New installation at Op De Bres Festival

Here is a preview of my new interactive fluid vortices installation consisting of three big cylindrical glass water containers with spiraling water vortices. The speed, depth and intensity of the vortices are controlled by pre-recorded and real-time sampled sounds resulting in a hypnotizing water vortex ballet.

The installation will be shown during the Op De Bres Festival inside an old fort near Amsterdam that was originally designed  as a defense system by flooding the surrouding areas. The fort has been closed to the public since it was built in 1912. Now it will be open for only three days. The exhibition presented is all about water as our friend and foe. Participating Artists: Afterlight, Roos van Haaften, Anneke Ingwersen and Peter Zegveld.

Exhibition runs May 26th, 27th and 28th.
Location: Fort aan de Jisperweg, Zuiddijk 4, 1461 EB Zuidoostbeemster, NL.
 Go here for more festival information
About the forts in English

Students Explore a Collision of Dinosaurs and Robots

By Laurie Gwen Shapiro

The first human beings to see the exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History were 25 children from the Lower East Side, 4th Grade Class at PS 110.

Read the full story here

A Meeting of Beasts

American Museum of Natural History, New York City, November 9th-14th, 2011

They have not stopped. They have not stopped chirping, clicking, and carrying on. They have not stopped ever since we returned from New York City. Every morning, before I have even turned them on, they demand to return.

I have no choice. I am outnumbered.

I am so pleased to announce my return to New York, accompanied by a collection of my kinetic sculptures. The exhibit is in mutual support of Convento, the new award-winning documentary about my family and I from filmmaker Jarred Alterman, screening in the Margaret Meade Film Festival at the American Museum of Natural History. There is no more suitable venue than the great halls of that incredible institution. The entire building is a natural archive. My work is, too, a record, simply preserved in a different way. The installation will be in the lobby of the Grand Gallery for the duration of the Margaret Meade Film Festival, November 9th-14th, 2011.

My mechanoids are very excited to see the dinosaurs. Why shouldn’t they be? The two are biological brethren, kept apart by so much time. The connective tissue of both may have long ago disintegrated, but they will all stand together for the first time, one in the shadow of the other. My sculptures are interactive art, encouraging all to look into the eyes that are most definitely looking back. The enormous reptiles, however, will be doing all the looking. Such teeth demand respectful distance. Each viewer will have the ability to walk into and be surrounded by near tangible evolution, simultaneously occupying a mark on its timeline.

I hope you are able to attend this meshing of sculpture, film, and multi-species mingling.

November 9th-14th, 2011
American Museum of Natural History, lobby of the Grand Gallery
77 St. between Central Park West and Columbus Ave., NY. http://www.amnh.org/
Check here for ticket and festival information.

Co presented by ROOFTOP FILMS and the Consulate General of Netherlands in NYC

Living Machines: From Puppets To Humanoids

MACCCHINE VIVE: DALLE MARIONETTE AGLI UMANOIDI

 & Musée Du Quai Branly

October 6 I will have an opening + lecture at the Museo Internazionale Delle Marionette Antonio Pasqualino in Palermo. I will be talking about my bio-mechanical creatures. During this seminar there will be talks by the anthropologists and art historians José Antonio González Alcantud, Ignazio E. Buttitta, Thierry Dufrêne, Emmanuel Grimaud, Caterina Pasqualino, Rosario Perricone and Denis Vidal. Curated by Caterina Pasqualino.

Hope to see you there!

CONVENTO – closing night film at CIFF

CONVENTO will be the closing night film at the 2011 Camden International Film Festival co sponsored by Rooftop Films.  The film will screen outdoors at The Cellar Door Winery. The weekend will jam packed with international documentaries.  During the festival  a series of video installations will be shown in a variety of locations- including a forest, an old ship and some yet-to-be-determined sights.  The work is an on-going collaboration with filmmaker Jarred Alterman.  Bellow is a preview of the work cut by Jarred.

ICON Magazine photo editorial

Issue 099 is out now and the theme is “Artificial Intelligence”. On the cover of our September issue is BERG, the design practice busy “inventing next year”. “The world is full of non-human actors that we have to get along with,” they say. Looking further ahead, Miles Kemp of Variate Labs, “robotic architecture’s most fervent evangelist”, imagines the intelligent house of 50 years from now being staffed with nanobots, shapeshifting to our changing needs and moods. Less optimistically we visit the post-apocalyptic world of Dutch artist , which is inhabited by uncanny automata. And firmly in the present, we explore the architecture of datacentres, the vast, anonymous storehouses of our digital traffic. SEE DIGITAL PREVIEW HERE.

The machinist, Nature Magazine.

By Jascha Hoffman

Dutch artist Christiaan Zwanikken makes computer-controlled mechanical sculptures, many of which use animal skeletons he has found. He discusses the relationships between humans, animals and machines.

Read full interview here