The Forgettable Art Machine

FILE 2024 | Installations

International Electronic Language Festival

The Forgettable Art Machine is an artificial intelligence-driven video installation. When facing the panel, the public has their image captured, starting a cycle of analysis, creation and destruction. From this data, a composite emerges, slowly transforming the visitors’ image into a generative visualization. Once the cycle is complete, the composition is deleted, waiting for a new audience to be captured.

Bio

Matthias Oostrik works at the intersection of digital art, installation art, cinema and architecture. His works establish unpredictable relationships between people and their surroundings. Using digital technology, his installations allow visitors to reshape their environment and their relationships with each other. Oostrik collaborates with renowned professionals and, above all, with his audience, who often become an integral part of his work.

Credits

Co-production: Zester
IA Music: Than van Nispen

ORB
The shape of the piece alludes to the ‘pi’ number concealed in the geometry of the Pyramids, found when dividing the perimeter of a Pyramid by twice its height. The sphere is an invisible part of the resulting geometry, since a sphere with a radius as high as the Pyramid would have a circumference very close in length to the Pyramid’s perimeter. The surface of the artwork captures the Pyramids, the sky, the surroundings and the viewers in a multiple fragmented reflection. It references the role of the circular mirror in historical Egyptian symbolism, where it was linked to the sun and conveyed notions of creation and rebirth.

بوب ويلسون
鲍伯·威尔逊
בוב וילסון
ロバート·ウィルソン
밥 윌슨
Боб Уилсон
SHAKESPEAR`S SONETTES
Staging Shakespeare, not dramatic but lyrical: that was the intention of the American director Bob Wilson in Sonnets de Shakespeares (Sonnets de Shakespeare), a show on display at the Berliner Ensemble. To that end, Wilson is associated with American-Canadian composer and musician Rufus Wainwright. The result is a variety night, with reference to all genres of entertainment, from the commedia dell’arte to television sketches, passing through the cabaret. If in the Elizabethan era female roles were played by men, Bob Wilson did the same, creating this reverse practice: actresses play male roles. This inversion – Queen Elizabeth 1st, on her throne, declaiming a sonnet with a deep voice and Shakespeare himself, as a young man and an elder, in female voices – further intensifies the farcical tone of the show. So much so that even the sporadic number of transvestite actor Georgette Dee, microphone in hand, does not disagree much of the Shakespearean surroundings.

Another Generosity
Another Generosity explores a new structure that consists of a membrane holding two basic elements: air and water. The simple structures are combined to create a visible and dynamic cellular structure. The inflated elements mediate between the natural and built environment. They respond to external and sometimes unseen stimuli, creating a new kind of experience, a momentary hesitation that heightens our awareness of our surroundings.

Audrey Large is a French designer based in the Netherlands. By bridging animation techniques with digital-to-material manufacturing processes, her work explores the potential of digital image manipulation as applied to the design of our material surroundings.

PIVOT POINT – ICHIHARA
‘Pivot Point – Ichihara’ is an interactive site-specific installation. Standing on a controller pod you navigate over and through a 3D terrain where gravity seems to have disappeared, you gradually become tele-present in a parallel projected space by exploring a mediated version of the venue, it’s direct surroundings and the Ichihara region. A cinematic journey to a fascinating point cloud realm, precise in details but simultaneously abstract and dreamlike.The kidney shaped interface is covered with capacitive sensors and mounted on a pole, touching this interface right, left, up or down aims the virtual camera accordingly. When you release the navigation pole the virtual camera automatically starts spiralling back to the initial starting point your journey and temporary centre of the universe, the Asohbara Art House.

Madakaripura

Digital image projection, software, real-time internet-based data, and sound
Installation shot at St. Saviour Church, London
Tromarama is an art collective founded in 2006 by Febie Babyrose, Herbert Hans and Ruddy Hatumena. Engaging with the notion of hyperreality in the digital age, their projects explore the interrelationship between the virtual and the physical world. Their works often combine video, installations, computer programming and public participation depicting the influence of digital media on the society perception towards their surroundings. They live and work between Jakarta and Bandung.

Aqueous
Inspired by the color blue’s calming qualities, Aqueous is a deep dive into our water-filled surroundings. Whether looking out at the vast horizon of the ocean or listening to the bubbling flow of a stream, water instills a sense of peace and relaxation. Through exploring the textures of liquid in all its states, this immersive installation seeks to soothe the spirit and inspire action to preserve this natural resource.

