Light exhibit by digital arts group Squidsoup

Volume 4,096, a new permanent exhibit by digital arts group Squidsoup, is now on permanent display at the Royal Society New Zealand. The piece is suspended 6m above visitors in the main foyer of RSNZ’s beautiful new Headquarters, and can be seen from three floors within the building, and also outside. There is no escape!

The piece has two modes – day and night. Daytime mode consists of slow moving spheres, reminiscent of the flows of a lava-lamp, designed to complement but not overpower what is a working environment rather than an art gallery. The place turns into more of a gallery space at night, when exuberant multicolour explosions fill the atrium in volumetric splendour. Seen from outside, it is clear there is a fireworks display going on indoors.

Squidsoup have many years experience at building visual installations using three dimensional grids of lights like this to create truly three dimensional visual experiences that occupy physical space, but Volume 4,096 is the first exhibit to use a new hardware system, Ocean of Light 2.

The system is scalable and can be configured in highly flexible configurations. The system is also weather-proof and tough enough to be used within reach of the public and in permanent architectural installations. More details atOceanOfLight.net

High resolution images here.

Photos courtesy Shaun Waugh.

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Top 10 Art Installations in 2013

Out of all the different types of art forms we write about on a daily basis, there’s one that clearly stands apart from the rest - installation. According to Merriam-Webster, an installation is defined as “a work of art that usually consists of multiple components often in mixed media and that is exhibited in a usually large space in an arrangement specified by the artist.”

Why do we love installation art? For many reasons. First, it’s oftentimes immersive, providing visitors with a multi-sensory experience. Next, it’s site-specific, meaning that piece of art was built for that particular time and space. Finally, it’s highly imaginative in that it brings several different materials together to create something original and unexpected.

Today, we take a look at the most stunning installations that were shown around the world in 2013. If you were one of the lucky ones, you experienced one or a few of these artworks first-hand yourself.

10. Colorful Canopies of Umbrellas by Sextafeira Produções

In July, the city of Agueda, Portugal came alive as a colorful canopies of umbrellas hung over its streets. Photographer Patrícia Almeida took great shots of a similar installation last year, which went viral. This was part of an art festival called Agitagueda. Production company Sextafeira Produções had created the cheery installation to turn traditional shopping streets into an engaging visual experience. See more, here.

9. From the Knees of My Nose to the Belly of My Toes by Alex Chinneck

From the Knees of My Nose to the Belly of My Toes is a surreal display by British designer Alex Chinneck that makes it look like the brick facade is sliding right off the front of a building in Margate, England. The eye-catching installation, which took Chinneck approximately one year to bring to fruition, took a four-story residence that had been abandoned for eleven years and replaced the old frontage with a new one that slumped down and curved outward. See more, here.

8. The Fallen by Andy Moss and Jamie Wardley

British artists Andy Moss and Jamie Wardley, of Sand In Your Eye, produced this incredibly powerful visual display at the D-Day landing beach of Arromanche in France. The two developed this concept, entitled The Fallen, in honor of International Peace Day (September 21) and as a way to remember what happens in the absence of that peace. See more, here.

7. Unwoven Light by Soo Sunny Park

At the Rice University Art Gallery at Houston, Texas, visitors were immersed in a shimmering world of light, shadow and color. Called Unwoven Light, the hovering sculpture, by artist Soo Sunny Park, was made of chain link fencing and Plexiglas. Visitors were invited to enter the space to see how natural and artificial light change when viewed at a certain angle or at different times of the day. See more, here.

6. Sirens of the Lambs by Banksy

Leave it to Banksy to mix the cute and the cuddly with the totally disturbing. In the 11th work of his Better Out Than In exhibit that happened on the streets of New York, the British artist took over a delivery truck turning it into a slaughterhouse installation carrying 60 stuffed animals (or puppets) - cows, chickens, pigs, lambs - who were seen moving their heads through wooden slats. See more, here. 

5. Home Within Home Within Home Within Home Within Home by Do Ho Suh

At the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Seoul, you could find Home Within Home Within Home Within Home Within Home, a 1:1 scale replica of two houses the artist had previously lived in, one inside the other. Created in purple fabric, his traditional Korean home, where he lived in when he was a child, was enveloped and suspended within a more modern building, his first apartment building when he came to the United States, located in Providence, Rhode Island. See more, here. 

4. In Orbit by Tomas Saraceno

His largest and most ambitious work to date, In Orbit by Argentinian artist Tomas Saraceno was a huge mesh construction that suspended over 25 meters above the piazza of the K21 Standehaus museum in Dusseldorf, Germany. Visitors were able to climb on the gigantic steel wire construction that spanned three levels. The mesh net alone weighed three tons and there were a half a dozen “spheres” or inflated PVC balloons positioned within it. See more, here.

3. Forever Bicycles by Ai Weiwei

This year, Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei presented a new version of his incredible Forever Bicycles installation in Toronto. As the centerpiece of this year’s Scotiabank Nuit Blanche, the all-night contemporary art event that takes over city streets, 3,144 bicycles, the most Weiwei has used of this work to date, were stacked 100 feet in length and 30 feet in height and depth in Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square. See more, here.

2. Rain Room by Random International

Rain Room, by London and Berlin-based collective Random International, allowed you to experience the rain without getting wet! First shown at Barbican Centre from October 2012 to this March, it came to New York, housed in a temporary gallery next door to the MoMA museum. This was the monumental installation’s US debut. See more, here.

