EXHIBITION: Pulse Show: Works by Rafael Lozano-Hemmer
Organized by David Familian
DATES: September 30, 2010 – January 22, 2011
LOCATION: The Beall Center for Art + Technology, UC Irvine
EVENTS:
OPENING RECEPTION: Thursday, September 30, 2010, 6:00-9:00 p.m.
Beall Center 10-Year Anniversary Event: Sunday, October 10, 1:00 – 8:00 p.m.
FAMILY DAY: Saturday, November, 13, 11:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m.
ADDRESS:
Beall Center for Art + Technology
University of California, Irvine
Claire Trevor School of the Arts
712 Arts Plaza
Irvine, CA 92697-2775
GENERAL CONTACT:
(949) 824-6206
email: syoungha@uci.edu www.beallcenter.uci.edu
MEDIA CONTACT:
Lesly Martin (949) 824-2189 elmartin@uci.edu
EXHIBITION HOURS:
Tuesday – Wednesday, 12 – 5 p.m.
Thursday – Saturday, 12 – 8 p.m.
BRIEF OVERVIEW
The Beall Center for Art + Technology at the University of California, Irvine brings innovative new-media exhibitions that use the latest experimental artistic and scientific digital, audio, and visual technology. In conjunction with its 10th anniversary this fall, the Beall Center will present the interactive installations of internationally renowned artist, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer.
ARTIST’S BIOGRAPHY
Rafael Lozano-Hemmer was born in Mexico City in 1967. In 1989 he received a B.Sc. in Physical Chemistry from Concordia University in Montreal, Canada and lives in Montreal. Most recently Lozano-Hemmer created Vectorial Elevation, an interactive artwork for the 2010 Olympics that allowed participants to transform the sky by directing 20 robotic searchlights located along the English bay in Vancouver, Canada.
As an electronic artist, he develops large-scale interactive installations in public spaces, usually deploying new technologies and custom-made physical interfaces. Using robotics, projections, sound, Internet and cell-phone links, sensors and other devices, his installations aim to provide "temporary anti-monuments for alien agency." His kinetic sculptures, responsive environments, video installations and photography have been shown in more than 30 countries. His work has been commissioned for events such as the Millennium Celebrations in Mexico City (1999), the Cultural Capital of Europe in Rotterdam (2001), the United Nations' World Summit of Cities in Lyon (2003), the opening of the Yamaguchi Centre for Art and Media in Japan (2003), the Expansion of the European Union in Dublin (2004), the 40th Anniversary of the Tlatelolco Student Massacre in Mexico City (2008) and the 50th Anniversary of the Guggenheim Museum in New York City (2009).
ARTISTIC DIRECTOR STATEMENT
The Beall exhibition will bring together three of Lozano-Hemmer’s recent installations that are part of a series of six works that use forms of biometric information, such as pulse and blood flow, to create forms of visual output. This exhibition offers a unique opportunity to see these works from this series together in one location.
All three of the works combine multiple individual inputs in order to create a multivalent result. This is an ongoing thread within Hemmer’s work that explores various forms of embodied interactivity. The kinetic quality is not interactive in the traditional sense of the viewer consciously controlling the output. It is our autonomic nervous system systems, which we have less control that is made manifest by the work. That what is felt is made visible by the output of the work. By creating a representation of our pulse he not only reveals our own bodily function but that what we share with others. This transformation of control from our minds to our bodies is at the heart of Rafael Lozano-Hemmer’s work.
Two of the works Pulse Room and Pulse Index presents us with a history of who has viewed the work in a kind of memento-mori, in Pulse Room we view blinking lights representing the last 100 viewers of the work and Pulse Index we see images of an index finger of the last 509
viewers.
The exhibition will be on view at the Beall Center for the Art + Technology from September 30, 2010 – January 22, 2011. The exhibit may be available for travel beginning February 2011. Please contact the Beall Center for additional information.
LIST OF WORKS
Pulse Room (2007) uses a viewer’s heartbeat to trigger a grid of 100 lights that hang from the ceiling. When one grips a steel device, a sensor detects his or her pulse and immediately sets off the closest bulb to flash at the exact rhythm of his or her heart. With each new interaction the previous pulse is moved forward through the array of a 100 lights.
Pulse Tank (2008) reads a person’s pulse either from their finger or palms to activate a device that interacts with a small pool of water to produce two kinds of wave patterns. These wave patterns then cross each other creating interference patterns within the water. Lights pointing at the water then reflect these patterns throughout the space.
Pulse Index (2010), is an interactive installation that records participants’ fingerprints at the same time as it detects their heart rates. The piece displays data for the last 509 participants in a stepped display that creates a horizon line of skin. To participate, people introduce their finger into a custom-made sensor equipped with a 220x digital microscope and a heart rate sensor; their fingerprint immediately appears on the largest cell of the display, pulsating to their heart beat. As more people try the piece one’s own recording travels upwards until it disappears altogether a kind of memento-mori using fingerprints, the most commonly used biometric image for identification.