Inspiration
Warping Halos- from children of the light
The performative installation combines light, colour, sound and elemental geometric forms creating a profound transcendental experience for the viewer.
The work is inspired by the duo’s research into the halo – the natural phenomenon of circle of white or coloured light that can form around a luminous object - caused by the refraction through ice crystals in the atmosphere. In the iconography of many cultures halos represent a worldly manifestation of spiritual energy and of an underlying divine order in the universe.
The physical element of the work comprises a large motorized, illuminated ring, suspended from the ceiling that revolves in the space. This elemental geometric form, science-fiction like in appearance, is accompanied by light and sound that periodically fills the perception of the viewers.
The light emitted by the ring changes during the performance, in colour and in solidity, occasionally pulsing and flashing. At times the effect of the light seems to turn the ring into a solid disc, floating and rotating in space or a portal into another world. This ethereal quality is heightened still further by the rich and atmospheric soundscape created by producer Huerco S. inspired by the harmonic resonances of colours. Live singing by soprano Brigitte van Hagen completes the installation.
Characteristically of their work, Warping Halos comprises an interplay between perception and reality, presence and absence, generating in the viewer that sense of wonder that is so rare in the modern world.
Reality perception
We live in an age where the world is increasingly separated
from the physical. A lot of things only take place digitally
instead of in real life. As a result, we not only lose human
relationships but also relationships with ourselves.
During this time I am looking for ways to find myself together
with physical objects that take place in real life. I also want
to give my participants exactly this opportunity. A journey to
themself to find themself and to real things in our world.
Not the digital one. Something that is in front of us physically.
I try to focus again on the here and now and our inner self.
natural phenomena
Physical and chemical properties
Our world is full of phenomenas and natural wonders. We are driven by our chemistry ourselves. It describes how what is related and why. It is a big topic on its own. Sometimes these explanations are difficult for me to understand. However, I work with it a lot. I am not concerned with how and why but only that it is so. I have got used to looking at my surroundings and seeing small moments. I am doing a kind of mindfulness exercise at this moment. I am inspired and fascinated by my environment. I capture these little moments in videos and photos. They bring me new ideas for my work. It is fascinating what materials achieve when they interact with each other or how the look is changed by a certain materials.
Method
Mostly I'm looking for chemical or physical reactions out of different materials. For example, by observing my environment. One example is that I drank a cup of tea recently. Due to the curvature of the glas, the tealight in the background has distorted and on the surface, the whole has mirrored again. After that I had thought about how I could work with it. I wanted to fill a round ball that is transparent with water and try out this physical property. Because I could not find a glass ball that fast, I had bought a transparent balloon and filled with water. Due to the mass of water, the balloon was too heavy. I had to improvise and put the balloon on a glass plate. and put a beamer underneath. There was an interesting distortion on the ceiling. After that, I had found that by adding a glass plate on the top the distortion is changing. This describes quite well a working method of mine. I discover a reaction of materials to each other. Test these, but get out a completely different effect and continue to work with it. A kind of chain reaction. A journey of discovery. In the end, I evaluate the whole thing and try to test if it has a hypnotic effect on my mind.
In the text 'verdubbeld Bewusstzijn: het verband tussen een filmfilsofische & cognitie-Psychologische Benadering' by A.C.R Cornelius it is about the double awareness when we watch a movie. The movie is not a simple illusion in which the is shown is the truth. The interventions that took place behind the screen are indeed observed. It is therefore a double consciousness through the experience of the Cinema space and the experience of the space in the movie. This is also comparable with the the Theater. you always have double consciousness with a play. The perception of the space of the Theater and the space of the Theater piece. I found this approach an interesting point and very applicable to my research and the question of reality perception. I would like to make use of this double Awareness for my installations and perhaps to investigate even more the question who am I and where am I. The question is always in space but is not very conscious in the mind of the spectator. How can I make this as a clear experience?
