peace can be realized even without order

Teamlab installation shown in the video below at the Singapore Art Museum.



Seemingly endless holographic figures play music and dance, influenced by the sounds of the figures close to them.  From Teamlab's description:

[...] There is no lead figure that oversees or can influence all the other dancers, and there is also no center or order enforced on the crowd.  External events can cause disorder, but then in time gradually peace will be restored.

When a person enters the installation and a figure senses the viewer, the figure responds to that person and stops playing music.  The figure passes on this information to other figures close by.  After a short period of time the figure will start playing music and dance again, but this disturbance will have disrupted the harmony.  If, however, the viewer stays still or leaves, the dancers will begin to form back into one harmonious group and the feeling of peace will return.

More video of the work:



Here, too:



Teamlab describes the ancient Japanese Awa Dance Festival whereby various groups of dancers and musicians arbitrarily roam town playing and dancing as any given group so chooses.  As one group encounters another, each begins to "gradually and unconsciously" match the music and tempo of the other, "not due to any set of rules," and whereby, "an extraordinary peaceful feeling prevails,"  Teamlab stating:

Today, in the Internet age, the speed at which people can connect with other people has accelerated.  As a result people throughout the world have become increasingly connected, and the influence of connections to other people has become more important.  What we experience in this new age can be considered similar to the experience of the dance festival, and perhaps in these unordered connections there is a way to find peace.

And more - the concept of ultra subjective space.

the event of a thread

Ann Hamilton's installation, the event of a thread, opens at the Park Avenue Armory through January 6th.  Roberta Smith has a review here, replete with photostream and video, detailing the engineering of an immense, billowing white curtain strung throughout the rafters of the Wade Thompson Drill Hall's vast and seemingly cetological interior.  The cords and curtains toss and dance, put into motion by the audience, as individuals are pushed by one another on huge swing planks suspended on long cords from the towering ceiling.  Other visitors choose to perhaps lay beneath the waves of curtain or walk around holding radios wrapped in brown paper to their ears, listening to literature transmissions "murmured" by actors seated somberly at a refectory table and while a writer scribbles on a miked surface, seated off by herself in a corner.  Pigeons are supposed to be released at the end of each day, to fly around the space and then be homed back into their cages.

The work is described as reminiscent of Christo and Jean-Claude's 1972 outdoor land-art piece Valley Curtain.  Ms. Hamilton is also a weaver and has an extensive background in textiles.