This video and sound artwork was created in memory of John Cage, René Berger, Joseph Beuys, Hans Joachim Koellreutter, Richard Buckminster Fuller, Marshall McLuhan and John Archibald Wheeler – seven magical doors to a new universe. The sound art is composed of extraterrestrial sounds and was presented in concert SETI in 2002.
“Human must rise above the Earth – to the top of the atmosphere and beyond – for only thus will he fully understand the world in which he lives” – Socrates (469-399 BC)
“Following Nature’s own design principles, human may be able to produce most-economic designs while at the same time solving formerly insoluble design problems” – Richard Buckminster Fuller
Kairos is an orbital building, a privileged observatory of Earth, open to civil society, recalling the ancient Sumerian concept of ‘deep time’, projecting a complex of human values in a large-scale spectrum. KAIROS is a conceptual work that merges architecture design and art project in a same corpus – a crossing point between aesthetics, function and technology. Being an architectural design, it presents structural developments in terms of function and technological challenges. As a visual artwork, it crosses all fields of environments and functions, projecting unexpected images that are, at the same time, abstract and figurative, linear and non-linear. As an artwork it questions and criticizes the concept of contemporary art and culture in general. In few words, Kairos is a design for an orbital building.
Kairos launches on September 10, 2011, at Holotopia Academy, Amalfi Coast, where Ulysses met the Sirens in Homer’s Odyssey. The work will become part of a permanent collection of the ancient 17th century tower that has been transformed into a contemporary art museum by the scientist and art lover, Alberto del Genio, Founder of the Holotopia Academy which is devoted to music, art and philosophy. On October 27 Kairos will be exhibited at th Robotarium technology/art center in Lisbon, Portugal, curated by its founder/director and robotic artist, Leonel Moura. In November the book Kairos: A Bird Orbiting Planet Earth will be released. It includes details of the project, and a history of space satellites, laboratories and stations.
EMANUEL DIMAS DE MELO PIMENTA Pimenta is a Brazilian musician, architect, and intermedia artist. His works have been included in art collections and have been recognized by institutions such as the Whitney Museum of New York, the Ars Aevi Contemporary Art Museum, the Venice Biennale, the Kunsthaus Zürich, the Bibliotèque Nationale of Paris and the MART – Modern Art Museum of Rovereto and Trento among others.
Pimenta develops music, architecture, and urban projects using virtual reality and cyberspace technologies. His concerts of music integrate visual art and have been performed in various countries in the last twenty years, beginning with his concert at the São Paulo Art Biennial, in 1985, with John Cage, Francesco Clemente, Sandro Chia, and Robert Rauschenberg.
Pimenta has collaborated with John Cage, as commissioned composer for Merce Cunningham. He has been composer for several companies such as the Appels Company in New York. His concerts have been performed at the Lincoln Center and The Kitchen in New York, the Palais Garnier, the Shinjuku Bunka Center in Tokyo, the Festival of Aix en Provence, and the São Paulo Museum of Art.
In the early 1980s, Emanuel Pimenta coined the concept “virtual architecture”, later largely used as specific discipline in universities all over the world. Since the end of the 1970s he has developed graphical musical notations inside virtual environments.
He has served as a curator for the Biennial of São Paulo, the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, the Triennial of Milan, and the Belém Cultural Center.
Pimenta is a founding member of the International Society for the Interdisciplinary Study of Symmetry. He is member of the jury of the BES Fellowship (Experimental Intermedia Foundation of New York, the Luso American Foundation and the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation) since 1995. He his director of the contemporary music festival Holotopia, in Naples. He is also founder and director of the Foundation for Arts, Sciences and Technology – Observatory, in Trancoso, Portugal. He was editorial director of the art and culture magazine RISK Arte Oggi from 1995 to 2005. He is also member of the advisory editorial board of the science magazine Forma, in Tokyo, and of the art and philosophy magazine Technoetic Arts, in Bristol, England.
Excerpt from the book “Kairos: A Bird Orbiting Planet Earth”