highlike

Lawrence Lek

Unreal

Lawrence’s accompanying soundtrack is a delicate lattice; complex, opaque and entirely synthetic. Diva’s yearning vocals, sung in English and Mandarin, cast classical melodies over billowing, intricately arranged songs. Her voice is created with a Vocaloid voice synthesiser, giving it an uncanny feeling. Her confessional lyrics draw empathy from the listener, as she reveals her fears of becoming an irrelevant influencer, obsolete in a machine-driven age.

The lead single ‘ unreal’ is launched with a harrowing video adapted from the film.

RYUJI NAKAMURA

中村竜治
류지 나카무라
РЮДЗИ НАКАМУРА
spring (invisible 3D screen)

Japanese architect Ryuji Nakamura has constructed a nearly invisible 3D screen that only reveals itself in the presence of light.  This installation ‘spring’ was part of the “Neoreal in the Forest” exhibit at this year’s Milan Design Week

Stine Deja

Cryptic Ruins
It’s the year 21020 and a mysterious archaeological site has been uncovered in what was central London. A large communal structure seemingly dedicated to unproductive expending of energy from human bodies. Whilst we might easily identify it as a gym, our descendants are concerned with why it exists at all. By framing the 21st century compulsion towards physical fitness as a mysterious practice of the past that requires decoding, Deja’s playful film reveals something of the absurdity of contemporary urban life and questions the rationality of our obsessions.

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.

THORSTEN FLEISCH

Energie!
Thorsten Fleisch creates films that reveal the shapes and patterns of natural forces and phenomena. In this work he reveals what energy in one of its simplest forms looks like in motion. Energie! is a sequence of still images created on light-sensitive photographic paper. The artist exposed dozens of sheets of paper to enormous electrical discharges, each leaving its imprint as a trail of light. Animating these images reveals patterns in their flow of energy, akin to tracing the flow of electricity at each moment of a lightning strike. As the images are photographs created without cameras, they are records of single moments. Accordingly we see dozens of split-second documents animated to reveal the shape and power of energy.

JEFFREY SHAW

Disappearance

In this work the movement of a large video monitor mounted on an industrial fork-lift truck creates a virtual representation of a larger than life size ballerina. As the forklift moves the monitor up and down the ballerina is presented from head to toe, and as the forklift truck rotates the ballerina also appears to turn. In this way the monitor functions as a window that gradually reveals the virtual presence of the ballerina who is dancing in the same axis as the rotating forklift truck. Also visible inside the motor compartment of the forklift truck is a small rotating ballerina figurine in front of which a video camera moves up and down. This mechanism is electronically synchronised with the movement of the forklift itself and provides the closed circuit source for the video image of the ballerina that is seen on the monitor screen. Disappearance evokes and celebrates the memory of the ballerina on a music box (a first generation robot) and generates her virtual reconstruction to the extent that the machinery of reproduction itself now incarnates her pirouettes.
video

ERNESTO KLAR

Эрнесто Клар
Convergenze parallele

Convergenze parallele is an audiovisual installation in which airborne dust particles passing through a beam of light are tracked, visualized, and sonified in realtime by a custom software system. The installation reacts to air movements in the exhibition space, allowing the viewer to see and hear the amplified movement of dust particles. “Convergenze parallele” explores the poetic potential of revealing and transforming the imperceptible. The custom software uses a video camera to capture the activity of dust articles passing through the beam of light. It then analyzes the video signal to track the location of individual dust particles, and reveals each particle’s trajectory in the image-processed projection. The physical particles draw traces of their otherwise invisible motion on the digital screen. At random intervals, the software artificially saturates the system by briefly activating the fan-a cloud of dust fills the beam of light and creates dense and stunning patterns of particle trajectories and sound.

File Festival

Glenda León

Espejismos
Glenda Leon’s work includes various techniques such as drawings, video art, installations, sculpture and photography. Glenda León encourages the viewer to approach the object from a poetical perspective. This way, she reveals the metaphoric part of everyday life objects and is interested in revealing antagonisms like silence or sound, visibility or invisibility; public or private; and ephemeral or eternal.

Stine Deja

THERMAL WOMB
“Thermal Womb, a sculpture of figure suspended upside down that recalls the practice of cryopreservation. The structure is indeed a replica of the mechanism used by companies such as Alcor, which prepares bodies before they are submerged in liquid nitrogen—figures indefinitely frozen, waiting for technology to catch up and revive them. The film component of the work reveals a pair of bright blue eyes, whose only animation is to blink, adding a time-based layer to the otherwise static nature of the piece.” Stephanie Cristello

PAULINE VAN DONGEN

wearable solar

There is nothing natural in nature; technology makes our humanness giving form to our surroundings. The human habitat reveals a techno-morphed structure that can no longer be hidden behind the vestiges of a natural world: technology has to be naturalized. Pauline van Dongen researches the body in a technologically textured space. After graduating from ArtEZ, Academy of the Arts in Arnhem, the Netherlands, she started her own womenswear label in 2010. Pauline operates a meticulous research of the behaviour of experimental and high-tech materials, combining new technologies with traditional techniques to constantly renovate craftsmanship. Working closely with companies from the field of science and innovation, Pauline aims to merge fashion and technology giving life to scientific creations.