New kinetic light installation Cylinders by Macular premieres at Conflux

Come and see the premiere of the new kinetic light installation Cylinders by Macular from the 2nd till the 5th of June in WORM UBIK Rotterdam.

As a part of the exhibition at UBIK, Conflux is showing the new kinetic light installation Cylinders by Macular. The installation is realized in collaboration with Highlight festival in Delft and shows five rectangles spinning rapidly through each other’s field of rotation resulting in a dynamic field of abstract light patterns that are scattered through the space. Macular has been a close collaborator of Klankvorm, the organisation behind the Conflux festival. The collective works extensively together in the realization and presentation of multisensorial artworks.

About Macular
Macular is an initiative of a group of artists who share a collective interest in art, science, technology, and perception. The members of the collective collaborate on the creation and production of multisensorial artworks that are presented at media arts festivals, galleries, and other arts institutions around the world. An important part of the initiative is that the collective functions as a nomadic lab in which the members do research and develop the technology and theory that’s needed in order to create their works.

One of the ongoing research topics is the creation and manipulation of emergent systems and the possibilities for composition that arise from them. Besides showing these systems as installations, they can also be seen as instruments for live performance, where the performer and/or the audience becomes part of the system. Another field of interest is the notion of musical thinking and the way concepts of musical theory can be inserted into other media in order to create generative compositions in movement, light, and sound.

In doing so, the artists aim to create their own abstract language that is mostly based on rule-sets within self-built systems. This development happens through constant interaction between the works and the creators. The pieces are shaped and transformed throughout the process. With this in mind, Macular aims for a minimalistic aesthetic through a continuous exploration of the basic characteristic properties of the media they use. Whether they are cultivated systems or natural phenomena, the medium gets stripped down to the essence of the medium itself, showing only what is necessary to perform the composition.

Work by Macular members has been shown worldwide at festivals and institutions such as; Ars Electronica (Linz, AT), WRO International Media Art Biennale (Wroclaw, PL), Saatchi Gallery (London, GB), Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (Taichung, TW), Boijmans van Beuningen (Rotterdam, NL) Woodstreet Galleries (Pittsburgh, US), AxS Festival (Pasadena, US), Lucida Space NCCA (Moskow, RU), Microwave International New Media Arts Festival (Hong Kong, CN), TodaysArt Festival (Tokyo, JP & The Hague, NL), Ende Tymes IV (Brooklyn, US), New Wight Gallery (Los Angeles, US), DEAF Biennale (Rotterdam, NL), Sonic Acts Festival (Amsterdam, NL), Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam, NL), Biennale of Carrara (Carrara, IT), Exit Festival (Paris, FR), Van Gogh Museum (Amsterdam, NL), V2_Institute (Rotterdam, NL), ISMAR/SHIFT Festival (Basel, CH), Kontraste Festival (Krems, AT), Sight&Sound Festival (Montréal, CA), and Salone del Mobile (Milan, IT).

Picture: Phyllotaxis by Macular @ Fiber x The Rest is Noise 04 photo credit Maarten Nauw.

 

Program 2023

  • Conference

    Curiosity abounds when dealing with nonhuman forms of consciousness in relation to the very human forms of emotional and intellectual expression inherent to the art and music presented at Conflux Festival. Do abstraction and beauty translate? Do intention and meaning change? Can one compose for another type of consciousness? What dreams do machines and bees share?

    The one day Conflux Festival conference happening at Worm explores machine hallucinations for waking humans through talks and presentations by theorists, artists and performers from the festival program in response to the festival theme of Living Machines. With special focus on the nonhuman experience of consciousness, the conference presents alternate ways of understanding our rapidly integrated human-machine world.

    Artists

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    Laura Tripaldi
    Soft Machines. Material Interfaces Between Bodies and Technologies
    Nicky Assmann
    Artist Talk
    Jorrit Paaijmans
    Artist Talk
    Joost Rekveld
    Analog Dreams of Nature
    Dave Murray-Rust
    Claire Williams
    Artist Talk
  • Club Nights

    After the neurological demands and multisensory stimulation of the Conflux's Festival day program, by night you're invited to viscerally engage in the techno-driven sounds of the club nights happening at POING and WORM across two dancefloors. Plunged into darkness and sensorially deprived by strobe and smoke, surrounded by other bodies ensnared in the ritualistic human-machine interactions of the dancefloor, here the unconscious processing can begin.

