8pr

Sunday, February 06, 2011

KINETICA ART FAIR - LONDON FEBRUARY 2011

Installations as far as the eye can see and they all move! And there were buttons to press – yes, buttons AND levers to make the installations, move, jump, dance, light-up and make a noise. Heaven! The artists and creators were present so if you were baffled as to why someone welded chicken skulls to a robot body and animated them to the dialogue of “Magnificent Seven” then you could ask the motive!

Picture this – a robotic handbag, wriggling around like there was an invisible hand rooting around seeking out the keys that always end up in the bottom corner. Genius!

When it comes to Art and Culture I just think it’s very subjective. You either like something or you don’t. It resonates or it doesn’t. Modern art leaves me cold and yet I do like innovation.And there’s the paradox. I like finicky, tiny little detail and found it in abundance at Kinetica Art Fair – it was like the science museum meets the Museum of Modern Art.

Exploring themes of ‘body, brain and consciousness the installation had an agenda to make us question time, space, destruction and evolution. Organic materials and cybertronics married together to form some disturbing spectacles of strangeness.

Mad for pushing buttons, I tore through the Ambika gallery interacting like a wild thing until I happened upon the spinning light installation accompanied by music. Driven by a programme that was based on haphazard decision-making, the rotations of the hollow structure give it solidity and pattern, colour sound and movement. Particle, the kinetic light installation is the brainchild of audiovisual artist Alex Posada. He answered my inane questions with patience.‘What’s the logic?’ ‘There is is no logic.’ Does the music drive the lights?’ ‘Yes, and the lights also drive the music.’ It took some time for my brain to assimilate the information that it was random and I filed it where I keep ‘string theory’.