When looking at Gabey Tjon a Tham’s installation for a long time, lucid afterimages emerge from the swarm of light and sound; new forms and drawings painted by the brain reveal themselves arbitrarily on the retina.

The kinetic installation consists of 15 meticulously controlled double pendulums, each arm of which contains a white light and a small speaker. The movement of the pendulums is based on the minute, precarious and random movement patterns that can be observed in nature and which are governed by rules on a meta level that even alter themselves. The light choreography painted on the retina is thus simultaneously perceived as chaotic and precisely designed, mechanical and natural.

Complex behaviour – a phenomenon that occurs for example in a swarm of individuals which, through simple rules, display complex behaviour, patterns and intelligence as a whole – is the starting point of the installation. The installation integrates this principle in the spatialisation of the sound, its development in time and the mechanism of the double pendulums.

Borbála Szalai