ART & INNOVATION – part II

presentation of artworks by AROTIN & SERGHEI, 
special guest: HENNING LOHNER, inventor, Active Image Technology

12 April – 7pm  FREE SPACE  /  SYNESTHETIC ART 
presentation part of Metamorphosis

exhibition and cycle curated by AROTIN & SERGHEI

A “free space of synesthetic art” means for us an inter-media art that is free from the fixation on one single media or art form, an expression in a constant transgression of different states and a continous process of mutation and transformation. With Carré blanc (2017), Genesis (2016), White Point (2015) and Life Cells (2017-18) the exhibition Metamorphosis shows several of our art cycles that refer directly to two of the most innovative and enigmatic art creations of classical avantgarde: Black Square (1913/15) by Malevich and Prometheus (1910) by Scriabin.

The presented works moved all through different states of realisation, from sketches, drawings, to intermedial paintings with several analogue layers up to large scale installations with data projections and are realialised and now shown in the exhibition on worldwide new prototypes of “digital canvases”.  This innovative encoding, hardware and software technology permits for the first time the realisation of registred and certified unique digital pieces. Our synesthetic artworks Babel Tower, Infinite Time Machine and Metamorphosis 01 are using these techniques in worldwide first orchestrations of up to 6 individual images in infinite logarithmus. In the context of our cycle ART & INNOVATION we will present our creations together with Henning Lohner, the inventor of these digital canvases and “Active Image” Technology.

A main point of our research is the “Basic Black” colour of our monitors. It representsin our view a “permeable counterpart” to the walls of the “White Cube” and an omnipresent contemporary form of “Black Squares”. In fact, Malevitch’s Black Square can be seen too as a fascinating infinite “empty” space where everything can happen, an absolute starting point, the place of the creation of light. In a similar way Scriabin, who worked lifelong on sketches for a synesthetic total art temple in form of a hole inside a mirrored sphere and on a notation system for “light piano“, had to create for his Prometheus – poem of fire a musical “infinite dark space“ and a sort of first synthetic sound, a hexachord, symbol of the genesis of universe, as a starting point in order to be able to show “light”.

Since our first  red, blue and green portraits of light cells cycle White Screen (2012), the black surface appears in our artworks as a off-state of light, inside of which we are showing the growing and splitting process of the nanocomponents, the matrix of all information one can perceive on nowadays devices, as a contemporary symbol of reality, time and infinity.

AROTIN & SERGHEI, New York, April 2018

The artworks by AROTIN & SERGHEI presented at the event:
White Point 2015/16
subliminal installation for floor, wall & sound 16x18m,
commission Ars Electronica Deep Space 8K Media Collection

>>> AROTIN & SERGHEI

The artwork of the future is for AROTIN & SERGHEI a composition of images, signs and ideas that involves the viewer in the dynamics of artistic research and creation. The interest lays not only in the addition of artistic disciplines in order to get a supreme effect that overwhelms the viewer in a finished work, but in a infinite splitting process of reflection and questioning that explores and deliberates the fascination of unknown space in between the known matrix of visual and acoustical signs, expressions and languages. Main topics of their work are the “surface of illusion”, the “error” as a creative space, the essence of images, of colour, light and sound, and the research of the impact of images in the context of artificial intelligence and media saturation. 

“In our contemporary world, our media devices are constantly accelerating our communication, and perception, reducing in a certain way our impression of time and space. We are interested in creating artworks as objects of reflection, which suggest an augmentation of our vision. That is for us one of the main roles of art.” 

The artist duo’s main creation “Infinite Screen” was first realized as a commission by La Biennale di Venezia and Klangforum Wien. The project was then further developed for the Festival Ars Electronica, Fondation Beyeler and for Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien as a gigantic rotating installation on the Museum’s main facade. At Luxembourg University, the duo created the research seminary & workshop  “FREE SPACE”.

AROTIN & SERGHEI Contemporary Art, is co-initiator of the Ars Electronica Gallery Spaces, presented at the Festival 2017 “Artificial Intelligence” (100.000 visitors in 5 days) in cooperation with W&K Gallery for the first time their first digital images on Active Images.

>>> HENNING LOHNER

inventor, Active Image Technology

Henning Lohner (DE/USA, *1961) & Van Carlson (USA *1950 †2011) / Max Carlson (USA *1984) – Lohner Carlson – have been pursuing the notion of the Active Image since the late 1980s when their initial collaboration with John Cage inspired them to expand the found object and the notion of silence into the medium of film. As a result, Active Images investigate the nature of photography and the moving image. The viewer’s “real” time perception collides with filmed “real time” in an experimental combustion of long-term visual loops with seemingly coincidental and minimalist changes, thereby allowing the temporal and spacial dimension to transform into hypnotic, rhythmic, visual-music structures.

In order to adequately present their digital media work, Lohner Carlson, have developed a hardware-software-content-exhibition platform named “Active Image” technology, which, for the first time, allows complete digital uniqueness and originality, accountability, transactability, and security of the media artwork. Aesthetically, images shown on the Active Image digital canvas rival the saturation and tranquility of analog picture or painting quality. In the near future this new presentation form will be available for all media artists.

At Festival Ars Electronica 2017 this technology was shown for the first time, featuring artworks by LOHNER CARLSON and AROTIN & SERGHEI.

Henning Lohner’s creative output embraces diverse fields within the audio-visual arts.

He is film-composer of award-winning scores (The Ring Two, The Hands of Orlac), creator of acclaimed media art projects (Active Images), director of various filmic essays and teleplays (among them about & with Frank Zappa, Dennis Hopper, and Gerhard Richter), and head of creative experience at the media technology company Videri. Most recently he has founded the Active Image Company dedicated to the prolipheration of the digital unique and original artwork. As Lohner Carlson he has exhibited in major museums around the globe, such as the SFMoMa, Centre Pompidou Metz, the Guggenheim, Menil Collection, Gemeentemuseum Den Haag, Kunsthal Rotterdam, Kunsthalle Emden, Mira Art Collection, Tokyo.