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::: MUSIQUES et CULTURES DIGITALES :HEHE
Helen Evans is British and Heiko Hansen is German, together they form the group HeHe based in Paris. Their artistic researches articulate around themes like light, transport or pollution. They currently initiate new experimentations at Ars Longa. It’s with the “Pollstream” project, gathering a series of installations and performances around what they call “Man-Made Clouds” that they were awarded last year with the very expected Golden Nica in hybrid art at the Ars Electronica festival.
Smoking Lamp
When Helen and Heiko created the Smoking Lamp installation in 2005 they tackled the most pathetic smoke generated by men. They however emphasized that smoking had never been neutral, as it successively was a sign of virility for ones and then emancipation for others, before becoming a threat for everyone. This lamp equipped with a smoke captor totally similar to those installed in public spaces that became non-smoking areas. It illuminates and crackles when it perceives smoke. But how many museums refused to show this artwork because that could “lead to a slow and painful death”?
Ozone Fields
It’s with the installation Champs d’Ozone that HeHe took part in the tribute exhibition to Marcel Duchamp, Air de Paris, in 2007. One of the sixth floor window of the Centre Pompidou was then “extended” with a translucent film receiving colourful lights particular to visual codes of representation of atmospheric pollution detected by the association Airparif. This window, extended by a connection to ozone captors based in the local area near the Halles, makes visible, perceptible, the level of pollution which became invisible with time.
Toy Emission
Helen and Heiko, during a residence at the New York Eyebeam in 2007, imagined the urban performance Toy émissions of which subtitle My friends all drive Porsches, is slightly ironical. They controlled together a scale-down Porsche Cayenne equipped with yellow, red and blue smokes in this city where everything is possible. And lots of passers-by reacted when they saw this “artist toy”, in distress in the endless flow of other vehicles of which noxious emissions are totally invisible. Some even talked about All Gore mentioning global warming.
Nuage Vert (Green Cloud)
In 2008, after years of discussions, Hehe had finally the possibility to focus our attention on a factory chimney similar to those on the film poster An Inconvenient Truth. But it was the chimney of a thermal power station of Helsinki. The two artists, during Pixelache festival, redesigned the outlines of the “cloud” that it produced with a green laser ray. The inhabitants of the area were then encouraged to reduce their energy consuming. And the green outlines, of fluctuating form, of the “cloud” stopped growing thanks to the effort of the inhabitants who turned into actors.
Million Parts
Years after years the members of the group started to get interested in the scientific analysis of the air that we are breathing to realize that the level of pollution, most of the time, was measured in PPM for “Parts Per Million”. Hence the title Million Parts for an installation that highlighted pollution, rarely denounced, of our own rejection of carbon dioxides when we breathe out. The luminosity of a pink neon light, installed in 2008 at France Fiction, is modulated according to the level of CO2 in the gallery. It makes us realize that the only fact of existing, being, could also be interpreted as pollution for others, pollution for ourselves.
Dominique Moulon
Exhibition Sirènes until 14th July at Ars Longa, 67 avenue Parmentier, Paris. Website: www.arslonga.fr
Nuage Vert : www.nuagevert.org
Website: http://hehe.org.free.fr |
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Digital Art
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