Navid Navab is recognized as a media-alchemist and anti-disciplinary composer with a background in biomedical sonification. Navab’s work illuminates the intersection of investigative arts, media archeology, and philosophical biology and is characterized by sculpturous engagement with transductive structures of liveliness. His recent creations orchestrate sensory attunement to the dissipative formations and uncanny forms of order that flow from machinic engagement with excitable dynamics of matter.

A robotically prepared pipe organ driven by a robotically-steered chaotic pendulum
Navid Navab (IR/CA) in collaboration with Garnet Willis (CA)

This work probes the form-giving tendencies of nature by drawing kinetic chaos into conversation with sonic turbulence. The chaotic motion of Excitable Chaos, a robotically-steered triple pendulum, drives the aerodynamic thresholds of Organism, a robotically-prepared century-old pipe organ.

Organism dismantles the socio-historical tonality of the organ to sound its turbulent materiality, liberating long-repressed timbres to be heard anew. Excitable Chaos produces chaotic patterns by modulating the mass/orbital relations between its 3 moving arms. As a physical system with nonlinear behavior it highlights how, in nature, even events at the smallest scales of magnitude compel emergent behaviors whose next states are unknown.

Solo concert with a century-old pipe organ prepared robotically to sound turbulent patterning

In this solo performance centered around a robotically-prepared pipe organ, Navab improvises with Organism to explore ways in which its turbulent thresholds manifest unstable timbres.

A Casavant pipe organ built in 1910 is rescued from the indifference of gentrification at a heritage site in Montreal and brought back to life. Organism destabilizes the socio-historical tonality of the pipe organ to liberate its turbulent materiality, robotically unleashing timbres unheard after centuries of sonic repression.

During the concert, shifting metastable states allow for energetic thresholds to rapidly fall into and out of compatibility with one another. With no digital sounds, Navab aerodynamically shapes the resulting ecology of interdependent timbres into emergent realms, traversing microsonic polyrhythms, post-rock overspill and swampy soundscapes.

Navid Navab
Concert Organism: In Turbulence
5 September 2024
17:00 – 17:35
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HOPE: A touch of many
Theme exhibition Ars Electronica
Organism + Excitable Chaos
4 - 8 September 2024
POSTCITY, Bunker, Linz (AT)
Tickets

EXHAUST by A Two Dogs Company / Kris Verdonck is all about the execution of an internal combustion engine: over-revving a truck engine in a public space until it blows up.

A marching crowd, a motor engine, an execution: the opening of the 24th edition of Transart will be literally explosive. Visual artist and theatre director Kris Verdonck invites us to march together through the streets of Bolzano to the site where a trial and death sentence will be carried out in the style of a medieval execution. 

This is a procession to the gallows not for a person, but rather for an everyday object: the internal combustion engine. Normally hidden from view, it’s a symbol of the insane technical progress known to mankind during the 21st century, but also of the ecological catastrophes gripping the planet. 

EXHAUST re-enacts the format of a medieval execution. The accused - in this case, the internal combustion engine - is dragged through the city at the head of a procession, beginning at the OASIE Transart in Via Dante. After a reading of the accused's crimes and condemnations - such as the unfulfilled promises of endless progress and growth - the death sentence is carried out. 

The performance follows the methods of Greek tragedies, Japanese Nō theatre or Shakespeare: mythological sacrifice as a violent ritual to resolve conflict; brutal violence as a purifying force.

EXHAUST
Transart

For more than 15 years, the artist Martin Messier has created artworks in which sound art meets light, robotics and video. In the form of performances and installations, these works place the body front and center.

Sonica Glasgow, the biennial festival dedicated to world-class music and audiovisual art for curious minds and adventurous spirits, is back for its 8th edition, presented by Cryptic, who are celebrating 30 years of innovation in 2024. Get ready to be immersed.

1 DROP 1000 YEARS
Signs of the climate crisis are not always visible – but its hidden effects are no less devastating. Even a minute fluctuation in the constant temperature of the thermohaline loop which circulates through Earth’s five oceans could transform our ecosystem. It takes a millennium for a single drop of water to travel the world in this current, a fact that informs Martin Messier’s new work, in which digital water currents stream, splatter and splash, set to a bubbling electronic soundtrack that underscores water’s vital importance to our continued survival.
21 September 2024 - 20:15
Tramway Glasgow

Sonica Talk: Martin Messier: Placing the body front and centre - Sound, Light and Robotics
Martin Messier will discuss the intersection between sensory experiences and technology. He will share insights into his projects through engaging videos and discussions, revealing how sound, light, and robotics can redefine our understanding of the human/machine art form. By giving voice to materials through movements and sound, Messier creates performances that highlight the synchronicity between sound and image, transforming ordinary objects into captivating experiences. 
21 September 2024 - 11:00
Glasgow School of Art

CYCLES
In Martin Messier’s Cycles, thin straps of dazzling light flail out into empty space, then float down almost weightless in the dark. Their movements – sometimes one beam acting alone, sometimes all eight in complex interplay – form patterns that move from the closely choreographed to the seemingly random, while an accompanying electronic hum suggests industrial machinery or a hive of insects intent on some inscrutable task. Messier transforms his fascination for harmony and disorder into a dance for white light, a simple medium describing highly involved systems.  
19 -  29 September 2024
CCA, Glasgow

Martin Messier

EXHAUST is the medieval execution of an internal combustion engine. The accused, a truck engine, is paraded from the Quartier Heyvaert in Molenbeek to the Brussels Grand Place, where the scaffold awaits. Before the execution is carried out, the convict’s heinous crimes are read out to the public. They are the unfulfilled promises of endless progress and growth. Violence is met with violence, so that catharsis might take place.

