Miguel CHEVALIER Alfombras Màgicas 2021, Madrid (Spain)

A film by Claude Mossessian Claude Mossessian©

ALFOMBRAS MÁGICAS
Festival LuzMadrid, Centre culturel Matadero Madrid (Spain)
29, 30 et 31 October 2021
Generative and interactive virtual reality installation
Software: Cyrille Henry and Antoine Villeret

Alfombras Mágicas 2021 is made up of four interactive light carpets (17 meters x 15 meters) projected onto the ground in Matadero at nightfall.

Alfombras Mágicas 2021 is inspired by biology, particularly the shapes and development of micro-organisms invisible to the eye. This creation is composed of organic universes of cells in bright colours that gradually merge and transform into more constructivist universes of thousands of pixels in colour or black and white. Nature hybridizes with the artificial. Here we have the fusion of cells, the basic elements of life that make up matter, with pixels, the basic elements of digital, virtual "life".

Cells multiply in abundance, divide, merge, proliferate. Everything comes together, comes apart, and changes shape at top speed. These virtual organic compositions of expanding cells float among the flow of luminous pixels. The work is interactive. This visual symphony is transformed as visitors pass by.

Their displacements create disturbances in the trajectory of these cells, revealing new layers of images, drawing infinite compositions.
The sinuous curves that undulate create new sensory and visual experiences close to the psychedelic universes and artificial paradises of the 1960s and 70s.
Each virtual carpet immerses the visitor in a continuous flow and a whirlwind of intense colours. It is a new "technological baroque", a baroque of the extreme, almost churrigueresque or plateresque, which is perpetually renewed.

The artwork pays homage to the decorative motifs and bright colours of Spanish craftsmanship, especially carpet weaving, as well as to the mosaic that prefigures the pixel, a fundamental element of the digital image and the equivalent of the pictorial touch.

This world of colors and shapes in movement takes us, as in a giant kaleidoscope, on an imaginary, poetic voyage. Miguel Chevalier’s new creative work plunges us into the magical universe of One Thousand and One Nights and flying carpets.