Bloom
BLOOM is kinetic laser and sound installation by TRIBE investigating illusions of stillness unfolding at speeds unable to be registered by human sight. It is named for intangible flower-like shapes produced by moving lasers filling all the space and bringing new dimension to surroundings.

Path of silence
Inspired by the remarkable topography of the landscape of the Kistefos Sculpture Park, the stepped slope and terraces beside the Industry Museum, where the power and energy of water is directly visible and gives the site a special quality, a free form is adapted to the shape of this landscape, thus creating a dialogue between the place and the object. The sculpture is defined by an extensive mirror labyrinth that encloses three spaces of silence: A contemplative space, where an enclosure of high mirror steles promotes an upward glance to the sky, a natural space, where a tree inside the sculpture links the inside with the outside and an active space where walls of water appear and disappear, thus offering ever-changing perspectives of the surroundings.

Watage
An interactive installation using naturally-generated power rather than man-made sources like electricity. Dandelion fluff (watage in Japanese) soaked in water to form drop-like shapes, untreated fluff, and so on serve as modules, bonded with liquid paste to be reconstructed. The fluff sways in response to viewers’ breath or movement, even in the absence of breeze, immaculately revalidating the viewer’s own existence by making their influence on surroundings visible without use of technology. Using its surrounding environment to send off its seeds, the dandelion has achieved a lightness and form in its fluff specialized to the purpose and sprouts up each year no matter how the world may change. Having been drawn into the quietly-paced world of plants, the artist looked to dandelion fluff for a new form of expression able to hold its own against showy, rapidly evolving technological expression.

DARK ECOLOGY

IsoScope

IsoScope is a kinetic audiovisual outdoor installation, a sensorial experience in which the audience wanders through rotating lights and an ever-changing sonic cloud. This new work by Dutch artist Joris Strijbos consists of multiple robotic wind objects interacting with each other and with their surroundings. Strijbos aimed at creating a human-constructed phenomenon, an abstract entity which, like most natural phenomena, can only be experienced in certain weather conditions. IsoScope can be seen as a proposition for a new kind of machinic and artificial lifeform. IsoScope was commissioned by Sonic Acts for the second Dark Ecology Journey (2015) and realised in collaboration with Jeroen Molenaar, Daan Johan and Erfan Abdi.

THE LONG NOW
A soap bubble usually remains stable for only a few moments – it is a perfectly formed sphere with an iridescent surface that reflects its surroundings. As one of the classical vanitas symbols the soap bubble traditionally stands for the transience of the moment and the fragility of life. THE LONG NOW approaches the soap bubble from a contemporary perspective – with reference to its chemical and physical properties as well as recent scientific and technological developments. THE LONG NOW is aimed at extending the lifespan of a soap bubble, or even to preserve it forever. Using an improved formula, a machine generates a bubble, sends it to a chamber with a controlled atmosphere and keeps it there in suspension for as long as possible. The project is presented in the form of an experimental set-up in which the newly created soap bubble oscillates permanently between fragility and stability.

States of Mind
Brussels-based artist Ann Veronica Janssens’ practice is concerned primarily with light, colour, and perception. Janssens makes very few art objects. Instead, her work attempts to escape the ‘tyranny of objects’ and what she describes as their ‘overbearing materiality’. Since the late 1990s, Janssens has filled spaces with washes of coloured light or ‘haze sculptures’: dense, illuminated clouds of vapour that render surroundings unfamiliar and sensory perception altered.

object no. 9

Marleen Sleeuwits is inspired by impersonal environments—places that could be anywhere and nowhere—such as vacant zones in airports, unoccupied corridors of hotels, and empty rooms in office buildings. The Netherlands-based artist is attracted to these non-spaces for the lack of impression they leave on people; her work focuses on finding ways of visualizing the identity of these voids and connecting to them in novel ways. Through structural contradiction, illusion, and the manipulation of scale, she aims to transform viewers’ awareness of their surroundings.

Anima
»ANIMA« is a sculptural installation developed to explore the relationship between itself and its surroundings through the use of movement, texture, light and sound. The installation consists of a giant glowing sphere measuring two meters in diameter. This larger-than-life entity is suspended from the ceiling, as if in mid-air, in a darkened room. The luminescent sculpture acts as the sole light source for the space, drawing viewers in as it reacts to their presence.

file sao paulo 2018
“Outrospectre” is an experimental proposal for a medical device aimed at reconciling people with death through simulating out-of-body experiences. In healthcare the majority of efforts and research focus on keeping people alive. The fear and experience of death is a mostly neglected topic. Recent (para) psychological research, however, suggests that the sensation of drifting outside of one’s own body using virtual reality technology could help reduce death anxiety. “Outrospectre” explores the possible application of these findings in hospital surroundings where it could help terminal patients accept their own mortality with more comfort.
This project investigates unanswered questions about mortality and ‘end of life’.

