Photo by Polina Kondrashova on Unsplash
The KIKK Festival has become a fixture both in Belgium and in the international digital arts scene.
From 23 to 26 October, its immersive 14th edition will once again take over Namur, exploring the musicality of our world.
The programme features robot musicians playing the organ of the Saint-Loup Church, along with some thirty immersive and striking installations by Zimoun, So Kanno and Ban Lei and others, transforming the city into one vast exhibition.
For the first time in its history, KIKK combines music with technology. The onomatopoeia ‘Boom Boom Tchak’ refers to our heartbeat and runs like a common thread through the programme, which gives sound to the musicality of the world: from natural rhythms to vibrating machines and electronic music.
It is an ideal introduction to digital art for the general public, and for families in particular.
“This edition invites you to listen as much as to look: wind, birds, motors, bass guitars… Namur becomes a resonant chamber where art reflects the bustle of life,” explains Marie du Chastel, artistic director of the KIKK Festival.
This year, the art trail expands: new public artworks commissioned by KIKK feature among some thirty visual and sound installations across the city.
From 16 October, Studio Interval — a collective led by Yannick Jacquet — will install a large-scale audiovisual structure on Place Maurice Servais (supported by Imaginaires Publics, FWB, ST’ART and WBI). In the evening, the colourful work transforms into an animated carousel with a 360° soundtrack and projections by Rocio Alvarez.
Zimoun, the renowned sound and immersive artist, is another highlight of the programme. His monumental work takes over the vast glass hall of the Institut Saint-Louis, an impressive venue with superb acoustics.
The Swiss artist employs hundreds of motors to set a wall of cardboard boxes in motion: a mechanical, hypnotic ensemble of rhythm, friction and organised chaos. This raw, almost organic experience engages all the senses.
Also present is French artist Alexis Choplain, who will present Hydroscope, commissioned by the Interstice Festival on the occasion of Caen’s thousandth anniversary.
You can expect an almost magical staging of water through light and sound, constructed with stroboscopic frequencies and motion illusions.
The marvellous creations of Japanese artist So Kanno leave no one untouched. Chirping Machines are robots hidden in the garden of the Museum of Decorative Arts, reproducing acoustic sounds of nature. A symphony of frictional sounds imitates crickets, birds and frogs with astonishing realism, in an installation where technology meets poetry.
Lasermice Dyad is, says the organiser, a swarm of robotic mice equipped with lasers that generate light and sound stimuli. Inspired by the behaviour of flocking animals such as birds, fish and ants, the collective responds to its environment according to the principles of swarm robotics.
“The result is a captivating sound-and-light spectacle,” said the event spokesman.
Also Chinese artist Ban Lei brings spectacle with 153 Returning Birds, a participatory installation of 153 ‘bird-sculpture whistles’ that the public can play. “Ban Lei will be present throughout the four days of the festival to coordinate and animate these collective scenes, transforming the auditorium into a shared instrument.”
