James Irwin, a student at Goldsmiths College's new course, Computational Studio Arts created the light-based installation “Monument to the Alphabet” takes the traditional fine art plinth and uses it as an interface for the work, a diital alphabet. “It’s also a response to Twitter,” Says James, who comes from a fine art background but wants to close the gap between fine art and new media, “I’m making the whole process of creating text more complicated.”

Kinetica artist Balint Bolygo’s wonderful work Trace, “essentially a mechanised 3D scanner”. Alluding to finger printing, DNA profiling and hi tech ways of representing and looking into the human body.  Balint has taken a plaster cast of his head, which rotates and maps the undulations and typography of the head with a pantographic mechanism, picking up the texture and profile. This movement is translated to paper “The result is a typographical portrait of the sitter.”

Balint studied Fine Art Sculpture at Edinburgh and has been represented by Kinetica in London for the 5 years since they opened. “Kinetica are very nomadic, they take us to various events, exhibitions and workshops from Budapest to Exeter.”

One of the Fair’s partners is the Hungarian Cultural Centre, thus, there is a strong presence from Budapest, who knew that Kinetic art was so big there? Three galleries from Budapest are showing at Kinetica, jotta spoke to one artist, Esther Bircsak, from Kitchen Budapest. A new media lab of young cross-disciplinary teams interested in the convergence of mobile communication, online communities and urban space. Esther’s work 'LANdelion' looks at bio-mimicry and the technical movement of nature. “One must blow a dandelion, so its uses sound and light and also uses recycled materials, we used cables and a ventilator. The sound is intimate, it is of bells and the light mimics the way the dandelion would sctatter.”

While the film below shows musician, composer and artist Ray Lee demonstrating his theramin orchestra.

Packed with fun, interactive futuristic and often beautiful (see Rosaline de Thélin’s ghostly  family of holographic light beings), often kitsch  nostalgia, in the case of the wonderful mad scientist, Bruce Lacey, one of the pioneers in the Masters of Kinetic Art section. This is what he has to say about his lady friend robot, "Over the years R.O.S.A. has achieved many things, being Best Man at my second wedding, acting in films, appearing in television shows, newspapers, magazines, and exhibitions. Her finest moment was to win The Andrew Logan’s Alternative Miss World competition in 1985. R.O.S.A. is still going strong today, and loving every minute of it, at the age of 45."

See more pics from our adventures at Kinetica 2010 here

1. Eszter Bircsák commented on Thursday, 11 February

   hi Millie!
   thank you very much for your kind release about our work!

   just one thing that Kitchen Budapest is a collaboration so LANdelion not just mine work more our group’s project :).

   thank you very much and i hope you will follow our projects in the future as well.
   cheers
   Eszter