FORCE
FORCE is an installation work that provides a visualization of the force of gravity via the interaction between gravity and a liquid with carefully computed qualities. Black silicone oil, engineered to achieve the required viscosity, streams constantly from the ceiling under the influence of gravity, forming a black pool on the floor and blurring the distinction between the characteristics of solids and liquids as if it were a sculpture transformed into a liquid. The tightly configured space places the viewpoint in the interface between time, space, and matter, giving us a direct awareness of the reality of our existence within a continuous series of actual moments.

Skid
Pushing further his exploration of a more intense and intimate relationship of the body to the force of gravity, Damien Jalet created “Skid” (2017) for the Gothenburg Dance Company. The dancers performed for 40 minutes on a 34 degree inclined platform of 40 square meters. Together with dancer Aimilios Arapoglou and other members of the company, they developed an alphabet of new physical possibilities, alternating control and surrendering, of accelerations and slow motions, to be performed alone or with partners.

In 20 Steps
Amsterdam based Studio Drift has created In 20 Steps, an installation of moving glass bars, arranged in pairs and moving at different times to each other creating an impression of wings slowly flapping.In 20 Steps is a tribute to the human desire to be able to fly, despite the force of gravity and the poetry of persistence in the face of adversity. Studio Drift is intrigued by the continuous attempts of humankind to deal with its limitations, so miraculously opposed to nature as these ventures might be.

O’Neill cylinder

O’Neill was inspired by the papers written by his students. He began to work out the details of a program to build self-supporting space habitats in free space.Among the details was how to provide the inhabitants of a space colony with an Earth-like environment. His students had designed giant pressurized structures, spun up to approximate Earth gravity by centrifugal force . With the population of the colony living on the inner surface of a sphere or cylinder, these structures resembled “inside-out planets”. He found that pairing counter-rotating cylinders would eliminate the need to spin them using rockets.This configuration has since been known as the O’Neill cylinder.

The way we were
Not only does Arcangelo Sassolino transform failure into art, but he manages to make the art of failing a profound part of the art of living. He goes even further in the awareness of risk. He is aware that his experiments may not hold up to the forces that he himself puts in place but this possible collateral damage wants to represent an additional value, becoming precisely the existential metaphor of the concepts of risk and failure. His installations explore the behavior and mechanical limits of matter, he forces their characteristics to distort their shape, gravity, pressure, friction, statics, and of each possibility Sassolino contemplates the risks of collapse with its precise timing and programming.

POPPY
FILE FESTIVAL SÃO PAULO
As a giant poppy flower, this piece of tarpaulin unfolds itself above the viewer to show an elegant dance of waves and curls while within this dance a violent battle emerges between gravity, friction and centrifugal forces.

Needle Tower
“Inspired by architect Buckminster Fuller’s interest in the geometry of structure, Snelson’s experiments led to a prototype for a “floating compression structure.” Fuller subsequently credited Snelson with having invented a new structural principle which the architect named tensegrity, a contraction of the words tension and integrity.
These investigations into the physical properties of structure became more fully realized as an art form beginning in the 1950s. Snelson created sculptures consisting of tubes and cables. Cylinders of steel seemingly dance through space in defiance of gravity, yet it is the structural competition between tension and compression which underlies their construction. Snelson finds beauty in bringing these forces of nature into balance: the rigid compression tubes pushing outward, the flexible tension cables pulling inward. His sculptures would maintain their structural integrity beyond gravity, in the vacuum of outer space.” Joelle Burrows

Re Rain
“Re-rain” is a sound installation expressing non-visible elements such as gravity, magnetic force, and sound as physical elements. This installation is created with the sound of rain sampled in Japan early spring of 2016.The sound of raindrops hitting an umbrella are recorded, and is then played back from a speaker. The umbrella is set on top of a speaker, and the vibration of the speaker is transmitted through the umbrella to make a sound. For example, an umbrella cannot vibrate if the magnetic force of the speaker is small or if the rain hitting the umbrella is either too high or too low in pitch extent. For this reason, this is a device picking out a state in which the magnetic force of the speaker, weight of the umbrella, and pitch extent of sound are all in a balanced state. Natural phenomena such as rain travels through an object and is emitted as sound to the air..

