ACT Festival 2015: TEKTÕNICS

The first thematic festival of ACT creation

2015 ACT Festival 《TEKTÕNICS》Asia Culture Center (ACC)

TEKTÕNICS

TEKTÕNICS is an exhibition that examines the possibility of ‘New Making’ through technologies. Artists start with their imagination and then 'make' through the visualization, abstraction, and refinement of concepts. Digital technology is a new way of creating through writers.

test pattern [n 8]Asia Culture Center (ACC)

test pattern [n 8]

Artist and musician, Ryoji Ikeda, has received attention with his works blurring the lines between visual media and auditory media. <test pattern [n 8]> (2015), which was submitted to the festival, realizes the system which converts data such as text, sound, photo, and video into a barcode method and a binary system of 0s and 1s. The work is an experiment to explore the relationship and difference between machine and human perception.

(Exhibition video) test pattern [n 8]Asia Culture Center (ACC)

The work in real time, converts the data such as text, sound, photos, images into bar code patterns. In the space visualized with stripes of black and white, the viewer experiences a new sense.

test pattern [n 8] Installation of test pattern [n 8], From the collection of: Asia Culture Center (ACC)
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Ryoji Ikeda is a musician and media artist who is involved in a variety of media including live performance, installation and publishing.

RGB CMYK KineticAsia Culture Center (ACC)

RGB CMYK Kinetic

‹RGB|CMYK Kinetic›(2015) by Joachim Sauter is a hanging formwork of light and music choreography. The work, which combines color, movement and sound, is based on two important genres of the 20th century avant-garde: the kinetic art and the light art. The artist used the attributes of light to express the choreography of light while adding and subtracting.

(Exhibition video) RGB CMYK KineticAsia Culture Center (ACC)

When the discs start to move to the music by Ólafur Arnalds, RGB reflection occurs in one direction, and CMYK reflection occurs in another direction, making shadows of light in the exhibition space. As for the sound work, depending on the height of the discs moving in the air, five kinds of digital sounds are played. At this time, the music which is played in tandem with movements of the discs completes choreography.

RGB CMYK Kinetic Installation of RGB CMYK Kinetic, From the collection of: Asia Culture Center (ACC)
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Joachim Sauter has worked as a media artist and designer who focuses on digital technologies since the early 1980s. He has experimented with methods to express contents, forms, and narrations. In 1988, along with peer artists, designers, scientists, and technicians, he established ART+COM, and has conducted practical researches on the media newly appearing in art and design areas.

unicolorAsia Culture Center (ACC)

Unicolor

<unicolor> by Carsten Nicolaiis composed of 24 modules experimenting with special color perception. One module percepts RGB color filters which move one after another at high speed. Through this, the process from low speed to high speed is visualized and causes optical effects of gray surface.

(Exhibition video) unicolorAsia Culture Center (ACC)

<unidisplay> expands vision like space through the mirror installed with two walls of mirror on both sides, and explores semiotics and laws of perception, and <unicolor> submitted for the festival explores psychology of color perception. The work in which modules making various visual effects work positively intervenes in perception of the audience.

unicolor Installation of unicolor, From the collection of: Asia Culture Center (ACC)
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Carsten Nicolai utilizes mathematical patterns such as grid and code, error, randomness, self-organizing structure throughout his work. He has continued experiments of making his own original symbols and audiovisual symbolic systems under an assumed name of ‘Noto’.

483 Lines Second EditionAsia Culture Center (ACC)

483 Lines Second Edition

‹483 Lines Second Edition› (2015) by Kimchi and Chips, mourns the end of analogue images. The work installs analogue videos at a width of 16 meters. Kimchi and Chips takes strategy of the opposite, which uses light and make static objects look like moving. 

(Exhibition video) 483 Lines Second EditionAsia Culture Center (ACC)

NTSC standard adjusts 483 light lines accumulated from the bottom to the top of television screens and creates one video image. The image appears as white thin lights which resembles interference from an analogue television screen. Wavelengths and particles of light crossing the screen make flickering patterns.

