Windprints
Installation, mixed media, Clisson, France, 2011
In collaboration with Bence Samu, Hungarian artist (http://www.binaura.net/bnc )
I spent two months in the villa ‘Garenne Lemot’ in Clisson, a little town in France. There is a vast and
astonishing park around the villa with full of ancient trees. In the middle of June the leaves began to
fall. The gardener explained me that in the last couple of years ‘the autumn’ started much earlier as the
trees are drying out, because of the climate change. For this landart and installation project I marked the
leaves before their fall around the park with red silk ribbons. Using a camera and a computer through
the exhibition space’s windows – in a collaboration with Bence Samu, Budapest-based new media artist
- we detected the ribbons’ movements in the wind. In a live connection with the garden, the computer
projected thin, black lines on the walls of the exhibition space. The software reacted to the ribbons only
when they were moving and projected the lines to draw the connections between the marked leaves
outside. In the final result, I found really interesting not only the live mapping of the leaves momentary
location but also the empty spaces within the projection when the wind stopped blowing and the walls
stayed white.
1 % – Integration des Arts à L’Architecture, Théâtre Les Deux Mondes
Public Art Installation, mixed media, Montréal, QC, Canada, 2011
In collaboration with Jerome Fortin, Canadian artist (http://jeromefortin.com/ )
Jerome Fortin, Montréal-based sculptor asked me for a collaboration in a public art commission for the
Theatre Les Deux Mondes (http://www.lesdeuxmondes.com/en/ ) in Montréal. According to the strict
rules of making public art projects, we got a specific request from the theatre with possible size and
location, we also needed to consider the permanency of the piece and the weather conditions to find
the best material. To start creating ideas we made a research about the theatre and we got to know that
the place was founded recently as a union of 5 different companies who decided to move altogether.
Finally we had the idea to create an art piece which depicts the daily life of the theatres and also
reflects on the process of their unification. We collected scripts, story boards, architectural plans from
the last 15 years what we found in each theatre and folded the papers altogether as one origami chain.
This visualization includes all the contents which could give a nice overview of the theatres: histories,
workshops, spectacles, maps of travellings and a whole bunch of images and publications. This simple
abstractation of the founded information, the process of folding together their archives finally creates
an unexpected relations between their memories. We blew up the visualization to a 2 x 5,5 meter high,
thin aluminium curtain – a curtain as a symbol which opens a new dimension for the spectator, the
border between the ordinary and the special world – and cut with water-jet the folded pattern on it. We
suspended the piece next to the entrance, in front of a window which gives constant light from behind
through this lace surface.
‘Ecce homo’- Meeting my father once again
Installation, mixed media (Photo prints and book), Montréal, Canada, 2011
http://gyorgyigalik.com/doc/Ecce_Homo_Meeting_my_father_once_again.pdf
My father passed away years ago, when he just turned 50. We didn’t have a good relationship. He was
an alcoholic. Years and years I felt continuous anger for him, that I needed to leave behind. I built
a new ‘father system’ for myself to be capable to accept his life and death. While I was cleaning up
his apartment I found many pictures of him and the family. I started to gather these photographs and
write titles below them. I started to write kind of a ’diary from heaven’ on behalf of him. The titles
became little poems similar to Japanese Haikus. Not beyond the formal requirements of Haiku writing
(a traditional form of Japanese poetry, is a short verse of 17 syllables in three metrical sections (lines) of
5-7-5 syllables), rather in the sense of the fundamental characteristic of the classic seventeenth-century
Japanese Zen Haikus. A compact yet profound and evocative form, haiku gives an objective, suggestive,
pithy and fleeting picture of its subject. The aim is to point out a fact, preferably a daily life fragment
or moment. The gesture in these poems does not aim for anything particular. Regarding to the content,
there is no judgement in them, no passion, no enthusiasm, or anger either, the subjects just exist only
on their own way. What is said is important but what is unsaid may be more important. I am interested
in the perception of the ‘negative spaces’, in the breaks between the texts. I had been working on this
project for almost a year when in my eyes I began to see my father in a different light. Now I always try
to remind myself that once he was just like me: a young person with lots of dreams. Like all of us, as a
child he had the dream that he could become someone special. He made his own decisions but he also
had to assume their consequences. To show our family life through this simplicity and total sincerity,
my aim was to give an universal human value for a really intimate story. I tried to explore bravely and
with impunity the border of self-therapy, intimacy and the state or quality of being. When I decided to
organize this exhibition, someone asked me where he could find my father on Google. He supposed if
I did an exhibition for my father, it should mean he was famous. I found that question really amusing.
