With Shelter, digital artist Mathieu Le Sourd a.k.a. Maotik creates an immersive light sculpture through which the public can observe the “poetic representation” of a global network that connects billions of people. Maotik describes Shelter as a“symphony of lights” where laser beams sketch paths and patterns inside a geodesic dome. Smokes gives the light sculpture an extra dose of three-dimensionality.
“Following my experiences working in geodesic domes, video mapping, and other media displays, I am interested in exploring the possibilities of this new immersive environment by creating a virtual world where data connections between machines are visible with laser beams,” Maotik writes on his website.
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Maotik calls the installation an “open form” that offers various combination options to the viewer, who he calls an interpreter. He built a system with a random creation process across a range of settings defined by data transfer.
Maotik explains, “Sound design will translate the visual into a sonic experience that will dive the public to the center of this electronic landscape.”
Does Shelter seem to play as a refuge from mass electronic communication? Sure, on some poetic level. Then again, he may just remind us how deep inside the internet rabbit hole we have fallen.
SHELTER – AN IMMERSIVE LIGHT SCULPTURE BY MAOTIK from MAOTIK on Vimeo.
Maotik presented Shelter—produced by BAM Festival—at the festival Metamorphoses in Liège, Belgium this past May. Click here to see more of Maotik’s work.
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