highlike

FILE 2026 – Registration Open for the IA Film Festival – Art and Technology

FILE 2026

Digital Film Festival and AI Cinema: includes productions that explore new aesthetics, narratives, and processes enabled by digital and artificial intelligence technologies.  This language questions traditional notions of authorship, editing, scriptwriting, and directing, proposing new forms of expanded and computational cinema. Cinema ceases to be merely representational and becomes processual and adaptive. It is an emerging field that articulates aesthetics, technology, and critical reflection on the future of moving images and multiple narratives. The works may also explore machine learning algorithms, generative models, and automation as active agents in the construction of image, sound, and dramaturgy.

Applications are open until February 19, 2026. Access  the application form.

FILE 2026 | GENERAL REGULATIONS

CINESTEIKA

Dina Khuseyn, Patrick K.-H., Oleg Makarov

A multivarious result of visual representation of 3 non-identical structures (dance performance, sound art and animation) points at interactivity as the main possible axis of reference. Necessity of this axis derives from specific interpretations that can only appear by juxtaposing of several systems. It opposes to traditional “parallelism” of media, employed in theater that only imitates causality, but having it already done before performance is starting.
In Cinestetika, each element of each media works as separate PROCESS, but also serves a SIGNAL to other medias. This essential core makes Cinestetika rather an instrument to make a term “live performance” filled with its perfect sense.

FILE SÃO PAULO 2025: SYNTHETIKA – Darren Slater (DSM)

Darren Slater (DSM)

FILE SÃO PAULO 2025: SYNTHETIKA – Art and Technology – INTERATOR
Electronic Language International Festival

BIO

Darren Slater is a musician and amateur visual artist based in the UK. He composes cinematic soundtracks in ambient and techno-house styles with sci-fi inspiration, using attribute-free loops and sound effects. He uses Krea AI Animator to bring AI-generated images to life, creating immersive experiences. He also works as a traditional artist, painting fantasy worlds with brushes and pigments.

FILE SÃO PAULO 2025: SYNTHETIKA – Darren Slater (DSM)

Darren Slater (DSM)

FILE SÃO PAULO 2025: SYNTHETIKA – Art and Technology – INTERATOR
Electronic Language International Festival

Trip Portal – United Kingdom

Portal Trip is a captivating fusion of original music and Darren Slater’s AI-generated animations, transporting viewers on a surreal journey through ever-shifting dimensions. As abstract portals open and dissolve into fluid landscapes, the hypnotic visuals synchronize with Darren’s immersive soundscapes, creating an audiovisual experience that feels like entering another reality. A mesmerizing blend of movement and sound, this video invites viewers to lose themselves in its dreamlike, otherworldly depths.

BIO

Darren Slater is a musician and amateur visual artist based in the UK. He composes cinematic soundtracks in ambient and techno-house styles with sci-fi inspiration, using attribute-free loops and sound effects. He uses Krea AI Animator to bring AI-generated images to life, creating immersive experiences. He also works as a traditional artist, painting fantasy worlds with brushes and pigments.

FILE SÃO PAULO 2025: SYNTHETIKA – Darren Slater (DSM)

Pods

Darren Slater (DSM)

FILE SÃO PAULO 2025: SYNTHETIKA – Art and Technology – INTERATOR
Electronic Language International Festival

Pods – United Kingdom

Pods is an atmospheric fusion of original music and Darren Slater’s mesmerizing AI-generated visuals. This 4K video takes viewers on a surreal journey through an abstract world filled with floating organic forms and fluid transformations. The sci-fi-inspired imagery and immersive soundscape complement each other perfectly, creating an otherworldly audiovisual experience that lingers in the imagination.

BIO

Darren Slater is a musician and amateur visual artist based in the UK. He composes cinematic soundtracks in ambient and techno-house styles with sci-fi inspiration, using attribute-free loops and sound effects. He uses Krea AI Animator to bring AI-generated images to life, creating immersive experiences. He also works as a traditional artist, painting fantasy worlds with brushes and pigments.

