Sensory Test
13min
audiovisual intervention
projection, RGB led lights, hazer
Project by: Gabriela Prochazka & Lunchmeat studio
concept / creative direction: Gabriela Prochazka
animation: Pavel Žáček
sound design: Ondra Mikula
typography: Anymade studio
voiceover: Justin Lavash
photography: Lukáš Havlena, Filip Kustka, Jakub Doležal
photos: Martin Kubalec, Gabriela Prochazka
13min, multimedia performance
laser, video projection, prismatic foil, 2 channel sound, 9 performers
For the special opening of the dance theatre Ponec’s 20th season I created a space that started out as a light installation and gradually turned into a proper dance party. The idea was to give the dancers a chance to work themselves into the ecstatic or almost trance-like state that can sometimes occur at rave parties and which embodies total freedom of body and mind – that moment when nothing else in the world exists except for the music and the body moving with it.
A laser drawing was projected onto the building’s facade and into a special prismatic circle that was hung above the entrance. The wind interacted with the circle, and so sometimes the projection mapping worked precisely, but at other times it was more up to luck. This created a sense of playful chance, which was dependent on the weather conditions at the time.
Concept, creative direction: Gabriela Prochazka
Laser, light installation: Gabriela Prochazka
Support: Lunchmeat studio
Sound: Oliver Torr
Choreography: Jindřiška Křivánková
Performers:
Viktor Černický
Cecile Da Costa
Markéta Jandová
David Králík
Tereza Lenerová Hradílková
Žaneta Musilová
Jaroslav Ondruš
Jazmína Piktorová
Ester Trčková
Special thanks to:
Václav Kovář
Ondra Eliášek
David Vrbík
Eliška Kociánová
Jan Slanina
Laser intervention at the Počerady coal-fired power plant, the largest polluter and producer of greenhouse gases in the Czech Republic. It emits 5.5 million tons of CO2 and 223 kg of Mercury into the surrounding landscape every year, yet is only able to make use of 1/3 of the energy it produces.
“We act locally, but our activity is global. Similar artistic interventions are taking place around the world. We don’t have a second planet. Humankind must unite to save it. We are not activists, we are nature protecting itself.”
Inspired by global activist movements, post-internet culture, and claims, the projections on cooling towers included messages including, “Shit is fucked up and bullshit,‘‘ “#nofilter,” “I can’t believe I still have to protest this shit,” “We’re losing time,” as well as information on the toxic waste it produces, and, of course, classical ‘‘Stop coal.”
Made by Czech light artist collective to support local and global climate movement.
collaboration: Lunchmeat studio
photos: racek
Supported by: Greenpeace Česká republika , Limity jsme my Extinction Rebellion, Hnutí Duha, Fridays for Future & many more …
International Festival of Technologies, TU Delft, NL
50 x 90cm
sound design: Aid Kid
video snippet: https://www.instagram.com/p/BjxFItFhw2w/
710 x 1015
mixed media
The installation is a reference to long exposure photos of light movement ”light painting”, while here, actual sources of light are being framed like a painting.
visual poem, 4.54 min. loop, large scale projection, Holesovicka Sachta, 2018
Selection 2016-2019
sound artists:
OAKE (de), Iron Sight, (se), Gost zvuk (ru), Peter Kirn (us/de), Never Sol (cz), dne (cz), Arielle Esther (fr),
photo:
Jan Rozsypal, Dita Havrankova, Camille Blake, Jakub Cervenka
collaboration: Filip Mirbauer
Permanent lamp object installed in Polagraph Gallery, Brno
concept, creative direction: Gabriela Prochazka
photo: Martin Janousek
Guerrila laser projection, Prague
Ongoing questions if & how could possibly new media art in public spaces shape and bring awareness to global issues.
Supported by: Lunchmeat studio
photos: Jara Moravec
graphic design: Marek Ehrenberger
collaboration with Vlastimil Senkyr
photo prints, 420 x 594 / 297 x 420
Galerie Cella, Bludny Kamen, Opava, CZ, 2018
This photographic collection explores the light bending phenomenon and it’s correlation between science and art. Visual dynamic structures suggest that light is a potent medium, able to create ephemeral scenes reminiscent of abstract art movements. When darkness is a canvas, and light is a paint.
The concept of each composition was cautiously built from prismatic materials around a source of a light and projected on a flat surface.
Images were photographed as they appeared to the naked eye.
in collaboration with Peter Kirn
photo: Dita Havrankova
fluorescent tubes, laptop, active speakers
The installation draws inspiration both from color field painting movements and a new awareness of perception. Set in the black box, the visitor is surrounded by all immersive darkness and hypnotic layered music. Flashes of light stimulate after effects hallucinations, where colors, lines, and movement becomes a unique subjective experience of a perceptual architecture of sound and vision.
Adaptable to different venues.
Exhibited:
1.03.—29.3. 2018
Galerie Cella, Bludný Kámen, Opava, CZ
9.10.—22.10. 2017
Editions of Lights vol. III, Holesovicka Sachta, Prague, CZ
1. 6.—28. 6. 2017
Degree Show 17 — Exhibition of diploma works of students of the Faculty of Art and Design at Jan Evangelista Purkyně University in Ústí nad Labem / Ústí nad Labem house of art and design, CZ
4.5.
Total Eclipse of the <3, Berghain, Berlin, DE
11.6. (premiere) 15.6. (reprise)
scenic reading of die unverheiratete (The Celibate) from Ewald Palmetshofer (AT)
Činoherní studio of Ústí nad Labem, CZ
Direction and dramaturgy: Kateřina Bláhová
Art direction and scenography: Gabriela Procházková
Cast: Kryštof Rímský, Jaroslav Achab Haidler, Marta Vítů, Matúš Bukovčan
Production: Andrea Čerbačeská, Michal Jalůvka
Supervision: Karel Tománek (KALD DAMU), Michal Koleček (FUD UJEP)
Photo: Jáchym Myslivec
Three generations of women and one inherited sin from the time of Nazism.
