calendario eventi  :: 

X

22/10/2010

Federico Diaz - Michael Oatman

Mass MoCA, North Adams

Federico Diaz: Geometric Death Frequency-141

Beginning October 23, 2010, MASS MoCA will present a new site-specific sculpture by Prague-based artist Federico Díaz. Created from 420,000 black spheres precisely milled and assembled by robotic machines, the 50-feet long by 20-feet high sculpture, Geometric Death Frequency-141, will fill MASS MoCA's entrance courtyard with a fragmented wave seemingly caught between movement and stasis.

Architecture critic and curator Jeff Kipnis calls Diaz's work "re-origination," comparing it to the making of a book into a film. In one sense the film represents the book, yet does so in an entirely new medium, and through this becomes something completely different. In the case of Geometric Death Frequency-141, the "book" is a digital photograph of the museum's clocktower entry courtyard as taken by the artist, which the artist then transforms into pure data, and modulates using analytical and fluid dynamic modeling techniques, finally rendering the data stream into a three-dimensional sculpture using state-of-the-art computer-aided manufacturing methodologies. The new work thus combines elements of photographic manipulation, data analysis, and computer programming, utilizing new techniques to produce a sculpture completely untouched by human hands.

Visually, Geometric Death Frequency-141 combines Diaz's interest in the built environment, deep natural forces such as cellular growth, physics and fluid dynamics to create a massive wave confined within an invisible 50 by 20-foot tank that penetrates the wall of MASS MoCA's lobby from the exterior of the museum's main entrance courtyard. As the wave hits imaginary boundaries, it splashes back and up as high as the second storey galleries of the museum.

An interior installation of one of the robotic machines used to manufacture the work will accompany Díaz's presentation at MASS MoCA. The robot will assemble additional spheres to be later added to the massive sculpture, providing viewers with the opportunity to experience the process by which Geometric Death Frequency-141 is created. The Díaz-developed process is unique-in addition to utilizing modern computer-aided manufacturing techniques, pure data and algorithms based on particle physics are the guiding forces behind the sculpture's shape, texture and size.

MASS MoCA's courtyard, where the natural elements of Natalie Jeremijenko's Tree Logic and a mature blaze maple specimen tree are presented within the industrial confines of MASS MoCA's architecture, provides an ideal ground for Díaz's site-specific creation in which a lifeless, manmade vehicle transforms data into a tangible, material creation (the sculpture).

Artist Federico Díaz comments, "Creating a unique object, which transformed the museum into a new form of algorithmic architecture was a fascinating journey full of unforgettable emotions."

Director of MASS MoCA Joseph C. Thompson comments, "Federico is, in a way, the ultimate shape-shifter, but his works are always deeply rooted in physical reality. In this instance Federico has 'deconstructed' a photographic image of our entrance courtyard. Taking the digital bits and bytes which define the location, depth, and color of the pixels from the photographic image, Federico rearranges them thru the artful application of the laws of fluid dynamics. The three-dimensional black spheres that make up this work are in some ways distant relatives of the pixels of that original, two-dimensional photograph, but instead of being transcribed into a flat image as micro dots of ink on paper, here they well up into great waves that crash against the very walls of their original subject matter. There is something alchemical or magical about it: The bricks and mullions and windows of our buildings become files of digital data, the pixels become black spheres meticulously cut, stacked and assembled, the courtyard becomes and contains sculpture - and all the while Federico remains behind the curtain, as if to say 'look ma, no hands.' If data manipulation sounds dry, this work helps show that data too can fluctuate between stasis and movement, permanence and change, fullness and utter emptiness."

About the Artist
Since the early 1990s, Federico Díaz has focused on art which combines software generated shapes and sound with work in space. Multimedia installations and realizations related to biomorphic architecture and site-specific projects are central to his domain, and he commonly engages audiences through active participation in his art.

His interactive works have been included in international exhibitions at institutions including: Royal Institute of British Architects, Algorithmic Revolution at the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany, Fondation Electricité de France, and Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria. In 2001, he received the Milano Europe, Futuro Presente 2001 special award for his engaging Generatrix, which featured a generated organism reacting to movements of viewers in the gallery. His work, A Sembion, an interactive space filled with forms created on the basis of a syntactical analysis of words, has also been shown at the Institute of Contemporary Arts/ICA in London.

