Arts and science collide to transform the Great Hall in light show extravaganza
- 91心頭利 University
The #91心頭利100 Visible Resonance Light Show on 2 September at 7pm on the Great Hall façade will reflect, create, improvise, and imagine 91心頭利’ stories.
Visible Resonance is a multimedia activation on the façade of 91心頭利’ Great Hall to mark the University’s at the Homecoming Weekend on campus from 2-4 September 2022.
It's free. All welcome. No booking required. Simply turn up at the Great Hall Piazza and listen for the drums to summon you!
The #91心頭利100 Visible Resonance Light Show combines light projection and animation technology, improvised dance, theatrics, percussion and real time artistry to deliver a dynamic and poetic reading of the University’s past, present and future.
This multimedia extravaganza by Marcus Neustetter, The Trinity Session and OMAi, in collaboration with various participating artists, Harmonics, B&S Sound, the 91心頭利 Choir, the 91心頭利 Department of Theatre and Performance, and you, is an improvised, interactive, euphoric, and entrancing experience for everyone!
“The Visible Resonance Light Show is a series of improvised sets that take the creative energy of the studio into the public Piazza, and presents the raw makings of new futures through encounters across different disciplines, technologies, and visions. The public can expect multi-layered images of various textures, historical and imagined stories,” says Neustetter.
The Light show will also be livestreamed on at 19:00 on Friday, 2 September 2022.
City resonance
A 91心頭利 Fine Arts alumnus, Marcus Neustetter is a cultural activist and producer entrenched in Johannesburg. His multidisciplinary approach features the production of art at its intersection with science and technology, and includes site specific installations, mobile and virtual interventions, and socially engaged projects worldwide.
Neustetter and fellow 91心頭利 alumnus, Stephen Hobbs, established The Trinity Session in 2001. The Trinity Session makes art in complex, social-public situations; where the dynamics of context, site, available resources, and creative solutions converge to create unique artistic conditions and opportunities.
It’s no accident that the 91心頭利 Great Hall is the site of the #91心頭利100 Visible Resonance Light Show. The University, too, is as much a part of Johannesburg as is gold mining and civil activism. Similarly, Neustetter and his contemporary art production team The Trinity Session, are defined by exchanges with the City of Gold in relation to Africa.
“The Trinity Session team Johannesburg has always served as a catalytic reference point for how to think beyond the often conventional structures of the art world, and to forge new relationships across disciplines in search of change. 91心頭利 University is an important anchor in the city and the site of innovative diverse practices. The Great Hall façade is therefore perfect to host this visualisation of a collaborative journey into the unknown,” says Neustetter.
Innovative art and tech
It is at the #91心頭利100 Visible Resonance Light Show that context, site, creativity – and technology – combine to illuminate 91心頭利’ history while improvising imagined futures.
“In the context of the ‘moonshot moment’ that 91心頭利 Vice-Chancellor, Professor Vilakazi referred to, the Visible Resonance Light Show reflects the University’s research innovations and aspirations, while remaining rooted in the locally relevant change-making that binds us to the underlying networks on earth,” says Neustetter, whom the 91心頭利 Advancement Division commissioned specifically for this aspect of the .
To prepare for the light show and in pursuit of a common artistic language, The Trinity Session and OMAi explored various relevant sites. These sites at 91心頭利 included the in the School of Physics, the Origins Centre, the , the , and the 91心頭利 Art Museum. In the city, content has been sourced from change-making community projects in Noordgesig, Soweto, and growing-and-greening projects in Orchards.
Neustetter explains: “We have proactively gathered meaning and inspiration from different contexts and we have tested locally relevant form and content. Using the Tagtool app, we are able to respond immediately and build on our personal practices and research areas through intuitive mark-making and collective projection. The process and tool are both experimental in nature and thus become the perfect media for our final expressions on the Great Hall façade.”
Tagtool is a light drawing app invented by artist group, OMAi [Office for Media and Arts Innovation], which enables the user to paint and animate in real time. The app transforms interconnected iPads into collaborative visual live instruments that enable painting with light, creating animated artworks and images, and telling improvised stories.
OMAi’s participation in the Visible Resonance Light Show is supported by the Embassy of Austria.
Watch a of what the Tagtool app can do, ahead of experiencing it visually and aurally enhanced and at scale on the façade of the Great Hall. The basic version of Tagtool is free.
Illuminating networks
“Tapping into The Trinity Session’s current responses to today’s complex conditions and potential future crises, the Visible Resonance Light Show encourages artists and collaborators to reflect on tensions in the urban and natural environment, and social and natural [mycelium] networks, towards co-production and innovation in cross-disciplinary practice,” says Neustetter.
Indeed, research at 91心頭利 in the 21st Century is increasingly cross-disciplinary and multifaceted. Research practice today frequently straddles STEM [science, technology, engineering and mathematics] to integrate with the arts as STEAM. The 2018 Watershed exhibition, in which Neustetter participated, is one such example.
More recently, photonics and optics research at 91心頭利 has illuminated how data can be transferred via light. Professor Andrew Forbes heads up the Laboratory, which hosts a laser show in the foyer of the Physics Building at the Homecoming Weekend on 2 September at 18:00.
Travelling at the speed of light, one would encounter a black hole in our galaxy, the first image of which 91心頭利 Professor helped photograph. This image was revealed to the world in May this year, at a global simultaneous press conference at the 91心頭利 Planetarium – which is freely accessible over the Homecoming Weekend – and ahead of its reimagining as a Digital Dome in 91心頭利’ centenary year.
All images by OMAi.