Cloud Pergola
Inspired by the cloud formations and weather events, this mathematized cloud plays with visitor’s perception. Movement through the structure generates a series of dynamic interference views in its deep fabric, drifts and ruptures in visibility. A sea of redirecting vectors is pulling the visitor like an invisible gravity force through the fabric.

The weight of light
Light, as we usually interpret it, is an element without mass and gravity. For “the weight of light” a physics engine simulates the kinetic forces of a moving object. This mass is projected on a wave shaped structure in virtual space. The moving object is represented as a light particle in physical space. Gravity, mass, density and friction affect velocity and acceleration of these light particles. As the particles movement is based on a simulation, it does not have to adhere to the physical realities we know from everyday life. Therefore the installation goes beyond expected behaviour. Thus the matter of light traverses a reinterpretation of our known reality.

Accelerator

Marnix de Nijs’ installation examines the precarious balance of machine, image and body in time and the effects that accelerated forces of gravity have on today’s urban citizenry. Participants sit in a racing car seat attached to a motorized revolving arm and focus on a video projection which is simultaneously circulating with them.

Balance From Within
File Festival
Jacob Tonski is a pragmatic optimist whose work explores dynamic balance through kinetic metaphors.
A self-adjusting platform makes everyone the same height, probing ideas of equality and the origins of power. A larger-than-life top spins about the room, wobbling through themes of pleasure, danger, youth and decay. A sofa teeters, standing on one leg, musing on the stability of the social structures we build.
These and other human-scale objects, both amusing and threatening, find an uncanny identity between toys and tools. The forces of time and gravity serve in these works as foils for those things we are powerless to direct in our lives, and with which we must instead dance and negotiate.

Caten
Created for the Saint Sauveur chapel in Caen, Caten is a levitating sculpture, determined by gravity and guiding the evolution of a sound composition.
300 fine wires suspended from two ropes, connected themselves at each end to a slowly rotating arm, form an evanescent surface which interacts with the architecture. By a symbolic mirror effect, the curves of the wires, created by the gravitational force, reflect the shapes of the church arches. Caten opposes the ephemeral to the eternal, the movement to the static, and produce a tension between the lightness and the millenary stability of the space.

That a Dead Man Sings
Creating sculptures out of materials such as sheets of glass, foam, metal, cement, and various found objects, Dave Hardy composes his sculptures’ seemingly precarious poise as an intentionally engineered defiance of gravity. Distinguished by a constant shuttle between literal and allegorical readings, Hardy’s artworks are both resolutely materialist and infused with a human scale and, more precisely, a human fragility that forces the viewer to confront them as bodies in space.

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.

Marionettes
FILE FESTIVAL 

“Marionettes” is a seven-minute computer animation about collapse. Marionettes are controlled by strings: if there is no string, they collapse. Nobody animates the body. If nobody animates the body, it will be animated by natural forces. Mass. Gravity. Collision. Randomization. In this animation, the animator does not animate in traditional terms. Thus, we might say it is an anti-animation.
The forces that control the movements of the marionettes are calculated by physical simulation algorithms. Therefore, these movements are strictly mathematical ones. They are dramatic, too. They visualize collapse in its physical and – amazingly enough from puppets animated by machines – psychological sense.

Balance Study Apparatus
Jacob Tonski is a pragmatic optimist whose work explores dynamic balance through kinetic metaphors.
A self-adjusting platform makes everyone the same height, probing ideas of equality and the origins of power. A larger-than-life top spins about the room, wobbling through themes of pleasure, danger, youth and decay. A sofa teeters, standing on one leg, musing on the stability of the social structures we build. These and other human-scale objects, both amusing and threatening, find an uncanny identity between toys and tools. The forces of time and gravity serve in these works as foils for those things we are powerless to direct in our lives, and with which we must instead dance and negotiate.