Somatic Echo
“Somatic Echo” is an experimental sound art and research project that utilizes bone conducted sound as a method to investigate human audition and create an unusual and mesmerizing aesthetic of the body as a medium of sound. The installation uses a reclining chair and a sound mask to play an 8-channel sound composition through 8 transducers placed on the user’s head: 6 channels in the face and 2 in the back of the head. The transducers transmit sound through the bone structure of the skull directly to the listener’s inner ear, bypassing the outer ears, which normally are the gateway for auditory signals. The listeners experience the soundscape through both their auditory and tactile senses perceiving a sonic image shaped by the sound traveling through the head structure and through vibrations applied to the skin. This set up lets us experience sound through our body and our body through sound.

IN
In IN (2003) an actress remains motionless for an hour in a display window filled with water. The distortion to her senses caused by the environment she is in makes her go into a trance. The sounds of her breathing and movement are amplified by microphones.

Epistēmē
Titled with the Ancient Greek word for knowledge and understanding, the installation is born of the belief that we absorb knowledge through the senses, with the skin acting as an interface between the body and the world around us. ‘To illustrate the skin in states of transformation, I imagined it as a canvas for sensations felt and information absorbed. The digital manipulation in each film melds body and sensation, skin and material, reality and virtuality to express the effects of each product,’

I frequently entertain the idea that everything we perceive might actually not be real at all, that the world around me could actually just be my senses lying to me. The idea that “reality is a hoax” completely freaks me out, so naturally it became the concrete starting point for my collection. From this, I began to develop different ways of “imagining” garments, of finding ways of putting things that are not really there into existence. I wanted to blur the lines of real versus imagined//artificial. Print was the best facilitator of this goal.

Вернер Рейтерер
The Beginnings of Space Travel
Should art make us laugh? Styrian artist Werner Reiterer certainly challenges us to ponder on the sense and nonsenses of our world, but the noir humour and irreverent handling of reality in his approach mean that our first reaction is to laugh out loud. What we make of it afterwards is the long finish, as it were.

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.

Networked Ecosystem
In Networked Ecosystem, natural phenomena have been replaced by digital and artificial systems as forces that drive development: Electricity/battery = sustenance, WIFI signals = nutrition, Lidar data = fire/heat. Data Organisms populate this digital ecosystem as native life forms in the form of bots, AI’s, and avatars. Visitors to this networked landscape develop new kinds of digital senses to experience data as environmental changes, and interact with the simulated world and each other in an ever-changing online environment.

Clairvoyance
“Clairvoyance means the ability to perceive objects and matters beyond ordinary senses. We named this work as Clairvoyance because it perfectly describes the curiosity people have about the future. This grand artwork tells the story of how curiosity intrigues imaginations and improves technology, both of which urge people to move on.” Ke Jyun Wu

中谷芙二子

fog sculptures
ok-offenens kulturhaus linz

In 1970 Nakaya created her first fog sculpture when commissioned by the group Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T) to make a work for the Pepsi Pavillion of the Osaka World Exposition. In creating a work of white mist enclosing the building, Nakaya became the first artist to have used fog as a sculptural medium. E.A.T is an organisation devoted to facilitating working relationships between artists and engineers. Nakaya worked with American engineer Thomas Mee to create the fog for her Osaka commission, the technique for which she has continued to use, with minor moderations, for her subsequent fog sculptures since.Whilst Nakaya has also worked in film and video, it is her use of fog for which she is best known. Nakaya has used pure-water fog to create installations, performances, stage-sets and environmental park designs, often collaborating with other artists or with performers, choreographers and composers. Nakaya’s interest in fog has developed from its relation to our visual sense. In a thick fog we become disorientated, frustrated at our inability to see. In this way, Nakaya’s sculptures activate our other senses, to compensate for our loss of sight.

Difference and Repetition
The title references Deleuze’s thesis ‘Difference and Repetition’ – his attempt to understand reality without referring to identities. The artists aim to ‘unidentify’ the audience – to criticize the bubbles of reality which technology has helped us to build around ourselves. By allowing ourselves to remove our identity occasionally, we can better understand the thoughts of those we disagree with and therefore better work together to build a combined reality. Difference (in both senses) is generated by the motion control system which continuously changes the pose of the mirrors relative to the viewer. This movement disrupts space itself, creating a transformation similar to that of a Lorentz transformation when one travels close to the speed of light. This causes space itself to compress, twist and break, giving the viewer a tool for observing the non-absolute nature of time.

Vision II
David Spriggs’ Vision artwork series have a distinct focus on the senses. Accentuated by an affinity between its subject matter and the fragmentary nature of the medium, there is a tension created between form and emptiness. Appearing both as an implosion and as an explosion depending on the one’s perception, the viewer has the sense that he/she is observing a form in becoming, yet at the same time breaking down. The immersive experience created by Vision provides the audience with the impression that they are in the midst of witnessing an event, something of monumental proportions akin to the Big Bang. In changing viewpoints by navigating around the work, Vision is continually altered, breaking down at the sides so that the viewer can only see the edge planes of multiple sheets, begging the question: Is there in fact a form, or just individual images?