FILE SÃO PAULO 2025: SYNTHETIKA – Michael Betancourt

Garden

Michael Betancourt

FILE SÃO PAULO 2025: SYNTHETIKA – Art and Technology – CGI VIDEOS
Electronic Language International Festival

 

Garden – United States

Garden is a generative glitches animation created by deliberately conflicting AI (LoRA) models. Using multiple LoRA models to generate images that evoke flowers in a garden, the work transforms traditional representations of plant life into a fluid and hallucinatory exploration of growth, decay, and metamorphosis. These transformations suggest alternative ways of understanding organic growth, where the boundaries between individual organisms become fluid and permeable.

BIO

Michael Betancourt is a contemporary Cuban-American critical theorist, filmmaker, and artist-researcher known for his pioneering work in the fields of Digital Capitalism, Motion Graphics , and Glitch Art . Since 1990, he has explored the intersection of technology, culture, and aesthetics in a diverse practice unified by a constant concern with the poetic potential of images generated by errors.

FILE SÃO PAULO 2025: SYNTHETIKA – Callahan Indovina

Daily Diffusion 53 & 86

Callahan Indovina

FILE SÃO PAULO 2025: SYNTHETIKA – Art and Technology – Shorts Films AI
Electronic Language International Festival

 

Daily Diffusion 53 & 86 – United States

The Daily Diffusion series by Callahan Indovina was a three-month project launched in 2024, as Generative AI tools and various plat forms to support the automation of animations and workflows were still emergent. The YouTube series aimed to provide workflows, prompts, and examples on how to utilize Stable Diffusion and various enhancements to create psychedelic animations. Like many of his works, the Daily Diffusion series took inspiration from Calalhan’s experiences within his dreams.

Music: https://www.mubert.com

BIO

Callahan Indovina is a spir itual and psychedelic artist from California’s Sierra Nevada. His artistic expression combines traditional digital composition techniques with innovative practices such as generative AI. His creations, described as super natural and dreamlike, reflect his surreal and transcendental vision, drawn from experiences within his dreams

FILE SÃO PAULO 2025: SYNTHETIKA – CNDSD & Iván Abreu

Pre(N)atura | Fonocene

CNDSD & Iván Abreu

FILE SÃO PAULO 2025: SYNTHETIKA – Art and Technology – Shorts Films AI
Electronic Language International Festival

 

Pre(N)atura | Fonocene – Mexico

Speculative audiovisual project inspired by postnatural studies, designed to explore the era of the Fonocene—a period where both human and non-human sounds define sensory experiences and interspecies interactions. In this narrative, Chthulucene beings, hybrid creatures, emerge to challenge traditional forms of communication, using listening as a tool to activate our awareness of interdependence. 

BIO

Iván Abreu is a Mexican-Cuban interdisciplinary artist who uses science, design and technology to create works that question human interaction and social systems. Malitzin Cortés, (CNDSD), is a Mexican artist who explores the intersection of sound, technology and speculative architecture. Her work combines live coding, audiovisuals and critical narratives. 

FILE SÃO PAULO 2025: SYNTHETIKA – Jenifer Haider Chowdhury

Verticity

Jenifer Haider Chowdhury

FILE SÃO PAULO 2025: SYNTHETIKA – Art and Technology – Shorts Films AI
Electronic Language International Festival

 

Verticity – Bangladesh

What will happen in the AEC industry after one thousand years from today? In this cutting-edge technology-based world, we have already started to take steps in Artificial Intelligence and some other advanced sectors such as biotechnology which is inspired by mimicking mechanisms found in nature. By observing all of these, we can say that in the future there will be so much dynamism and diversities in the skyscraper design development process.

BIO

Architectural designer who graduated with a B.Arch degree from the University of Asia Pacific, Bangladesh. For the past two and a half years, she has been exploring AI-based architecture and fashion experiments. She has a deep interest in parametric and dynamic computational style designs and ideas in both architecture and fashion design. She is also passionate about surrealism and non-traditional concepts. These factors are the major inspirations behind all of her works.