Her Contour
My work involves creating a 3-dimensional flexible organic form of a comfortable ambiance that is yet dynamic and possibly mystical or illusionary. It is an abstract representation of objects or concepts that recreates our surroundings. It can be interpreted in various ways including landscapes, living organisms, social ideas or values, anything that we accept as given that they exist. Through my work, I try to create an opportunity for audiences to see, think and most of all feel our surroundings from various perspectives.

Flowing water, Standing time
Montreal-based fashion designer, ying gao, designed robotic clothing out of silicone, glass and organza, and added electronic devices to create every-changing dynamic pieces that react to its surrounding chromatic spectrum. the collection, entitled ‘flowing water, standing time’ captures the essence of movement and stability over a period of time, and how different energies flowing through the garment, mirroring the colors in its immediate surroundings.

Floating Lens
The combination of movement and the reflections of the fresnel lenses, provide an interesting visual experience. When used on the rooftops of Paris, the Haussmanian roofs of the city seem to be seen through a dream. The wind on the lenses lightly distort the surroundings, creating a dream-like environment. Once again, the subtle mix of simple technology and poetic interpretation detach the conscious mind of reality. Leroy compares his project to an intriguing game of fluidity: “everything seems to breathe: no beginning, no end, just a stream.”

菲力浦 畢斯雷

Hylozoic Ground

The project’s title refers to ‘hylozoism’, the ancient belief that all matter has life. Hylozoic Ground offers a vision for a new generation of responsive architecture. The Hylozoic Ground environment can be described as a suspended geotextile that gradually accumulates hybrid soil from ingredients drawn from its surroundings. Akin to the functions of a living system, embedded machine intelligence allows human interaction to trigger breathing, caressing, and swallowing motions and hybrid metabolic exchanges. These empathic motions ripple out from hives of kinetic valves and pores in peristaltic waves, creating a diffuse pumping that pulls air, moisture and stray organic matter through the filtering Hylozoic membranes.

The Climate Dress
The Climate Dress is made of conductive embroidery, over hundred of tiny LED lights inserted into the embroidery, a CO2 sensor and an Arduino Lilypad microprocessor. The LEDs visualise the level of CO2 in the nearby surroundings and are powered trough the embroidery.

Solar Egg
The egg is made out of stainless golden mirror sheeting, its multifaceted form breaking up the surroundings that it reflects into a multiplicity of different mirror images. Landscape, mine, town, sky, sun and snow are here combined into a fragmented image that can evoke associations with the complexity spanned by today’s discussion about climate and sustainable community development.more…

Verges
In Pia Männikkö’s installation Verges the gallery space is completely filled with white tulle fabrics that hang from a grid of metal wires. Viewers are invited to enter the installation. The fabrics are open on all sides so the viewer can freely choose which way to go. The white surroundings affect the viewer’s sense of the space and as a result the viewer cannot exactly locate the edges of the room. Adding to the sense of disorientation, other people moving in the space seem like silhouettes disappearing gradually into the whiteness.

The Swing

In The Swing, a 3D game avatar becomes Rococo fleshy decadence. In this multi-screen animation, the avatar swings on a seat suspended from the sky, in super Mannerist slow time. Her wooded surroundings ebb and flow at different rate, imitating stop-motion. Years pass in a matter of moments. The avatar is the driver of all of these cycles, but a driver scarcely in control – she is instead, a Mother Nature heading straight for what she suspects might be oblivion. The Swing is a multi channel installation, in nine, five and three screen versions.

sound: Kurt Hentschlager

Void Entity
HART+LËSHKINA is an interdisciplinary image-making duo, composed of Tatiana Lëshkina and Erik Hart. Their work deals with the themes of vulnerability, disengagement, relationship between the individual and its surroundings, and a dislodging of everyday life through simple acts and absurdist theatricality.

