Nothing captures the essence of the blending of different influences, contexts, energies and worlds of ideas better than transitional, border areas. There, it is difficult to pinpoint, or ever truly define, where one thing ends and the other begins. In this sense, with some metaphor and humor, one might refer to border as the geographical equivalent of art, which by definition is a field of ontological (and other) flexibility, always open to new incursions and contaminations. Both concepts are characterized by the fluidity of identities and determinations, which they do not take as a weakness, but rather an advantage that constitutively defines them. What could better capture this spirit of openness than a festival held at a geographic threshold, dedicated to practices that belong to art, science and technology at the same time, but at the same time they never truly belong to any one of these in particular. Between the rural and the urban, between two countries, regions and disciplines, the R.o.R. festival showcases artistic practices in the intervening space between disciplines, which allows them to speak in many languages and thus address a diverse range of communities.
The practice of the Hungarian art collective Lightspray Visual (Fényszóró Visual), who have been creating projects using analogue light for over 15 years, also forms part of this universe of (artistic) hybridities. The collective’s origins date back to 2008, when they joined a cultural association which was creating art projects, music events and exhibitions in the local community. The association was mostly made up of self-taught artists who thought and acted both collectively and individually. It seems that this initial experience was pivotal for the work of the collective, which found in it the freedom to develop its work and gather life and professional experience through interactions with friends. And it is this spirit of openness to new contaminations achieved through contacts with new people and environments that still defines the work of Lightspray Visual to this day.
This formative experience of the collective has also defined the technological specifications of their work. They use old overhead projectors with powerful light bulbs to project color images onto building surfaces and monuments. They achieve motion of their images through use of special devices they created themselves, which can be mounted on an overhead projector, creating an effect which resembles kinetic sculptures of grandiose proportions. In fact, these imposing creations combine the principles of the three classical media in their transmedia tandem: their point of departure, as we will see below, is tied to photography; the logic of image creation and its effect are often explicitly pictorial in nature, while the very technological element that makes this possible is constitutively integrated into the work itself, its experience, in a certain spirit of installation. This experimental hybrid approach can be linked to their formative period in a cultural community, where artistic solutions were inspired by bonds of friendship. In the cultural association, the duo gained their formative experience working with colleagues – professional photographers who developed their photographs as slides and then projected them onto the canvas using a slide projector. From this, Lightspray began to develop their reception, which initially involved painting on glass panels of a similar size and creating slide projections with them, which is likely the reason for the undeniably painterly dimension of the collective's work. After these initial experiments with slide projectors, they soon began using overhead projectors, which are so characteristic of their artistic practices today. This move was driven on the one hand by the fact that they overhead projectors allow for larger “painting” surfaces and are easier to use, and on the other hand they allow for the option of changing the light source for one more suitable for large area projection. This allowed them to achieve a four-fold increase of the original luminosity, and after further experimentation, they were able to increase their luminosity to sixteen times the factory default!
The playful, simple and direct productivity of the medium itself continued to inspire technical solutions that give the Lightspray visual duo’s works their characteristic sense of slightly theatrical analogue expressivity. Since the overhead projector incorporates into its projection every element that finds itself in the path of its light strip, they came up with the idea of creating miniature robotic devices that will set the entire projection in motion. They were first guided by the image of the rotating cobwebs effect, which was only the beginning of the characteristic hypnotic visuals of their ecstatically charged projections. Their magical and exhilarating play, always engaged in dynamic transformation, most often draws on the motifs inspired by the immediate context, a sort of genius loci, be it a historical fact, a natural landmark, a fragment of the environment, or the immediacy of the material surface that “receives” their projections. All this can find itself as a motif at the center of the duo's interest and continue its journey to the point where it betrays its starting point (as is ever the rule in art) and continues its motion, assembling and disassembling in breathtaking, ecstatic transformations.
Nevertheless, their work is undeniably influenced by street art, steampunk and science fiction. I think it is no coincidence that these influences are cross-polinating, transforming in joyful hybridity. They are often defined by a sense of anachronism, or more precisely retrofuturism, which is itself a contradiction in terms, but this contradictory temporality is something that essentially defines the conceptual landscape of the Lightspray Visual duo. Their work combines different media and disciplines, and above all harnesses the power of imagination and old and new technologies to show the forces which can change the world we live in. Historical fragments in futuristic scenarios, robotic mechanical structures in organic free-flow, today’s technology reimagined in a genuinely analog story: all these fragments of contradictions act as tactical particles in the work of the duo, able to penetrate through the horizon of the expected and into the realms of the impossible, yet somehow possible. Is it a paradox? The Lightspray visual duo’s visual narratives of are just that, synesthetic compositions that follow their own logic and write scenarios that only art is capable of doing.
Vladimir Vidmar
Lightspray Visual (Fényszóró Visual) an artist group from Hungary, has been working with analogue light for more than 15 years. Their main activity is based on old overhead projectors, in which they installed high-brightness bulbs to colour buildings or monumental surfaces.
The paintings are moved by self-made repetitive motion devices which, when placed on the projector, can achieve an effect similar to kinetic sculpture, but on a huge scale. This makes not only the projected image, but also the projector is an exciting installation.
The artist group is strongly influenced by contemporary street art, steampunk and sci-fi, but their greatest potential is the ability to incorporate any subject to fit the location and the theme of the festivals. Currently, their projects have many directions; they can highlight building facades like video mapping, fuse light from multiple projectors to create analogue effects, and thanks to the latest development, they can create analogue-digital hybrid light shows synchronised to music.
In recent years they presented their art at numerous festivals such as Nobel Week Lights in Sweden, Prisma in Portugal, Essen Light Fest in Germany and in Lumiart in Dubrovnik.
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