VERDUBBELD BEWUSTZIJN: HET VERBAND TUSSEN EEN
FILMFILOSOFISCHE & COGNITIEF-PSYCHOLOGISCHE BENADERING
FILOSOFIE VAN EEN BEPAALD WETENSCHAPSGEBIED/A.C.R. CORNELIUS/S1900900
Mindfulness exercise
A moment of passive presence of mind. This is achieved by someone experiencing the current state of their immediate environment, body & mind without being distracted by streams of thought & evaluating them. Special state of perception and state of consciousness.
-> basic meditative practice of the Buddhist school
Follow experiment
Based on the idea of my dramaturgy to start with a mindfulness exercise. By which the space is first observed.
I did this experiment in the 'share' program together with the master finer-art.
Change of consciousness
I want to try to change your consciousness with a hypnotic trance. It intensifies the work together of your consciousness and your unconscious.
This change of consciousness is possible through meditation which completely relaxes your mind and body. But it is also possible to do this through rhythmical activities. If your brain receives monotonous signals over a long period of time it will stop registering them. This is called habituation. Your attention turns inward to mental happenings.
A well-known example of this is when you drive a long distance on the highway. It is very monotonous and you start to wander with your thoughts. A kind of daydream takes place.
Your creativity is stimulated and helps you to solve tasks that don’t only require logical thinking.
In trance your active brain side becomes calmer and the less active side becomes more active. The left and right brain-sides start to synchronise and exchange more information than before.
The special thing about hypnotic trance is that it makes living images possible. So complete sensual experiences. Ideas & solutions that appear now seem deeper than simply thought-out & logical constructed ideas. So in a trance you really do make a lasting & changed experience.
There are different ways to change the state of consciousness. Such as by sensory deprivation. It is the withdrawal of sensory stimuli. You will be completely shielded from outside. This can lead to hallucinations.
A well-known way to do this is the "floating" It is a kind of bath where you drift in salt water and you see and hear nothing. The temperature is adapted to your skin temperature which means you feel no heat or cold. Your sensory stimuli are completely encapsulated. Your body boundaries disappear.
I would like to evoke this feeling of loosing the feeling of your body.
A softer form of sensory deprivation was developed by the American parapsychologist Charles Honorton using the Ganzfeld technique. it comes from the German word “entire field”.
instead of eliminating all external sensory stimuli, they are kept at a constant level. By monotone signals.
Another possibility is "brain wave entertainment". In doing so, your brain frequencies are changed by light and acoustic frequencies.
I want to test these possibilities on you and find out which ones are most effective to put you in a kind of daydream where your creativity is stimulated. You can deal with yourself, with problems, or just relax and escape reality.
So I used the new result and made my 2.0 Document performance. I let my viewers come into the room and lie down. I had written a text about my research for the performance and made a sound recording of it.
I let the audience come into the room with the instructions to touch the object and play with it. During that time I read a short story about the sea.
This experiment had a different approach than the previous experiment. This time I wanted to do a mindfulness exercise. Based on the idea of my dramaturgy at the beginning, the participants first prepare for what is happening. You should pay more attention to the space and the object than to yourself at the beginning. This was successful, but it was too much for some participants. The focus on what was happening in the room and on the object was simply overwhelming. They didn't know where the focus should go. From this I learned that the focus mindfulness exercise should focus on one thing only. Either the room or the object. I would like to investigate this further and see if it can can be built on each other. That the focus first on the object and then on the object and the spatial structure. I also worked with my voice again this time. I was visible and read a short story. This was not so effective because the participants also focused on me. It is less effective than when the object would talk to them. So the focus was di
Conclusion of this experiment
stracted from the object. This makes me want to do more tests with sound recordings. How about if someone else speaks? How is it when I speak myself but behind a curtain? The short story had an overly narrative aspect. This also sent the participants thoughts directly to the sea. Something I really don't want. The participants should concentrate on their own needs.
I played this sound recording together with a slow beat, which should indicate a rhythm according to which the viewer's heartbeat should be based. During the performance I also changed the color of the video life for the first time.
Short story
The sea at the Daytime and at Night
The sea was not like anything else ever created. It had a beautifully charming effect on people generally and a relaxing and relieving one on others. Therefore,there are an immense amount of sea lovers.
