Carsten Nicolai

Visual artist, composer and musician — Born 1965 in East Germany. Presently lives and works in Berlin and Chemnitz, Germany. Know for creating works incorporating physical, life, chaos and other phenomena, based on hybrid tools combining forms of expression from the fields of visual art and electronic sound. His sound performances visualizing symbolic codes are highly regarded internationally in the realm of post-techno, music as well as in the fields of contemporary and media art. As a musician, operating under the pseudonyms noto and alva noto, Nicolai has cooperated with various noted artists, and is particularly well-known also for his work with Ikeda Ryoji in the duo project “cyclo.”. In 2005, he presented “syn chron”, an installation piece integrating light, sound and architecture, at YCAM.
http://www.carstennicolai.de/
http://www.alvanoto.com/

Marko Peljhan

Conceptual and media artist — Born 1969 in Slovenia. Associate professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Currently holds a joint appointment with the Department of Art and the Media Arts & Technology graduate program. Has introduced his work in museum displays, exhibitions and festivals around the world. Next to establishing the art and technology organization “Zavod Projekt Atol” in 1995, and set up “PACT Systems”, a global network for developing technologies on a base of open-source and strategic media. Also launched the music label “rx:tx”, and has been involved with the mobile laboratory project Makrolab, focusing on telecommunications, migrations and weather systems, since 1997. He further coordinates a joint project by the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre (Moscow) and the MIR (Microgravity Interdisciplinary Research) network.

polar^m [mirrored], 2010

If polar, that we have created in the year 2000 was concerned with the notion of the networks as an intelligent matrix, not unlike the matrix of cogintion of the Solaris^*1 ocean and our interaction with them, the polar^m landscape questions the relevance of the viewer, her/his existence within the space and her/his influence on it. the focus is on the work of art as an autonomous construction in a much larger, to a certain degree infinite structure enveloped in a radiating particles ocean.

Electromagnetic and visual radiance together with α, β, and γ radiation are the dynamic triggers of the polarm algorithms that sonify and visualise the measurements transmitted from the observatoria and instruments present in the landscape (gieger counters, cloud chamber, high frequency receivers, granite radiation generators).

Perceptually immaterial processes of nature, both man made and cosmic on the micro and macro levels are projected onto a temporal human perception scale.

What we are asking the visitors is to question the edges of perception, to reflect the uncertainty principle and quantum relations in this system of systems, to test its limits and to generate new meaning and new relations through mere observation.

Carsten Nicolai + Marko Peljhan

^*1 Solaris (1961), a novel by polish science fiction writer Stanislaw Lem. Solaris (1972), a film by russian director Andrei Tarkovsky.

Photo: Summer Yen, Taiwan

Photo: Tone Stojko