Magana Mutatio / Aurei Montis

Neither in visuality nor in materiality does the work of Brůh connect with the crises of the contemporary human world, at least not directly. He steps out of them and explores other limits. In his installation for the Ostrava Plato as part of this year's Jindřich Chalupecký Prize, he mixes several of his long-term practices (Magna Mutatio, Inter Solaris, and Aurei Montis, respectively) into one intertwined configuration. This time he uses his methods to explore the geologically specific site of Zlaté Vrch in northern Bohemia. In the installation, he primarily works with phenomena not normally visible to the eye. The first part of the individual aluminium structures with built-in transparent displays fed by an exposed base plate with visible cables - information flows - make normally sight-obscured elements visible. The displays then flow a visual intermediate state, or a state where we cannot clearly tell what it is - barely identifiable maps. The automated projections of maps of discharges, seizures, nodes, loops, taken and recorded by machines, correspond to liminal natural place-defined processes that are only remotely, if at all, historically contingently related to humans. Together with other hypertechnological objects bound to space only by neodymium magnets - an invisible force - these phenomena insert into the environment the question not why, but how. Or rather, the question that we traditionally ask when human thinking or seeing does not reach a state of understanding, comprehension, even after the artistic-technological strategy is explained by the creator or curator. Measuring, mapping and then putting into projection - the tactic of Brůh - draws attention to the physical record, memory, of everyday realities located outside the human body. While the record is empirically imaginable to humans in source code, in its complexity it is visually, and therefore by definition emotionally, unperceivable - only simulated - generative. 

Neither visually nor materially does Brůh's work connect with the crises of the contemporary human world, at least not directly. He steps out of them and explores other boundaries. In his installation for Ostrava's Plato as part of this year's Jindřich Chalupecký Prize, he mixes several of his long-term practices (Magna Mutatio, Inter Solaris, and Aurei Montis, respectively) into one intertwined configuration. This time, he is using his methods to explore the geologically specific site of Zlatý vrch in northern Bohemia. In the installation he works mainly with phenomena that are not normally visible to the eye. The first part of the individual aluminium structures with built-in transparent displays fed from the exposed base plate by visible cables - information flows - makes visible elements not normally visible to the eye. A visual interstate, or a state of not being able to clearly tell what is going on - barely identifiable maps - then flows through the displays. The automated projections of maps of discharges, seizures, knots, loops, made and recorded by machines, correspond to liminal natural locally defined processes that are historically only remotely, if at all, contingently associated with humans. Together with other hypertechnological objects bound to space only by neodymium magnets - an invisible force - these phenomena insert into the environment the question not why, but how. Or rather, the question we traditionally ask when human thinking or seeing fails to reach a state of understanding, of comprehension, even after the artistic-technological strategy is explained by the creator or curator. Measuring, mapping and then putting into projection - the tactic of God - draws attention to the physical record, memory, everyday reality located outside the human body. While this record is empirically imaginable to humans in source code, in its complexity it is visually, and therefore by definition emotionally, ungraspable - only simulated - generative. zahlédnout data, it points to unrecognized or man-made dangers if it is not looking properly. The constellation of objects and screens is complemented by suspended aluminium discs, in the centres of which are anchored geological findings that do not seem to be found in nature in this form. They have also undergone a technological, also natural transformation, but more of an artistic manipulation through a kinetic mechanism (the algorithm was set according to the natural conditions of the site). By setting up a gigantic Fresnel lens, which curled and concentrated the direction of the sun's ray into the artist's chosen rock, he made a new memory record of the given natural conditions at a given time. The works - after a certain degree of revelation by sight - fluctuate in a kind of in-between spaces; the universe, the Earth - nature, man, technology. They do not establish clear boundaries, but overlapping variations, combinatorial transitions of views in time and place. 

