Part of the atelierWG Series

Finissage: 12 March 16:00

At puntWG Harm van den Berg presents an innovative sound installation, entitled The Invisibility of Colour. In this work, he conducted interviews with individuals on the street to gather their perspectives on colours. These recordings are combined to create hundreds of spoken colours, which are played through 20 invisible speakers spread over the surface of a wall.

The Invisibility of Colour is part of van den Berg's research on emergent processes. Emergence means: appearing spontaneously. It is a phenomenon which occurs often in nature. For example, a flock of birds in the sky showing the most fantastic shapes, a colony of ants collectively creating the most stunning building structures, or thousands of fireflies that blink in perfect synchronisation. This is swarming behaviour which is not much different from how atoms and small particles collectively behave. Colour is also an emergent phenomenon: atoms have no colour; colour only appears when a large number of atoms are in a certain arrangement.

In addition to sound installations, van den Berg also creates drawings consisting of fine- meshed structures with emergent properties. While his drawings reflect this emergent process, The Invisibility of Colour offers an opportunity for spectators to experience themselves the emergent process of creation in real-time.

In his drawings and sound installations, Harm van den Berg (1970) investigates natural processes at the interface between nature and culture. His research focuses on phenomena such as self-organisation, complexity, and emergence. His work has been exhibited at institutions including Museum Belvédère, Museum De Paviljoens, Kunstvereniging Diepenheim, Netherlands Media Art Institute (NIMk), Galeria Klovicevi in Zagreb, Crossing Border Festival, Zoo Gallery in Nantes, W139, Arti et Amicitiae, Goethe-Institut, and AC Institute in New York City.

Supported by the Amsterdam Funds for the Arts and Mondrian Fund.

More information about the artist can be found at www.harmvandenberg.nl.