I told him that he was not on Google at all. He was not more than what he was. An ordinary man (Ecce
homo = Behold the man). By visiting the exhibition, the public can take fragments of his tragic story,
and through my text they will get to know him better, just like I did. I hope through my work I helped
him to get closer to become special, even if for a moment…
Sine wave through my grandma’s jars
Installation, mixed media, Budapest, Hungary, 2010
Once I went up the staircase to see my grandma’s old attic. During the war, she had to learn to take care
of the food and her objects. Even after 60 years that the war ended she still gathered all the stuffs she
found, and she piled up kilos of sugar and flour, always being ready for the tough times. The old attic
depicted her memory of war. I found hundreds of empty jars which she collected to conserve the tomatos
and jam she made from what she had in her garden. Above me there was a hole on the roof and while I
was standing there the sun was starting to shine through the jars and gave a twinkling light around the
walls. I found staring at that phenomenon was really peaceful. In this installation I tried to recreate that
sense. I used a simple sine wave which I generated by a bisected, old speaker, with a simple laser light
glu gunned on it, and I made the whole structure move on an orbit path, back and forth. Before the sine
wave reached the wall I installed the jars in the way of it, which broke the wave into parts. The laser on
the moving structure through the jars created the same twinkling phenomena all around the walls in the
dark space.
Landart – Water-jet from another dimension
Installation, mixed media, Budapest, Hungary, 2006
Once when I was walking in the forest, a fleshy raindrop fell down on my skin. What would happen if
during having coffee or while walking in the forest, suddenly some water started to splash from a point
unexpectedly right next to our head? What if another dimension was worn through like some ragged
trousers and a piece of it filtered through into our world? The photo documentation of this mixed media
installation tries to arrest this fictitious moment. I bought a mirror, drilled a hole in it and poured some
water into the hole from behind, while I zoomed onto the mirror and took a picture about the reflection
of the mirror with the splashing water and its reflection…
Experiments in Social Orthodontics, Master’s thesis project, Non-linear social project
Non-linear video map with 45 video extracts of interview series (in Hungarian), Installation, Budapest,
Hungary, 2009
http://gyorgyigalik.com/doc/gyorgyigalik_diploma_EN.pdf
(Special thanks to Prezi http://prezi.com/ )
My practical-based diploma project (Social teeth-straightening) wants to call attention to the correct
use of the escalator – a social agreement which exists in all big cities, but is ignored in Hungary. The
escalator is a public place that we all use every day. In every big city of the world: London, Paris,
Rome, Tokyo, Moscow people generally queue up on it behind each other in order to make place for
those who are in a hurry. My work presents the questions I’ve had during long months of using the
escalators in Budapest, and the answers given by various people and experts (sociologists, psychologists,
mathematicians, priests, politicians, etc.) that I have interviewed. I built a non-linear, online video map
and a newly designed interface built up from a 45 extracts of interview series about the Hungarian
society and mentality: sense of community, tolerance, generosity, solidarity. The project shows how
a small step – that we DON’T take – can describe the attitude of a nation. The online video map was
created in a software called ‘Prezi’. The program is built up with a unique design and new technological
solutions created especially for this project. I chose ‘Prezi’ software and the non-linear map as the means
of visualization because for me this combined solution reflects most adequately the diverging lines of
thought that I followed during my work. As my thoughts also started to spread out from one idea and
ended up in many different questions – especially about the situation in Hungary – I tried to depict the
same, diverse paths in the design of the final structure. When the mouse is moved to a video, a window
pops up with a question that the video is about to answer. By clicking on certain points on the video
map, 45 short films give us a general image about the present psychological, physical and social state of
Hungary. It is not only about stating certain facts, but we also try to suggest solutions to the problems
that come up. On the video map we can discover all the information in a path as we would like it. But
it is also possible to follow my project by an automatically set path, which could seem similar to a
documentary film trailer that emphasizes and summarizes the essence of my diploma work in a concise
way.
Nighmo (with original name Home Moonlight) is a night-light object which starts to operate when it detects motion in the room, and makes just little light, enough to sense the space, furniture, and things around in the room.
If you have several nighmos placed in different parts of the flat, the pleasant light follows the direction of your movement, and slowly fades out when movement ceases in the space. This light is weak enough not to disturb sleepers in the room.
Nighmo has no other function in daytime than beeing a nice organic object in the flat. When the daylight goes off, nighmo lamps switch on automatically with a smooth fade-in.