FILE SÃO PAULO 2025: SYNTHETIKA – Hassan Ragab

The City – The Wicked Emergence

Hassan Ragab

FILE SÃO PAULO 2025: SYNTHETIKA – Art and Technology – Installations
Electronic Language International Festival

 

The City – The Wicked Emergence – Egypt | United States 

BIO

Hassan Ragab is a new media artist, interdisciplinary designer and architect who leverages generative AI to discover new visual and conceptual vocabularies. A pioneer in the use of LLMs (Large Language Models) in architecture and art, Hassan explores how these tools can redefine creativity, challenge traditional boundaries, and foster new dialogues between technology, identity, and the built environment.

In partnership with the Architectural Association School of Architecture · The AA

FILE SÃO PAULO 2025: SYNTHETIKA – Thomas Marcusson

The MicroCinescope

Thomas Marcusson

FILE SÃO PAULO 2025: SYNTHETIKA – Art and Technology – Installations
Electronic Language International Festival

 

The MicroCinescope – Australia

The MicroCinescope is an interactive artwork merging art and science. A high-resolution screen, magnified by an antique brass microscope, shows a live feed from above the device and the surrounding visitors. Placing the audience literally under the lens, the piece invites reflection on ourselves and our cultural habits—such as visiting art exhibitions.

BIO

Thomas is an artist exploring the intersection of science and contemporary culture, blending technology with traditional media like sculpture, video, and installation. Studied mathematics in Gothenburg and earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Technology Sydney, working across Australia and Europe.

QUBIT AI: Michael Sadowski (aka derealizer)

Stealth Technology of Ancient, Cosmic Pantheons

FILE 2024 | Aesthetic Synthetics
International Electronic Language Festival
Michael Sadowski (aka derealizer) – Stealth Technology of Ancient, Cosmic Pantheons – Austria

An abstract painting in motion, with colors and shapes exploding and transforming to the rhythm of the music. The dynamic element is not trapped in a static image, but can unfold in time and space.

Bio

Using Stable Diffusion, a visual synthesizer, the artist turns fantasies into videos using just a PC, similar to the invention of printing 600 years ago. Exploring the interplay between software algorithms that create visual worlds and the artist’s mind guiding this process is incredibly exciting. Unlike traditional cinema, there is no ‘reality’ or humans involved, making it a satisfying medium for creating visual art.

Credits

Visuals: Michael Sadowski
Music: Stealth Technology of Ancient, Cosmic Pantheons by The Intangible

QUBIT AI: Michael Sadowski (aka derealizer)

Distortions of The Past

FILE 2024 | Aesthetic Synthetics
International Electronic Language Festival
Michael Sadowski (aka derealizer) – Distortions of The Past – Austria

Fractal elements that resemble cosmic structures evoke the illusion of traveling through a fractal universe. Rules, in the form of prompts, and chance interact with each other to create a visual fantasy.

Bio

Using Stable Diffusion, a visual synthesizer, the artist turns fantasies into videos using just a PC, similar to the invention of printing 600 years ago. Exploring the interplay between software algorithms that create visual worlds and the artist’s mind guiding this process is incredibly exciting. Unlike traditional cinema, there is no ‘reality’ or humans involved, making it a satisfying medium for creating visual art.

Credits

Visuals: Michael Sadowski
Music: Distortions of the Past by Dreamstate Logic

QUBIT AI: Leilanni Todd

Floating

FILE 2024 | Aesthetic Synthetics
International Electronic Language Festival
Leilanni Todd – Floating – United States

Floating explores the concept of surrendering and freeing oneself by allowing oneself to float, symbolizing overcoming adversity and mastering self-confidence. Inspired by her grandmother’s journey to overcome her fear of water through swimming, the work uses water and sea creatures as symbols of resilience and transformation. The personal narrative behind the work adds depth to its exploration of overcoming fears and discovering inner strength.

Bio

Leilanni Todd is an award-winning creative director with extensive experience in advertising, fashion and new media. Originally from Toronto and now based in New York, she harmoniously integrates art, technology and culture into her work. Through her FLOAM WORLD platform, Leilanni creates surreal narratives, reimagines traditional norms in fashion and advertising, and addresses complex human issues with humor and creativity.

