Nuit Blanche Paris 2009
03 - 08.10.2009

Basilique de Saint-Denis
invitation by Synesthésie & Arcadi

featured project: framework f5x5x5, kinetic light art installation

about the event
For the second time, the organisation Synesthésie initiates an exhibition of LAb[au]'s monumental work in Saint-Denis' public space. 'Binary Waves' was presented in 2008 on the quays of the canal, in the context of the Biennale Art Grandeur Nature. In 2009 it is 'framework f5x5x5' which is presented in the Basilica, in the context of Nuit Blanche Paris.

With Binary Waves LAb[au] made us discovering the singular proposal of machines of desire, not celibate but contextual, since their complete integration in the collective space, resulting - once demounted after one month of exhibition - in feelings of emptiness to the space they enhanced with their presence.

'Framework' takes its place in the magnificent frame of the Basilica, masterpiece of gothic art and royal necropolis. The installation's title reflects the notion of the frame, which consequently blurs its representative intention in favour of a plastic, multisensory experience associating movement, sound, forms, colour and light. The frames of 'Framework' are framed in other frames, with dissociated axis orienting in opposite direction. The work has the quality to embrace different contexts; it absorbs its environment and, without granting its reaction, answers with its proper language.

This active behaviour creates an impression of co-presence which associates man with technology through mediation of an apparatus which delights us continuously while ever questioning the sense of sublime.'

about f5x5x5

The installation 'Framework f5x5x5' is an interactive kinetic light sculpture, extending the bi-dimensional screen space, by transposition of its pixel resolution to the physical space. Conceived as a modular infrastructure, '16n _ f5x5x5' is a communication and computation system, propagating in form of light and sound, the events it inhabits. Presence and motion create and alter the transmitted data, and propagation of this data becomes a space-time parameter.

The project title refers to informatics' modular workspace, called a framework. Here, 'f5x5x5's frames constitute the framework, a space built up by five modules of 2x2m, divided in 5x5 squared elements, establishing a matrix of 5x5x5 = 125 modules. At the one side diffusing the light (white) and at the other side absorbing the light ( black ), the modules constitute a binary language (0,1) and a space of 125 pixels, allowing to transcribe captured data from the physical environment in a kinetic and luminous play _ in between opening and closing, in between transparency and reflection, in between light and dark.

'(...) One purpose for art and artists is to be witnesses of their time, to expose the artistic result of new technologies applied to new materials carrying new ideas. Escaping from the old forms, LAb[au]'s creations challenge, stimulate curiosity, and for the audience, this knowledge contributes to its enrichment. (...) What goes beyond the spectator's understanding, the waves, the sounds and their interaction, form a magic that exceeds them, exerting a fascination that carry the spectator away from its daily life - that trivial constraint of material life. (..)

Looking at a work by LAb[au], or by Schöffer, who would have loved watching their work in continuity of his premonitory ideas and his Tour Lumière Cybernétique that was to be erected at la Défense, translating the city of Paris 's functioning data flows into luminous and kinetic effects - one is striked, not only by its aesthetical beauty, but by all this significance that emerges, if the perceiver goes to the point of investigating the invisible part of the work - its meaning. (...)'

Eléonore de Lavandeyra Schöffer