Sarah Oppenheimer creates unexpected relays between bodies and buildings, transforming the viewer into an agent of spatial change.

 

During the Atelier Calder residency, Oppenheimer will develop a new work entitled N-04008.

Functioning simultaneously as analogue artwork and kinesthetic network, N-04008 invites communication through a tactile, luminous network. Transversing the open space of Atelier Calder, an array of instruments is activated by human touch. Each instrument takes the form of an elongated black cylinder illuminated from within. Touch sets in motion a chain reaction. As visitors slide the suspended instruments, an expanding and contracting cone of light projects from the cylinder’s open ends. The instruments communicate with one another. Their connections extend through the building’s boundary planes and across spatial gaps. Sliding a cylinder routes air through a pneumatic network buried beneath the Atelier’s wooden floor. Pneumatic actuators drive linked instruments in remote locations. Gestures send signals, transmitted and received at atmospheric pressure. Pools of light combine and interact. The Atelier’s complex construction is illuminated and revealed, shadowed and concealed. Light is both medium and object in the experience of cause and effect.

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N-04008 is a luminous system whose technical dimensions are profoundly social. Visitors become active participants in a choreography of spatial revelation. The rhythms and timescales of living systems flow from body to building and back again. 

 

The project was initiated in the framework of EPFL - CDH Artist in Residence Program 2023, Enter the Hyper-Scientific, EPFL the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne.

 

N-04008 was be presented at Atelier Calder for AR(t)CHIPEL Festival, organized by the Région Centre Val de Loire, as part of Nouvelles Renaissances, from October 20 to November 3, 2024.

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​Photos 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10  Guillaume Blanc

2 & 8 Serge Hasenböehler.