ALBA TRIANA

Dialogue with the Primordial Sea at Locust Projects is an expansion of the artist’s ongoing Delirious Fields Series, exploring the complex interplay between the tangible and intangible, the individual and the collective, chance and organization, and self-organizing processes in nature. By engaging with these phenomena on a large scale, the installation unveils and immerses the viewer in the unseen underlying dynamics that shape humanity.

The site-specific installation features a series of magnetic spheres that alternately levitate or pendulate as they interact with invisible magnetic fields. Each system consists of a magnetic sphere and two coils. When a coil emits a magnetic field, the sphere levitates near it, manifesting the field’s intangible presence. When the field dissipates, the sphere pendulates freely, propelled by gravity. As a whole, the installation behaves like a collective—an organism composed of interrelated parts that function together tracing ephemeral lines of movement across the walls of the space. Controlled by a probabilistic code, the spheres exhibit both individual and collective behaviors. Amidst the randomness, moments of synchronized stillness and synchronized activity emerge, evoking a living entity that constantly self-generates.

Commissioned by Locust Projects as part of the Knight Digital Commission series, this site-specific work offers Alba Triana an exceptional opportunity to scale her previous explorations into a large-scale, immersive installation. Transforming the Project Room into a space that embodies intangible yet powerful forces and relationships, Triana pushes the limits of her practice, deepening her exploration of the ethereal realms from which everything—including humans and their creations—emerges.

Dialogue with the Primordial Sea was a ‘Curator’s Pick,’ selected by Executive Director Lorie Mertes from artist applications to the 2024 Knight Digital Commissions open calls.