Introducing
Samsung The Wall x Niio Art Awards
Winners
Areo Gardens I – Attraction by Dev Harlan
We’re delighted to present the jury results for
Congratulations to the winners of the Samsung The Wall x Niio Art Awards!
The winning artwork was created by
Dev Harlan
Artwork title:
Areo Gardens I - Attraction
For this open call, we received 494 moving image artworks by 454 new media artists and art students from 59 countries. The works submitted were a reflection of the theme:
“Digital Realism"
Winner: Dev Harlan
Dev Harlan, Areo Gardens I - Attraction, 2020, Moving Image Animation, 1 min 01 sec
Invisible forces compel large boulders to collide in a desert garden.
This work is part of a series which reflects on the surreal and sublime aspects of natural geology throughout the solar system. Each short film depicts a stone sculpture garden set on the surface of Mars, apparently defying the laws of physics. Each animation features 3D scans of real rocks and boulders captured in many parts of the world using 3D photogrammetry. The boulders in this work were found on a remote hiking trail in Joshua Tree National Park. The animation is set in a Martian terrain site near Gale Crater, currently being explored by the NASA Curiosity Rover. Digital elevation data was obtained courtesy the Martian MRO/HiRise satellite program managed by NASA, JPL and the University of Arizona.
Second Place: Ohad Benit & Roni Azgad
Ohad Benit & Roni Azgad, Ho Me, 2020, Video Art, 2 min 52 sec
The work “Ho Me” explores the relationship between man and machine, between the creators and computer manipulations. During these unprecedented times, we are faced with challenges that are foreign and new for us. We are forced to sit back and look upon the world we know with new and bewildered eyes. How have we reached this point? A sense of an apocalypse is upon us. This piece of art evokes this feeling of staring and not being able to tear our eyes away from something beautiful and disturbing at the same time. By capturing an extensive amount of frames and using precise software, the artists are enabling the naked eye to grasp what would otherwise be lost in the rhythm of life. Our dialectical relationship with technology enables humanity to behold this beauty but at times can cause us to lose contact. The video invites the viewer into a momentary window where he gets to discover new humane natural moments. The music accompanying the work is original and created for this piece. It is based on the song “Moon River,”performed by actress Audrey Hepburn. The soft speaking song has been manipulated by computer and is now creating a sense of dissonance between the melody and the cold and sometimes distorted metallic voice. A pause from the loneliness of man while being faced with breathtaking beauty available by use of technology. Samsung’s innovative, high-resolution screen will allow viewers a similar opportunity, with a sharp and mesmerising experience.
Third Place: Alex McLeod
Alex McLeod, The Gallery, 2020, Moving Image, 5 min 11 sec (Audio by Alex Jarvis)
The pace and audio cues reveal that there is something else on display.
Fourth Place: Nicolas Sassoon & Rick Silva
Nicolas Sassoon & Rick Silva, SIGNALS 4, 2017, Moving Image, 5 min 57 sec
SIGNALS 4 is a 6 minutes long looping digital animation from the project SIGNALS, a collaboration between artists Nicolas Sassoon (Vancouver, BC) and Rick Silva (Eugene, OR) focusing on immersive audio-visual renderings of altered seascapes. Sassoon and Silva share an ongoing theme in their individual practices; the depiction of wilderness and natural forms through computer imaging. Created by merging their respective fields of visual research, SIGNALS features oceanic panoramas inhabited by unnatural substances and enigmatic structures. The project draws from sources such as oceanographic surveys, climate studies and science-fiction to create 3D generated video works and installations that reflect on contamination, mutation and future ecologies.
Fifth Place: Enan (Rankyoung Lee)
Enan (Rankyoung Lee), museum of natural art, 2020, Moving Image, 46 sec
Natural phenomena are the most beautiful works of art in the world. It represents an art museum that displays moments that cannot exist in nature. The works on display are canvas containing flowing clouds, melting stones and shaped lights, stationary water, and a self-growing plant.