1945, shortly after the end of the Second World War. A young woman is sentenced to twenty years of imprisonment by a court for collaborating with the fascists. 2015: a young woman finds her grandmother collapsed on the ground in their kitchen.
Between the past and the present, between prison and God’s judgement, between the kitchen chair and the death bed is where 70 years of the cobwebs of the past starts to unravel. The grandmother, mother and granddaughter discover the family secret concerning the disappearance of their husbands, they seek out the truth about their fathers and brothers, twisting between blame and forgiveness. How is it possible to come to terms with the blood on their hands that has been passed down from the grandmother? How can we ask the dead for forgiveness?
This powerful family story about three generations of women reveals the crimes that have played out in silence behind our neighbours’ closed doors.
more here (in czech)
105 x 55 x 15 cm
mixed media,
2017
Totem light sculpture presents light as a visible energy, that we might admire both from the point of view of physics, and as a metaphor of spirituality. The surface is made from translucent optical plexiglass that from different angles simultaneously refracts light sources and from other angles shows mirror-like reflections of its environment, adds another level of interpretations.
pics by: Evelin Belincakova, Paul Henschel
Gabriela Prochazka – direction / light design
Ichi Go – dance
Arielle Esther – sound design
Georg Werner – sound and light interface
Eyal Meistel – costume design
contemporary dance performance with elements of butoh
(butoh; also known as a dance of darkness)
In the first state, man and sword become one and each other. Here, even a blade of grass can be used as a lethal weapon. In the next stage, the sword resides not in the hand but in the heart. Even without a weapon, the warrior can slay his enemy from a hundred paces. But the ultimate ideal is when the sword disappears altogether. The warrior embraces all around him. The desire no longer exists. Only peace remains. – King of Qin, Hero
trailer / 2016
supported by Adam Csoka Keller, Eveline Belincakova, Sandro Mosco
Premiere:
DARKIDENTITIESDARKBODIES: Spektrum, Berlin, DE
4.11. 2016 / audiovisual performance with Vida Vojic (SWE), Spektrum, Berlin
performance here
installation / self-made visual machine, various liquids, light transmitting materials, ink, brushes / dimensions variable
These macro and microscopic visuals are a result of continuous investigation of pure materiality and what they could possibly tell us about how this universe was made. With the use of various common materials, these abstract organically structures collages emerge.
In daily life, one tends to disregard seemingly ordinary moments of passing natural elements, but when sculpted and captured in time, observation of these structures, might lead us into philosophies such as wabi-sabi which represents Japanese aesthetics and world view. Sometimes described as one of beauty that is ‘imperfect, impermanent and incomplete’. Understanding emptiness and imperfection was honoured as tantamount to the first step to satori, enlightenment. The idea is, that being surrounded by natural, changing, unique objects helps us connect to our real world. In one sense wabi-sabi is a training whereby one might find basic, natural objects interesting, fascinating and beautiful. Wabi-sabi can change our perception of the world to the extent that a chip or crack in a vase makes it more interesting and gives the object greater meditative value.
« To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour. »
– William Blake
video of audio set up { heart beat } here: https://vimeo.com/172349786
installation / cat skull, various light sources, black velvet, speakers
Schrödinger’s cat is a thought experiment, sometimes described as a paradox, devised by Austrian physicist Erwin Schrödinger in 1935. The scenario presents a cat that may be simultaneously both alive and dead, a state known as a quantum superposition, as a result of being linked to a random subatomic event that may or may not occur.
The work is Memento mori which has been an important part of ascetic disciplines as a means of perfecting the character by cultivating detachment and other virtues, and by turning the attention towards the immortality of the soul and the afterlife.
We can see a part of a dead cat, to which a new life is given with light sources – fluorescent tubes ad LEDs, and illusion of a life beat with speaker turning themselves on/off.
Site-specific light objects are part of the theatre performance. Led crystals, optique fibres sculpture. For more pictures visit my Instagram #kolonizace Trailer here
Director: Jiří Havelka
Screenplay: Jiří Havelka, Petr Prokop, Ondřej Cihlář
Producer: Petr Prokop a Vosto5
Sound design: Martin Tvrdý
Costumes: Jan Brejcha, Mikoláš Zika
Light design: Tomáš Morávek
Projections : Martin Bražina
Artistic collaboration: Gabriela Prochazka, Aneta Železníková
Production: Jeník Bubal, Jeník Tyl
Cast: Ondřej Bauer, Tomáš Jeřábek, Petr Prokop, Ondřej Cihlář
Voices: Václav Zimmermann a Jiří Havelka
Mankind has always longed to discover and explore new places. What drives us? Curiosity, advancement, adventure, enlarging living space, disseminating human DNA or just ordinary human pride? The colonization of new planets is inevitable in the future. But should the universe be colonized by people?
Premiere: 1. February 2016
Reprizes and current shows:
Kraken Signal festival 2014 from Gabriela Prochazka on Vimeo.
audiovisual underwater installation
Vltava River, Prague, CZ
computer, open source softwares, microprocessor, digital LED lights, light transmitting materials
1800 x 500 x 100 cm
,,An uncertain world lies under the water surface.”
Kraken is a cryptid = from the Greek κρύπτω, krypto, meaning “hide” is a creature, whose existence has been suggested, but has not been discovered or documented by the scientific community. Legendary sea animal, gigantic in scale. It is said it lives in the northern seas. This time it arrives in Prague. One can miss it during the day, but not at night time, when it starts its own visual show, putting us in mind of the bioluminescent powers of deep water creatures.
