Alembic

Alembic

Soumis par NT2 le mer, 10/24/2007 - 16:12

Auteur·e·s:

Alembic est une installation interactive qui aborde le thème de l'alchimie. L'installation permet aux visiteurs d'avoir une expérience concrète des alternatives de l'espace puisque leurs mouvements influent directement sur l'évolution des formes projetées sur le sol.

Citation(s)

«Linking art, science, spirituality and technology, this interactive installation is the product of the artist's exploration of virtual reality as a sculptural medium, and is centered upon a floor based projection of computer generated 3D images. These virtual forms represent the content of an 'alembic retort', a device used by alchemists searching for the philospher's stone, and are based upon the four alchemical elements of fire, earth, air and water. Via electric field sensing, the movement of the viewer effects the continual metamorphosis of these simulated forms, from geometric crystalline structures to amorphous liquid shapes, captivating the senses in a unique, powerfully mesmerising experience.» Exhibitions and Events, Bonington Gallery, January-July 1997.

Discours (notes)

The title of Richard Brown's installation 'Alembic', refers directly to a kind of vessel used by alchemists for the purposes of distillation, ultimately for transmuting base matter into gold. Although a complex and multifaceted subject, alchemy, as a form of inquiry/experiment practised between the 11th and 17thC, could be viewed as a precursor of modern chemistry, but also as embodying the fundamental precepts of artistic activity, i.e. the manipulation of media and material in questioning accepted understanding of reality. Likewise, it is the dissolution of the divisions between art and science, that Brown has always sought to achieve, or rather to positively combine such seemingly opposed practices.

Central to the ideas forming 'Alembic', is the challenge to our acceptance of a Cartesian model of space/reality and its representation through traditional Renaissance perspective and Euclidean geometry i.e. that the shortest distance between two points is a line, parallel lines never meet etc. More specifically, it is the use of these traditional modes employed by creators of Virtual Reality to represent form and space that Brown seeks to actively question. Such a challenge has been made throughout the evolution of modernism, beginning with the Cubists, some of whom were well versed in the principles of non-Euclidean geometry, through the depiction of objects in space from multiple viewpoints in a single picture plane. Furthermore, an integral aspect of this line of exploration is the concept of the fourth dimension, in simple terms that the third dimension is the shadow cast by a four dimensional 'object'. The fourth dimension has also been popularly understood as being time, first put forward by H.G.Wells in The Time Machine (1895). (http://www.mimetics.com/vur/jhtext.html)

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Répertoire

Brown, Richard