Modules

Modules is a VR art experience, where architecture, sculpture, film, and music blend together to immerse viewers into Zhestkov’s world. A total work of art, it is a world that questions the established definitions of our reality. In digital space, we can abandon the logic of reality and are freed from its boundaries. New worlds with total freedom are possible, worlds only limited by our creativity and the potential of art.

Simulation Hypothesis

In Simulation Hypothesis, Zhestkov equally seeks inspiration in pre-historic cultures of cave art and ancient bas-reliefs. He plays with a visuality that precedes written language, from a time in which early humans used clay to make vessels and figurines.
The artist uses the inspiration from ancient forms of art and transforms it into digital sculptures using simulations and algorithms based on principles of nature.
The show takes viewers on a conceptual journey, immersing them first in Clouds of Creation, a large-scale projection that recreates the Big Bang, and then guiding them through micro manifestations of this transformative moment of genesis.

Embodied Simulation

‘Embodied Simulation’ is a multiscreen video and sound installation that aims to provoke and nurture strong connections to the global ecosystems of which we are a part. The work combines artificial intelligence with dance and research from neuroscience to create an immersive, embodied experience, extending the viewer’s bodily perception beyond the skin, and into the environment.
The cognitive phenomenon of embodied simulation (an evolved and refined version of ‘mirror neurons’ theory) refers to the way we feel and embody the movement of others, as if they are happening in our own bodies. The brain of an observer unconsciously mirrors the movements of others, all the way through to the planning and simulating execution of the movements in their own body. This can even be seen in situations such as embodying and ‘feeling’ the movement of fabric blowing in the wind. As Vittorio Gallese writes, “By means of a shared neural state realized in two different bodies that nevertheless obey to the same functional rules, the ‘objectual other’ becomes ‘another self’.”

Interwoven Existence

The artwork draws inspiration from the concept that individual human beings are interconnected rather than isolated. It is a visual representation of collective strength and diversity. The artwork is divided into sections of various sizes and colors, each symbolizing the diverse origins of people around the world.
As viewers approach the artwork, it becomes interactive, reflecting their image across the piece. Upon stepping away, a recording of their interaction is placed into one of the sections, symbolizing the randomness of a given person’s birthplace and socioeconomic position. Subsequently, recorded video clips of previous viewers are displayed in adjacent sections, integrating new viewers into the existing community of participants.

Kelly Luck
Strangeland 1 (excerpt)

FILE 2024 | Aesthetic Synthetics
International Electronic Language Festival
Kelly Luck – Strangeland 1 (excerpt) – United States

From a surrealist point of view, the main attraction of generative AI, for the artist, is its lack of memory. At any given moment, she only has the current frame and instructions on how to proceed, similar to free association in dreams. This work is part of a series of long-term environments designed to immerse the viewer in a constantly evolving and never-ending landscape, inviting relaxation and engagement.

Bio

As part of the first generation to grow up around computers, Kelly Luck quickly became fascinated with the creative possibilities of this new technology. Her journey has ranged from pixel art and graphic ‘hacks’ to the 90s demoscene, 2D and later 3D graphics, and now the modern tools of digital art. With the emergence of generative AI, it endlessly explores how technology continues to blur the line between imagination and reality.

Brain Entity

FILE 2024 | Interator – Sound Synthetics
International Electronic Language Festival
Luigi Novellino (aka PintoCreation) – Brain Entity – Italy

In a laboratory, a brain-like organism grows rapidly, integrating with technology and evolving into a giant entity that manipulates objects with its mind. He hypnotizes the city, absorbing energy and creating patterns. Efforts to stop him fail, signaling a battle to understand existence. This symbolizes a new era of coexistence, urging us to embrace interconnectivity and navigate a more integrated world.

Bio

Fascinated by the limitless domain of AI, Luigi Novellino adopts the title syntographer, a term that resonates deeply within the community. The artist often asks himself: “am I an artist?” Art, in his view, defies rigid definitions or limits; it represents a fluid expression of creativity that transcends labels. The artist’s ultimate goal is to awaken something in the viewer, provoking thoughts and evoking emotions.

