Kunstkraftwerk Leipzig – “ILLUSION. Nothing is as it seems”

An old power plant in Leipzig, Germany, has been converted to an experimental factory for art, illusion, culture, design, communication, and happenings. For its opening on 18 June, the Kunstkraftwerk Leipzig is bringing the international exhibition “ILLUSION: NOTHING IS AS IT SEEMS” by the Science Gallery Dublin to Leipzig. Until 27 November 2016, some 20 exhibits offer an insight into the human mind by exploring the motivations and mechanisms of sensory deception. This exhibition combines magic with psychology, optical illusions with scientific reasoning, and confusion with clarity. Looking at interactive mirrors, holographic creatures or kinetic sculptures, you are going to wonder: Should you always believe what you see right in front of you? Can you really trust your senses? And is anything really as it seems?

Leipzig, 4 July 2016. The Kunstkraftwerk Leipzig goes online at full steam ahead. At its opening on 18 June, the Science Gallery Dublin will make its German debut in the newly opened rooms of the former heating plant with the international exhibition “ILLUSION. Nothing is as it seems.” The show, conceived by British psychologist and magician, Richard Wiseman, and Irish illusion artist, Paul Gleeson, attracted around 83,500 visitors to the museum in Ireland. The exhibition organisers in Leipzig, with curator Lavinia D. Freitas, would very much like to repeat this success.

From 18th June to 27th November 2016, over an exhibition space of 400 square metres, more than 20 exhibits by scholars, designers, engineers and technologists from seven different countries will be displayed, bringing together art and scientific fields including physics, optics, computer science and psychology to interact with visitors and invite them to get in touch with their senses. Insects that seem to scuttle over the viewer's skin, a puddle of oil on the floor that flows back into the canister by itself, a concert created by birdcalls that our ear recognises as a human voice… Each of these works of art challenges our own perceptions by exploring the laws of physics and physiology in the form of artistic objects and presenting them playfully. Interactive mirrors, holographic beings and kinetic sculptures await the viewers. “At Kunstkraftwerk Leipzig, visitors have a unique opportunity to be tricked in a charming, clever way, and be amazed with all their senses,” says Lavinia Freitas. “But ILLUSION is not just an art exhibition. It is also an experimental laboratory in which the perception of the illusions becomes the subject of both scientific discussion and reception aesthetic analysis.”

The exhibition has been conceptualised to span across generations and is accompanied by a team of art mediators, who start a dialogue with the visitors about the exhibits and encourage active engagement with the works. For the upcoming summer holiday period, the exhibition organisers are offering a special accompanied tour for schools and students.

“The opening exhibition demonstrates our aim to be a place of art and discovery for everyone – for families, young people and art enthusiasts alike,” says the founder of Kunstkraftwerk, Professor Markus Löffler.

Key info:
Illusion: Nothing is as it seems.
From 18th June until 27th November 2016
Where: KUNSTKRAFTWERK Leipzig
www.kunstkraftwerk-leipzig.de

Kunstkraftwerk Leipzig: Art. Science. Education. Events.
Since 2012, the west end of Leipzig has seen the rise of a new, innovative cultural project. The former heating plant in the Lindenau/Plagwitz district has now been transformed into an experimental factory, a centre for contemporary art and culture, contemporary design and communication. Various halls and rooms covering a floor space of over 2,000 square metres within the Kunstkraftwerk ensure that the perfect setting can be created for any occasion. There are spaces and rooms for exhibitions, art projects, meetings, multimedia shows, symposiums and workshops. Themed gastronomy, a small museum and leasing for private events are also part of the concept, as well as concerts and theatre performances. The Kunstkraftwerk celebrates its official opening on 18th June 2016 with the exhibition, “ILLUSION. Nothing is as it seems.”

ALL THE UNIVERSE IS FULL OF THE LIVES OF PERFECT CREATURES
Karolina Sobecka (PL)
In this interactive mirror, the viewer's movement and expressions are mimicked by an animal head which is overlaid on the viewer's reflection. The resulting effect explores theories around mirror neurons and invites the viewer to question issues of self¬-awareness, empathy and non¬verbal communication. A different animal appears every time a person stands in front of the mirror.
The animals represent species from across the spectrum of domestication. The animal mimics the viewer's facial expressions, interspersing them with its own independent ones. The viewer then feels compelled to enact those animal expressions, fully inhabiting the role.

