Spacy exhibition Cinema Mystica mixes art and technology to transport you to different worlds

Techno music has the power of creating a magical world, especially if digital artists and visual designers also contribute. This enchanting atmosphere doesn’t happen when an EDM star is performing on the big stage, and has to makes up for their lack of invention with lasers and fireworks. In place of empty visual promises, Cinema Mystica offers a different experience.

To be fair, the first exhibition at the recently opened cultural centre on Margaret Island, Cinema Mystica, is not just about art, and not every piece has a message or deeper meaning. But even if you glance past one installation without stopping – for example, the two lion heads illuminated from inside – you still stop and marvel.

It’s hard to move on from this room, you would rather prefer to dance and walk back and forth for hours among the whirl of funny creatures. The video installation titled The Divine Clockwork is equally impressive. It showcases the clock-like operation of the human body in a special way, or the 3D-printed Iris, which has inside not only the swirling version of life’s fullness, but also the universe and the reality beyond it. The Covid-inspired Psyrus or Stargate-like giant We Are Membranes can also capture your attention.

In the installations and 3D sculptures, light, sound and image create special merged forms. The creators, who include famous local names such as visual artist and musician Dávid Vígh (Takkra) and the visual group Glowing Bulbs, have reconsidered the relationship between art and technology, creating an audiovisual experience of the kind not yet seen in any Hungarian gallery.

Each work may be really thought-provoking, but may not leave a particularly deep imprint on the viewer because it also radiates a pleasant harmony as they stare, transfixed.

Cinema Mystica may not deal with the techno phenomenon per se, but it certainly brings in its visual world, the culture and the ideals surrounding it. Perhaps even more so, as is the case with the works that didn’t come into the exhibition from the medium of techno parties: the work Biomorph Land, a play of form and light made for an acoustic concert by Hungarian band Punnany Massif.

There is still a misconception that electronic music is just empty entertainment for people torn apart by mind-altering drugs, but the Cinema Mystica exhibition proves that this is far from the case. It only takes a little openness to reveal the vibrant, colourful and multi-level techno universe behind the four-to-the-floor sounds.


After this, maybe everyone will look at DJs differently.