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Liam Johnson

Liam was chosen for the scholarship by lead designer at Alexander McQueen, Sarah Burton. He spent his year in industry in Paris, working at Maison Margiela under John Galliano, working personally with the designer on both the artisanal and ready-to-wear collections. As a designer, his own collections often centre upon alternatives to normal fashion and instead offer remodelled silhouettes, bright colours, unexpected textures and sculptural, exaggerated forms.

SyncDon II

Akihito Ito + Issey Takahashi
FILE FESTIVAL 2018
story changes in the body as it acclimates to a new rhythm. Participating in the installation can bring about unexpected emotional responses that also affect heart rate variability and, thereby, get recorded, too. The reason why the gift-box is used as an indicator of the heartbeat is because it is a metaphor of a “Gift.

Bernardi Roig

NO/Escape
Mallorcan artist Bernardi Roig (b. 1965) installs six sculptural works in unexpected interior and exterior spaces, challenging visitors to rethink the definition of the museum. Roig draws parallels between his and Honoré Daumier’s works, both of which offer poignant social commentary. Roig addresses the existential dualities of entrapment and liberation, blinding and illumination, absence and presence. Typical of the artist’s work are the cruel-looking white plaster figures cast from real people, often cornered or crushed against walls or twisting in pain. By including the element of light—whether a single light bulb, neon tubes, or fluorescent lights—Roig’s work blends minimalist forms with highly charged expressions of anxiety and loneliness.

ŽIL Julie Vostalová

ZIL

“DEVELOP A NEGATIVE INTO A POSITIVE PICTURE”

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Phygital way of designing that captures a momentum of transition between digital and physical worlds.
Digital and sustainable fashion with respect to materiality propose no-waste patterning that uses the technique of cut-ups to be assembled into a garment. Inspiration comes from the process of deconstructing historical garments and unexpected assemblage.

BILL VIOLA

The Raft
The Raft depicts at life-sized scale a group of ordinary people casually standing together. Suddenly, they are struck by strong blasts of water that rush in, overtake them, and then, just as unexpectedly, recede. In the aftermath of the deluge, the victims huddle together, seek protection, and help those who have fallen. The viewer experiences this event in an immersive setting, standing in a darkened room and surrounded by the roaring sounds of the water. Meticulously captured in slow-motion, The Raft arouses a visceral experience of human calamity and shared humanity, provoking a consideration of the range of responses to crisis.

SNARKITECTURE

The Beach
The Beach is an interactive installation that reimagines the familiar natural and cultural elements of a day at the beach, to create an unexpected and memorable experience for people of all ages. Visitors ascend a ramp before entering an all-white enclosure, where the floor descends towards the highlight of the experience – an ocean of over one million recyclable, antimicrobial plastic balls. A pier extends out into the sea’, allowing people to stand in the center of the space and watch others, while an island invites exploration and discovery. Visual cues such as deck chairs, lifeguard chairs, umbrellas, and signage recall elements of the typical beach-going experience.

Ronald van der Meijs

Odoshi Cloud Sequence
A symbiosis between nature and culture is created against the backdrop of the Japanese garden in the pond of the Amstelpark. This artwork explores new possibilities to generate sound and composition that are controlled by slow, unpredictable and unexpected elements of nature which are highly respected in Japanese culture. The diversity of natural sounds gives the work an almost meditative character, while the dependance on natural factors evoke a tension between longing and acceptance. This sound installation engages, as a natural sequencer, in a dialogue with the water, sun wind and clouds. It refers to Japanese garden culture by using the principle of the Japanese bamboo water tumbler.

Pangenerator

The shimmering pulse
The installation consists of 451 independent modules arranged in a form of hexagon – each module reacts to light it receives by spinning iridescent disc that spreads out thanks to centrifugal force, creating a unique kinetic “physical pixel”. That field of shimmering pixels is combined with light projection mapped onto the installation surface to visualize real-time data of the traffic in the Shenzhen area – the hexagon is divided into sections corresponding the 9 city districts. As a result the public can observe and interact with the object that represents the pulse of life of the city in an artful and unexpected way.

