Liquid Space 6.0 - Museumnacht 2009
On Rotterdam's museum night, V2_ Institute for the Unstable Media will hold a preview of the installation Liquid Space 6.0 by Rotterdam artist Daan Roosegaarde (known for projects including the Sustainable Dance Floor at the club WATT).
Liquid Space 6.0 is an interactive artwork in the form of a tripod several meters tall that links four spheres by means of bundled flexible tubes that mysteriously light up. Visitors who enter Liquid Space will notice that the installation responds to them. The installation appears to come alive: its form follows the visitor's movements, the tubes light up, and the movements of the visitor and the space fuse.
Technopoetry
Roosegaarde has lived and worked in Rotterdam since his master's course at the Berlage Institute. His work stems from a fascination with technology. Between the first Liquid Space installation (which Roosegaarde built in 2002, as he was graduating from AKI) and the current sixth version lie years of technological development. The first version of Liquid Space was a moving metal structure driven by clearly visible windshield-wiper motors.
Roosegaarde says, "My goal is to refine the technology so that it is invisible and interaction with the work is experienced as something natural. With Liquid Space 6.0, I feel like the technology really does merge with the experience. Current interactive technologies exist mainly on screens and are therefore flat. I want to make these technologies physical in a poetic way in the form of spaces or landscapes."
Technology drives more and more aspects of everyday life. Whether it's escalators changing direction in Rotterdam's metro stations, social interaction on Facebook, or simulated daylight in a lounge at Schiphol Airport, the influence of technology on the human body is ubiquitous.
Roosegaarde says, "This new world that is oriented more and more to technology is slowly but surely becoming the new nature - nature 2.0. As an artist, I want to make people conscious of this new world in which technology is increasingly becoming an extension of our senses."
Nature also plays an important role in Roosegaarde's art; in Liquid Space 6.0, he took inspiration from jellyfish.
Roosegaarde: "Jellyfish have this fantastic science-fiction appearance, but of course they're completely natural animals. Deep under the sea, they produce their own light so they can communicate with each other. Nature's ability to adapt and evolve fascinates me: reality is always more shocking, poetic and surprising than you could imagine. It's one of the most important inputs in my artistic process."
The Liquid Space project is never really finished. Artwork and viewer influence each other in a continual interplay of interaction and control, continually creating new forms. Roosegaarde sees every presentation of Liquid Space 6.0 as a test lab in which the audience provides input for the project's further development. The viewers are thus part of the work's identity.
Following its commissioning and exhibition at Japan's Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media in 2008, its museum-night preview at V2_ is an important moment for Roosegaarde's team in the run-up to the work's official European premiere at STRP in Eindhoven and this summer's Oerol Festival on the Dutch island of Terschelling. As the work travels, it will continue to explore and develop its relationship with the viewer.
March 12: Test_Lab: Artistic Interfaces
On V2_'s Test_Lab night on March 12, Daan Roosegaarde will be present to discuss his work and take questions from the audience.
Liquid Space 6.0 was developed by Daan Roosegaarde and the Studio Roosegaarde team (Peter de Man, Axis Stuifmeel and project staff).
During the Museumnacht, VJ Barbara Nordhjem will transform V2_ into the ideal visitors' lounge using video projections based on the Liquid Space series.
http://www.studioroosegaarde.net
http://www.ycam.jp
http://www.rotterdamsemuseumnacht.nl
