virtual sunset it is a work that
comments on a very long-standing
tradition of sunsets a very powerful
notion so it ranges back as long as
humanity is there the adoration of
sunsets and the sun itself
my name is tobias klein
i'm the principal or director of studio
tobias klein we focus a lot on the
design of systems of interactions of
installations it's an experimental
workshop environment you could say to
date we are all talking about the latest
installation of our studio that project
is called virtual sunset at the
victorian albert museum i think it's
quite important that there's a
strong relationship between a physical
environment an environment of light and
actually a digital environment and how
do we start to position ourselves in
there
it is the first installation that uses a
crowdsourcing as the basis to create a
second sunset it uses images that people
have uploaded online so the creation and
construction of this sense is entirely
dependent on how people engage with the
notion of sunset and it is overwhelming
at the moment i think what is quite
thrilling for me is to see the the quite
dramatic response since we put the
website online we have approximately two
to three hundred images already of
sunsets within one week
in the victorian albert we build an
installation that uses pvc tubing a lot
of it and projecting or at any given
point two of the sunset images where the
sunset is at that point the installation
itself starts to glow more and more and
more over the time of four hours till it
meets the real sunset that kind of sets
upon london
i certainly took references to turner
when actually even constructing the
installation in fact the first time we
we thought about the installation the
first images we thought about the first
qualities we thought about was actually
the environmental qualities of that
light the weather and the kind of
density of a space that he depicts and
that he shows as a glow in an urban
environment
for me turner was a great influence
his artwork talked a lot about the
symbolism and the kind of the sublime
quality this overwhelming beauty and
power of the sunset i think that's very
different
so let me start with actually showing
you the ipad there are going to be two
ipads that are in the space that show
you where the sunset is at the moment
and projector number one
will project uh image number one and
three and projector number two is
projecting image number two and four
these are at the moment the sunsets
and you will see how they're merging in
like they have a 30
30 second fading window where they
actually merge into the second one and
then merge into the next one updating
live from the website
these are the scaffolds that i actually
talked about they're regular nine foot
scaffolds of 44 millimeters
there's 28 poles basically holding each
26 different cut tubes so
you can stand in there with two three
people and actually just be engulfed
within the light from the two sides
so through this installation there's
there's the idea of like how do we
construct time or how do we relate a
network environment to something that is
on the one inside
for the basis of all life the entire sun
light etc
and this idea of how the live sunset
moves forward
to be then recreated in a time base
that's the thing that i wanted to take
in
and the second thing
is the the condition of the light so
that's why it's not projected onto a
two-dimensional screen but into a real
three-dimensional environment that you
can pass through that you can become
part of so where two sunsets are
projected at the same time in one
environment it creates a
an entire installation of light so
as the light of a real sunset transforms
a city a landscape
transforms a cultural ground this was
this installation tries to take this
transformative power that every half
minute the updates of the sunsets
are creating a different life condition
so it's on the one hand side a very
physical thing that we wanted to create
on the other hand side
is the idea of the notion of time
something that is very different to most
of the artworks that work with sunsets
you