LFS2 // installation in collaboration with Mariska de Groot, 2018
LFS2 is an installation originating from the two artists’ ongoing research into dynamic architectures composed of solid and ephemeral media. Innovative and antiquated technologies meet in a forest of light and sound emitting nodes intersected by monolithic optical fiber artifacts. It builds on the foundation of LFS1 and expands it with new elements.
Sculptural light beams orchestrate the emergent pulsing and waving field. Both a control signal and an aesthetic element, the scanning light projections exemplify the artists’ treatment of media as building blocks for ephemeral, immersive architectures where the territories of digital and analog media, solid matter and sensory experience fade into each other.
The light planes scanning the space act as conductors of the atmospheric composition. When probed by a light beam the signal synthesized by a node slightly alters, turns on or goes silent. The choreography of scanning beams thus causes the spatial field of light and sound to morph while contrasting the warm neon glow with washes of cold LED light. Navigating this misty landscape, the visitor becomes the spectator of an ever-changing environment filled with organic signals and patterns.
In each of the 40 pole-mounted nodes a transparent piezo-electric sound sheet cylinder envelopes two stacked Nixie neon tubes. An embedded signal generator drives both of them so that the waveforms emanate from the modules as both sound and light. The signal excites the piezo sound sheet, causing audible air pressure waves. Synchronously the signal modulates the visible extension of the two Nixie tubes. One for the positive phase of the signal, the other for the negative. The Nixie neon plasma tube is an analog medium subjected to the complex laws of particle physics and electro-magnetism. It is an imprecise, unreliable and now disused 1950’s display technology that is applied and exploited here exactly for this specific, unstable character.
The third layer of elements consists of a network of 7 architectonic units built around a wide gauge optical fiber string and sound transducer. Like the neon tube modules, the optical fiber units emanate their signals in both light and sound. Here however the 7 units share a common source, like an invisible subterranean root network linking them together. Their seemingly coordinated pulsing creates sharp transients that cut through the cloud of neon glow, catalyst of a timeless state of suspension.
LFS2 is commissioned by FIBER (NL) in collaboration with KIKK Festival (BE) and supported by iii, Creative Industries Fund NL and Stichting Stokroos.
Realized with the assistance of:
Marije Baalman, ATtiny synth module design & PCB assembly guidance
Simon de Bakker, PCB design
Huub Lolang, silk screen printing
Mozzi, sound synthesis project for embedded microcontroller systems
Awinash Panchu, steel stands welding
Protospace Utrecht, 3D printing advice
Photo #1 credit: Simon Fusillier
