interview Archives - Page 5 of 5

Yoshi Sodeoka: human audio visualizer

Roxanne Vardi and Pau Waelder

A multifaceted artist, Yoshi Sodeoka creates a wide range of audiovisual artistic works that include video art, animated gifs, music videos, and editorial illustrations. Influenced from an early stage in his career in noise music and glitch art, as well as avant garde movements such as Op Art, his work is characterized by breaking down the structure of the musical score and visual integrity of the image to find new forms of artistic expression. His projects, developed individually or in close collaboration with other artists, materialize in fields as diverse as music (Psychic TV, Tame Impala, Oneohtrix Point Never, Beck, The Presets, Max Cooper), illustration (New York Times, Wired, The Atlantic, M.I.T Technology Review) fashion (Adidas, Nike), and advertising (Apple, Samsung). His work has been exhibited internationally, including at Centre Pompidou, Tate Britain, the Museum of Modern Art, the Cleveland Museum of Art, Deitch Projects, La Gaîté Lyrique, the Museum of Moving Image, the Baltimore Museum of Art, and Laforet Museum Harajuku.

In the following conversation, Sodeoka discusses his work and influences, focusing on the two artworks from the series Synthetic Liquid recently commissioned by Niio.

Could you elaborate on how your background in music influences your artistic practice when creating new media artworks?

At the beginning of my abstract video art projects, music and sounds usually come first. I guess in a way, I’m trying to be a human audio visualizer. I usually start by picking up some interesting sounds that I want to work with. That could either come from a friend or from myself. It really depends on how I feel. I’ve been a long time user of Logic (a MIDI sequencer software) so I usually cook up something quick in that. I’ve always played electric guitar since a young age, and I still have a collection of synthesizers and instruments. I’ve been a big fan of experimental noise and ambient music. I am lucky to have some really talented music friends that provide me with the exact sounds I’m looking for if I’m not in the mood to do my own. Anyhow, then I would try to come up with the idea of what sort of visuals go well with that sound. Experimental/Noise music is just a perfect fit with the videos I make.

Yoshi Sodeoka, Synthetic Liquid 7, 2022.

Why are you interested in glitch and noise?

I feel that everything is broken anyway, nothing is complete. In computer glitches, something interesting happens, in terms of color and composition. I am mainly interested in these colors and shapes. For me it comes from an aesthetic reason, I am not a conceptual glitch artist. I use it for everything.

However, these particular artworks I created for the commission look more organized, with more neutral colors. It relates to how I feel about the project or what influences me at a particular time, but I really can’t tell why.

“If you depend on the programs and machines you are using, then your creative process becomes shaped by the vision of the person who made that software or those machines.”

The neo-psychedelic style of both commissioned works from your Synthetic Liquid series with its kaleidoscope of colors resembles the aesthetic used by Futurist artists in the early twentieth century, and you have also mentioned your interest in Op Art. Would you say your work relates to these avant garde movements?

Yes, to some certain extent. I like Futurism, particularly in its more abstract manifestations. And in this particular work that I’m presenting in Niio, I should say I’ve been more influenced by Op art. I like the work of Bridget Riley and Victor Vasarely, among others. I just like the idea of making video versions of Op art. I enjoy seeing those visual triggers: Op Art makes you question what you are seeing. The arrangement of colors and shapes make your brain think. I like the idea of trying to make animated Op Art, because when you see it your mind goes someplace else, and this is fascinating to me. When you look at a landscape, for instance, you feel calm, whereas with Op Art there is a different feeling.

Yoshi Sodeoka, Synthetic Liquid 8, 2022.

Can you tell us about your artistic process and about the different digital softwares that you use in the creation of your video works and the process of moving from analog practices to digital practices?

Sound and visuals are strongly connected. My interest in experimental noise is that it does not have a structure, which goes well with abstract videos. I have been playing music since I was 12 years old, and at the same time I studied painting. Doing both at the same time from a very young age, when I discovered video art there was no question that I wanted to do that.

I’ve used a lot of analog setups in the past. But I use less of it now. I still like a pure analog setup, but I’m just in a different phase. I like to keep it simple with fewer gears in my studio at the moment. I incorporate the ideas that I have learned from working on analog videos into the digital video-making process. One of the things that are fascinating about what I can do with analog video is video feedback. I try to simulate that in the digital setting. The exact process might be different. But the concept is the same either in analog or digital.