    At POING on Friday experience an afterhours program of bass-driven techno with daring producer and Fever AM label co-founder Rhyw playing with Amsterdam experimental bass artist Zohar and rising Rotterdam dubstep DJ Nala Brown from the female-focused AMPFEMININE collective. Plus local support from Ruwedata, Nikos and Mark Rutta (AKA Mark & Ruta Genyten).

    At WORM on Saturday, the playful leftfield house sounds of rRoxymore meets electro, industrial and seering "Mensch-Maschine" techno with Oliver Ho DJing as Broken English Club alongside Rotterdam techno veteran and Mord Records chief Bas Mooy, with a special collaboration from Perron resident Rita Maomenos and visual artist Cem Altınöz. Plus local support from Afra, dirtydms and Vox supreme.

    Artists

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    Rhyw
    rRoxymore
    Broken English Club
    Bas Mooy
    Afra
    Zohar
    Nala Brown
    VSK
    Rita Maomenos & Cem Altınöz
    RVRS
    Vox supreme
    dirtydms
    Ruwedata
    Nikos
    Noach & Tyn
    Mark Rutta
  • Exhibitions

    Are machines living among us or are we living among machines? And how can we learn from each other's experiences? This year’s Conflux Festival dives deep into the human-machine dichotomy and raises questions about our relationship with artificial systems through two exhibitions exploring the festival theme of Living Machines.

    At V2_ artists Claire Williams, Evelina Domnitch & Dmitry Gelfand, Jorrit Paaijmans, Louis-Philippe Demers and Entangled Others Studio present multidisciplinary works at the intersection of science, art and technology. Under the title ‘Living Machines’ the selection of artworks show alternative views on how technology influences human perception. The second exhibition at Roodkapje presents kinetic light installations and screen based experiments by artistic researchers from the Macular collective, who celebrate 15 years of their nomadic lab practice.

    The exhibitions are free of charge. Opening times:

    Thursday 15 June: 18:00 - 21:00
    Friday 16 June: 14:00 - 20:30
    Saturday 17 June: 14:00 - 20:30
    Sunday 18 June: 14:00 - 20:30

    Artists

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    Entangled Others Studio
    SEDIMENT NODES
    Macular: Nicky Assmann
    The Abysses of the Scorching Sun
    Macular: Daan Johan & Joris Strijbos
    Cycles
    Macular: Daan Johan & Joris Strijbos
    Revolve
    Macular: Eric Parren
    Drifting
    Macular: Nicky Assmann & Joris Strijbos
    Liquid Solid
    Jorrit Paaijmans
    Automatic Signum Series
    Jorrit Paaijmans
    Linearis Objectum No.3
    Louis-Philippe Demers
    A Monocular Dialogue
    Evelina Domnitch & Dmitry Gelfand
    Hilbert Hotel
    Claire Williams
    Zoryas
    Macular: Matthijs Munnik
    Citadels
    Macular: Matthijs Munnik
    Barycentre
  • Performances

    Conflux Festival explores the broad and murky boundaries between humans and their machines over a four day program of innovative sound performances, live audiovisual presentations and experimental cinema showcases by a cross-section of internationally renowned artists, happening across a diverse range of environments throughout the city of Rotterdam.

    For the free opening concert on Thursday, Conflux Festival presents a public sound art intervention at Plein 1940 featuring elements of the Kinetic Sounds multichannel sound installation. On Friday, the concrete cathedral Brutus will host an expanded cinema showcase of audiovisual works going beyond the traditional frame of a screen. On Saturday, visual artists and musicians will present a series of immersive screen-based performances at the Arminius Kerk, and on Sunday experience experimental theater and sound performances at Worm.

    Artists

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    Drew McDowall
    Leila Bordreuil
    Telcosystems
    Ulla & Nan Wang
    AV live collaboration
    Joost Rekveld, Fani Konstantinidou & Anne La Berge
    #2623
    Acidic Male & Jelmer Noordeman
    AV live collaboration
    Michela Pelusio
    SpaceTime Helix
    Olivier de Sagazan
    Transfiguration
    Encor Studio
    INITIATION
    Mint Park
    Macular: Daan Johan
    Line-AV
    Joost Rekveld
    Film Screening: Mechanisms Common to Disparate Phenomena; #59
    Pandelis Diamantides
    Παλμός
    Goldblum
    Paul Devens
    Pulses, Pops and Kaboom
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