18. April 2009 – 25. April 2010

THINGS TO BURN BY RUDOLFO QUINTAS
This interactive audiovisual installation is a new work from the series ‘Memory of the Future: Looking to the Past Never Ends’ that includes the awarded performance „Burning the Sound“ (2008) and „Inversed Metaphors“ installation (2008).
In „Things to Burn“ (2009) participants are asked to burn elementary 3D figurative objects until its total abstract transformation. This action is perceptually achieved by the use of fire from a regular match as interface to modulate, animate and lighten the 3D objects – as an adventures dialogue between the poetics of form. In spite of something being destroying, it is creating. The contradiction is that what is real is destroyed, but what is digital is created, and the attention goes to what is created instead of what is destroyed. „Things to Burn“ reverses the perception of an object being burned: When a match starts to burn and its wood is being destroyed it makes a digital shape to upsurge in an organic way. Its duration is the one of the burning match. While one grows the other decreases. The participant controls his action, but it is the fire that determines the time of its experience, generating an ambiguity in the idea of a participant controlling an action.

JAN-PETER E.R. SONNTAG: WARDEN SPRITE (RAUM #2)
Based on inventions and ideas of Nicola Tesla, explorations of Selim Lemström in the late 1880th and the actual NASA and ESA research on SPRITES – transit luminous events in between the tropo- and ionosphere – and their radial echo in extreme long frequency natural electromagnetic waves Jan-Peter E.R. Sonntag is going to transform live atmospheric plasma data into ultrasonic modulated air and high frequency electrical AC- fields in the space which let fluorescent tubes glow. Selim Lemström built up the first and only machines on a mountain in Lapland that creates artificial induced aurora borealis.
„The sky is a great dome of hard material arched over the earth. There is a hole in it through which the spirits pass to the true heavens. (…). The spirits who live there light torches to guide the feet of new arrivals. This is the light of the aurora. (…) The whistling crackling noise which sometimes accompanies the aurora is the voices of these spirits trying to communicate with the people of the earth.“ – E. W. Hawkes reported about the „heavenly regions“ of the Inuits in his book „The Labrador Eskimo“ from 1916.

SKETCH WALL: PHOTOLUMINESCENCE BOARD BY ŠTĚPÁN KLENÍK
The project is influenced by the author’s interest in the phenomenon of the photoluminescent and fluorescent materials. These materials (PTL-photoluminescent) need minimum energy to glare. They are basically accumulative glaring self-charging batteries.

 Draw it! Write it down! Make confidence… The room, in which the foil is tightly attached to the wall, is darkened. The foil is basically a big picture, an outsized canvas. A visitor / spectator obtains a torch with a thin but strong ray of light before entering. The torch is a substitution for a brush – it is unique light brush painting. A spectator entering the room is able to paint or write with the brush / ray of light on the very canvas (PTL- foil). She is a co-creator of the work. Her supposed perception is deepened by the experience of the actual participation / creation. She has the opportunity to leave her own print in the sacred place of the gallery. It is not only passive interaction based on the movements or sound made by a visitor that brings to life an action or some kind of pre-programmed mechanisms. Also it is not any random generative process. You create!

ASPECT OF ILLUMINOSITY: First divine creation was Light… Let there be Light! In the materialistic but also spiritual sense Light is an elementary quality. The game of light cheers up. A spectator has an unrepeatable feeling while looking at the beam, leaving a luminous track behind it. It is all about discovering a game and its system. How to create with a ray of light? A spectator does not create only for herself, but for others, present visitors, and those who will come after she leaves. That makes a field for reaction: interception with previous drawings and messages. The canvas would never be full, because as time proceeds, a track of light would disappear, as the crystals discharge.

ASPECT OF IMPERMANENCY: The effect reflects another aspect of Kleník’s work, and that is its dependency on time: its flashiness and uniqueness. A drawer realizes the impermanency of her draws, but also the possibility of laminating these draws. The third dimension of the drawing/writing occurs – time. Particular drawings slowly disappear in the distance (dark); its fading into the background creates a feeling of three dimensions. We see previous sketches disappearing. For newcomers they would be forever secret.

The author does not offer a clear message, concept or a thought: He lets the spectator participate, become a part of the work and enjoy herself. Kleník lets him co-create her own adventure / memory. Hence, the language of art makes sense only when there is someone who understands it, or at least tries to decode it, in this case a spectator co-creates the actual language. She must understand it.

Czech, 1978, http://www.umakart.cz, studied philosophy of art at Charles University in Prague, currently a student of New Media Department at the Fine Arts Academy in Prague. His works mainly reflect the relationship between world of art and its consumers.

CHRONICLE_THERAPY! is a sound performance that explores the electromagnetic spectrum. In addition to television, radio and mobile phone signals, all other electronic devices send out and can be affected by electromagnetic signals. The same is true for humans and other living beings: we are always immersed in the electromagnetic spectrum that we have to adapt to.

The performance has been created in the context of the Education Focus Programme (EFP) initiated by Venzha Christ. The Education Focus Program (EFP) is a project conceived of in terms of a developing country where New Media art is currently not widely available. The main goal of the project is to build a modern conception of a future between technology and people. It thus includes activities and research focusing on people, technology, communities, and beyond. The EFP challenges people to approach their everyday environment differently.

Venzha Christ is a prolific artist and organiser based in Yogyajakarta, Indonesia. His projects involve a very intimate relationship with his environment, which he is dedicated to building and challenging at the same time. He has initiated projects such as House of Natural Fiber (HONF), Cellsbutton Media Art Festival and Education Focus Programme (EFP).