The distance of observation from space, the expanded perspective of vision that is transformed when observed over time, removes human individuals, communities, societies from the position of initiators and subsequent controllers of all events. "Showing" and "looking back" in the gallery, however, then draws the human back in as a reader. The nature of such a reader in the complex fraction approaches, or has even entered, a temporal phase of powerlessness to intervene effectively. Man, society seems to be a dream that is learning to come to terms with its impending end, which Brůha points out by observing the activity of non-human scales. The sensory experience of such changes in time is an essential element of the tendency in contemporary global art - art in the Anthropocene - to turn to other times - geological time, of which human time is merely a partial interval. Thanks to the human aspect (manipulation of the human eye by 

technology) in Brůh's art we find not only the dualistic principle of society against nature, but a more extended, though temporary, new synthesis. Through his precise use of technology, Brůha makes it a horizontal link between man and nature. By gazing from orbit at the Earth, Brůha is able to condensedly allow the human senses to at least glimpse the "hyperobject" which, according to Timothy Morton, is centerless and characterized by omnipresence. It moves beyond the human scale and is definable only by its manifestations, imprints in objects, among which Morton includes the human being who, through his activity, created the hyperobject. Bruha's work is not only an imprint, but a deliberate concentration that causes perception to change as it passes between elements in the installation. The viewer, through his gaze and looking back at the elements in the work, recognizes his position on the horizontal structure with all the objects, which are characterized by an inevitable finality compared to the hyperobject, which does not have its time of demise in the tangible time of humans. 

My work is based on Jan Zálešák's text: Apocalypse Me, Timothy Morton's books Hyperobjects and from a personal interview with Kryštof Brůha.

Author of the critical text Ruda Minka

Magna Mutatio / Yamaneko

Magna Mutatio / Yamaneko explores a tropical storm that occurred in the fall of 2022 from 13:00 on 10 November to 19:00 UTC+1 on 14 November, approximately 276 NM north of the coral atoll of Wake in the North Pacific Ocean. It was a tropical cyclone - an atmospheric formation in the form of a large-scale vortex with a characteristic eye in the centre - a so-called hurricane. 

Unlike previous works, Yamaneko focuses on immediate, current events. The tropical cyclone is a phenomenon that is quite unique in place and time. In the case of Yamaneko, it was less than five days. It is not a change of landscape, a development of a body of water, a transformation of the natural world. It is a phenomenon without human input. But it remains a driving force in the context of what is observed. At one point, due to the low air pressure and the heat released from the condensing water vapour, an enormous concentration of energy begins to form.

Although the causes of the storms are de facto predictable in our observations, their course is not. 

The potential of a storm, an electro-static phenomenon, a relative meteorological anomaly, is not of long duration; it exhausts itself, calms down, and gradually disappears irreversibly. If, as in the case of Yamaneko, it is a cyclone passing only over the ocean, nothing will be left of it.

Its implications will be reflected in other forecasts for some time. Even its name, assigned by man, will be forgotten as it arose, passed and disappeared completely outside of human settlements.

Magna Mutatio / Pantha Rei

Magna Mutacio is the title of a series of works that explore the transformation of a selected territory over time, specifically the transformation of cities, landscapes, bodies of water and glacial formations. European Space Agency satellite data are used for this analysis. The transformation of the territory is mapped, which, given its size and the long period of observation, could not be perceived from the viewer's perspective. The work thus offers a macro view of the subject.

The Magna Mutatio / Pantha Rei installation explores the unique ecosystem of Lake Natron in northern Tanzania. Monitoring through ESA datasets provides a macro-scale view of the site over different time periods. The work builds on previous work by Magna Mutatio / Natron, which tracked colour phenomena occurring on the lake due to the specific composition of the water there. This time, it is not a comprehensive view of the entire body of water, but more detailed shots of different parts of the lake, conveying the unique processes to the viewer in more detail.

The installation uses translucent panel technology - a layer of liquid crystals extracted from display devices through reverse engineering techniques. Here, the white colour appears as transparent, which allows you to look through one panel to another, blending the images, spreading the visual principle, a different view of the observed reality.

Opposite the viewer, at the far end of the installation, stands a source of red light - a colour characteristic of Lake Natron - which permeates the display opposite the recipient as a unifying principle.

The set of six smaller panels is rounded off by the seventh, the largest, presenting a generative video that takes specific Natron phenomena to more abstract levels. A local species of flamingo also acquires its red coloration by consuming red cyanobacteria found only in the extreme conditions of the lake. Using machine learning, the work works with this concept, thinking independently about the form of the flamingo and trying to give it a shape, starting from already created forms and transforming and improving them again and again.

