KASSEL, Germany—Lengthy video, slide shows, and other tech-heavy works abound at documenta 12. But many of the most resonant works in the show employ technology in a much simpler way, distilling the time-based genre to environments powered by light and sound.

These works—along with select pieces at Sculpture Projects Muenster and major solo exhibitions of Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller (through August 26 at Insitut Mathildenhohe, Darmstadt), Antony Gormley (through August 19 at The Hayward, London), and William Kentridge (through August 5 at Stadel Museum, Frankfurt)—confirm that unexpected applications of the most basic technologies can produce art that is immediate and surprising, yet intellectually and visually transcendent.

Add a Splash of Water

For his ethereal and unsettling Blind Light, Antony Gormley has constructed a large glass room lit by fluorescent bulbs and filled with ultrasonic humidifiers that emit a dense mist. Viewers wander within this synthetic, incarcerated cloud, but given its brightness and density, visibility is only about two feet. The space seems to collapse into opaque blankness, and you experience something like the "blinding light" of near-death experiences.

Janet Cardiff and George Bures Miller's site-specific Tiki Tiki Bar, a highlight in this excellent mini-retrospective, also uses water, but here it is modulated by darkness, color, and kitsch. The work is located in the museum's basement, which was formerly a reservoir, and visitors don rubber boots and climb down dank poorly lit stair into the building's deepest bowels. From there the escort tells you to step down—into five inches of water—and follow the sound of the music. As with Cardiff's well-known "Walks," the work evokes a contract of trust between artist and audience, and its success depends on a certain interplay of anxiety and relief. In Tiki Tiki Bar, you must trust that everything will be okay as you wade through a dark, cavernous, water-filled basement in the middle of a small town in the middle of Europe.

If you are able to surrender to the piece, the rewards are great. As you move along, you hear the sounds of vintage Hawaiian crooning. The water ripples and light glances off the tiny waves. Eventually, just beyond the furthest pillar, a thatched Tiki bar appears. It is festooned with colored lights, its counter strewn with used cups, an empty bottle, and oranges and lemons spiked by tiny umbrella toothpicks. Gently lapping water and tracks like Blue Velvet amplify the strange, nervous beauty of this amazing installation.

Mirrors, Lenses, Animation

The binaural recordings central to many of Cardiff and Miller's works have been described as the "auditory equivalent of an old-fashioned, three-dimensional stereograph," which is the rudimentary technology at the center of William Kentridge's recent anamorphic and stereoscopic drawings at the Stadel. Using mirrors and other reflective surfaces, Kentridge has discovered a new way to bring his intelligent drawings and ideas to life.

Appropriating several of Albrecht Durer's prints in the permanent collection, Kentridge has enlarged, duplicated, and reversed them such that, when viewed in double via mirrored lenses, they coalesce into uncanny three-dimensional tableaux. Meanwhile, other, circular drawings laid flat rely on a polished metal cylinder to anamorphically "correct" their distortions-what is seen from above as a blur of charcoal, is pulled together into the image of a fly or a landscape of convincing depth.

Kentridge is best known for films in which he painstakingly animates his drawings into moving, thought-provoking narratives. Here, in the piece de resistance, What Will Come (Has Already Come), anamorphic drawings are projected downward onto a circular pedestal with a metal cylinder. The image of an airplane flying seamlessly around the cylinder with no projection shadows or interruptions is exquisite legerdemain. As always, the lasting fascination of Kentridge's work is that he uses such visual trickery not as facile one-liners, but as entrees into the complex idea and history of human perception.