99 Columns: An Interactive Scenographic Art Experience by Stéphane Malka

loving this minimalist light installation in paris. m.

or paris’ experiences art fair, stéphane malka architecture has infilled a vast exhibition space with ’99 columns’, an interactive scenographic art experience that visually and physically transforms the vacant site. attached to architectural beams installed throughout the industrial space are a sequence of vertically-oriented fluorescent tubes. these cylindrical light sources are connected to motion sensors that automatically generate fluctuating intensity within the hypostyle hall, completely bathing it in artificial light. the motion-activated system responds to visitors’ movements, blurring the line between the performance and the audience, and allowing the two to affect one other. the dynamic strings of light continually renew the viewer’s relationship to the venue, and architecture, as the space transforms, stretches and dematerializes.

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Video — Towards Biology by Onionlab + Ricardo Bofill Taller de Arquitectura

stunning piece! more after the jump. m.

‘towards biology’ is a piece created by onionlab in collaboration with ricardo bofill taller de arquitectura for the exhibition ‘time, space, existence’ held at palazzo bembo within the framework of the 2014 venice architecture biennale. in the work, viewers are asked to consider abstractly, from the values of ‘la fábrica’, the creative epicenter of bofill’s studio, and its work from the mid-1970s to the present day. it is a building that moreover lays the foundations and the methodology for the development of the workshop’s approach, which is based on innovation and focuses on ecology as well as on social and technological aspects.

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Video — 483 Lines by Seoul-Based Studio Kimchi and Chips

fantastic light and space installation created using 483 lines of nylon string. m.

for the exhibition moment to moment, the jeju museum of art commissioned seoul-based studio kimchi and chips to create a new iteration of their previous work ‘line segments space’. the museum’s specific architectural traits, including a panorama of reflective floors and square concrete apertures, demanded a reconsideration of the original work, leading artists elliot woods and mimi son to realize ‘483 lines’.

prior to the digital video revolution, analogue broadcasts constructed living imagery using the NTSC standard. this system generates a moving picture frame as 483 lines of modulated light, stacked from the top to the bottom of a television screen.

within the museum, ‘483 lines’ magnifies the video picture at a scale of 16 meters wide, folding it several times to fit vertically into the gallery space. this layered reinterpretation allows oscillations of depth, which are activated by ‘tuning’ the projected video to match these waves. the team describes, ‘the strictly organized lines can be illusionary, creating a confusing architecture of horizons, whilst the video played through it displays a parallel past, present and future.’

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Video — James Turrell: The Wolfsburg Project by Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg

one of the greats. i’ve seen numerous exhibits of his and had the pleasure of meeting him at length at a barnett newman symposium at the philadelphia museum of art. one truly has to experience his work live to fully appreciate it but this gives a nice tour. enjoy! m.

“The primary medium of Californian artist James Turrell is light. Probably the best-known artist in his field, Turrell’s entire oeuvre since the 1960s has been devoted to exploring the diverse manifestations of this immaterial medium and working towards a new, space-defining form of light art. While light here refers to nothing beyond itself, it causes surface, colour and space to interact and allows viewers to immerse themselves in a mysterious, painterly world. Occupying a central place in James Turrell’s oeuvre is the Roden Crater, an extinct volcano in the Arizona desert which the artist has been transforming into an observatory since 1974. Building upon the cosmic aspects of this quiet, meditative place, Turrell is creating the worldwide largest museum installation he has made to date at the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg, producing a light-filled space of experience in the tradition of his Ganzfeld Pieces. Making full use of the adaptable architecture system of the Kunstmuseum Wolfsburg — unique within the German museum landscape — his installation will be an exploration of space and light: immaterial and material at once. The timelessness and fascination of James Turrell’s works derives from his incredible skill at capturing fleeting light and giving it the visual presence and tactile density of a physical body.”

Video — Light Barrier by Kimchi and Chips.

stellar work by the creative duo! m.

The Light Barrier series by studio Kimchi and Chips create volumetric drawings in the air using hundreds of calibrated #video projections. These light projections merge in a field of fog to create graphic objects that animate through physical space as they do in time.
The installations present a semi-material mode of existence, materializing objects from light. The third edition continues to exploit the confusion and non-conformities at the boundary between materials and non-materials, reality and illusion, and existence and absence. The viewer is presented with a surreal vision that advances the human instinct of duration and space. The name refers to the light barrier in relativistic physics, which separates things that are material from things that are light, and since 1983 has been used to specify the exact meaning of the metric system of spatial measure.
The 6-minute sequence employs the motif of the circle to travel through themes of birth, death, and rebirth, helping shift the audience into the new mode of existence. The artists use the circle often in their works to evoke the fundamentals of materials and the external connection between life and death.
The artists are interested in how impressionist painters were inspired by the introduction of photography to create ‘viewer-less images’. The #installation allows images to arise from the canvas, creating painting outside of perspective. It is a direct approach to the artists’ theme of ‘drawing in the air’.
In this third edition, 8 architectural video projectors are split into 630 sub-projectors using an apparatus of concave mirrors designed by artificial nature. Each mirror and its backing structure are computationally generated to create a group that collaborates to form the single image in the air. By measuring the path of each of the 16,000,000 pixel beams individually, light beams can be calibrated to merge in the haze to draw in the air. 40 channels of audio are then used to build a field of sound which solidifies the projected phenomena in the audience’s senses.
Artists : Kimchi and Chips (Mimi Son, Elliot Woods)
Thanks to
Engineering : Chung Youngjae, Studio Sungshin
Sound design : Pi Junghoon
Production team : Lee Soyoung, Yang Yoona, Yoh Donghoo, James G Jackson, Yi Donghoon,
In collaboration with Arts & Creative Technology Center, ACC