Fluid Architectures artists and works

From 30-05-2009 until 16-08-2009


Opening 29 May 18:30 hrs

Annja Krautgasser, Walter Langelaar, Jan Robert Leegte, Dirk Lüsebrink/Joachim Sauter, Mader Stublic Wiermann, Michael Najjar, Mark Napier, Marnix de Nijs, Stanza, Pablo Valbuena

The exhibition Fluid Architectures gathers spaces of flow and immateriality created by artists in response to these contemporary notions the city. These fictional spaces made of light, moving image, and other media extend the idea of physical architecture to the construction of dynamic and seemingly infinite spaces enabling a sensory experience. The works rethink the classic standards of spatial construction and topography. Rather they introduce the new concept of 'performative architecture' and thus propose an imaginary urban landscape for the 21st century. The Fluid Architectures programme comprises a gallery exhibition, lectures and workshops. The exhibition is curated by Susanne Jaschko.

Artists and works
For Fluid Architectures new site-specific works have created by Walter Langelaar, Jan Robert Leegte and Pablo Valbuena.

 

Annja Krautgasser (A)
Dashed II, 2005

www.annjakrautgasser.net

installation

The use of mobile phones as visual medium for the presentation of individual fragments of memory refers to the parallelism of different stories. The synchronism of the stories opens a level of 'active' recollection structured in the here and now, and the use of the mobile phone as a placeholder that can be assigned to individual subjects thus staging a 'choir of memory'.

 

Walter Langelaar (NL)
paralevel | OA_NIMK2 , 2009

http://lowstandart.net

modified videogame software, projection

'Paralevel | OA_NIMK2' is a 'strange loop' which traverses the real and the virtual through the use of videogame technology augmented with a live video feed from a webcam. The installation responses to the physical gallery space by mirroring and perpetuating it. At the same time the viewers’ positions and perspectives of the exhibition space are contradicted by the projected scene before them. This results in the destabilisation - if only briefly - of the spatial experience. An unsettling interaction between architecture and its visual perception unfolds.

 

Jan Robert Leegte (NL)
Ornaments (Amsterdam),  2009

www.leegte.org

computer projection

Ornaments (Amsterdam) is an ornamental intervention in the building of the Netherlands Media Art Institute. This site-specific work is a computer generated ornament projected on two windows. The sublime intervention questions the qualities of a space taken for granted and usually not paid much attention to. It emphasises a particular part of the building and offers it for reinterpretation by applying a strangely familiar set of icons.

 

Dirk Lüsebrink/Joachim Sauter (D)
Invisible Shapes of Things Past - Shanghai, 1996/2006

www.artcom.de

film-based sculptures, 2D and 3D print, video

The 'Invisible Shapes of Things Past' is a series of parametric translations of movies into space. Single frames from a film sequence are lined up in space, according to the camera movement with which they were shot. Through this translation of single frames consisting of single pixels (picture elements) into space, objects of voxels (volume elements) are generated. The work introduces a method of finding an architectural or sculptural form not based on manual modelling but on a generative process.

 

Mader Stublic Wiermann (D)
folded space, 2008

www.webblick.de

video projection, Torre Pompéia, São Paulo (video documentation)

The video installation folded space uses the composition of iconic parts of the building for a temporal re-interpretation. The projected video consists of abstract two-dimensional structures, which arrange themselves in spatial constellations in a choreographed sequence of about 12 minutes. Change of motifs and perspectives are performed. Space shifts over time.

 

Mader Stublic Wiermann (D)
twists and turns, 2006

video on LED installation, Uniqa Tower, Vienna (video documentation)

The exterior of the Uniqa Tower in Vienna has been equipped with a LED-grid, a wide-meshed net of picture elements capable of receiving video-data. On it, an interplay between the architecture and the electronic data feed, changing over time, evolves. The building does not simply serve as a screen or message board, but becomes an integral part of the urban landscape as abstract, constantly modulated architectural form. At first, the visuals correspond to the architectural structure of the tower, during the course of its choreography however, they repeatedly detach themselves from the concrete shape of the building, establishing new spaces which dynamically interweave. Ever new virtual layers are thus added to the building.

 

Michael Najjar (D)
the invisible city (netropolis), 2004

www.michaelnajjar.com

video, loop

The work series 'Netropolis' (2003 - 2006) is an exploration of the way global cities will develop in the future. The complexity of a huge megacity is to be considered as material embodiment of information density. Telematic space endows the urban environment with a new form of structure, intermingling with it and giving birth to a completely unprecedented form of urban space.

 

Mark Napier (USA)
Cyclops Birth I IV, 2007

www.potatoland.org

inkjet on paper

The 'Cyclops Series' of artworks asks simply "What does a virtual monument look like?" The answer is a parody of solidity: a bendable building, a monument that bounces, a skyscraper that flies. The object straddles the line between a thing and an event: an organic form that is itself a record of a fleeting moment of destruction and creation.

 

Mark Napier (USA)
Smoke, 2007

custom software, computer, projectie

In 'Smoke', the Empire State Building appears to soften and melt, writhing almost organically, then struggling to return to its original form. Teetering on the line between organism and architecture, 'Smoke' speaks to a morphological tension between static physical structures of power and those that are information-based.

 

Marnix de Nijs (NL)
Exploded Views – Remapping Firenze,  2008

(produced within NIMk’s artist in residence programme, co-produced by Centro di Cultura Contemporanea Strozzina, Florence)
www.marnixdenijs.nl

multi media installation

The installation Exploded Views combines the physical act of walking with both interactive imagery and a spatial setting that results in a powerfully absorptive experience. The urban landscape was generated with an innovative 3D scanning technique that creates an unusually surreal and dreamlike atmosphere. The 3D scans are built up from an enormous archive of photographs.

 

Stanza (UK)
Urban Generation, 2005

www.stanza.co.uk

net art, software, real time city experience

For 'Urban Generation' multiple CCTV cameras in London are accessed randomly in real time to make an urban tapestry and to create an evolving, generative artwork.
The city has a recorded source of data; CCTV is everywhere. The increase of technology infrastructure in the daily existence of a city means that technology will, more than ever, be everywhere in our environment. In his CCTV based works Stanza puts these systems in place in order to re-employ the perception of space and thus create new understanding of how behaviour unfolds. Urban Generation extends the imagination of the physical city and enables the perception of the city as a dynamic network and flow of patterns.

 

Pablo Valbuena (ES)
Extension series, 2009 (commission)

www.pablovalbuena.com

architecture and projection

The installation Exploded Views combines the physical act of walking with both interactive imagery and a spatial setting that results in a powerfully absorptive experience. The urban landscape was generated with an innovative 3D scanning technique that creates an unusually surreal and dreamlike atmosphere. The 3D scans are built up from an enormous archive of photographs.

 

 





Programme

Opening May 29 From 18.30 hrs
18:30 hrs: Introduction into Fluid Architectures by exhibition curator Susanne Jaschko
19:00 hrs Lecture Digital urbanism - historical and and future utopias of the megacity by exhibiting artist Michael Najjar
 
Thanks to:
BeamSystems, AECID, Spanish Embassy