QUBIT AI: Michael Sadowski (aka derealizer)

Magic Drops

FILE 2024 | Interator – Sound Synthetics
International Electronic Language Festival
Michael Sadowski (aka derealizer) – Magic Drops – Austria

Moving abstract structures and grimacing masks, colors that change and pulse to the rhythm of the music create a psychedelic experience that embodies the spirit of Techno.

Bio

Using Stable Diffusion, a visual synthesizer, the artist turns fantasies into videos using just a PC, similar to the invention of printing 600 years ago. Exploring the interplay between software algorithms that create visual worlds and the artist’s mind guiding this process is incredibly exciting. Unlike traditional cinema, there is no ‘reality’ or humans involved, making it a satisfying medium for creating visual art.

Credits

Music: Chris Robert

QUBIT AI: Michael Sadowski (aka derealizer)

In Love

FILE 2024 | Interator – Sound Synthetics
International Electronic Language Festival
Michael Sadowski (aka derealizer) – In Love – Austria

Fractal structures move to the sound of progressive house as the virtual camera navigates through this fractal world. To intensify the psychedelic quality, a second layer contrasts with the movement, resulting in a joyful madness of colors.

Bio

Using Stable Diffusion, a visual synthesizer, the artist turns fantasies into videos using just a PC, similar to the invention of printing 600 years ago. Exploring the interplay between software algorithms that create visual worlds and the artist’s mind guiding this process is incredibly exciting. Unlike traditional cinema, there is no ‘reality’ or humans involved, making it a satisfying medium for creating visual art.

Credits

Music: Y do I

Breakfast

Portraits in Black and Silver
Portraits in Black and Silver is an interactive kinetic artwork that uses BREAKFAST’s custom-engineered Flip-Disc medium. This computer-controlled installation invites you to become a part of its history. As you engage with the piece, it will record a brief clip of your interaction and play it back at a later time, cycling through all of the portraits captured. Flip-Discs are small dime-size circles that can rotate 60 times per second using electromagnets, creating abstract images of black and silver portraits. The artwork challenges your perception of what art can be and pushes the boundaries of traditional mediums.

Kino

MIT Media Lab, Stanford University
This work explores a dynamic future where the accessories we wear are no longer static, but are instead mobile, living objects on the body. Engineered with the functionality of 18 robotics, this “living” jewelry roams on unmodified clothing, changing location and reconfiguring appearance according to social context and enabling multitude presentations of self. With the addition of sensor devices, they transition into active devices which can react to environmental conditions. They can also be paired with existing mobile devices to become personalized on-body assistants to help complete tasks. Attached to garments, they generate shape-changing clothing and kinetic pattern designs–creating a new, dynamic fashion.
It is our vision that in the future, these robots will be miniaturized to the extent that they can be seamlessly integrated into existing practices of body ornamentation. With the addition of kinetic capabilities, traditionally static jewelry and accessories will start displaying life-like qualities, learning, shifting, and reconfiguring to the needs and preferences of the wearer, also assisting in fluid presentation of self. We envision a new class of future wearables that possess hybrid qualities of the living and the crafted, creating a new on-body ecology for human-wearable symbiosis.

Eli Cortiñas

The Body is The House, The House is But Haunted
.
Eli Cortiñas’ artistic practice traverses contemporary and historical visual cultures, which she dissects using montage and collage, displacing limiting attributions and creating space for feminist and decolonial narratives. These methods gradually reveal specific patterns which are often inherent in the images themselves. Juxtaposing what seems disparate, drawing parallels and uncovering commonalities, Cortiñas lays bare traditional conventions of representation and identifies surprisingly rigid narrative patterns.

