Honorary Mention
RGB|CMYK Kinetic is a poetic experience of color, movement, and sound. Simultaneously a suspended sculpture and a choreography of light and music, it has roots in two twentieth-century avant-garde traditions: kinetic art and light art. The inspiration for the work stems from the nature of light, particularly from the duality of additive and subtractive colors.
Five mirror-coated flat disks seem to float through space in unison. Three spot lights in the three primary colors, red, green and blue (RGB), project a circle of white light on the floor. The discs reflect the light and cast colored shadows onto the floor. This set-up provides the basis for a poetic choreography and the immersive, spatial experience of colorful, synchronized lights and shadows moving in unison with the computative and weightless motion of the discs.
The colored ellipses on the ground are generated by reflecting and shadowing the spot lights. The mirror discs cast shadows behind them on the ground, and in these shadows the white light subtracts into cyan, magenta and yellow (CMY). In front, the discs reflect the RGB light as individual colors onto the ground. With this the three additive primary colors (RGB) and the three subtractive primary colors (CMY) are created out of the white light.
The kinetic choreography is complemented by a musical score that unfolds in dialogue with the discs’ movements. The three-part sound composition for RGB|CMYK Kinetic was made by Icelandic musician, Ólafur Arnalds. The first part of the composition is based on the movements of the mirror discs: the varying heights of the discs in space modulate the five digital instruments. The following two sections of the composition interpret the computatively designed choreography more freely.
The installation RGB|CMYK Kinetic was commissioned by Sónar and the Sorigué Foundation and premiered at SónarPLANTA Barcelona in 2015. Expanded by the dimension of black (the ‘K’ in CMYK stands for key=mask=black), RGB|CMYK Kinetic is a work produced for the opening exhibition at the Asian Art Center in Gwangju, South Korea.
ART+COM Studios (DE)
ART+COM Studios designs and develops new media installations and spaces. We use new technology as an artistic medium of expression and as a medium for the interactive communication of complex information. In the process, we are improving the technologies constantly and exploring their potential for spatial communication and art. ART+COM e.V., founded in 1988, is today ART+COM Studios, working internationally in the field of art, communication, and research.
Project credits
ART+COM Studios (DE)
Sound: Ólafur Arnalds