Sixth Place: Claudia Hart
Claudia Hart, Dark kNight, 2012/19, Moving Image, 16 min 26 sec, Edition of 3
Dark kNight, 2012, is Hart’s response to Christopher Nolan’s 2012 film, “The Dark Knight Rises,” depicting the attempt of one of her avatars to break free of the simulated world behind the screen. In creating “Dark kNight” (spelling intentional), 2012, Hart felt it was time to begin a migration out of the sanctuary cocoon of her earlier automatons. She represents the attempt of this defiant one to break free of the simulated sanctuary world behind the screen.
The popular Christopher Nolan “Dark Knight Rises,” is a film about escape from imprisonment and the powers that deem who is and isn’t to be imprisoned. With the film’s two highly independent, physically athletic and defiant female characters, both of whom have escaped their own entrapments, Hart was immediately prompted to envision her own restless, racially-hybrid female avatar trying out various strategies to escape virtuality. In the video we see her hurling herself against the screen; swinging from her feet by a rope and hitting the screen full body; catapulting like a human cannonball into the screen; and as seen here, swinging with a rope by her hands and hitting the screen with her feet–all seen at various speeds. Hart claims the mythological source for the figure, besides Nolan’s Batman, is the chained Prometheus, bound by the Olympian gods for bringing fire to humankind. Artistically she is inspired by Michaelangelo’s “Dying Captives,” who appear to struggle in their efforts to release themselves from their prisons of stone.”
Seventh Place: Jacco Olivier
Jacco Olivier, Terra Incognita, 2019, Moving Image, 4 min 18 sec
Merging painting with video, Jacco Olivier creates short, intimate animations that document his painting process. Olivier’s works are narrative episodes that depict simple moments from daily life—a bus journey, a swim in the ocean, a film in a theater, or a walk through the woods—set in microcosmic, enigmatic worlds. As he paints, Olivier photographs each step of the process, then uses the still images to create stop-action animation. Although the process of photographing the action is time-consuming, Olivier paints spontaneously and intuitively, rather than restricting himself to pre-exisiting strategies or planning how each incremental photograph will relate to the others. The captured sequences see his paintings move between abstraction and representation, and hint at the inherent tensions that arise from moving between divergent mediums.
Eight Place: Dev Harlan
Dev Harlan, Areo Gardens III - Wash, 2020, Moving Image Animation, 1 min 36 sec
Invisible forces compel large boulders to collide in a Martian sculpture garden. Iridescent stones float above a volcanic desert.
This series of animated short films depicts surreal and sublime natural geology in the solar system. Scans of natural rocks and boulders captured in many parts of the world using 3D photogrammetry are set above a Martian landscape captured by the NASA/JPL HiRise Imager. The works Areo Gardens I & III depicts boulders from Joshua Tree, California, and volcanic stone formations from the coast of Senegal.
Ninth Place: Félix Luque and Iñigo Bilbao
Félix Luque and Iñigo Bilbao, Junkyard I, 2019, Moving Image, 19 min 43 sec, Edition of 4.
Text by Jussi Parikka & Yiğit Soncul.
Tenth Place: Nohlab
Nohlab, Journey, 2019, Moving Image Animation, 3 min 38 sec
AN IMMERSIVE STORYTELLING by NOHLAB
Photon’s Journey into the Eye
JOURNEY is a 4 min. immersive audiovisual experience, telling the story of photons, primary elements of light, from the moment they approach the eye until the brain reconstructs them into perceivable forms.
Designed as a part of Immersive Art Festival of Atelier Des Lumieres in Paris, Journey used Atelier’s 140 video projectors, 50 speakers, 3,000 m2 of projection surface as a canvas, Journey’s storytelling creates a truly unique immersive world. In the end, it received three awards at the Immersive Art Festival: Jury Special Prize, Best Sound Design Prize, and the Grand Prix – which was voted 50% by a professional jury and 50% by the audience using an app designed for the visitors.
We’d like to extend our gratitude to all of the participants for their effort and creativity. Thank you for being part of this important initiative to celebrate visual arts on a global scale. A special thanks to our respected international Jury for their detailed and thoughtful selection process.
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