Wind Nomads at Floriade 2012

Wind Nomads

The Wind Nomads are a collection of 400 paintings presented on counterbalanced hinged-pairs of wooden boards that resemble giant butterflies.

It was organised by the Dutch arts organisation SLeM (Stichting Landschapstheater en Meer).

They involved almost 400 artists from 30 countries around the world to create the paintings that were then mounted on the fluttering boards by a team from SLeM. The curator was Bruno Doedens, who has said that he is keen to expand this project worldwide.

Each individual painting is rectangular in shape, measuring 135 x 76 cm with an asymmetric split running along the entire width under a slight angle, at a height of approximately 70 cm, like an opened book. Hinges and an ingenious construction allow it to move in the wind.

It took many experiments to obtain a hinge and counterbalance system that would react to gentle gusts of wind without being blown into the next field when the the wind blew harder.

Wind Nomads was first exhibited in 2009 on flat sandy beaches on the coast of The Netherlands and subsequently travelled to the USA in order to be be exhibited on Governor's Island, in New York to celebrate Manhattan’s 400 year anniversary, as part of the New Amsterdam Festival.

There are videos and a VR on the SleM website . There is also a full catalogue of the paintings, each with a link to the artists websites.

On their return to The Netherlands the Wind Nomads were exhibited at Floriade 2012. They were planted in a field between the pavilions for "House of Flavours" and "Tropical Treasures".

---

Europe / Netherlands

Lat: 51° 24' 18.54" N
Long: 6° 6' 38.65" E

Elevation: 25m

→ maps.google.com [EXT]

Precision is: Medium. Nearby, but not to the last decimal.

Equipment: The source images were taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mk II, Zenitar 16mm fisheye f/2.8 lens. The camera was hand held using a string tied around the pivotal point of the lens, with a small weight dangling to the ground, as a guide to position. (This allowed me to travel light, without a tripod.)

Horizontal photographs were taken at roughly 45° angles and also two ground shots and a sky shot. Each "shot" consisted of three bracketed exposures from +2 to -2 stops.

A total of 33 separate images were combined using Hugin in order to achieve this High Dynamic Range type result.