About
Sleeping octopuses shift colour at room scale in Tuomas A. Laitinen's immersive video, made with an Okinawa neuroscience lab, in Red Hook.
Laitinen scales octopus skin up to room size: a multichannel video of shifting camouflage patterns, textures and colours, mixing his own footage with OIST lab recordings of octopuses as they sleep. Edited into one continuous landscape, several bodies seem to merge into a single rippling, painterly surface. If you like art that feels like being inside a nature documentary, this is Red Hook's most hypnotic room this fall.
What to expect
Pioneer Works is a big brick former ironworks on Pioneer Street, and Siphon is built around its titular multichannel video that surrounds viewers. You can drift in and out, then wander the building's other fall shows and its back garden.
Good to know
- Pioneer Works is at 159 Pioneer Street; there is no subway stop in Red Hook.
- The B61 bus or the NYC Ferry stop at Atlantic Basin get you closest.
- Two other new exhibitions open alongside it, so budget time for the whole building.
- The garden is open during gallery hours and makes a good pause.
- Pioneer Works notes that most of its programming is free or accessibly priced.
Common questions
What is Siphon about?
It draws on more than a decade of research into octopus intelligence, sleep and consciousness, centred on an immersive multichannel video of octopus camouflage and sleep patterns.
Who did the artist work with?
Neuroscientist Sam Reiter of the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, with production guidance and support from PALO.