Pixels Wave 2015 | Miguel Chevalier

In collaboration with Carrie K and Depression (Singapore)
Generative and interactive virtual-reality installation
Singapore Night Festival, National Design Centre, Singapore
Software: Cyrille Henry / Antoine Villeret
Technical Production: Voxels Productions

"Pixels Wave” 2015 is a giant light carpet that will fill the floor inside the National Design Center. Various “multicolored graphic scenes,” following one upon another in random fashion, are composed of such symbolic motifs from the digital universe as pixels, 0s and 1s (symbolic representations of binary code), mathematical symbols (+, x, and -), Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc. For Singapore Night Festival, Miguel Chevalier collaborate for the first time with 2 Singaporean designers, Carolyn Kan and Depression, who create new original geometric patterns that they will be incorporated in the wave. The wave ripples forth, endlessly taking shape and then losing its shape, thereby creating ceaselessly replenished universes. This fluid universe reacts to the motion of visitors. Their movements amplify the pixel distortions under their feets. This new creative work harks back to the idea of the trompe l’oeil technique in art, disturbing the perceptions of visitors while creating the sensation of a shifting floor that loses its shape and moves. The reference here is to such Kinetic Art and Op Art artists (Victor Vasarely, Carlos Cruz-Diez, Jesús Rafael Soto, Julio Le Parc, ...) who conducted research into movement and optical illusion and prefigured digital art. With its undulating curves, “Pixels Wave” 2015 traces its own artistic heritage and whilst providing a visual experience that is constantly renewed and which characterizes the fluid possibilities of twenty-first century art. Like a giant kaleidoscope, this world of colors and shapes in motion leads us on an imaginary and poetic journey of optical illusion and play.