Credits

Music: Odyssey by John Tasoulas

Blob Alien Mouth

FILE 2024 | Interator – Sound Synthetics
International Electronic Language Festival
Luigi Novellino (aka PintoCreation) – Blob Alien Mouth – Italy

The journey begins with Deforum, using the Automatic1111 interface to create basic images with the StableDiffusion XL, EndjourneyXL, and Lora XLFullArt templates. The video undergoes a transformation using the Absolute Reality model and Lora Aurora style, guided by the IPAdapter node and refined by QrCode Controlnet.

Bio

Fascinated by the limitless domain of AI, Luigi Novellino adopts the title syntographer, a term that resonates deeply within the community. The artist often asks himself: “am I an artist?” Art, in his view, defies rigid definitions or limits; it represents a fluid expression of creativity that transcends labels. The artist’s ultimate goal is to awaken something in the viewer, provoking thoughts and evoking emotions.

Credits

Music: Oleh Boretskyi

COIL
The COIL installation is a space for reflection and a feeling of connection between people. COIL resembles a teleport and with this meaning it carries the phenomenon of teleportation. It is something impossible, but the consequences of escaping into it are instantaneous movement and farewell to eternal time. Any venue with art or raves is already an attempt to escape. So COIL pulls the viewer out of chronos and opens access to the eternal.

DET LYTTENDE SPEJL
Visitors to DNV-Gødstrup, a new hospital near Herning, Denmark, are greeted at the main entrance by an airy, round pavilion. Two curved pipes, crossing one another perpendicularly, hold a large disc aloft at a slight angle. The reflective underside of the disc mirrors the semicircular pipes, creating the illusion of two complete circles passing through the ceiling and rising into an imaginary space above. As visitors enter the pavilion, they can gaze up at their own reflections in the mirror and see themselves incorporated, upside down, into the artwork, embraced within the globe drawn by the pipes. The tilt of the ceiling allows the reflections to be seen from the outside. As the viewer moves towards and around the pavilion, the rings appear to shift in shape, changing from ellipses to circles and back again.

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

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

Principles of Motion
For Principles of Motion, UVA uses a rotating LED disc to create an abstract rotating and shifting kinematic landscape that plays with the viewer’s perception of movement and reflects the phenomenon of persistence of vision (sparkler’s trail effect / pov display). By varying the luminosity of the LED, the kinetic landscape moves and gives the viewer a sense of space and time. While observing the abstract rotating patterns and rhythms, the optic nerve of the recipient replicates the effect of an afterimage on the eye.

The Garden
The Garden is a living artwork that embraces the dichotomy between the natural environment and a synthetic man-made experience. Aitken’s The Garden installation brings the viewer into the center of the artwork and asks them to physically immerse, participate and become the subject of the installation. Set inside a dark warehouse space the viewer walks inside, their eyes adjusting to become aware of thick lush jungle growing under artificial grow lights. Walking closer, the viewer enters inside the jungle and discovers a huge rectangular glass cube. Inside the glass room is a man-made environment replete with generic elements of modern life: tables and chairs, a cabinet, a sterile tableau set under bright raking lights.

Ritual
An undisclosed location. Dry land under a scorching sun. Something abominable has happened here in recent memory. Now a ritual is taking place. The remains of what was once human are flickering in darkness. Nature is reclaiming what is hers. She is savage and unforgiving. She is laughing at us. Her sinister laughter echoes in the emptiness. Ritual re-imagines the notion of site-specificity within the mediated landscape. The digital and physical work for this exhibition sit in a forgotten mining town somewhere in the California desert. The viewer is invited to interact with Triantafyllidis’ new live simulation, sculptures and custom electronics blurring the line between the real life and online experience

Nature Morte
Nature Morte focuses on Nauman’s long relationship to his own studio, a variation on his four unique multi-projection videos, Mapping the Studio (2001). Three viewing stations, each consisting of an iPad linked to a wall-sized projection, provide an interactive exploration of the 3D studio space. Only now the artist is absent, and the participant becomes performer as he/she manipulates the large scale video projections on an iPad using touch control. The participant is free to navigate anywhere throughout the space, selecting broad vistas or individual objects. Using a hand-held 3D scanner, Nauman recorded hundreds of images that allow participants to select an object and locate close-up anything found there, and further reorient the image to see an object from above and below, and at times inside-out. The resulting mobility intensifies the experience of the viewer/performer. Presenting a static, but immersive re-creation of his studio space, Nauman’s pieces once again play at the tenuous lines between the body and space, perception and physical material.

