INTRO

Despite its holographic appearance, this work holds a wild physical phenomenon which has been carefully stabilized, lit, and sonified. The dissipative-structures within the work are not algorithmically driven but consist of real objects self-organizing under magnetically induced complex-harmonic-motion: uncanny patterns of Chaos brought to life in full kinetic rawness.

It took several of initial research and exploration to harness the pre-mathematical origins of the laws of Chaos and Complex Harmonic Motion in order to conceive the world’s first nonlinear, Enactive, and fully kinetic real-time oscillograph. tangibleFlux’s three microcosms build on this initial research to orchestrate emergent patterns of movement, light, and sound. The tamed phenomenon within these microcosms can be implicitly considered as ontological and archeological fossils of contemporary intermedia animation techniques such as Vector Synthesis, Oscillography, digital morphogenesis, and generative chaotic algorithms.

DESCRIPTION

In search for the hidden mysteries of matter from the borders of table-top astrophysics and natural fiction, three microcosms orchestrate states of sensory access to the phenomenological emergence of order out of chaos. tangibleFlux φ plenumorphic ∴ chaosmosis is an installation that invites participants to intimately encounter the ontogenesis of vital patterns through the spontaneous formation of temporal textures that emerge from material-energy fields. 

Physically investigated through collaboration with forces of complex harmonic motion, patterns-of-interaction between magnetism, gravity, and light spiral out of theories of complexity and into an improvisatory dance of hallucinatory forms. Eventually, the kinetic event unveils messy realness chaosing into balance: things doing…  stuff seeking a minimum-energy-state under magnetic flux. Sensually binding, spatially confusing, and temporally unsettling, tangibleFlux pulls everything into immediate vibrational relation with its vertiginous ritual.

“[tangibleFlux] expresses the ontogenic moment that vividly moves around the cosmos. In its microcosms, the three-dimensional movement of spheroids under magnetic harmony, look like a paranormal phenomenon, like the dance of life itself.”

- translated from Japanese, advertimes journal, Kotaro and Takashi Koguchi, Japan, 2018.09.11

“I felt a mysterious force that makes me forget even the sense of time and space due to the whirlpool of movement [of entities] that cannot be seen at the beginning nor at the end.”

original text: その始めも終わりも見えない動きの渦に、時間と空間感覚さえ忘却させる不思議な力を感じました。

100BRANCH Magazine, Shibuya, Japan, 2018.10.15

A physical phenomenon delivered in a sacral, exhilarating way.

INSAM Journal of Contemporary Music, Art and Technology, 2019. 07

Microcosm no.1 plenumeia suspends a miniature ball above unstable magnetic fields. The ball shoots, twists, and turns towards a stability which it never sustains, leading to the spontaneous emergence of hypnotic patterns. Chaotic behaviour of the ball is then sonified and haptified in poetic sync, confusing the senses and bringing the body into prominence.

Because the installation contains a non-linear dynamical system, unpredictable interaction from the outside, such as the audience’s hands, result in unpredictable yet cohesive behaviour. Some audiences discover that they can charge their gestures with emotion and meaning, and use their interactions for improvised play.

plenumélliptique périgée

microcosm no.2

2018, Slovenia; version 2: 2019 Montreal

N°2 plenumélliptique périgée, stirs a large array of spheroids in an intensive magnetic whirlpool. Elliptical textures emerge and morph to survive induced instabilities. Occasionally, energetic upheavals at the edge of chaos shake things up, dance, revolt and self transmute but always surrender to the seemingly static power of an underlying orbicular resonance of atomic topologies.

plenumophileia

microcosm no.3

2018, montréal; version 2: 2019Montreal

N°3 plenumophileia holds a sensuous swamp of voids, curves, and viscous waves, where gestures prevail shapes: where pixel is lube, architecture is pollen, and objects are but excited clumps in a puddle of time.

NOTES ON LIGHT & SIGHT


A thin band of light invisibly hovers and flickers just above the curved surface, only making itself apparent indirectly upon interaction with the moving spheroids. The lighting apparatus is precisely modulated via computationally driven electronics that pulsate it at imperceivable rates. This is done in such a way to playfully excite the physical aliasing perceptual phenomena that occur at the intersection of 1) our visual cortex’s rate or persistency of vision, 2) the rapidly moving objects’ complex oscillatory rates, 3) the constituent frequencies of the LED light, 4) and subtle synaesthetic effects induced via haptic and sonic channels. Therefore, in a way, here light is used to destabilize the dynamic process by which our sight converts “process” (formation of temporal textures) into “things” (form of perceptually freeze-framed movement). This leads to an odd effect for the viewers where physical events may appear virtual or hyper real, thus messing with their notions of actual/virtual, and form/formation. These subtle variations may lead the audience to embody the wicked phenomenological insights that “a thing is when it is not doing.”

OUTRO: CHAOTIC WHOLENESS AT PLAY

The visible patterns and trajectories in tangibleFlux are never “coded-in” but always kinetically emergent at the “edge-of-chaos”, where matter’s self organizing properties start kicking in. Their emergent “goal” is to maintain their near-equilibrium state around compositionally modulated “strange attractors”. Compositionally induced turbulences, at certain thresholds, result in upheavals that push the system as a whole towards a “phase shift”, and to sudden restructuralization of the kinetic event, which for us are grasped as morphodynamical shifts in the perceived patterns of light.

This work doubles as a poetic platform for phenomenological investigation into patterns of complexity, ontogenesis, and self organization. How is it that these formations seem so lively? May we investigate life-from-none-life transmutations as forms of chaotic wholeness at play?

EXHIBITIONS

version2:

• FIMAV: Festival international de musique actuelle de Victoriaville, Victoriaville, Canada, May 11-18, 2020 - canceled due to covid
  ⋗ [triptych]

• Sight & Sound Festival [DIY or Die], Eastern Bloc, Montréal, Canada, Oct 24-27, 2019
  ⋗ [triptych- première québécoise]

• Helen-Gardiner Theatre, exhibit Chaosmosis mAchInes curated by Leonardo, Toronto, Canada, Sept 28, 2019
  ⋗ [diptych]
      ⋗ microcosm no.1: plenumeia
      ⋗ microcosm no.2: plenumélliptique périgée

version1:

• Device_art triennial: Machines Are Not Us Exhibition, Museum of Contemporary Art , Zagreb, Croatia, Dec.18-Feb.3, 2019
  ⋗ [triptych]

• Ars Electronica Festival, theme exhibition: Error, Post City, Linz, Austria, Sep 6-11, 2018
  ⋗ tangibleFlux φ plenumorphic ∴ chaosmosis [triptych - world premiere]

version beta:

• MGLC: The International Centre of Graphic Arts, Ljubljana, Slovenia, April 5, 2018
  ⋗ [diptych - beta]
  ⋗ microcosm no.1 plenumeia [beta 2.0]
  ⋗ microcosm no.2 plenumélliptique périgée [alpha 1.0]

• “ALVIN ALVIN…” exhibition; Milieux + FOFA, Montréal, Canada, Nov 12, 2017
  ⋗ tangibleFlux, microcosm no.1 [version alpha 1.0]