"Snow.Noise - Carsten Nicolai"
2001-06-30 until 2001-08-05
Art Gallery of New South Wales
Sydney, , AU Australia

On his return from exhibiting at the 2001 Venice Biennale, Berlin artist and musician Carsten Nicolai (aka Noto) is creating his first Australian solo exhibition, snow.noise. This ambitious installation will turn the Contemporary Projects Space into a laboratory in which visitors can manufacture snow crystals. Nicolai shares Winterson’s passion for the snowflake’s infinitely variable structure, which he considers to be a metaphor for human creativity.

Transformed into a harshly sterile environment, the exhibition space will contain racks of glass and copper tubes and all the materials needed to make snowflakes. The walls will be lined with Nicolai’s paintings of the types of snow crystals that form at different temperatures, derived from Japanese physicist Nakaya’s 1930s experiments in creating artificial snow. The accompanying electronic sound track suggests the inaudible sounds of crystals developing.

The opening night of snow.noise will also feature a 40-minute ambient music performance by Nicolai.

Nicolai’s work was exhibited at both Documenta X and The Liverpool Biennial. He is well known in Germany as a visual and installation artist, and for his recordings for Rastermusic and Noton, labels that “tread the line between conceptual art and techno”. Philip Sherburne, Urban Sounds.

www.snownoise.com is an interactive shockwave website project art-directed by Carsten and designed by Animal Logic. It features the artist’s designs, interactive segments, animation, and sound, and is on-line from 15 June.

IMAGE:
Carsten Nicolai
Kerne 1998 (detail)
water in glass vessels, sound, table, rubber
Galerie fur Zeitgenossiche, Kunst, Leipzig

Related Links:

Indepth Arts Resources for Australia

Other Important Exhibitions in Sydney