Jacky Tsai

Golden Years
Jacky Tsai is a Chinese artist based in London. His inventive approach fuses traditional eastern artistic techniques and imagery with western Pop Art references to create an original style that seeks to establish balance and harmony between cultural extremes.

danny karas

sofi

in analysis of the modern skyscraper there is traditionally an aesthetic agenda that localizes itself in a “shoes” or “hat” location. The tower typology has ignored the possibility of a center distortion. This distortion acts as an aesthetic element as well as an organizational(programmatic) locator. By designing from the middle out there is a chance for the building to better blend with its context by keeping the processional elements in the center. Entrance and roof conditions mimic their tower brothers and give a moments rest in the exuberance of design. This proposal creates a center distortion and layers form through a simulation of gravity and the“claspyness” of the outer skin. The inner void acts as a way of creating a Secretary oriented office program rather than a traditional first floor security, freeing up the center of the building to the public. The project looks to rationalize itself through components rather than a monolithic form.

SCANLAB

FRAMERATE
Created from thousands of daily 3D time-lapse scans of British landscapes, the work observes change on a scale impossible to see with the lens of traditional cameras. This is not just an artwork. The data collected and presented by FRAMERATE is ground-breaking scientific research, containing empirical, measurable facts. We glimpse a future perpetually documented by the eyes of a billion autonomous vehicles and personal devices, creating high fidelity spatial records of the earth.

PHILIP GLASS

فيليب الزجاج
菲利普·格拉斯
פיליפ גלאס
フィリップ·グラス
필립 글래스
Филип Гласс
Einstein On The Beach

ROBERT WILSON
Portrait Trilogy:Einstein; Akhnaten; Gandhi

.
Einstein on the Beach is an opera in four acts (framed and connected by five “knee plays” or intermezzos), scored by Philip Glass and directed by theatrical producer Robert Wilson. The opera eschews traditional narrative in favor of a formalist approach based on structured spaces laid out by Wilson in a series of storyboards. The music was written “in the spring, summer and fall of 1975.”Glass recounts the collaborative process: “I put [Wilson’s notebook of sketches] on the piano and composed each section like a portrait of the drawing before me. The score was begun in the spring of 1975 and completed by the following November, and those drawings were before me all the time.”
full opera

Daniel Widrig

‘SnP’, 2018, recycled plastic, injection moulded

“Widrig’s art breaks down the boundaries between disciplines; borrowing tools traditionally associated with one industry and using them in other fields, in often unanticipated and exciting ways. Widrig uses computer simulation processes and advanced technologies adopted from the special effects business to create sculptural 3D-printed craftwork—digital designs materialize into intricate sculptures in glass or recycled plastic and furniture pieces with impeccable undulated thin surfaces,” Devid Gualandris

Jeremy Rotsztain

BECHA-KPACHA
BECHA-KPACHA is an algorithmic music video for the electronic musician COH. The song’s tittle (pronounced Vesna Krasna) was taken from an old Russian poem and roughly translates “Spring the beautiful”, though it can also mean “Spring the red.” The animation reference’s traditional Russian folk patterns, commonly known as Hohloma. In these patterns, colorful plant leaves expand and twist around one another while fruit grows along side. These patterns were a starting point for this sound-responsive animation.

François Vogel

Erebeta
« Erebeta » drives us on a vertical jump above the city. We ricochet on the pavement, twirl around the buildings and pass through streets. This bouncing point of view on modern Japan is accompanied by the traditional Kuroda Bushi music.

Eugenia Bakurin

La trahison des tapis
The title is a reference to the famous work by René Magritte “The Treachery of Images”. Even though the video installation alludes to it, the viewer is immediately aware that this is not a real carpet. What you see is an animation, a digital carpet, its contemporary variant. However, the patterns of the replica show that it could have been made in the west of Iran. The movements, which appear surreal, are reminiscent of a state of intoxication. Whether this was triggered by drugs, or only arose from the lively imagination of a tired child, is left to the speculation of the viewer. The work reflects the importance of traditional arts and crafts in the modern digital world. It is the first of a series of digital carpets.
The animation has a realistic resolution of 4k, is 03:55 minutes, and runs in an infinite loop on a 65-inch display.

