Principles of Motion
Seoul, 2014 - 2015
Principles of Motion is a temporary exhibition including a film and a series of kinetic sculptures inspired by the phenomenon of afterimage or persistence of vision and plays with the viewers’ perception of motion and parallax.
The film acts as a central anchor point that binds together different elements from the sculptures into a slowly evolving newly constructed landscape. Directly linking musical and visual composition, both the patterns on the sculptures and those in the film are inspired by classical and mechanical musical notation systems.
By cross-pollinating the disciplines of animation and music composition, the abstracted shifting cinematic landscape is a visualisation of the musical arrangement, drawing on on the geometries and rhythms ever present in our environment; the blink of the sunlight through the trees, the structure of a bridge as we cross, twisting power lines passing overhead. These familiar scenes from everyday journeys become abstract with repetition, building in layered complexity across the screen canvas.
The composition is ordered by the idea of parallax, where at each row, the notes animate at a speed linearly dependant on their distance to the artificial ‘horizon’. The tiling of the screens is further subdivided to suggest the appearance of musical bars and staff lines.
The sculptures look at persistence of vision. Each disc introduces the elementary shapes that together comprise the film. Through large illuminated areas and printed patterns, inspired by Constructivist and Suprematist painters, visitors can create and disassemble the elements to reveal the principles of motion. Machined with abstract surface patterns, discs slowly rotate and illuminate at differing frequencies of light to reveal different motion phenomena. Varying the apparent motion of simple geometric elements results in what appear to be paintings that flow in and out of phase creating differing patterns and rhythms, and replicating the effect of speed's ability to create an afterimage on the eye.
Photographs by Kyungsub Shin
