Works
The Primordial Stars
2023 Melt Festival, Feel Festival, Monopol, Kiez Burn
The Primordial Stars are a playful interactive audio-visual experience using 10 hanging units that respond to both touch and sound.
Entrance text:
“These were the first 10 Stars to be born in
our universe. They were also the first to Supernovae, which created
all of the things that matter in your world, including you. They
still contain and are connected to all of the potential and
possibilites of their star dust. Enter here, and reflect upon a dream
you wish to bring into the world. Play with the Stars, explore their
response to your interaction. Find the Star that holds the keys to
your Dream and be with it. Hold your Dream in your mind as you dance
with the Star, and through movement, allow it to whisper your path
forward”
Each Star is an ESP32, with an accelerometer and microphone. They communicate over MQTT, and the connected Raspberry Pi broker triggers sound effects when the Stars are interacted with (which the stars’ microphone then allows them to respond to the sound created by themselves).
The installation can be installed in my geodesic dome (~4m High), or in any location with suitable hanging possibilities.
There are several modes available, and several games that can be played. The whole system can be controlled by a touchscreen panel (instrument and scale selection, mode selection, game initiation). All of which custom coded in uPython.
Designed, written, built, wired, coded, recorded, edited, deployed and performed by Alex Kaos.
The Dimension Doors
2021 – 2022 Monopol, Birgit and Bier, CTM Vorspiel, Berlin
The Dimension Doors is a 2-person, 7 minute audio-visual experience that takes the participants on an ideal journey from the 0th to the 6th dimension.
These dimensions are drawn from physics, and are a logical progression based on the formation of the first 4-dimensions. But this objective argumentation is made from the lens of idealism, and so the participant experiences that perception in the 1st person (which is a loose statement after dimension 5).
An infinity mirror box first greets the participants with countless versions of themselves, but as the experience develops, the portals within the doors show all of the paths that have been and never will be taken.
Combining metaphysics, idealism, programmed synchronized lighting, hypnotic methods and comedy, ultimately this piece is a critique on the paradox of free-will, and how an argument can be made using physics and philosophy that we do after all, have a choice.
Designed, written, built, wired, coded, recorded, edited, deployed and performed by Alex Kaos.
Limbo
2022 – Monopol, Berlin
Limbo is the place in between worlds. Most participants to past Dream World experiences come awaiting colors, mystery and excitment. But in the most recent edition of the Dream World experiences, the dreamers (guests) took a wrong turn, and found themsleves face-to-face with death herself.
For the remaining 50 minutes of the experience, the dreamers were invited to reflect upon what life looks like from the perspective of outside. Writting their last words, melding their consciousness to anothers, or melting into oblivion. It is rare in this modern age to be given the opportunity to observe life from the end backwards, and then be given the chance to re-engage with life, right where you left it. Limbo was full of mysteries and colors, but something else, much deeper, as well.
44 compensated artists took part in Limbo
Co-Lead by Alex Kaos and Kia Kali. Production, build, finance, ticketing, installation artist, community management, concept, and more - Alex Kaos
202 – 2023 Monopol, Birgit and Bier, , Kiez Burn, Mahalla, Berlin
The Goblet of Prometheus is an interactive fire installation, deigned so that participants may quite literally put fire into their hands.
Eons ago, Prometheus decended from Mt. Olympus with the god's fier, and gifted it to the humans. Since then humans have ascended from the animal kingdom into it's civilized society, for better or for worse.
Through interacting directly with fire, without gloves or other protective equipment, participants are invited to reflect upon that which ignites them. In bringing attention to the eternal flame that smolders in each and every one of us, we can release our fear in a single moment, and embrace our full titantic power.
Designed, built, wired, deployed by Alex Kaos. Performances by Alex Kaos and Kia Kali
Find a New Perspective
2022 – Re:Publica, Arena Berlin
This piece was commissioned for the ARD/ZDF stand at Re:Publica festival in Arena Berlin.
With interchangeable lettering and lights, it is the deepest LED infinity mirror I have personally experienced, at approximately 12m+ deep.
The Temple of Transmutation
2022 – Kiez Burn, Mecklenburg Vorprommen
In collaboration with Kia Kali
This was Kiez Burn’s first temple. The topic of Transmutation was chosen to invite participants to reflect upon the completeness of self, and that change is not a process of removal or addition, but to transform something old to something new.
Amidst the art and the fun of the event, this space was a tranquil haven of solitude and beauty. Particiapants were invited to walk around the willow structure, and then sit and write and reflect upon what it is they wished to transmute.
Following were the instructions to complete the transmutaiton:
- “Whisper it to the air to let it go”
- “Dip it in the water so it can flow”
- “Then bury it in the earth so it might grow”
At the end of the event, we hosted a ceremony for several hours in which participants could burn their transmutations in silence, completing the final instruction – “place it in the fire, so it may glow”.
Over 100 participants attended the ceremony, and not a word was spoken amongst them for several hours, a truly transcendent experience.
Aloneness
2021 – Flutgraben e.V., Treptow-Köpenick
In collaboration with Kia Kali
We focused on providing an alternative to lens to what it means to be alone in the months following the initial lockdowns.
“Loneliness is the absence of others, aloneness is the presence of oneself”
about Me
I am Alex ‘Professor’ Kaos, a welsh-born, Berlin-based, physics graduate, obsessed with thoughts that hurt the head. The complexity of metaphysics, philosophy, psychology and sociology are the over-arching topics of my work, with special interest in the themes surrounding nature of consciousness, epistemology, and collective-coordination.
I work primarily with immersive installations, by which I mean installations that are large enough to be fully entered, and that utilize at least 3 senses with deliberation. Within this medium I interweave theoretical physics, painful thought-experiments, responsive programmed electronics and optical illusions to provide a platform of self-reflection in which my guests are not just active participants of the work, but by definition the piece’s centrepiece. My work is a spherical fun-house mirror designed to reflect back at the observer a truer shape of themselves than that which they might project outward.