Atomium's new installation spins a wordless tale

Brussels’ Atomium has been at the cutting edge of design since its sleek steel-and-glass spheres were first unveiled at the 1958 World’s Fair. With the recent opening of the nearby Art & Design Atomium Museum and the inauguration of its ID# (Innovative Display) programme, though, the Atomium’s sponsorship of contemporary design has reached new heights.

The former is housed next door in the Trade Mart building, but the latter brings a new site-specific installation into the Atomium every year. The current ID# offering is TALK, a seven-minute sound-and-light show conceived by French digital arts collective Visual System.

The installation occupies two levels of the monument’s temporary exhibition sphere as well as the access escalator. It consists of a set of interacting panels varying in size. Some suggest standard computer monitors, while other larger units evoke ancient sarcophagi. All of these flash geometric patterns in synch with a synthesizer-heavy score. The experience builds from flickering, half-mute passages to dazzling crescendos.

TALK can of course be enjoyed as a strictly sensory experience but there is much more than meets the eye (and ear) here. Together, the visual and audio components form an elemental language, a sort of communication without words. It doesn’t tell a story, nor is it linear; it can be entered and exited at any point. But there is a purposeful grammar here, with light and sound standing in for those traditional linguistic units, words.

If the artists of Visual System are comfortable in the space, it’s because the Paris-based collective are regular guests at the Atomium. They contributed the sprawling dystopian rhizome Out of Control to ID# in 2014 and are the architects of the permanent digital installation Transit stretching the length of one of the venue’s longest escalators.

Until 13 November at Atomium, Brussels. Photo: Axel Addidngton/SABAM 2016