“I imagine that the future of computing will be more organic and fluid.”

I still have a video analog setup in my studio. For me it started to get kind of boring, and to break out of it one of the solutions was to buy more gears. I feel that the parameter is very limited because if you buy gear, then your creative process becomes shaped by the vision of the person who made that gear. I don’t like that, so I use my own video feedback technique with After Effects, which not many people do, and therefore it feels like it is my own tool and my own technique.

I also randomize a lot of elements in my audio production, working with a set of parameters. I set a tone, add notes from here to here, and allow a bit of randomness. But that’s as far as I go. I don’t use a coding environment such as PureDate to make audio compositions, but I use audio production software and randomize it, which is similar in a way.

“I like the idea of creating Op Art, because it makes you question what you are seeing”

When experiencing your works, one cannot help but think of the beginning of the creation of everything with the representation of fluids and water.

Ha, I’m not sure. When people think of computers and technologies, they don’t really think of liquids and water. Machines are always dry and hard things. But I imagine that the future of computing will be more organic and fluid. People are using liquid elements in computing and I am fascinated by it. My videos feel very organic, particularly because they have an analog component, so it is not only about zeros and ones. I want to make everything organic as much as possible. It’s not easy, but I take it as my challenge to make things look more organic.

You have recently also been active in the NFT space, could you please share your experience with us on these projects and how you imagine NFTs becoming part of the more traditional art industry as a whole?

It’s been such a crazy ride with NFTs! I’ve sold plenty of work as I’ve never had before. And I’ve made a lot of new friends, and I discovered a lot of great artists I’ve heard of before. Overall it’s been a good experience for me. But I’m not a big fanatic of it either. I’m staying pretty low-key about it. Things come and go and I have no idea where this is going, honestly. I just focus on making good art, which has always been my thing.

Andreas Nicolas Fischer’s Ambient Art

Roxanne Vardi

Andreas Nicolas Fischer is a multidisciplinary artist from Berlin. Fischer started his artistic career as a traditional artist working mainly with painting and drawing, but became interested in generative art upon his visit to artist Casey Reas’ Process/Drawing exhibition in 2005 at DAM Gallery in Berlin.

At the time he discovered Reas’ work, Fischer was interning at ART+COM, founded by Joachim Sauter, who also later became a professor at the Berlin University of the Arts. Fischer learnt Processing from the very first people who worked on the creative coding environment conceived and developed by Casey Reas and Ben Fry in 2001. While he did not have a background in computing, Fischer was motivated to teach himself code and started creating animations with Processing. He also worked briefly with fabrication and sculpture to adapt to the demands of the market at a time when the interest in digital art was not yet mainstream. However, he considers himself a purist and likes to create systems that operate autonomously, something that he can achieve by working with generative algorithms.

In the following interview, that took place on the occasion of the artist’s solo artcast The Art of Hypnosis on Niio, Andreas Nicolas Fischer unfolds the motivations and techniques behind his work.

How would you describe your art practice today?

My practice is mostly generative pure abstraction. I do some narrative 3D animation philosophizing about the end of the world, but my main focus is generative systems and aesthetics and abstractions; developing these systems over time and translating them into different means. My personal preference is to create art that is self-contained, and doesn’t take data from the outside. I used to work as an art director to make a living, making 3D animation as this was a bigger market, but I didn’t want to be part of that career where artists need to receive grants. I always wanted to have a hard skill, with a foot in the industry, but I like my work to be more dynamic where I learn something and then apply it. This is what I did for ten years, but then I started to receive commissions, until at some point my art practice and commercial practice merged. Today I don’t work for agencies and I don’t work as a freelance artist. I do my own work. My main focus is generative systems and aesthetics and abstractions, developing these systems over time and translating them into different means.

My main focus is generative systems and aesthetics and abstractions, developing these systems over time and translating them into different means

Andreas Nicolas Fischer, Nethervoid 07 L 2180, 2022

You have described some of your latest works as ‘Ambient Art’. Could you please elaborate on this concept?