Chimes
Chimes is an interactive, audio-reactive experience that translates the sound of a room into digital wind, setting in motion an exploration of space, music and time. The installation invites the viewer to surrender to the interplay of spatial sound, touch, air, movement and noise and to discover ever new facets in a constantly changing environment.

Present Shock
Present Shock confronts the viewer with a barrage of statistical clocks representing real-time information about the world—from life-changing global events to the banal trivia of everyday existence—highlighting how the speed and volume of data in the Information Age present new challenges to our limited cognitive apparatus. Many of the statistics presented occur at timescales and spatial horizons that similarly defy our perception or comprehension. Disturbing the inertia of the here and now, they reveal the fluctuating state of dynamic transformation that characterizes life on earth.

Primordial
Primordial is a generative artwork made from code, depicting a stylised, coloured take on cellular microscopic life. The flow of organisms projected onto the floor are audio responsive, moving and growing to the pulse of sound. These creatures navigate the space in their own freeform way, naturally encouraging viewers to flow into the exhibition.

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.

Symbiosis
In the installation area, the human body is augmented with video projected virtual images. Viewer and technology enter a symbiotic relationship and as a result, bring to life wonderful biomorphic creatures. They change constantly – reacting to your every movement and turning into new and unique forms each time. The installation was inspired by the symmetry of living organisms, the structure of exotic insects, and reflections on extraterrestrial life forms.

19Returning the Gaze
‘Returning the Gaze’ is an cyber-physical robotic installation by Behnaz Farahi supported by Universal Robots for ANNAKIKI’s Milan Fashion Week. ‘Returning the Gaze’ is an exploration of this scenario. In the center, a female model wears a spacesuit-like outfit and a headpiece fitted with two tiny cameras. The cameras track and capture the movements of the model’s eyes, and enlarging and displaying them on four monitors mounted moving around on robotic arms glaring back at the observers. The gaze of the model is thereby directed back at the viewer, extended and enhanced through cyborgian technologies.

Ascent
Ascent is a large-scale site-specific light installation that embodies a variety of archetypical and physical associations – from microscopic observations, electromagnetic wave dynamics, and atmospheric phenomena of a whirlwind to a spiritual epiphany. Most importantly, Ascent offers a unique immersive experience, that invites the viewer to become its central point, and transforms the perception of the viewer on a sensual level. The light and the fog create a monumental dynamic space that is participatory, the space that opens up a new dimension and directs the attention toward the bodily sensations in the explicit environment. The viewer is free to approach the work according to its own sensual response, but direct interaction can offer the potential to evoke a new perceptual imagination.

TOKYO METACLOUD
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Vincent Leroy onthult ‘Tokyo Metacloud’, een gigantische zwevende wolk die door de straten van de japanse metropool trekt. De installatie, bestaande uit dunne gebogen bladen, speelt met de balans tussen materiaal, lucht en transparantie om een ​​indruk van extreme lichtheid te creëren. Nogmaals, het poëtische en contemplatieve universum van Leroy maakt kijkers los van de echte wereld en nodigt hen uit om te genieten van een meeslepende, dromerige ervaring.
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Vincent Leroy unveils ‘Tokyo Metacloud’, a gigantic floating cloud that sweeps through the streets of the Japanese metropolis. The installation, consisting of thin curved blades, plays with the balance between material, air and transparency to create an impression of extreme lightness. Again, Leroy’s poetic and contemplative universe detaches viewers from the real world and invites them to enjoy an immersive, dreamlike experience.

Blueskywhite
Devlin’s latest installtion is ‘BLUESKYWHITE’, a large-scale work commissioned by 180 Studios, which is currently showing at LUX: New Wave of Contemporary Art, a new exhibition co-curated by Fact and SUUM Project. The work combines light, music and language, and was conceived as a sculptural expression of our emotional response to the possible extinction of blue sky. The installation is formed of two parts: In Part I, text from Byron’s 1816 poem Darkness underscores the viewer’s passage through a 24m long red-lit tunnel. Part II draws from contemporary solar geo-engineering models documented by Elizabeth Kolbert and others which suggest that a haze of suspended particles might reduce global temperature to pre-industrial levels and might also turn the blue sky white.