Díaz's works are included in the permanent collection of the ZKM Media Museum and he is the honored recipient of numerous awards. In 2005, Díaz presented a visual installation Sakura at the Ars Electronica Festival in Linz, Austria and the Mori Art Museum in Tokyo. The Sakura project is his critical comment to an expanding technological invasion into human bodies. At the Florence Biennale Federico Díaz was awarded the 2007 Premio Internazionale "Lorenzo il Magni?co" in the new media category for the Sakura project. In the U.S., Díaz's installation Ultra was the first presented in 2008 for the MOMA/PS.1 exhibition at Art Basel Miami Beach. More recently, Diaz has given lectures at the Storefront for Art and Architecture and Columbia University in New York City and at University at Buffalo.

Federico Díaz lives in Prague and is a co-founder of the Supermedia Studio at the Academy of Art, Architecture and Design.
Rendering of Geometric Death Frequency-141 at MASS MoCA (2010), Courtesy Federico Díaz Studio

-------------------------

Michael Oatman: All Utopias Fell

All Utopias Fell is a project in three interrelated parts: The Shining and The Library of the Sun and Codex Solis The project is a long-term installation that will be open seasonally.

The Shining is a 1970s-era ‘satellite’ that has crash-landed at MASS MoCA. This beautifully reflective, repurposed Airstream trailer – with large parachutes and active solar panels – is inspired by an earlier era of pulp aeronauts like Buck Rogers, Tom Swift and Tom Corbett: Space Cadet, as well as the works of Giotto, Jules Verne, NASA, and Chris Marker’s 1962 film La Jetée. Visitors will be allowed to climb a staircase and enter into the craft where they will encounter The Library of the Sun.

Hybridizing a domestic space, a laboratory and a library, it has the feel of a hermitage, where the occupant will ‘be right back’, only it is 30 years later. Videos relating to the sun and its mythology flicker to life on the cockpit’s instrumentation panels. In addition to these elements, visitors will be stunned by a stained glass window in what was once the windshield of the vehicle. Once inside the craft, visitors will also be able to view Codex Solis, a massive field of photovoltaic (PVs) or solar panels.

At 50kw, the field will generate 7% of the power consumed by MASS MoCA. In addition to this 230-foot long grid, mirrors are interspersed in the middle of the field, and suggest an absent text. The arrangement of mirrors and solar panels is based on a specific quote by an unnamed author, and will not be revealed by the artist; instead the public will be encouraged to spend time with the piece, watch the reflected sky, and solve the riddle as birds and planes, inverted, fly by.

About the Artist

Born in 1964 in Burlington, Vermont, Michael Oatman currently lives and works in Troy, NY and teaches at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. He has exhibited his context-specific environments, videos and collages nationally, and was the subject of a mid-career retrospective at the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College. Oatman won the Nancy Graves Foundation Award in 2005 and is currently working on large-scale projects for the Decordova Museum and the City of Philadelphia. Oatman's work is familiar to MASS MoCA visitors. His installation Long Shadows: Henry Perkins and the Eugenics Survey of Vermont (Vermont Pure) was part of MASS MoCA's Unnatural Science exhibition in 2000, and his collages were included in Becoming Animal in 2005. Oatman has a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design and an MFA from the University of Albany. Oatman's long history of experimentation with collage has resulted in a body of work he describes as "maximum collage," a term he uses to move his work from the two-dimensional format of magazine and book cut-outs to complex assembled environments of re-purposed found objects. Oatman attributes his affinity for collage to the pleasure of manipulating the material residue of history.

This exhibition is made possible by the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative.

For Immediate Release
Contact Katherine Myers
(413) 664-4481 x 8113
katherine@massmoca.org

Image: Federico Diaz

Opening October 23, 2010

MASS MoCA
North Adams, Massachusetts
open 11am -5pm every day except Tuesdays
Gallery admission is $15 for adults, $10 for students, $5 for children 6 - 16
and free for children 5 and under.

stampa

permanent link