I have been doing more real-time work in the past few years, I like to call it ambient art, it’s not narrative and it’s not super intrusive. You don’t need to pay attention to the work all day, but it’s a small intricate development with its own pace. I really like when you get drawn into the work. In this way I like to see my work as hypnosis, I hypnotize people through the work in a sense. I do this for myself, because I like the process of viewing my own work, but I have also observed that in my audience, some people tell me that they get lost in the work. And that’s what I like, changing people’s state, changing their psychological state. We all have a perceptual system, but you can influence that. I like changing someone’s state of mind with my art overtime. It’s an introspective process, there are no demands, it’s more subtle. In a sense I am not saying anything. I make my work for myself but also for other people.

Many of your latest series such as Nethervoid and Infinite Void also contain a sound element that feels crucial to the works. Is this another way for you to influence your audience’s perceptual system?

There are sound frequencies that you can use to influence one’s perceptual state, which I started looking into. I create some of the sounds with other artists, while others I find and modify myself using generative code. Composers hear so much more than we do, that’s the beauty, to be able to collaborate with sound designers because it enriches the artwork and we learn from each other.

On one of my works, I worked with a friend of mine, David Kamp, a composer and sound designer. I had sent him a rough cut for this work and I literally almost cried when I got it back from him. There are not many things that move me, but when I got that [sound design] back it was very powerful, it was so subtle. It was like listening to 70’s progressive rock on a good sound system, there is just so much there.

Andreas Nicolas Fischer, Feeder-01-2160p, 2022

I like changing someone’s state of mind with my art overtime. It’s an introspective process, there are no demands, it’s more subtle.

Can you tell us more about your involvement with creating video sound installations which make the work immersive and create a dialogue with an environment such as The Origin of Quantum Dot, established in collaboration with Samsung?

That was a unique and special project. I co art directed it and created the content for those screens, but the sculpture was made by Christopher M. Bauder and Schnelle Bunte Bilder, a studio of visual art in Berlin. But this is not something that you can do every day.

In 2021 we were commissioned to create an installation in Washington DC. It was such a powerful experience as the end result resembled an animated James Turrell, playing with light, where the sensation of the room completely changed according to the light.

What is it that draws you into creating digital art or software-born art created with code?

What I like a lot about the process is creating something from nothing, just from text and code. Of course the whole programming environment and the libraries were created by someone so it’s not nothing-nothing, but what I like is that you have something that is a pure instruction and you can create something new from it that has so much depth and richness . This is so powerful. I love 3D animation and coloring and shading, but 3D animation is an insane amount of work. What I like about software is the leverage that you have, making systems autonomously while you are running the code, it’s also a flexible medium. With AI and generative systems you have a lot of leverage and you can control these machines to do something, I appreciate that on a conceptual level.

You start with pure instruction and you can create something new from it that has so much depth and richness. This is so powerful!

When you use found data in your generative artworks, how important is it for you that people know the origin of the source material?

It depends, in the past I would use found images to create some of my works, but now I generate my own procedural compositions. I like both but I am not interested in where it came from, and visually it’s far enough removed from the original image that I don’t feel guilty about it. The machines give you power to create some things that you cannot create by hand.

Andreas Nicolas Fischer, Infinite Void 13A L 2098, 2022

You have also experimented with AI. What is your take on working with generative adversarial networks?

I had a brief and romantic relationship with AI. People talk about the end times of machines and the domination of AI. There are reasons to be concerned about that. I received a few DALL·E invites which I intentionally gave out to people who are not versed visually, but what I found is that if you don’t have good taste or that trained eye, what you produce with the AI is not going to be that interesting. This is what I concluded from my sample experiment. These tools on the one hand are very helpful for certain things, but also very biased because as soon as you get specific about things, what it hasn’t seen, then it gets harder. In the beginning when I got it I was completely sucked in, I sat there for a couple of days and hit the ‘dopamine button’.

As an artist everything you do is a dopamine loop, that warm fuzzy feeling is something I am trying to reproduce. But the thing is once you have an image prompting machine to create things that are visually pleasing, things one can do without a huge effort, your receptors shut down, and the satisfaction is that you don’t feel good or accomplished with yourself. It’s like TikTok, after half an hour of scrolling if I would ask you what you remember about it, it wouldn’t be very much. I see AI going where you can turn yourself and other people into dopamine junkies, it’s visual stimulation on steroids. The thing with all of technology is that it’s only going to get stronger, sowe need to find a way to deal with it.’. Today I mostly use AI tools to up-res all of my older videos by adding more detail to them. To me, this is the beauty about it, to increase the fidelity of the content.

