22 January 2018
We asked international artists Refik Anadol (Turkey) and Matt Parker (US) what we should expect from the exciting interactive installations they're bringing to Future Playground – a digital wonderland set to delight the whole family at Shed 6 from 1 - 11 March this Festival.
Infinity Room and Lumarca are just two of the mind-bending digital installations to feature in Future Playground at Shed 6 during the Festival. Get your tickets here.
Infinity Room by Refik Anadol
Infinity Room is an astounding immersive space, where light and sound blur the boundaries between the physical and virtual worlds. Part of a series of works that creator Refik Anadol calls “Temporary Immersive Environment Experiments”, it uses audio visual installations to alter a participant’s consciousness and create a perception of being in a non-physical world.
1. Sum up Infinity Room in just five words if you can.
Unlearning, relativity, doors of perception.
2. What reactions from people who have experienced Infinity Room have most surprised you?
I remember one person who stayed in for around 90 minutes. And when she was leaving the room she said, "this experience justifies that architecture as a software and a hardware, like an intelligent machine". Another person in Geneva was crying because he said that he finally found a time out of his chaotic current life situation, a sanctuary from the near future. I've many many inputs like this. Almost a quarter of a million people have experienced Infinity Room and I cannot imagine how many people have been touched by the beauty of infinity.
-Almost a quarter of a million people have experienced Infinity Room and I cannot imagine how many people have been touched by the beauty of infinity
3. Which artists, living or dead, do you credit with influencing your work and why?
James Turrell, Yayoi Kusama, Sol Lewitt, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Ryuichi Sakamoto and Jun Kaneko.
Lumarca by Matt Parker, Josh Holtsford & Albert Hwang
Lumarca is a captivating light sculpture that creates a digital avatar to mimic any movement you make. It allows you to encounter motion and graphic and digital animation as both observer and participant. Lumarca is also open source and open hardware, providing an affordable platform for other artists to design compelling content in a new way.
1. Sum up Lumarca in just five words if you can.
Truly 3-Dimensional Dynamic Light Sculpture.
2. What reactions from people who have experienced Lumarca have most surprised you?
People always want to understand how it works. There's often a moment of disbelief, as if they can't trust what their eyes are seeing. Even after they've seen it, they can't quite understand it, as it's so different from anything they experienced before.
-Even after they've seen it, they can't quite understand it, as it's so different from anything they experienced before
3. Which artists, living or dead, do you credit with influencing your work and why?
Ken Perlin's white paper on volumetric displays first inspired the creation of Lumarca. There are also literally thousands of artists and engineers whose work Lumarca is built on top of, the creators of frameworks like OpenGL, Processing and Unity all have helped bring this project to life.
