Shi Zheng

Umwelt [sim], 2020
Video (sound, color), media player, screen or projector
Dimensions variable, landscape orientation
7 min 13 sec, loop
Edition of 5, 2 AP

Umwelt [sim] is an audio-visual simulation of the installation work, Umwelt, originally commissioned by curator Fram Kitagawa for the 2019 Shanghai Urban Space Art Season (SUSAS). Based on the samples taken from the Chongming Island National Forest Park near Shanghai, the artist virtually reconstructed the natural landscape through digital technology, then designed a computer vision system to observe this virtual environment. The main structure with the four screens in the installation can be considered as a metaphor for the "tree" which supports the constant exchange and transfer of matter and energy in the environment. In this parallel simulated reality, the screens hanging in different directions perform the role of mirrors, reflecting the visual landscape shared by both human and machine.

Mark Dorf

Preservation, 2020
Video (color, sound), media player, screen or projector
Dimensions variable, landscape orientation
6 min 13 sec, loop
Edition of 3, 1 AP
Music made in collaboration with Cory Zimmerman

In Preservation’s infinitely scrolling scene, each tree is secured in its individual vitrine sealed from the world but transformed into a golden object, an earthly material of great luxury. As climate change continues to ravage the planet, conservation of what we call "Nature" remains a central subject. In sequestering some spaces to "natural growth", supposedly untouched from human intervention, while allowing other swaths of land to fall into ruin by way of material extraction, the false binary of Nature/Culture continues. Preservation presents both sides of this spectrum at once, asking the viewer to consider this spectrum and reflect on our entanglement with what we call "Nature".

Quayola

Pleasant Places – Diptych, 2016
Two-channel video (color, sound), media player, screen or projector
Dimensions variable, landscape orientation
15 min 20 sec, loop
Edition of 3, 1 AP

Pleasant Places derives its name from the first series of landscape prints produced in Holland in the seventeenth century. In direct dialogue with the work of Vincent Van Gogh, Quayola returned to the same countryside in Provence, 125 years later. Based on 3D-scanned natural scenery in southern France, the series consists of both hyper-realistic and highly interpretative computer-generated imagery. Pleasant Places challenges the photographic image and proposes alternative modes of vision and synthesis: familiar landscapes are transformed into dense and impenetrable masses of geometries. Landscape serves as a point of departure for Quayola, paying homage to the tradition of landscape painting in Western art, while also alluding to a pivotal moment within its history when representation began to verge on abstraction.

Kurt Hentschläger

Measure, 2014
Audiovisual installation
Dimensions variable, landscape orientation
17 min 19 sec, loop
Edition of 5, 2 AP

Measure is part of an emerging body of work, which reflects on concepts of nature in the 21st century. As nature filtered through digital communications channels becomes the new norm, the boundaries start to blur between mediated and physical experience. Hentschläger’s work probes the question whether “nature” and the concept of the “original” can still culturally exist in the Anthropocene, in this age of human influence. What exactly is real, in the sense of the pure and original, and what is to be understood as constructed and artificial?

Sara Ludy

Thuja, 2012
Video (color, sound), media player, screen or projector
Dimensions variable, landscape orientation
3 min 6 sec, loop
Edition of 3, 1 AP

Pan Gifs is a series of animated gifs composed of photographs taken by Ludy while in transit and exploring spaces. Each gif alternates between two perspectives of the same location, creating a repetition that both embraces and breaks the mundanity of the everyday. Thuja is from this series of works where Ludy composes found images to show the vast interconnectedness of place through space and time. The work takes form as a slow moving panorama composed of mundane interiors and landscapes from Northern Virginia real estate listings.

Marina Zurkow

Mesocosm (Wink, TX), 2012
Hand-drawn animation (color, silent), custom software, computer, screen or projector
Dimensions variable, landscape orientation
146-hour cycle (24-minute day, 146-hour year)
Edition of 5, 2 AP

Animation in collaboration with Michelle Mayer
Sound in collaboration with Lem Jay Ignacio
Software Developer, Sam Brenner

Mesocosm (Wink, TX) is part of an ongoing series of animated landscapes that develop and change over time in response to software-driven data inputs. A large sinkhole—the “Wink Sink 2” located on private oil company property in the small town of Wink—boils, gushes, flows and expels objects. Mesocosm refers to experimental, simulated ecosystems which allow for manipulation of physical environments typically used for biological, community, and ecological research. Hand-drawn animations of these systems present dynamic choreography in real-time. Probability equations determine the outcome of each work, giving way to endless combinations of order and density. Exhibited video is documentation of a generative work.

Gary Hill

Sine Wave (the curve of life), 2011
Video (color, sound), wood, projectors, speakers
36 x 64 in / 91 x 163 cm
Edition of 3, 1 AP

Sine Wave is derived from a single uninterrupted recording of a glass of water (half empty/half full) that stands at the end of a flat aluminum bar or plank. The location is a natural setting of lush trees and plants at early dawn. Since the relative positions of the glass and camera remain the same, the glass doesn't move from the center of the frame. However, the landscape moves behind it and is also refracted in the glass. Depending on the direction of the panning movement that switches back and forth, the channels alternately switch in time to "correct" and maintain the semblance of a continuous panorama across the two screens. The doubling theme is reiterated by the inhaling and exhaling sound of the artist's breathing throughout the work.

Documentation courtesy of West Den Haag

Auriea Harvey & Michaël Samyn

The Endless Forest, 2006/2020-ongoing
Online multiplayer game

The Endless Forest is a multiplayer online game. There are no goals to achieve or rules to follow. Run through the forest and see what happens. You are a deer. So are the other players. You meet each other in a magical forest on the internet. The setting is idyllic, the atmosphere peaceful. You communicate with one another through sounds and body language. The Endless Forest requires Windows and a fast 3D videocard.

To download this game, please visit http://tale-of-tales.com/TheEndlessForest/.

Claudia Hart

Timegarden 02, 2005
Video (color, sound), computer, screen or projector, speakers
Dimensions variable, landscape orientation
1 hour, loop
Edition of 3, 1 AP

Timegardens are contemplative artworks in the tradition of the ‘sublime’ landscape gardens first designed in the 18th-century, meant to be the subject of meditation on the transitory nature of human life as compared to slower natural cycles. Timegarden 02 is a one-hour procession where the camera revolves 360º, like a clock, positioned in the woods outside a circular walled garden. Four time spans are represented simultaneously: flowerbeds cycle from spring to fall; trees cycle from winter to winter, and the dome of the sky moves from dawn to dusk. The cycles are seamlessly looped, repeating hourly.