Participating researchers
Tamas Bagi, Zoltan Csik-Kovacs, David Lakatos, Melinda Sipos, Andras Szalai, Gyorgyi Galik
Read more
http://nighmo.com/
http://kitchenbudapest.hu/en/home_moonlight
Edith and cigarettes – It’s been a nice day!
Video, Budapest, Hungary, 2009
http://vimeo.com/7978983
Everyone has some kind of passion, smoking cigarettes is one of them. It’s not just the taste of tobacco, but all the related rituals of striking a match, the first drag with the morning coffee, the way we hold it – all these make us dependent. Cigarettes become part of our everyday life unnoticed. After a while one cannot be occupied with anything for a longer period of time as every activity has to be interrupted by a „cigarette break”: we smoke while reading a book, talking with friends, working and even eating. The video is searching for the answer to this relationship: how cigarettes subtly take control of our everyday lives…
Reservoir of seasons, ‘Kitchen Budapest’ research project
Installation, Budapest, Hungary, 2008
http://kitchenbudapest.hu/en/node/522
Reservoir of Seasons, our microecosystem is not about presenting phenomena which many people will
never experience, like dying polar bears, melting icebergs or the cooling of the Gulf Stream, but about
the subtle changes we experience every day, it is an experimental project to show how we loose our
springs and falls…Other researchers: Gina Haraszti, Marton Juhasz, John Nussey
My observation system…
Video, Budapest, Hungary, 2009
http://vimeo.com/7980951
This video reflects upon the never-ending process of constructions in my city. It presents the phenomenon
when the view from a window suddenly disappears. I have been looking at the sunrise above the front
hills for years, when a man bought all the land in front of our house and built an even higher building by
taking away my whole view. From now on, I can only watch the guy in the opposite flat who is about to
take a shower…How our surroundings change our habits?
Footprinting, ‘Kitchen Budapest’ research project,
Installation, mixed media, Helsinki, Finland, 2008
http://kitchenbudapest.hu/en/footprinting_pixelache
A comparing account of a journey performed in two different ways, as for our load on the environment:
fuel consumption, air pollution and waste production. The unit of this account is the “ecological
footprint”. Some researchers of Kitchen Budapest traveled the distance between Budapest and Helsinki
in mid-March. Some arrived in the festival Pixelache Helsinki 2008 by plane, others by minibus. On
the way they were documenting their environmental expenses, by taking pictures and making notes. For
the birthday exhibition of Kitchen Budapest the project is summarized in a presentation. One of the key
issues of the festival Pixelache Helsinki 2008 was environmental awareness, about which a seminar called
“Traveling Without Moving” was given. As an exhibitioner Kitchen Budapest respected this endeavor.
The researchers followed the ecological load of the journey traveled on two routes, then among other
projects of KIBU, presented it in the festival. A huge poster to see and read, about a personal, footprinting
travel report of Kitchen Budapest, accompanied by technical details and references. Map based poster,
interesting details, pictures and pieces of information of specific points of the route highlighted. Next to
it additional background literature of the meaning, calculation of ecological footprint, and what it has to
do with reality, with some relating expressions, such as: carbon footprint, specific CO2-emissions…Other
researchers: Tamas Bagi, Gina Haraszti, Gyogyi Galik, Szonja Kadar, Zoltan Csik-Kovacs, Agoston
Nagy, Peter Nemeth, Gabor Papp, Bence Samu, Melinda Sipos, Andras Szalai
Arbour light, an intelligent lighting system can reproduce the visual atmosphere of natural phenomena. It recreates the ambient atmosphere rather than a photographic image, hence it extends communication into non intrusive modalities.
Participating researchers
Melinda Sipos, Peter Nemeth, Tamas Bagi, Aron Horvath, Kadar Szonja, Zoltan Csik-Kovacs, Gabor Papp, Gyorgyi Galik
Read more
http://kitchenbudapest.hu/en/node/302
Blanka
Blanka and Kati
Kati
Kati and Anna
Anna
Kati and Anna
Anna and Blanka
Experimental photo
Young girls like to imitate media celebrities and tend to consider what they see on TV and on the cover of magazines as reality. This creates many inhibitions and pain in them as they can never reach the desired perfection. We are the way we are even if we are constantly struggling against it. Some are afraid to be distinguished from the crowd, others want to be different and turn to extremes. Would we be happier if we could just slip into anybody’s skin? Maybe even that wouldn’t be enough for us. What if we could stay ourselves a little, but could also take some things that we like over from others?
