Lunch Bites with Adinda van ‘t Klooster

Location: Culture Lab, Space 7
Time/Date: 5th November 2009, 12:00 - 13:00

Lunch Bites is a series of hour-long lunchtime conversations hosted in Space 7, Culture Lab featuring local and visiting thinkers and creators.

The topics are varied and various - anything our guest is currently thinking, creating or thinking of creating. Lunch Bites are part dialog, part skill-share, part knowledge - exchange and all for fun. No preparation, stress or pressure of any kind is implied or involved - we strive simply for an opportunity to facilitate casual meet-ups between the interesting and the interested.

Adinda van ‘t Klooster will be talking about her prototype ‘Emotion Light’ which was exhibited at this year’s ISEA in Belfast.  The Emotion Light is a sculptural light that uses biofeedback technology to visualize the holder’s physiological state. To achieve this, changes in physiological data like GSR (galvanic skin response), heart rate and movement are tracked and translated via code into changes in light patterns. This artwork avoids the explicitly medical or therapeutic uses of biofeedback technology to explore the less literal complex relationships between sound, colour and bodily response.

The emotion light is wireless and non-invasive. The visitor is asked to listen to an emotive sound sequence whilst holding a quirky light sculpture which responds live to changes in the viewers biosignals.  The work aims to make people consider how much the body and emotions/feelings are interlinked.

The uterus-like shape is simultaneously reminiscent of a ram’s head and spermatoids. This ambiguous sculpture renders the internal body visible on the outside and allows for an introspective and embodied experience. This piece also relates to the artists earlier works, such as Receptive Mo(nu)ment: a site- specific installation in Gloucester Cathedral where she recreated a womb environment by enlarging the pinopods found in scanning electron micrographs of the uterine lining. Pinopods are small protrusions thought to be indicative of whether an embryo can implant in the womb but much remains unknown about them. By enlarging the microscopic to the macroscopic a new relationship to the body is created. Van ‘t Klooster also tends to choose those areas of science where there are more questions than answers and the area of emotion research is one of those areas.

Adinda van ’t Klooster is an international artist who works with sound, light, installation, animation, sculpture, electronics and computer generated performance. She creates multi-sensory experiences in often site-specific and collaborative contexts. She is currently in the process of completing an AHRC-funded practice-based PhD at CRUMB, University of Sunderland. Her work explores the areas where art and science overlap. She is interested in how developments in science and technology provide new ways of looking at the body, the mind and the start of life itself.

For more information and images, see:

http://www.axisweb.org/seCVPG.aspx?ARTISTID=8405

Lunch Bites are held the 1st Thursday of every month at 12 noon - come along with a sandwich and an open mind.

Published: 27th October 2009