I see AI going where you can turn yourself and other people into dopamine junkies, it’s visual stimulation on steroids.

Can you dive deeper into your use of the term ‘void’ in describing or naming your works?

Using the term void is intentional, coming back to wanting to hypnotize or affect people’s mental state through the works. The void is more of a meditative void, a mental void. Of course it’s visually very full, but for me meditation is hard, I don’t have a solid practice but sometimes my work can help me with it by producing that mental void.

Lauren Moffatt on the intimacy of VR

Fabien Siouffi

On the occasion of our collaboration with Fabbula on the artcast Worlding with the Trouble, which features the work of Lauren Moffatt, Serafín Álvarez, and Xenoangel, we are featuring in this post an interview by guest author Fabien Siouffi with artist Lauren Moffatt.

Following the selection of Lauren Moffatt as the first recipient of Fabbula’s Worlding with the Trouble programme, Fabien Siouffi discusses with the artist her trajectory towards the VR medium.

Worlding with the Trouble is a commission and production programme designed to support artists, hackers and thinkers in the creation of disconcerting, heady virtual worlds, translating radical thoughts into multi-sensory experiences.

I’d love for you to trace back your trajectory as an artist. When did you start with VR, and what have you done with it so far?

I’m a graduate of painting and drawing but actually all through my studies there was an almost even balance between time-based media and painting, and even while I was studying I was integrating animation and different types of experimental image making into my painting. This culminated in a painted animation from my graduate work, and around that time I started to get really interested in embodied experiences and how to visualize what someone sees through their eyes. I started creating self portraits and then I moved onto trying to show other people’s views.

Considering this form of representation also led me to think about how our visual system works, the fact that we’re only focused on one thing that our eyes are scanning all the time and that we’re seeing parts of our faces as we look at the world around us. To me, this was a very intimate way to try and represent a world from inside someone’s body. What I found missing was questioning the visual system when certain aspects of it don’t belong in this objective table system in which everything is delineated with a horizon line. Everything starts with this fictional line. This is quite different to the way that we subjectively see things and the way that we also trace the narrative and our surroundings, as we go about our day to day. And so, it became clear at some point that painting wasn’t the right medium for these experiments that I was doing because it was taking too long. It was too complicated to bring these images that I wanted to make to the surface of a canvas.

I started working with digital images and animating them using video editing software and then I started making videos and editing them. This progressively led to a series of works in which I was building multi camera rigs, performing in public spaces while wearing these camera costumes and filming with them. I made this footage into a massive collage by manually knitting together 360 degree perspectives to create immersive videos. And by chance, it was around this time that 3D was becoming big and I received some funding and support to train in stereoscopic filmmaking. Actually, Céline Tricart was one of my trainers in Prague. She taught me how to make stereoscopic images interesting in video.

Lauren Moffatt, On Hybrids and Strings. Image courtesy of the artist and Fabbula.

From there I went on to do a fellowship at Le Fresnoy, and it was there that I started working with VR. I wanted to do something really different and so I created the first documentary piece that I’d ever made, which was also the first VR piece that I’ve ever made. This was a piece called The Oculist Reason. I was really interested in history and the way that virtual documentation could possibly change the way that history is written. And so I used as a case study a dome-shaped painting in Liverpool and looked at it from different points of view, creating a virtual reproduction of the painting and telling its story and that of the events it describes. The next project I did was made in collaboration with a Korean filmmaker. It was an adaptation of a sequence from one of his films to VR, and it led us to think about the way that this translation changes the rules for cinema. And also about how there isn’t this cutoff between cinema and life anymore, everything is cinema and cinema is life.

I started working with digital images because I realized that it was too complicated to bring these images that I wanted to make to the surface of a canvas.

From there I went on to make a piece called Image Technology Echoes, which has been in production for the last two years and in development for another year before that. It deals with the separation between the body and the mind, and the idea that there could be an homunculus that lives inside your mind and that is controlling everything and perceiving everything from this more interiorized point of view than the one that you are aware of in your everyday dealings. And so in this case you can step inside each of the characters: there are two characters in an art gallery, watching an exhibition and having a conversation. As you approach them, you become transported into their mind space, a room of their own where there are some clues about who these people are. So as a viewer, you jump between these different realities and if you choose to pay close attention, then you might find out why these two people are together and what’s going on inside their minds and what’s going on between them in this conversation. However, a lot of people just like to move between all of these different spaces and look at things from different points of view, so there is no right or wrong way to to experience it.

