Palais Abdellia – La Marsa
« It seems as if the viewer has been there from the beginning, that the work has been made for him, that the fixed point where he will be placed has been taken into account » (Esthétique, 1965), says Hegel of the viewer’s virtual place within the work.
The exhibition Surface Sensible brings together installations offering visual, tactile, sonic or other perceptual interaction with the public. Linked to science and technology, interactive art has developed considerably with the advent of computers and digital interfaces. Surface Sensible will question the way in which the work is exhibited in the face of the viewer’s participation.
Interactivity reproduces a central, « perspectival » point of view, as conceived during the Renaissance and thought lost with modernity. According to Jérôme Glicenstein: « Isn’t the simulated or mental displacement offered by many hypermedia devices, whether networked or in virtual reality, an ideal way of making the viewer experience the world?
the world to you, to master space? If the interactive relationship occasionally brings into play the
collective creation with « open » networked works or dialogical modes, as in « relational aesthetics », then we need to question the relationship of privileged interactivity that places the subject-interactor at the center of the work, and opens the work up to its mediation ». (Cf. Jérôme Glicenstein, La place du sujet dans l’oeuvre interactive).
More broadly, through the choice of this theme, Surface Sensible seeks to direct the viewer towards a metaphorical reflection on his or her role in conditioning the cultural and artistic landscape on offer. Having exhibited several times as an artist at E-FEST, Farah Khelil has been invited to curate the exhibition in association with Artistic Director Afif Riahi.
GUEST ARTISTS
Vincent Dulom – Centre 15060501 -Inkjet on canvas (single print)
The canvas created by Vicent Dulom for the exhibition Surface Sensible is first and foremost a statement of size. In keeping with the dimensions of the room, it occupies the center. The floor and walls emphasize its tilting, from square to rhombus, with palpable tension.
With diagonals over four meters long, the painting offers a vertiginous experience. Through the light of its color alone, the canvas is covered in shadow. Its yellow becomes green. It sinks, dark, into the unfathomable, shifting thickness of its plane, eventually disappearing from its surface. The visible appearance of this erasure loses the viewer, opening the gaze to doubt and uncertainty. Resisting its frame, the painting offers a withdrawal over which the eye has no control, a path for that which is without definition. V.D
Félix Luque Sanchez – Different Ways to Infinity: Modular (2014) – Visual and sound installation
« D.W.I.: Modular » is composed of geometric objects, ten rhombic dodecahedrons, polyhedra that are part of the « Space-filling polyhedra » family: a form capable of interlocking with each other to completely fill space to infinity. These rhombic dodecahedron shapes function in the installation as a generator of geometric sculptures. They have immense combinatorial potential to create three-dimensional landscapes.
These dodecahedrons are also endowed with reactive behaviors, thanks to luminous edges. Faced with this sculpture-generating system, the author has designed a configuration, an assemblage, that exploits the dramatic and formal capacities of this geometric construction. He uses an algorithm to produce a random flow of light. This will blur the perception of the object’s geometry, which will only be revealed gradually.
Frédéric Deslias – #TeslaCoil – Visual and sound installation
#TeslaCoil radiates magnetic fields and makes them visible by pushing them to the limit (45,000V). This coil resonates today in all our consciousnesses – literally and figuratively – as it acts as a lightning antenna that propagates data in the air, provoking both technophile fascination (we sculpt lightning in a hacking exercise that defies the laws of nature) and technophobia, in a critical exercise, it makes tangible the fields (Wifi,3G…) that surround us.
The fluorescent tubes surrounding the coil are powered solely by the electromagnetic energy it emits. The sound produced by the modulations of the high-frequency arcs is a restitution of the fields captured live in the room.
Filomena Borecka, in collaboration with Bruno Dubois – Phrenos – la banque du souffle – Immersive sound installation
The penetrable, participatory sound sculpture « Phrenos – la banque du souffle » questions the phenomenon of sharing and interdependence, as well as the « Gross Inner Happiness » of these spect-actors. It unites individual breaths in a single, shared, collective breath. The ergonomic shape of Phrenos, created in close collaboration with visual artist and designer Bruno Dubois, shapes the circulation of air by taking into account the spectator’s body. Thanks to a 5.1 spatial diffusion system, integrated into the sculpture’s centripetal shape, we can hear the breathing rhythms of people who are distinct at the same time: a sleeping baby with deep, soothed breath, a woman after physical exertion, an emotional man, an elderly man out of breath, and many other rhythms.
