My eyes hurt when I hear you | video installation, 2011
Industrial board boxes, LED light, laser light, sensors, video projection
This piece explores how internet-based communication devices frame the space (visual, emotional, sensorial, spatial) in a context of overseas conversations. I examine how is mediated the human contact in these attempts to communicate, as it is a primary need to keep alive relationships, especially long-distance ones.
The use of the entire existing space of the room, from ceiling to floor, to emphasizes the fact that we always are, in a globalized world, parts of a whole (no matter the distances). It also allows me to question the popular norms in which the term “communication” mostly refer to fragmented text/vocal messages, low-quality video chats or interrupted conversations through digital technology devices.
The installation is comprised of three parts. I use board boxes to build a structure in a corner of the room, on which is projected a split-screen video made of Skype conversations captures. Within this ‘global’ space, the square created by the boxes creates one point of attraction, while the activation of in-between spaces (such as gaps between pipes in the ceiling, corners of the room) with small LED lights, the use of laser lights, disrupt the idea of any visual or narrative consensus.
Interactivity being a primarily aspect of Internet-based communication devices, I uses electronic sensors to activate the space at different levels. Laser lights, coupled to photocells, react to the passing of the viewer in the room, triggering or stopping sound/video projections.
Two white boxes will be placed in an obvious way in the room, to raise the viewer’s curiosity. The first one, hung from the ceiling, will have holes perforated on both of its sides. This familiar ‘audio sign’ pattern will invite the viewer to put his/her head in the box, where an invisible sonar will trigger the video projection on the structure in the corner of the room, hiding it to the viewer in the box. Vice-versa, the second white box will be standing on the floor, a dark hole in its center, inviting the viewer to bend to see inside. A sonar will trigger a shrill sound in response to the viewer’s physical presence.
With this project, I want the viewer to interfer permanently with the piece, by either activating voluntarily or not an element, transforming the projected images with his/her own shadow, reacting to a frustration or an absence of event. The viewer’s difficulty to locate himself/herself in the space, to control the activation of the elemnts and to determine the focal point of the piece will raise issues of multiplicity of points of views, belonging, mediation and virtualization of human relationships.
Industrial board boxes, LED light, laser light, sensors, video projection
This piece explores how internet-based communication devices frame the space (visual, emotional, sensorial, spatial) in a context of overseas conversations. I examine how is mediated the human contact in these attempts to communicate, as it is a primary need to keep alive relationships, especially long-distance ones.
The use of the entire existing space of the room, from ceiling to floor, to emphasizes the fact that we always are, in a globalized world, parts of a whole (no matter the distances). It also allows me to question the popular norms in which the term “communication” mostly refer to fragmented text/vocal messages, low-quality video chats or interrupted conversations through digital technology devices.
The installation is comprised of three parts. I use board boxes to build a structure in a corner of the room, on which is projected a split-screen video made of Skype conversations captures. Within this ‘global’ space, the square created by the boxes creates one point of attraction, while the activation of in-between spaces (such as gaps between pipes in the ceiling, corners of the room) with small LED lights, the use of laser lights, disrupt the idea of any visual or narrative consensus.
Interactivity being a primarily aspect of Internet-based communication devices, I uses electronic sensors to activate the space at different levels. Laser lights, coupled to photocells, react to the passing of the viewer in the room, triggering or stopping sound/video projections.
Two white boxes will be placed in an obvious way in the room, to raise the viewer’s curiosity. The first one, hung from the ceiling, will have holes perforated on both of its sides. This familiar ‘audio sign’ pattern will invite the viewer to put his/her head in the box, where an invisible sonar will trigger the video projection on the structure in the corner of the room, hiding it to the viewer in the box. Vice-versa, the second white box will be standing on the floor, a dark hole in its center, inviting the viewer to bend to see inside. A sonar will trigger a shrill sound in response to the viewer’s physical presence.
With this project, I want the viewer to interfer permanently with the piece, by either activating voluntarily or not an element, transforming the projected images with his/her own shadow, reacting to a frustration or an absence of event. The viewer’s difficulty to locate himself/herself in the space, to control the activation of the elemnts and to determine the focal point of the piece will raise issues of multiplicity of points of views, belonging, mediation and virtualization of human relationships.