Energy Axis
2023, Nadia Zhaya & Arthur Start, room-size, 4 min. on loop, audio-visual immersive installation
hologram, triple projection, mirrors, generative art
“You…” exhibition, Reid gallery, 2023
Note: To avoid distorting the sound, the video needs be played through a speaker.
The hologram is made from a real-life pillar of fire generated in a spinning kinetic sculpture. The fire pillar generated restlessly by the sculpture’s constant motion, embodies a resilient and inexhaustible personal energy backbone. The inner source of spirit and light, and the underlying soul-stirring desire and drive, take on the shape of an axis on fire. The installation serves as a personal eternal flame.
The sound is generated directly from the fire pillar’s changing light intensity and motion. The multilayered sound is generated from the layers of the fast-changing flame petals. The two-channel sound is played through a quadraphonic speaker system, immersing the room.
The hologram projection triples, with 2 more of the same fire formation on the opposite walls. Superimposed with the projections are human-height mirrors, appearing as black voids ablaze. Voids are inherently infinite. As the viewer approaches 1 of the mirror voids, she sees herself in a swirl of flames. The viewer is the axis now.
On the floor, a fiery river flows as a stream of energy.
In the context of the exhibition, the energy axis is associated with the dream as one’s own desire and real-life spirit; a feeling of a dream-fuelled full-on wakefulness.
The generative sound art coded in Python and composed in Supercollider by Arthur Start.