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Enter an Audiovisual Void Made of Shadows

Try not to get lost in Visiophone's new installation.
Images courtey the artist

In general, creating a black hole indoors isn't exactly safe, but it seems that artist Rodrigo Carvalho likes to live dangerously. His group Visiophone's new installation, Into the Void, opens up a shadowy triangular mass surrounded by algorithmically-generated patterns of blinding white light. The darkness in the center of the light show draws the gaze, much like Ad Reinhardt's eerie Abstract Painting, which was meticulously crafted to leave no texture—not even a brushstroke—on its alien surface. In the same way, the blackness central to Into the Void is even more mesmerizing than the flashy patterns that frame it.

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While the eyes are occupied by Carvalho's shadows, the ears are set on edge by André Sousa's atonal soundtrack. His audio designs barely seem to correspond to the randomness of the LED-powered visuals, creating a rift between sight and sound just as real as the titular void made of shadow.

Carvhalho has experimented with incorporating dance into his installations, and excising humanity from them entirely, but Into the Void is a balanced mix of human psychology and machine-generated chaos that goes beyond his previous work. Watch the installation in action in the video below.

See more of Visiophone's work on their website.

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