The 2013 Kinetica Art Fair

Belated and speedy report on the 5th Kinetica Art Fair.

Aphra Shemza, Composition X. Picture: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

Photo by Luke Neve for Kinetica

Year after year, i go to Kinetica with enthusiasm. I might find it a challenge to spot the real gems in a sea of (sometimes) artistically questionable works but that’s part of the fun. Kinetica might not be the Mecca for art & science that some bloggers and journalists describe (too many holograms!) but it’s certainly a good place to discover kinetic, electronic, and robotic art. It also has a friendly, open atmosphere that makes it surprisingly easy to have a chat with artists, art dealers and other exhibitors.

This year, the theme of Kinetica’s exhibition and programme of talks and performances was ‘Illusion and Reality’ and the thin veil that divides what is real and perceived. The -fairly broad- theme aims to challenge ideas on what is real, perceived or imagined, and focuses on transformation, metamorphism, visual paradox, vibration, nature, the subliminal and the subconscious.

This year, i liked:

Wu Xiao Fei Dyson‘s Musical Typewriter sits quietly on a table. Each of its letters is attached to a fishing line that disappears quickly in a confusion of other fishing lines and triggers a little hammer as you type. The hammers strike empty barrels of rapeseed cooking oil, jars of Marmite, cans of Pepsi, wine bottles, etc. Each producing a different sound.

Wu Xiao Fei Dyson, Musical Typewriter. Photo by Luke Neve for Kinetica

Wu Xiao Fei Dyson, Musical Typewriter

Mechanical Flipbooks by Mark Rosen and Wendy Marvel, (based on the motion studies of Eadweard Muybridge) are inspired by Eadweard Muybridge’s pioneering photographic studies of motion.

Mark Rosen and Wendy Marvel, Mechanical Flipbook. Photo by Luke Neve for Kinetica

Mechanical Flipbook, Horse in Motion

Mechanical Flipbook, Horse in Motion. Photo by Luke Neve for Kinetica

Mark Rosen and Wendy Marvel, Mechanical Flipbook. Photo by Luke Neve for Kinetica

Right at the entrance of the fair, The Walk was impossible to miss. The 2.5-meter diameter sphere is covered with some 35,000 LED’s displaying a video loop that tells a story loosely based on Dante’s Divine Comedy of the journey from Hell to Purgatory.

Titia Ex, The Walk. Photo by Luke Neve for Kinetica

Titia Ex, The Walk. Image Happy Famous Artists

The most exciting booth was by far the one set up by All Visual Arts. They showed six works inside a small dark room.

The level of water contained in Ben Tyers’ Breathe glass sculpture goes up and down following a slow, regular rhythm. In fact, the mechanism ‘inhales and exhales’ the same capacity of air as two human lungs. There’s something meditative about the piece as after having watched it for a short period of time, you realize that your own breathing pattern calms down.

Ben Tyers, Breathe, 2009. Photo by Luke Neve for Kinetica

Paul Fryer’s Chess for Tesla (which some of you might have seen at The Art of Chess exhibition at the Saatchi Gallery) is an homage to Nikola Tesla. Because Tesla was a pioneer of the vacuum tubes, the 32 pieces in the set are glass vacuum tubes. I didn’t dare touch the work but apparently The board of the chess set powers the vacuum tube pieces so that when unplugged the individual pieces glow for a little while, struggling to keep connection with the board, and then die. Plug them back in and they reactivate.

I was told that the chess board was about to travel to Hollywood to feature in a blockbuster scifi movie (Star Trek if i remember correctly.)

More images, including Kinetic LEGO sculpture by Alex Allmont and a kinetic-tensegrity-roof and reactive floor.

Alex Allmont. Photo by Luke Neve for Kinetica

Alex Allmont, All Work and No Play. At Kinetica 2013

Alex Allmont, Ride With Me

Alex Allmont. Picture: Dan Kitwood/Getty Images

David John Rosewell, Puppets to our Creation

David John Rosewell’s Puppets to our Creation mirrors the movements of the viewer who stands in front of it. The person becomes thus both the puppet and the puppeteer.

Sharisharishari + Takumi, Tea Ceremony Room. Photo by Luke Neve for Kinetica