This is not near me, but I was near it. So I thought I'd post this in here. Here is what I saw at the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid. I was unable to film or photograph any of it, so I will do my best to convey the show to you. I will tell you about my favourites.
The show was called
Máquinas&Almas (Machines&Souls - as it was translated officially)
All of the works involved a mixture of art, science and technology.
Instead of being all descriptive, this is really about trying to show you what I saw.
Sachiko Kodama's work:
If you don't quite get what this is, basically the piece consists of a vat filled with ferrofluid which is moved by powerful magnets around these two tower structures. Also there was another model, similar to this:
Though visually powerful, I'm not too sure about the work's concept. But I do like it and was seriously impressed to see the liquid move before my eyes. It felt like I was in a sci-fi movie!
Next, I saw the work of Paul Friedlander.
Unfortunately his work isn't so easy to find on youtube so here is a pale version of one of the works I saw plus a photo of the piece "Wave Function":
To get a clearer idea of what I saw, check out this page in his site:
Paul Friedlander
It has several videos of the works - seriously it has to be a video.
All his work involves movement, light and physics to create visually fascinating effects.
I also liked the work of Daniel Rozin very much, who I've mentioned before in another art thread. I had never seen it live before and it was really wonderful to finally see. Only thing I wish I could show you is the back of the mirrors...seriously high tech.
After this piece, I saw a really great work by two artists, Ben Rubin and Mark Hansen. The piece seemed particularly relevant because it used data collected in real-time from online forums - of course I thought of the TFP!
The piece then used the info to make a visual and audio composition, that at times was quite poignant. The videos here are of several stages within the piece. Some it is only selecting out sentences people are posting that start "I am". Others it's reading random sentences in an overlapping sequence. In the last one it is saying random words in different tonalities, almost singing a song.
Finally, I found the work of Theo Jansen quite interesting and different, though I did not get to see it live in action.
This is a BMW commercial he's been in:
How neat is that? It's like being a kid and building fun things just because, and then making a living off it!
There was more but these were my favourites! I think there's plenty there to think about anyway. What do you think?