The works are described in chronological order of the route.

 

ADEM
By Puck van Dijk
(Audio poles throughout the festival)

ADEM is an audio work about human connection, that ties all festival installations together in one narrative. The voice of word artist Roziena Salihu will lead you in the twilight through your shared history. What attracts you in each other, when will your connection start to fray and what will remain after there’s only silence left between you?

This work is presented in seven audio poles, that are spread throughout the festival route.

As a multidisciplinary maker Roziena Salihu always starts from words, both written and spoken. She previously made short documentaries and programmes, and has written stories, fiction and poems.

Puck van Dijk is a theater maker, lecturer at the Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor de Kunsten and artistic leader of Studio Puck van Dijk. She creates immersive experiences using film, locational theater and technology. The concept of this audio work was created in collaboration with Boris Acket. Sebastiaan Smink was responsible for the sound design.

Concept & direction: Puck van Dijk
Text: Roziena Salihu en Puck van Dijk
Sound design: Sebastiaan Smink

 

(1) BLIND SPOTS
By Mark IJzerman and Sébastien Robert

The installation BLIND SPOTS focuses on the life surrounding us, that we tend to forget because it is less visible: like bats, which communicate on a frequency outside the sound spectrum that we can hear.

Recordings of bats that live in the Goffertpark are translated into a light and sound composition, in a way that is not only visible to us, but also attracts insects that are hunted by bats. The presence of bats is sensed by the installation, that reacts to this and thus creates a form of communication with the unseen.

The installation is a collaboration between interdisciplinary artists Mark Ijzerman and Sébastien Robert, and grounded in the scientific research of Ton Verhoeven, urban ecologist of the Municipality of Nijmegen.

 

(2) WAAIWERK
By Boris Acket and @voCampus students Ingrid Petit, Gabriel de Brouwer, Lieve Sarneel and Lieke Fleuren

How do you make air and its energy visible? Can you tell a story about air using only light and wind? What is the difference between measurable reality and researched facts? These are some questions that artist Boris Acket and students of the Nijmegen secondary school voCampus have been working on over the past six months. The result of this joint quest is presented at Schemerlicht 2022. The installation WAAIWERK is a kinetic wind work that maps air quality. The work is a visual wonder as well as a warning, making the sky reveal its true face.

Scientists Linda Carton and Nils van Rooijen also took part in this project. Carton has a background in climate activism and researches air quality. She provided the students with substantive explanations and sensors, in order to load the installation with data.

Using the expertise of Nils van Rooijen, the work was given an extra transformative layer in the form of seeds sewn into the fabric, which will be freed by the wind to be blown throughout the Goffertpark. This means that the more the wind will make this work dance, the more breathing space will be created. 

 

(3) HYMN OF THE WIND
By Kaap

The song of the wind began more than four billion years ago. The movement of air is an essential part of our musical history. Think of wind instruments, but also of the human voice. The installation HYMN OF THE WIND turns wind itself into an instrument.

Kaap made eight small wind turbines, that generate a signal that is electronically translated and interpreted. The force of the wind determines how fast the turbines turn and how the music piece develops. The wind thus writes the musical composition in the Goffertpark, which is recorded and can later be listened back as an album on various streaming platforms.

 

(4) DE ZWIEPERS
By Pelle Schilling

The human brain is a powerful tool. It also is a grim tyrant, aiming to understand everything through the tunnel vision of the intellect and producing a continuous stream of thoughts. This installation tries to break through rational limits in a sensory way, by submerging the viewer in the present moment. What do you hear? What do you see? What do you feel deep inside?

A bullroarer is an aerophone musical instrument, meaning it needs airflow to create a sound. As with wind instruments, the sound is produced by vibrating air, with the difference being that the bullroarer itself is moved through the air in order to produce sounds. The installation plays with mechanical movement and acoustic sound sources, pushing the boundaries of what the human ear can perceive in an acoustic landscape that is constantly changing shape.

 

(5) ROTORBLAD
By Boris Acket

Although it’s hardly conceivable from ground level, the blades of modern windmills are actually 65 meters long on average. That is an astonishing length. ROTORBLAD lets you experience what is happening high above our heads, by downsizing this enormous scale to a human perspective.

