Science is not art and art is not science, but both can dialogue, and giving nowadays possibilities around technologies –not just in terms of the production and instrumentation, but also in the sense of consciousness and the exploration of new territories of time, space, energy and our universe as such–, the dialogue can be enriching for both sides. Such process is found in unfold, the latest work of japanese artist Ryoichi Kurokawa, commissioned by FACT and result of a succesful Kickstarter campaign done last year and aimed to create an exhibition in which sound and visual interact based on scientific data.
And it is not mere conceptual support, but tangible data, granted by astrophysicists at the Research Institute in the Fundamental Laws of the Universe (CEA, France), which allowed Kurokawa to explore information “taken from molecular clouds in space – data which may hold the secrets behind the birth of stars.”
Such interaction serves as the core of unfold, ultimately pointing to an immersive audiovisual environment inspired in the birth and evolution of stars, with the goal of offering “an artistic, yet scientific, representation of how the solar system was born, and how our galaxy might evolve”, which leads to interesting granular reactions in the sonic process, plus the beautiful contrast between frenetic and abrupt tension, and pristine, soft and minimialist developments, all resulting in that unique aesthetic dichotomy you may expect from Kurokawa.
That is done by different audiovisual processes in structures of spacetime create not using matter as such, but sound and light, with the idea of manifesting an aesthetic perspective “of a molecular cloud as close as possible to the scientific truth using striking 3D representations of space, combined with interpretations of how stars form within the cloud and create star clusters.” The exhibition has two galleries, each with a respective work. Unfold (gallery 1) is reproduced in a 6.1 surround system, while constrained surface (gallery 2) is a two-channel system.
More info at FACT
