Without us being aware, the body continuously adjusts itself to the gravitational pull. Artist Teun Vonk created an installation that lets you experience gravity anew. Immerse yourself in the transforming space of A Sense of Gravity and explore how your body reacts to the visual, tactile and bodily sensations. As you set foot on solid ground afterwards, your sense of gravity changes in a spectacular yet subtle way.

Teun Vonk asked himself: How can I challenge the perception of gravity?

With A Sense of Gravity, artist Teun Vonk created an installation that lets you experience gravity anew. For two years, Vonk researched how our human bodies perceive and react to gravity. Without us being aware, the body continuously adjusts itself to the gravitational pull and keeps itself in balance. This process seems effortless and self-evident. Teun Vonk asked himself: How can I challenge the logic of gravity, of the bodily perception of gravity, with a machine or installation? Can I expand the boundaries of our everyday perception of gravity?

Lying on his back on an elevated, floating platform in his studio, Vonk reflected on gravity and weightlessness. He realized that our bodies anticipate and adjust to what you see around you and the surface you walk on. It seems self-evident, especially since we spend most of our everyday life in interior spaces, with levelled floors. The artist set out to create a space that is not static, but that changes in size and shape. This interferes with the logic of spatial perception, ‘waking up’ your body’s sensory system and influencing gravity perception. Vonk experimented with visual and bodily sensations, taking his own physical reactions as a starting point. In close collaboration with designers and programmers, the artist developed the prototype for this immersive installation.

This technological, futuristic looking machine harbours a dynamic, soft space that invites the viewer to submit to a very personal physical experience. The entire body’s sensibility is engaged, an awareness that changes the viewer’s sense of gravity in a spectacular yet subtle way.

A Sense of Gravity is developed with support of CBK Rotterdam, Mondriaan Fonds, V2_lab for the unstable media and STRP.

More information:

https://strp.nl/program/a-sense-of-gravity
http://todaysart.org/
http://www.crossingparallels.nl/

Photography: Luuk Smits