ALTER EGO
MORITZ WEHRMANN (DE)
Set in a darkened room using a micro-controller, LED lights and special mirrored glass, Alter Ego visually fuses two people onto each other. In a split of a second, the two visitors see their own and their counterpart's reflection alternating between each other. This presents a new experience of self to each of the participants of the installation.
The artist questions: is there conscious or subconscious adaption to the opposite person? Thrown back into early-childhood curiosity and wonder, the visitor tries to nd himself again try through grimaces and gestures.
The reactions of laughter, crying and conversations about the experience are part of the art installation.

BOTTLE MAGIC
Jeff Scanlan (US)
An impossible bottle is a type of mechanical puzzle. It is a bottle that has an object inside it that does not appear to fit through the mouth of the bottle. The illusion therefore resides in the question: How was the object put into the bottle?
These bottles have not been cut, heated or cooled and the bottle was not blown around the item. They have not been manipulated in any way, shape, or manner. Each item inside the bottles is still perfectly usable.

COLUMBA
Roseline de Thelin (FR)
Columba is named after the small, faint star constellation Columba Noachi (Latin for Noah's Dove) and symbolises our growing consciousness. Continuing the series of Homos Luminosos (Latin for Luminous Humans), this new member of the family is a young girl sitting in a constellation of quartz crystal stars.
Made of optic fibres, this work combines digital technology and craftsmanship. Columba was initially created digitally as a three¬-dimensional mapping piece and then hand carved into thousands of light points across hundreds of optic fibers.
Roseline de Thelin is represented by the Kinetica Museum.

COUNTER
Anthony Murphy (IE)
Counter is a video¬-mapped structure which aims to temporarily suspend the viewer's reality by forging relationships between the digital and physical elements of the piece that are at once symbiotic and contradictory. It is designed to trick the viewer's perception as a modern, animated version of the technique of trompe l'oeil, which translates from French as “deceive the eye”.
As the work evolves it carries out a number of alterations, the purpose of which is to encourage the viewer to question their experience of the work by attempting to blur the line between a physical and digital definition.

CUBES
Jennifer Townley (NL)
Cubes is a kinetic, mechanical art sculpture based on a geometric pattern of diamonds that gives the optical illusion of six cubes, when in fact the perceived cubes only consist of three diamond¬-shaped forms grouped together.
The piece uses the transformation of motion and power that takes place within a machine and the way the independent mechanisms work together to explore how the brain responds to repetitive movements. The diamond shapes seem to reconnect themselves with a different shape again and again, inducing a subtle, hypnotic effect.

DELICATE BOUNDARIES
Chris Sugrue (US)
As digital technologies have become embedded in everyday life, the line between the virtual and real is becoming increasingly blurred. Delicate Boundaries creates a space that allows the worlds inside our digital devices to move into the physical realm.
Inside a computer monitor, a world of organic forms wriggle and flock. When the screen is touched, these small bugs made of light swarm towards the point of contact. They appear to emerge from the computer screen, often surprising their audience as they try to abandon a virtual existence.

UNTITLED
Gregory Barsamian (US)
Ask any writer and they will tell you about writer's block. The creative state of the mind is fickle. It requires certain conditions; a kind of perfect mental storm.
UNTITLED is an unconscious response to that experience. The title of the piece reflects the artist's uncertainty over the fate of the project. Draft after draft are thrown out with the hope of making them disappear.
The 'persistence of vision' principle used in this work applies to the subject as well as the mechanics of the piece, because the viewer's mind not only fills in the gaps of the animated sequence to give it visual continuity, but also completes the sculpture with the added dimension of personal meaning.
Courtesy of the artist and Kinetica Museum London.