ギジェルモ・モラ
VITRINE
VITRINE is a collaboration with artist Guillermo Mora, with who Georgina Santiago has a speciall creative connection. The idea behind it was to merge the two creative worlds in the way that the essence of a gallery is translated to the clothes and sorround them with a sculpure. The boundaries between art and fashion get blurry and the body become a sculpture itself. The surroundings of the body become part of it and all mutate into one. The body became a vitrine were the art is exposed.

سيندي شيرمان
辛迪·舍曼
סינדי שרמן
シンディ·シャーマン
신디 셔먼
СИНДИ ШЕРМАН
history portraits
Working as her own model for more than 30 years, Sherman has captured herself in a range of guises and personas which are at turns amusing and disturbing, distasteful and affecting. To create her photographs, she assumes multiple roles of photographer, model, makeup artist, hairdresser, stylist, and wardrobe mistress. With an arsenal of wigs, costumes, makeup, prosthetics, and props, Sherman has deftly altered her physique and surroundings to create a myriad of intriguing tableaus and characters, from screen siren to clown to aging socialite.
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Off-II
“In this project I have downloaded pictures of ‘friends’ that I only know through the Internet, and given them a new context. The persons are only visible through a digital representation, while the surroundings are as analog as possible. The sceneries are photographed places that invited to interaction – places that missed the company of human beings. The milieu adds a new meaning to the way the digital personas act, and gives their simplified characteristics meaning and personality again, by adding a setting to their digital components.”

Sears Kit: The American Dream
Blending art with design, paper and a little imagination, artist Judith Hoffman builds her own ‘castles in the air.’ Think children’s paper and cardboard cities, all grown up. “Environment is the central factor in my work. My surroundings and the complexities of location are heavy influences in what I build,” she says.

HART+LËSHKINA is an interdisciplinary image-making duo, composed of Tatiana Lëshkina and Erik Hart. Their work deals with the themes of vulnerability, disengagement, relationship between the individual and its surroundings, and a dislodging of everyday life through simple acts and absurdist theatricality.

雏菊气球
데이지 풍선
デイジーバルーン
DAISY BALLOON is a balloon unit of worldwide balloon artist Rie Hosokai (born 1976) and art director/graphic designer Takashi Kawada (born 1976). Since forming in 2008, they have produced many balloon art works based on the themes of “perception and quality.” Above all, the balloon dresses have fascinated many people through the intricacy of detail that suggests architectural qualities. Their daily fieldwork consists of searching for philosophical themes and interacting with people and objects, but their vision is constantly looking toward achieving essential harmony with their surroundings.

Untitled
Ren Hang created visual poetry of naked human bodies and it is very sad that his directed yet natural way of capturing his surroundings.more…

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.

Photographies éthérées
Cerro Espada

Alexandre Deschaumes is a self taught french photographer. These photographs take place in the French Alps, Austria, Iceland and Patagonia.
“When I am in nature, the environment makes me feel humble about all that surrounds me, opening a new abstract door of inspiration, making me very grateful about these fantastic benefits. And the most important aspect that i like about the abstract photography quest is that when I am in nature, I feel home and I feel alive.” From one of his last interviews,”What are some tips you could give to people that really like your work?”
“I would advise them to listen to their inner feeling, to take their camera and go somewhere remote, like a deep forest during a foggy day and keep watching everywhere to seek details, because beauty is everywhere.To feel the atmosphere of the surroundings, vision is always the most important. In composition, you should avoid everything that disturbs and focus on simple shapes, because elegance comes with simplicity.”
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Fog
Talk about blending into the background. Photographer Wilma Hurskainen and her sister wear clothes that perfectly match their natural surroundings. Whereas we’ve seen this style done before, never have we seen it done so naturally, almost as if it was all done by accident.They’re part of the larger series called No Name which deals with childhood and memory.“Invisible, was an idea that I once got while looking at snow and a forest line,” she tells us. “We have a lot of that in Finland! Even as a child I was very interested in the idea of hiding or mimicking an animal.” The woman in Invisible is actually one of her sisters.

文森特·勒罗伊
北极光环
stone age
Paris-based artist vincent leroy takes movement as the motivation for his work. he prefers this over form, material, or color. instead, he focuses on adding rhythm, pauses, and creating different patterns to set and differentiate every piece. ‘stone age’ is his latest sculpture and is made of fourteen triangular mirrors that move subtly, breaking its surroundings into thin reflections of space. these mirror images deconstruct the environment allowing for different visions of it.
This sculpture situates itself between poetry and technology, generating the opportunity to test visual and physical experiences that relate to space. ‘stone age’ looks like a heavy and rigid structure, but it will surprise the user when it twists and deforms with flexibility and fluidity, creating a delicate contrast. all the movement is created using very low technology.

