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Exploring Chaos And Order: Q&A With Kinetic Sculptor Balint Bolygo

Using fundamental forces and mechanics, Bolygo interprets the interplay between chaotic and ordered systems.

Mappings

Kinetica Art Fair starts this Thursday, February 9 in London, bringing with it a collection of art based around motion and all things mobile. Last week we spoke with boredomresearch, who will be exhibiting a generative piece there, and now we’re introducing you to another artist who’ll be exhibiting at the fair, Balint Bolygo.

Balygo will be showing the piece Mappings—a rotating mechanized globe with no axis, a surface that has no beginning or end. A drawing mechanism will start marking up the surface of the globe at the beginning of the show using a pen set in motion by two pendulums, which move whenever people interact with them. The mass of the earth is essentially creating the drawing, with the project playing on the idea of using a fundamental force in an imaginative way. He’s also collaborating with Pavegen on a piece that uses pavement slabs that harvest kinetic energy when stepped on. As people walk into the exhibition, they’ll walk through a gangway of these slabs, which will generate a lazer display created by Bolygo in the entrance.

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Bolygo’s work is often time-based using simple systems that generate complex outcomes, exploring motion and movement via drawings, whether that be with light or paint or ink. He creates his work from a concept rather than having a complete blueprint and this sense of excitement, wonder, and discovery in the making process is passed on to the viewer. The artwork itself becomes a process, a journey unfolding over a period of time.

We visited his east London studio to have a chat and find out why the passage of time is an important part of his work.

The Creators Project: Would you consider your drawing machines to be robots or what are they?
Balint Bolygo: I don't consider what I make to be robots, more like mechanized processes. A lot of the things are very simple—they might look quite complicated but in actual fact, it's still high school physics. For instance Trace is very much a take on sculpture itself. I've made quite a few drawing machines, a lot of them using harmonic movement, pendulums, by linking more than one pendulum together.

Mappings

How does Trace work?
I start off with making a head cast, then that gets put into a mechanized tripod and the whole system acts like a mechanical algorithm. So it's an analogue computer, really, that creates drawings that look a bit like spirographs, but are a lot more complicated because with these mechanisms it's very difficult to do the same drawing twice. It uses cogs and leavers and the head is almost like a program and there is an arm, which is essentially a pendulum, but it's a weighted pendulum which always puts a little bit of pressure onto the 3D head. Then as the head turns it actually pushes this little arm out where you've got the undulation. Little movements can be magnified so the movement of the head matches the movement of the paper, which is also turning at the same speed, and between the two objects what you have is a really simple mechanism that measures these movements. By putting all these movements together, after three hours you have spirograph-esque mathematical diagrams.

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So the process is very much a part of the work. It’s not just about the picture produced?
Yes and even if you're not into mechanical engineering you can almost decipher and figure out how it was brought into existence. The important part of this work is you see these quite mesmerizing images come about from processes that are equally as mesmerizing, but they put you in a position where you're allowed to discover where they come from.

How important is the journey in your art work?
For me, it's not just about a finished product but about the journey of getting there. This means I enjoy an element of randomness, playing with the idea of the interplay between chaotic and ordered systems. I've done quite a lot using gravity as a fundamental force and it's interesting because that's the force that brought all other mechanics into life.

Is discovery a unifying theme in your work?
I think so, it is a theme that really goes through a lot of the projects. It's about not just creating an effect or a phenomenon but about leading the viewer to it through the work. So that could be a process of discovery or by leading through a process, a creative process. I guess that would be the theme.

Trace

Why does that appeal, because you don't always see it in art. You might see a finished product but you don't always see the mechanics that go into it?
Say, for example, you go and visit an artist's studio then you have a little bit of insight into all the things that are in the studio and then when you go and see the show, there's always a little bit more that you'll get from the finished work. So I guess a lot of my time-based pieces they actually create something over time in the gallery—so in a way I take that process that's usually just seen in the studio into the gallery. It's not really about the end result as such but about the whole process, the event is the work.

With kinetic sculpture those processes have often been a part of the style, part of the aesthetic.
I think it's interesting how, for example, a lot of painters who work in two dimensions try and somehow bring the third dimension into the work, so they're fascinated by the third dimension which, in a way, is not available to them. And if you follow this through, a lot of sculpture—and they have the three dimensions—are actually very much involved with movement, right the way from classical sculpture. It's about capturing some kind of movement and motion whether that's emotional or a physical movement.

And with kinetic sculpture you also have time.
Exactly, in moving sculpture you've got time as one of the dimensions that you play with. So you move from 2D to 3D and then into the 4th dimension which can be quite an interesting tool or material to play with. Because you can actually slow down people and over that time they spend with the work you can actually play with their senses in a much deeper way. I often refer to what I do as time-based sculpture because kinetic sometimes confuses people, because the emphasis tends to be movement for movement's sake. Which I guess is slightly missing the point when it comes to my work because the movement needs to happen in order for some event to occur.

Kinetica Art Fair 2012 will take place from February 9-12 at Ambika p3, 35 Marylebone Road NW1 5LS