This installation by Boris Acket is a visualization of a wind turbine in operation. Rotating light sources are placed in a circle rotate, thus representing the average speeds of windmills. The work is based on the expertise of Jan de Laat, who conducts research into low-frequency noise pollution and its influence on humans. In the installation, his sound recordings are presented in a rhythmic and meditative audiovisual composition. At the same time, the artwork forms a poetic representation of human ignorance, in which Acket shows his fascination with design solutions that in turn lead to new problems. For instance, wind turbines provide clean energy, but also increase bird mortality, low-frequency noise pollution and landscape change.

(6) WINDOWSEAT
By Mark Prendergast and Joeri Woudstra

Mark Prendergast and Joeri Woudstra’s work looks and listens to the world in a different way. The artists use different ways of digital image manipulation to achieve magnifications of ‘idiosyncrasies’. Prendergast questions the way we consume culture for new and potentially emancipatory visual strategies and Woudstra builds physical objects and sounds from our daily commutes into monumental (digital) ruins of image and sound.

In ‘These Cars Do Not Exist’, Woudstra and Prendergast collaborate on a rollercoaster of image compilations. Birds, clouds, sea and concrete all find a place in the two artists’ universe in their very own way.

For Schemerlicht, the duo created ‘Windowseat’; a generative audiovisual installation that explores the idea of “ambient watching” and our physical relationship to it. On two large screens at a 90-degree angle, simulating a headrest screen and an aeroplane window, they seek the contrast and nuance between organic and static/digital image consumption.

 

(7) AERIAL DISTORTIONS
By Eversines

Are there still places left on Earth without human-made sound? Like humans are responsible for rising levels of air pollution, we are the cause of global noise pollution. Often the largest air pollutants are also the main source of intrusive auditory waste. Think, for example, of airplanes, which even in remote and inhospitable places where no human sets foot, cause noise pollution by flying over them. Back and forth. Back and forth.

This audio installation consists of sound fragments that are disturbing, polluting and permeating, woven together in a rhythmically evolving collage that forms an uninterrupted flow of noise. Based on Jan de Laat’s expertise on intrusive sound sources in the Nijmegen area, Eversines confronts the listener with unceasing human noise, aiming to make you think about the invaluable worth of silence.

 

(8) ATMOSPHERES
By Paul Lubbers and Rein de Sauvage

ATMOSPHERES is a spatial musical composition that symbolizes the process of climate change in a sensory experience. Paul Lubbers and Rein de Sauvage make global warming not visible, but audible. For this they use field recordings of emission sources such as the oil and waste industry, which are often located far from our daily lives. They bring sounds from these remote places to the Goffert Park, creating a sonic atmosphere that offers the chance to experience an invisible process in sound. The composition is based on Bram Maasakkers’ scientific research into greenhouse gases. Maasakkers works at SRON (Netherlands Institute for Space Research).

 

(9) INTO THIN AIR
By Sandipan Nath and Sebastiaan Smink

Every city in the world is host to trillions of microbes: organisms too small to see with the naked eye, such as bacteria, single-celled algae and fungi. How the lives of these trillions of invisible inhabitants is intertwined with our human reality becomes visible in this installation, which is both a laboratory and is a work of art.

This mixed media sculpture that forms an urban ariel archive and floating microbial ecosystem. It consists of an impressive curtain of thousands of petri dishes representing a cross-section of layers of air. Hidden within the layers are agar infused dishes which trap invisible particles in the air and thus present the microbial footprint of this park. The work visualizes Goffert park as a dynamic ecosystem, where, in addition to human inhabitants and the built environment, a diversity of other invisible inhabitants is present. This sheds new light on the relationship between our bodies and our environment, allowing us to rethink what it means to be human.

 

(10) VOLUME
By Elsemarijn Bruys

Inhale. Exhale. Can you imagine that we are no longer able to breathe on this earth? Is that a frightening idea? Oxygen deficiency and air pollution are an actual and major threat, but the danger is invisible: we cannot see what the air quality is. The pollution of the air is a process that is happening gradually, moving closer slowly from the upper layers of air towards the earth.

