highlike

KRIS VERDONCK

A Two Dogs Company
END

In the performance END artist Kris Verdonck shows the possible final stages of a human society in ten scenes. Melting glaciers, burning forests, cities under water, ubiquitous screens and cameras spying on us, the uncontrolled availability of weapons of mass destruction, and so on. END starts out from the images the media project onto our retinas all day and every day. The ten scenes are linked by a monologue spoken by a single character: the witness who sees it all happen. While this survivor – like the messenger in Greek tragedy – talks unceasingly, a series of ‘Figures’ appears on stage: machines and people or a combination of the two. They go from one side of the stage to the other, all in the same direction. Are they fleeing something? If so, what?

Kurt Hentschlager

SOL
SOL is a minimalistic environment, leading visitors into the reaches of their perception. The installation builds on loss of control, shifts in awareness and a feeling of dislocation and timelessness. SOL is the third work in an ongoing series of phenomenological environments, after the live performance FEED, 2005 and the installation ZEE, 2008. The all encompassing darkness of SOL is lifted, in intervals and for parts of seconds only, by animated bursts of intensely bright light. Falling back into darkness, visitors experience abundant retinal after-images, that gradually drift away until eventually the next eruption of light is triggered. In the surround sound-scape of SOL, electronic drones mix with swarming field recordings, amidst a sea of infra-bass.

JILL SCOTT

Electric retina
The Electric Retina is a “neuromedia” sculpture which combines retinal research with interactive media art and metaphorical associations in order to explore the complexity of visual perception. Based on her residency in Neurobiology at the Institute of Zoology, University of Zurich, Scott gained a deeper insight into the genetic control of visual system development and function by analysis of zebra fish mutants, which are used as the main phenotypes for human eye disease research.