Past Exhibition
Dubai — Nov. 19 - Jan. 18, 2024
Past Exhibition
Dubai — Nov. 19 - Jan. 18, 2024
The Poetry of Water:
A Maxi Cohen Show
Overview
Overview
When the legendary Maxi Cohen (who is in the collections of MoMA; the Whitney; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the National Gallery of Canada, and many other institutions) invited dArt to collaborate on two pieces for her first solo show in the UAE, we jumped at the opportunity.
A leading pioneer of the video art movement, Maxi is no stranger to emerging technologies. After graduating from NYU, Cohen directed and produced a weekly television series called 'Are You There?' which was cited as the “first example of community interactive television” by the National Cable Television Association. The project was her first media for social change experiment.
This exhibition — The Poetry of Water — features a collection of water art captured in the UAE, including paintings, large format photographs, multimedia works, immersive installations, spatial art, and video furniture.
Maxi’s engagement with water, as a medium, began in the hot springs in the desert of California, where she became mesmerized by the lush visual abstractions within the water. Thus began a twenty-five year pursuit, filming and photographing rivers, oceans, springs, and waterfalls all around the world…from Argentina to Zambia, Iceland to Antarctica.
About the Leila Heller Gallery
About the Leila Heller Gallery
Since its establishment over four decades ago in New York, Leila Heller Gallery has gained worldwide recognition as a pioneer in promoting a creative dialogue and exchange between Western artists and Middle Eastern, Central and Southeast Asian artists. The Gallery has garnered a reputation for identifying and cultivating the careers of artists, leaving a lasting impact on contemporary art and culture.
We are proud to have this exhibit shown in the Leila Heller Gallery, Dubai.
'Looking Glass'
'Looking Glass'
'Looking Glass' is a first-of-its-kind, meditative, real-time EEG (brainwave) visualization.
Our first collaboration with Jason J. Snell — a New York-based creative technologist who specializes in using biological data to create real-time music compositions and visualizations — the piece proved to be equal parts technically experimental and emotionally satisfying.
By rigging a Muse headband to read and send EEG data to the Meta Quest Pro 3 via a Bluetooth connection, we achieved real-time visuals with minimal latency. The effect was profound: viewers entered the experience with a wide range of brain-states, yet each was able to enter a kind of positive feedback loop where the soothing visuals (accompanied by respective audio and haptic scoring) helped bring said viewers 'to center'.
We have already begun working on the next iteration of this piece, this time experimenting with alternative headbands that read additional biofeedback parameters, and upgraded visuals.
'Gradus ad Parnassus'
'Gradus ad Parnassus'
In 'Gradus ad Parnassus', JEFF (Monster Mike's signature character) emerges from one of Maxi Cohen's video tables a la Botiicelli's 'The Birth of Venus', only to find himself immersed in a chaotic world of water. Pursued by chaos and gravity, and fueled by a constant desire to ascend, JEFF ultimately discovers a large tree planted in the video table, which he helps to grow until the entire gallery turns into a chaotic, Escher-esque, underwater garden, at which point he is finally able to ascend.
Whereas in 'DO NOT TOUCH THE ART', the spatial effects were achieved by overlaying video files displayed on invisible, 3D surfaces, 'Gradus ad Parnassus' is constructed through the careful manipulation of 3D meshes that are turned on and off in actual space. As the meshes themselves were drawn by hand in Blender and exported through custom scripting to Unity, the whole construction method was experimental and highly educational. Additionally, this was the first time we anchored a narrative art experience to a piece of furniture rather than a building.
'Gradus ad Parnassus' is therefor a fitting title, as it is not only references the title of the score — Debussy's Dr. Gradus ad Parnasum — but also embodies the popular Latin phrase for which it is named, meaning in essence 'steps towards mastery'. Not only does JEFF seek metaphorical mastery over his world, but dArt and Monster Mike got one step closer towards mastery over the medium of spatial art.
Curated by William Wong.
Special thanks to Maxi Cohen, Jason Snell, initialPrefabs, Leila Heller, Pamela Giaroli, Xiao Xiao Chen, and the wonderful staff at the Leila Heller Gallery in Dubai.