MOIRÉ MATRIX: INFLATION
Shelley James, blown by Liam Reeves (UK)
This work combines the magnifying qualities of glass and the graphic precision of print to set up a conflict between these signals, creating a paradoxical space where the relationship between front and back, near and far is constantly switching. When the object revolves, the conflict is exacerbated. When the piece is lit, the paradox extends beyond the object to create patterns of light and shade that compound the paradoxical appearance of a form that is both solid and transparent, material and virtual.
In this work, cobalt oxide reacts with the chemical composition of the glass to introduce an organic effect. A single bubble expanded sufficiently to break out and float above the matrix, highlighting the regularity of the lattice and the optical effects produced by the modulated curves of the form.

MOTION AFTEREFFECT ILLUSION
Helen MacMahon (IE)
Motion Aftereffect Illusion consists of two discs with spiral images capable of inward or outward motion. In between these two discs is a mirror. When the viewer looks at the centre of one of the rotating spirals for approximately one minute, then looks into the mirror, the motion aftereffect will create the illusion that their head is either shrinking or growing.
Like all aftereffects, this can be explained in terms of the 'fatigue' of nerve cells encoding for one motion direction. A constant stimulus in one motion direction will result in nerves becoming accustomed to it or 'fatigued'. When the stimulus is removed, the motion detectors in the opposite direction produce a stronger signal for a few seconds as a result of the balance between these groups being disrupted.

PENROSE PATTERN & FIGURE¬GROUND
Shelley James (UK)
These pieces use moiré interference patterns to create illusions of depth and movement. As the viewer moves around the work, each simple structure – four panes of glass printed with parallel and angled lines in black and in white – becomes apparent. Seen from the side, the panels are fragile and insubstantial. Yet as the angle of view changes, they suddenly appear as solid screens over which rhythmic patterns appear to run in different directions and on different planes.

RGB 01
MARCELINA WELLMER (PL)
Wellmer's RGB 01 shifts the format of a painting to an expanded pattern of projected color, taking as starting point a photograph of a building.
The work is procedural based on an algorithm through which colour and form change at random speed. Following the light spectrum of a video projector, the projection always transitions from red to green and then blue. The transition occurs so slowly that viewer does not notice it. The invisible becomes visible only when the viewer does not look at the projection for some time. With a second look, the viewer is surprised that the picture looks quite different than a few moments before.
RGB 01 extends the basic properties of a projection and the bi-dimensional format of a canvas, offering the viewer an ambiguous experience based on an optical illusion questioning the limits of human perception.  

SIGNIFICANT BIRDS
Nye Parry (UK)
In Significant Birds the listener is confronted with a group of twelve bird cages, each containing a small loudspeaker. From each speaker a pure 'chirping' sound can be heard which is in fact a single sine wave extracted from a recording of speech. When we hear speech our ear breaks it down into individual frequencies which are then reconstituted by the brain into the meaningful sound we hear. When all twelve speakers are active and in perfect time with one another the listener hears the speech reconstructed, although no speaker ever contains more than its one single 'partial'. The work focuses on speech as it is perhaps the most recognisable sound in human culture and we are predisposed to focus in on voices whenever we hear them.

SIMPLY SMASHING
Rebecca Cummins (US)
Add water to the common red wine glass and it becomes a pristine lens that turns the world upside down. The view appears much like it would in a camera, however a camera lens won't spill if you tip it; move and the view moves too. This common domestic object inverts the view due to its spherical shape and the refractive index of water. Viewers from one side will see an inverted version of the world opposite them while passers¬by on the other side will see the space through a new lens.

SOMETHING IN THE WAY IT MOVES
Fiona Newell, Stefan Hutzler & Robert Murtagh (IE)
Something in the Way It Moves is a study that examines how illusory patterns emerge from a range of simple to complex arrangements of dots, displayed statically or dynamically on a computer screen. The study is part of an ongoing investigation concerning the processing of visual information by the brain and the role of correlations for complexity. Participants are invited to ponder how order and disorder can be distinguished.
 
