TRANSFORMIRROR

Daito Manabe and Kyle McDonald

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

Transformirror – Japan |  United States

When everything is imagined by AI—from music and images to prompts and titles—what’s it like to look in the mirror? This seminal study of real-time image generation, made possible in 2023 with Stable Diffusion XL-Turbo and Stable Audio, explores the future of media and interactivity. Can we better understand these systems by interacting with them physically, in real time?

BIO

Kyle McDonald creates immersive audiovisual installations and performances using computer vision, machine learning, and creative programming techniques to explore connections and shared futures between human beings. Daito Manabe combines technology and physical expression in collaborations such as Perfume and ELEVENPLAY with MIKIKO. Founder of Rhizomatiks, he has directed projects such as the closing ceremony of the Rio 2016 Olympics.

Piano
Iwai’s Piano — As Image Media (1995), a later sound work, is related to these early interactive experiments. Here the user, seated at the piano, triggers a flow of images that depress the piano’s keys; a consequence of this action releases yet another flight of images. The resulting interactive installation synthesizes two different aesthetics: sounds (simple melodies), images and a mechanical object (the piano) with digital media. A projected score and computer-generated imagery transform the piano into image media, hence the work’s name. Sound is the triumphant component in these works, for it activates and shapes the visual work. But the visual aspect of Iwai’s installations is lovely. His interactive systems appeal to the creative impulses of adults and children alike with their celebration of animation, computer potential, and the joy of sound.07

أوسكار شليمر
奥斯卡·施莱默
אוסקר שלמר
オスカー·シュレンマー
오스카 슐 렘머
Оскар Шлеммер
Triadic Ballet
1-Margarete Hastings, Franz Schömbs, Georg Verden
1970
2-Super 16mm colour film, directed by Helmut Ammann.
Oskar Schlemmer saw the human body as a new artistic medium. He saw ballet and pantomimes as being free from the historical baggage of theater and opera and, therefore, capable of presenting his ideas of choreographed geometry, the man as a dancer, transformed by his costumes, moving in space. He saw the puppet and puppet movement as superior to that of the human, as this emphasized that the average of all art is artificial. This device could be expressed through stylized movements and the abstraction of the human body. Schlemmer saw the modern world being guided by two main currents, the mechanized (man as a machine and body as a mechanism) and the primordial impulse (the depths of creative urgency). He claimed that choreographed geometry offered a synthesis; the Dionysian and emotional origins of dance become rigid and Apollonian in its final form.
3-Bayerisches Junior Ballet München

高谷史郎
史郎の高谷
La chambre claire
La Chambre Claire (or Camera Lucida) is a show built up from precise, symmetrical movements, inviting spectators to embark on a thought-provoking journey into their most intimate and personal territory. In this, his first solo work as creative artist and director, Shiro Takatani pays homage to the French writer Roland Barthes and his essay on photography, La chambre claire (1980). The result is a performance that blends theatre, the art of movement and installation to compose a great fresco full of subtle, elegant minimalist images that advance towards an aesthetic climax. Reflecting on photography and memory, the production invites us to embark upon an intimate, solitary journey to look inside ourselves and formulate a personal interpretation of what we see.
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La Chambre Claire (oder Camera Lucida) ist eine Show, die aus präzisen, symmetrischen Bewegungen aufgebaut ist und die Zuschauer zu einer zum Nachdenken anregenden Reise in ihr intimstes und persönlichstes Gebiet einlädt. In seiner ersten Soloarbeit als kreativer Künstler und Regisseur huldigt Shiro Takatani dem französischen Schriftsteller Roland Barthes und seinem Aufsatz über Fotografie, La chambre claire (1980). Das Ergebnis ist eine Performance, die Theater, Bewegungskunst und Installation miteinander verbindet, um ein großartiges Fresko voller subtiler, eleganter minimalistischer Bilder zu komponieren, die sich einem ästhetischen Höhepunkt nähern. Die Produktion reflektiert Fotografie und Erinnerung und lädt uns ein, eine intime, einsame Reise zu unternehmen, um in uns selbst zu schauen und eine persönliche Interpretation dessen zu formulieren, was wir sehen.
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La Chambre Claire（またはCamera Lucida）は、正確で対称的な動きから構築されたショーであり、観客を招待して、最も親密で個人的な領域への示唆に富む旅に出ます。この中で、クリエイティブアーティスト兼ディレクターとしての彼の最初のソロ作品である高谷史郎は、フランスの作家ロラン・バルトと彼の写真に関するエッセイ、ラ・シャンブル・クレア（1980）に敬意を表しています。その結果、劇場、動きの芸術、インスタレーションを融合させて、美的クライマックスに向けて前進する繊細でエレガントなミニマリストのイメージに満ちた素晴らしいフレスコ画を構成するパフォーマンスが生まれました。写真と記憶を反映して、この作品は私たちを親密で孤独な旅に乗り出し、自分自身の内部を見て、私たちが見ているものの個人的な解釈を定式化するように誘います。

