The Network Paradox Scroll was first shown at Catharine Clark Gallery in San Francisco, and since has been traveling to Palo Alto and New York.

GREG NIEMEYER’S

work focuses on mediations between individuals, communities and environments. These mediations rely on data manifestations. Data manifestations are materializations of abstract data in the way people can feel. Sea water levels can become compositions for Carillons. Climate data stored in the Vostok Ice Core can become an audio tour. The myriad ways in which nodes in networks can connect to define emergent ways of life can become a gallery exhibit or a multimedia concert.

Niemeyer's work includes collaborations across disciplines and across media from gravure etchings to VR, always with an eye for the poetic foundations of technical protocols.

ROGER ANTONSEN’S

work focuses on Mathematics, Computer Science, and Mathematical Art. For the Network Paradox, Antonsen created a network simulation tool that produced both animations and still images of complex network states that emerge from the very simple rules of networking.

Marc Gumpinger‘s artworks focus on the dialog between man and technology. They are a distillation of his many years of experience in the software and tech field: After initial steps on his C64 at nine years old, while still at school in the early 90s he published computer and games graphics along with 3D visualizations. Afterwards, he developed industry-leading image processing software, graduating in business administration and earning his PhD in human biology with a focus on information technology and statistics. 

Following the introduction of the iPhone, Marc founded a start-up for creative gaming components, which he turned into the world’s biggest mobile gaming network, which was acquired by BlackBerry in 2011. Since 2015 he has been merging his experience and creativity in artworks, visualizing the aesthetics of this new technology-shaped generation. His works are in collections such as the Allianz Art Collection throughout Europe, USA and Asia. 

For this series Gumpinger used bleeding edge technology from algorithms to procedural visual effects software. In his general practice he turns these motives into oil paintings. For DAHJ he made the exception of providing the raw rendered motives.

KEEP YOURSELF CLEAN

THE FIRST SOLO EXHIBITION BY VOLNA, PRESENTING A RECONSTRUCTION OF THE ART COLLECTIVE’S MAJOR WORKS FROM 2016 – PRESENT IN A VIRTUAL SPACE*

Visit the exhibition until July 20,2020. Read the catalog. Watch a video preview.

The exhibition spaces and installations were created using video game development tools (Unreal Engine) that simulate real-time scenes and lighting effects. Exhibition visitors are invited to immerse themselves in the surroundings of each installation and can move freely in the room and choose any observation point.

The exhibition’s initiators and creators are VOLNA, an art collective from St. Petersburg, Russia. Since its formation in 2016, the group has dedicated itself to creating light art that incorporates interdisciplinary artistic practices and new technologies. The artists are known for their unusual exhibition formats, monumental installations and scenographic creations for the electronic music scene. Throughout its four years of existence, VOLNA has maintained financial and aesthetic independence by creating 17 light installations and over 30 stage designs for festivals and performances.

The following works were reconstructed for the exhibition: the audiovisual installations NEUBAU (2016), Powerline (2017) and Rotor (2018), the light installation Octave (2018), the installation Vague (2019), and two kinetic light installations, Duel (2019) and Nymphéas (2020).

Despite the site-specific nature of the works, the overarching artistic principle behind all of them is the search for a universal language of pure forms. These forms, which correspond to the abstract subjects of the installations, are refined during an extensive detailing process, minimalistic in their expressiveness and often even have a functional nature.

The primary expressive element in VOLNA's work is light and its various characteristics, its interaction with space, as well as its movement, the rhythm of chiaroscuro and the way chiaroscuro scenarios unfold in relation to time. Some works include synchronized sound, created to interact closely with the light’s dramaturgy.

The virtual exhibition space itself is heterotopic and at the same time proportional to the original exhibition locations. The model exhibits displayed inside it are as close as possible to their real prototypes and preserve the original structural details, including the nature of the lighting and scenarios behind each of the live installations. The original sound design and ambient sound environments are reproduced, and each work’s context and theme are discussed in an accompanying text.

This online exhibition represents the first time VOLNA’s enthusiasm for pragmatic production processes has been reflected in a simulated world. For this reason, only works that were realized in the material world were selected for display. The exhibition is characterized by the presence of real space, living according to its own laws in another (virtual) space, as well as the merging of virtual and real spaces, a synthesis of various methods for transmitting information and their hypertextuality. As media historian Norbert Bolz once put it, in media reality “thematically structured visual worlds are supposed to bring a surreal condensation of the experience: more real than reality.”

Accepting this challenge, the exhibition Keep Yourself Clean attempts to embrace all the real and virtual layers of information that make up each of the works, and then let the works themselves become the determinants of perception. With their help, each of the contexts will “re-sort” in the virtual world, rethink and obey the laws of perception, and each work, in turn, will become an experience of sensory contemplation. We hope this experience will be personal and genuine for each viewer.

PRACTICAL INFORMATION

The exhibition has eight rooms you can navigate through using simple control commands. You can move from one room to its neighboring rooms and return to the entrance hall. You can access any of the seven exhibition rooms with installations from the entrance hall.

You can always get information about the installation you are viewing and choose from three languages (​English, German, Russian). Using the QR-codes, you can find more information about the real-life installations, as well as download an exhibition catalogue in English or Russian, leave feedback in the guestbook and make a donation.

Navigation is controlled with a mouse or trackpad and a keyboard. Tooltips for the control commands can always be found in the lower right corner of the screen.

PROJECT ORGANIZER

VOLNA art collective

https://www.volna-media.com/

https://www.facebook.com/vvvvolna/

https://www.instagram.com/keine_angst/

https://vimeo.com/vvvvolna

*This text is from the exhibition’s press release.