ROBIN FOX - TRIPTYCH (Realtime Laser Works)
Inspired by Polish A/V innovator Stanislaus Ostoja-Kotkowski, Robin Fox’s latest work is described as an “audio-visual space-time carving” that uses laser projectors to transform a venue’s unique architecture into a completely new environment. As an early adopter of laser technology, Fox wanted to investigate what he saw as an apparent interconnectedness between light and sound. Ostoja-Kotkowski built instruments and installations to express his idea about “chromasonics” (what we might now describe as A/V art), and produced films that are still exhibited in his adopted home of Australia. With “Triptych”, Fox picks up where Ostoja-Kotkowski leaves off – he was given the opportunity to research the artist’s life and work in 2021, and used it to create a work that he assures us can never be packaged up and released: “ it needs to be experienced.”
Image credit: Lachie Douglas
Image credit: Lachie Douglas
Image credit: Lachie Douglas
Robin Fox is an internationally recognized Australian-based audio-visual artist working across live performance, exhibitions, public art, and composition for contemporary dance. His audio-visual laser works, which synchronize sound & visual electricity in hyper-amplified 3D space have been performed in over 60 cities worldwide. His critically acclaimed work TRIPTYCH premiered at Unsound Krakow in late 2022 and has toured extensively since with highlights including headline shows at Berlin Atonal, Barbican (London), Ephemera (Warsaw), OHM Festival Brisbane among many others. TRIPTYCH was awarded the Isao Tomita Special Prize at Ars Electronica 2023. Recent large-scale audio-visual works include ICON which illuminated the Sydney Opera House for its 50th birthday, Night Sky for Brisbane Festival, Aqua Luma for Mona Foma 2021, Library of Light for Illuminate Adelaide 2021 BEACON for Mona Foma 2022 and MONOCHORD for Rising Festival 2022. In 2019 his science fiction opera DIASPORA premiered at the Melbourne International Arts Festival. Made in collaboration with Chamber Made, the work won Green Room Awards for Best Production and Best Visual Design.
AWARDS
TRIPTYCH won the Isao Tomita Special Prize for electronic music at Prix Ars Electronica
2023
MEDIA QUOTES
“a deliciously abrasive wall of carefully controlled and focused noise – a blend of gut-shaking bass notes and deep, drawn out droning beats coupled with a spectacular laser display. It was music you felt in your bones and the pit of your stomach as the smoke-wreathed air overhead was sliced and segmented by sweeping, stabbing beams and shards of light” ARTS HUB AUSTRALIA
“Fox’s performance is the equivalent of seeing a major pop star condense their stadium show into your local band room” NME Magazine Australia
"Few artists have such a unique take on laser technology as Robin Fox" The Quietus
“Fox pairs light with audio to create a fully synaesthetic experience that proposes different ways to imagine the structure of sound” The Quietus
"The combination of sound and visual seemed to tickle some third, underworked part of the brain....we all picked our jaws up off the floor" Resident Advisor
“Fox's closing performance was about as close to fireworks as you can get within a spectacular old theatre” Resident Advisor