Equilibria
Research and development in art and design is a central, conspicuous and integrated aspect of KHiB's efforts. The following text is a description of a research project initiated by Assistant Professor Ellen Røed of The Dept of Fine Art.
We are drawing close to a kinetic, time-spatial way of existence, an awareness of those forces and their interrelationships which will for the future define all of life (..) Space-Time can mean this: relativity of movement and their measurements... the simultaneous recording of interior and exterior processes, the uncovering of structures behind their surfaces. It also stands for a new way of perceiving material, energies, tensions and their corresponding social implications. Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (Vision in Motion, 1946)
Equilibria is an artistic development project through which I aim to investigate the idea of equilibrium as a utopian state through a kinetic and optic machine, taking the form of a pendulum video installation. The purpose is to explore the concept of equilibrium as a utopian state from a contemporary perspective. The installation in it self will work like a kinetic mobile with optical devices, and will reflect the space that surrounds it as well as the people in it. It will contain the basic components of a video-feedback-circuit; camera and projected image. The machine will be observing and reflecting the space and it inhabitants, who will in turn observe its struggle to achieve its ideal state.
The system contained within the mobile will work in such a way that if equilibrium would occur, a process known as video-feedback would start. Past and present would meet in the image through this process of refilming the projection. In this way the image would begin to contain a kind of memory. For the circuit to work and such a moment to occur, opposing forces within the machine itself would need to be in balance. As long as they are not, their attempt to get there will result in a continuum of see-sawing shifts and round-about turns, and an image that dips in and out of view. The systems aim is to achieve equilibrium,
The aim of the project is to explore concepts like equilibrium and utopia through ideas of certain artists from the 20th century such as Lazlo Moholy-Nagy, Sol LeWitt, Steina and Woody Vasulka, Alexander Calder, and Nam June Paik, from the perspective of a different technological and artistical reality, a reality where forces such as consumerism and globalism are causing our ecological system to be out of balance and in a destructive process that seems out of control.
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