations of colonialism and capitalism that seek to define others according to symbolic narratives. In Evolution or Death, 2004, (fig. 4) two Anglo-European looking subjects imitate suicide bombers with books and papers taped around their abdomens. One holds open a trenchcoat and another holds up a book that looks like a detonator attached to wires. Fatmi reverses the situation. These are not the suicide-bombers from Arab and Muslim countries. Instead, they appear to be of European descent in a European street or modern room in casual clothing.

Break Wall Sim
Eyal Gever is an artist who combines technology and art to create sculptures based off of 3D software technology that he uses to produce animations and 3D renderings to compliment his work. Gever has over 18 years experience implementing his ideas into 3D software technologies and server/web-based products, primarily in the area of interactive real time multimedia communication software as well as 3D creation and animation.

アシフ·カーン
아시프 칸/
Асиф хан
megaface
Valentin Spiess di iart, spiega come funziona il sistema. «Dietro il telone ci sono più di 10mila cilindri telescopici estensibili, sormontati da una sfera con il LED colorato. Quando la persona da ritrarre entra nel gabbiotto per il selfie, vengono scattate 5 immagini che un computer assembla in un rendering 3D. Una volta terminato il disegno, le informazioni vengono inviate al sistema che regola il posizionamento dei cilindri telescopici che si mettono nella posizione giusta per far apparire il viso prescelto». Il sistema è stato costruito in modo da poter essere riutilizzato. Come una specie di Mount Rushmore mobile e per tutti.

Korean artist Kyuin Shim creates work that your pupils will interpret as a straight up science fiction novel. One body of work in particular, “Black Black,” is a series of gruesome depictions of black mannequin bodies gone haywire. As a digital artist and sculptor, he works compiling 3D renderings of real images. These sculptures, with the glossy stature of high fashion, the black mannequins are enrobed in large blisters. In varying states of vulnerability, his sculptures are suffering implosion and meltdown; a person who has ripped his head off gives himself fellatio, another is on his hands and knees, expelling their entire insides.

Marleen Sleeuwits is particularly interested in the illusory character of depicted spaces. Or to put it more precisely: in and with her work she creates situations in which the viewer is confused by a realistic looking rendering of a space which is in itself entirely artificial.

Mao Never Down
Classical culture, along with a profound interest in religions, and the exploration of the self, also inspire his artwork. The artist uses language as a sculptural element. Each sculpture derives from or literally cites pieces of literature or counts a story, in a readable or unreadable way depending on the chosen script. The rendering in three dimensions of an art or a philosophy, which is either ephemeral and spoken, or written and two-dimensional, is esthetically and technically astonishing. His works translate to the viewer the balance and contradiction inherent in human nature.

Black Black
“Black Black,” is a series of gruesome depictions of black mannequin bodies gone haywire. As a digital artist and sculptor, he works compiling 3D renderings of real images. These sculptures, with the glossy stature of high fashion, the black mannequins are enrobed in large blisters. In varying states of vulnerability, his sculptures are suffering implosion and meltdown; a person who has ripped his head off gives himself fellatio, another is on his hands and knees, expelling their entire insides.

СЕРИС ВИН ЭВАНС
ケリス·ウィン·エヴァンス
Form in Space…By Light

‘Cerith’s installation sits beautifully within the space, unfolding as you walk through,’ explains Clarrie Wallis, Tate’s Senior Curator of Contemporary British Art. The neon experience builds, from a single ‘peep hole’ ring in the South Duveens, through which you can glimpse swirls of radial light and an imposing octagon in the central gallery. The fractured neon fragments look like frantically drawn sparkler-lines on fireworks night.But there’s method and logic within these celestial scribbles. Hidden in the design are references to a host of highbrow sources, from Japanese ‘Noh’ theatre, to Marcel Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), 1915-23. Don’t worry if you missed them. The beauty of rendering precise (verging on obscure) references in such a celebratory neon explosion allows for multiple – if not endless – interpretations.Each way you look at the sprawling 2km of neon tubing, a different shape or symbol emerges. No small thanks to the elegant way in which the structures have been painstakingly suspended. ‘There were over 1000 fixing points, and obviously we couldn’t drill 1000 holes in the Grade II listed building,’ Wallis explains. ‘We had to work with structural engineers very intensely, so as to be completely happy and convinced that we would be able to remove it without damaging the fabric of the building.’Though it seems too soon to be discussing the installation’s removal, Wallis has a point. It’s a visibly fragile, delicate sculpture – whose impermanence makes it more intriguing. As it is a site-specific sculpture, it can’t be recreated elsewhere. What’s more, because the neon tubes are filled with a constantly moving stream of pulsing, vibrating gasses, visitors will never see the same sculpture twice.

Paranoid Panopticum

The viewer activates the «Paranoid Panopticum» by entering its small corridor between two «walls». Recorded through the mirrored wall by a video camera, the viewer’s image is projected onto the opposite wall, where it becomes part of a story freely adapted by Alfred Kreijemborg in his play titled «An Echo Play» (1923), based on the Greek myth of Narcissus. Instead of returning the affections of the nymph Echo, the protagonist falls in love with his own reflection. Like with the image of Narcissus on the water, the viewer’s own reflection appears now – and the viewer observes only himself. The Panopticum, the terminus of a circulatory prison complex, is controlled from a watchtower not visible for the prison inmates. Having consciousness controlled here causes in effect the self-control among the prisoners. The paradox in this experience – control and society’s surrendering to its own mechanisms – forms the basis of Maat’s installation. Whether as the observer or observed, the viewer is consistently extradited to the panoptic omnipresence of his own all-pervading reflection.