Inhale. Exhale. To give you an idea of ​​oxygen deficiency, artist Elsemarijn Bruys devised VOLUME, an abstract simulation of breathing. You are literally oppressed by the pulsating movement of this work. The installation looks like a living being, in the form of a volume existing in time and space. It is also an object, which in fact is nothing more than a bag filled with the same air that we all breathe in daily. An object that points out to us the power, presence and volume of air.

In collaboration with scientist Linda Carton of the Smart Emission Project, the installation also acts as a measuring point, investigating the air quality at various locations. This makes VOLUME an indicator of the environment in all places where it is exhibited, including right here, in the Goffertpark. On the measuring equipment you can read off the particulate matter content of this place. The European Union sets requirements on air quality in member states. For example, there are limit values for the maximum permissible concentrations of particulate matter (PM10 (fine dust)) and the finer fraction of particulate matter ( PM2.5 (fine dust)) in the air.

 

(11) INNESTEOUSIE
By Mary Lake

INNESTEOUSIE is an experiment with different sounds of wind, which were recorded at ear height by Mary Lake and are now presented as a virtual story through headphones in the Goffertpark. The recordings have been manipulated to put the listener in a trance, while playing an interesting game with volume, speed and panning – a technique of assigning sounds specific locations between your left and right ear, creating an auditory spatial panorama in your head. You hear and feel something that you cannot see. In doing so, this installation reminds us that we are part of the infinite universe.

 

(12) TREE OF LIFE
By MAOTIK

For Schemerlicht MAOTIK made a work that is projected onto a tree. As an organism it provides many animals with oxygen, while the tree itself seems to be increasingly suffocated by various threats. MAOTIK collaborated with Bram Maasakkers, who provided data from his SRON research into methane emissions. By projecting a work about methane gases onto a tree, the tree comes alive with the same light that threatens to suffocate it. This installation reflects on the question of why we aren’t taking better care of the organisms that gift us life.

 

(13) AIRBORNE LANDSCAPES
By Gabey Tjon a Tham

AIRBORNE LANDSCAPES is an audiovisual installation that investigates the dynamics between air particles located at different heights in the atmosphere above Nijmegen. The atmosphere is a dynamic ecosystem, in which elements such as air and temperature are in constant motion. They change in form, substance and behavior by interacting with other life forms such as plants and man-made elements.

Inspired by the expertise of scientists Bram Maasakkers, Nils van Rooijen and Linda Carton, Gabey Tjon a Tham creates a physical virtual reality with this spatial installation, in the form of an airflow that behaves both statically and dynamically on a series of connected LED screens between the trees in the Goffertpark. The work is an imaginary air drilling, comparable to an earth drilling that is carried out for soil research.

Credits
Unity 3D technical support: Rob Bothof
Special thanks to: Zeno van den Broek, Jacqueline Heerema, Bert van der Valk

 

(14) TOXIC SILENCE
By Kems Kriol

In collaboration with Bram Maasakkers, Kems Kriol makes the invisible visible in this audiovisual installation, by showing and hearing what is happening outside our direct perception. With parabolic and geological recording equipment he has recorded silences, underground and at different heights in both the Rijnmond area (Rotterdam) and in the Goffertpark. Visually, this work depicts the flaring of methane gas, as it’s done in the petrochemical industry around Rotterdam, the city where Kems Kriol grew up.

 

(15) ISSIZ
By Nikki Hock

The work looks like a sculpture from a bygone era, which also points to the future by using elements of cyberpunk. It thus forms the backbone of a lost past, but also of a future far away. The installation consists of self-created light sources such as stroboscopes, LEDs and lasers. It looks like an object from a dystopian film set, with wires roaming freely throughout the work. The sculpture also is a ruin of human life made of plastic and electronics, like a contemporary Greek temple.

For ISSIZ, Hock has 20 turmeric plants on loan that were grown by the team of Professor Hans de Kroon at the Faculty of Science at Radboud University. ISSIZ is the bearer of a hopeful and at the same time dystopian narrative, and we can see the work as
a warning. Man destroys themselves, but not the world: it outlives
us. We owe our downfall to ourselves.

Credits
Musical composition in collaboration with Torus (Joeri Woudstra)