Kinetica Art Fair is a bit disappointing this year. Nonetheless, Tom Jeffreys picks out his personal highlights.
And it's back. With a whirl, a whizz, and a long drawn-out mechanical splutter, Kinetica Art Fair returns to the cavernous underground hangar that is Ambika P3 on Marylebone Road. Kinetica is the UK's only fair dedicated exclusively to kinetic art, and is always a riot of computerised contraptions, mechanised installations and baffling robotic weirdness. This year though it's all a bit lacklustre, with little of that sense of danger, wonder and excitement that usually oscillates through the fair. This may in part be explained by the fact that when I visit – two hours into the media view – a fair number of stands are unmanned, with works unplugged and unmoving. Technical glitches at the media view are always a potential problem with a fair like Kinetica, but there's just a broader sense that the really innovative guys have stayed away this year, which is a shame.
That's not to say that it's not worth a visit however, or that there's not stuff worth seeing. Below are my picks of the five best works at Kinetica Art Fair 2012:
Mobile Architecture
AA D_Lab + Sharisharishari
If this is what the future looks like then count me in. Sharisharishari are an architecture and design practice based in China, Japan and the UK that explore ideas around interaction – not just in a public space, but with the public space. On show here are six architectural models that allow visitors to subtly interact with an array of delicately constructed roofs, through the use of biometals and various sensors. In the model form, there's a sense of power; in execution it could be something more approaching humility.
Twitter Art
Immo Blaese
Not the only artist producing work synced up to Twitter (there's also another work involving lightbulbs) but the most nuanced. Inspired by the Concrete Art of the 1930s, Immo Blaese has designed a programme that responds to Twitter trends, translates these into coloured lines and produces digital images not dissimilar in some ways to the paintings of Ian Davenport. You can also print them out on the spot, which is a neat little addition.
Dark Room Trickery
Carol MacGillivray & Bruno Mathez
It's always a good idea to keep a careful eye out at Kinetica as there's every chance you may miss something. I only noticed this as I was just about to leave. Follow the arrows on the floor of the mezzanine over to the corner. Step into the blackness behind a dark curtain and be entertained and intrigued by MacGillivray and Mathez' Gestalt Circle, a kind of illusory zoetrope for the technological age.
Philosophy Trains
Paul Malone
I'm not entirely sure why but there's something both soothing and vaguely amusing about Paul Malone's work. He's constructed a toy train-set that goes round in an elegant circle a few feet above head height, its carriages formed of perspex cylinders containing the words of various theorists about the galaxy – from Cicero to Kant, Donne and Hume. There's something celestial about it – all white and clear and silver – and something wry. It's a neat, thought-provoking and rather satisfying piece of work.
Drip, drip, click...
Nicola Rae
Down below Malone's piece is a sound installation by Nicola Rae, that responds to visitors strumming on a guitar, whistling or tapping a microphone by producing a stream of distantly ethereal clicks and drips. The sounds also interact with the work's visual element – as noises are translated into a rather beautiful projection of mirrors and light. Rae and Malone's works are quite different, but linked by a shared sense of exploration and of calm.
3D Funghi
Laura White
My favourite works in the whole show though are those by 25 year-old artist Laura White, who only graduated from Brighton last year. She's showing work as part of Ravensbourne's stand and has clearly been having a good time with the college's 3D printer. The design world has been going doolally for 3D printers for a while now, but White's focus on the beauty of pattern and structure in otherwise overlooked areas of the natural world gives the technology a new purpose. Her work is nuanced, sensitive, intelligent and thought-provoking. Definitely one to keep an eye on.
Kinetica Art Fair is at Ambika P3 from Thursday 9th to Sunday 12th February 2012.
Read Spoonfed's reviews of Kinetica Art Fair 2010 and Kinetica Art Fair 2011.
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