Manuel Rossner

Hotfix
In the midst of the pandemic, people experience every day that technology such as smartphones and the Internet make social distance bearable. With his AR sculpture, Manuel Rossner shows how technology can become a hotfix, a quick solution to an unexpected challenge. “Hotfix” with its bubbles and lines is a playful introduction to problem solving through gamification.

Patricia Olynyk

Oculus
Oculus is a large-scale, collaborative light sculpture that depicts a colossal abstracted drosophila eye, replete with compound faceted surfaces. It both recalls the circular opening at the apex of a cupola and alludes to a surveillance device or drone hovering in mid-air. Oculus is inspired in part by a series of scanning electron micrographs produced in a transgenic lab while researching human and non-human sensoria. The work evokes affective encounters with scale such as viewing miniature particles through the lens of a microscope or wandering through monumental physical environments. As each viewer’s reflection plays across the sculpture’s undulating surface, the apprehension of the self affects both individual and collective behavior in unexpected ways. This affective dynamic plays on the precariousness of our coexistence with other lifeforms in the world, one that is always contingent upon viewers’ bodies and the variability of the environment around them. The act of gazing at Oculus also puts into play the reciprocal condition of both seeing and being seen.

Maotik

Erratic Weather
Despite some world leaders skepticism, climate change is a reality and the world isn’t just warming, in some parts of the planet the weather is becoming more erratic. During the last years, our generation has started to observe the effects and consequences of this shift, witnessing violent and unexpected climate phenomenons. Erratic Weather is a digital art project aiming to represent changing atmospheric conditions into an immersive multimedia experience. During the performance, the system uses various source of weather information retrieved from an online database and processed on real time to generate a visual and a surround sound composition. During 30 minutes the audience will experience the life cycle of swirling phenomenons such typhoon, hurricane and tropical cyclone , demonstrating the devastating power of the nature and the emergency to preserve it.

Carsten Höller

卡斯滕·奥莱
КАРСТЕН ХЕЛЛЕР
Dice (White Body, Black Dots)
“Carsten Höller likes to unsettle, upset, delight and surprise. You get out of one of his shows and feel like you’ve lived through ‘something’ new and totally unexpected.”Régine Debatty

TIM HAWKINSON

蒂姆·霍金森
ティム·ホーキンソン
تيم هاوكينسون
Möbius Ship

The ambitious and imaginative structure of Hawkinson’s sculpture offers an uncanny visual metaphor for Melville’s epic tale, which is often considered the ultimate American novel. Möbius Ship also humorously refers to the mathematical concept of the Möbius Strip. Named after a nineteenth-century astronomer and mathematician, the Möbius Strip is a surface that has only one side, and exists as a continuous curve. Its simple yet complex spatial configuration presents a visual puzzle that parallels Hawkinson’s transformation of the mundane materials into something unexpected.

olafur eliasson

Seeing spheres
Each of olafur eliasson’s seeing spheres supports a flat, circular mirrored face, framed by a ring of LED lights, which is oriented inward to reflect the mirrored faces of the surrounding spheres. Together they produce a surprising environment of multilayered, reflected spaces in which the same people and settings appear again and again, visible from various unexpected angles. Tunnel-like sets of nested reflections open up in the mirrors, repeating countless times and disappearing into the distance.

David Colombini

Attachment
This poetic machine prints your message and a code on a sheet A6, slips it into a biopolymer cylinder attached to a balloon, which is finally released into the air. Then, the balloon will travel haphazardly to a potential recipient.
Where did the idea come from? The basic idea was to take a stand against the current use of «smart» technologies by creating a poetic concept, using current technology that allows us to communicate differently and rediscover expectation, the random, and the unexpected.
For the record, I have always been attracted by what is in the air and remember having won a balloon release contest when I was about ten years old. My balloon flew from Switzerland to Austria, this definitely left an impression on me and perhaps influenced the idea of this project.

