Ongoing until July 30; NOVA Gallery, Warehouse 12A, La Fuerza Compound, 2241 Don Chino Roces Ave. Makati; for more information, call (02) 659-3697
 
 
Hypermanilarama is an exhibition by young artists living and working in Manila on how they view this city of complexity through the emerging trajectory of the intersection of art and STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Architecture & Math). The artists that present have interdisciplinary practices: an architect, a programmer, a motion designer, a citizen scientist, a machine maker, a game estate designer and a new media artist exploring through traditional methods and new technologies.
Works are open to collaboration between artist sharing skills and knowledge at the same time.
 
 
Ian Jaucian’s mediums for his interactive installation ‘Metamorphic Metaphor for Mining,’ for example, which consists of sodium tetraborate decahydrate (aka Borax), LED bulbs, magnet wires and “magical soil” among others are quite interesting by themselves. The LED bulbs with Borax crystals grown around them are lit wirelessly via magnetic induction coupling with a transmitter buried underneath the soil. Jaucian says the work is a metaphor about mining “like something dies when you take it away from its natural surroundings.”
 
 
 
Architect Jose Tong creates the sculpture ‘Hyperhouse,’ a Babel-like re-imagination of the ubiquitous residential towers of Manila. Tong sees it as an ephemeral and transparent structure which is dense at the top while the floors at the base gradiate into bigger spaces as it descends into the public realm. In Charles Buenconsejo’s moving image work entitled ‘A-Z,’ 70 people, shot separately in different locations around Manila and of whose footage are merged together, recites the English alphabet.
 
 
Julius Redillas creates his ideal Manila in ‘Ghost City,’ a city floating on air made of buildings and found materials that will soon be deleted from a simulated virtual environment. The video is shot from a virtual installation consisting of abandoned and unused buildings and structures using the interactive
3D virtual world platform SecondLife.
 
 
Mvltiverse tries to evoke a sensory experience through color perception with an LED screen projecting a myriad of colors drawn from the visible spectrum of light. It explores the materiality of light and challenges how colors and wavelengths are seen.
 
 
Hypermanilarama also features artists Miguel Inumerable, Clarissa Gonzalez, Megan Palero, Veronica Pee, Manila Automat, and the creative duo GIFKids.