Interstitial 1 is part of a series of 4 digital animations created by Nicolas Sassoon (Vancouver, BC) and Rick Silva (Eugene, OR), featuring iridescent and pulsating structures floating above different oceanic landscapes. Interstitials is part of an ongoing collaboration between the two artists, initiated in 2014 and titled SIGNALS, focusing on immersive audio-visual renderings of altered seascapes and geological formations. Since 2015, SIGNALS and Interstitials have been shown internationally, with notable exhibitions at the Chronus Art Center in Shanghai, Centre Pompidou in Paris, House of Electronic Art in Basel, the Current Museum in New York, 150 Media Stream in Chicago, and Wil Aballe Art Projects in Vancouver.
Sassoon and Silva share an ongoing theme in their individual practices: the depiction of natural forms through computer imaging. Created by merging their respective fields of visual research—representational 3D rendering for Silva, digital abstraction for Sassoon—Interstitials features oceanic panoramas inhabited by artificial structures in an otherwise ‘natural’ landscape. Broadly speaking, the project draws upon oceanographic surveys, climate studies, and science-fiction to create 3D generated video works reflecting on notions of future ecologies. The collaboration also builds upon the idea of “signal” as a central compositional element: a foreign or artificial body emitting a signal within a landscape.
Specifically, the series Interstitials was created as a statement to express a collaborative process: combining the realistic 3D renderings of Silva with the digital animated moiré patterns of Sassoon. The animated patterns appear as monolithic structures floating above the ocean surface—a reference to tiled textures in 3D modelling software and science-fiction imagery—building a landscape through a combination of dissimilar elements, generating tensions between one another. For its release on SuperRare, the series Interstitials—initially created in 2015 and structured as 4 short seamless video loops—has been remastered and supplemented with soundtracks composed by Rick Silva in March 2021. More information on Interstitials and SIGNALS can be found at: https://s-i-g-n-a-l-s.com/
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