Henryk Górecki
Concerto for Harpsichord and String Orchestra Op. 40
Harpsichord: elisabeth chojnacka
Less than nine minutes long, the bipartite Concerto for Harpsichord (or Piano) and String Orchestra, which the composer sometimes called a “prank”, is a veritable volcano that carries the listener away from the very first bars with its immense energy. Its repetitive, motoric nature and rhythmic vigour suit the specific, slightly clattery sound of the harpsichord which is usually somewhat amplified, complemented by the chordal texture of the strings. In both parts, the mood of the piece clearly draws on the highlander music of the southern Podhale region, of which Górecki was a great admirer. In the context of his monumental sacred music from the same period, this Concerto is like the artist’s brief “respite”. It reflects the whirl and “profane” energy of a folk dance.
Elżbieta Chojnacka, to whom the piece was dedicated, has always stressed that every performance of the Concerto, which she has played throughout the world, ends with an encore. The piece meets with such acclaim from the audience, and is one of the most striking – and most joyful – compositions in the composer’s output. “A spectacular plaything”, as Teresa Malecka has described the piece.

Inverta
A circular axle is able to rotate by the use of 36 universal joints hanging from perspex rods and transmitting their rotary motion onto the next. In between the joints, 36 stainless steel objects are attached that rotate at the same speed as the axle. One of the objects has a slightly thinner body, making room for two integrated timing pulleys and thin cogged belts that connect it with the drive mechanism situated on the upper circular frame. The objects are made from thin sheet material and are carefully balanced by placing several counterweights inside their hollow bodies and by perforating their tails, reducing the amount of material furthest away from the axle. During the entire revolution their centre of gravity perfectly aligns with the position of the axle so that a stable rotation is ensured.

Répons

“Oh yes, there is a metre, slightly irregular on one level but very regular on another. There are so many irregular things in this piece that at one point you need to have a regular metre as you say – a bass and a regular pulse anyway – but also a series of harmonies which are all symmetrical. The harmony always gives this impression of something followed by its inverse; there is always a centre – an axis of symmetry. This symmetry of harmony corresponds in harmonic terms to a regular metre. This is very important. There are three types of time. That which is chaotic and irregular such as you have in the beginning (in the speed I mean). Then you have, in the speed, the very regular rapid repeated notes – always in semiquavers. Finally at the end there is a regularity, a kind of metre – but with much ornamentation. The ornamentation is in fact very irregular, but the metre itself is very regular”. Pierre Boulez

Your uncertain shadow
Five coloured spotlights, directed at a white wall, are arranged in a line on the floor: a green light positioned next to another green light, followed by a magenta light, an orange light, and, finally, a blue light. These colours combine to illuminate the wall with a bright white light. When the visitor enters the space, her projected shadow, by blocking each coloured light from a slightly different angle, appears on the wall as an array of five differently coloured silhouettes.

Float
The Floats – or floating sculptures – that Robert Breer took up producing again at the end of the 1990s, emerged in 1965. The word “float” meaning something floating – a marker, fishing float or buoy – and which also describes those carnival vehicles whose pretend wheels give them the appearance of floating above the tarmac, enabled Robert Breer to apply this principle to works of a new genre. Primary shapes, neutral colours and, for the most recent, an industrial aspect, the Floats were then made with polystyrene, foam, painted plywood, and, more latterly, out of fibreglass. At first glance, these simple structures appear immobile. In fact, they are moving, imperceptibly, within the space they inhabit. Motorised and on mini-rollers – which raise them slightly above ground, giving them an air of weightlessness – they glide unbeknown to the visitor, following random paths that are interrupted by the slightest obstacle that they encounter.

Light Cloud
The Light Cloud at the Merck Innovation Center detects visitors’ movements in the room and translates them into many different moods. The generative sculpture stimulates and facilitates intense encounters between people and technology. The room-filling installation consists of four curved strands that are concentrically superimposed and slightly shifted in relation to each other. OLED elements that are attached to the strands and controlled by sensors react to the visitors’ movements and to sound compositions. In combination, this generates a complex mosaic in which sound and light interact playfully and the viewers leave traces.

sound cloud
London-based designer kazuhiro yamanaka has created the ‘sound cloud’ a light-emitting quantum glass speaker system installation for saazs ‘a glass house’ program. the structure is composed of five interactive monolithic glass panels, formed with the intention of modelling the integration of innovative glass within architecture and design. the sound and light radiating from ‘sound cloud’ shift in unison, their synchronization may be altered by the viewer as they adjust their aural and visual experience by means of a touch-screen controller.
yamanaka aspired for the visitors to ‘be able to hear the sound move from one to another, jumping back and forth and echoing from the panels.’
a sound module is attached to each panel. as it vibrates,the three layers of glass move at a frequency, which creates optimum sound quality. the sound for the installation was developed by the france-based sound designer, gling-glang. yamanaka and gling-glang devised a soundscape by which ‘sound cloud’ visitors were able to sense the sculptural construction of the music in walking through the installation’s glass-paneled pathway.
the glass is outfitted with a light-emitting system known as ‘LED in glass’, invented by quantum glass. through this technology, the panels become a source of light. the ‘sound cloud’ is illuminated as the LED bars are fitted around the edge of the panel in order to direct beams of light through the edge of the extra clear glass sheet. as a result, light refraction occurs from the front side by means of a white enamel screen print on the opposite side.
yamanaka chose to slightly obscure the brightness of the glass sound system by creating a thin layer from millions of light dots, culminating in a cloud-like shape.

アン·ハミルトン
앤 해밀턴
Filament

This piece consisted of a high curtained structure which circulated the material around in one space. It stopped every 15 seconds or so, enough time for one or two people to enter into the spinning vortex of linen material. Whilst standing inside the whirlwind of fabric I felt as though I myself were almost flying or being transported to another dimension or something (ok, this description might be slightly exaggerated, but I have quite an ambitious imagination!) Either way, I fully enjoyed the experience of the piece immensely.

