Liquid Solid [2015]

Liquid Solid is a collaborative project between Nicky Assmann and Joris Strijbos in which they research the cinematic qualities of a freezing soap film.

Liquid Solid came about after attending the Ars BioArctica residency at the Biological Research Center in the Arctic Region of Finland. During this residency they shot footage of the freezing process of soap films. The footage functioned as the basis for a single channel video and a video installation.

Video installation: 2015, Full HD, 1920x1080, 18'09" (loop)
The video installation Liquid Solid is an eighteen-minute-long film about the freezing process of soap liquid. Soap only freezes at very low temperatures, because the water remains protected by the soap acids for a very long time. Within a number of minutes, the colourful soap slowly sinks down in the film of soap, until a vacuum of a very thin layer of water remains, in which frozen crystals whirl round. The constantly shifting iridescent quality of the liquid soap membrane disappears as it freezes, leaving a solid, crystallized colourless surface. Only at a very low temperature, an accelerated freezing process occurs, during which ice crystals transform into fractal-like patterns.

Single Channel Video: 2016, Full HD, 1920x1080, 7'02"
The single channel video Liquid Solid focusses on the conditions where the temperatures are around -20 degrees Celsius and all colour has disappeared from the soap film, it shows a precise montage of the accelerated freezing process of the soap films during which ice crystals grow into complex fractal-like patterns.

For both the video installation and the film Strijbos and Assmann composed a soundtrack with a mixture of soundscapes and recordings of self-made instruments, such as monochords played with electromagnets, which they developed in earlier collaborations.

The single channel video is distributed by Eye Experimental

Liquid Solid was made possible with the generous support of:
Creative Industries Fund NL, Gemeente Rotterdam, The Finnish Society of Bioart