Chess Auto-Creative (Self-Replicating)
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‘Chess Auto-Creative (CHEAC)’, takes the form of a cube where each face corresponds to an 8 x 8 chessboard. The six chessboards can also be arranged in a line to make them easier to see. There are 16 white pieces and 16 black pieces on each of the chessboards, made up of elements such as: kings, queens, bishops, knights, castles and pawns, each of which moves according to the rules of the game. However, instead of the pieces being arranged as normal, they are first set out in patterns where each element is repeated […]Each time a piece is moved to a new position, symmetrically or asymmetrically, a new variation of proto-chess is produced – in other words, a new game emerges. All games generated in this way are, in principle, variations of proto-chess – including the official chess game itself. This means that ‘Chess Auto-Creative’ is not a variant of the official chess game, but its origin.

FILE SAO PAULO 2019

frequencies (light quanta)

The project is part of an ongoing process entitled «frequencies», exploring basic sound and light dichotomic systems. Here, frequencies (light quanta) stems from a fascination towards science, light, and granular synthesis allowing to create clouds/grains of sounds. The conceptual focus lies in the quantum — the smallest measurable value of energy —, on the smallness of matter. The whole project is based on the possible conceptual relationships between basic quantum physics principles applied to the audio-visual creative process: particles, probabilities, wave/particle duality and discontinuity. Metaphorically structured around these notions, the audio-visual composition stems from 100 sound and light micro-sequences that develop themselves, generating an ever expending but yet disruptive form in time and space. With the use of randomness, the vectorial graphics are always creating new ways to look at the visual, physically superimposing pattern images.

antivirus mask and 3d makeups

“She tries to fantasize what complete aesthetic freedom of one’s appearance would look like. Her goal is to encourage a fun and creative approach to make up and self expression. By completely thrashing all preconceptions of what make-up is and how it’s used, Ines collaborates with various artists, musicians and models to produce her own fantastical versions of reality“. Teo Sandigliano

s.asmbli[wall]
Get immersed by 360° projections on a gigantic cube at OCT Loft Creative Festival and surround yourself with the power of nature. Thanks to a well-chosen combination of front and rear projection screens, you can enjoy the immersive fabric projections from every possible angle. To enhance the immersive 360-feel, several mirrors were placed around the eye-catching sculpture, reflecting the high-quality video mapping beautifully.

Vortexture
Vortexture puts forward an architecture that is agile, activity-based and challenges our ideas of organization and static typologies. Materializing permeant physical form – it is a space that is constant fluctuation. There is no final typicality; it’s an architecture in a process that regenerates and adapts with the change in space and time. Vortexture is a proposal for a new work environment simulated and tested via agent models and developed as a new kind of the urban district as a creative industry hub. Vortetute is time-sensitive. Vortexture is season sensitive. On weekdays, the office orients itself to create a user interface that is productivity-based, while during the weekend, the floor plan reshuffles itself to enhance creativity-based plan allowing more communal areas and meeting zones.