Background:
This is an experimental photo series, in which I asked three of my classmates –Blanka, Kati and Panni – to sit for me to take their portraits.
I took their photos to pieces in order to create new women from them. I didn’t want to have some chaotic collages of faces as a result but I tried to aim at some kind of perfection where even I no longer could tell which portrait is real and which one not. Even I was startled to find how real these faces became even though they never existed only as a result of my work.
Sensitive wheat, ‘Kitchen Budapest’ research project,
Landart, mixed media, Budapest, Hungary, 2008
http://kitchenbudapest.hu/en/node/473
In this project we make patterns by using plants as they were photographic materials. When we keep
wheat under a black tent, the plant starts to grow in yellow color. When the wheat gets some light, it
starts to grow in green color. We used a black space to grow a yellow wheat field, and we used masked
projectors shining on some parts of the wheat to create different green images, patterns in the field…
Other researchers: Zsolt Korai, Zoltan Csik-Kovacs
Mixed media
Everyone who knows the works of Caspar David Friedrich is aware that he depicted his musing figures from behind. In this experimental work, I decided to bring his iconic figure and romantic landscapes into new situations, mixing them with contemporary elements.
Searching for my grandma…
Video, Budapest, Hungary, 2007
http://vimeo.com/7981131
In this video I recalled my memories about my grandma who passed away in 2006. Whatever has
remained of her? Movements and gestures mostly. Feelings, colors, pictures of my childhood as she
used to hoe and water the garden. The work was commissioned by Iris Disse and David Höner for
completing their Radio Play “Der Tod tanzt mit ” performed at the Palace of Arts in Budapest.
Mixed media, maquette
I wanted to experiment whether I am capable of imitating the depth of the sea and to tell an underwater story with the help of only a few things – an aquarium, some colored water, some wax, some tinfoil and a hair-net.
I used the colors and atmosphere of some photos I took during a seaside journey a long time ago as a starting point. My brother was the model of whom I took a photo while he was dry, then I replaced him into the world of the maquette with the help of a software. The scene was built upon a very silly story, in which a swimmer gets entangled in a fishnet and drowns.
Sheep Decide, ‘Kitchen Budapest’ research project,
Landart, Concept of a prospective project, mixed media, Budapest, Hungary, 2008
http://kitchenbudapest.hu/en/node/474
We have a new way of research what we would like to realize later on. There are some kind of grass
which sheep like and which they do not like. If we set a field by mixing two different hayseeds, we get
a latent picture or pattern and sheep will make it visible while they eat…Other researchers: Tamas Bagi,
Andras Fischer, Zsolt Korai, Zoltan Csik-Kovacs, Melinda Sipos
Scroll-muscle
Installation, Budapest, Hungary 2008
We spend hours on the computer with reading. In this installation my aim was to convert the process
of scrolling with the computer mouse wheel to train my muscles. When we want to see the page of a
website, we have to use the dumbbell. Each time when we raise up and down the dumbbell, the page
scrolls down with one step, step by step…Other researchers: Andras Szalai, Gabor Papp
Landprint, ‘Kitchen Budapest’ research project
http://kitchenbudapest.hu/en/landprint
The aim of the Landprint project is to reproduce subtle patterns and photos by combining various species of plants with programmed robotics. Plants and flowers that spawn seem to make continuous patterns with their various colours and shades seen from a distance. With the use of programmed robotics for the planting and cutting of plants, we can manipulate the evolving patterns, to render photo-like, delicate images. Other researchers: Tamas Bagi, Zoltan Csik-Kovacs, Maxigas, Melinda Sipos, Andras Szalai, Gyorgyi Galik
Breath Fairies, ‘Kitchen Budapest’ research project
Installation, mixed media, Budapest, Hungary, 2007
http://kitchenbudapest.hu/en/node/488
When we are blowing into the mouth of the ‘Breath Fairies’ machine, steam comes up and creates a little
curtain in front of our eyes. After the projector senses the blowing, it starts to project a little fairy on
the steam. As the steam evaporates slowly, the fairy flies away with it. Thousands of little fairies were
generated for the project…Other researchers: Gabor Papp, Melinda Sipos, Peter Nemeth, Anita Pozna,
Adam Somlai-Fischer, Zoltan Csik-Kovacs, Milan Korsos, Tamas Bagi
Musical Kitchen, ‘Kitchen Budapest’ research project
Installation, mixed media, Budapest, Hungary, 2007
http://kitchenbudapest.hu/en/node/204
