The legendary Art Curator Scarlet Lin contacted GMUNK to commission an art exhibition at the Asia Design Management Forum in Hangzhou, China. I was brought on board with our frequent collaborator Phil Reyneri to help design a projection-mapped installation that would compliment Munky’s psychedelic print series. During our trip to china, the days were filled with hazy neon signage, a cappella covers of Darude’s Sandstorm, and photo hunts through the surreal facets of our exhibition factory.

We designed a metallic projection-mapped sculpture entitled ‘ISO.’ The structure was build in China and accompanied by a surround sound speaker-system that played a musical score by yours truly (Enternull). The audio visual structure would evolve throughout the day and was the first exhibition room that visitors would experience in the event. Our sculpture room was filled with smoke in order to fully immerse viewers in volumetric light, which was emitted by six surrounding projectors.
 

The ISO sculpture was designed as an immersive room for viewers to be lost within geometric forms. Munko and myself wanted to create a piece of Geometry that was inspired by the Bizmuth crystal while obeying the Isometric rulebook – and also had a presence of its own by resembling a geometric mask – a pensive mathematical portrait that could emote on its own. This sculpture was then hoisted by a pedestal, an Isomorphic tripod, providing a pathway for the travel of animated light to scan the form on multiple planes. Lastly, a triangular mirror was placed underneath the tripod base and was also mapped by the six projectors – which gave the form an analog prismatic and caustic reaction that bounced organic shapes of light throughout the room.

Philip Reyneri mapped ISO with 6 projectors, and a copious amount of haze was added to visualize each beam of light as it cascaded through the space on to the form. The animated light tells a story of its own, containing chapters of emergence, rebirth and perpetual illumination, highlighting each facet with color and tracing graphic forms, revealing different tracks and states of existence.  As the light evolved, the music would synchronize and shift between moods. The soundscape was played on 4 large speakers that could be heard all throughout the exhibition’s hangar space. Thanks to the volume, many people were drawn in to our dark ISO chamber by the echoing drone sounds.

The ISO sculpture was built from steel plates and welded on site by our team in China. It took over eight people to lift the sculpture up onto the tripod base. Phil worked with the local projection team to align all the projectors once everything was built.

The animation and music were both based on daily light cycles. Opening with a warm sunrise and closing with a cold full moonlight. The sculpture and surrounding room were designed in Cinema 4D, which allowed us to figure out the exhibition flow. All the light animations were created using Octane renderer and compiled in Adobe Aftereffects. Phil Reyneri then rebuilt the sculpture design in Rhino before sending it off to the fabrication team in China.

The project was locally produced by the legendary photographer Xun Chi, whom the team met and collaborated with during the LCAD exhibition a year prior. He was the connective presence for the entirety of the project and it couldn’t have been done without him. This experience was entirely about adventure in its purest form. It was an absolutely mind-bending experience to travel in such a unique city like hangzhou with my friends GMUNK and Phil Reyneri. Thankfully we had Scarlet Lin to help us navigate such a wild city and find the rare vegetarian options. This trip is a peak in 2019 and I can’t wait for another opportunity to travel with this sandstorm crew again.

We spent most of the trip exploring our exhibition space and had little moments to gleam vignettes of Hangzhou. Mornings and nights were the few times we could explore the walls of neon and distant temples framed between replicated skyscrapers. The ADM event space was its own crazy environment, filled with various teams building their own art installations. Huge cats, levitating gardens and chrome frogs slowly took shape in the huge multi-building factory called The Boiler Plant. It was absolutely insane to see how quickly the teams turned an abandoned group of hangars into a pristine art event within a week.

There’s nothing I love more than dystopian spaces, so the abandoned Boiler Plant in Hangzhou was no disappointment for me. Before security and cleaning crews were brought in, the space was open for me to wander. Areas deep in the crevices revealed control rooms and huge machinery bathed in dust. Most of the rooms appeared to be left in mid-use, similar to a chernobyl event. The massive radiation doors were definitely the highlight for me, though I hope there wasn’t any mild exposure to long-abandoned toxic elements. I’ll always remember the strange sunset hours as I climbed through the old control booths several stories above our exhibition room.

Exhibition Artist: GMUNK
Creative Director: Bradley G Munkowitz
Design Director: Peter Clark
Technical Director: Philip Reyneri
TouchDesigner Lead: Philip Reyneri
Composer: EnterNull
Curator: Scarlett Lin
Curator: Xun Chi
Photography: Bradley G Munkowitz
Photography: Peter Clark