Three-channel video installation, color, sound
6 min 29 sec (videos)
Overall dimensions variable


Haluk Akakçe's digitally animated video creates a poetically choreographed microcosm of alien-looking flora in an indefinite space. Illusion of the First Time features three large projected abstract images that merge into a single, mural-sized frame, cycling through three “compositions” in a symphony of form and shadow, stillness and movement, the organic and the digital. The first composition is silent and consists of graphic black lines rushing past one another in hectic motion. The second constitutes shadowy organic forms drifting slowly down the projected surface, accompanied by an enigmatic score composed by Dan Donavan in collaboration with Akakce. The third part shows bright, fluid techno-organic objects spinning and gradually unfolding.

Articulated in three dimensions against the flat stain of the background, the objects cluster at the top of the composition as if waiting to bloom beyond the surface edge. Illusion of the First Time suggests rather than depicts an organic evolution, against the backdrop of an Edenic cybergarden. The three successive compositions evolve in a dynamic continuum of form, highlighting the increasingly indistinct border between the artificial and the natural.


*1970 in Ankara, Turkey | Living and working in Ankara, Turkey and New York, USA

Please find here the LINK to the brochure Haluk Akakçe: Illusion of the First Time
Published by the Whitney Museum of Amercian Art and published by archive.org