483 Lines Second Edition Installation of 483 Lines Second Edition, From the collection of: Asia Culture Center (ACC)
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Son Mimi is co-founder of Kimchi and Chips, a studio for experimental art, design and technology, which is working in Seoul. Recently, Kimchi and Chips have conducted research on the effects of technologies through emotional and tactual interaction and creative approaches for the future life.

483 Lines Second Edition Installation of 483 Lines Second Edition, From the collection of: Asia Culture Center (ACC)
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Elliot Woods from Manchester is a digital media artist, technician, curator and educator. With Son Mimi, he co-founded Kimchi and Chips, and conducts research on the future of interaction between visual design technologies and human beings through equipment like projector, camera, and graphic computation.

Otto (2014) by Jürg LehniAsia Culture Center (ACC)

Otto

Jürg Lehni, is a Swiss artist and designer and has researched drawing and writing as fundamental methods of visual expressions as mechanic behavior.

(Exhibition video) OttoAsia Culture Center (ACC)

<otto> is a robot-chalk drawing machine-based drawing created by collaborating with Wilm Thoben. <otto> is drawing a series of artifacts from the rich history of people working at the intersection of art, design and technology: Work notes, diagrams, sketches and research.

Empty WordsAsia Culture Center (ACC)

Empty Words

<empty words> is inspired by Marcel Duchamp and the way he published his notes via <the large glass> (1920) in a box with letters consisting only of dots on the lid. This cooperative work of Jürg Lehni and Alex Rich is a text-based poster work composed only of holes. Using a gently modified standard vinyl cutter and a custom-made software interface, each hole is cut in sequence at a controlled speed. These holes make calligraphic styles and write didactic messages.

 

(Exhibition video) Empty WordsAsia Culture Center (ACC)

The piece runs on a modified Apple TV connected to a rotated LCD display, and defines a maximum of five lines of text, at an automatically determined type-size. This limits the options for the poster to be produced, while rendering visible the always present limitations of any technology-based system for creative production.

Empty Words Installation of Empty Words, From the collection of: Asia Culture Center (ACC)
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Alex Rich is based in Wales, United Kingdom and explores aspects of communication which work a kind of tool in a social structure, and puts it into practice through multidisciplinary cooperation.

mosaique 4x4x4 rgbAsia Culture Center (ACC)

mosaique 4x4x4 rgb

<mosaique 4x4x4 rgb>(2013) is an experiment about interaction between color and matter, and adopts the method of intersecting at right angles. LAb[au], a studio which is mostly active in Brussels has continuously explored kinetic parts based on algorithm.

(Exhibition video) mosaique 4x4x4 rgbAsia Culture Center (ACC)

The tiles are illuminated by three light projectors in red, green and blue. The white illumination of the tiles, results from the mixing of the three primary colors, which is decomposed by the tiles’ motion in colored shadows displaying the primary and secondary colors of light. In addition, each tile can be activated by a linear motor retracting it 10cm from the installation’s vertical plane. The individual control of the tiles’ motion creates three-dimensional reliefs based on geometric patterns. Color shadows appear and disappear, crossing order and disorder, according to the motion of tiles moving back and forth. The formation of patterns underlines the geometric design whereas random arrangements underscore the mixing of colors.

mosaique 4x4x4 rgbAsia Culture Center (ACC)

The installation’s elementary visual and architectural vocabulary forms a neo-plasticist work using the additive principles of light, instead of the subtractive one of paint. Through algorithmic logic and the composition, the installation reconciles simplicity with serendipity, geometric order with randomness.

mosaique 4x4x4 rgb Installation of mosaique 4x4x4 rgb, From the collection of: Asia Culture Center (ACC)
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LAb[au] (Manuel Abendroth, Els Vermang, and Jerome Decock), makes through modern materials and techniques, and methods, but have traits of conceptual art, system art, and art concrete. Colors and geometric composition, and movement of light of artworks show that they have the same tendency of using reductive, sequential, and simple languages.