Park Lage
In the installation, an 11m x 15m x 25m orange inflatable that completely covered the historic courtyard, the viewer accesses the interior of the work and observes how the previously known space, or not, was reconfigured by a monochromatic plastic cover, through which only the shapes of a reality that has just become a work are drawn. This work makes visible a space that was previously just the place where things live. A work that the wind, the sun, the rain and the passing of people keeps alive, breathing.

#define Moon_
[#define Moon_ ] consists of 9 rotating kinect light installations. It presents different postures of moon shape, exerting new sense experiences. The audience is allowed to explore through various ways of looking and bring curiosity to the installation by watching from different angles. By thinking of the science spirit, once again, viewer can define and understand the concept of this work of their own.

Daniel Jolliffe
R.I.P
FILE SÃO PAULO 2017
Perfect View
the viewer encounters a badly damaged Cloisonné vase, mounted on a white plinth. When the viewer comes within a few meters of the piece, the vase begins to turn silently, adjusting its position so as to always show the viewer a perfect view of its undamaged side.

カロリナ・ソアベッカ
Каролина Собечка
Wildlife
FILE FESTIVAL

At night a projection from a moving car is shone on the buildings. The car projects a video of a tiger whose movements are programmed to correspond to the speed of the car: as the car moves, the tiger runs along it speeding up and slowing down with the car, as the car stops, the tiger stops also. The framerate of the movie corresponds to the speed of the wheel rotation, picked up by a sensor. The viewers are elevated from the everyday reality through this element of fantasy into a world with more dimensions, possibilities and perhaps beauty.

Bleu Remix
In his spectacle-installation Bleu Remix, Yann Marussich returns to a theme originally explored in Bleu Provisoire (2001), a spectacle in which a mysterious blue liquid oozes through the layers of his skin as though it were the final effect or by-product of his body’s inner processes. In Bleu Remix, the artist once more invites the viewer to experience an intimate journey through the corners of his body. Each time the spectacle is performed, a different (local) musician accompanies Marussich. This unique, singular confrontation establishes a new relationship between the sound and image. The meeting of the two artists brings an element of risk and uniqueness to the event, as if the music explores the spectacle repeatedly, resulting in new ways of perception.

Saturation Sampler
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s work Saturation Sampler, uses AI computer vision to track onlookers and extract the most saturated color palettes from their bodies and clothes, creating a gridded composition from the footage where viewers catch glimpses of their reflections in the pixelated field. With the widest color gamut available and an unparalleled 160-degree viewing angle, Luma Canvas delivers a unique viewing experience unlike any other. The direct emissive nature of the display’s LEDs creates a visceral and material encounter with Lozano-Hemmer’s interactive work, meaningfully situating his digital work within the physical realm.

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.

Linie II
One second of white rope is traveling through time and space. The white rope is moving at a constant pace along the contours of an imaginary shape, traversing the whole space in several directions and angles. For following that second in the vast space, it requires the viewer to look up while moving his whole head. While passing through long distances as a straight line, it appears to be slow and content. Other passages require quick shifts of direction and the perception changes to fast and sudden movements.

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.

À la folie/To Insanity

Gregor and Grete don’t understand one another anymore. Their common language, which used to be based on love, has disappeared. She accuses him of becoming a sickening crustacean, while he says she’s degenerated into some kind of mollusc. Through a failing memory and ever-changing versions of the same story, the viewer and characters become embroiled in a false history.

Quantum Memories: Nature Studies
Technological and digital advancements of the past century could as well be defined by the humanity’s eagerness to make machines go to places that humans could not go, including the spaces inside our minds and the non-spaces of our un- or sub-conscious acts. These unique pieces of the “Quantum Memories” series exhibit arresting visuals and colors that speculate the probability of reaching invisible spaces. They are composed in collaboration with a generative algorithm enabled by artificial intelligence (AI) and quantum computing, a new form of computing that exploits the unusual physics of the subatomic world. It turns the visual data that flows around us into an artwork that represents our collective and digitized memories of nature and encourages the viewer to imagine the potential of this computing technology for the future of art, design, and architecture.