Peter Eötvö

Peter Eötvös

Multiversum

Multiversum is written for two solo instruments and orchestra, for two instruments of the same family: the traditional organ with its rich but static colours and the modern Hammond, which can continuously change colours. It was very important for me that the sound of the two organs could completely wrap around the audience, like we imagine the cosmos envelops us. The traditional organ sounds from the front, the Hammond from the back. If we visualise the two organs as our galaxy, then the different groups of the orchestra can represent different galaxies. That’s how the “Universe” becomes the “Multiversum”.

Liam Young

Planet City

Planet City, by Los Angeles-based film director and architect Liam Young, explores the productive potential of extreme densification, where 10 billion people surrender the rest of the planet to a global wilderness. Although wildly provocative, Planet City eschews the techno-utopian fantasy of designing a new world order. This is not a neo-colonial masterplan to be imposed from a singular seat of power. It is a work of critical architecture – a speculative fiction grounded in statistical analysis, research and traditional knowledge.
It is a collaborative work of multiple voices and cultures supported by an international team of acclaimed environmental scientists, theorists and advisors. In Planet City we see that climate change is no longer a technological problem, but rather an ideological one, rooted in culture and politics.

Hybe

Light Tree: Interactive Dan Flavin
HYBE’s Light Tree: Interactive Dan Flavin re-illuminates the minimalist fluorescent light tubes of Dan Flavin from the 1960s, through digital technology. Experimenting with light and its effect, Flavin explored artistic meaning in relationships between light, situation, and environment. The readymade fluorescent light fixtures he used created space divided and adjusted by light and composition, offering a newly structured space with light. HYBE’s work expands the logic of Flavin by reinforcing the physical property of light through interactive media. It presents an escape from traditional lighting, as light and color changes when touched by viewers. Lighting here is divided into front and back, and colors are programmed to maintain complementary colors. The front lighting constantly interacts with colors on a back wall through visual contrast and mixture. A random change and diffusion of light with the involvement of viewers provokes tension extending and segmenting space, turning space into a forum for emotional perceptual experience.

Eric Singer/LEMUR

LEMUR GuitarBot
File Festival
The “LEMUR GuitarBot” is a robotically controlled electric slide guitar-like instrument. It is comprised of four independently controllable units which can pick and slide extremely rapidly. Resembling neither a traditional robot nor a guitar, it is a new type of instrument with markedly different capabilities than a human guitarist.

One Life Remains: André Berlemont, Kevin Lesur, Brice Roy & Franck Weber

FILE SAO PAULO 2017
LES DISCIPLINES DU RECTANGLE
Inspired by Michel Foucault’s work, Les disciplines du rectangle is a videogame proposition about the nature of rules and norms at the digital age. If society provides models of accomplishment we are supposed to fit inside, then the rectangle is the pure abstraction of this idea. The geometrical shape works as a symbol of the very nature of normativity, blind to individual differences. The rectangle, existing only on the screen, reveals how digital technologies can in some ways become the new location for this normativity and the ambivalent results of their intangible and invisible nature. Besides, the installation offers an occasion to think about the way games can become manipulation tools. The fact that in the end, players act as if they were piloted by the rectangle (an inversion of the traditional relationship between player and avatar) gives an aesthetical highlight to this.

.

Inspirado en el trabajo de Michel Foucault, Les disciplines du rectangle es una propuesta de videojuego sobre la naturaleza de las reglas y normas en la era digital. Si la sociedad proporciona modelos de realización en los que se supone que encajamos, entonces el rectángulo es la pura abstracción de esta idea. La forma geométrica funciona como símbolo de la naturaleza misma de la normatividad, ciega a las diferencias individuales. El rectángulo, que existe solo en la pantalla, revela cómo las tecnologías digitales pueden convertirse de alguna manera en la nueva ubicación de esta normatividad y los resultados ambivalentes de su naturaleza intangible e invisible. Además, la instalación ofrece la oportunidad de pensar en cómo los juegos pueden convertirse en herramientas de manipulación. El hecho de que, al final, los jugadores actúen como si fueran piloteados por el rectángulo (una inversión de la relación tradicional entre jugador y avatar) le da un toque estético a esto.