Magna Mutatio / Natron

Magna Mutacio is the title of a series of works that explore the transformation of a selected territory over time, specifically the transformation of cities, landscapes, bodies of water and glacial formations. European Space Agency satellite data are used for this analysis. The transformation of the territory is mapped, which, given its size and the long period of observation, could not be perceived from the viewer's perspective. The work thus offers a macro view of the subject.

Generative digital graphics and video Magna Mutatio / Natron explores the transformations of Lake Natron in northern Tanzania over the course of a year. Lake Natron is a unique natural phenomenon. The unusually high pH of the lake water and the temperature of up to 60°C, caused by massive evaporation and therefore excessive concentration of sodium carbonate, create specific conditions for a certain species of cyanobacteria that colour the lake red. This unusual phenomenon can also be observed from space.

The extreme environment provides shelter for only a few resistant organisms - the aforementioned cyanobacteria (cyanobacteria), several species of fish or small flamingos, which acquire a pinkish colour due to their specific diet.

Magna Mutatio / Lake MacKay

Magna Mutacio is the title of a series of works that explore the transformation of a selected territory over time, specifically the transformation of cities, landscapes, bodies of water and glacial formations. European Space Agency satellite data are used for this analysis. The transformation of the territory is mapped, which, given its size and the long period of observation, could not be perceived from the viewer's perspective. The work thus offers a macro view of the subject.

Magna Mutatio / Lake MacKay traces the three-year cycle of this salt lake. MacKay is located in the middle of the desert on the border of the states of Western Australia and the Northern Territory. The lake is classified as an ephemeral body of water, which means it only exists during and immediately after rainfall, drying up the rest of the year. Precipitation and subsequent evaporation gives the lake its changing cycle.

Several dominant phenomena can be observed within the ecosystem of this reverse island. Seasonal islands of desert vegetation and algae appear on the surface of the lake, drawing moisture from the lowest parts of the lake where the water is still holding. As the water rises and evaporates, salts and minerals rise to the surface, causing the white colour of the lake basin.

Magna Mutatio / Lake MacKay / Insulae

The work Magna Mutatio / Lake MacKay / Insulae focuses on seasonal islands in the northeast of the lake.

Magna Mutatio / Lake MacKay / Ora

The work Magna Mutatio / Lake MacKay / Ora Closer explores the southern shore of the lake.

Magna Mutatio / Gelu

Magna Mutacio is the title of a series of works that explore the transformation of a selected territory over time, specifically the transformation of cities, landscapes, bodies of water and glacial formations. European Space Agency satellite data are used for this analysis. The transformation of the territory is mapped, which, given its size and the long period of observation, could not be perceived from the viewer's perspective. The work thus offers a macro view of the subject.

The Magna Mutatio / Gelu light video installation focuses on the transformation of glacial formations over six years - Helheim Glacier, Glaciers of western Greeenland, Grey Glacier, Malaspina Glacier, Bear Glatier. The project is inspired by the research of Livia Jakob and her study "Spatially and temporally resolved ice loss in High Mountain Asia and the Gulf of Alaska observed by CryoSat-2 swath altimetry between 2010 and 2019", in which he discusses a new way of mapping glaciers using a radar altimeter. This technique makes it possible to monitor inaccessible glacier areas. Magna Mutatio / Gelu's process, like Jacob's, uses datasets from ESA, whose Copernicus programme is involved in remote sensing of the Earth and provides records from the Sentinel 1-5 space satellites, which examine the Earth's surface using radar and electromagnetic sensing.

The transformation of the glaciers can be observed on six translucent displays that connect the virtual layer of reality being explored with the tangible reality of the gallery. In the generative videos, the acquired data is represented by a pigment dissolving in time and showing the transformation of the observed areas.

