FRACT
fract is a site-specific audio-visual minimalist installation by Julien Bayle commissioned by Museum of Transitory Art (Ljubljana, Slovenia)
Continuing his artistic researches and representations about the concept of continuum’s disruption, the artist creates fract as an immersive monumental audio-visual piece.
Inspired by suprematist art current and brutalist architecture, fract constantly iterates the same process of cracking growth simulation based on physics of matter and real science of concrete.
The process is a metaphor of a new possible Myth of Sisyphus, depicting the ever cycle of destruction / reconstruction by using sound & visuals.
The display area on the wall figures a very bright light provided by the visual coming from a program through video-projectors. Progressively, cracks are appearing and growing in some place of the wall, represented by very dark fissures. The concrete surface is cracking and the sound comes louder, according to the progression of fissures, as a roaring matter, a crying structure. Then, the piece resets and the concrete wall is again lighted by plain white everywhere ; the process reseted, the concrete wall is like a new one, but every time the same one. A new fragility maps is calculated, providing the way to grow fissures, and the process occurs again, an again.
Each final fissure painting is stored as vectorial file format in order to be re-used, as another way of using & reusing the same matter, as the piece re-use the same wall again and again. Some specific visual artworks could be extracted and derived from this digital files stored. Some 3D printing could also be created according to this data set.
fract is named according to fractal / fracture terms related to latin root fractus / frangere which means breaking into pieces. fract then addresses the main dystopia of civilizations related to paroxysm & decline cycles through the concrete building / destruction metaphor. Constructivist architecture in Slovenia also relates to these ideas and resonates with the piece itself.
Date : 09/2017
Place : Museum of Transitory Art,Ljubljana, Slovenia
Commissioned by : Museum of Transitory Art
Role : Author, Programmer
Technology : Stereo sound system with specific low frequencies setup, Max7 based software, Openframeworks
Collaborators : Laboratoire de Mécanique et Acoustique CNRS, and Cracking simulation growth specifically coded by Dr. Andrew Wilson / Scalable Analysis and Visualization, Sandia National Laboratories / Albuquerque, New Mexico, USA / http://www.sandia.gov
Producer : Museum of Transitory Art, Julien Bayle Studio