Landscape Paintings
Jardins d’Été by Quayola pays homage to the tradition of french impressionism and the late works of Claude Monet.The second iteration of this series of artworks investigates the ways in which nature is observed, studied and synthesized, becoming a point of departure towards abstration. Quayola recreated similar conditions to the classical impressionist landscape paintings, however he engaged with an extensive technological apparatus to capture the sensitive nuances of reality beyond our senses. Here natural landscapes are observed and analysed through the eye of the machine, and re-purposed through new modes of visual synthesis.

Who Wants To Be A Self Driving Car?

The moovel lab collaborated with MESO Digital Interiors to prototype this immersive experience. The idea was to make a machine that replaces the human senses with the sensors that a self-driving car might use. Our unconventional driving machine is essentially a steel-frame buggy with in-wheel, electric motors, complete with hydraulic breaking. Drivers lay head first on the vehicle; the positioning used to enhance the feeling of immersion (and vulnerability) created during the experience. A physical steering wheel controls the turning of the vehicle.The VR experience is created using data collected by the sensors outfitted on the driving machine.

Upload not complete
The work magnifies the process of virtual and real fusion, which is the process of uploading human consciousness to digital space. When the visual perception has been lost, can people still recognize the body through the touch and sound of wind, sound and vibration everywhere? Experiencers use non-visual senses, experience media art, and cooperate with the Taiwanese Non-Visual Aesthetic Education Association to create a digital space where the computer can fully understand the location of the experiencer in the space, allowing the experiencer to listen, move, touch objects, feel the vibration and come to know the space.

Abysmal
Abysmal means bottomless; resembling an abyss in depth; unfathomable. Perception is a procedure of acquiring, interpreting, selecting, and organizing sensory information. Perception presumes sensing. In people, perception is aided by sensory organs. In the area of AI, perception mechanism puts the data acquired by the sensors together in a meaningful manner. Machine perception is the capability of a computer system to interpret data in a manner that is similar to the way humans use their senses to relate to the world around them. Inspired by the brain, deep neural networks (DNN) are thought to learn abstract representations through their hierarchical architecture. The work mostly shows the ‘hidden’ transformations happening in a network: summing and multiplying things, adding some non-linearities, creating common basic structures, patterns inside data. It creates highly non-linear functions that map ‘un-knowledge’ to ‘knowledge’.

Prehysterical Machine

The Prehysterical Machine has a spherical body and eight arms made of aluminum tubing. It has a sensing system, a motor system and a control system that functions as an autonomous nervous system (entirely reactive). The machine is suspended from the ceiling and its arms are actuated by pneumatic valves and cylinders. Pyroelectric sensors allow the robot to detect the presence of viewers in the nearby environment. It reacts to the viewers according to the amount of stimuli it receives. The perceived emergent behaviors of this machine engender a multiplicity of interpretations based on single dynamic pattern of events.The aim of this project is to induce empathy of the viewer towards a “character” which is nothing more than an articulated metal structure. The strength of the simulacra is emphasized by perverting the perception of the creature, which is neither animal nor human, carried through the inevitable instinct of anthropomorphism and projection of our internal sensations, a reflex triggered by any phenomenon that challenges our senses.
FILE FESTIVAL

黒川良一
octfalls
Octfalls consists of eight hanging HD screens displaying images of a silver waterfall cascading down a cliff, while the sound of the water rushing over rocks plays over a pair of speakers attached to each screen. These screens are distributed throughout the space at varying heights, encouraging our eyes to wander freely through the installation. The stunning images and highly refined sounds immerse our senses and play tricks on our perceptions. The waterfall suddenly vanishes in vain, then reappears, shifting to another screen, a complex combination of loops in a unique sequence of orchestrated play.

dementia simulator
This Dementia Simulator headset designed by Central Saint Martins graduate Di Peng lets wearers experience symptoms of the disease for themselves (+ movie). The helmet affects each of the senses, in an attempt to replicate many of the challenges faced by dementia sufferers. The translucent, egg-shaped device sits over the wearer’s entire head, and includes a mouthpiece, earpiece and screen that covers the eyes.

Eden
‘Eden’ blurs the boundaries between man-made wonders and the beauty of nature. Opening up your senses to a world of delight and new sensations through a curated retail experience. ‘Eden’ is a celebration of natural elements, merging the lush greenery of the existing site-163 Retail Park with a wondrous landscape referenced from the mythical story of the ‘Garden of Eden’. Providing visitors with a refuge away from the hustle and bustle of daily life; as a space of solace and contemplation.

INNERFORM 8
The moment you hold your breath, the membrane opens and reveals a hermetically sealed head carrying a uniquecavity where senses are mixed.

The Petal Room
The Petal Room consists of 3,500 real flowers, 6 million paper petals designed to fall with beautiful trajectories, a signature scent, and sensor-activated lighting that incorporates microscopic scans of flowers. These elements stimulate the senses and allow visitors to feel physically connected to flowers and nature.