RANDOM INTERNATIONAL

随机国际
rain room

Using digital technology, “Rain Room” is a carefully choreographed downpour—a monumental work that encourages people to become performers on an unexpected stage, while creating an intimate atmosphere of contemplation. Visitors can literally walk through rain, as though surrounded by an invisible magnetic field, and never get wet.

KILIAN ENG

Kilian Eng is an illustrator/graphic designer based in Stockholm, Sweden. Born in 1982, he graduated from the Konstfack University of Arts Craft & Design in 2010 with a masters in storytelling, graphic design and illustration. A couple of years ago, he discovered the possibilities of working with computers, and digital illustration proved to give him the flow he was looking for. His works are rich in colours and most often depict alternative worlds in which imagination takes over and creates the unexpected.

Los Carpinteros

ロス·テロス
ЛОС-КАРПИНТЕРОС
150 People

Interested in the intersection between art and society, the group merges architecture, design, and sculpture in unexpected and often humorous ways. They create installations and drawings which negotiate the space between the functional and the nonfunctional. The group’s elegant and mordantly humorous sculptures, drawings, and installations draw their inspiration from the physical world—particularly that of furniture. Their carefully crafted works use humor to exploit a visual syntax that sets up contradictions among object and function 
as well as practicality and uselessness.

TOM FRIEDMAN

Фридмен, Том
톰 프리드먼
トム・フリードマン

Tom Friedman’s art has been exhibited extensively in the United States and internationally. The quirky, and flawlessly executed work tends to defy categorization. While his art is often linked to 1960s Conceptualism and Minimal art, Friedman invents his own visual language through his almost obsessive attentiveness to detail and his striking ability to transform the familiar into the unexpected. He uses common household materials such as aluminum foil, spaghetti, fishing line, hair, Styrofoam, and Play-Doh to create works that rearrange the viewer’s perceptions of the everyday environment.

EIJA-LIISA AHTILA

Vaakasuora-Horizontal
The artwork shows a 11-metre tall spruce, with its branches swaying in the wind, filmed at full scale in six parts. The soundscape consists of the sound of the wind, the creaking of the trunk and birdsong. The method of display is, however, unexpected: it is shown in a horizontal position.Vaakasuora-Horizontal is a portrait of a spruce. It is an interpretation of the essence of the spruce, and the difficulty of observing and recording the life of a spruce. How can one capture the very being of a spruce? Each viewer will see the reality differently and each one of them will see the spruce trough glasses tinted by their personal memories and experiences. The artist has wanted to use this artwork to represent the German biologist Jakob von Uexküell’s idea of the parallel and concurrent existence of time and spatial worlds. The work of art, on the other hand, also moves the focus from the human being as the centre of the universe to the greatness of nature; people play a minor part in the greater picture.

Raffaello D’Andrea and Max Dean

The Table
The Table is an autonomous robot with an automatic mechanized system able to react to unexpected movement or obstacles and to carry out one or more tasks by executing a program in a given environment. As is the case with most “prototypical” robotic works, or single editions, the basic physical components can be pre-manufactured then modified or custom built to meet specific needs. In the case of The Table, the control system and its algorithms were entirely conceived by Max Dean and Raffallo D’Andrea. All the components, including the wheels and motors, were also custom manufactured, giving the installation a unique character. The singular characteristic of this work lies in the robotic nature of the table and it’s capacity to operate in an environment specifically designed for it. For example, the shade of red painted on the floor is directly linked to the effective functioning of the camera and the control software. Also, the space lights used in the room produce a light that prevents the creation of shadows, which the software could mistakenly interpret as a physical presence.