In the daytime, on a hot summer's day, its warm blue moving water, which got its colour from the blue of the sky, was a heavenly enticing scene.
The water is as clear and clean as glistening glass, drifting the feelings away to the depth of the magnificent sea. The gentle waves eagerly pushes one another to touch the still smooth sea sand, as if they were trying to say something secret about the sea to the golden sand. Wonderfully amazing sounds came out of these touches. It is a real wonder! How are the waves moving and making this capturing melody? Who can understand the sea’s language?
The sun is rising proudly up into the sky, spreading its glorious rays on the water like a glittering gold on a wavy garment.
When the day is getting to its end, the nice warm water is getting colder. When the sky begins to wear its orangery coloured gown, the sun will start to sleep and the moon will wake up instead.
The sky joines the sea to make a whole blue in the horizon. The night cold breezes starts to blow, bringing magnificent sand and sea scents.
While the wind will start blowing stronger, the weather is growing colder, and the waves were getting higher and higher. The moon light will get dimmed by some grey moving clouds, will leave a faint radiance about as the moon light is glowing from the edges of the clouds. Some twinkling stars are sparkling in the darkness.
When I recently bought a bottle of vitamin water and put it on the table, and the sun shone exactly on the bottle, the orange of the water glowed so intensely. I was very fascinated by the luminosity of the orange. Due to the semi transparency I had the feeling that the whole thing was even more brilliant from the color. It reminded me of the brightness of the sun. The saturation and luminosity that convey a warm feeling. I would like to investigate exactly this intensity in an experiment in the near future. What happens when I fill one of my plexiglass balls with it and put a spot on it? Could this be the center of my universe? Like the sun in our solar system? Could my work build on it and revolve around it? Everything will still embody its own world, create its own environment. however, is this perhaps the center and perhaps the starting point of the whole? What if the ball was not illuminated but a light bulb was inside?
Conclusion of this experiment
This experiment showed me that a kind of hypnotic trance effect can occur through the monotonous visual effect in the room with the participants lying on the floor. However, it is not possible for every participant to lie down on the floor. So I should think more about positioning of the spectator. The monotonous sound helped the test subjects relax and became calmer. The recording of my voice also helped to get involved. Sometimes they didn't quite listen to what I say, but they kept hearing the key words like 'hypnotic trance'. At the beginning, a few participants drifted off but weren’t sure if that’s ok. But after hearing that this was about it, they got involved completely. They also found my voice was gentle and soothing. This was the first time that I worked with my voice but gave me the drive to work more with it. Also the point that it was a sound recording and the boxes were positioned under the object gave the effect as if the object was talking to them.
Inspiration
A dreamachine or dream machine is a lamp that uses the stroboscopic effect to optically stimulate the brain.
Sound / BPM
Sound is something that can drive us forward, something that can support our speed. When I go to a club and the music has around 120 BMP, my body goes into a kind of ecstasy. I feel light and fluent. I slide out of reality and am in the "here and now". Allowing this to be guided by the beat I would like to involve more. It can be a tool to guide my participants without giving proper instructions.
Zooming in zooming out
My idea for one of my next installations is based on my last one in Culemborg. I want to cast acrylic Hartz balls that are hol from the inside and can be filled with different liquids. These balls have a magnifying glass effect.
At the beginning, the audience should be led in a dark room. You stand there first and see and hear nothing. A slow beat begins to try to slow the viewer's heart rate.
'Zooming in'
LED strips hanging in the room reflect the shape of the room. Participants are now supposed to do a mindfulness exercise without saying this to them. They should look at the LED strips through the balls. The straight LED strips are deformed by the magnifying glass effect. Some balls are filled with oil and water, which means that there is a water surface in the ball, which reflects everything. The spectator should wander through the room and notice what is there. 'Zooming in'. It's a way of looking at the outside world through the globe.
After a while, the audience should get comfortable on the furniture.
