Impacts

source: artificieorg

Tesla coils each fitted with a glass pane and suspended from the ceiling of the exhibition space make up the components of this “live” sculptural installation. The presence of the visitor before each sculptural device activates an audio and visual experience. The visitor’s proximity to the works engages arcs of electricity of variable intensities as well as a rhythmic articulation, generated by the impact of the electrical arc on the glass pane.

As a symbolic and sonic source, the Tesla coil’s ability to throw electric arcs has been employed by a wide spectrum of artists. With this new work, Alexandre Burton proposes the use of plasma (loosely defined as an electrically neutral medium of positive and negative particles) as matter and medium itself, circumscribed by a defined frame and articulated through unique programming. In this way, IMPACTS serves as a reminder of the danger and muscle of this marvel while capturing its sublime beauty and rhythmic potential.
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source: artificieorg

Alexandre Burton’s interest for new media technology stems from a desire to reveal new forms of expressivity through digital processes. Tightly integrating hardware and software, his artistic work is the result of attempts to think beyond media, in a realm where sound, images and processes cohabit and answer to each other in meaningfull ways.
His work is regularily presented in international new media and music events. He was awared a first prize in Bourges for software design (with Jean Piché for Cecilia) and an honorable mention in Ars Electronica in Digital Music (with artificiel, for Bulbes).
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source: artificieorg

Artiste et luthier numérique, Alexandre Burton s’intéresse à la technologie afin de dévoiler une nouvelle sensibilité propre au numérique. Son travail porte essentiellement sur la mise en relation de phénomènes sonores, visuels et somatiques.

Son travail est présenté régulièrement dans le cadre de manifestations internationales d’art numérique et de musique telles que Sonar, Ars Electronica, Transmediale et Cervantino. En plus de ses activités au sein du groupe artificiel, il collabore avec d’autres entités artistiques et culturelles à titre de conseiller en intégration technologique. Il s’est vu remettre, entres autres, un premier prix au festival électroacoustique de Bourges pour Cecilia, un logiciel de traitement sonore, et une mention honorable à Ars Electronica pour l’installation sonore condemned_bulbes, ainsi qu’un prix au festival FILE, à Sao Paulo, pour le projet POWEr.
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source: fastcodesign

If you’ve never seen a Tesla coil in person, it’s a remarkable experience. Purple plasma flashes in unpredictable, wide-reaching bolts. The sound cracks with more fearsomeness than a whip. The air fills with the sterile acridity of ozone. The effect is equal parts frightening and beautiful; this machinery can use enough voltage to carbonize your flesh right down to the bone, yet some self-destructive impulse tells you to look closer.

Alexandre Burton plays with this very impulse in his installation, Impacts. The exhibition features several Tesla coils that hang from the ceiling. They fire, not against a cage or predictable grounding surface, but a delicate pane of glass, so the viewer can appreciate the plasma filaments like a framed piece of art or a caged lion.

“A central preoccupation [with Impacts] was to find a way to present those high-energy, relatively dangerous events in an intimate and fragile context,” Burton tells Co.Design. “The idea is to get very close to the electrical plasma and appreciate the infinite resolution of the arcs.”

In fact, the entire installation is designed to pull you in. It “wakes up” as visitors enter the gallery, gradually growing more intense as people stay longer and move closer to the coils. No doubt, this sort of reverse-psychology approach tempts the daredevil in us all, beckoning us to move closer by responding with more of the very element that had left us so nervous (and captivated) in the first place. In the meantime, the coils begin to make music that Burton compares to 20th-century composers Morton Feldman or Iannis Xenakis, inundating your brain with two ways to experience the same piece of media.
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source: balack

Les bobines de Tesla sont chacune équipées d’une plaque de verre, et sont suspendues au plafond de l’espace d’exposition, formant ainsi les composantes de cette « live » installation sculpturale. Le passage d’un visiteur devant chaque dispositif sculptural active une expérience audio et visuelle en déclenchant des arcs électriques d’intensités variables ainsi qu’une articulation rythmique générée par l’impact de l’arc électrique sur la vitre. Source symbolique et sonore, la capacité de la bobine Tesla à projeter des arcs électriques a été utilisée par un certain nombre d’artistes. Avec ce nouvel ouvrage d’Alexandre Burton propose l’utilisation du plasma, à la fois comme matière et médium, circonscrit dans un cadre défini et articulé à travers une programmation unique. Ainsi, IMPACTS est un rappel du danger et de la puissance de cette merveille qui sublime et capture à la fois sa beauté et son potentiel rythmique.