Virtual Depictions
Parametric data sculptures
The main idea of ‘Virtual Depictions:San Francisco’ is to bring 21st century approach to public art to define new poetics of space through media arts and architecture and to create a unique parametric data sculptures that has an intelligence, memory and culture. Through architectural transformations of media wall located in 350 Mission’ lobby, home of Salesforce, main motivation with this seminal media architecture approach is to frame this experience with a meticulously abstract and cinematic site-specific data-driven narration. As a result, this media wall turns into a spectacular public event making direct and phantasmagorical connections to its surroundings through simultaneous juxtapositions. The project also intends to contribute to contemporary discourse of public art by proposing a hybrid blend of media arts and architecture in 21st century.

24 drones
24 Drones is a video demonstration of the incredible drones made by Rhizomatiks and their ability to move around 3d space in ways never before seen. With intricate sensor systems both on the drones and in the room the drones are constantly checking their surroundings and mapping them in order to move without colliding with each other or a speaker who stands in the middle of the swarm of drones directing them with gestures and movements. The movement of the drones is not only controlled and safer than ever, the drones awareness of their surroundings makes them appear conscious and gives them a sense of personality.

Strange Fruit
Using both sculpture and musical performance in his practice, Kevin Beasley explores the physical materiality and cultural connotations of both objects and sound. His sculptures typically incorporate everyday items like clothing, housewares, or sporting goods, bound together using tar, foam, resin, or other materials. Often they also contain embedded audio equipment that warps and amplifies the ambient tones of their surroundings. For Storylines, Beasley has created two new works specifically for the Guggenheim’s Frank Lloyd Wright–designed building. Within this vast and open sonic environment, Strange Fruit (Pair 1) and Strange Fruit (Pair 2) (both 2015) offer an experience of intimacy, absorbing and reflecting the sound of the crowd at the scale of a personal conversation. Each work embodies this spirit of dialogue in its two-part structure—at its core are two athletic shoes, one merged with microphones, the other with speakers. Suspending these objects in space, Beasley compounds their technological interchange with additional layers of meaning, bringing to mind the urban phenomenon of shoes hanging from overhead wires or poles (itself an open-ended form of communication). At the same time the works’ titles refer to history of lynchings in the American South memorialized by Bronx schoolteacher Abel Meerepol in the 1937 protest song “Strange Fruit.” In these contexts, the hanging forms of Beasley’s sculptures resonate not only with his body, which molded them by hand, or with the bodies moving through the museum, but also with those inscribed in the problematic history of race and class in the United States.

blind smell stick

Explore the smells of your city, environment or another location by simply walking by and sniffing with the Blind Smell Stick.The little bulb on top of the stick has holes in it and it detects the smells. With the use of a few mini ventilators, heating, and filters, the scents reach your nose through a special tube. You can wear dark sunglasses and really focus on the smells or you can also open the dark glasses and take a look at what you’re smelling.It’s another way to explore a city or the surroundings.The Blind Smell Stick lets you re-design the way you experience your life.
It’s also a tool to help blind people to find their way and to help them enjoy their daily life more.It has a lot of possibilities. We could make a smell line (Smell Groove) through the city and every street would have their own smell. That makes it easier on people to find their way and also makes it more pleasurable.
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МИЕОНГБЕОМ КИМ
김명범
tree boat

“I try to examine how my surroundings are perceived and remembered. To do this, I listen to a whisper from the objects within my surroundings. I attempt to have an intimate, private dialogue with the world, trying to concretely present the way things approach me, by using other mediums. To ask what an objects means to me is like asking what being I am. I have consistently experienced my surrounding objects from the perspective of life, growth, and decline, which lends vitality to my work.”

THE INNER LIFE OFF CELL
Harvard University selected XVIVO to develop an animation that would take their cellular biology students on a journey through the microscopic world of a cell, illustrating mechanisms that allow a white blood cell to sense its surroundings and respond to an external stimulus. This award winning piece was the first topic in a series of animations XVIVO is creating for Harvard’s educational website BioVisions at Harvard.

Platon’s Mirror
Mischa Kuball’s installations question the characteristics of a room in a visual and kinetic way. They move their boundaries and open them in another dimension, far from whatever time and spatial structure. Space and place are comprehended anew; Kuball is interested in the nature of the human surroundings, and in the perception and experience of the human being in that space.