Art in Review

XYZT: Abstract Landscapes

At an exhibition by the Adrien M & Claire B Company, you will be tempted to stomp, wave, blow, and dance with increasing wildness as you grow accustomed to your surroundings. Do it all. While you stop to catch your breath, the effects of your movements will linger on the surfaces that surround you.

debuted in Albuquerque’s Sawmill District in May, following a 2011 premiere and a tour of a selection of cities. It is being presented by Artechouse, an art space that focuses on works exploring the fusion of art and technology. The exhibition is composed of a series of 10 installations that span the floor of a warehouse, and all but one is interactive. In a number of the works, patterns of white lights projected onto dark surfaces move as you do: When you step on the lines on the floor in Anamorphosis in Space, they start to whirl and jag. Shifting Clouds invites you to sit on a bench and observe the formations projected onto a screen, in reaction to the movements of a person on the other side of it. A generally human-shaped image moves around on the screen, formed by countless flecks. (The effect is less that of a shifting cloud and I more of a large-scale effigy swaying in the wind.) The installations’ responses go beyond just movement. Blow on the aquarium-like boxes of

and watch the letters inside fly around their container.

The artists, Adrien Mondot and Claire Bardainne (who officially go by their company name), are based in Lyon, France. Much of their digital art explores the relationship between the seen and the felt — for instance, their work has served as the setting for choreography in which the dancer engages directly with the moving, responding set design. invites a similar — though perhaps less graceful — engagement with the body. In the installation Anamorphosis

in Time, participants stand before a four-seconddelayed projection of themselves. Step to the side, and the projection moves, too, in a sidewinder fashion, with your feet eventually catching up to your upper body. The resulting distortions are bizarre and very funny — it’s like a funhouse mirror that messes with time in addition to shape.

Anamorphosis in Time is one of several works in the exhibition that make use of a projector and camera, which interplay with software created by the artists. Other instruments used in the installations are somewhat mystifying — “probabilistic social model of movement and Perlin noise” is one of the tools used in Shifting Clouds — although video kiosks provide clarification on their meaning and the artists’ use of them. (Perlin noise, one video explains, is an algorithm that produces a harmonic series.) A number of the works use a Kinect camera, which measures the distance from camera to object, and, in the case of the floor-based installation Field of Vectors, converts that data into reactions to the participant’s movements.

Though the technology is fairly modern — updates were made in 2015 — it often references older forms. Perlin noise dates to 1983. Going further back, Typographic Organisms incorporates the 19thcentury “Pepper’s ghost” illusion, which uses an angled plate of reflective glass to create a deceptive composite image. Classic Renaissance perspective is used in to explore perception. Technology-based art may be progressive, but its roots are ancient — as is our contention with space, dimensions, and how we perceive what surrounds us.

The exhibition is at its most galvanizing in the installation for which the exhibition is partially named. Toward the back of the room, walking into a nearly enclosed cube-like structure surrounds you with changing patterns of dots, shapes, numbers, and letters. The figures swirl around the viewer, in a seemingly repeated manner beyond the cube; screens give the illusion that the patterns replicate into the beyond, somewhat like endless mirror reflections. Sweep your arms, and the images follow your lead, as though you’re the conductor of an orchestra of dots and digits. (Regarding younger conductors, the exhibition is suitable for children; the suggested minimum age is six.)

Lena Galperina, the exhibition’s visitor experience director, explained that Artechouse chose Albuquerque as its only Southwestern stop in part because of the city’s long tradition of artistic and scientific cohabitation. Walking, or dancing, around

there is no distinction between those two realms. Art is technology, and technology is art; blurring further distinctions, participants create the art as they study it, or at least create their individual variations on it. In doing so, their sensory experience of the commonplace — like floors and walls, and their own bodies — may get a jolt of fresh awareness.

— Grace Parazzoli