Project: Persiscopista by Thijs Biersteker
www.thijsbiersteker.com
Periscopista is an interactive mist cloud designed and produced by Netherlands based artist Thijs Biersteker. He uses this project to ask and answer how we can turn data into beauty.
The magical interactive installation is a giant cloud of mist that aims to harvest data (video feeds, sound, and movement) from a festival crowd. The installation was built to show that data can be used to give you back something good. This overwhelming psychedelic cloud connects the people with their festival surrounding in new and innovative ways.
Be Brave for 2019/20 represents grasping the unfamiliar and being fearless with it and this direction underpins Biersteker's motivation, creating projects that highlight the world’s most pressing issues today.
We spoke to Thijs to find out more about his creative ambition:
1. What is your creative ethos?
My digital physical installation work reflects the growing disconnection between nature, humanity and technology. By collaborating with scientific researchers on environmental and social changes, I aim to remove boundaries to touch on people's emotions through the thought-provoking power of immersive art. As we enter the age of the Anthropocene we are in the need to rebalance and shape a new ecosystem. There is a lot we can learn about nature, that is now slowly being revealed by ground-breaking papers.
2. What inspired Persiscopista?
The misuse of data gathered in the public space or online was my fuel for creation. I wanted to create something that was monitoring people at the festival as giant corporations do but then give them something back that is beautiful, instead of a marketing advert that keeps retargeting you to eternity.
3. We have featured this project in our trend Be Brave where in a world beyond expectations, we grasp the unfamiliar and become optimistically fearless. How do you see your work fitting into this trend?
I think bravery is the only way forward.
4. What is your reaction to the trend Be Brave?
When you work on environmental issues like me there is an urgency that demands bravery.
5. What are you working on at the moment?
My work, the Voice of Nature, uses real time data from a living tree to speak about the impact of climate change. Trees show the environmental impact in yearly growth rings. Using sensors this installation could create a tree ring every second. I’m working on the working of Mycelium and plant intelligence together with fronting researchers in the field. There’s more about the project
here.