THE ARK BY ROMAIN TARDY & SQUEAKY LOBSTER
MANAGE BY NICOLAS BORITCH
THE ARK BY ROMAIN TARDY & SQUEAKY LOBSTER
MANAGE BY NICOLAS BORITCH
ProYecta Oaxaca, festival Internacional de diseño y artes digitales
Ethnobotanical garden of Oaxaca, Mexico
Ethnobotanical garden of Oaxaca, Mexico
The series of site specific visual and sonic installations created
by several artists of the ANTIVJ visual label on the invitation of PROYECTA
Oaxaca, international festival of design & digital arts, as part of
the Ethnobotanical garden of Oaxaca, Mexico, explores the mediation between the
natural and the artificial. Light follows the organic behavior of plants and
creates depths of the perceptual field in order to vivify a lively dialogue
between computer-generated elements and the natural world.
While gardens are an expression of the relationship between nature
and culture, mostly seen as an idealized landscape subjected to the shaping
powers of culture and deprived of their own principles of ecology, the garden
in Oaxaca seems untameable. Its wild diversity is an image of all ethnic
groups, indigenous languages and species of plants that found here a favourable
oasis. The arrangement of the garden reflects the natural history of
cultivation and creates a polemical encounter between the garden’s rather “nationalist”
character and the arched windows of the monastery, an expression of alien
colonists. The location turns into a living canvas and mediates our
contemplation on the relationship with nature, environment, the passage of
time, the spectres of being and our illuminating beliefs.
The garden in Oaxaca is a microcosm the artists use to unveil the
region’s endemic flora and to create a continuous experience out of the
artistic format, one that may enables visitors to gain a deeper understanding
of human interaction with the environment.
“We liked the idea of trying to create a trail” says Nicolas
Boritch, “(…) of developing an ephemeral experience in such a unique space. A
place which had never been opened to the public at night before.”
The artists’ use of an immersive experience through several site specific installations generates a physical and psychological journey, but it also transforms materials and the environment into a magic geography where matter becomes object and space is refined as a wild territory of organic forms, light and technology. The trails of light become trails of the senses through which visitors can resonate with ancestral techniques, nature, technology, and a mystical experience of the world. While the curative mythologies and practices man creates to ensure his grasp over nature are an attempt to command its wild forces, the artists were interested “in letting the spectators glimpse and hear the hidden world behind each plant, rock and construction there”, says Thomas Vaquié. “We approached this idea of a garden trail as a dream. Even though each piece could work separately, it was important for us to build the trail as a journey, so that people might enter and exit with a sense of continuity. To give them the impression that they never left the dream.”
The artists’ use of an immersive experience through several site specific installations generates a physical and psychological journey, but it also transforms materials and the environment into a magic geography where matter becomes object and space is refined as a wild territory of organic forms, light and technology. The trails of light become trails of the senses through which visitors can resonate with ancestral techniques, nature, technology, and a mystical experience of the world. While the curative mythologies and practices man creates to ensure his grasp over nature are an attempt to command its wild forces, the artists were interested “in letting the spectators glimpse and hear the hidden world behind each plant, rock and construction there”, says Thomas Vaquié. “We approached this idea of a garden trail as a dream. Even though each piece could work separately, it was important for us to build the trail as a journey, so that people might enter and exit with a sense of continuity. To give them the impression that they never left the dream.”
Romain Tardy’s cacti piece creates a cultural and symbolic bridge
linking heterogeneous moments into a shared continuum. As the visitor
approaches the installation, he is progressively immersed into its core, where
shapes of light and whispering sounds draw him towards the main scene. The
architectural setting, “formed by cacti which separated the space into two
unavoidable chambers of perception, allows the visitors to view the
installation from different angles”, says Laurent Delforge. “The idea of
playing with multi-sided space became a thread in the narrative construction of
the piece.”
The Ark is a contextual installation. It uses plants as a visual
canvas but also as living beings embodying an individual presence coherently
integrated into nature as the unity of multiple living entities. Yet the
installation was not an attempt to reach “a pristine symbiosis between nature
and technology”, says Delforge. “The idea was more to create a peculiar
encounter.” The trail of light is an expression of the collision between nature
and technology, but its luminous matter also deals with memory and
recollection. The magic of light activates our recollection. Immersed in this
environment, the visitor takes an illuminating mental journey to regain memory
as light.
As visitors walk past the cacti installation, guided by distant
lowing lights and subterranean sounds only, an open space reveals 3Destruct |
Oaxaca pulsating behind thick vegetation.
Text by Sabin Bors, curator at anti-utopias.com
You may watch the Arc Project’s video to click below link of Antivj
http://blog.antivj.com/2014/magic-geography/#more-1861
You may reach another project from Antivj to click below link from my blog archive.
http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2013/05/3destruct-at-scopitone-2011.html
You may reach another project from Antivj to click below link from my blog archive.
http://mymagicalattic.blogspot.com.tr/2013/05/3destruct-at-scopitone-2011.html
THE ARK BY ROMAIN TARDY & SQUEAKY LOBSTER
MANAGE BY NICOLAS BORITCH
ROMAIN TARDY
Romain Tardy is a visual artist, and focuses his work primarily in
digital arts.
Born on September 23, 1984, in Paris, he studied at the École des
Beaux-Arts before working for various animation and post-production studios in
Paris. He also worked as a VJ at numerous events in France and across Europe,
which led him to further examine the complex connections between sound and
image.
With this experience, Tardy, along with three other artists,
created the European visual label Antivj in 2008, which formed the base of his
research and work on projected light and its influence on perception. He
remained one of the label’s main artists until late 2013.
His installations, which often use the technique of videomapping,
are conceived as tangible experiences in situ and use light as a way to enhance
existing architecture or original structures. By examining our relationship to
reality as we are confronted by computer imagery and the social changes that it
triggers, as well as the way that digital technology is situated in public
space, Tardy’s installations seek to evoke these current issues through a
poetic approach.
www.antivj.com
