video – Radical Atoms https://ars.electronica.art/radicalatoms/en Ars Electronica Festival 2016 Tue, 28 Jun 2022 13:26:43 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.6 Burning Too https://ars.electronica.art/radicalatoms/en/burning-too/ Mon, 01 Aug 2016 13:09:44 +0000 https://ars.electronica.art/radicalatoms/?p=2683 Bright lights and blazing flames—Don Ritter works with sound & video projections screened right on the exterior wall of the old post office at Linz’s main train station right across from the entrance to POSTCITY. The imposing projections consist of multiple recordings of fire that are mixed and manipulated in real time during playback. The colors change slowly but steadily, while the sound of the fire is interactively controlled by the visual activity of the projection. Don Ritter’s Burning Too plays with the symbolic power of fire. In bygone days, primary focus was on fire’s specific benefits, but nowadays fire evokes feelings like fear or romanticism. The selection of the façade was by no means a matter of chance. This structure was built during the postwar era on the basis of plans by Hitler’s architect Speer. Thus, in the historical context of this place and its past, it can also serve as a monument that commemorates and admonishes.

Design and programming, video and sound editing: Don Ritter
Production coordinator: Cleo Song
Raw video footage: Mitch Martninez
Produced with financial assistance from City University of Hong Kong, grant no. 9380072.

]]> Just Before Paradise https://ars.electronica.art/radicalatoms/en/just-before-paradise/ Mon, 01 Aug 2016 12:39:36 +0000 https://ars.electronica.art/radicalatoms/?p=2019 There were big waves of migration in the Middle East following wars and massacres. With the civil war in Syria, the pace of long-standing dramatic problems changed. We have witnessed the biggest refugee crisis since WW2. But there is a big difference between now and then: today everything happens much more publicly. This experience of witnessing things in real time increases our anxiety that we may, in the future, end up in their position.

In the video we see a group of refugees waist-deep in dark water. These young men seem like they are singing a quiet anthem as the waves lap up against the shore. They all have a proud expression on their faces as they realize the last duty for their lost friends, with whom they shared a common fate. The silence is more of a survival strategy against traumatic experiences in life rather than resignation. The video draws attention to forced migration and the refugee crisis and also depicts the tides between death and life as a boundless crisis instead of a regional one.

Courtesy the artist Cengiz Tekin and Pilot Gallery (Istanbul)

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