The Architecture of Radio
In case you’ve ever wondered exactly what lies beyond the realm of the visible, Dutch designer Richard Vijgen has created a new app that is able to visually portray the network of radio waves that lies below the surface. The app was created as a part of Vijgen’s new ”The Architecture of Radio” exhibition at Germany’s ZKM, and combines technologies from GPS, OpenCellID, and NASA’s public satellite feeds to amalgamate a rendering of the data webs all around us. The app was intended to give a physical portrait of the very data waves that rule the modern day, according to Vijgen: “We cannot see the very thing that is defining our time, and that concerns me.” The designer went on to note “as technology is becoming more and more transparent, I think data visualization can help us to relate to things that are invisible, yet play an important role in our lives.”

cgi masks
Madrid-based 3D artist Lee Griggs created some fascinating topographical illustrations using 3D animation and rendering software Maya Xgen and Arnold. Each piece is comprised of countless >spheres, cylinders, or cubes that have been extruded and colored to create images reminiscent of ocean floors, bacterial growth, or even weather patterns.

wash choose peel chop rinse
This series of prints were created by capturing the editing timelines of the five movements of wash choose peel chop rinse. These images allow us to experience time as a static artifact of the musical composition process. Each slice of the simulated video frames correspond on a one-to-one basis with audible changes in the rhythmically edited video art work. In the process of making these images, the artist acts as a human agent of the video rendering codec. Each slice is hand selected to become part of the final image composite.

ケリーリチャードソン
켈리 리처드슨
קלי ריצ’רדסון/
凯利·理查森
mariner 9
Mariner 9 presents a panoramic view of a Martian landscape set hundreds of years into the future, littered with the rusting remains from various missions to the planet. Despite its suggested abandoned state, several of the spacecraft continue to partially function, to do their intended jobs, to ultimately find signs of life, possibly transmitting the data back to no one.
Mariner 9 was created using scenery-generation software employed by the film and gaming industries in combination with technical data from NASA’s missions to Mars to produce a faithful artist’s rendering of Martian terrain, populated by the debris from centuries of exploration through real and imagined spacecraft in the centre of a duststorm. “Cinematic tropes of sci-fi films abound, but any search for a clear narrative is frustrated. Presented with minimal action, we wonder instead about the search for life beyond our own planet and the simultaneous destruction of life on earth.” (Laurel MacMillan, Programmer for TIFF Future Projections)

Glow
Glow is an illuminating 30-minute choreographic essay by Artistic Director Gideon Obarzanek and interactive software creator Frieder Weiss. Beneath the glow of a sophisticated video tracking system, a lone organic being mutates in and out of human form into unfamiliar, sensual and grotesque creature states. Utilising the latest in interactive video technologies a digital landscape is generated in real time in response to the dancer’s movement. The body’s gestures are extended by and in turn manipulate the video world that surrounds it, rendering no two performances exactly the same.

Mandelbulb garden

The Mandelbulb is a 3-Dimensional representation of the boundary only – it is the surface of the object that is infinite. You don’t explore it by entering it, you simply ‘poke’ around the complex folds that make up the outer barrier. The more you poke around, the more stuff you find. That being said, Daniel White’s rendering of the object allowed for penetration of the structure revealing cross-sections of the bulb allowing us to look inside as well.

Иньиго Manglano-Оваллье
Manglano-Ovalles technologisch anspruchsvolle Skulpturen und Videoinstallationen verwenden natürliche Formen wie Wolken, Eisberge und DNA als Metaphern für das Verständnis sozialer Probleme wie Einwanderung, Waffengewalt und menschliches Klonen. In Zusammenarbeit mit Astrophysikern, Meteorologen und medizinischen Ethikern nutzt Manglano-Ovalle außerirdische Funksignale, Wettermuster und biologischen Code und wandelt reine Daten in digitale Videoprojektionen und Skulpturen um, die durch Computer-Rendering realisiert wurden. Seine Strategie, die Natur durch Informationen darzustellen, führt zu einer Untersuchung der zugrunde liegenden Kräfte, die den Planeten formen, sowie der Punkte menschlicher Interaktion und Eingriffe in die Umwelt. Manglano-Ovalle beschäftigt sich mit Schnittpunkten zwischen lokalen und globalen Gemeinschaften und betont die Komplexität von Ökosystemen.

Aquaplayne
file festival

Aquaplayne lays out a new field of expression by extending the framework for immediate experience. The horizontal plane bypasses recognition and “sets up” an interactive surface, making a play of art by providing the viewer with instant access to the creative flow. In the movement from observation to participation we interface with an intelligent canvas through the automatic rendering of action into effect. The “body in motion” plays across a field of sensation, making the ripples of possibility appear as an ever-changing artwork. Unlike the action painter, whose technique is to offload creative energy in the painterly gesture, the activator retrieves what has already been deposited as data and brings it to the surface, aquaplaning on a stream of information. The virtual is restored to the actuality of expression, brought back to life in the flux between cause and effect, between code and composition. The calibrated experience of Aquaplayne is the art of permutation, the programmed initiative played and replayed as the artwork in formation.