SANCTUAIRE
Sanctuaire it’s all about my relationship with Mexico City. A space filled with its own pure and special energy. To me is a never ending source of inspiration. This city is benefited of the powerful vibe, result of many factors provoked by its habitants. From far away, this city is characterized by a chaotic and indescribable movement. To be able to understand this, one must come close to realize that this apparent chaos is the manifestation of millions of individual actions from its habitants. Sanctuaire it’s going to be the visual manifestation of a mystical energy that transcends to the viewer. This piece gathers people in a cozy environment from which a light will be generated while levitating above the audience.

Stalking the Trace
Stalking the Trace est une installation VR multi-spectateurs qui se déroule dans une série d’enceintes, renforcées par l’audio, l’éclairage et les projections pour créer une atmosphère immersive sensorielle dans la galerie. Rossin utilise le mouvement du spectateur à travers l’espace comme méthode pour interroger le désir humain de contrôle et d’agence, et la notion de temps avec le sujet humain en son centre.
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Stalking the Trace is a multi viewer VR installation, takes place within a series of enclosures, heightened by audio, lighting and projections to create a sensory immersive atmosphere within the gallery. Rossin utilises the movement of the viewer through the space as a method to interrogate the human desire for control and agency, and the notion of time with the human subject at its centre.
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Stalking the Trace – это многопользовательская VR-инсталляция, действие которой происходит в серии ограждений, усиленных звуком, освещением и проекциями для создания чувственной иммерсивной атмосферы в галерее. Россин использует движение зрителя в пространстве как метод исследования человеческого стремления к контролю и свободе действий, а также понятия времени с человеческим субъектом в его центре.

The willful marionette
the willful marionette (2014) was created by artists Lilla LoCurto and Bill Outcault during a residency with the University of North Carolina Charlotte, working with the College of Computing and Informatics as well as the College of Art and Architecture. The marionette is 3d printed from the scanned image of a human figure and responds engagingly in real time to spontaneous human gestures by reading a viewer’s movements and expressions. Its strings are manipulated by motors and software and there are two depth sensors that read and analyze the behaviors and gestures of participants. The puppet’s subsequent actions are designed to elicit further responses, creating an exchange focusing on the frailty and insecurities of the human participant and raising issues of contemporary relevance. The intention of the project was not to create so much a perfectly functioning robot but rather to imbue an obviously mechanically actuated marionette with the ability to solicit a physical and emotional dialog with a viewer.

理查德·杜邦
리처드 듀퐁
Mr. Dupont makes these sculptures based on a full-body scan of his own body. He says viewers relate to them like they’re three dimensional illusions: The viewer walks around the figures and gets all these different perspectives as the surfaces change. That’s one way the distortions are interesting, because no two perspectives are the same.

Hot Pink Turquoise
Janssens’ works range wide, but they can all be described as sculptures that use the space as a stage for sensory activity. The simple white architecture of Louisiana’s South Wing becomes a resonating surface for Janssens’ both fragile and dizzying art – fragile because the works and their components are very simple while their effect elevates them above the material. Janssens herself often uses the word ‘fluid’ to describe the effect of her works – even for example when they consist of a 6.5 metre long iron girder polished at the top so the room is reflected and it is hard to fix your gaze on the object. Janssens seeks no control of either works or viewers, for as the Dutch theorist Mieke Bal has said, Janssens’ artworks are at one and the same time object and event. Many of the works in the exhibition can evoke the sensation of standing at the threshold of something. They stress transitions and transformations between on the one hand a material level – evoked by glass, colour, liquids and not least light – and on the other hand a dynamic experience of time and space.

Mirror Armor
Being entrapped in narcissism is like a “self-jail”. Placing the mirror armor fixtures over my nude body causes the viewer to see the pixelated and fragmented image of myself. Usually covering, hiding, pretending to be a version of myself on the outside, therefore, “good looking” seems more of decoration or in itself a type of armor suitable for public viewing. Will these mirrors of self reflection cause me to wonder who I am on a deeper level? To discover who I truly am, what I am afraid of, why I waste my life without discovering my inner self. I constantly struggle with how I can break this boundary because I want to wake from this oblivion.

Satellarium II
Sun Outage is a degradation or temporary interruption of satellite signal caused by solar radiation. In these moments satellites occur to be in between the Sun and the Earth, producing with their shadows an invisible eclipse. Satellarium II shows these astronomical events through a variation of visuals and sounds in the room in which it is exhibited. The installation consists of a set up of multi channel surround speakers and graphics projected on a disk above the viewers, representing the fragment of the visible sky from the location of the artwork. Visuals and sounds are based on real time tracking of the satellites position and magnitude (brightness of a satellite as it appears in the night sky from Earth). The gradient on the background of the projection represents the sun and it is related to its real-time position in the sky.

