Below you will find information about the NYUAD project “Animations for a Media Facade, FILE 2017”. The festival will take place at the Cultural Centre of SESI in São Paulo City between July 17th until September 3rd, 2017.

The Festival Internacional de Linguagem Eletrônica (FILE; English: Electronic Language International Festival) is a media arts festival that usually takes place in three different cities of Brazil: São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre. It is the biggest art & technology festival in Brazil, and it serves as a lead indicator of the plurality of the work created in the interactive art field not only nationally but also internationally. It was founded in 2000 as a non-profit cultural organization with a main goal of promote and motivate research and art production on electronic language and contemporary art, as a way to set a discussing about Technology & Culture in Latin America.

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The media facede only works from 7pm to 6am. Never in the day time.

INFINITE by Liu Chang, Miao Jing, Gan Jian, 2016

“An audiovisual installation created by New York-based visual artist duo Liu Chang and Miao Jing, in collaboration with sound artist Gan Jian. The work explores the connection between time and space, discusses about spatial gravity and its influence to human’s perception. Sound and visual elements are in completely synced in order to contribute the immersive experience.” source: http://file.org.br/led_sp_2016/file-led-show-2016-6/

For additional images/videos check the links bellow:
– http://file.org.br/led_sp_2016/file-led-show-2016-6
– http://file.org.br/led_sp_2014/?lang=pt

Works must be exported in the following formats: .mov and Animation/H264 codec. Non‐interactive works are sent to the panel via Imposa Player software installed on the Windows platform.

A mask should be applied on the work. The mask is equivalent to a two‐dimensional version of the LED panel – just like the unwrapped facade of the three sides of the building. It is important to consider, during the development of the work, that the panel is three‐dimensional: the right edge of the left side continues onto the left edge of the front area, and the left edge of the right side continues onto the right side of the front area.

You can also download this PDF with additional information.

Evolving Roots refers to the production of coffee seeds in Brazil as a cultural reference. On one hand it emphasizes the significance of coffee production in Brazil, as the world’s largest producer of coffee for the last 150 years and Sao Paulo as the 3rd largest producer state in Brazil. On the other hand she captures this natural form in a digital imagery. By creating such contrast, Basaran aims to reflect the dynamism between the nature and technology in today’s world. And raises the debate on how human stays connected to their environment, how nature itself is still conserved in the face of the speedy change towards mechanical interfaces and mediums. How strong can we stay bonded to our roots of culture, do we add on our history along with the changing centuries or do we help evolve where our roots grew, what we remember and what we celebrate?

Taking coffee as a symbol for this purpose, she also explores this concept of balance between the nature and technology, keeping her own roots and where she currently takes as a place that is growing her in mind, where the culture of coffee is shared in all these locations: Turkey, the Arab Emirates and Brazil.

Basaran by her design represents how both this agriculture in particular and culture that is dependent on nature surrounds the life of a nation. And by the choice of this medium, to present a reminder of a cultural symbol, she lastly invites the audience to question a newly arising concept named as the “digital conservation”, where this time the debate opens on not only how techno-world can cause us to evolve our lands towards skyscrapers and forget our natural roots, but whether digital technology can now start to help us conserve them, conserve our nature. “

Keywords: coffee, culture, naturalistic vs digital, evolution, environment, dependence

As the expression of the body through dance is an important element to Brazilian culture, this design centers on the importance of not losing the freedom to move one’s body. The building encloses the dancer who must be able to move within the confines of the structure, which serves to hold the dancer captive as well as open up the possibilities of how minute movements have a profound effect on the body. Previously filmed footage is mapped to the façade and shows the dancer from three different perspectives performing simple movements within a narrative. The objective of the design is to remind the passerby not to fall into the confines of the everyday work life and to reignite the body.

The design is inspired by the works of Trisha Brown and Yvonne Rainer who believe in the everyday body as being a performance body, in that simple actions like sitting, standing or jumping can be seen as dance. It is also inspired by Brazil’s vibrant dance culture, which places an emphasis on the grand movement of one’s own body. ”

Keywords: body, dance, movement, everyday, pixels, halftone, monochrome, form, film

Through working with digital media and animated frameworks, Alia Alharmi urges the reconsideration of human conceptions of time and space. Growing up in the multicultural setting of the UAE, she gained an understanding of both the singularity and conformity of time. She hopes to convey the uncontrollable progression of time by showing a single droplet of water that continously falls and rises—always reappearing into the water below, or above. The artist invites the audience to ponder the origins of this water cycle: when did it begin? How long will it run for? Will it ever end? Like grains of sand in an hourglass, the droplet represents the tangible, incremental passing of time. The usage of water, rather than sand, demonstrates the vastness of time and that the lines between the past and the future are hugely distorted. The present, which is represented by the droplet, is the channel through which we travel between the two. The artwork also uses high contrasting colors to emphasize the inexorable passing of time. The never-ending cycle of falling and rising destroys the feeling of being grounded, which leaves nothing but the singular orb to hold on to.

Keywords: water, waiting, time, eternal, flow, drop, droplet, cycle, splash, ripple, liquid, splatter, drip

At a visual level, the concept involves geometric patterns growing on the building. These geometric patterns are inspired by window designs in old architecture for natural ventilation and lighting systems. On the right face of the building, geometric patterns mimicking the mashrabiya style of windows in ancient Arabian and South Asian architecture will be depicted. On the left face of the building, geometric patterns resembling Cobogó bricks used in Brazilian architecture will be depicted. The patterns will start from the bottom of the face of the building and slowly grow to consume all the space available. When the patterns run out of space on their respective building faces, they will encroach upon the middle face of the building. There will come a point when the patterns meet with each other and a conflict of space ensues. The conflict will be resolved by creating a new pattern that combines elements of both of the original patterns on the middle face. This new merged pattern will fill up the middle face, followed by the left and right faces. At a metaphorical level, the concept represents the clash of cultures during exploration and growth and the need for the self to learn to tolerate the other. The concept represents conflicts that Nahil has faced on a daily basis growing up as a third culture child that had moved around a lot throughout her entire life. The mashrabiya patterns resonates with her parent’s Pakistani ethnicity and her current home in Abu Dhabi, UAE while the inspiration from the Cobogó bricks resonates with the people who will see the animation where the FILES festival will take place.

Keywords: architecture, windows, mashrabiya, cobogó, culture clash, geometric patterns, tolerance, self vs. other