‘Chaturanga’, Film
Commissioned by
Project Description
The briefing for this facade projection piece was to produce a piece of work that has to do with “War and Peace”, but without explicitly showing this theme.
In case of war, the participants of war are seeing everything in “black and white”, there are never any shades of good and evil inbetween. The opponents are permamently “erasing each other”. War never leads to a final solution. It’s going on and on – even if one side can win, the war goes on in the heads of the victims.
So the piece Chaturanga (which is the name for an ancient indian game which is presumed to be the ancestor of chess) resambles this principle in showing black and white shapes that are both moving with the same speed and with the same movements and intensity, permanently erasing and beeing erased at the same time. Both “sides” are equally strong, no side is ever winning.
Text
Vattenfall, by Lia, is a multiple projection piece created for a commission under the general themes of “War and Peace” and “Energy Made to Measure”.
It is certainly a “made to measure” piece, with the emphasis on “measure”, because with a total of 18 screens arranged in two complementary compositions, this is a canvas of unusual proportions and resources.
Not only the numbers are big here, but the scale of the projections is indeed something uncommon. In the outer piece, 5 screens are arranged vertically, composing a single animation where two forces of equal energy clash with each other, forcing their opposite up or down, fighting for their space inside the canvas. On this fight there is never a winner or a looser, as territory is permanently gained or lost, images are destroyed and rebuilt as each of the elements leaves its imprint in the screen while erasing the other’s.
Choosing black and white as the colors to represent these two opposite poles evoques the symbolic clash in the game of chess, not the war then, but the representation of war, the battle made abstract.
The fight becomes a choreography and an elaborate composition is built over time in this piece, later displaced both in space and hue in the horizontal piece, where thirteen more screens are arranged in a similar yet different composition.
All the movement here follows the plane of projection and the intricate details from the clash of the two main poles (where warmer colors invite the audience’s attention) blend through their movements, interfering with each other and leaving out a complex image, built from artifacts generated by this interference.
// Text: Miguel Carvalhais
Image details
Info (German)
28.08.2005 | Neue Fassadenbespielung für Vattenfall
Am 27. August 2005 fand die 18. Lange Nacht der Museen statt, an der sich das Energieunternehmen Vattenfall Europe mit einem Filmwettbewerb beteiligte. Hierfür hat ART+COM das Konzept entwickelt.
Vier junge Medien-Künstler, Andre Stubbe, Markus Lerner, Lia und Marius Watz haben abwechselnd ihre digital animierten Filme auf der 100qm großen Vattenfall-Medienfassade in Berlin-Mitte präsentiert. Die Filme “Fairytale”, “Chaturanga” und “Neon Organics” stellen Energiefelder und Lichtexplosionen dar und zeigen, wie Energie in einem Traum aussehen kann.
Während des gesamten Abends hatten die Besucher die Möglichkeit, für einen der Künstlerfilme zu stimmen. Dazu mussten sie eines von drei, mit Lichtschranken versehenen, Toren passieren, die in der Eingangshalle platziert waren. In Echtzeit wurden die Voting-Ergebnisse auf einem digitalen Balken angezeigt. Der Künstlerfilm “Neon Organics” hat die meisten Stimmen erhalten und wird das nächste halbe Jahr auf der Vattenfall-Medienfassade zu sehen sein.
Den Auftakt der Medienfassadenbespielung zur 16. Langen Nacht der Museen 2004 bildete das Konzept „Gärten voller Energie“, das von ART+COM konzipiert, gestaltet und realisiert wurde.