3/2/24

UnderCURRENTS is a year-long series of experimental happenings that take place outside of the exhibition programme. Whether through sounds, performances, or talks, each session features an artist or thinker who is invited to present something they are currently investigating, providing a platform for testing half-processed ideas with audience interaction and immediate feedback.

On Feb 3, Samuel Swope will present an experimental installation involving acts of sonification from airborne sculptures. Entry is pay-as-you-want, no registration required. Support your local art space!! 💚

Samuel Swope is most recognized for his research and development of what he defines as aerial art – flight and air as medium. Merging multiple media and engineering practices, Swope constructs and controls aesthetic systems that work with air and are often themselves airborne. Through his research and studio practice he often engages with issues on hybridity, atmosphere, emerging technologies, autonomy, and the non-human. Swope's studio is based in Hong Kong where he is an assistant professor for The Hang Seng University of Hong Kong.

For Swope, aerial art is the construction and control of aesthetic objects/environments/systems that work with air and are often themselves airborne. Aerial art engages the artistic, dynamic, and technical issues of air as an aesthetic dimension. Aerial arts may merge flight, air, gas, or gravity as medium and often require some form of apparatus. There are many ways in appointing aerial art; sculptural drones, levitating objects, micro-atmospheres and gas/fog artworks name just a few examples. Aerial art frames air, giving it a perceptible and systematic volume – or multi-sensory experience.

Swope’s practice is informed by concepts at the intersection of art, science, technology, and life. His work periodically involves iteratively crafting objects or environments that facilitate novel situations that oscillate between playful and poetic, introducing an uncanny apparatus to challenge cultural constructs, manipulate norms and produce ephemeral spectacles, which are then complemented by skillful documenting and storytelling. These works play with the intersection of technology and the non-human, framing these encounters through an anthropomorphic lens to explore our place within these complex hybrid systems.