Layer Drawing – the Tactual SkyAsia Culture Center (ACC)

Layer Drawing – the Tactual Sky

<layer drawing – the tactual sky> (2013) is the work of floating photos of static scenes taken at low speed in a row after placing them in transparent frames. This work starts from nullifying traditional concept about landscape and video. Objects remind people of celluloid film of movies and expand two dimensional images into three dimensional images. Layers hanging in the air look like an abstract painting which accumulates instant moments into a continuum.

(Exhibition video) Layer Drawing–the Tactual SkyAsia Culture Center (ACC)

Layer Drawing – the Tactual Sky Installation of Layer Drawing – the Tactual Sky, From the collection of: Asia Culture Center (ACC)
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Nobuhiro Nakanishi's research connects the gap between art and life, and makes sculptures of mixed media and installations by using images similar to the method with which we precept nature and natural phenomena in reality. Series of Layer Drawing of Nakanish starts from taking photos of sunset, foggy forest or burning candle over a long time. The artist places the photos in transparent acrylic frames, underscores the process of perception itself through installations layered in order of time, and reproduces natural phenomena that audience experience.

Body Paint (series)Asia Culture Center (ACC)

Body Paint (series)

The Japanese artist duo Exonemo who continuously combines old things and new things displayed <body paint>(2014) series. This work utilizes a portrait of eccentric scenes of a single color created by a colored screen and a human body. In this work, common LCD display and human body are re-intermediated into post-digital frame.

(Exhibition video) Body Paint (series)Asia Culture Center (ACC)

Each work in this portrait series features a person painted entirely in a single shade of color, displayed on an LCD which has been entirely painted in the same color except for the human subject on the screen. In particular, the background and foreground are painted in the same paint, and human body becomes an electronic display body. In addition, from the perspective of contents, the portrait of body painting in a single color asks a question about the definition of our body in the world of networking information. With these boundaries erased, the subject can be said to become ambiguous and confusing, and it questions the definition of whether the individual depicted is a human being or just a representation.

Body Paint (series)Asia Culture Center (ACC)

The artist unit Exonemo(Sembo Kensuke and AKAIWA Yae) from 1999 has explored the paradoxes of digital and analog computer networked and actual environments in our lives. They have been organizing the IDPW gatherings and Internet Yami-Ichi(blak market) since 2012.

MirageAsia Culture Center (ACC)

Mirage

Mirage by Ralf Baeker is a projection apparatus that makes use of principles from optics and artificial neural network research. Mirage generates a synthesized landscape based on its perception through a fluxgate magnetometer (Förster Sonde). These variations are translated into a two-dimensional matrix that physically transforms into a thin mirror sheet by 48 muscle wire actors. The changing signals are then visualized into vibrating red laser beam.

(Exhibition video) MirageAsia Culture Center (ACC)

Mirage Installation of Mirage, From the collection of: Asia Culture Center (ACC)
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The artist Ralf Baecker explores formal systems into physical process based on computer engineering, and researches relationship between our thinking and the world.

Credits: Story

ACT Festival 2015 TEKTÕNICS
2015. 11. 25 ~ 2016. 6. 30

Organized by
Asia Culture Center
Korean Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism

Hosted by
Asia Culture Institute

Artists
Ryoji Ikeda, ART+COM Studioes, Carsten Nicolai, Kimchi and Chips, Jurg Lehni, Alex Rich, LAb[au], Bobuhiro Nakanishi, exonemo, Ralf Baecker

ACT Festival 2016: Heterotopia—Common spaces unseen
ACT Festival 2017: Inbetween Dramatic Networking
Act Festival 2018: Otherly Space / Knowledge

Credits: All media
The story featured may in some cases have been created by an independent third party and may not always represent the views of the institutions, listed below, who have supplied the content.
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