Algorithmic Architecture
This short film is intended to encourage a creative audience to seek out Kevin Slavin’s talk Those Algorithms Which Govern Our Lives. It employs an effect which takes place in Google Earth when its 3D street photography and 2D satellite imagery don’t register correctly. This glitch is applied as a metaphor for the way that our 21st century supercities are physically changing to suit the needs of computer algorithms rather than human employees.

森永邦彦
쿠니히코 모리나가
くにひこ もりなが
КУНИХИКО МОРИНАГА
Anrealage

Kunihiko Morinaga, the creative director of cult Japanese label Anrealage, has a thing for sensations and optical illusions. His debut Paris show last season was about light and shadow. Today, his sophomore outing focused on light and dark. Or, better, on the impressions you get from flashing or projecting light in pitch black. The Anrealage sculptural silhouettes were cut in a special black fabric that revealed a printed texture only under ultraviolet lights, or had needle-punched white circles—like a spotlight projection—splattered across the front. To emphasize the depth of such darkness, everything was black, including models’ faces, a heavy stroke that made things a little too dramatic.

“Adam Ferriss is one of those technologically-minded creatives who is able to put his ever-growing knowledge of code and processing to use building aesthetically wondrous digital art for the rest of us to enjoy. His images make me feel like I’ve just taken some psychedelics and stepped into one of those crazy houses you get in funfairs, where there are giant optical illusions on every wall and the floor keeps moving under your feet, except these are made using algorithms and coding frameworks […]”

The Flat Arc
​Intent: Experimenting artistic freedom on data, a road to explore possibilities of telling abstract yet emotional stories not with literature but visuals corresponding to datasets. Method: Generative visual parameters based on World Urbanization Prospects data are governed by real time image/video synthesis, with the help of graphic manipulative software platforms and creative coding.

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Chess Auto-Creative (Self-Replicating )
‘Chess Auto-Creative (CHEAC)’, takes the form of a cube where each face corresponds to an 8 x 8 chessboard. The six chessboards can also be arranged in a line to make them easier to see. There are 16 white pieces and 16 black pieces on each of the chessboards, made up of elements such as: kings, queens, bishops, knights, castles and pawns, each of which moves according to the rules of the game. However, instead of the pieces being arranged as normal, they are first set out in patterns where each element is repeated […]Each time a piece is moved to a new position, symmetrically or asymmetrically, a new variation of proto-chess is produced – in other words, a new game emerges. All games generated in this way are, in principle, variations of proto-chess – including the official chess game itself. This means that ‘Chess Auto-Creative’ is not a variant of the official chess game, but its origin.

FILE SAO PAULO 2019

ueno zoo
Au cours de sa longue vie créative, le graphiste japonais a dessiné un grand nombre d’affiches: 475 d’entre elles ont été présentées dans une grande rétrospective de Nagai en 2014, et selon lui, ce n’est que la moitié environ de toutes les œuvres qu’il a créées.
Et étonnamment, la plupart des affiches des années 1960 et 70 ont même l’air moderne et pertinentes.

“My goal is always to create work that has impact and enhances and emboldens the emotions of the performances, editing and soundscape of the work it is part of. I constantly strive to find new ways of approaching subjects and to find new creative angles – whether through lighting, technique or composition – to capture the imagination of an audience.” more…

whether line
Commissioned by Fondazione Prada for its Milan venue, “Whether Line”, the large-scale multimedia installation, conceived by Lizzie Fitch (USA, 1981) and Ryan Trecartin (USA, 1981), represents the first output of a creative process begun in late 2016, investigating the perpetual promise of “new” terrain and the inherent instability of territorial appropriation.

