Pablo Valbuena

Two new works by Pablo Valbuena who has always kept one of the cleanest minimalist style working through videoprojection on architecture, recently Pablo made time tilings [stuk] consisting in four site-specific interventions at Artefact festival in STUK Kunstencentrum. Leuven, 2013. 

The other new work called chrono-graphy [max estrella 2013-2010] is a site and time specific project using black paint on walls, floors and ceilings at Max Estrella Gallery in Madrid, 2013. See more;

time tilings [stuk], 2013

"Architecture is judged by eyes that see, by the head that turns, and the legs that walk. Architecture is not a synchronic phenomenon but a successive one, made up of pictures adding themselves one to the other, following each other in time and space, like music."

chrono-graphy [max estrella 2013-2010]

chrono- : time (from gr. khronos)

-graphy : process of writing, drawing, representing or recording (from gr. graphia)

"The outlines of the works presented in previous exhibitions are drawn on the surfaces of the gallery, visualizing the memory of the space and shaping a time-based cartography."

Evolution Of Silence by Matthias Lohscheidt

Evolution Of Silence, 2013, an interactive sound-installation by Matthias Lohscheidt.

"The work »Evolution Of Silence« portrays a virtual world populated by artificial creatures. Each creature creates a tone defined by its DNA, and is visually represented by a ray of light inside a holographic projection. The population of these creatures evolves steadily in an evolutionary algorithm. The virtual world provides an inaudible key as an environmental condition. The more the tone of a creature fits the key, the louder its tone sounds, the stronger and broader its ray of light is, the more attractive it is to the other creatures and the longer it lives. Thus, it can produce many offspring by mating other creatures. Deviant tones however are quiet, have a very thin ray of light and die relatively quickly.

This way, the population inside the world evolves from a disharmonic and chaotic soundscape to a harmonic structure, fitting more and more to the key provided by the environment. After two to three minutes the environment key changes randomly, and the soundscape immediately becomes chaotic again. The population will adapt to this new environment over the period of several generations." - Matthias Lohscheidt. See more;

"The visitor can influence the evolutionary process by touching the rays of lights belonging to the creatures and thus “feeding” them. If the weak, quiet creatures with deviant, disharmonic tones, a thin ray of light and imminent death are touched or “fed”, they immediately become strong and loud. Thus, they are much more attractive to the other creatures and can produce many offspring. So the process of harmonising controlled by the evolutionary algorithm will slow down and be complemented with disharmonies.

»Evolution Of Silence« is the result of a series of experiments where I applied evolutionary algorithms to the emergent generation of sounds. Following JOHN CAGE, »Silence« is interpreted as the occurrence of all sounds that arise inside an environment by the very existence of all beings and elements – without any intention associated with those sounds: The artificial beings of the virtual world don’t sound to fulfill a musical purpose, they just sound because they exist. Only the environment with its progressing evolutionary process judges every tone and sets it into a harmonic context. This context attributes an intention to every tone, that is however, only valid within this context." - Matthias Lohscheidt.

Technical Information

All software is written in Java based on the Processing-library. The sound is generated with SuperCollider, which is controlled by the java-application through the great SUPERCOLLIDER-CLIENT for Processing by Daniel Jones. The tracking has been realized with a Kinect and Daniel Shiffman’s OPENKINECT-LIBRARY.

List of all used libraries: TOXICLIBS by Karsten “toxi” Schmidt, DNA by André Sier, OPENKINECT by Daniel Shiffman, PROCESSING-SC by Daniel Jones, OSCP5 and CONTROLP5 by Andreas Schlegel, ANI by Benedikt Groß

Vanishing Point by United Visual Artists

United Visual Artists are presenting Vanishing Point at Photography Playground in Berlin, scroll down into the post to see the pictures from the ongoing installation which "employs perspective as both tool and visual outcome to reshape, redefine and represent a pristine space. Inspired by sketches of Great Masters like Leon Battista Alberti, Leonardo DaVinci or Albrecht Dürer, UVA sends lines into space from an arbitrary vanishing point, creating different volumes, divisions and rooms to be explored by the audience." See more;

United Visual Artists are one of 11 artists including; Julian Charrière, Numen / For Use and Zimoun among others whom have been commissioned by Olympus to generate large installation works that encourage the visitors to consider their perspective and experience. The exhibition is running till next May 24, 2013, see more info here.

