The exhibition will feature individual and collaborative works by Michael Winter and Mareike Yin-Yee Lee in a constellation designed specifically for the Lichthof Ost exhibition room of the Humboldt University. The original kinetic sculpture Winter created to visualize the aperiodic tilings of the history of the domino problem will be juxtaposed with recent works by Yin-Yee Lee as well as collaboratively created realizations of the tilings. The works on display by Yin-Yee Lee will highlight selections from her Hidden Lakes and Missing Pieces series in which enigmatic outlines of lakes and various shapes encourage observers to perceive similarities and differences in form, pattern, and repetition between the pieces and to mentally fill in blank space. The collaborative realizations of the tilings will include prints generated by Winter with the aid of a computer that incorporate images and color schemes by Yin-Yee Lee as well as a floor mosaic of drawings on mirrors. The exhibition plays on the macro versus the micro, transformation, and how topologies of various color combinations, relationships between shapes and gradients reflect in space in order to illuminate "a few thoughts on how things fit together..."
The kinetic sculpture displays the mosaics using visual cryptography. In visual cryptography, a message is encrypted by dividing the information of the message into two `shadow' images, which look completely random and independent of each other. The message is decrypted and revealed when the shadow images are combined/overlayed in a precise orientation. In the kinetic sculpture of a history of the domino problem, the shadow images are printed on photomasks, which are essentially high-resolution transparencies: quartz wafers with a chrome coating etched at a pixel size ranging from nano- to micrometers. A high-precision, motorized multiaxis stage aligns the finely printed shadow images to reveal the mosaics (along with 3 other images of poetic texts inspired by the history of the Domino Problem).
My practice as a composer and sound artist is diverse, ranging from music created by digital and acoustic instruments to installations and kinetic sculptures. Each piece typically explores one simple process and often reflects various related interests of mine such as phenomenology, mathematics, epistemology, algorithmic information theory, and the history of science. To me, everything we experience is computable. Given this digital philosophy, I acknowledge even my most open works as algorithmic; and, while not always apparent on the surface of any given piece, the considerations of computability and epistemology are integral to my practice. I often reconcile epistemological limits with artistic practicality by considering and addressing the limits of computation from an artistic and experiential vantage point and by collaborating with other artists, mathematicians, and scientists in order to integrate objects, ideas, and texts from various domains as structural elements in my pieces. My work also aims to subvert discriminatory conventions and hierarchies by exploring alternative forms of presentation and interaction, often with minimal resources and low information.
My work has been presented at venues and festivals throughout the world such as REDCAT, in Los Angeles; the Ostrava Festival of New Music in the Czech Republic; Tsonami Arte Sonoro Festival in Valparaiso, Chile; the Huddersfield New Music Festival in the United Kingdom; and Umbral Sesiones at the Museo de Arte Contemporáneo in Oaxaca, Mexico. Recordings of my music have been released by XI Records, Another Timbre, New World Records, Edition Wandelweiser, Bahn Mi Verlag, Tsonami Records, and Pogus Productions. In 2008, I co-founded the wulf., a Los Angeles-based organization dedicated to experimental performance and art. From 2018 to 2019, I was a fellow / artist-in-residence at the Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart, Germany. I currently reside in Berlin.
