1974 documentary about Aotearoa New Zealand artist Ralph Hotere
"Directed by Sam Pillsbury, this 1974 film observes Ralph Hotere — one of New Zealand's greatest artists — at a moment when excitement is gathering about his work. Lauded as a 'classic' by Ian Wedde, the documentary is framed around the execution of a watershed piece: a large mural Hotere was commissioned to paint for Hamilton's Founders Theatre. Interviews with friends and associates — poets Hone Tuwhare and Bill Manhire, art critics, officials and dealers — are intercut with fascinating shots of Hotere working (including making art by photocopying or 'xerography')."
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Supersymmetry: a immersive aesthetic experience by Ryoji Ikeda
"Supersymmetry attempts to transform the complexity of quantum information theory into an immersive aesthetic experience, meshing sound, visual data and high-speed light displays. The show pairs two inter-related installations. As you step into the cavernous, pitch-black space at the top of Brewer Street Car Park in Soho, you're confronted by [experiment]. Three 1m x 1m light boxes, glowing white, skitter and whoosh with tiny ball bearings, forming unique and unpredictable patterns. It's a disorientating experience, leaving you feeling adrift in such a frenetic space, with red lasers constantly scanning the surface movements.
As you step through the curtain into the next space, [experience], you're plunged into the middle of two 20m-long screens, blinking with forty monitors, all displaying how the previous room's data has been analysed and translated. The synchronized monitors pulse with high-speed analyses and typed text, while the electronic soundscape -- a symphony of bleeps, buzzes and droning hums -- adds to the charged atmosphere. The overall effect, as you glance at the mutating text and the rapid-fire bombardment of data, is both hypnotic and hallucinatory, and yet there's also something strangely oppressive about being caught in this endless loop of sound and information."
(Daniel Culpan, 23 April 2015, Wired)
"Supersymmetry" by Ryoji Ikeda, 2015. The exhibition runs at The Vinyl Factory Space at Brewer Street Car Park, London, W1F 0LA, until 31 May 2015.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Sonia Delaunay and the Art Simultané
"Together, the Delaunay [Sonia and Robert Delaunay] start a research on color that will be the essence, the content and the form but also the line of a new painting for a non–figurative art. Influenced by the Fauvism, she first presents works whose subjects and models are marked, slashed by the brutality of the shades. Creative perfection to aim at, the music offers to the artists, at this time, the philosophical assessment that will underlie their respective works. Powerful associations of rhythms and melodies, the compositions gather in the idea of 'simultaneous' what makes a new challenge for poets and painters. Sonia Delaunay then progressively develops a lyrical use and signification of the color, close from cubism, between rhythm and shade. Repetitions of forms, structures but also colors, her paintings take a direction all her artistic propositions will follow."
(Ozarts Etc, 3 December 2011)
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Ralph Hotere, New Zealand Artist, Dies at 81
Ralph Hotere 1931–2013 "was one of New Zealand's leading abstract artists, well known for his enigmatic, black painted surfaces stripped with luminous lines of color. He was not a strict formalist or wary of content. When an aluminium smelter was proposed for the Aramoana wetland, he famously nailed protest works on local telephone poles, painted on corrugated iron. And although his message was never explicit, his black paintings emerged at the height of the Civil Rights movement and suggested themes of historical crisis: war, nuclear testing, the Cuban Missile Crisis and Apartheid. With an understated gravitas unusual in protest art, Hotere demanded that his work speak for itself.
Although Hotere did not want to be pigeonholed as a 'Māori artist,' his works were steeped in the spiritual world of his ancestors. He was one of the first generation of Māori artists in New Zealand who, with quiet perseverance, forged a path for subsequent generations of artists by establishing a distinctive visual vocabulary that would be influential to both Māori and Pakeha (European) artists alike."
(Andrew Clifford, 1 March 2013, ArtAsiaPacific Magazine)
Fig.1 Ralph Hotere with his Black Phoenix installation at the Dunedin Public Art Gallery in 2000. Photo by Stephen Jaquiery.
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
Tagtool: a collaborative performative visual drawing tool
"The Tagtool is a performative visual instrument used on stage and on the street. It serves as a VJ tool, a creative video game, or an intuitive way of creating animation.
The system is operated collaboratively by an artist drawing the pictures and an animator adding movement to the artwork with a gamepad. The design achieves virtually unlimited artistic complexity with a simple set of controls, which can be mastered even by children.
The project is coordinated by OMA International. Our approach is that all knowledge acquired within the Tagtool project should be shared. We are inspired by the open source movement and believe that it is also relevant for the digital arts."
(OMA International, Austria)
Fig.1 Hagleitner, Krenn, Kermer, Rieger, 2008. 'Tagtool' (short video documentary).
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Simon PerkinsSHARE
