Matthijs Munnik

Installations

May 22 to June 1 (except on Monday)

Free entrance

Friday 23
Saturday May 24
Wednesday May 28
Friday May 30
Saturday May 31
11am - 9pm

Sunday May 25
Tuesday May 27
Thursday May 29
Sunday June 1
11am - 6pm

Ground and 1st floor Le Commun (BAC) – Central location of Mapping Festival

Rue des Bains 28
1205 Genève

MATTHIJS MUNNIK (NL) – Citadels: Lightscape X

Matthijs Munnik is a new media artist currently living and working in The Hague. His work consists of performances and installations that often play with the perception of the visitor. Matthijs Munnik studied at Academie Minerva in Groningen and the Royal Academy of Arts in The Hague.

“Citadels” is a series of installations and performances that facilitate investigations into the hallucinatory realm created inside eyes stimulated by flickering light. Discovered around 1800 by the bohemian physiologist Johannes Purkyne, who waved his hands in front of his closed eyes while looking at the sun, the flicker effect has captivated many over the years. Most notably was its resurgence in the 60’s. Beat culture, psychedelics and new methods of expanding consciousness proved a fertile ground for further creative investigations into Purkyne’s phenomena. Most influential however, was the invention of the Dream Machine by Brion Gysin and Ian Sommerville, one of the first artworks that realized the potential of flickering light.

Citadels: Lightscape X is the latest work in the “Citadels” series, a window to a virtual world, visualizing an abstract universe composed only of light and sound. The aim of this virtual universe is to explore the borders of our sensory hardware. While the eye tries to make sense of the sensory overload, a dazzling display of highly detailed patterns, fractals and geometry is rendered inside the retina and fed to the brain. These curious phenomena you see are created by the eye itself, induced by the installation. This effect is something that is impossible to capture on video or in text, it can only be experienced in real life.