KYLE MCDONALD

Face Substitution

Faces is an interactive installation result of the work on face substitution in collaboration with Arturo Castro

“The installation is based on the idea of wishing for a new identity: when the subject first steps up, they see their face unmodified. After closing their eyes to make a wish and opening them again, they discover they are wearing a new face. The result is a mixture of a playful, surprising and some times scary experience.This installation takes advantage of the unique experience of slowly recognizing yourself as someone else playing also with the concept of the uncanny valley by showing a face that perfecly matches the visitors facial expresion but still has some lighting and texturing imperfections. This elicits everything from laughter, to surprise, or repulsion.Knowing that it takes approximately one second for someone to respond to a completely unexpected event, we store a photograph at 1.5 seconds after the swap — capturing that moment of realization.”Arturo Castro

 

Cod.Act

振り子の合唱団
CYCLOID-E

This piece, which comprises a series of tubular pieces arranged horizontally and activated by a motor, generates a particular sound through its movement, which is unexpectedly harmonic. The artists have taken their interest in the mechanisms that generate wave motions as a starting point to create this sculpture: five metal tubes joined together feature sound sources and sensors that allow them to emit different sounds based on their rotations.
The sculpture runs through a series of rhythmic movements, like a dance, creating, in the words of the artists themselves, “a unique kinetic and polyphonic work, in the likeness of the “Cosmic Ballet” to which the physicist Johannes Kepler refers to in his “Music of the Spheres” in 1619.” This work is part of the reflection on the possible interactions between sound and movement developed by the artists since 1999, using electronic devices and inspired by the aesthetics of industrial machinery.

Joon Y. Moon

Augmented Shadow
File Festival

Augmented Shadow is a design experiment producing an artificial shadow effect through the use of tangible objects, blocks, on a displayable tabletop interface. Its goal is to offer a new type of user-experience. The project plays on the fact that shadows present distorted silhouettes depending on the light. Augmented Shadows take the distortion effect into the realm of fantasy. Shadows display below the objects according to the physics of the real world. However, the shadows themselves transform the objects into houses, occupied by shadow creatures. By moving the blocks around the table the user sets off series of reactions within this new fantasy ecosystem. In this installation, the shadows exist both in a real and a virtual environment simultaneously. It thus brings augmented reality to the tabletop by way of a tangible interface. The shadow is an interface metaphor connecting the virtual world and users. Second, the unexpected user experience results from manipulating the users’ visual perceptions, expectations, and imagination to inspire re-perception and new understanding. Therefore, users can play with the shadows lying on the boundary between the real, virtual, and fantasy. Augmented Shadow utilizes this unique interface metaphor for interactive storytelling. Maximizing the magical amusement of AR, it is embedding an ecosystem where imaginary objects and organic beings co-exist while each of them influences on each other’s life-cycle, even though it is not in use by users. Light and shadow play critical roles in this world’s functions causing chain reactions between virtual people, trees, birds, and houses. A set of tangible blocks allows users to participate in the ecosystem. Users can influence on the system by playing with the blocks or observe the changes of the shadows as if kids were playing with an ant farm.

HOWARD SHORE

The Hobbit An Unexpected Journey Soundtrack
Tracklist:
00:00:00 – My Dear Frodo
00:06:58 – Old Friends
00:12:18 – An Unexpected Party
00:16:00 – Axe or Sword?
00:21:56 – Misty Mountains
00:23:30 – The Adventure Begins
00:25:28 – The World is Ahead
00:27:37 – An Ancient Enemy
00:32:28 – Radagast the Brown
00:37:13 – Roast Mutton
00:40:50 – A Troll-hoard
00:43:43 – The Hill of Sorcery
00:47:28 – Warg-scouts
00:50:25 – The Hidden Valley
00:54:10 – Moon Runes
00:57:24 – The Defiler
00:58:32 – The White Council
01:05:48 – Over Hill
01:09:22 – A Thunder Battle
01:13:11 – Under Hill
01:15:00 – Riddles in the Dark
01:20:15 – Brass Buttons
01:27:50 – Out of the Frying-Pan
01:33:40 – A Good Omen
01:39:20 – Song of the Lonely Mountain
01:43:22 – Dreaming of Bag End