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.

Bildverarbeitungsmaschine
Björn Schülke ist von den kinetischen Skulpturen des deutschen Klangkünstlers Peter Vogel und Jean Tinguely beeinflusst und schafft komplexe vom Betrachter aktivierte Maschinen, die Bewegung, Überwachung und Klang kombinieren.

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Björn Schülke é influenciado pelas esculturas cinéticas dos artistas sonoros alemães Peter Vogel e Jean Tinguely e cria máquinas complexas ativadas pelo espectador que combinam movimento, vigilância e som.

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Björn Schülke is influenced by the kinetic sculptures of the German sound artists Peter Vogel and Jean Tinguely and creates complex machines activated by the viewer that combine movement, surveillance and sound.

Please Smile
File Festival
“Please smile” is an exhibit involving five robotic skeleton arms that change their gestures depending on a viewer’s facial expressions. It consists of a microcontroller, a camera, a computer, five external power supplies, and five plastic skeleton arms, each of them with four motors. It incorporates elements from mechanical engineering, computer vision perception, to serve artistic expression with a robot.

梁基爵
Digital Hug
File Festival – Hipersonica
The project is in collaboration with Henry Chu, Adrian Yeung, Thomas Ip, Joseph Chan, XEX GRP, and Hamlet Lin. It started from the fabrication of digital hubs but it turned out to make you feel like having an intimate hug, such is the chemistry coming from the new media performance “Digital Hug”. GayBird and his group of “musical frankensteins” developed a series of unconventional custom-made musical instruments and a responsive sound installation, which are played in complement to interactive video-mapping images and animation. Digital Hug emphasizes “new instruments for new music”, with the aim of bringing a unique and performative live electronic music performance to viewers.

Geometric mirrors
Geometric Mirrors is a series of mirror angles, each comprised of two mirror surfaces intersecting at a 90° angle. While a perpendicular viewpoint simply reflects the viewer and the opposite space, an interesting visual phenomenon occurs when the viewer faces the corner angle directly. The right angle causes a duplicate reflection, as both mirrors reflect not only the space but also each other. Their widths become extended into the adjoining side, thus appearing to the viewer as a mirrored cross rather than a mirrored angle.

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.

Underwater Pavilions
Underwater Pavilions is artist Doug Aitken’s large-scale installation produced by Parley for the Oceans and presented in partnership with The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (MOCA). The work consists of three temporary underwater sculptures, floating beneath the ocean’s surface that swimmers, snorkelers, and scuba divers swim through and experience. Geometric in design, the sculptures create underwater spaces synthesizing art and science as they are constructed with carefully researched materials and will be moored to the ocean floor. Part of each structure is mirrored to reflect the underwater seascape and create a kaleidoscopic observatory for the viewer, while other surfaces are rough and rock-like. The environments created by the sculptures will constantly change with the currents and the time of day, focusing the attention of the viewer on the rhythm of the ocean and its life cycles.

Difference and Repetition
The title references Deleuze’s thesis ‘Difference and Repetition’ – his attempt to understand reality without referring to identities. The artists aim to ‘unidentify’ the audience – to criticize the bubbles of reality which technology has helped us to build around ourselves. By allowing ourselves to remove our identity occasionally, we can better understand the thoughts of those we disagree with and therefore better work together to build a combined reality. Difference (in both senses) is generated by the motion control system which continuously changes the pose of the mirrors relative to the viewer. This movement disrupts space itself, creating a transformation similar to that of a Lorentz transformation when one travels close to the speed of light. This causes space itself to compress, twist and break, giving the viewer a tool for observing the non-absolute nature of time.

Divide, Multiply
The King Deluxe label teamed up with animator Keita Onishi to create an innovative music video for ‘Divide, Multiply’[…] The final result is a seriously aesthetically pleasing work of videographic art, living up exactly to King Deluxe’s ‘audio-visual laboratory’ manifesto. With its geometric simplicity, and cog-like machinery driven by symmetrical beats, the video instills the utmost satisfaction deep within every viewer.