Exhibition #8: Dark Society / Dark Science

About

curated by Alfredo Ciannameo

/// CONCEPT
The exhibition Dark Science presents artistic works approaching specific phenomena focusing on their physicality by means of the paradox underlaying our human relation to them in terms of states of absence, immateriality, evanescence and void. This pushes the boundaries of our imagination and reflects a constant need to sense and understand levels of the physical world in an observable and measurable matter. Traces and shadows of those transitory presences become the territory of exploration for artists with different approaches from an intentionality on presenting a direct experience of the phenomena to the impact of these elements produces indirectly in our culture and society.

/// WORKS

Labofactory, Jean-Marc Chomaz, Laurent Karst & Gaétan Lerisson: VOID SPACES - Installation & Conference/Performance 
Is the expansion of space, or the light that finally remembers that the universe has an age or that no longer has one? But the shadows that our bodies cast on the distant galaxies inevitably shift to the red, leaving on our silhouettes a pale iridescence of blue. How to reverse the time and light the Universe? How to retrace the double star of your eyes? Vacuum contracted by the cry of absence. The pellucid rags of night mingle with the living. Great black sails that the solar wind rises, they transform the present into an ark of Void spaces.

Michael Kugler & Sebastian Wolf: BRUME - Installation
In Brume, the artist duo Michael Kugler and Sebastian Wolf investigate immateriality by coaxing fog into a semi-geometrical, self-organizing form. The viewer becomes a catalyst for disturbance, generating turbulences that not only illustrate the carrying power of the air, but upset a perceived equilibrium, and reveal the spatial and temporal volatility of such a phenomenon. 'Brume' operates in the margins between ubiquity and the finite, symmetry and the amorphous, transience and permanence, and gesturing at the paradox of immateriality.

Luiz Zanotello: THE AEROGRAPHER 
This kinetic installation maps the air to raise fragile grounds. In times of ubiquitous technological mediation and accelerated uncertainty, borders among territories and boundaries among bodies do not endure nor cease to evaporate. What is it like to live in airlike times, when everything evanishes, and no ground lingers? The Aerographer is both a system and an individual, trapped on groundless air, seeking to sustain a place inside of the clouds.

Giovanni Salice: NANOSOUND 
Video installation collecting images discovered in 2013 at the Center for Functional Nanomaterials, Oak Ridge. They appear for the first time on screen showing nanostructures that have never been seen before. However, the widest part of the physical processes is in such a small scale that can be described only applying data analysis. In order to make deepest layers of the phenomenon assessable on scientific observation, these data have been interpreted into the sound domain, by converting images with a process of sonification, which reveals new levels of understanding in the nature of this matter. 

/// ARTISTS

JEAN-MARC CHOMAZ (FR) is a physicist and an artist. His scientific research encompasses areas such as the dynamics of soap films, global instability, vortex breakdown, geophysical and stratified fluids and biomechanics. He is a Director of Research, professor and chair at the University Paris-Saclay, and has co-founded the Hydrodynamics Laboratory he co-directed from 1990 to 2013. With more than 25 different artworks, performances or installations, his practice in Art & Science aims at exploring the sensorial and emotional foundations of science. It participates from the will to reassess the very nature of science facing the complexity, to explore and expose its human nature, weak and sublime, to distinguish observable from perceivable. Chomaz’ Installations create fractures in the real from which emerge abstract but physical Universes that the public experiments and invents calling back his own experiences and memories.

MICHAEL KUGLER (USA) is a media artist and filmmaker whose practice engages 'psychogeographic' modalities—practices, rituals, and spaces in which these occur. His recent work traverses the nebulous margins of science and art. He currently lives and works in Berlin.

SEBASTIAN WOLF (DE) creates interactive video and light installations. His work explores the relationship between nature and humanity and employs a fundamental approach to artistic creation that seeks the inherent aesthetic and emotional potential of novel technologies. He currently lives and works in Berlin.

LUIZ ZANOTELLO (BR) is a Brazilian media artist/designer based in Bremen. His work occurs within digital media studies, often through kinetic installations, poetic machinery and speculative interactions. He has exhibited at two editions of FILE in São Paulo (2011/2012), at the Museum of Applied Arts in Vienna (2013), at the Dubai Design Week (2015), at the Resonate Festival in Belgrade (2016), as well as in different exhibitions in Germany. A designer graduated by the São Paulo State University in 2012, he is currently a masters student at the Digital Media program of the University of the Arts Bremen.

GIOVANNI SALICE (IT) is an Italian artist/musician working in the field of sonic-media. He holds a degree in classical oboe. After this education, he studied electronic music and visual arts and, through the years, he increased his interest into film and installative art. He is currently working on microscopic sounds, Artificial Intelligence and field-recording.