オラファー·エリアソン
اولافور الياسون
奥拉维尔·埃利亚松
אולאפור אליאסון
Олафур Элиассон
Infinite Staircase (Umschreibung)

Permanently installed in the atrium of an office building in Munich, two spiral staircases interlock with each other, creating a continuous loop in the form of a double helix. To plan the work, a double helix was projected onto the surface of a sphere. The heights of the steps vary slightly to compensate for the curvature of the staircases, growing shallower at the poles. Precise engineering was necessary to enable the structure to balance on one point.
The continuous loop of Umschreibung contrasts starkly with the office courtyard in Munich where it is installed. Umschreibung – which can be translated as ‘circumscription’ or ‘periphrasis’ – proposes a movement without destination, a space defined by motion rather than walls.

bombay arts society
sanjay puri architects have designed ‘bombay arts society’ as a mixed-use building on a 1,300 square meter plot. half the complex’s programs is composed of office spaces, while the other half caters to visual and performance arts displays and creative studio space. three lower levels encased in an undulating concrete form house galleries and their allied functions, the seamless transitions between vertical and horizontal surfaces continuing inside the building as well as on the exterior. thus, patrons tour the museum, moving fluidly through an occupiable sculpture. slightly detached from the public realm below, a four-storey volume contains the arts society’s administrative offices.

Hitchcock Hallway
Hitchcock Hallway is a series of 11 consecutive rooms. The rooms are connected by doors and they all look alike. One room leads to the next similar looking room which leads to the next similar room and so forth. The rooms are not alike. When moving into the rooms from the lobby all dimensions of the rooms slightly decreases, this makes the first room 13,21 m3 and the last room 5,26 m3. The change from one room to the next is unrecognizably subtle, but over several rooms it’s distinct.

Au Bout Du Souffle
Stéphane Thidet is a French artist who takes regular, everyday objects and transforms them into absurd, fantastical, slightly disorienting installation pieces. Although his work may be slightly off-putting at first, Thidet’s consistently humorous touch lends his installations a sense of accessibility and charm. Thidet is a multimedia contemporary artist, who apart from installations, also works in photography, video and sculpture. Many of his pieces were inspired by toys or games from childhood and play with ideas in popular culture and entertainment.

Studio Fantasy
By manipulating the human body into contorted geometries and abstracted formations, american photographer bill durgin plays with the observers perception of the scene. the curled up, fractured anatomies — some semi-concealed behind boxes and wooden blocks – study the corporal limitations from a fresh angle, resulting in a series photographs that are both fascinating and slightly disturbing.

WORKS ON PAPER III: The Shape of Missing Violence
Each of the participants is required to hold a knife and stay still. They stand in front of a wall within a “frame” which is made of black adhesive tape in rectangle shape. When the performance starts, the artist adjusts their postures and, later, uses the same black adhesive tape to “fill” everything within the frame. Afterwards, the wall and the bodies of the participants are covered with black tapes, while their heads and the knives are still visible; then, their heads are covered with black tape and, finally, the knives are covered as well. Once participants realize that their body is completely covered, they can move slightly, expanding the tapes from “inside” (not destroying them) and come out from the tapes. They leave the knife, which is stuck on the wall, behind the tapes. In the end, the shapes of the leaving traces of their bodies are shown while the knives are invisible.

Ephemeral and ethereal

Ephemeral and ethereal, the work of artist Rein Vollenga is particularly notable in his ‘wearable sculpture’. Vollenga’s unique and visceral work is darkly seductive, and his creations have been embraced by many of fashions forward thinkers as they continue to venture into darker, more fetishistic territory that celebrates a deeper, animalistic sexuality and revels in individuality and fragmented identity. Vollenga is a native of Berlin, reflected in the Teutonic avant garde nature that pervades his work, as is a dangerous, slightly sinister and hedonistic sense that harks back to pre-war Berlin’s days of decadence and ‘voluptuous panic’; his creations conjure all the allure of the decadence of a futuristic Ball Masque. Renowned for his wearable art, which takes form in sculptural headwear and accessories, the artist is now gaining the attention and patronage of the fashion industries elite; a more severe and gothic, 21st Century Dali if you will. Chasseur sat down with Rein himself to discuss his work; its origins and nature, and what drives the man behind the masks.

Drama House
File Festival
“Drama house” is a house when the simple ring at the doorbell can have unpredictable consequences; event, one is stranger then another and in the same time all, what happens with habitants belongs to everyday life. Sometimes these circumstances are a little bit exaggerated. Spectator stands in front of low fence with a door-gate. There are 8 doorbells on it. The act of ringing provokes an action in an apartment window. Based on chance and the choices that viewers make, the project explores the contemporary trends in the construction of a narrative and the interplay between diverse informative sub-layers effected through the impact of digital, non-linear media. It also questions the very process of story telling and at the same time considers the way of audience reading. It investigates the differences of individual and collective perception. In other words, the sequence and choices that each viewer selects reflect his own perspectives and behavioral patterns, thus makes the viewer much more than an active participant. By interacting with the installation the viewer is engaged in the creative process: re-telling the ever-changing story through the utilization of the primary capability of the digitization: reshaping the information. Therefore, each participant walks away with a unique, slightly different vision, each shaped according to his own choices and directions. Interactive media and the digital environment of the DH and its narrative function through a recognizable metaphor that makes access to the information meaningful: a house as a conceptual society model and an apartment as a private space. This reference transforms the objects and stories in the project into the metaphors and reminds us of the art cultural function: as a site of memory of the social collective imagination and as a site of representation and power.