PITHOPRAKTA
During the 1950s and early 1960s‚ Iannis Xenakis represented an alternative avant­garde‚ with a radical approach to form and texture that rejected the serial mechanics of Boulez and Stockhausen‚ and involved a uniquely intense interpretation of ideas about probability and randomness. A world away from John Cage’s laid­back experiments[…] The two short orchestral works‚ Metastasis and Pithoprakta‚ are undoubtedly far more austere‚ more primitive in their overall effect‚ than the exuberant‚ hyperactive Eonta‚ whose ferociously demanding writing for piano and five brass players pulsates with the kind of creative energy that the orchestral pieces seek to suppress.

on the water edge

bright yellow house on water

An interest in architecture and coastal living led Casebere to develop the project, which is a follow up to a set of images he created in 2016 based on the buildings of Luis Barragán. Casebere created the series titled On the Water’s Edge to draw attention to issues relating to climate change and, in particular, the need for humans to respond creatively to the threat posed by rising sea levels.

Reconcile
“I think I became a visual artist at conception[…] It is more who I am as a person than what I do. However, the reason I make digital art is that I have a very overactive, noisy mind. Creating modern art is one of the few things that allow me to present. I skateboarded professionally for 16 years. During that time, it served as my creative outlet. Now that I do not have the opportunity to do it as often, combined with being less enthusiastic about broken bones, my visual art explorations have become my new outlet.”

The almost ideal game

Gilles Deleuze about the Ideal Game: we are surprised when he postulates as the first rule: “there is no rule”. Soon, all the other games that have some rule are, for him, partial. That is, products of the ideal game.

A game where there are no rules implies a completely free game creatively. The question to be raised is whether there is a grey region between the ideal game and the partial games, so that the rules established in the partial games could be suspended. This way we could unpartialise the games bringing them closer to the ideal game or some kind of almost ideal game.
If we take the rules of any game, it means it stops to work immediately, except in the ideal game. Therefore, the key question is: how to suspend the rule of a game (Dice games) so that it can continue to work?

FILE FESTIVAL SAO PAULO 2016

box
Bot & Dolly is a design and engineering studio that specializes in automation, robotics, and filmmaking. It’s our mission to advance motion control and automation as a creative medium, and build world-class tools that enable others to do the same. At the core of our technology is an integrated software/hardware platform that provides precise and expressive control of 6-axis industrial robots. On top of this core platform we provide industry-specific toolsets such as IRIS to support in the creative process, from prototype to production. To date, our tools have been used in feature films, national television ads, Las Vegas shows, and large-scale art installations. We dream about where they’ll be used next.
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ILANIO REUBIN AND ELENA SLIVNYAK
SUPREME BEINGS FASHION SHOW

The Supreme Beings Fashion Show will reveal the avant-garde concepts of two local fashion designers, Ilanio Reubin of Ilanio and Elena Slivnyak of IIMUAHII, at the spacious SOMArts Cultural Center on Thursday, March 1st. The two runway shows will showcase 8 imaginative looks from each designer, as well as two short improvisational performances by Butoh (contemporary Japanese) dancers which we find very fitting for the two creatives.Though different in aesthetic, both designers hail from similar backgrounds and aim for analogous goals. Ilanio (San Francisco Art Institute) and Elena (Academy of Art) both found the retail and fashion corporate worlds too constrictive and mass-produced, and thus ventured into their own imaginative ones.
Ilanio works to create “visually stunning fashion concepts that explicitly disregard wearability, saleability, and practicality; that embrace advanced definitions of sexuality and gender; and that defy the commercially-mandated boundary between the fashion and art worlds.” For Elena of IIMUAHIII, her avant-garde aesthetic is manifested in an intricately-crafted sportswear line.Although we’re dreaming of being in Paris (but really, when are we not?), we’re excited to watch Ilanio and IIMUAHII strut and represent San Francisco’s undeniable talent in their nontraditional fashion show and hope to see you all there as well!

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