 

YOICHI YAMAMOTO

Japanese firm yoichi yamamoto architects has completed ‘2D/3D chairs’ for tokyo fashion labels issey miyake store. featuring a series of traditional dining chairs, the installation transforms from a two dimensional graphic into a tangible piece. The perspective is manipulated creating a unique appearance from different vantage points for onlookers. graphics of legs in varying perspectives are printed onto a horizontal plane while the chair backs rest upon the surface. The seat backs maintain a seamless transition from the graphics by utilizing assorted sizes, heights and placed at diverse angles.

JAUME PLENSA

Crown Fountain
Designed by Spanish artist Jaume Plensa, the Crown Fountain in Millennium Park is a major addition to the city’s world-renowned public art collection. The fountain consists of two 50-foot glass block towers at each end of a shallow reflecting pool. The towers project video images from a broad social spectrum of Chicago citizens, a reference to the traditional use of gargoyles in fountains, where faces of mythological beings were sculpted with open mouths to allow water, a symbol of life, to flow out.

Jascha Dormann

Sounds of Silence
Inside the exhibition, there’s not a word of written text, and few traditional photos or videos. Instead, you get abstract spatial graphics. Tracking systems respond as you navigate the exhibit, and an unseen voice hints at what you might do. There’s a snowy cotton-like entry, radio-like sound effects, and then a pathway to explore silence from the start of the universe until this century.

Zaha Hadid Architects

bow chair
designed by Zaha Hadid Architects, Ross Lovegrove and Daniel Widrig

Bow is the latest result of the extensive, ongoing research that ZHA is conducting within the domains of 3D printing and material experimentation.The chair combines pristine design informed by structural optimisation processes typically found in nature, with innovative materials and the most advanced fabrication methods. The pattern and the colour gradient concur in redefining the traditional spatial relationship between furniture and its setting.

Mariko Mori

Enlightenment Capsule
“Enlightenment Capsule, which featured a rainbow-colored acrylic lotus blossom set within a space-age capsule illuminated by sunlight. …Enlightenment Capsule blends traditional symbolism with futuristic elements.” Katrina Klaasmeyer

Anders Lind and Ulla Karlsson

Skogen/The forest
Skogen/The forest is an interactive sound art exhibition created by Swedish composer Anders Lind in collaboration with Swedish scenographer Ulla Karlsson. THE FOREST is created as a multiplayer orchestra platform for novices (or experts). Within THE FOREST the visitors becomes orchestra performers ready to explore preprocessed sounds from the Swedish forest in combination with sounds from a traditional symphony orchestra. THE FOREST was first exhibited at Norrlandsoperan, Umeå, Sweden in 2019.

PAUL CHAN

ODYSSEUS AND THE BATHERS

Far from the traditional pastoral scenes that are evoked by the exhibition’s title, the New York-based artist has conjured a bright and minimalist series of kinetic sculptures at the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens.For the new works, the artist drew inspiration from Ancient Greece. This was not only through the titles of his work, which play on the names of characters from The Odyssey, but also through an exploration of the characteristics of the protagonists.Abstract and enigmatic, Paul Chan artfully brings the philosophical tethering of Ancient Greek thought to a modern and relatable new setting. Odysseus’ drive to return to his home after the Trojan War, and the way in which he navigates the journey, becomes a poignant metaphor for contemporary experience.

Quayola

Transient
Transient – Impermanent paintings is an audiovisual concert for two motorized pianos and two conductors in collaboration with generative algorithms. Hyper-realistic digital brushstrokes articulate endlessly on a large-scale projection as if on a real canvas. Each brushstroke is sonified with a piano note, creating polyphonic synesthetic landscapes. The project continues Quayola’s research on traditional artistic techniques in the context of human-machine relationship, this time gradually withdrawing from formal subjects and giving way to the computational substance: the algorithm.

Tobias Gremmler

Virtual Actors in Chinese Opera
Created for a theater piece that fuses Chinese Opera  with New Media, the virtual actors are inspired by shapes, colors and motions of traditional Chinese costumes and dance. The project explores how costumes and motions can virtually reshape a human body.

