Category Archives: media/video art

pe lang :: moving objects nº 804

 
pelang

Click on image to watch the video.

Motor, cords, various mechanical parts
Size: 74 x 100 cm
Year: 2013
View: Studio Berlin
 
pelang.ch
 
“Pe Lang’s kinetic objects obey a stringent constructive optimization in which each element can be decoded with respect to its functionality. Nothing about them seems ornamental or arbitrary. Their syntax is dominated by precision and control as the framework for sophisticated aleatorics, in which order and chaos are placed in fragile balance. This happens within an intensely aestheticized context wherein each detail has a formal significance.

Pe Lang came to kinetic art through experimental music and sound art. For the artist, born 1974 in Switzerland, it is a development that seems completely natural, in the sense that each sound is caused by movements of air molecules. Mechanical movements are, from his perspective, nothing more than greatly slowed wave frequencies. This fundamentally musically inspired attitude can be observed in Pe Lang’s kinetic systems: with bewitching elegance, they harness physical forces and put them on stage. These are constructions that are as soulful as they are ingenious, and which challenge seeing, hearing and thinking equally.” Marc Wellmann

“Controlled and precise, Lang’s elegant machines act as mesmerising revelations about the relation between moving bodies and the forces acting upon them. Working with seemingly mundane hardware such as magnets, steel spheres, motors or metal sheet, Lang orchestrates spare parts into mysterious vignettes that both intrigue and challenge our expectations of how objects will behave. From multiple rotating coils of chain, to chimeric viscous liquids – or entire walls of o-rings that appear to dance along strings – the behaviours of his machine are at once repetitive and full of character.” Rebecca Roke
 

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller :: Alter Bahnhof Video Walk

 

 
‘Alter Bahnhof’ is created by Janet Cardiff and Georges Bures Miller for the 13th edition of DOCUMENTA. Viewers are given an ipod and headphones and asked to follow the artist’s narrated guidance in pre-recorded ‘video walk’ through the old train station in Kassel. By moving around the viewer finds himself at the locations where the stories in the video happen as he experiences the blurred line between reality of the physical space and cinematic fiction recorded on the video.

Janet Cardiff and Georges Bures Miller.com
 

 
“DOCUMENTA (13) takes a spatial or, rather, ‘locational’ turn, highlighting the significance of a physical space, but at the same time aiming for dislocation and for the creation of different and partial perspectives – an exploration of micro-histories on varying scales that link the local history and reality of a space with the world, and worldly.” Carolyn Christov – Bakargiev

documenta(13).de

Jake Hochhalter :: Reinterpreting the Ephemeral

 


 
“An art project from over the summer of 2011 chronicles my life in an ironic way. I wanted to call attention to the fact that pictures are becoming our memories, rather than the moments themselves. We shape our recollections with the rising popularity of mobile devices and digital cameras. Why do we need pictures to remind us of the good times? Why can’t we just slow down and take everything in as it happens?

The irony of this project is that I had to step out of some of my own experiences in order to take the photographs. Since digital pictures have become reference points to our memories, if I don’t exist in them, was I there? Or did the act of taking the photograph become my only real memory?” – Jake Hochhalter

Richard Broomhall and Maria Niro :: W O R D S – S U R F A C E


Click the image to watch an online installation/collaboration between Richard Broomhall and Maria Niro.


WORDS is an evolving moving image collaboration, exploring language, cultural context, chance and the nature of online artistic relationships. Entirely remote from one another, the two artists investigate the power of synchronicity in art. The artists never met in person, never seen the others face or heard the others voice.

Each artist takes a turn in proposing a word. Then they are to create a two minute video with original sound interpreting the proposed word. The work has to be shot in each artist’s lived environment and be a response to said environment. All images and audio must be original. There is no discussion of content or production techniques or direction. Neither watched the others work until both were finished. The videos are then composited as a diptych, with no tweaking to adjust synchronization, and is then uploaded to the internet and available for viewing world wide.

Maria is based in New York, USA and Richard is based in Bristol, UK. They don’t know where the project will go or how it will end but ask you to accompany them in finding out by checking back regularly and giving your feedback. These are links to other 3 parts of this project: FOOD , DISRUPT and BIRD

www.marianiro.com

www.fracturedether.co.uk