Wave interference
Artist Marco Ortiga first noticed wave interference, or the effect known as moiré, while working as a production designer working on a local TV show, when certain clothe would mess with the cameras. “Whenever the talent was wearing a striped shirt, he always had to change it.”
The mutability and randomness of moiré can be fascinating. In “Everyday Moiré,” at The Crucible Gallery, 3rd Floor, Megamall A, until Nov. 30, Ortiga installed various groupings of metal sheets with rows of perforated dots (his training as a material fabricator serves him well) as triple-pendulum installations with moving parts. Spin the sculpture and gravity takes over, creating interesting contrasts, shifting patterns—an effect akin to Op-Art of the ‘60s: the illusion of endless movement.
“I knew I wanted to do something with moiré, but I didn’t know why, or how.” Ortiga experimented with perforated metal sheets with different hole sizes, overlapping the sheets to see how the patterns moved together. The installations can resemble industrial art, or shifting Mondrian patterns done in tones of gray.
It’s another version of kinetic art, something Ortiga has explored in previous shows, whether it’s colorful, discarded fishing boat pieces that shift and move with a crank on a wall (“Baroto”), or pendulum-operated Spirograph-type machines that create evolving patterns on paper (“Speed of Abstract”). Movement is a constant in his work.
“I always found it cool,” he says of the moiré effect, “but the challenge was how to show it in an interesting way.” A three-minute, single-channel video occupies one wall, a hypnotic meditation on shifting dot patterns.
Similar to moiré is what’s called the “beat phenomenon”—that’s when, say, a drummer slams a bass pedal against a head. The acoustical interference between two sounds of slightly different frequencies is perceived as a "beat," breaking up the notion of peaceful acoustic space.
This phenomenon was on display last Friday when Ortiga took his musical outfit Somatosonic to WHYNoT space at Karrivin Plaza, Makati. Composed of visual artist and dancer Christina Dy, media and sound artist Tad Ermitaño and Ortiga, Somatosonic is described as a “multidisciplinary art unit” prone to experimental live sets. Featuring Miggy Inumerable, the hour-long event included live visuals and “sound sculptures” developed from keyboard-triggered parts. It’s just another way Ortiga is injecting wave interference into the somewhat static art scene of the moment.
