SETTING MINDS FREE: Artists’ collective Extrabright plays volleyball with our heads
Poster children for self-assurance, “We are Extrabright,” announce the collective of media artists behind the name. “We blend digital media with public spaces to create experiences that pop, provoke, and occasionally disrupt.” The Munich-based artists seek “high art and high jinks” along their voyage of discovery to the threshold of a new digital esthetic.
Extrabright takes an open-ended approach: “Working in the collective is like children playing; things develop and evolve as we do them,” explain members Sebastian Boyamba and Bastian Bormke. “We rigorously select our projects depending on the opportunities they offer us to experiment with new, exciting technologies, materials, and spaces.”
Driving the pace
Extrabright is synonymous with high-caliber digital art installations at festivals and in liminal spaces, where the boundaries between digital and physical reality become blurred; where images dance across the walls, and nobody is sure what’s up and what’s down. The space suddenly expands, or dissolves in a flood of images. Sometimes the projections are reminiscent of a vortex mercilessly drawing people into its force field – as Extrabright has demonstrated at countless events.
Take Intercellar, for example. Held in an old beer cellar in Munich during the Science and Fiction Festival, it took the audience along on an intergalactic journey and invited visitors to fly along tunnels through digital worlds. Or the mapping installation Dis Connected, where people floated through the space wearing pajamas instead of space suits. This spectacular show presented Extrabright’s take on our lives tomorrow. What will “studying, communicating, working in pajamas” look like?
Taking the leap
No wonder that Extrabright uses the very sharpest of cutting-edge technologies. The artists apply projection mapping methods to create interactive art installations. “We use LEDs to create brilliant, dynamic installations. Real-time rendering software is a key tool in our creative armory, and motion graphics also play a key role for us in combining motion and visual esthetics.”
The collective is currently engaged in developing an audio-reactive art installation. Known as NOICE, it transforms “ambient sounds and the constant background hum of life into digital sound art.” Visitors can bring along their own sounds and co-design the “visual symphony.” This is Extrabright’s foremost strength: fostering participation directly, without oblique routes or circuitous approaches. “Why stay silent in a space when you can make it resound?”