OBSOLETELY NEW! Finn Wagner | Sebastien Robert | Brigitte Louter | Igor Bobeldijk
About this activity.
SIGN presents: OBSOLETELY NEW!
September 23 to October 22, 2023
Finn Wagner | Sebastien Robert | Brigitte Louter | Igor Bobeldijk
You are very welcome to the opening of the exhibition on Saturday, September 23 at 4:00 PM.
Artists Finn Wagner, Sébastien Robert, Brigitte Louter, Igor Bobeldijk show in 'Obsoletely New!' new multidisciplinary installations with links to scientific, technological processes with a research-like slant. They make unusual assumptions: Nets end their role in the human environment and turn against us, Aurora Borealis raises her voice live from the Lofoten Islands, water fleas determine our view of time and space, robot creatures populate cooling systems of data centers. Old techniques and methods escape control; new creations and functions arise outside of humans.
About the artists:
The art practice of Brigitte Louter (Rotterdam, 1996) includes installation, sculpture, drawing and sometimes moving components, using any material that suits her. She is interested in humanity's ongoing attempts to organize, measure and map everything in search of understanding the world. A quest that can consist of a small act or a megalomaniac gesture. The failures inherent in these pursuits are central to her work. With a preference for the (im)practical, the (im)possible and the (in)visible, she hopes to create curious stories structured by absurd logic. Visual elements and solutions used in data visualization, educational contexts and measurement instruments are often used.
For the exhibition Obsoletely New! Brigitte Louter will make new work that consists of a storage and presentation piece for her three objects. Her work is about Daphnia, better known as the Water Flea, and our relationship with it from a human perspective. The large difference in scale, the microscopic size, but also the life cycles put the sense of space and time into perspective. Daphnia are popular organisms as research subjects for studying biological life processes because of their transparent and responsive nature. They require little maintenance and reproduce quickly.
The storage/presentation furniture in SIGN consists of:
- The first object is a drawing in a ring binder. The drawing is of an unusual format and shows a sediment core sample with a number of Daphnia ephippia (eggs at rest). Rather than a standardized design, the shape of this folder follows the logic and form of the drawing, meaning the folder can only carry this specific drawing.
- The second object is based on an enlarged ephippium, or resting egg, converted into an egg clock. Water fleas usually reproduce asexually, but sometimes lay these resting eggs that can be fertilized and hatch when conditions are right. The egg clock suggests that it can be counted down, with a minimum of one season and a maximum of 700 years; the oldest recorded hatched Daphnia resting egg.
- The third object is a medium-sized water flea bellow. It consists of a number of transparent layers in which a simplified silhouette of a water flea is cut out. The shape shrinks layer by layer, almost disappearing to its actual size (approximately 0.2 – 5 mm.)
https://www.brigittelouter.com/index.html
https://www.instagram.com/brigittelouter/
Finn Wagner (1992, Krefeld Germany) works as an archaeologist who makes his own finds to formulate a new future by creating a past. He navigates in time and wants to break out of the oppressive 'loop' of history. In his current work, nets symbolize man's control over his environment: what if this is lost and the nets start to play an independent role after use and create their own living environment? Nets have played a major role in the development of humanity, as they allowed people to become sedentary and achieve higher yields from fishing. They are in fact systems that separate the small from the large, the solid from the liquid, and can take any form. In many mythologies, nets represent something treacherous, because the captured victims are completely powerless and at the mercy of others.
When people lose control, the solution is usually a new technical innovation, the far-reaching and unintended consequences usually cannot be estimated. There is something desperate about our inability to solve problems by changing the way we use our resources. We become victims of our own instruments, become entangled in machine-made, resistant nets and slowly become less and less able to act. The line between prey, bait and hunter is blurring.
In SIGN Finn Wagner creates new sculptures and a new 3D Video that elaborates and visualizes the above. In the video he will discuss the metaphorical aspects of nets and also highlight the interaction with the environments. The video is played in a timeless environment, it could be the past, the present or the future. Old broken nets hang in landscapes, moving in the wind, while the environment around them tells a story about what led to that situation. Wagner uses a virtual camera with 3D scenes to give the images a cinematic, documentary look.
https://www.instagram.com/_finnwagner_/
Igor Bobeldijk (1992, Leeuwarden) gives old inventions, devices or gadgets a different function. He thoroughly investigates the origins and then gives them a hypothetical history (repurposing & re-contextualising). The objects take on a different function, role and meaning in today's society. It is not focused on optimal functionality but on presence. Igor Bobeldijk combines this with digital techniques, strange search methods, AI and algorithms.
Igor Bobeldijk is creating new work especially for SIGN.
The assumption is: An emerging cooling technology used in the most advanced data centers is called immersion cooling. All computers are immersed in special oil, a supposedly more efficient cooling solution than 'traditional' air conditioning and ventilation. Because oil is a more suitable environment for electrical and mechanical components. If the data centers of the future are submerged in oil, this will be more difficult for humans to access. Will maintenance work be delegated to robotic creatures such as servo worms, robot fish, crabs or trilobites? Prehistoric species reemerging in a 'post historical' world? On the other hand, hackers will have to think of a saboteur counterpart, e.g. bionic eels that can insert a USB stick into something, or mechanical lobsters that cut wires here and there? It could develop into a new kind of ecosystem with artificial marine animals, autonomous and remotely controlled, that live and reproduce in oil. In SIGN an aquarium/lab setting is created with prototypes of such robotic sea animals. Another angle for the public is to contact the submerged miniature world via webcams.
https://www.instagram.com/igorbobeldijk/
NB. For enthusiasts, read his thesis: www.igorbobeldijk.com/thesis.html
Sébastien Robert (1993. Nantes, FR) is an interdisciplinary artist and researcher who develops work at the intersection of visual and sound art, technology, science and ethnography. His work Magnetic Fluctuations is a real-time generative sound installation initiated by the activity of the Northern Lights of Lofoten.
A modular sound system receives real-time data from several magnetometers and antennas at the Polar Light Center, a station that monitors aurora activity in Norway's Lofoten Islands and is operated by Dutch radio astronomer Rob Stammes. All collected data directly affects various sound parameters (speed, pitch, timing, etc.) and creates a continuous soundscape, a musical score composed and played by the Northern Lights. The more this is present, the more it asserts itself in the 'sound sculpture'. The screen attached to the modular sound system complements the work, visualizing the incoming data and thus providing insight into this black box.
https://www.instagram.com/_sebastien_r_/
SIGN.
SIGN is een levendige en experimentele projectruimte voor actuele interdisciplinaire kunst op nationaal niveau. Zij biedt jonge kunstenaars een podium voor verdere profilering, ontwikkeling en intensivering van hun kunstenaarschap. Daarbij wordt nieuw werk geïnitieerd in bijzondere contexten en wordt de nodige reflectie gegeven. Presentaties zijn er in SIGN, op allerlei locaties, en in openbare ruimte met een variatie aan omstandigheden, invalshoeken, disciplines.
SIGN wordt ondersteund door Mondriaan Fonds Kunstpodium Basis 2025-2028 en door de Gemeente Groningen voor dezelfde periode.
Location.
SIGN
Winschoterkade 10
9711 EA Groningen
tel 050-3132651 of 0623631796
www.sign2.nl