Lauren Moffatt, Image Technology Echoes. Image courtesy of the artist

About your relationship with the medium VR in general, I’m interested in knowing why it has caught your attention? What do you see in this medium that feels special for your work?

What I find really special is that I can build a subjective space that brings together many things that I’ve been working on for many years before all of this technology became available to me. And I find it also quite powerful in the sense that you can build an entire architecture that encloses the person and, if the viewing conditions are right, they can feel safe inside it and completely suspend their disbelief in this thing that you’ve built. And this is even more powerful than a physical installation because it becomes so intimate. The intimate relationship that is created between the viewer and the piece is something that is quite appealing to me because I’m often working with intimate concepts that I’m trying to transmit to the people I’m showing my work to. There is an intensified relationship between the viewer, and you as an artist, expressing something about the medium itself, and producing subjective realities.

Which subjective realities are you interested in conveying or which ones do you think come out with this medium that could not come out with others?

In VR you can create quiet meditative spaces where you have time to engage with ideas that play a little bit foreign or a little bit difficult to take seriously unless you really pay attention. When you get the viewer’s undivided attention, you can build empathy, and that can be really powerful when you tell human stories with this medium. The attention that the audience gives to the objects or the surfaces or whatever it is that you’re constructing in these environments is much more focused because of how they are delivered to them.

What I find really special about VR is that I can build a subjective space that encloses the person and make them feel safe inside it and completely suspend their disbelief in this thing that you’ve built.

You once stated that VR can represent realities that we hold inside our minds.

Yes, I find it interesting to think about the way that reality is for us intimately, how we build our perception of reality and how often our ideas and our imagination are suppressed by our need to adapt to our environment. So it’s interesting to create spaces where it is possible to explore the interior life of a person and that this is not something that’s scary, or formless, or unhealthy.

For instance, I was quite inspired by Notes on Blindness (2016), a VR experience based on a film which I found very interesting. There have been a number of works that I thought were really interesting, because they were not just constructing visible realities but also constructing points of view and allowing you to realize how much of the lives of all of the people around me are invisible to me.

Lauren Moffatt, The Unbinding. Image courtesy of the artist

Do you feel that there is a particular area or subject matter that comes out in your work that only comes out with this medium?

Yes, there are some formulas, some narrative resources and themes that tend to surface, but it’s difficult to point them out because I’ve noticed that the audience who visit my work, had a really different experience of it to what I saw when I made it. So there’s an openness to interpretation, while it is also true that frequently strong feelings such as anxiety or melancholy emerge from the VR experiences. However, the artworks are more of an invitation to explore other realms of realities all in their complex layers rather than simply an exposition of a theme. It is often rather cryptic, so there are a lot of different interpretations that could come from it.

The Lumen Prize: a conversation with Carla Rapaport

Lumen Prize (Moving Image Winner): AfterGlow by boredomresearch — Lumen Prize Moving Image Winner 2016: AfterGlow by boredomresearch

What led you from working as a successful journalist to deciding that you were going to start the Lumen Prize, a not-for-profit global art prize?

Journalism changed completely during my career and not for the best. I was looking for a give-back project that I could do from my home in rural Wales. I’ve always loved art and once I started meeting emerging artists, I was hooked.

Why new media? What specifically sparked your interest in the medium?

David Hockney

I went to his 2012 Exhibition at the Royal Academy in London 3 times and was astounded by what he was creating with digital devices. It occurred to me that there had to be more artists doing this kind of work and it turned out that there was a whole world of art and artists that I’d never seen or heard of before.

"MAY 11TH 2011 WOLDGATE 12:45PM" 18 DIGITAL VIDEOS SYNCHRONIZED AND PRESENTED ON 18 55" NEC SCREENS TO COMPRISE A SINGLE ART WORK, 27 X 47 1/8" EACH 81 X 287" OVERALL DURATION: 2:00 © DAVID HOCKNEY — May 11th 2011 Woldgate 12:45pm, 18 digital videos synchronized by David Hockney.

You’ve said that you started the Lumen Prize to “raise the enjoyment and visibility of new media art” and to “bring it into the contemporary art scene in a curatorial and global fashion.” Why do you think that is so critical?

