3LD Art and Technology Center and Ernesto Klar are pleased to present the United States premiere of “Luzes relacionais” (Relational Lights), a new large-scale interactive installation work by Venezuelan-American new media artist Ernesto Klar. Relational Lights creates a morphing, three-dimensional light-space in which spectators actively participate, manipulating it with their presence and movements.

The exhibition of Relational Lights in New York City follows the world premiere at the FILE Festival in Sao Paulo, Brazil, and a second exhibition at the SHARE Festival in Turin, Italy. At both festivals, Relational Lights received first prize awards among hundreds of contestants — in Brazil it was awarded the first prize of the FILE PRIX LUX in the Interactive Art category, and in Italy the first prize of the SHARE PRIZE. On behalf of the SHARE PRIZE jury, American science fiction author Bruce Sterling explained the decision saying: “In this work, a huge algorithmic complex is hidden behind a simple, elegant interface. This work of interactive art is a fantastic, world-class work.”

Relational Lights is an interactive installation that explores the ways in which the individual and expressive human subject occupies a shifting and variable space in relation to others. The installation uses light, sound, haze, and a custom-software system to create a morphing, three-dimensional light-space in which spectators actively participate, manipulating it with their presence and movements. The work functions as a living organism with or without the presence and interactions of spectators. When viewers step outside the projected light-space, the system begins its own dialogue with space by means of extruding and morphing sequences of geometric light forms. And when viewers penetrate and interact with the projected light-space, a collective and participatory expression of space unfolds. Relational Lights amplifies the three-dimensional fabric of space by making it visible, audible, and tangible to participants. The resulting aesthetic experience encourages an unending relational process of shaping space among participants.

Ernesto Klar created Relational Lights as a tribute to the work and aesthetic inquiry of Brazilian artist Lygia Clark (1920-1988). Relational Lights emphasizes the spectator’s relationship with what Lygia Clark called the “expressional-organic” character of space, and expands on her conception of the “organic line.” The latter is the root of Lygia Clark’s progressive interest in and inclusion of the viewing subject within the work of art. Relational Lights takes examples of the “organic line” in Lygia’s oeuvre, such as her Modulated Space maquettes from 1958, and literally extrudes them as interactive planes into three-dimensional space. Spectators are able to modulate and penetrate the “organic line” itself while maneuvering within the space. Relational Lights brings about an awareness of the spectator’s bodily occupations of space in relation to other

ERNESTO KLAR: RELATIONAL LIGHTS
December 15 – 21 December 2010
3LD Art and Technology Center, 80 Greenwich Street, NYC

Gallery Hours: 12:00 PM – 8:00 PM and by appointment
Opening Reception: Wednesday, December 15th, 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM

Directions to 3LD: http://www.3ldnyc.org/map.shtml

Nearest subway stations are 1/R/W to Rector Street; 4/5 to Wall Street; J/M/Z to Broad Street; A/C to Broadway-Nassau; E to World Trade Center