The Particle mayo 31, 2010

“The Particle” is a kinetic sculpture produced at Barcelona’s visual arts workshop Hangar by software and interactive audiovisual artist Alex Posada. Packed with custom electronics and using XBee for wireless communications, the creation responds to the space around it, transforming movement into color and sound. It’s perhaps the perfect response to advances in particle physics; just as unseen particles are, the orb is entangled with what happens around it. Rings of colored LED lights rotate in rings by a motor, and surround sound makes the audio response spatialized, as well. Skip halfway into the video and see this thing in motion – epileptic visitors may want to avoid this creation. Rapid gyrations make the life of the object mysterious, turning the fixed structure of the sculpture into a hypnotic, indeterminate phenomenon. Switched off, the sculpture is rigid and mechanical-looking, but switched on, it becomes something magically ephemeral. I’d give up my television in my house to look at this every evening; I’m strange like that.

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