Error
Internationally recognised Amsterdam locals, Paul Vendel and Sandra de Wolf, have participated in the Amsterdam Light Festival four times, making this their fifth. Typical in all of Vendel & de Wolf’s work is their use of materials: lightbulbs, marbles, spoons, cardboard, and styrofoam, just to name a few. Objects or materials that are mass-produced are turned into something completely unique that resembles the natural forms of the universe. In light art, this also distinguishes them from other light artists. Similar to Dan Flavin’s work they frequently use standard mass produced units of prefabricated consumer light fixtures. However, in Vendel & de Wolf’s work each fixture possesses an onboard chip which controls the flickering movement independently of one another. This means that Vendel & de Wolf do not make use of a central control program to operate the lighting effects in their work. The resulting effect is produced by the random and out of sync operation of these mass-produced chips. In contrast to the theme of AI, their work exhibits a natural born randomness within the supposed ‘faultless precision’ of technology.
Our evolution is often the result of errors in the reading of DNA which create new mutations and impact natural selection. This is what makes us human, our diversity. The swirling blackhole in the work Error is then a striking, abstract visual representation connecting the randomness of the universe with the randomness of technology - a pulsar sucking us all into the ever unknown. Will technology fix all the errors? Or does it have its own inbuilt flaws, like us. Vendel & de Wolf’s unique take on the theme of AI invites audiences to question whether technology can break the laws of nature, or is it like us, eternally bound by it… imperfections and all.
