As a part of the exhibition at UBIK, Conflux is showing the new kinetic light installation Cylinders by Macular. The installation is realized in collaboration with Highlight festival in Delft and shows five rectangles spinning rapidly through each other’s field of rotation resulting in a dynamic field of abstract light patterns that are scattered through the space. Macular has been a close collaborator of Klankvorm, the organisation behind the Conflux festival. The collective works extensively together in the realization and presentation of multisensorial artworks.
About Macular
Macular is an initiative of a group of artists who share a collective interest in art, science, technology, and perception. The members of the collective collaborate on the creation and production of multisensorial artworks that are presented at media arts festivals, galleries, and other arts institutions around the world. An important part of the initiative is that the collective functions as a nomadic lab in which the members do research and develop the technology and theory that’s needed in order to create their works.
One of the ongoing research topics is the creation and manipulation of emergent systems and the possibilities for composition that arise from them. Besides showing these systems as installations, they can also be seen as instruments for live performance, where the performer and/or the audience becomes part of the system. Another field of interest is the notion of musical thinking and the way concepts of musical theory can be inserted into other media in order to create generative compositions in movement, light, and sound.
In doing so, the artists aim to create their own abstract language that is mostly based on rule-sets within self-built systems. This development happens through constant interaction between the works and the creators. The pieces are shaped and transformed throughout the process. With this in mind, Macular aims for a minimalistic aesthetic through a continuous exploration of the basic characteristic properties of the media they use. Whether they are cultivated systems or natural phenomena, the medium gets stripped down to the essence of the medium itself, showing only what is necessary to perform the composition.
Work by Macular members has been shown worldwide at festivals and institutions such as; Ars Electronica (Linz, AT), WRO International Media Art Biennale (Wroclaw, PL), Saatchi Gallery (London, GB), Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (Taichung, TW), Boijmans van Beuningen (Rotterdam, NL) Woodstreet Galleries (Pittsburgh, US), AxS Festival (Pasadena, US), Lucida Space NCCA (Moskow, RU), Microwave International New Media Arts Festival (Hong Kong, CN), TodaysArt Festival (Tokyo, JP & The Hague, NL), Ende Tymes IV (Brooklyn, US), New Wight Gallery (Los Angeles, US), DEAF Biennale (Rotterdam, NL), Sonic Acts Festival (Amsterdam, NL), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, NL), Biennale of Carrara (Carrara, IT), Exit Festival (Paris, FR), Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam, NL), V2_Institute (Rotterdam, NL), ISMAR/SHIFT Festival (Basel, CH), Kontraste Festival (Krems, AT), Sight&Sound Festival (Montréal, CA), and Salone del Mobile (Milan, IT).
Picture: Phyllotaxis by Macular @ Fiber x The Rest is Noise 04 photo credit Maarten Nauw.