[This intriguing art installation was designed explicitly to evoke presence; the story is from The Creators Project blog, where it includes more pictures and a 3:51 minute video. You can experience the Infinity Room at Houston’s Day for Night Festival through Sunday (December 20). –Matthew]
An Artist Put Infinity in a Room in Istanbul
By Kevin Holmes — Sep 15 2015
Representing the infinite is, in its very nature, problematic. But that hasn’t stopped it from making an appearance in art, time and again. LA-based Turkish artist Refik Anadol tackles the concept in his installation Infinity Room, an immersive room that radiates projected generative patterns across its four walls. It’s part of what Anadol calls his Temporary Immersive Environment Experiments and is exhibited at the Zorlu Center of Performing Arts in Instabul.
These audiovisual pieces transform a space into a simulated, abstract, mind-bending environment. This is done by “using the state called immersion,” Anadol writes on his site, “which is the state of consciousness where an immersant’s awareness of physical self is transformed by being surrounded in an engrossing environment; often artificial, creating a perception of presence in a non-physical world.”
For this installation, that non-physical world is infinity algorithmically generated using light, sound, and projection. The result is a room that looks like you’ve just stepped into some kind of otherworldly portal or cosmic gateway, as the swirls, curls, and linear forms cause the walls to melt away. But Anadol says the idea is not purely escapism, instead it’s a chance to cleanse those doors of perception—a kind of psychotropic experience minus the drugs.
”In this project ‘infinity’ chosen as a concept,” explains Anadol, “a radical effort to deconstruct the framework of this illusory space and transgress the normal boundaries of the viewing experience, to set out to transform the conventional flat cinema projection screen into a three dimensional kinetic and architectonic space of visualisation by using contemporary algorithms.”
Refik Anadol’s Infinity Room is on display at the Zorlu Center of Performing Arts as part of their ongoing 40 METERS 4 WALLS 8 CUBES exhibition, which ran through November 1, 2015. Click here to learn more.