Amsterdam Light Festival

Amsterdam Light Festival Proposal

About the Partners:

Working with brilliant artists from around the world, Future Fires provides incandescent, emotionally involving experiences.

Future Fires works with international cultural agencies, and with a wide network of creative global partners, creating immersive environments, projection art, data-driven LED installations, VFX animation, robotics, choreographed drones, VR, AR, and more.

Future Fires pioneered the first large-stage digital arts event series in the SF Bay Area (the "Luminary" series). Since 2015, Future Fires has partnered with major brands, as well as museums and other presenters to enable forward-looking performances and installations at the nexus of art and technology.

Future Fires and David Ostro: design for the PLANTAGE MUIDERGACHT

About Digital Ambiance:

Digital Ambiance (Berkeley, California) is a multi-disciplinary design studio that works at the intersection of architectural, artistic, and experiential environments. Digital Ambiance integrates new technology and custom design to build features that come to life and capture the viewers’ attention and imagination.

In the pictures to the right can be seen recent, large-scale, outdoor projects commissioned from Digital Ambiance.

For the Amsterdam Light Festival, Digital Ambiance will have built custom LED components for the PLANTAGE MUIDERGACHT, providing all-weather durability and the necessary capacity for compelling, kinetic, and interactive light design.

About Make Tank and David Ostro:

David Ostro provides both interaction design and fabrication services for "If Something Should Happen To Me."

David Ostro is a new media artist based in Oakland CA and NYC. A dual-citizen of Switzerland and the US, Ostro studied at Princeton University, RISD, and 3D Technical Institute before receiving a BA in Studio Art and Philosophy from Vassar College with honors, and a MFA in Fine Art from the School of Visual Arts. He is the founder and artistic director of daoLAB Studios, which specializes in commissioned art projects incorporating cutting edge technologies for private clients, companies, and public entities. David Ostro is also the founder and Principal Director of daoLAB MakeTank, a research and innovation lab in the San Francisco Bay Area. MakeTank implements emerging technologies to develop groundbreaking creative tools for artists.

The Consortium: Future Fires - Digital Ambiance - Make Tank

AMSTERDAM LIGHT FESTIVAL: THE CONCEPT

This will be an LED-illuminated structure that adheres to the architecture of the bridge. It is conceived as a mirror image of the existing structure.

There is an additional “mirroring” effect, in that reflective Mylar on the underside of the new structure casts a disrupted view of the water below, and those that pass under or along the bridge. The roof of the simulcram is mirrored, warping pedestrians’ sense of distance, creating foreshortening as they traverse the bridge. Visible from any angle, movement triggers, via sensors, patterns of colored light that ripple from one shore to the other.

After the festival, the structure could be relocated. It would remain a striking and functional piece of interactive light art.

THE THEME

Disruption to the existing order is made visible in relation to the existing order. In this piece (“If Something Should Happen To Me”) any and every person, bicyclist, or boat finds that passage has an effect: ribbons of patterned light ripple from one side of the bridge to the other, shore-to-shore, indicating the strong effect even one person can have when they move through the world. The art, also, is a disruption: of what exists around and beneath it, of what was there before. What is known and familiar is (literally) turned upside-down.

Digital Ambiance: Cultural Ctr. in Fresno, Ca.

Digital Ambiance: interactive LED Installation for the city

of San Francisco, at the SF Civic Center

David Ostro has worked with Digital Ambiance and with Future Fires on multiple projects.

Most recently, David is the fabricator and technical director for the Future Fires commissioned work "Resonance," at the Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose, Ca.

Turntable Rendering of Artwork for the Bridge

As per March 8 email from Jule at Amsterdam Light Festival:

I can confirm that Amsterdam Light Festival will pay and arrange for:

- Any necessary permits / inspection

- Travel in April for one of our team to present to you

- Any assistance onsite with fabrication, or in other ways (once selected you will be connected to one of our technical producers who will assist you in the process)