Ingrid Dabringer has shifted her interest from maps to x-rays in her recent work with some really intriguing results.

Dabringer on her work:

Body of Work is a presentation of colourfully illustrated X-rays presented on hospital imaging light-boards. As an artist I am continuously interested in the tools of humanity. Through the use of X-rays, shapes are created through the imaging and flattening of the human body. An entire alternate reality emerges through how humanity sees itself and the structures it uses for self-analysis.

Human tools define our civilization’s values, progress and intentions. By using X-rays I am able to quite literally comment on how we see ourselves. Importantly, it’s also how we see ourselves when the “chips are down,” when we’re vulnerable. North Americans are systematically taught to look for answers outside of themselves; to trust empirical evidence over intuition. Yet with x-rays it comes full circle in that we go outside of ourselves to look inside ourselves. And, although the natural organic lines and forms of anatomy are lyrical and soothing, they also speak to our human fragility…

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Transcending the Material by Ben Cuevas is a continuation of his interest in ”reflect[ing] on the condition of embodiment, which begs the question: what does it mean to have a body, to inhabit a body, to be a body incarnated in, and interacting with, this world?” In this particular installation housed in Wassaic, New York he uses cans of condensed milk as a reference to material culture and Wassaic’s local history (The Borden Company had a factory in Wassaic). It is also some of the most impressive knitting I’ve ever seen.

Oscar Lhermitte and his team want to make sure you don’t have to miss out on star gazing just because you live in an urban environment. They have concocted a system for planting stars in the night sky and they’ve even added a few new constellations.

About the project:

Over time, society has developed a complex rhythm that demands we live in an environment artificially lit twenty-four hours a day preventing us from experiencing the natural lights coming from billions of light years away, shining and twinkling as soon as the Sun sets to the west.

The Urban Stargazing project focuses on bringing back the stars in the city sky by recreating existing constellations and adding new ones, narrating old and contemporary myths about London. Twelve groups of stars have been installed at different locations in the city, and can only be observed by the naked eye at night time.

Nervous Structure by Cuppetelli and Mendoza 

About the project:

Nervous Structure is a series of site-specific, interactive installations consisting of string and fabric structures illuminated with interactive computer graphics that react to the presence and motion of viewers.

The piece consists of three planes that intersect: the physical plane (the structure), the virtual plane (the projection) and the perceptual plane (the viewer and his/her interaction). It is in these various points of intersection that the piece works, and our interest lies in the perceptual problems that arise within these intersections.

See some samples of them in motion here:

Growth rendering device and Growth modeling device by David Bowen.

About the growth rendering device:

This system provides light and food in the form of hydroponic solution for the plant. The plant reacts to the device by growing. The device in-turn reacts to the plant by producing a rasterized inkjet drawing of the plant every twenty-four hours. After a new drawing is produced the system scrolls the roll of paper approximately four inches so a new drawing can be produced during the next cycle. This system is allowed to run indefinitely and the final outcome is not predetermined.

About the growth modeling device:

This system uses lasers to scan an onion plant from one of three angles. As the plant is scanned a fuse deposition modeler in real-time creates a plastic model based on the information collected. The device repeats this process every twenty-four hours scanning from a different angle. After a new model is produced the system advances a conveyor approximately 17 inches so the cycle can repeat. The result is a series of plastic models illustrating the growth of the plant from three different angles.

Quayola and Memo Akten have collaborated to create a multiscreen digital artwork for the exhibition In the Blink of an Eye: Media and Movement, which is part of the Cultural Olympiad programme. Taking the raw data collected from athletes in motion, they have created beautiful and complex moving abstractions that seem to capture the very essence of their power and grace. This generative animation and interactive installation will display at the Museum from 9 March – 2 September.

About the project:

Forms is a series of studies on human motion, and its reverberations through space and time. It is inspired by the works of Eadweard Muybridge, Harold Edgerton, Étienne-Jules Marey as well as similarly inspired modernist cubist works such as Marcel Duchamp’s “Nude Descending a Staircase No.2″. Rather than focusing on observable trajectories, it explores techniques of extrapolation to sculpt abstract forms, visualizing unseen relationships – power, balance, grace and conflict – between the body and its surroundings. The project investigates athletes; pushing their bodies to their extreme capabilities, their movements shaped by an evolutionary process targeting a winning performance. Traditionally a form of entertainment in todays society with an overpowering competitive edge, the disciplines are deconstructed and interrogated from an exclusively mechanical and aesthetic point of view; concentrating on the invisible forces generated by and influencing the movement. The source for the study is footage from the Commonwealth Games. The process of transformation from live footage to abstract forms is exposed as part of the interactive multi-screen artwork, to provide insight into the evolution of the specially crafted world in which the athletes were placed.

Since this is a project all about movement, it can’t really be fully appreciated until seen in motion:

Forms (Excerpt) from Nexus Productions on Vimeo.

Multimedia artist Dev Harlan combines sculptural forms with projected light to create the illusion of transformation. 

About his work:

His hybrid works combines the physical and the virtual with the use of sculpture, light and projection. The large scale works draw on foundational geometries, and yet serves as vessels which contain material seemingly captured from the ether. There is no reckoning required – they are Here and Now. They embody that indescribable matter that exists between everything and nothing.

Still images really don’t do his work justice, so here’s a video of one of his pieces:

Dev Harlan - “Parmenides I”, 2011 from Dev Harlan on Vimeo.

Systems by Dan Beckemeyer is an “illustrated skeletal system with a stitched cardiovascular system and hand felted muscle mass all on hand-made paper”.

The BrainCar by Olaf Mooji

From WHOA:

The BrainCar was created by Rotterdam artist, Olaf Mooji, and is a mobile sculpture that features a brain-like extrusion on the back of a modified used car. During the day, the vehicle drives around (operated by a human driver, obviously) and captures and stores images and video from its travels. During the night, the footage is remixed and projected from within the brain sculpture and visible to passersby on the outside. Mooji’s body of work involves the alteration of motor vehicles in pieces that express the nearly psychological connection between drivers and their cars. In the case of the BrainCar, Mooji wondered what it would be like if “…the car itself could experience with a kind of consciousness its own passage through spacetime.”

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