highlike

tabor robak

balenciaga collaboration
A 25 minute video loop with previously unreleased tracks by DJ Hell, made in collaboration with Balenciaga.

Here is a dramatic tension in his work between the real and the imagined in his use of often-appropriated digital objects to create virtual landscapes, which frequently contain elements – animals, machines, fragments of videogames – that are recognisable from our day to day life. This creates a symbiotic relationship between the digital and the real. In a very real way digital space has now become an intangible reality. The worlds built by Robak have a distinctly cinematic sensibility that hyperbolises the shine and dramatic effects of 3D rendered animation. The aesthetic of his work is supremely important, drawing the viewer into a truly alluring, indulgent and strangely gratifying environment. There is a further challenge to the void between high-art and the worlds of 3D animation and gaming, in the intersection between depiction and simulation. This can be partially attributed to the vernacular of advertising Robak is so proficient at utilising.

Antoine Catala

Emobot
Catala’s work investigate emotions and empathy in our technological information-driven society. His computer generated Emobot appears at once familiar and strange as it utters simple statement about its feelings. The visually mesmerizing figure might serve as an avatar onto which we relate to the expression of strong feelings when they are delivered digitally-an increasing prevalent cultural phenomena. Listening to a not-quite human presence express its vulnerability may have less impact in us than hearing a real person communicate similar emotions. Nevertheless, the deliberate and repetitive manner in which Emobot articulates powerful sentiments affords us ample opportunity to reflect on the existential quality of their meaning.

GUTO NÓBREGA

Breathing
File Festival
Breathing is a work of art based on a hybrid creature made of a living organism and an artificial system. The creature responds to its environment through movement, light and the noise of its mechanical parts. Breathing is the best way to interact with the creature.
This work is the result of an investigation of plants as sensitive agents for the creation of art. The intention was to explore new forms of artistic experience through the dialogue of natural and artificial processes. Breathing is a pre-requisite for life, and is the path that links the observer to the creature.Breathing is a small step towards new art forms in which subtle processes of organic and non-organic life may reveal invisible patterns that interconnect us.Breathing is a work of art driven by biological impulse. Its beauty is neither found isolated on the plant nor in the robotic system itself. It emerges at the very moment in which the observer approaches the creature and their energies are exchanged through the whole system. It is in that moment of joy and fascination, in which we find ourselves in a very strange dialogue, that a life metaphor is created.Breathing is the celebration of that moment.

clement valla

Valla claimed to have collected a series of 60 “surrealistic” images, or that, at least, give that impression, during a long period “playing” in Google Earth.“The images are a kind of mirrors for a fun house.They are strange illusions and reflections of the real ”Despite the strong distortions, which easily resemble a surrealist painting, the images of the work do not have any manipulation of tools like Photoshop, for example.”The images are screenshots of Earth with basic color adjustments”, “This is a construction of 3D maps on two-dimensional bases, creating these fabulous and unintended distortions”.

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.

EMILIJA ŠKARNULYTĖ

Mirror Matter
In the neutrino observatory rendered in Mirror Matter, slow panning movement gives a sense of the immensity of the nearly 13,000 photo-multipliers that inhabit this strange vessel – their ‘eyes’ engineered to watch light. Another frame depicts the Hadron Collider at CERN; its architecture envisioned through lidar scans, producing a dynamic, transparent imprint in three dimensions. Described as a vision that flows through the body, it is imagined by Škarnulytė as alien archaeological vision’ with the ability to see through, and as the experience of sight farthest from the human realm. Through simultaneous perspectives, the constant surveying motion that weaves a continues thread through each video narrative, and the immersion generated by the reflective black ceiling, the viewer is imparted with this panoptical mode of perception.

COOP HIMMELB(L)AU

CHBL Jammer Coat
The CHBL Jammer Coat is a piece of clothing that enables its user to disappear: Google cannot find you anymore. The piece is made of metallized fabrics, which are blocking radio waves and shielding the wearer against tracking devices. You are no longer reachable on your mobile phone and no information from your credit card can be captured. The Wave Circle pattern of the fabric gives an illusion of strange multiple body parts, which hides and frees the individual physicality.

Sam Twidale & Marija Avramovic

After Party

(AI) infinite simulations

‘After Party’ is an animation about two young girls, Ada and Milica. They find themselves in a strange space where an adult party is happening. With every new simulation their personalities evolve in unpredictable ways: between Childhood and Adolescence, Refined and Savage. Our digital work consists of creating artificial environments in the form of real-time animation using our own custom software, where artificial intelligence characters interact with each other as well as with the virtual world that surrounds them. These pieces are usually inspired by stories or myths found in different cultures.

FILE SAO PAULO 2019

olga de la iglesia

woman 27
Olga is part of a new generation of young women reshaping the art world from Barcelona. Using social media platforms to gain creative traction, and either blurring the lines between creative genres, she describes herself as an “imager”. Fashion with a documentary edge, strange still-lifes against brightly colored backgrounds, and monochromatic arrangements of ordinary objects. Teo Sandigliano