Berlin-based artist and tinkerer Nils Völker’s latest installation Bits and Pieces is a combination of performative art, dance, and machinery working together in perfect harmony to execute a captivating dance of what the artist describes as “ordinary objects.” The exhibition consists of 108 suspended orbs that open and close in a harmonized rhythm.
“The floating, colorful everyday objects merge into a single entity, an almost living organism that modulates, attempting to find a poetic balance between space, electricity, and relationships. The movements generate a tension between the planned and the accidental, with each new variation opening up possibilities for interpretation. The sculptural presence draws attention away from the technical underpinnings of the finite object to a world of imaginative motional processes,” according to the NOME Gallery description.
The entire process of creating the installation was somewhat of a lucky coincidence, Völker told The Creators Project. Völker began by experimenting with LEGO sets and at some point, his ideas began to grow until he finally switched to “real” electronics. As for the spheres, Völker purchased a few of them from a 99-cent store and slowly began assembling a test setup with components that he had lying around. “Although it was a really roughly made test with just a handful of spheres, it looked amazing and pretty promising,” Völker says.
Völker says he enjoys the process of fiddling with the components more than the concepts. In the end, he explains that “there are many possible interpretations when it comes to large amounts of mass-produced, almost identical objects doing all the same thing, or when things made from cheap and colorful plastic—the opposite of anything organic—start to behave organically like a swarm or wave. But in general I prefer to leave any interpretation open to the visitor and really like to hear what others think instead of telling them what they should see in it.”
However viewers interpret Bits and Pieces, it cannot be denied that Völker was able to create a colorful stage of dancing spheres where there was once an empty and austere space.
Check out more of his work here.
[Via: The Creators Project]