Suspended in mid-air looking as if it was somehow caught mid-explosion is an installation by AntiVJ‘s Olivier Ratsi called White Roads in the Red Matrix. The piece is, he says, a continuation of his exploration of the theme of deconstruction, which he’s been investigating in work like his Anarchitecture series and his glitch portraits of American presidents.But while those were focused on 2D images, White Roads in the Red Matrix is an installation that brings those ideas into a 3D environment. Ratsi created the piece for the BIAN (Biennial International Digital Arts) festival in Montréal last year and it’s the result of his research into fragmentary forms based on the shape of the rectangle, “the main geometrical shape I've been obsessed with for years.”Wanting to take a more radical approach than his previous explorations, he designed this piecemeal sculpture: “The outcome of this research [into deconstruction] is a spread of fragments in space, a floating matrix animated in time by sound and light.” The piece is lit up by LEDs and projections with sound design by Thomas Vaquié. Both the sound and the physical makeup of the piece are closely linked, with the two materials used to build it—red plexiglass and the LED-embedded aluminium—reflected in two major sounds that dominate the soundscape.The result is an abstract piece that flickers into existence like a malfunctioning lighbulb. The mapped red visuals dance with the white LEDs, flitting and responding to one another. These are perfectly synced to the audio to create an ominous but melodic experience, which has a kind of laid-back jazz tempo to its audiovisual rhythm.Images: © Olivier RatsiYou can find out more about audiovisual collective AntiVJ in the short doc below.@stewart23rd
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