Artist Statement
Audio-visual installation. ENSBA, ECOLE NATIONALE SUPERIEURE DES BEAUX-ARTS. 2000, France
A visual and musical installation based on a motorized device putting in motion optical fibers defining geometrical forms by effect of the retinian persistance. This new realisation of the device imagined by artists Francoise Henry and Laurent Bolognini is controlable directly by computer, and is the instrument of a creation by Andre Serre who has conceived parallely the visual and the music in real time.
About the Galileograph: “towards a celestial mechanism”
Lead the viewer into a reverie …
It all starts with a small star which seems to be detached from the sky, dragging another star in its course, which in turn begins to describe circular shapes but whose trajectory is deviated by centrifugal force, the luminous circles then become ellipses , contortions, random geometric figures. Other stars come to complicate this ballet like so many electrons, trying to escape from a bubble chamber. The persistence of light traces on the retina then reveals figures that take on all the nuances of the spectrum, sometimes overlapping each other.
The different combinations that can be obtained by the variations in speed, light intensity and direction of rotation, constitute a range of possibilities from which a “light partition” will be established. The luminous movements would intervene in time ranges considered either of passage, or of announcement, creating a dialogue between the visual effects and the sound impressions in progress or to come, to involve the spectator in a more abstract reverie. [source: andreserre-milan.com/Toiles_filantes.html]
Andre Serre-Milan: Conception of movement and music ‘Toiles Filantes’, Francoise Henry & Laurent Bolognini: Conception and realisation of the original Galileograph, Thierry Coduys, Gilles Dubost, F. Benvenuti, Sandrine Adass (La Kitchen): New version of the device.
- Andre Serre-Milan (France) andreserre-milan.com fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9_Serre-Milan