Photography courtesy UVA

Anita Ackermann

Some interesting works by Anita Ackermann who uses light and sound as major source for her work and studies. Also Anita made some great concepts playing the perspective using mirros at her series Reflectionen.  See more;

Painted by the light

Light tudies II

In the light of perception

Jordan Belson 5 Essential Films

Jordan Belson 5 Essential Films is another film I rented while ago which features 5 amazing works by filmmaker and artist Jordan Belson who created spiritually oriented abstract films richly woven with cosmological imagery, exploring consciousness, transcendence, and the nature of light itself. See more;

Here are some still images from each piece. This is a great film to have, which is on several sites online around 25-30€. 

Information courtesy Centerforvisualmusi.org where you will find more about Jordan Belson and  this DVD.

Allures (1961)

"An early (8 min) masterpiece of Non-Objective Cinema “I think of Allures as a combination of molecular structures and astronomical events mixed with subconscious and subjective phenomena – all happening simultaneously. the beginning is almost purely sensual, the end perhaps totally nonmaterial. It seems to move from matter to spirit in some way.” “…it took a year and a half to make, pieced together in thousands of different ways….Allures actually developed out of images I was working with in the Vortex Concerts.” (Jordan Belson, quoted in Expanded Cinema by Gene Youngblood, p. 160-162). The soundtrack is a collaboration with Henry Jacobs. Allures was preserved with the support of the National Film Preservation Foundation."

Samadhi (1967)

"Samadhi (6 min) evokes the ecstatic state achieved by the meditator where individual consciousness merges with the Universal. “I hoped that somehow the film could actually provide a taste of what the real experience of samadhi might be like.” (from Scott MacDonald’s interview with Belson in A Critical Cinema 3). Belson adds “It is primarily an abstract cinematic work of art inspired by Yoga and Buddhism. Not a description or explanation of Samadhi.”

Light (1973)

"Light (8 min) is based on the continuity of the electromagnetic spectrum. It is a ride through space and light. This is the last film for which Belson composed his own soundtrack."

Fountain of Dreams (1984) 

"A bold sychronisation to the Transcendental music of Franz Liszt."

Epilogue (2005) 

"By way of pure Visual Music experience, the Hirshhorn Museum (Smithsonian Institution) commissioned a major new work from abstract film artist Jordan Belson, who distilled 60 years of visionary sound and images into a twelve minute videofilm, synchronised to a symphonic tone poem “Isle of the Dead” by the great lyric composer Sergei Rachmaninoff."

Diffraction by Mitch Payne

Diffraction is a photograph series created by Mitch Payne, consisting in several abstract colorful compositions made using opaque and transparent forms and shapes where the light is reflected. See more;

Kite & Laslett

Kite & Laslett is the artist duo formed by Sebastian Kite and Will Laslett, trained in architecture, sound and music, specialise in producing architectural interventions in the form of interactive installations. Their cross-disciplinary projects fuse sound, light, film, performance and sculptural elements to construct immersive experiential environments that challenge human perceptions of space. See more;

ORBIT, 2012

5x custom built 400mw laser motorised armatures, custom software - audio/light triggering 2.5m (D) circular canvas

PANOPTIC, 2009-2012

It was created for platform79 - the berlin project Kite & Laslett produced two artistic interventions. The first, Panoptic, is a physical mobile-installation situated in Courtyard IV of the former Kantstraße Women’s Prison, exploring visual space. In contrast, Klangzelle, a sound installation, examines solely aural space and the acoustic energy of the prison interior. The two works stand in relative juxtaposition to one another, both architecturally and in conception.