林天苗
Endless door
LIAN TIANMIAO lives and works out of Beijing creating predominantly installation pieces. She has made a career transforming silk, threads and textiles into elaborate works of art and also for her experimentation with photography and video. Her art has a textural and tactile nature that plays on the senses.

Gravicells
Gravicells puts the senses on edge. This installation produces a visualization and sonification of the force of gravity acting upon the visitor. Interconnected sensors continuously measure the visitor’s weight, movements and speed. The resulting data are converted into physical audio-visual experience by various media systems.

Леандро Эрлих
莱安德罗·埃利希
Swimming Pool
[…]Erlich creates spaces with fluid and unstable boundaries. Before one tries to make sense of his sculptures and installations, one senses the uncanny. A single change (up is down, inside is out) can be enough to upset the seemingly normal situation, collapsing and exposing our reality as counterfeit. Through this transgression of limits, the artist undermines certain absolutes and the institutions that reinforce them.

Animal Works
In his interdisciplinary work, encompassing video, performance, dance, theatre, painting, photography, installation, and even puppetry, Markus Schinwald creates mysterious and unsettling atmospheres that hint at their Viennese production context, through references to austere Biedermeier style or to psychoanalysis. His seminal studies in fashion left him with a wide interest in clothing and, furthermore, in the human body’s potential and limitations in both physical and psychological senses.

sensescapes

Eine rundum 360 ° Wandprojektion ermöglicht ein eindringliches Erlebnis und erstaunliche sensorische Illusionen. In Sensescapes spiegeln sich die Präsenz und Bewegungen der Besucher in der Änderung der Raumzusammensetzung wider. Historische Kunstbewegungen, die in der Ausstellung mit Sensescapes gezeigt werden, werden spielerisch aufgegriffen und interpretiert.

Jacobson’s Fabulous Olfactometer
Created by Susanna Hertrich, Jacobson’s Fabulous Olfactometer (JFO) is a sensorial prosthesis that mimics mammalian ‘flehmen’ when air pollution levels are high. The prosthetic is designed around a new human sense modeled after a mammalian sense organ called the vomeronasal or “Jacobson’s” organ. This olfactory sense organ enables certain animals to sense odourless chemicals. When a mammal senses chemicals, it lifts its upper lip to expose this organ. This behaviour is called ‘flehmen’ (wikipedia).Two air chemical sensors located at the top part of the prosthetic register small particles (smoke) and CO2 levels. This data is fed into an Arduino board. When air pollution levels are registered as ‘high’, two stepper motors on either side of the head set exaggerated bone gears in motion and the wearer’s lip is slowly pulled upwards. Thus, JFO enables its wearer to ‘sense’ airborne chemicals and modifies his/her face similar to mammalian flehmen.Sensing and data processing is achieved using an Arduino with a Smoke detector (fine particles) & a Co2 sensor. The device also includes Adafruit stepper motor shield, two stepper motors and a custom designed gears carved from camel bone.

Desire of Codes

This interactive installation consisting of three parts is set up in YCAM’s Studio A, a space that is normally used for theatre performances.
A large number of devices resembling tentacles with built-in small cameras are placed across a huge wall (Part 1), while six robotic “search arms” equipped with cameras and projectors are suspended from the ceiling (Part 2). Each device senses with insect-like wriggling movements the positions and movements of visitors, and turns toward detected persons in order to observe their actions. In addition, a giant round-shaped screen that looks like an insect’s compound eye is installed in the back of the exhibition space (Part 3). Visual data transmitted from each camera, along with footage recorded by surveillance cameras installed at various places around the world, are stored in a central database, and ultimately projected in complex images mixing elements of past and present, the venue itself and points around the globe, onto the screen. The compound eye visualizes a new reality in which fragmentary aspects of space and time are recombined, while the visitor’s position as a subject of expression and surveillance at once indicates the new appearances of human corporeality and desire.

Stitching The Stories We Dare To Tell
My investigation of the limitations of a visual language within fine art leads me to explore the fundamental elements of language that contribute to a story. This overlap plays on one’s senses of memory and imagination. I place myself at the centre of the work, both physically as the object and emotionally as the subject.

Desert Breath

I imagine two parallel realities in the way that we view the world. There is the world inside and the world outside of us. It is through the senses that we are able to connect the inside to the outside world. My whole life, including the choice to become an artist, has been an attempt to re-search, to understand, and to connect these two parallel realities. To bridge what is within to what is without…
Naturally my works are triggered or have a point of departure either in the external or in the internal world. Initially, an idea is generated in the form of an internal image, which in turn needs to be answered intellectually and put into context. This process seems to me to have its point of departure in the world of the subconscious, which then surfaces into the conscious realm. Following from there, the initial idea decodes itself as it evolves into realisation and ends up ‘translating itself’ in to an artwork. It is a bit like a journey, which slowly reveals itself as I journey towards it.