liquid space02
designing by numbers spatial audiovisuals

Brussels Belgium
Workshop at MediaRuimte: 17.05. - 31.05.2004
Exhibition at Map, matrix art project: 08.07-29.7.2004

"1.Mathematics is the language of nature. 2. Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers. 3. If you graph the numbers of any system, patterns emerge. Therefore: There are patterns everywhere in nature."
Quote from the movie "Pi", by Darren Aronofsky

general approach

Submissions for the open call of the liquid space 02 workshop / exhibition organized by LAb[au] have been solicited from musicians, graphic designers, programmers, architects, video and media artists. The main topic of the workshop is spatial audiovisual music or in short: how to produce an artwork where music and images merge thanks to the concept of space. In regards to this topic, movie making practices and techniques, music composing techniques and architectural structural practices merge. Interdependency of sounds and images open a brand new range of experiments especially when considering the digital nature of the work permitting both real-time manipulation of parameters (performance setting) and interaction targeted towards visitors (exhibition setting).

All these considerations lead to a brand new field in an artist's register, designing processes and systems rather than "closed" results. Liquid space thus stands for a trans-disciplinary approach but also for an explorative work in merging codes and signs of different media.

In this manner the workshop focused on the production of interactive 3D real time spatial and visual music files which takes into account different performative settings such as 'live' playing: concerts, and user interaction: installations.

thematic approach

Liquid space 02 followed the theme of numbers where number theories have been motivated to stimulate the visualization of the inherent inFORMation logics in computation and communication processing technologies. In this manner the different participants workfiles express each the different established inter-relationships of media through this common code in order to visualize its parametric and structural setting, the language of the digital media. Here the thematic frame also establishes a common vector to relate the different files produced in the workshop: period 1, in order to create a common view all participants exchange, exhibit, perform and present the works in a coherent manner, exhibition: period2. In order to stimulate the general view different international theorists and artists have been invited during two work periods to engage with the participant artists via lectures and discussion panels, on the topic of relating number theories to the aesthetics of the digital media.

Liquid space02 has been realized with the support of: Vaf, Vlaams Audiovisueel Fonds