Magna Mutatio Flumen gen 2.0

Magna Mutacio is the title of a series of works that explore the transformation of a selected territory over time, specifically the transformation of cities, landscapes, bodies of water and glacial formations. European Space Agency satellite data are used for this analysis. The transformation of the territory is mapped, which, given its size and the long period of observation, could not be perceived from the viewer's perspective. The work thus offers a macro view of the subject.

Magna Mutatio / Narrationem

Artemis Gallery / Lisbon / Portugal

Technique / video, 4K, 8:30 min

Magna Mutacio is the title of a series of works that explore the transformation of a selected territory over time, specifically the transformation of cities, landscapes, bodies of water and glacial formations. European Space Agency satellite data are used for this analysis. The transformation of the territory is mapped, which, given its size and the long period of observation, could not be perceived from the viewer's perspective. The work thus offers a macro view of the subject.

"The name of the concept Magna Mutatio is reflected in a series of artworks whose main theme is the observation of the transformation of a place in the long term. To this end, Magna Mutatio uses a generative algorithm to depict the transformation of waterways, landscapes and cities over time. For this analysis, Magna Mutatio uses satellite data mapping the relevant areas. Datasets provided by the ESA space agency reveal the landscape in both the radar and infrared spectrum. This allows Magna Mutatio to map in detail the transformations of a given place over time and then present it in the form of generative images, 3D printed objects and light installations. These visually guide the viewer and show them the story of the place Magna Mutatio is exploring. The mass of the earth becomes the medium that Magna Mutatio mixes with the data stream. Through this new perspective, the work communicates its language of generative prediction and algorithmic visualization of a reality that is constantly changing - just like the world around us.

In this series of works by Magna Mutatio, the viewer can follow the transformation of the water of the Tajo River flowing through Lisbon over a period of six years. By observing the different ways in which the water behaves over time, Magna Mutatio reveals its form, showing the moments of transformation of both water and land and places, the different shapes of the bodies of water, the movement of the water and the appearance of the landscape, which are all part of the story and which the artist uses this video to tell.

Magna Mutatio creates generative works that work on multiple levels. They tell the story of the territory they represent, the history of the place, its changes and evolution over time. In these works, Magna Mutatio also engages in a dialogue between art and science. Science is the language of nature, a language that Magna Mutatio is able to interpret and communicate through the language of generative algorithms. Art is the language of culture, a language that Magna Mutatio can interpret and communicate through the artwork.

The generative work Magna Mutatio creates a dialogue between science and art, telling the stories of the places it visits, of nature and of the people living in the place. The data from the places it presents is information about the world. Its task is to convey stories through artistic language. Space, place and time are the three levels of these stories.

Magna Mutatio

Within the exhibition "Mechanics of Reality: Interplay between Art and Technology," we encounter works from the Magna Mutatio collection, which meticulously examine the transformation of selected territories over time. The fusion of art and technology here is key to understanding how our environment constantly evolves and changes. Utilizing satellite data and algorithmic processes, these works capture the changes in cities, landscapes, and water bodies, offering us a macroscopic view of the dynamics of our planet.

In the Artemis Gallery exhibition space, translucent panels, generative graphics, and 3D printed objects are presented, depicting changes in Lisbon, the capital of Portugal. This visualization of transformations in greenery, urban development, and water quality in the Tagus River mesmerized spectators, who witnessed six years of Lisbon's transformation in a single moment.

The Magna Mutatio works utilize datasets from the European Space Agency and the Copernicus program, which focuses on remote Earth observation. Thanks to satellite imagery and specialized algorithms, these changes are recorded and presented to viewers as artistic creations that simultaneously reflect the reality and dynamics of our planet.

In conjunction with the aforementioned collection of Magna Mutatio works, the "Mechanics of Reality" exhibition introduces us to artists who work with technology and art as a research field. Armin Keplinger, Diogo Gonçalves, Error-43, Ida Kvetny, Krystof Bruha, and Studio Above & Below show us through their works how closely intertwined art and science are in today's world.

In this exhibition, we encounter art that uses technology to open our eyes to predictable patterns of behavior in the world. Thanks to AR and VR technologies, the invisible becomes visible, and the environment gains a voice to express its essence. This exhibition is a place where nature, machines, and people converge, and where art and technology together explore the mechanisms of reality.