Immersive new Future Shock exhibition open at 180 Studios

Featuring UK and world premieres from Actual Objects, object blue, Lawrence Lek, and a host of pioneering artists.

Fact and 180 Studios are launching a major new exhibition, called Future Shock, at London’s 180 The Strand, running from April through to August.

Featuring 14 leading international artists and collectives working at the cutting-edge of audio-visual technology, Future Shock transforms 180 Studios’ subterranean spaces through mesmerising and pioneering digital technology – from generative and interactive algorithms, AI, and 3D digital mapping, to spellbinding laser work, holographic projections, and groundbreaking electronic music.

Including numerous UK and world premieres, the exhibition celebrates artists at the apex of sound and vision who are redefining space to create a new kind of artistic experience. It includes: Ryoichi Kurokawa, Caterina Barbieri, Actual Objects, United Visual Artists, GENER8ION (aka Romain Gavras and Surkin), 404.zero, Gaika, Tundra, Ben Kelly, NONOTAK and object blue.

Weirdcore will present a brand new commission with an original soundtrack from frequent collaborator Aphex Twin, while Floating Points will provide an original score for an installation by Hamill Industries. Lawrence Lek will also present a new 180 Studios commission featuring a score by Hyperdub founder Kode9.

Tickets are on sale now via the 180 The Strand website.

Caterina Barbieri, Vigil, 2020.

A sonic pioneer, the ground-breaking Italian electronic artist Caterina Barbieri presents her first installation, Vigil. A multimedia collaboration with Ruben Spini, the installation creates a total environment, bringing together musical, visual and sculptural elements to explore the transformative power of sound and vision. A new commission by 180 Studios, the central element of the installation is a portal that symbolically connects to Barbieri’s idea of music as a gateway to transcending time and space.

Gaika, Convo 2.2 Complex Confessional, 2022.

An ‘Infrastructure for Inverted worship’ driven by a real-time conversation with a GTP-3 chatbot called Herbie, this new 180 Studios commission sees multidisciplinary London-based artist and musician Gaika considering AI ethics, horror, labour and theology in an architectural study comprising film, sound and sculpture.

United Visual Artists, Vanishing Point, 2022.

A new iteration of one of UVA’s most iconic and mesmerising installations. Commissioned by 180 Studios, Vanishing Point employs perspective as a tool to reshape and redefine a space, creating the illusion of light as a physical material. A laser carves through space to create different geometries, compositions and divisions within the room and transform our sense of perspective. The work’s behaviour is unpredictable and without repetition, fluctuating between states in which the beams glide calmly to more pulsing and energetic movements.

Ryoichi Kurokawa, subassemblies, 2020.

Japanese artist Ryoichi Kurokawa’s digitally generated audiovisual works take on multiple forms, including installations, recordings and live concerts. Making its UK premiere, this site-specific iteration of subassemblies transposes the artist’s 3D digital mapping of architecture, ruins, and nature into an immersive cube with quadrophonic sound and strobing to create a multilayered experience that distorts time and space.

Weirdcore, Subconscious, 2022.

Inventing boundary-pushing interfaces between sound and vision, Weirdcore is one of the UK’s leading audiovisual artists. Subconscious, a new 180 Studios commission, is an abstract journey into the inner mind, with its myriad potential pathways. It features an original soundtrack by frequent collaborator Aphex Twin, which disorientates visitors from reality in exploring the phenomenon of lucid dreaming.

GENER8TION, Neo Surf, 2021.

Making its UK premiere in Future Shock, GENER8ION is a new project from French filmmaker Romain Gavras and electronic producer Surkin. Set in 2034, GENER8ION’s triptych film installation is a tale of the future with a lowercase ‘f’, a future that contains moments that uncannily look like the present: an AI scanner capturing emotions, a flyover alliance posing with a spaceship, teens enjoying flying surfboards. No sudden nonhuman threat, no end of the world, but a seemingly ‘normal’ environment, underpinned by the threat of slow violence, just like the one we are experiencing right now.

Actual Objects, Vicky, 2022.

A new commission by 180 Studios, Vicky imagines a world in which, rather than old power structures, branded data and gamified interactions define space. A desert-like environment with six human-scale LED screens housing digital humans and triggered by motion sensors allows for the telling of multiple experiences. An experimental collective based in Los Angeles, Actual Objects functions primarily as a creative studio, probing emerging digital spaces, metaverses and the role technologies play in shaping frameworks of perception, aesthetics, and emotion.

NONOTAK, Daydream V.6, 2021.

Distorting the relationship between space and time, French/Japanese duo NONOTAK’s Daydream interweaves connections between virtual and physical space, immersing the audience in a contemplative audiovisual experience.

404.zero, In Noise We Trust, 2022.

A monumental, synapse-splitting, site-specific installation from one of the world’s leading exponents of futuristic audiovisual art, In Noise We Trust questions our notions of reality through a sonic assault on the senses, immersing visitors in a sensory overload soundtracked by the duo’s seductive analogue score. “Noise will be reborn endlessly”, says Alex and Kris from 404. “In the end, you can bring nothing. But the noise will always follow you.”

Hamill Industries, Vortex, 2016/2022.

Soundtracked by an original score by Floating Points, Vortex is an interactive light, smoke, and sound installation that generates a series of smoke rings that travel through the space, suspending visitors’ sense of disbelief and disconnecting them from their surroundings. A creative studio based in Barcelona, Hamill Industries’ founders Pablo Barquín and Anna Diaz marry computerised, robotic, and video techniques to create pioneering experiences at the forefront of technology.

object blue, What Melissa Said, 2021.

A new commission by 180 Studios, electronic musician object blue and and creative collaborator Natalia Podgórska draw from their interests in the metaverse, club music and creative freedom to produce an installation that imagines a world in which simulation theory is real, a far-from-ideal synthesis of virtual and physical space.

Lawrence Lek, Theta, 2022.

London-based artist Lawrence Lek expands his ongoing ‘Sinofuturist’ cinematic universe with a futuristic short road movie, exploring alternative visions of technology, identity, and nonhuman empathy. A new 180 Studios commission, Theta is set in the aftermath of an environmental catastrophe, following the self-driving car Theta as it travels through remnants of SimBeijing, a smart city that has become a ghost town. Produced entirely in Unreal Engine, this immersive single screen work features an electronic soundtrack produced in collaboration with electronic musician and Hyperdub label founder Kode9.

Ben Kelly, Columns, 2022.

Legendary Haçienda designer Ben Kelly bridges the physical and virtual with a new site-specific mirrored version of his installation Columns with large scale interactive LED wall and soundtrack by influential electronic musician Scanner.

Tundra, Row, 2020.

Making its UK premiere, acclaimed collective Tundra’s Row installation employs six holographic projectors to translate raw visuals driven by generative sound and data, from mathematics to 12 notes of the chromatic scale. In turn, Row transforms the nature of both the physical space around us and the imagined, virtual space the work engineers.

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Future Shock

Exhibition Dates: 28 April – 28 August 2022
Opening Hours: Wednesday – Sunday
Tickets: Adults: £20 / Concessions £15

Head here for more info and to purchase tickets.