LIFE IS BEAUTY.

Work.

Nigel Stanford is a musician, film composer and entrepreneur from Wellington, New Zealand. While often mentioned as entrepreneur first, Nigel’s first love is being a musician and composer. He is renowned for his atmospheric sounds on albums or sound tracks such as “TimeScapes” (astronomy documentation by award winning director and photographer Tom Lowe). In one of the first video clips (“Cymatics”) for Nigel’s latest album “Solar Echoes,” he explores his love for science as well as the transformative power and beauty of music. Directed by film maker and visual effects artist Sahir Daud, “Cymatics” is a transformation study of visible sound vibration, where typically a plate or membrane coated in particles is vibrated, thus producing different geometric patterns. The clip showcases various transformation experiments, with each experiment representing a sound element from the song playing in time with the music. The notion Cymatics has been coined to describe this new scientific discipline, the “visualization of sounds” – a seamless transformation and integration of science, music and sounds…

Work.

Boris Kazakov’s animated films are often considered by critics as true “Triumphs of Transformation.” In his early works, Boris took historic Russian black-and-white 35mm films and drew straight on the film, scratched them or even painted them over. In the first work we present here “DOG” (2002) he continued his technique and theme, but created an entire new animated film without taking any other material. Kazakov creates / draws each 35mm picture separately with a colored felt tip pen (the original film runs with 22 pictures per second). Boris invites us to a fantastic journey of life, depicting the relationship between a dog and its owner. When you watch this five-minute animated video, you will see that Boris morphs one object into another, in a seemingly endless display of transformation, back and forth: from bad to good, from darkness to light, from subjectivity to objectivity… being separated just for a fraction of a second, then merging again with each other… everything in one and one being everything… You are invited to see the world through the Boris’s creative eyes, advancing your own, individual transformation by changing perspectives multiple times and realizing, that we are all connected, all one…a simple truth not just discovered by quantum physics in the last century, but also be enlightened individuals thousands of years ago…

Vita.

Boris Kazakov is a Russian artist, animator, film maker and clip maker. Born on November 13th, 1964, Boris was born into a Russian family of well-known intellectuals. He graduated Technical University in 1989 and started working in the artistic group “Art Engineer.” Soon after that, Boris began creating his first animated films and became an individual animator. He is a member of the creative association “Village of Artists” since 1994. Kasakov’s animation films have received great international recognition and received many festival rewards and honors, including the Berlin Film Festival Competition, Germany. Two of his films are on permanent display in the Dutch Film Museum (Amsterdam) Boris Kazakov is represented by Marina Gisich Gallery, St. Petersburg.

Work.

Computer Orchestra is a crowdsourced project by three media and interaction design students (Simon de Diesbach, Jonas Lacôte and Laura Perrenoud) from Ecal University of Art and Design in Lausanne, Switzerland. It lets users create and conduct their own orchestra. To transform 24 laptops into an orchestra, the three need to load the computers with a single sample. By choosing to upload their own music or download samples to integrate into his formation, the conductor, one Kintec, directs the computers only with the movements of this hands. His movements are detected by a kinect system, which transmits the data to processing via the SimpleOpenNI library. Via WiFi the program is able to send a signal to the computers: the assigned samples start to play immediately and a visual derived from the outgoing sound is generated. So that finally, the computers do not only send sound back to the director, but visualize it.

Vita.

Fragment.in is an interaction design studio based in Lausanne, Switzerland created by Simon de Diesbach, Marc Dubois and Laura Perrenoud. The three students met at Ecal University of Art and Design during their Bachelor Studies in Media & Interaction Design. Though they vary in their artistic skills and focus, the idea of creating something together quickly emerged. Their ideas centre upon creating innovative interactive projects by mixing installation, video and game design. The studio alternates between commercial projects and artistic projects: experimenting and exploring the boundaries between digital and tangible interaction, aiming on transforming our perception of how you can trigger change through digital interaction. You wonder how this may look like? The trio has realized several interesting projects making transformation easily happen: With their project “Open controllers” the three invented among others a small series of game controllers – one of them has been created by transforming an iphone into a controller. On www.fragment.in you can have a look on the exciting installations by the fragment team.

Work.

Marina Alexeeva’s transformational “Boxes” are small mixed-media installations composed of Miniature Theater settings combined with surreal video projections that seamlessly breathe life into the analogue stage. Taking a closer look at these compositions first reveals that all miniature elements are reused common things and objects that had a different life before Marina arranged them in a new context. Old, used film boxes diverted into Doric columns, frazzled cloth reborn as carpets, matches turning into an artist’s easel and more… All of these common, everyday things and objects experience a magical transformation from their intended use into something totally new by Marina’s gifted hands. What first seems like a theatrical still then truly comes alive, revealing its mysterious code by being supplemented with hidden-screen digital video projections. A collage of partly filmed and animated actors and actresses, combined with sequences of morphing surreal subjects and objects – all occupied with a constant process of transformation. Heroes as well as tragic figures, the first in a permanent triumphal procession while the latter in a catharsis bigger than life. Box interiors are transforming as well – while videos and stories stay the same, the interior is transforming into the exact opposite style – from a slum setting into luxurious apartment house without the stage protagonist interrupting, leaving the spectator dazzled, realizing the true transformative dimension only afterwards, when the curtain has fallen…

Vita.

Marina Alexeeva is a renowned Russian painter and creator of mixed-media installations. Born in St. Petersburg on October 2nd, 1959, Marina studied design and ceramic art at the Muhina Academy of Arts. She graduated and entered the union of artists in 1984. Marina is a member of the artistic group *Village of Artists* as well as a member of the artistic group *Life, I love You* (since 1990); she also publishes the artistic magazine *The Village Life* since 1999. Marina is well-known for her monochrome oil paintings as well as her transformational “Boxes” / small mixed-media installations.

Marina’s works are shown on international art fairs such as Berlin, Madrid, Vienna, Moscow etc. as well as displayed in renowned museums and private collections such as the Russian State Museum in St. Petersburg, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona, the Elton John Private Collection and others. Marina Alexeeva is represented by Marina Gisich Gallery, St. Petersburg.