Verena Friedrich

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.

Nelo Akamatsu

Chijikinkutsu
“Chijikinkutsu” is a coinage, specially created for the title of this work by mingling two Japanese words: “Chijiki” and “Suikinkutsu”.”Chijiki” means geomagnetism: terrestrial magnetic properties that cannot be sensed by the human body but that exists everywhere on earth. Since long before the Age of Discovery, people have traveled with navigation using compasses employing geomagnetism. In recent years, various devises that utilize geomagnetism have even been incorporated into smartphones[…] “Suikinkutsu” is a sound installation for a Japanese traditional garden, invented in the Edo period. The sounds of water drops falling into an earthenware pot buried under a stone wash basin resonate through hollow bamboo utensils. The concept of the work “Chijikinkutsu” does not derive from experimentalism of science and technology on which media arts rely, nor from architectural theory of western music upon which some sound arts lay their foundation. While utilizing the action of geomagnetism normally treated as a subject of science, this sound installation expands the subtle sounds of “Suikinkutsu” in the context of Japanese perspective on Nature.

Diana Thater

Abyss of Light

Abyss of Light is divided into three screens and into three acts, the traditional structure of classic narrative film. In the first act, all the images synchronize to form a single panorama of Bryce Canyon in Utah. In the second, the screens break away from one another into three parallel sequences wherein each projection shows the same one hundred images at different speeds. In the third, all three images synchronize once again to form a single wrapping panorama of Death Valley, California. The work is an ode to the American western, one of my favorite film genres. Despite my admiration, however, my desire is not to imitate westerns. Instead, I set up an abstraction in opposition to the idea of narrative, something that can be seen in all of my work. In Abyss of Light, continuous disruptions of the American landscape document my refusal to see the land as backdrop for man’s heroic conquering of the wild; instead I see it as a foreground, a subject to be contemplated for itself and for which wildness is a state of grace.

REIN VOLLENGA

The Ultimate Acceptance
THE ARTIST REIN VOLLENGA IS KNOWN FOR HIS HIGHLY VISCERAL SCULPTURES THAT SHOW A FASCINATION FOR THE HUMAN BODY MERGED WITH A SYNTHETIC AESTHETIC. THESE OPPOSITES ARE REFLECTED IN HIS TECHNIQUE OF COMBINING FOUND GENERIC OBJECTS WITH TRADITIONALLY HAND-SCULPTED MATERIAL, THE CRAFTSMANSHIP BEING IN STARK CONTRADICTION TO THE SLEEK HIGH GLOSS SURFACES OF THE FINISHED WORK. VOLLENGA’S SCULPTURES HAVE BEEN EXHIBITED IN BOTH MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES.

Vincent Lapp

“To me couture is the best source of excitement in fashion. Our debut collection was mix between couture orientated fashion and ready-to-wear. With AV Couture, I hope to create a true couture atelier, which stands for traditional craftsmanship and perfection.
Working for my own label was always my biggest dream. AV Couture is an instrument to visualize our thoughts, and all the society’s absurdities we think are essential to tackle.” Vincent Lapp

SAM TAYLOR WOOD

a little death

Despite the broader reference to the traditional pictorial genre of “still life”, disseminated from the Dutch and Spanish painters of the 15th, 16th and 17th centuries, ‘Still life’ from 2001 and ‘A little death’ from 2002 refer especially to the painting of transient elements of the French Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin (1699-1779) to discuss the distortion and inexorability of time, the finitude of life or, above all, the interdependence between life and death. The title makes a direct reference to the expression with which the French philosopher Georges Bataille defined the orgasm: ‘une petite mort‘.

ELIŠKA SKY

Kingdom of Sport
Series Kingdom of Sport connects the reference to the traditional renaissance portraits and modern sport culture. It was inspired by the classic portrait painting and the greek mythology, especially visible in the short film. Each model demonstrates their constructed ‘royal’ character with one type of sport specialisation. Sport equipment is cleverly integrated into the styling, fashion accessories and set design.