'Zooming out'
After that, a kind of slow sound by a Theremin begins. The LEDs go dark. Several beamers start to shine pictures on the balls. Some balls have a milky mixture on the inside, which means that the projections can be seen on the ball, other balls are filled with clear water, which focused the light at the end of the ball and vice versa. (I need smoke in the room to see it). It's a zoom out into the complete universe.
Recharge
One thing that keeps going through my head is 'charging'. We live in an age where we run against time. We always have to give 100% and sometimes sleep poorly / little. It can happen that our battery is at the end. Then coffee doesn't help either. But how are you supposed to be fit again in the next half hour? There are many theories about power naps. If you lie down for 10-20 minutes and you don't have to sleep, it works wonders. But it shouldn't be more than half an hour, otherwise it works counter productively. I would like to include this in my research. Find yourself again and and get new energy. I would like to use this for my installation. A place where you can find yourself and get new energy. Where to find creativity and balance. A place to relax or to solve problems. The more balanced you are, the easier it is to find the solution. Fatigue makes the brain work poorly, which can make things seem much more complicated.
Collaboration With Shlomo
I've done an experiment with Shlomo before. We wanted to try to get the water in a container moving through the beat. The reflection of a light in the water is distorted by the movement of the water. This distortion is said to represent the sound movement. Unfortunately that hadn't really worked with the beat to get the water moving. That's why we switched to dripping drops into the water on the beat.
Now we are thinking about doing an experiment with the Theremin together. I believe that the hypnotic distorted from the instrument could have a pleasant effect on my visual objects and lead the viewer to float with it.
experiments
To be a little more specific I made a list of what I would like to investigate next year
- Alone or several people at the same time?
- Audio recording from the object or a performer?
- Furniture in the room with acupuncture mat?
- Sound which BPM and / or Theremin?
- Life performance or pre-programmed?
- Is it possible to control the viewer with sound and light that is focused?
time
Time plays an important role for me in my work. How can you change the speed of time and how do you let the viewer feel this? Because I would like to create an kind of hypnotic trance what is equivalent to a kind of daydream, the time can take different speeds. For example, if I remember some dreams, time has rushed past or it was in slow motion. The thoughts start to roll over.
Cullumborg installation
In the installation for Cullumborg I used sound for the first time as a companion for my installation. I used the sound recordings of the NASA from the planets and among them the breathing of an astronaut. The abstract sounds still left the imagination free but also reminded of the universe and the breath of the astronaut indicates a kind of speed. The speed also affects the feeling of time. Time is an important aspect in my research. It should be there but feel different than in reality. More like a dream where things go faster or slower.
Conversation with two fellow students, about my thoughts!
Dear Fiona and Shlomo,
So this month I went to the Amsterdam light festival and to Skalar that was also in Amsterdam.
On facebook Skalar is called Skalar.art. a large-scale art installation that explores the complex impact of light and sound on human perception. A journey through human emotions.
But the only emotion I felt was overwhelming. And not really in a positiv way. The event is in the category Art and entertainment. So now I’m asking myself why does this both themes come together. Can art be entertainment? I guess yes. I already have seen beautiful things from artist that also entertained me.
But can Entertainment be art? If I ask myself now this questions after the light festival and Skalar lots of thoughts pop up. Because in our society its class if you are interested in art. It shows a kind of intellectual quality of your personality. But not everyone is can understand al art so it goes in the direction of entrainment that gets sold as art so that everyone can understand or maybe you don’t even need to understand it. I was always convinced to make art for everyone. But so I’m asking my self ist it art that is entertainment. or do I make entertainment that pretends to be art?? Thats a general thought right now in myself. Finding the roods of my work. So that it doesn’t become the kind work without a real soul and just about to entertain people. Something that can give some new thoughts to the spectator.
So what is the soul that i want to represent in my Scenographie practice? Until now it always have been intuitiv. I’m driven by little naturalphenomenas in combination with new technology. Something how the world can be explained without the need to understanding the real complexity of the world. An explanation that is easy to grab but still shows that there is more. Some things that we don’t know. I’m driven by this because I easily lose the red thread in my life and everything around it through the medias that gives us input. Something about the complexity of everting but to form it in to something more simpel and make little moments enjoyable.