SUPERMAJOR
Matt Kenyon (US)
What goes up must come down. These words describe not so much a scientific truth, but rather a common generalisation.
One of these oil cans has a visible fissure out of which oil slowly flows, cascading onto the pedestal and the gallery floor. However, upon closer inspection the oil isn't flowing out of the can. Instead, oil appears to slowly flow, drop-¬by-¬drop, back into the can. At times the drops of oil seem to hover unsupported in mid¬air. At other times, the drops are in the process of a reverse slow motion splash onto the pedestal.

THE HURWITZ SINGULARITY
Jonty Hurwitz (ZA)
"The technological singularity” is a future time speculated in science fiction. At the singularity moment, a human¬-made machine will design a machine more advanced than itself. Many say that software will never be capable of human emotional intelligence. This may well be the case but perhaps humanity offers only one kind of intelligence.
This sculpture offers a personal and emotional space¬time boundary that each of us cross several times in our lives. It represents that moment when a personal epiphany emerges in your life that changes your perspective forever. The Hurwitz Singularity.

THE POINT OF PERCEPTION
Madi Boyd (UK)
The Point of Perception is a collaborative project between artist Madi Boyd and neuroscientists Mark Lythgoe and Beau Lotto. The project is an immersive art installation that probes ambiguity in perception. It uses illusion in space to disorientate, providing the viewer with just enough visual information to be on a 'tipping point' for perceptual understanding. It is an uncertain, abstract but spectacular environment designed to engulf the viewer.
The Point of Perception seeks to identify when and how form emerges from formlessness in the visual field.

TITRE VARIABLE No9
Pierrick Sorin (FR)
Titre Variable N°9 is an 'optical theatre' that blends new media with traditional diorama. The video portrays the artist as the protagonist. Presented in the guise of a small ectoplasm, he runs on the turntable and sometimes almost falls. He's dressed as Mr Hulot, with the genuine iconic raincoat worn by Jacques Tati, the famous comical uncle in the French movie Les vacances de Mr Hulot. The accompanying lullaby is coming from the record playing backwards: the sound is repetitive and incomprehensible. This small¬-scale, pseudo¬-holographic optical theatre embodies simple technical means and a taste of abrasive humour and self¬-mockery.
Courtesy of the artist and Aeroplastics Contemporary, Brussels.

TYPOGRAPHIC ORGANISM
Adrien M / Claire B (FR)
Although these floating forms are actually letters, their movements suggest they are small creatures. Their hustle and bustle poetically mixes semantics of language and motion.
The installation uses the Pepper's ghost principle, a classic illusionary technique from the 19th century which enables objects to float in midair, disappear, become transparent, or morph into something completely different. It is based on a trick of light, the optical properties of glass, and the tendency of the human brain to believe that some images it sees are three-¬dimensional when they are, in fact, flat on a screen.

WHAT WE SEE
Joanna Hopkins (IE)
What We See is a conversation between two people that refers to open, non¬specific situations, empty questions and answers that allow the viewer to infer from it what they wish. The characters on screen play out conflicting gestural indicators to their dialogue, negative shrugs accompany positive answers. The viewer places themselves 'within' the set of the video by sitting in an exact replica of it. By viewing themselves mirrored in the artwork, the work questions the validity of their viewing, the ways by which they see things and the ways in which they believe what they see.


YOU. HERE. NOW.
Ian Willcock (UK)
You. Here. Now. is a dynamic portrait system that produces images which hover between representing the viewer and representing the time and social preoccupations at the instant the viewer engages with the installation. The system constantly trawls the websites of selected news organisations and downloads all the visual imagery it comes across. These images are then used to provide a large number of fragments, which, because of their size, are prevented from functioning iconically. To engage with You. Here. Now., you must pause a while; your face will gradually emerge from several hundred tiny fragments, you may then take a photograph with your phone and you will see your portrait emerge clearly on your screen.

Contact for Communications Programme
Christopher Utpadel
Head of Communications
M +49 170 582 49 95
christopher.utpadel@kunstkraftwerk-leipzig.de

Press Contact
Nicole Rundo
Director of Marketing & PR
M: +49 174 380 44 44
nicole.rundo@kkw-leipzig.com

Susanne Tenzler-Heusler
Spokesperson
M: +49 173 378 66 01
Susanne.tenzler-heusler@kkw-leipzig.com

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