1. Infinity Mirrored Room – The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away by Yayoi Kusama

In Infinity Mirrored Room – The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away, hundreds of multicolored LED lights, suspended at different heights and dangling from floor to ceiling, transformed a room into what feels like eternity. The cube-shaped, mirror-paneled room had a shallow reflecting pool as its floor and the lights flickered on and off in a strobe-like effect. Though similar to the ones Yayoi Kusama has shown previously - Infinity Mirror Room at the Tate Modern and Fireflies on the Water at the Whitney Museum of Art - this one was made especially for the exhibition at David Zwirner gallery and still promised the viewer a wonderfully surreal experience. See more, here.

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Neon Lights Beautifully Expose Glowing Human Figures

The Glow is a colorful, paint-splattered series by Brazil-based photographer Sarah Leal. Using neon paints and a black light, Leal narrows in on certain features and details of the human body. The orange and green paint splatters mix together with blue skin to create surreal compositions where lips and hands pop out against the darkness.

Inspired by fellow neon artist Hid Saib, Leal reveals to us a hidden world that is only exposed under the illumination of ultraviolet light. She gets close-up to her subjects to capture the intimate connection between the two figures, and the shadows and lights mix together to create a mesmerizing distortion between the forms and the paints.

If you want to see more of these remarkable UV light techniques, check out Into the Space by German artist Lisa Stroeher and these unbelievable glow-in-the-dark paintings by Japanese artist Que Houxo.

Sarah Leal on Behance

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Installation NONOTAK’s DAYDREAM V.02

4,5m x 4,5m x 2,5m, Audiovisual installation by Noemi Schipfer & Takami Nakamoto, 2013.
Installation at INSANITUS FESTIVAL DIGITAL ARTS KAUNAS 2013. http://www.insanitus.lt/

MANY THANKS TO : Martyna Laukaitytė, Jonas Jakūnas, Raffaele Fiorella, Pavel KáraFiat, Felice Nardella, Maurizio Fusillo, Žilvinas Roads, Mantas Pakeltis, Agnė Baronaitė, 

DAYDREAM is an audiovisual installation that generates space distortions. Relationship between space and time, accelerations, contractions, shifts and metamorphosis have been the lexical field of the project. This installation aimed at establishing a physical connection between the virtual space and the real space, blurring the limits and submerging the audience into a short detachment from reality. Lights generate abstract spaces while sounds define the echoes of virtual spaces. Daydream is an invitation to contemplation. The frontality of the installation leads the visitors to a passive position.

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Olivier Ratsi – Onion Skin

Visual label ANTIJV‘s Oliver Ratsi‘s new immersive installation “Onion Skin” via triangulationblog.com:

Onion Skin is a graphical work about the re-composition of time and space through a game of perspectives, both of the exhibition space itself and that of the projection canvas. Built around a progressive structure, made up of 4 parts lasting 14 minutes in total, the piece plays on the principle of repetition and scale to create a physical and hypnotic experience that opens doors onto the hidden and untouchable.

More photos and info about the installation here.

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Intercontinental Davos – Wave Chandelier

Wave chandelier

1,400 hand-blown glass spheres swirl into the playful shape of a gust of snow, a joyful interpretation of the sublime alpine hinterland of the InterContinental Hotel. This dynamic structure is animated by pairs of LED’s – one white, one blue – that illuminate each globe, and glisten along the chandelier’s surface. The installation stands at 28 metres long – a fittingly monumental centrepiece for the luxurious setting – and interacts with the snow-capped mountains through the towering windows that line the room.

Close up view of glass spheres

Wave chandelier in the atrium.

1,400 hand-blown glass spheres swirl into the playful shape of a gust of snow, a joyful interpretation of the sublime alpine hinterland of the InterContinental Hotel. This dynamic structure is animated by pairs of LED’s – one white, one blue – that illuminate each globe, and glisten along the chandelier’s surface. The installation stands at 28 metres long – a fittingly monumental centrepiece for the luxurious setting – and interacts with the snow-capped mountains through the towering windows that line the room.

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An Interactive Dynamic Shape Display that Physically Renders 3D Content

inFORM: An Interactive Dynamic Shape Display that Physically Renders 3D Content

Five engineers from the tangible media group at MIT’s media lab have developed ‘inFORM’, a dynamic shape display that has the capability to render three-dimensional content physically, so users can interact with tangible digital information.

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Anti Facial Recognition Visor

Anti Facial Recognition Visor

Interesting approach to avoid identification from cameras by lighting key areas of the face (video embedded below, via the great DigInfo):

This is the world’s first pair of glasses which prevent facial recognition by cameras. They are currently under development by Japan’s National Institute of Informatics.

Photos taken without people’s knowledge can violate privacy. For example, photos may be posted online, along with metadata including the time and location. But by wearing this device, you can stop your privacy from being infringed in such ways.

"You can try wearing sunglasses. But sunglasses alone can’t prevent face detection. Because face detection uses features like the eyes and nose, it’s hard to prevent just by concealing your eyes. This is the privacy visor I have developed, which uses 11 near-infrared LEDs. I’m switching it on now. It prevents face detection, like this."

"Light from these near-infrared LEDs can’t be seen by the human eye, but when it passes through a camera’s imaging device, it appears bright. The LEDs are installed in these locations because, a feature of face detection is, the eyes and part of the nose appear dark, while another part of the nose appears bright. So, by placing light sources mostly near dark parts of the face, we’ve succeeded in canceling face detection characteristics, making face detection fail."

Compared with previous ways of physically hiding the face, this technology can protect privacy without obstructing communication, as all users need to do is wear a pair of glasses.

More Here

Source: diginfo.tv

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