Looking-Glass House by Andrea Božić and Julia Willms at KunstFestSpiele Herrenhausen, Arne Jacobsen Foyer, Hannover

They have made 1965 Night Sky Replica: the exact same night sky above Hannover as it was in the year 1965, the year the construction of the Arne Jacobsen Foyer began. Throughout the festival, the moon will pass through the exact same phases as it did 57 years ago, against the same backdrop of star constellations, making a precise replica of the night sky in 1965. Growing from a waxing gibbon to a full moon to then disappear from the skies on the closing night of the festival as new moon. The visitors can observe 1965 Night Sky Replica from any point outdoors.

With a special event: Blood-Orange Moon (live performance) - a total eclipse of the Supermoon above Hannover in the early morning of the 16th of May.

The video-light installation Civil Twilight - Choreography for 450 nm and 600 nm inside the Arne Jacobsen Foyer brings the palette of the night sky colours into the modernist glass-house building, expanding its architectural inversion of the inside outside spaces and the play of mirroring and reflections.

It works with the colours of the night sky, a deep indigo-violet-blue and deep orange-red ranges, the shortest and longest wavelengths visible to human eye, creating a continuous movement with the twilight night sky.

The video-light installation features a cube-like shape in constant movement that plays with the perception of colour and shape. It combines infrathin layers of colour light projected across several surfaces, creating a perceptual continuum between a 2D video image and 3D projection screens, the shape constantly affected by a flux of merging colour fields.

Also inside the AJ Foyer, the visitors can enter an immersive installation Through the Looking Glasses based on the Ganzfeld effect. They wear a pair of specially designed non-see-through glasses, against which a range of slowly cross-fading colours is projected. Wearing a set of headphones, they listen to white noise based on granular synthesis. The eye sees uniform colour fields with no recognizable spatial border or shape, and the ear hears no recognizable sound related to the environment but a continuous noise wave. ‘Looking outside’ becomes ‘looking inside’. The visitors are taken to ‘no space’: a sensory immersion within this no-space of colour and noise, a highly affective state. Visitors who experience the piece are visible to passers-by as a part of the exhibit, while also being totally immersed in a different environment and cut off from the outside.

About Ganzfeld effect: ‘When our brains are starved of any stimuli after staring at any featureless, uninterrupted field even for a few seconds, it triggers the Ganzfeld effect, which in German means ‘total field’ or ‘entire field’. The ancient Greeks and Tibetans engaged in a similar process by entering dark caverns to receive insights from their subconscious minds, or from the otherworldly realms. This phenomenon has been experienced by arctic explorers staring at featureless expanses of white snow, prisoners in dark cells (termed ‘prisoner’s cinema”), astronauts, pilots, and miners trapped in underground caverns who end up having visions of apparitions.’

https://www.psychreg.org/ganzfeld-effect/

A training based on Ganzfeld effect is undergone by astronauts preparing for travel in outer space.

Works on view:

1965 Night Sky Replica by Andrea Božić
Durational installation, daily, from sunset to sunrise
Moon, Earth, star constellations, Metonic cycle
2022

Civil Twilight by Andrea Božić & Julia Willms
Choreography for 450 nm and 600 nm
Video-light installation
Video projection, light, mirror floor
14 min loop
2022

Through the Looking Glasses by Andrea Božić, Robert Pravda, Julia Willms
Audio-visual installation
Several persons installation, white glasses, light, sound
4 min loop
2022

Blood-Orange Moon by Andrea Božić
Live performance
Moon, Earth, Sun, weather
2022

Andrea Božić and Julia Willms’ video installation The Cube can be seen in the Städtische Galerie KUBUS.

More about Looking-Glass House at KFH here

Arne Jacobsen Foyer
Herrenhäuser Str. 3
30419 Hanover, Germany