Talk
Artist talk: PURE MOVEMENTS
17 May 2017
Centrum Berlin
Berlin, Germany
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Ulla Nolden, Pure Movement, Installation view, Centrum Berlin, Photo: Ute Klein
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Ulla Nolden, Artist Talk at Centrum Berlin, 2017
Exhibition
Pure Movements
6 May 2017 – 21 May 2017
Event times
open by appointment
Address
- Reuterstr. 7
- Berlin
Berlin - 12053
- Germany
Event map
In her exhibition at Centrum, Ulla Nolden will show works that are informed by the artist’s fascination with the beauty of subtle yet intricate movements at the margins of everyday reality.
About
In PURE MOVEMENTS Nolden consolidates the two main lines of her artistic enquiry of the past few years: translations of observed behavioural rules of movement into computational instructions and her photographic project EVERYDAY.As part of the latter, Nolden since 2006 has taken, selected, and subsequently published one photograph per day on nolden.com as a means and method to explore her own visual perception. The photographs capture particular elements or details of stasis within the artist's daily surroundings. Over the years certain motifs reappear and patterns of perception and selection have emerged revealing a unique personal aesthetic. The immediacy of the perception is met by the instantaneousness of the photograph. By contrast, Nolden experiences the visual perception of movement as accumulative. Over time, observations of similar movements are layered to form one complete percept. As part of the process of perception, the rules governing the movement are clarified. Nolden translates those behavioural rules into computational instructions.
In this exhibition two works of the PURE MOVEMENTS series will be presented using a Raspberry Pi computer constantly generating the movement we observe in real-time. The movement we perceive is created because each animated entity follows a set of behavioural rules: “align with the movements of your neighbours, move toward the average of your neighbours’ positions, keep at a distance from your neighbours, move towards a specified point in space, wander aimlessly.” The beauty we find in watching the infinite and complex movement of the swarm may be explained by the fundamental paradox of our own existence. Our condition is one of ubiquitous and determining connectedness and relation. Yet, by definition, every member in the swarm is autonomous. There is no leader. As individuals we feel we are self-ruling and unique.
Another work will be displayed as a series of video loops generated by an algorithm describing the movement of spiders. Fusing photographs of marks left by previous events on the fabric of the gallery space with the visualisation of algorithmic movement, this installation explores the intersection of the physical and the digital with a focus on the everyday.