Magdi Mostafa – Transparent Existence – Visual and sound installation
Transparent Existence is a sound and light installation created for the Mawlwian Islamic Museum in Cairo. The artist researched the architectural history of the museum itself, which houses objects relating to Sufi rituals and a theater dedicated to traditional Sufi dance. During his investigation, Mostafa found that the buildings, which date back over 650 years, were originally used as a school. Later, the structure became the foundation of a Sufi religious site, before finally being transformed into a museum. Recent archaeological excavations have revealed historical building foundations, as well as the burial of five anonymous individual bones dating back to the 15th century. Intrigued by these multiple, interpenetrating layers of history, the artist conceived a project to draw attention to the site’s invisible past.
SCENOCOSME: Grégory Lasserre & Anaïs met den Ancxt – Phonofolium and Lux – Interactive installation
Phonofolium et Lux is an interactive work featuring a shrub that reacts to the slightest human electrostatic contact with sound and light. When a person caresses the shrub, it begins to sing, and the variations in light become stronger the closer the contact.
Scenocosme artists work on possible hybridizations between plants and digital technology. They use plants as natural, living sensors, sensitive to various energy flows. Among other things, they explore the invisible relationships we maintain with our environment: they make the minute energy variations of living beings sensitive by proposing interactive stagings in which spectators share extraordinary sensory experiences.
SCENOCOSME (Grégory Lasserre & Anaïs met den Ancxt) & LOLA and YUKAO Meet (Lola Ajima & Yukao Nagemi) – La maison sensible- Interactive installation
This behavioral work reacts like a human body. La Maison Sensible is an interactive installation that takes shape in a room equipped with discrete sensory sensors. It augments a physical space and the relationship the viewer can have with a delicate environment.The walls are covered with fine particles, at rest, animated by slow breathing movements, accompanied by calm soundscapes. If the visitor enters the room in an abrupt manner, the particles flee and the room becomes noisy and frozen. Only gently, and in the presence of empathetic behavior, do the particles offer enchanting patterns accompanied by warmer soundscapes. If visitors gently caress it, the room becomes a communicative organism, encouraging further attentive behavior.
Santiago Torres – Composition Color v°3.4 – Interactive video installation
For Santiago Torres, the word « art » is a pure translation of the idea of freedom, creativity, reflection and breaking down the barriers of the fixed image. He wants to open up a new, playful and always interactive field. Éléonore Schöffer writes that the work of Santiago Torres « is not fixed, but offered to the aesthetic and sensitive dialogue of those who, by daring, join the spirit of the Creator ». In this way, the artist creates creation. His five « Construccion color » and 12 « Rotacion » works bear witness to this liberated aesthetic.
Véronique VERSTRAETE & Mohamed-Ali KAMMOUN – Kerkennah, visual melody – Visual and sound installation
Véronique VERSTRAETE, visual artist, and Mohamed-Ali KAMMOUN, pianist and composer, join forces to weave a sound and visual piece. « Kerkennah, mélodie visuelle » is an installation resulting from the practice of each of these two artists, from the musical and visual vocabularies that each develops individually, and from the work that was carried out as part of this creation.
The shape of the Kerkennah islands, with its sawtooth shape facing the gulf coast, the different patterns of the embroideries and carpets, the Kerkennah geometric stitch, as well as the density of the rhythmic paradigms of this archipelago, visible in particular in the Al-Shghol form, inspired the colored pattern drawn on the ground as well as the sounds that awaken it.
Visitors are invited to wander around this island space, listening and looking.
HEJER CHELBI – Selection call for entries – Equivoque – Visual installation
A sensitive screen, an elusive surface, volatile information… the work is a fleeting, disfigured image of reality, in which the viewer can bathe. Conceived as a pool of material smoke, the work invites viewers to immerse themselves in a reactive projection, a sensitive surface of smoke and dust.
The projected image propagates through the space, submerging it, drawing the viewer in and merging with it. It resorbs to absorb and imprison the visitor for a moment in a bath of translucent images, deliberately evasive sketches, mirrors of a reality that flees us. Movements affect the surface of the image, and it recedes… leaving a heavy, chatty void.
MEHDI HAJ SASSI – Sélection appel candidatures – – Can’it, Play it – Interactive installation
Can’it, Play it consists of aluminum soda cans forming a sound synthesizer. The sounds broadcast symbolize an element of nature. Through a sensitive, personal gesture, the spectator creates a melodious, harmonious or chaotic landscape.