Civil Twilight at CINEDANS FEST at EYE Filmmuseum- AMSTERDAM

We are very happy that Civil Twilight - Choreography for 450 nm and 600 nm and Through the Looking Glasses is part of this years special edition of Cinedans FEST at EYE Filmmuseum in Amsterdam celebrating its 20th anniversary!

The video-light installation Civil Twilight - Choreography for 450 nm and 600 nm inside the foyer of EYE Fillmuseum brings the palette of the night sky colours into this exceptional architecture:

It works with the colours of the night sky, a deep indigo-violet-blue and deep orange-red ranges, the shortest and longest wavelengths visible to human eye, creating a continuous movement with the twilight night sky.

The video-light installation features a cube-like shape in constant movement that plays with the perception of colour and shape. It combines infrathin layers of colour light projected across several surfaces, creating a perceptual continuum between a 2D video image and 3D projection screens, the shape constantly affected by a flux of merging colour fields.

Also inside the foyer, the visitors can enter an immersive installation Through the Looking Glasses based on the Ganzfeld effect. They wear a pair of specially designed non-see-through glasses, against which a range of slowly cross-fading colours is projected. Wearing a set of headphones, they listen to white noise based on granular synthesis. The eye sees uniform colour fields with no recognizable spatial border or shape, and the ear hears no recognizable sound related to the environment but a continuous noise wave. ‘Looking outside’ becomes ‘looking inside’. The visitors are taken to ‘no space’: a sensory immersion within this no-space of colour and noise, a highly affective state. Visitors who experience the piece are visible to passers-by as a part of the exhibit, while also being totally immersed in a different environment and cut off from the outside.

About Ganzfeld effect: ‘When our brains are starved of any stimuli after staring at any featureless, uninterrupted field even for a few seconds, it triggers the Ganzfeld effect, which in German means ‘total field’ or ‘entire field’. The ancient Greeks and Tibetans engaged in a similar process by entering dark caverns to receive insights from their subconscious minds, or from the otherworldly realms. This phenomenon has been experienced by arctic explorers staring at featureless expanses of white snow, prisoners in dark cells (termed ‘prisoner’s cinema”), astronauts, pilots, and miners trapped in underground caverns who end up having visions of apparitions.’

Changing Your Brain State Through the Ganzfeld Effect

A training based on Ganzfeld effect is undergone by astronauts preparing for travel in outer space.

Works on view:
Civil Twilight by Andrea Božić & Julia Willms
Choreography for 450 nm and 600 nm
Video-light installation
Video projection, light, mirror floor
14 min loop
2022

Through the Looking Glasses by Andrea Božić, Robert Pravda, Julia Willms
Audio-visual installation
Several persons installation, white glasses, light, sound
4 min loop
2022

Credits:

Concept and audio-visual installation Andrea Božić and Julia Willms animation and editing Julia Willms sound Robert Pravda technique Niels Runderkamp software development Nikzad Arabshahi

Through the Looking Glasses installation is made by Julia Willms, Andrea Božić and Robert Pravda | TILT

Sponsor: AUKES - Theatertechniek

Produced by TILT.
The orginal version of Through the Looking Glasses was produced as part of Mars Landing - a Frascati Production in co-production with the Rathenau Institute and ICKamsterdam, and was realised with the financial contribution of the VSBfonds, the Dutch Performing Arts Fund and Fonds 1818. TILT receives structural subsidy from the Amsterdam Fund for the Art for the period 2021-2024.