The engine is a miracle of the modern age. It fueled the industrial revolution and sped up our advance, but the ecological price we had to pay for it is enormous. This story has to come to an end. We must change, and change requires sacrifice.

From his home base in Brussels, Kris Verdonck has spent years crafting a wholly unique body of work that spans visual arts and theater, installation and performance, dance and architecture. Performer and artist Benjamin Verdonck is the executioner on duty.

EXHAUST
MOLENFEST

UNDERCURRENTS OF PERCEPTION
Phantom Vision uses the latest advances in science and technology to provide insights into brainwave patterns, dreams visualized by artificial intelligence, nature's hidden communication networks, and layers of our reality that go beyond the limits of everyday perception through the works, interactive installations and ever-changing projections of more than 35 international and Hungarian artists.

"If we can capture the rippling of a lake, can we also capture howling wind and billowing fog using digital art? David Bowen’s sculptures capture a fleeting moment in the ever-changing pulse of water waves, freezing it in space and time. Using a CNC router, the artist transforms the dynamic, fluid movement of water into a static, three-dimensional form, paradoxically capturing the constant flux of nature. The works encourage the viewer to reflect on the futility of artistic efforts to capture the essence of ephemeral natural phenomena and transform them into an artistic experience by digitally capturing a single moment of infinite wave motion. The intricate, minute details and undulating surface of the sculpture serve as a tangible imprint of the power of water and the complexity of wave motion, juxtaposing the ephemeral with the permanent. The precise geographical coordinates in the title refer to Lake Superior in North America and associate these frozen waves with a specific location, further emphasizing the tension between the universal nature of water movement and the singularity of a single moment in time and space. The sculptures exemplify the artist’s broader artistic practice, which offers unique perspectives on the relationship between nature, technology and human perception." Barnabás Bencsik

46°41'58.365" lat. -91°59'49.0128" long. @ 30m refers to the source location where the water surface data was collected for this series. An autonomous aerial vehicle hovering 30 meters above Lake Superior captured still images of the water’s surface. 
For this series of five, the vehicle was deployed to the same location on different days and in different weather conditions. The collected images were converted into three-dimensional models using open source software.
The models were then carved with a CNC router into a series of clear acrylic cylinders. This process captured the dynamic movements of the waves and ripples from a specific time and location and suspended this ever-changing water pattern into a static transparent form. 

David Bowen
Light Art Museum Budapest

Embracing the arts for systemic change, NaturArchy proposes to re-consider our imaginaries on nature and the non-human.

The exhibition probes issues of deep ecology, sustainability and the decolonisation of nature. A number of art and science works explore and query nature and law, the entanglement of human and non-human, green technologies and new materials, nature and law, ecology and economy, ancient and new knowledge. From global oceans to water flows, from contamination and bacteria to climate tipping points, pollinators, and landscapes of natural hazards; from natural and artificial intelligence to non-human values, forests, lands, soils, composting; from grief and mourning to rituals, wonder and collective action.

SEAGULL FOUNTAIN 02022 by Lawrence Malstaf
"Kittiwakes are a type of seagulls that are threatened with extinction due to climate change. They used to live in enormous colonies on islands far out in the arctic ocean. Recently the remaining birds are migrating to arctic cities like Tromsø in the north of Norway.
In the past 3 years the art museum has been invaded by an ever growing colony of kittiwakes. As a form of interspecies activism the birds took over the whole building with enormous noise, making hundreds of nests on window sills and ledges and spreading an intense smell. This resulted in an equally loud outcry of the people living and working in this otherwise peaceful town.
In collaboration with researchers we designed 3 light and mobile tripod structures with sculptural nesting modules on top and placed them right next to the facade. Once the birds started to make nests in their new hotels we moved them carefully away from the building, in small steps, a couple of meters per week. 95% of the colony followed and the local humans were happy too. By the end of next season we hope to arrive about 100 m further down the museum park. Here we will install 2 larger and permanent tripods that can welcome 2000 kittiwakes from other nearby buildings." Lawrence Malstaf

iMAL
Lawrence Malstaf

wilderness

Thirteen disposable plastic shopping bags playfully dance in the gallery space articulated by wave data collected on a voyage across the Pacific Ocean.
Data for this installation was collected as artist at sea resident aboard the Schmidt Ocean Institute Research Vessel Falkor as it transited from Astoria, Oregon to Honolulu, Hawaii, July 2019. While in the middle of the enormous ocean, at times, it felt this place was completely untouched by human activities. This delusion was destroyed by the occasional piece of human made debris floating in this vast wilderness. Using an on-board accelerometer, every movement of the ship caused by wave action was collected during the entire journey. The Z movement data is directly mapped to the movements of the bags floating in the gallery space creating the effect that the bags are suspended in waves of the Pacific.

the journey 
the journey is an installation that uses multi-beam sonar seafloor data collected during a transit on the Pacific Ocean July of 2019. During this journey aboard Research Vessel Falkor, an approximately 10 mile wide swath of seafloor was scanned using a sophisticated onboard multi-beam sonar depth sensor. The data gathered from entire journey is converted to an 3D model surfaces of the seafloor underneath the vessel as it transited the Pacific Ocean. For the installation, a portion of these 3D models will be carved into individual sections of clear acrylic and set end to end recreating an approximately 27-foot installation in the gallery space. An RGB led strip will be installed in the bottom of the acrylic sections and programed to illuminate a section of the journey chasing across the gallery space. This will recreate a sense of movement illustrating the vessels journey across the Pacific Ocean as it scanned the seafloor.

David Bowen