Sonic Acts Opening Exhibition at Netherlands Media Art Insitute

21feb 20:22

my cohorts and i just returned from the opening of the sonic acts 12 exhibition at the netherlands media art institute. the exhibition gathers work from four international artists, boris debackere(be), kurt hentschlager(at), ulf langheinrich(d) and julien maire(f).

just an initial impression, but, i was most impressed with julian maire's exploding camera (2007). essentially he dis-assembled a vhs camcorder onto a table and built a system of arms/alligator clips, leds, theatre lights and other bulbs to shine onto the exposed ccd. attached to a transparent disc, rotating just above the ccd he placed select transparent slides and film stills of detainee's, military and other pseudo-political images. the feed from the ccd is displayed on a television about 2 meters away from camera guts strewn across the table. as this low tech video creates itself, a soundtrack of sound bytes, gun shots and explosions fills the space.

as i watched other people watch this piece, i noticed that they were most interested in the dissected camera on the table. hardly anyone was watching the video. i kept thinking that perhaps it would have been better to fill the environment of the exploded camera with projects of the video it was creating. in essence turning the camera completely inside out, placing the viewer inside of the apparatus.

the rest of the pieces were quite nice as well, though i found ulf langheinrich's OSC (2006) piece too hard on my eyes to spend more than a few minutes with. kurt hentschlager's scape (2007) was also interesting in it's visual and techinical minimalism. i sat there for 20 minutes just enjoying the experience of the ever shifting scene before me.

check out pictures here and here.