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Porcupines made of Metal
Once upon a time, artists could only dream their surreal visions of influencing real matter by will alone. Soon, nobody will have to go such a long way round imagination ever again, if we believe Sachiko Kodama and Minako Takeno. It can look like a porcupine with fine bristles, but also like the metallic equivalent to a lava lamp, and when you speak it’s constantly changing its appearance. Or when you clap your hands. Or walk. Or go. 23 skidoo. Your voice is working as a direct inter-face to the fine fluid, that can spear quicksilver-like or rocket upwards like a visual-ized sound level. That’s how sounds finally look like, at least in some way. Gravity is defied, sculptures are created. The graceful look and the unfamiliar movement adds vivid contumacy to Kodama’s and Takeno’s installation, like you haven’t seen it jet, unless in virtual artistic works. Introduced at the renowned SIGGRAPH at the LA convention center, Protrude, Flow is now coming over to the Ars Electronica Festival. In this work, invisible powers find their visualized counterparts, as it is typical for Takeno’s artwork – this time, it’s magnetism and gravity her attention is focused on. For the first time it’s possible to move and alter real objects (even in liquid form) by apparent magic, and the very easy handling by voice and noises makes it possible to be in direct contact to the substance. Vivid it shall look, the artists insist. And vivid it looks. But what’s behind the magic? Metal dust. Oil. And Isoparafin, a very fine special sort of liquid wax. So actually the association with lava lamps is not that absurd. The con-sistence reminds you of the famous “I’ll be back”-Terminator-sequences, where the bad guy reunites his liquid parts to one big self. It’s vibrating, billowing, and seems to transform into hard, solid thorns, that can be gone with the next noise and disappear in the acoustic environment. And all thanks to an audio system which transforms sounds into electro-magnetic signals and so charges the electro-magnets that are in the same pot like the black fluid. Two other magnets are hanging from the ceiling. Alongside there is a microphone. The keyword behind the magic is Linux OS for that’s the system in which the self-written programs operate. The whole installation is 3 meters in height, 6 meters in width and 15 meters in depth. It needs 1,1 kW power. Three computers, eight mag-nets, one pot. A projector is transmitting the spectacle on a screen – enlarged, of course. The art behind this installation – no matter how easily it is handled – occurs only in interaction with its environment. The viewer becomes the acoustic sculptor of his own emotional expression, he can constantly change his creation while never knowing how the result will look like. Vivid. Art as a feedback to the human organism, as artists in the past could only imagine. So the barrier of the medium falls, the creation goes no long way round, except for the contact with its creator. Everything else would be un-thinkable. But what means unthinkable anyway. Let the children out – nobody will resent these porcupines! From September 6 to September 11, from 10:00 am, Ars Electronica Center | |
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21.7.2003 Marcus Lust |
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© Ars Electronica Linz GmbH, info@aec.at | |||||||||