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Dune X Lights Up Sydney’s Art Biennale With Scores Of Luminous, Plant-Like Fibers

Dutch artist Daan Roosegaarde is always finding inventive ways to apply touch-sensitive technologies, like the transformative dresses he did for Intimacy, which he created in partnership with Maartje Dijkstra and Anouk Wipprecht. Roosegaarde’s newest creation follows the same line of research, where an interactive installation reacts to the motion around it.

Dune is a series of installations built around bunches of flexible sticks that appear to grow out of the groung like hi-tech plants with upper edges made of optical fibers that illuminate according to the movements and sounds of passing visitors. The piece was first introduced in Rotterdam in 2007, and eventually became a recurring landscape in the city. This year, an adapted version of the project, Dune X, is being exhibited in Sidney, Australia, installed at Cockatoo Island’s Dogleg Tunnels, for the 18th Art Biennale.

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This Australian incarnation is a 42 meter long area with hundreds of motion sensors, creating a large, interactive landscape of light. The piece will be exhibited until September 16th this year. Those who cannot visit it can get a taste through this little video piece below, produced by the artist himself. “The goal of this short film was to visualize the ‘techno-poetry’ that emerges as a result of the connection between ideology and technology. I think we did a good job. The film reminds me of a real-life ‘Alice in techno-land,’” said Roosegaarde about the video.