supercodex [live set]
An audiovisual performance in which raw data and mathematical models generate both the sound and the projected image.
View supercodex [live set]Post HTX: a cross-section of new media after Harvey
The third edition opened three and a half months after Hurricane Harvey, in the same post-office building, now called Post HTX. Its curatorial approach was deliberately unthemed: a cross-section of meaningful new-media practice rather than an argument, mixing internationally recognised figures with emerging artists, and site-specific commissions with performance. Technology was treated as one of the ordinary materials of contemporary life rather than as a novelty, and the works were chosen for the way they played with perception, space, code, light, sound and robotics, and with the relationship between an audience and the machines around it.
The roster ran from Ryoji Ikeda's supercodex live set and Ryoichi Kurokawa's Octfalls to first-time commissions at architectural scale: Matthew Schreiber's laser room Ricochet, Kyle McDonald and Jonas Jongejan's Light Leaks, James Clar's The New Sublime, Playmodes' Cluster, Hovver's Liminal Scope, VT Pro and GMUNK's Telestron, Cocolab's Outside, The Mill's UPROAR, Lina Dib's Threshold, Félicie d'Estienne d'Orves's SUN (~8 MN), Theodore Fivel and Freeka Tet's GUST, Vincent Moon and Priscilla Telmon's Híbridos, and Ekene Ijeoma's Deconstructed Anthems. NYLON, previewing the weekend, wrote that where other festivals say they feature art, Day for Night is made of it.
“Where other festivals say they feature art, Day For Night is made of it.”
An audiovisual performance in which raw data and mathematical models generate both the sound and the projected image.
View supercodex [live set]A site-specific field of single-diode lasers forming an apparently architectural, wholly immaterial room the audience may enter.
View RicochetMirror balls and computed projection: scattered reflections resolved by software into controlled patterns across a room.
View Light LeaksEight screens suspended in an octagon carry synchronised close-up waterfalls and the sound of crashing water.
View OctfallsA dynamic visual index of code: interactive software modules the audience may manipulate directly or watch run.
View Impure FunctionsReal-time media generated by a kinetic sculpture: reflective forms, liquid and light filmed live and projected at architectural scale.
View The New SublimeA four-by-four array of the building's columns turned by LED into a light-and-sound instrument.
View ClusterThree large rings of light set in line, with a custom soundscape, so that visitors see them align and then walk between them.
View Liminal ScopeAn audiovisual environment of footage recorded over several years among Brazil's spiritual and religious rituals, shown as installation and as live performance.
View Híbridos, the Spirits of Brazil“I deeply believe that meaningful artwork that is not made for an art crowd is possible.”
A two-way-mirror performance cube in which a jazz trio plays an algorithmically deconstructed Star-Spangled Banner.
View Deconstructed AnthemsA large outdoor projection: a kaleidoscopic compilation of the artist's recent, time-sensitive works, made as a projected film for the festival.
View OverflowAn octagonal environment of reflective, tinsel-like surfaces and projection screens, built to run a long programme of Radio Soulwax audiovisual productions.
A separate live audiovisual performance by Freeka Tet at the 2017 edition, built around facial recognition; recorded apart from GUST, his collaboration with Théodore Fivel.
An interactive mechanical installation that reacts to visitors through programmed emotions expressed in light, movement and sound.
View OutsideA large digital projection combining Hurricane Harvey precipitation, wind and water data with #HOUSTONSTRONG activity on Twitter.
View UPROARTwo industrial robots as conductors of light, moving fabricated geometric shades before light sources to build a shifting architecture of shadow.
View TelestronAn interactive video installation of a Texas beach, projected some forty feet wide, whose speed, sound and colour change with the visitor's approach.
View ThresholdAn audiovisual installation in which a lit acrylic disk crosses an eighty-metre space in eight minutes, the time sunlight takes to reach the earth.
View SUN (~8 MN)