The contemporary art scene has a love/hate relationship with work created digitally. Curators are afraid it won’t work, museums worry that the equipment will become obsolete and galleries aren’t comfortable with art that can’t be framed, shipped and sold.

At the Lumen Prize, we can take the profit element out of the equation and work from the other end, creating enjoyiment, awareness and – dare I say it – demand. That, in the end, will tip the balance and allow digital art to ‘hang’ alongside traditional artwork.

What do you think will help establish the stature / acceptance of new media art in the context of the global art world?

A safe way to store and share the work which protects the artists’ copyright is one way – and Niio is working on that.

Another way is to get more mainstream museums involved in digital art shows. Prizes help too – we’ve done 5 awards and global tours now. By the time Lumen is 10, I expect the gulf to be narrowed. (View the 2016 Lumen Shortlist)

anima7 — Lumen Prize 3D Sculpture Winner 2016: ANIMA by Nick Verstand and onformative.

What do you think is most mis-understood about new media art and what would you like people to understand?

New media art is just like the print or oil on your walls. As Hockney famously said, “A paint brush is a tool just like an iPad is. Except an iPad offers millions of colours and an ‘endless’ sheet of paper.”

Do you envision a time when new media art will be be considered mainstream?

Yes, I’ve no doubt.

What do you think the biggest challenge is in collecting and exhibiting new media art?

Developing a secondary market for digital art will be key. Until that happens, it will be hard to crystalize price points for installations or works involving AR and VR, for example.

How do you think a company like NIIO will be able to contribute and support the growth of new media art?

Niio provides something unique – which is an open platform that artists and companies like Lumen can use to protect their work. As it grows, it will help establish a higher degree of comfort among the established art community.

What do you think about all the hype surrounding VR?

Lumen’s winner this year is a VR work and it’s astounding. There is a lot of hype about any new tool or piece of kit – it will shake fairly quickly.

At a recent show, a 10-year-old marched in and asked about the VR, put on the headset and spent 15 minutes exploring what is essentially a painting. Adults normally take off the headset after 2 minutes.

hyper_palazzo reale — Lumen Prize VR Winner 2016: Hyperplanes of Simultaneity by Fabio Giampietro and Alessio De Vecchi.

When did you first experience new media art? Was there a specific show / artist that you recall as having had a great impact on you?

I’ve always loved Bill Viola’s work and Sam Taylor-Woods moving Still Life, 2001, is probably my favourite work. But it was Hockney that ignited my curiousity and since then, I’ve been lucky enough to meet some of the most exciting digital artists working today. Bliss!

About the Lumen Prize

The Lumen Prize celebrates the very best art created digitally. As a not-for-profit social enterprise their goal is to focus the world’s attention on this exciting genre through an annual competition, a global tour and associated activities including workshops, seminars and special events.

Lumen is dedicated to building a movement around digital art, providing a network and opportunities to its longlisted and shortlisted artists, as well as the winners. Since its first show in London’s Cork Street January 2013, Lumen has staged nearly 30 shows and events around the world, including New York City, Shanghai, Athens, Amsterdam, Riga, Cardiff, Hong Kong, Leeds and London. In collaboration with its academic partners, Lumen advances the understanding of digital art at seminars, artist talks, workshops and symposiums.

Niio @ Unpainted Art Fair ’16 (Munich, Germany)

Earlier this year, Niio Co-Founder Oren Moshe had an opportunity to visit and participate in UNPAINTED lab 3.0 in Munich, Germany, a unique art fair featuring 40 international digital artist organized by artistic director Annette Doms in collaboration with New York curator Nate Hitchcock, Co-Founder of East Hampton Shed and former Co-Curator of Rhizome (NY).

Oren had the opportunity to join colleagues Chris Fitzpatrick (Director Kunstverein Munich), Nate Hitchcock (Co-Curator, UNPAINTED, New York), Ioannis Christoforakos (Collector, Athens) & VT ArtSalon (Taiwan) on the stage for a panel discussion about “The Impact of Digital Media on Our Real World.”

Fair participants included international curators and thought leaders, art collectors, gallerists, and artists, as well as an interdisciplinary team, who understand the challenges of these new art forms. It’s fair to say that all were “united by a love of art, innovation and the changing times”.

Some personal snaps from the weekend: